Congressman Lieu Destroys Trump Over Email And iPhone Hypocrisy

A bombshell report from “The New York Times” alleges that Chinese and Russian spies are exploiting vulnerabilities in resident Trump’s iPhone to listen to his conversations.

Trump has reportedly resisted warnings to avoid using the phone.

Rep. Ted Lieu tells Ari Melber that it’s “absolutely hypocritical” for Trump to use a non-secure phone when he campaigned on Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, which was never infiltrated by foreign spies.

Trump's Game of Blame Avoidance Continues! Only the Fools are Fooled!

Jesse Dollemore discusses the latest development related to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, George Soros, Eric Holder, John Brennan, Maxine Waters, Debbie Wasserman- Schultz, and the NYC headquarters of CNN. The list NOW INCLUDES Robert De Niro and Joe Biden. Something must be done!



Coming less than two weeks before the midterm elections, the discovery of the pipe bombs reverberated across a country already on edge, stirring anew questions about whether political discourse had grown too vitriolic. Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama, Mr. Soros and CNN have all figured prominently in right-wing political attacks — many of which have been led by Mr. Trump.

He has often referred to major news organizations as “the enemy of the people” and has shown contempt for CNN. Mr. Trump, speaking at the White House on Wednesday, called the attempted bombings “despicable acts.”

 “In these times we have to unify,” Mr. Trump said. “We have to come together and send one very clear, strong, unmistakable message that acts or threats of political violence of any kind have no place in the United States of America.”

New! A Hotline for Racists | NYT Opinion

In this satirical infomercial, the comedian and actress Niecy Nash plays the inventor of a new hotline, 1-844-WYT-FEAR.

The video advertises a phone service for white people to call when they can’t cope with black people living their lives near them.

It’s a real phone number we created so that fearful whites can call it for advice, about their racism.

Republicans Will Hurt You More Than 100 Caravans of Immigrants

Posted by Rude One

You have to be a special kind of son of a bitch to look at filthy, exhausted people wearing rags and desperately trying to get somewhere they won't be raped, tortured, murdered, or forced into gangs or where they won't watch their children starve to death, and think, "Fuckin' stop them because they gotta be terrorists." You gotta be a particular type of motherfucker if you exploit those families, those mothers, those fathers, those children in order to whip a horde of idiots into an orgy of xenophobia and racism where a perverse, heaving mass of flesh, all sweat and pimples and whiteness, so much whiteness, pumps and sucks, fucking themselves until they reach an undulating roar of intolerance.

Goddamn, the stink.

At each of his rallies of the damned, resident Donald Trump, a lump of cow shit with bits of undigested hay stuck in it, has been that son of a bitch and that motherfucker, frothing in a Mussolini-esque squawk about the immigrants and the vile Democrats who allowed this to happen and the depraved leaders of Honduras and Guatemala and Mexico who have not halted the march of the immigrants. Jesus, how the mob of Trumpistas lap it up like semen spooged straight from Jesus's circumcised dick, fighting over each other for who can ingest the last precious drops as Trump does his dance with the ghost of Hitler, demonizing, condemning, promising violence, stopping just short of advocating violence himself, but ensuring that the mob's adoring hatred will drive them to the voting booths to protect him, protect the future he has promised, the white future, the rich future, when the nation is Mar-a-Lago and you're either a member or you're staring in longingly from the gate.

Trump has mastered the art of layering lie upon lie, creating a shit parfait of lies, the essence of his entire career. He told the gathered villagers in Houston last night to get their pitchforks and torches ready for the "caravan" of immigrants traveling to the United States border with Mexico because "I think the Democrats had something to do with it and now they're saying I think we made a big mistake because people are seeing how bad it is...look, that is an assault on our country and in that caravan you have some very bad people. You have some very bad people and we can't let that happen to our country." Yes, the president of the United States, with no evidence at all, is saying that the opposition party is behind a mass of immigrants who are hiding evildoers. He said earlier in the day that, if you search the thousands of immigrants walking over 1000 miles, "You’re going to find MS-13, you’re going to find Middle Eastern, you’re going to find everything."

