Category: Racism
Israel carries out new airstrikes in Gaza amid growing outrage
BREAKING: Israel Strikes Sheltering Palestinians In Open Defiance Of Recent ICJ Order
The horror of the illegal Israeli strike in refuge camp Rafah, where Israel kept insisting all Palestinians MUST go to be SAFE, Israel has now been attacking. After Joe Biden, Mr lets play nice and get the Israeli’s to not do it, and the rest of the world body said stop the illegal action now, Israel has committed another war crime.
These people are trapped in a burning tent caused by the strikes, the injured / death toll is still coming but it is catastrophic because … Israel told these people to go there and they would be safe. Israel is shooting fish in a barrow, but these fish are humans, Palestinians, and Israel does not count them as human! Understand what Israel is doing and realize what the end goal always was. They want the eradication of Palestinian people and the land they are on. They have killed tens of thousands of them, and they want to kill the rest. Israel wants Gaza land for itself as even Jared Kushner tRump’s Middle East envoy said the land would make beautiful sea side resorts. In recent reports we learned Israel military were told to target aid workers and that they deliberately targeted medical people in any role. The goal was according to the military to stop, prevent, and keep others from helping Palestinians! When they tell you who they are, believe them the first time. Hugs. Scottie
The Roads to Trump, Jenga, and Foreign Policy
Israel’s Rafah Massacre: They Think They Can Get Away With Anything
This Vile Pro-Israeli Claim Taken Apart
PROOF: Israel Deliberately Killing Aid Workers
Proposed Texas GOP platform calls for the Bible in schools, electoral changes that would lock Democrats out of statewide office
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/25/texas-republican-party-convention-platform/
BY ROBERT DOWNEN AND RENZO DOWNEYCredit: Eli Hartman/The Texas TribuneRepublican Party of Texas delegates voted Saturday on a platform that called for new laws to require the Bible to be taught in public schools and a constitutional amendment that would require statewide elected leaders to win the popular vote in a majority of Texas counties.
Other proposed planks of the 50-page platform included proclamations that “abortion is not healthcare it is homicide”; that gender-transition treatment for children is “child abuse”; calls to reverse recent name changes to military bases and “publicly honor the southern heroes”; support for declaring gold and silver as legal tender; and demands that the U.S. government disclose “all pertinent information and knowledge” of UFOs.
The party hopes to finalize its platform on Wednesday, after Saturday’s votes on each proposal are tabulated.
Passed by delegates at the party’s biennial convention, the platform has traditionally been seen not as a definitive list of Republican stances, but a compromise document that represents the interests of the party’s various business, activist and social conservative factions. But in recent years — and amid a party civil war that’s pushed it further right — the platform has been increasingly used as a basis for censuring Republican officeholders who the party’s far right has attacked as insufficiently conservative, including Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, and U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzalez, R-San Antonio.
As the party has drifted further right, its platform has done the same. In 2022, it called for a referendum on Texas secession; resistance to the “Great Reset,” a conspiracy theory that claims global elites are using environmental and social policies to enslave the world’s population; proclamations that homosexuality is an “abnormal lifestyle choice”; and a declaration that President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected.
Many of those planks were also included in this year’s platform, which was debated late into Friday night and presented for a vote Saturday afternoon.
One proposal asserts that illegal immigration is the “greatest threat to American security and sovereignty” and calls for the state and federal governments to devote all available resources to deporting undocumented immigrants.
Perhaps the most consequential plank calls for a constitutional amendment to require that candidates for statewide office carry a majority of Texas’ 254 counties to win an election, a model similar to the U.S. electoral college.
Under current voting patterns, in which Republicans routinely win in the state’s rural counties, such a requirement would effectively end Democrats’ chances of winning statewide office. In 2022, Gov. Greg Abbott carried 235 counties, while Democrat Beto O’Rourke carried most of the urban, more populous counties and South Texas counties. Statewide, Abbott won 55% of the popular vote while O’Rourke carried 44%.
However, some attorneys question whether such a proposal would be constitutional and conform with the Voting Rights Act because it would most likely limit the voting power of racial minorities, who are concentrated in a relatively small number of counties. (The party’s platform also reiterates its previous calls for the repeal of the Voting Rights Act).