Many of the Hondurans and others are fleeing from vicious gangs who have threatened to kill them or their families, who have killed family members, who have taken over communities. You think that they'd want open gang members to be along with them? Or are they in disguise as young children being carried by their parents? And, as for Middle Easterners, you think that immigrants who want to start a new life are totally fine covering up for terrorists? They'd probably be able to tell the difference between a Saudi and a Guatemalan.

You know what would happen if those immigrants were treated like asylum seekers and refugees ought to be treated in the supposed wealthiest, greatest, mostest wonderfulest, sexiest nation in the history of the earth and universe forever? The adults would get jobs. They'd open businesses. The kids would go to school. They'd all create safe communities if they didn't have to worry about ICE coming in to tear their worlds apart. They'd want to become Americans if our shit system for allowing that wasn't hopelessly backlogged and broken. They would barely be a blip in the immigration radar.

Some would commit crimes, sure, but, statistically, at a lower rate than citizens. And a few might join a gang because that's just how the world goes. But the vast majority just want a goddamn life and a chance for their kids to survive and thrive and they are willing to fucking walk 1,500 miles for the barest thread of hope. (And, by the way, the caravan is just inside Mexico. Walking nonstop, it'd be at least two months before they got to the border, unless George Soros provides them with some helicopters, so everyone just calm the fuck down.)

Even if every single one of the immigrants were let into the United States, it would have no effect on your life (unless you work in resettlement or enforcement). They're not all gonna settle in your neighborhood. Some would live with family already here. The rest would be dispersed to different areas. The most you might see is a new family moving in next door. If that frightens you, well, you're a fucking dumbass and aren't worth talking to.

You know what will have an effect on your life? If Republicans continue to run the government without any check on their power, Mitch McConnell has vowed to go after Medicare and Social Security cuts to help pay for the tax cuts for the greedy, wealthy pig fuckers who fund our fraught and frayed political system. That's a real goddamned threat to you and your family.

If Republicans keep both the House and Senate, they have vowed to try again to overturn the Affordable Care Act, even as they blatantly lie about protecting the pre-existing conditions exemption. That's a real goddamned threat to you and your health.

If Democrats lose in the midterms, we'll fall even further behind on anything to slow climate change as even supposedly smart Republicans have come down on the "Well, the climate is changing, sure, but we don't know what causes it" side of the bullshit (even though we totally know what causes it). That's a real goddamned threat to you and safety and security and property.

You know what's not a threat to you, your family, your health, your safety, your security, and your property? The fucking caravan of immigrants in Mexico right now. If you give an actual shit about protecting your ass, you'll get rid of the people who have flat-out promised to do shit to kill you.

Vote for Democrats like your ass depends on it.

Woman demands to see passports of Spanish speaking family at Virginia restaurant

© Telemundo 44

A white woman confronted a Spanish-speaking family last week at a Virginia restaurant and demanded that they "show me your passports" in video that has since gone viral.

The woman can be heard in the video screaming at a Guatemalan woman and her family, telling them to "go back to your fucking country." She also tells the family not to "freeload on America" and repeatedly asks for their passports.

Later in the video, the woman is seen continuing her tirade outside the restaurant, saying, "I'm tired of this shit."

The woman who was berated recorded the video and shared it with Telemundo 44 in Washington, D.C.

The confrontation occurred at Andy's, a restaurant in Lovettsville, Va. The restaurant denounced the woman in a Facebook post, calling her "a vile and loathsome individual."

"Thank you — and we mean this with all the aforementioned respect that you rightfully deserve—for never returning to Andy’s. You are not welcome," the restaurant wrote.

The confrontation is the latest video to go viral showing a white person berating Spanish-speaking people in public. In May, a man threatened to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement on customers and employees at a restaurant in New York for speaking Spanish.

The man, an attorney named Aaron Schlossberg, was later kicked out of his office space.

 By Michael Burke - 10/22/18 09:19 PM EDT

Republicans want to take away your Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid

By Laurence Lewis

 

Mitch McConnell is disappointed:

After instituting a $1.5 trillion tax cut and signing off on a $675 billion budget for the Department of Defense, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that the only way to lower the record-high federal deficit would be to cut entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

"It’s disappointing, but it’s not a Republican problem," McConnell said of the deficit, which grew 17 percent to $779 billion in fiscal year 2018. McConnell explained to Bloomberg that "it’s a bipartisan problem: Unwillingness to address the real drivers of the debt by doing anything to adjust those programs to the demographics of America in the future." The deficit has increased 77 percent since McConnell became majority leader in 2015.

New Treasury Department analysis on Monday revealed that corporate tax cuts had a significant impact on the deficit this year. Federal revenue rose by 0.04 percent in 2018, a nearly 100 percent decrease on last year’s 1.5 percent. In fiscal year 2018, tax receipts on corporate income fell to $205 billion from $297 billion in 2017.

The Republican tax cuts for the wealthy gutted federal revenues and exploded the deficit, just as the CBO said they would, but it's not the Republicans' problem. That's Republican logic for you. And of course their solution isn’t to undo the damage they inflicted but to inflict more. By gutting the budget. McConnell has some very specific spending targets:

McConnell said it would be “very difficult to do entitlement reform, and we’re talking about Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid,” with one party in charge of Congress and the White House.

“I think it’s pretty safe to say that entitlement changes, which is the real driver of the debt by any objective standard, may well be difficult if not impossible to achieve when you have unified government,” McConnell said.

Trying to follow his train of thought makes the brain hurt. He's saying he wants to slash Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid, but he can't because his party controls all the branches of government. Democrats have no interest in destroying these popular and enormously beneficial programs, but somehow McConnell can only get it done with their help. The point seems to be that in order for an unpopular and disastrous Republican agenda to be enacted, Democrats need to be elected. Which may be his way of saying that if you don't want an unpopular and disastrous Republican agenda you need to keep Republicans in power.

Did I mention that trying to follow his train of thought makes the brain hurt?

But the point is clear. However he gets it done, he wants it done. Whatever the politics, his policy goal is to gut funding for Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. And as for his reference to any objective standard as to the driver of the debt, well he seems to have a different standard of objectivity than reality. That the Republican tax cuts for the wealthy would explode the deficit was known all along. Both before they were passed:

The House Republican tax plan may have a deficit problem.
The GOP bill including some changes would increase federal budget deficits by $1.7 trillion over 10 years, according to an estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That includes money for additional debt service payments due to the bill.
Under the plan, U.S. debt would rise to 97.1 percent of gross domestic product in 2027, up from 91.2 percent under current CBO projections.

And after:

The deficit - the amount that Washington’s spending exceeds its revenues - will expand to $804 billion in fiscal 2018, which ends on Sept. 30, up from $665 billion in fiscal 2017, CBO said.

The national debt is on track to approach 100 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2028, said the nonpartisan CBO, which analyzes legislation for Congress.

“That amount is far greater than the debt in any year since just after World War II,” CBO said, adding that the debt is now about 77 percent of GDP, a measure of the size of the economy. The Republican tax legislation, passed by Congress without Democratic support, along with a recent bipartisan $1.3 trillion spending package, are expected to drive economic growth faster than initially expected, CBO said.

Of course, McConnell was lying about it all along:

Nearly a year ago, as the debate over Republican tax breaks for the wealthy was near its end, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) insisted that the tax cuts didn’t need to be paid for – because they’d pay for themselves.

“I not only don’t think it will increase the deficit, I think it will be beyond revenue neutral,” McConnell said in December 2017. “In other words, I think it will produce more than enough to fill that gap.”

Whether the GOP leader actually believed his own rhetoric is an open question, but either way, we now know the Kentucky senator’s claim was spectacularly wrong. The Republican tax breaks have, as Democrats and those familiar with arithmetic predicted, sent the nation’s budget deficit soaring.