The platform also takes a step further some of the party’s previous calls for more Christianity in public life. The 2022 platform proclaimed that the United States was “founded on Judeo-Christian principles,” for instance, and demanded the repeal of federal prohibitions on political activity by churches.
The 2024 platform goes significantly further: It urges lawmakers and the State Board of Education to “require instruction on the Bible, servant leadership and Christian self-governance,” and supports the use of religious chaplains in schools — which was made legal under a law passed by the state Legislature last year.
Though more subtle, another proposed plank could also aid Republicans’ ongoing attempts to further infuse Christianity into public education. This year’s platform also calls for Thomas Jefferson’s “Letter to the Danbury Baptists” to be included in the list of “original founding documents” to be taught in history classes, along with the U.S. Constitution or The Federalist Papers. Jefferson’s Danbury letter is often cited by activists such as David Barton, a Texas pastor and self-described “amateur historian” who has spent decades arguing that church-state separation is a “myth” that has been used to shroud America’s true Christian roots — a claim that has been thoroughly debunked by actual historians and experts, many of them also conservative Christians.
The new platform comes as Republicans increasingly embrace once-fringe theories such as Christian nationalism, which argues that the United States’ founding was God-ordained, and therefore its institutions and laws should reflect conservative, Christian views. Barton’s ideas have been a key driver of that movement, and were repeatedly cited by lawmakers last year during debates over the chaplains bill and in legislation that would have required the Ten Commandments to be posted in public school classrooms. Barton’s group, WallBuilders, was also an exhibitor at this year’s Texas GOP convention, and the party has increasingly aligned with two far-right, fundamentalist Christian billionaires, Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks.
The draft platform also leans into the Texas GOP’s open hostility toward Texas House leadership and Phelan, with positions that would weaken the power of the House speaker and distribute power to the GOP caucus in the House as a whole. One plank advocates for limiting the speaker to two consecutive terms. Another calls for a discharge petition process, which would allow members to send bills to the House floor for a vote even if they haven’t passed the House committee process.
On Friday night, the convention elected former Collin County GOP Chair Abraham George as the next party chair, a vote that is expected to continue the party’s trajectory. During his candidate speech on Thursday, George called for the party to fight Democrats, radicals and “RINO” Republicans who go against “everything we stand for.”
During a speech on the convention stage on Saturday, former gubernatorial candidate and state Sen. Don Huffines carried a printed version of the platform with him. He noted that Republicans have controlled the Legislature and the governor’s mansion for two decades, but the party still struggles to secure its priorities.
“We could get any piece of legislation done anytime we want, but, every session, we struggle to get our platform into law,” Huffines said.
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Back because I love the show and try to watch it ever chance I get, some more The Majority Report clips
‘Little maggot-infested man’ Tom Cotton rises to top of Trump VP list
Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas
A new name has popped up in the chatter about Donald Trump’s potential pick for vice president: Sen. Tom Cotton. He’s reportedly high on the list because of his “experience and the ability to run a disciplined campaign.” As a running mate, the Arkansas senator “would carry relatively little risk of creating unwanted distractions for a presidential campaign already facing multiple legal threats,” according to The New York Times.
But it sure seems risky to put a no-holds barred racist, sexist creep on a debate stage with Vice President Kamala Harris. Cotton traded in his dog whistle for a racist bullhorn years ago, and has made headlines with his outrageous statements and behavior.
Here is a mere sampling of Cotton’s lowlights:
Attacking Ketanji Brown Jackson
During the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Cotton teamed up with the other deplorables on the Senate Judiciary Committee to harangue the nominee about everything from QAnon theories to her history as a public defender, attempting to paint her as an adherent of “critical race theory,” as if that’s a bad thing.
Cotton really sunk to the bottom, however, when he all but called Jackson a Nazi sympathizer during a floor speech. “You know, the last Judge Jackson left the Supreme Court to go to Nuremberg and prosecute the case against the Nazis,” he said. “This Judge Jackson might’ve gone there to defend them.”
“Judge Jackson voluntarily represented three terrorists in three cases,” Cotton complained to CNN. “And she called American soldiers war criminals. I have no patience for it.” Jackson, of course, did not call U.S. troops war criminals.
Those were the accusations that prompted Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison to call Cotton the “lowest of the low” and a “little maggot-infested man.”