And just last month the Republican House of Representatives was pushing through yet another round of tax cuts:

A second round of Republican tax cuts would add an additional $3.2 trillion to the federal deficit over a decade, according to a new report released by a centrist think-tank...

The GOP’s “tax reform 2.0” would make permanent many of the individual and estate tax provisions in the tax law Republicans passed last fall, which the Congressional Budget Office said would already add about $1.9 trillion to the deficit, factoring for interest costs.

The second round of cuts would cost $631 billion before 2028 and an additional $3.15 trillion in the decade after that, according to the Tax Policy Center. The finding was somewhat larger than the $2.4 trillion cost over 10 years projected by the Tax Foundation, a conservative think-tank.

The first round of Republican tax cuts for the wealthy exploded the deficit, leading the Republican Senate leader to call for cuts to Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid, and the Republicans already are pushing for yet more tax cuts for the wealthy, which would further explode the deficit, undoubtedly leading to more Republican calls for more cuts to Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and absolutely anything else that serves the interests of anyone other than the wealthy beneficiaries of the Republican tax cuts. For decades, this has been the Republican Party’s dream. If they retain control of Congress they can make it happen. As I wrote eight years ago, just don't call it class warfare:

It's not class warfare. Don't you dare call it class warfare. The Republicans may relentlessly pursue policies that favor the wealthy and hurt everyone else, but it most emphatically is not class warfare. The arbiters of appropriate political discourse will be most put out if you call it class warfare. You will not be welcome in the Village. You will not be invited to appear on the Sunday talk shows.

Class warfare is such an ugly term. To begin with, it suggests that we are a socially stratified nation, and that such stratification is at least to some degree based on money. Money is dirty. One shouldn't discuss money in polite conversation. And it's important that we be polite. And everyone knows that we are a melting pot. Everyone is capable of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps, and don't even consider questioning the physics when there is neither a fulcrum nor a point of leverage. This is America. The land of opportunity.

Republican policies that hurt the less affluent and favor those that need no favors is not class warfare, but to discuss Republican policies that hurt the less affluent and favor those that need no favors is class warfare. The pundits will say so. The policies themselves are not class warfare, but raising awareness about them is.

This isn't new. It's a pattern. It's the basis of the Republican Party’s economic history. As I wrote more than seven years ago:

Ronald Reagan used the deficit as an issue when he ran against President Carter. As president, Reagan ran up the largest deficit in U.S. history. The Republicans of his era talked a lot about a Balanced Budget Amendment, while consistently voting to run up the largest deficit in U.S. history. Reagan's successor, the heir to the Bush dynasty, outdid his mentor by running up an even larger deficit. President Clinton raised taxes, eliminated the deficit and created a surplus, and just coincidentally oversaw an enormous economic expansion and near full employment. The next heir to the Bush dynasty cut taxes, eviscerated the Clinton surplus, and outdid both his father and Reagan by breaking their records for creating the largest deficits in U.S. history. He also all but broke the economy. This isn't complicated. This isn't difficult to explain.

Republicans never did actually care about deficits. They cut taxes, explode deficits, then use those deficits as a rationale to cut government spending. It's not complicated. It never has been complicated. It has, in fact, been transparent all along. And it's transparent now.

Underneath his bizarre, Byzantine gaslighting, McConnell revealed the Republicans' ultimate goal. He wants to blame the Democrats for what his policies have wrought, and he wants to make the Democrats complicit in his further goals of wreaking further economic havoc. But the Democrats want no part of it. But cut through the misdirections and circumlocutions, and one thread of truth runs through McConnell's rhetoric. He admitted what he wants to do. He admitted what the Republican Party wants to do. And make no mistake that if they retain control of Congress, Republicans will push it through. They will blame its disastrous consequences on Democrats, but it is their agenda. More tax cuts for the wealthy. More cavernous deficits. And their ultimate goal: eviscerating Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid.

So much is at stake in next month's elections, and it's sometimes hard to focus when Trump, McConnell and the Republicans are burning down the republic in so many ways, but don't lose sight of this one. The existence of Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid are on the ballot this November.

Because the Republicans want to destroy them.

Eat At Home..You Vile Republicans....

By jodymarie aimee

poor Mitch and Elaine got hassled at chi chi restaurant...my elderly disabled and poor people in Wisconsin get a MAX of $15.00 a MONTH in FoodStamps...pennies a day....

Man dumps Mitch McConnell's to-go box on Bardstown Road, witness says

The Crisis

GOP Hypocrisy On Health Care

Republicans are talking up pre-existing conditions protections on the campaign trail after working for years to repeal health care. Lawrence discusses with Jared Bernstein and Ron Klain.

Alec Baldwin urges 'overthrow' of Trump government via voting

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Actor Alec Baldwin followed up his latest parody portrayal of resident Donald Trump with a serious call Sunday night for voters to use the Nov. 6 midterm elections to peacefully "overthrow" the government.

After reprising his role as Trump on "Saturday Night Live," Baldwin flew to New Hampshire, where he was the keynote speaker at the New Hampshire Democratic Party's annual fall fundraising dinner.

"The way we implement change in America is through elections. We change governments here at home in an orderly and formal way," he said. "In that orderly and formal way and lawful way, we need to overthrow the government of the United States under Donald Trump."

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday night.

Baldwin said on issue after issue, Republicans are destroyers, not builders.

"There is a small cadre of people currently in power who are hell-bent on continuing a malicious immigration policy that has set this country up for human rights violations charges by the global community. This cadre has looted money from the federal treasury and deposited it directly into the bank accounts of their most ardent political supporters," he said.

He said Republicans "shrug" when it comes to gun violence, "spit in the face" at the rest of the world at the notion of changing outdated energy policies and offer neither hope nor solutions to people of color "who seek a decent seat at the American economic table but instead are issued a prison term, or worse, a bullet."

The recent confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh showed that Republicans view women as undeserving as the same constitutional protections as men, Baldwin said.

"They themselves are sons, husbands, fathers, and yet when the time arrived in the thick of the #metoo movement to set politics aside and establish that women's rights were more important than political expediency, they failed and it was ugly," he said.

Several of the political leaders and candidates who spoke before Baldwin praised survivors of sexual assault who were moved to tell their stories during Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing, saying they should inspire others to speak up and advocate for issues they care about.

"People raising their voices and sharing their experiences is what has been critical for our democracy and our capacity to move forward throughout our history," U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan said. "As difficult as the Kavanaugh battle was, those moments have been incredibly important and will continue to be as we move forward."

Congressional candidate Chris Pappas echoed that sentiment.

"If we're not hoarse by the time the election rolls around, we're not doing our jobs or we're not paying attention," he said. "It's about raising our voices and what we're all about as a country."

In 2016, U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster went public with her own account of a renowned heart surgeon reaching up her skirt during a business luncheon more than 40 years ago, when she was a young staffer on Capitol Hill.

"I want to say to everyone, to the survivors who have come forward and those who have not, I believe you and you are not alone," Kuster said Sunday.

Baldwin's appearance in the state that holds the first presidential primary came hours before the premiere of his new talk show. "The Alec Baldwin Show," which airs on ABC at 10 p.m., will feature one-on-one conversations with celebrities and cultural icons.

But Baldwin said it won't be overtly political. Asked Sunday if he'd consider running for office himself, he didn't rule it out but joked that his wife would likely divorce him.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/celebrity/baldwin-urges-overthrow-of-trump-government-via-voting/ar-BBOomeY

GOP Aims To Suppress ND Native American Vote To Hinder Heidi Heitkamp

Trump to travel to Florida to view Hurricane Michael damage at Mar-a-Lago

By Tommy_Carcetti

resident Donald Trump announced that he will be traveling to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida to get a firsthand view of the aftermath of the damage that Florida incurred after Hurricane Michael--a near Category 5 major hurricane--struck the state this week.