Attacking the first Muslim American appeals court nominee
Cotton’s recent bigoted attacks on Adeel A. Mangi, the first-ever Muslim American federal appeals court nominee, also made headlines when he subjected the Pakistani-born attorney to a barrage of Islamophobic questions about the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, al-Qaida’s 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, policy issues regarding the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, and antisemitism in general.
Cotton bragged about his harassment of Mangi on X (formerly Twitter), crowing about his “gotcha” question trying to paint Mangi as antisemitic. Which is ironic, given Cotton’s previous antisemitic tweet history.
Blocking nominees of color
Cotton has a history of opposing Democratic presidents’ Black and brown nominees. From 2014 through 2016, Cotton blocked President Barack Obama’s friend and nominee Cassandra Butts—a Black woman—from an ambassador job. Why? When Butts met with him about his block, she told The New York Times’ Frank Bruni, Cotton admitted it was because “he knew that she was a close friend of Obama’s … and that blocking her was a way to inflict special pain on the president.” Butts died of cancer more than 800 days after her nomination.
Smearing a Singapore national
The senator proved himself an equal opportunity bigot in a recent Senate hearing on child safety and social media, repeatedly attacking TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew—a Singapore national—about his supposed personal connections to “the Chinese Communist Party.” Chew repeatedly denied Cotton’s obnoxious assertions, reiterating again and again, “I served my nation of Singapore.”
That didn’t stop Cotton from running to Fox News to smear Chew. “Singapore, unfortunately, is one of the places in the world that has the highest degree of infiltration and influence by the Chinese Communist Party,” he said. “So, Mr. Chew has a lot to answer for, for what his app is doing in America and why it’s doing it.”
Defending slavery
Of course, Cotton’s racist theatrics haven’t been confined to Senate hearings. He authored legislation in 2020 to ban public schools from using a curriculum based on The New York Times’ 1619 Project, which dissected slavery’s impact on our country’s founding. He justified his bill by calling The 1619 Project “left-wing propaganda” and revisionist history at its worst.”
Cotton added that children should instead be taught that slavery “was the necessary evil upon which the union was built.”
National security sabotoge
When he wasn’t harassing people of color during hearings, Cotton also dabbled in national security sabotage, interfering in Obama’s negotiations with Iran on their nuclear capabilities. Cotton spearheaded a letter from GOP senators to Iranian leaders telling them that even if they came to an agreement with the U.S., future administrations and/or Congress could renege on it.
That infamous New York Times op-ed
And don’t forget Cotton’s gross New York Times op-ed titled “Send In The Troops,” which called for Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and use “an overwhelming show of force” against protesters who took to the streets nationwide in the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police. The column incited fierce backlash, which led to backpedaling from The New York Times and the opinion page editor’s resignation.
None of this will diminish Cotton’s prospects with Trump, who likes him because he’s a smart guy with an elite education. Also, he’s a reliable sycophant.
Cotton has refused to condemn Trump’s love of Vladimir Putin, and has bragged about how he ignored the evidence and arguments in Trump’s first impeachment.
“My aides delivered a steady flow of papers and photocopied books, hidden underneath a fancy cover sheet labeled ‘Supplementary Impeachment Materials’, so nosy reporters sitting above us in the Senate gallery couldn’t see what I was reading,” Cotton wrote in his 2022 memoir.
Everything about Cotton appeals to Trump—and everything about him will revolt voters.
RELATED STORIES:
Tom Cotton calls slavery a ‘necessary evil’ in push to ban schools from teaching the 1619 Project
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GOP senators barrage Biden’s Muslim court nominee with hostile, inappropriate questions at hearing
Republican senators who attacked Ketanji Brown Jackson with racist frames got Fox News rewards
Republicans have their racist knives out for Ketanji Brown Jackson
New York Times gets justifiably smashed for publishing Sen. Tom Cotton’s fascist screed
We’re heading across the pond for this week’s episode of “The Downballot” after the UK just announced it would hold snap elections—on July 4, no less. Co-host David Beard gives us Yanks a full run-down, including how the elections will work, what the polls are predicting, and what Labour plans to do if it finally ends 14 years of Conservative rule. We also take detours into Scotland and Rwanda (believe it or not) and bear down on a small far-right party that could cost the Tories dearly.
Scottie's Playtime 