Trump will take an up close tour of the grounds of the club, which is located approximately 500 miles from the Panama City area where the storm made landfall. Palm trees at Mar-a-Lago reportedly lost multiple fronds during a Tuesday afternoon thunderstorm from one of Michael's outermost bands as it moved up the Gulf of Mexico towards the Florida Panhandle.

"From what I heard, damage to Mar-a-Lago was tremendous, the likes of which has never been seen before," Trump said to reporters as he boarded Marine One on his way to Andrews Air Force Base. "The amount of rain, which was wet, very, very wet, and some of the most incredible, powerful wind imaginable. I've heard estimates of winds in excess of 500 miles per hour, actually. It's really, really something."

Trump noted the "furious" work of groundskeepers to rake up fallen leaves and power wash muddied walkways to make sure the club was in spotless shape for the upcoming winter club season.

"It hasn't been easy," he noted. "For anyone. But especially for me. Of all the people out there, I have to say I've probably suffered the most because of this storm."

When asked if he had any thoughts for homeowners in storm ravaged areas like Mexico Beach--where houses were ripped from their foundations by devastating storm surge and obliterated into rubble by catastrophic winds--Trump replied, "Well, I'm certain any of those people would have to feel sorry for the situation I'm in. They'd very likely feel very, very bad for me. I'm sure if they had people wanting to pay $200,000 for access to them and their house, they'd know the type of situation I'm in, and they'd feel very, very bad. They wouldn't want to be in my position, believe me."

First Lady Melania Trump was expected to join her husband and pose for pictures alongside maintenance workers trimming hedges. The resident and First Lady would then reportedly sit down for a dinner prepared by banquet staff.

"We're going to have cake, chocolate cake, that most wonderful, magnificent chocolate cake like no other," the resident said. "No natural disaster is going to stop us from enjoying that wonderful, beautiful cake."

Details at Eleven.

Kanye West is what happens when Negroes don't read

Kanye West, you tap dancing, cant put 2 words together, foot shuffing, handkerchief head wearing Uncle Tom, 

Donald Trump can’t wait to talk with Kanye West about all the great things he’s done for minorities during his administration, especially in the African American community. #45 just spoke on his upcoming luncheon with Ye, and defended his decision to sit down with the rapper.

“He’s been a terrific guy … y’know he loves what we’re doing for African American jobs.” Trump says, “Kanye is a smart guy,” and apparently appreciates all the hard work the current administration has done.

Trump also revealed Kanye is bringing NFL legend Jim Brown to lunch, who the resident applauds as someone who also “gets it.”

Dyson Shreds Kanye-Trump: Blitzkrieg of Blathering Ignorance | The Beat With Ari Melber | MSNBC

Professor Michael Eric Dyson joins Ari to break down Kanye West’s surreal Oval Office takeover. West sounding off in a 10 minute rant with Donald Trump talking about politics, prison, racism and himself. Dyson, who knows West personally, demolishes his effort to bring Colin Kaepernick to the meeting and hammers his “interventions through media” adding Kanye can’t “engage about issues” that he doesn’t “ have sophisticated comprehension and knowledge” of.

Trump has been lying about Russia for years

On Monday, resident Trump and Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein flew together on Air Force One. And while Trump said he had no plans of firing Rosenstein, he also reiterated his position there was no collusion with Russia. Joe Scarborough weighs in.

Detective In Chief

Native Women Opposed To Kavanaugh Swayed Murkowski

Posted by Rude One

One of the few pleasant surprises to come out of the extraordinary fuckery of the "battle" over Brett Kavanaugh (if by "battle," you mean, "a pre-determined outcome where everyone pretended the fix wasn't in, especially Susan fucking Collins") was when Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, actually voted against Kavanaugh. And one major reason for Murkowski opposing her own party was the plea from Native women survivors of sexual assault and violence.

"Alaska Native women continue to suffer the highest rate of forcible sexual assault and have reported rates of domestic violence up to 10 times higher than in the rest of the United States," according to the Indian Law Resource Center. And some of these women showed up in DC to lobby Murkowski, who, to her credit, met with many of them over the course of the week. 

But the pressure on Murkowski ran deep in the Alaskan Native community, whose support was at least partially responsible for her electoral victories in 2010 (especially) and 2016. 

In an open letter to Murkowski, Natalie Landreth, a senior attorney with the Native American Rights Fund in Alaska, reminded the Senator, "This is the same community who had wristbands with your name on them so they could remember how to spell it when they had to write it in," referring to Murkowski's 2010 run as an independent candidate. As Melissa Merrick-Brady, a Native American survivor of sexual assault, wrote, "It pains me to think that our country’s leadership might allow such a figure to ascend to the highest judicial office in this land, allowing him to opine on whether I should be protected from violence." One of Merrick-Brady's senators in North Dakota, Heidi Heitkamp, did vote against Kavanaugh.

The Bering Sea Elders Group issued a statement saying, in part, "Violence against our Native women and children in Alaska is not part of our culture, but is unfortunately an epidemic in Alaska...A person’s actions, beliefs, and ways of being show you who they are, and it is our way to know a person, their actions, their beliefs, and their way of being before elevating them to an important position in the community."

It wasn't just issues of sexual violence that drove the Native groups in Alaska to lobby Murkowski. Kavanaugh had issued decisions that opposed tribal sovereignty on a host of issues. The BSEG, for instance, continued their statement, saying that Kavanaugh "has demonstrated he does not understand the inherent status, rights, and roles of federally recognized Tribes and puts at risk the 229 federally

recognized Tribes in Alaska."

Kavanaugh was opposed by the Alaska Federation of Natives because of his view of the Indian Commerce Clause. He was opposed by the Central Council of Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska because of concerns about voting rights and tribal control of rivers. He was opposed by the the Republican governor and the Democratic (and Tlingit) lieutenant governor of Alaska because of fears of the Supreme Court gutting the Affordable Care Act and the Indian Child Welfare Act. That last fear is closer to reality since a district court struck down the law that said that Indian children without parents should be placed within their tribe.

But the movement in DC was led by Native women, who protested outside Murkowski's office and the office of Alaska's other senator, Dan Sullivan. The protesters there were arrested by Capitol police (although Sullivan denies calling them), and Sullivan proudly voted for Kavanaugh.

Murkowski, though, listened, and in her heartfelt speech from the Senate floor, she recognized the treatment of Native women in her state: "The levels of sexual assault that we see within our Native American and our Alaska Native communities, the rates are incredibly devastating. It is not something that we say we’ll get to tomorrow. We’ve heard those voices. We’ve heard those voices, and I hope that we have all learned something, that we owe it to the victims of sexual assault to do more and to do better and to do it now with them." She listened. For once. She listened to Native voices.

Powerful, Privileged White Men Will Not Win Forever

Brandi Miller

Columnist

 

Pool via Getty Images  

 

This has been a week of tantrums. The last 10 days have been a picture of what it looks and feels like when white men in positions of power feel themselves threatened by a loss of the authority they feel entitled to.

We watched Brett Kavanaugh cry, lash out, bully and deflect in the face of sexual assault allegations because he wasn’t getting what he felt like he deserved. We watched Sen. Lindsey Graham put on an indignant performance of morality at the hearing on behalf of his friend, disfiguring his face like a gremlin and claiming that listening to a woman’s story, was “the most unethical sham since [he’s] been in politics.” We watched thousands of people at rallies cheer on a president who continues to produce a less ethnically aware and inclusive America.

The past few days (years, really) may symbolize a battle lost for people who are hoping to dismantle white supremacy (and its commitment to patriarchy) and move toward a reality where the rights of women and nonbinary folks, people of color and people at the intersections matter. It seems that the more angry and petulant that powerful white men become, the more they get what they want.

But at the end of the day, all of the tantrums we’re seeing should be viewed as evidence that powerful white men can feel their power slipping away and are going to extremes to hold on to it. We who envision a more just America have the powers that be shook, and we may soon have them on the run if we can channel our anger and grief into action.

All of the tantrums we’re seeing should be viewed as evidence that powerful white men can feel their power slipping away and are going to extremes to hold on to it.

We’ve seen this same clinging to power before, in 2016, when white people overwhelmingly voted to elect a man accused of sexual assault (among other things) to the presidency of the United States. 

And we saw it again this weekend when an overwhelmingly white Senate confirmed a man accused of sexual assault to the highest court in the land.

When the vision of white-male-dominated America is thwarted or threatened in any way, the backlash is nothing short of desperate and infantile. They’ll do whatever it takes to maintain control over their way of life, even if it means putting unqualified and equally petulant people in positions of power. CNN’s Van Jones called this phenomenon “whitelash.”

Whiteness at large has a vision for America, one that holds the entrenched values of white, male supremacy that came through genocide, enslavement, land annexation and exclusionary practices. 

And while the majority of white people would not claim that we ought to return to those times, they look back on the formation of the U.S. with nostalgia for days when things were more simple and easy, especially if you were a white man.

NICHOLAS KAMM via Getty Images

The rallying cry “Make America Great Again” relies on that racist, sexist nostalgic vision that calls on people to pursue a mythological unity that is simply white domination in disguise. This vision manifests as Trump’s America, as a utopia that calls back to the better days of more protected and less challenged white supremacy.

And before someone slams in like the Kool-Aid man with a “not all white people,” sure, some white folks aren’t actively supporting the most openly white supremacist administration of my lifetime. Let me stand and applaud you. But the bar is too low. White supremacy requires no active support, only complacency or tacit approval through apathy.

It is easy to implicate people in power of upholding the structures of white supremacy without recognizing that progressives and conservatives alike passively and actively seek the normalizing of white supremacy. Those at the Trump rallies more actively support their white supremacy, but white liberals reap the benefits while also being able to claim a level of “wokeness” because they can identify structures and white people that they are not like.

Sens. Jeff Flake and Susan Collins are primary examples of people who, though they may critique and disparage Trump as a leader, are still willing to dive in the deep end of partisan politics while claiming to be moderate.

The lesson is that no matter how well intentioned someone is or how much integrity they have had in the past, people are pulled to powers that uphold business as usual. Their votes were not surprising, merely disappointing. Whiteness and patriarchy work together. In the end, they are so closely tied, that to refuse to dismantle one is to continue to perpetuate the other.

The social norms are being threatened and the privileged will cry and kick and scream and go to the extreme end to maintain dominance.

Despite complacency and outright support for the status quo, there is a growing number of people in this country actively trying to change things and relieve white supremacy of its power. While some on the right have been emboldened in Trump’s America to show their true supremacist colors, others are feeling empowered to stand up for their rights and dismantle the societal structures that have kept privileged white men in power for so long while keeping women, people of color and others without power disenfranchised.

It seems, as we approach the midterm elections, that we will once again have an opportunity to practice what freedom fighters before us have done: voting, resisting and using our interpersonal relationships to rally each other to systemic and social changes. Good intentions and right politics have never changed the world, voting and action has.

In this political season, it is more important than ever that those who are fighting for a more just and free world choose the revolutionary work of educating ourselves and each other, taking care of ourselves and each other, and then doing what we can to honor our ancestors and get out to the do the work of politics, systemic change and truth-telling. If they did it with extraordinarily less freedom than we did, then maybe we can choose to hope, day to day, that progress yields progress and that history never looks back fondly on those who seek to conserve oppression and hatred.

The social norms are being threatened and the privileged will cry and kick and scream and go to the extreme end to maintain dominance. But the more people they push to the margins, the stronger the marginalized become. If anything, the tantrums and whitelash from the privileged few are proving that maybe they’re too weak and immature to handle the upcoming fight and maybe the rule of patriarchal white supremacy is finally on its way to an end.

Brandi Miller is a campus minister and justice program director from the Pacific Northwest.

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