Trump has lost the plot on racism

While Trump is definitely not the brightest bulb on the chandelier, one area where he seemed to be sure-footed was in his ability to use racism to rally people to him. His denigration of immigrants, his labeling of certain nations as ‘shit hole countries’, and his macho rhetoric were all not-so-veiled appeals to the racist instincts of his supporters that have stood him well. But the current protests over police brutality seem to have caught him flat-footed and isolated. The things that worked for him before no longer seem to do the trick.
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Sarah Cooper exposes Trump’s incoherence

One of the things that some people have noticed is that you have to read the transcripts of Trump’s utterances to fully appreciate how incoherent or crazy are the things he says. Peter Wade gives an example of this with the transcript of Trump’s response to question asked him by one of his Fox News sycophants who realizes that Trump has lost the plot entirely and tries vainly to get him back on point.

But comedian Sarah Cooper has found another way and made a couple of short online videos where she lip syncs to Trump’s words. Others have done this lip-syncing too but the way she does it really captures his craziness. In the above link, she explains to Lawrence O’Donnell how she does it.

Here is one of her clips.

Appeals Court strikes blow against qualified immunity for police

Jordan Smith recounts another shocking story of police murder from back in 2013 that should be better known.

It was roughly 11:30 p.m. on March 13, 2013, when Officer Paul Lehman spotted [Wayne] Jones walking along Queen Street in downtown Martinsburg. He wasn’t on the sidewalk, as city ordinance would require, so Lehman followed Jones, a 50-year-old black man who was homeless and had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. After about a minute, Lehman honked, pulled over, and asked Jones for identification. Jones didn’t have any. Lehman asked if he had any weapons; Jones wasn’t sure what that meant. “Anything,” Lehman responded. “Guns, knives, clubs.” Jones did have a small fixed-blade knife tucked inside his right shirt sleeve, but he didn’t say that specifically, only that he had “something on him.”

From there, the situation quickly escalated. Lehman demanded that Jones get up against the car. Jones wanted to know why — “What do you want?” he asked — but Lehman didn’t explain. Instead, Lehman called for backup and, as Jones moved away, drew his Taser and fired. A second cop, Daniel North, rolled up on scene and also fired a Taser at Jones. Jones fled, running into the alcove in front of a bookstore down the street.

Before long, three more cops — William Staubs, Eric Neely, and Erik Herb — would arrive. Jones was struck in the neck, kicked, and put into a chokehold — the 4th Circuit opinion notes that “choking and gurgling sounds” can be heard in dashcam video recordings of the incident — before one of the officers realized that Jones had the small knife. The cops pulled away, forming a semicircle around him with their weapons drawn. Jones was limp and lying on his right side. Even though he was not moving, the cops demanded that Jones drop his knife. When he didn’t respond, all five fired their guns — a total of 22 rounds in two seconds. A majority of the shots hit Jones in the back and buttocks. He died at the scene.

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What defunding the police means

There has been much discussion over the demands of protestors to ‘defund the police’, with right-wingers seizing upon the term and interpreting it in the most extreme way in order to discredit the idea, by raising scary images of (white) people being attacked by marauding (black) hordes who will come to take away their stuff if there are no police to protect them. But various commentators have been pushing back at the distortions.

Here is Seth Meyers on what defunding the police implies.


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Primary races to watch

Jim Jewell in the newsletter The Surge looks at some interesting upcoming primary races that are worth watching, both on the Democratic and Republican sides.

Marjorie Greene, a Republican candidate for a congressional seat in Georgia, is even a believer in the QAnon conspiracy and given the state of that party, and that fact that Trump has endorsed her, she will likely win her party’s nomination on August 11. She led in the first round held on Tuesday and is currently in a runoff with the second place finisher.)

Trump to hold rally in Tulsa – what could possibly go wrong?

There is nothing more that Trump loves than holding rallies and one can see why. A narcissist loves to be the center of attention of an adoring crowd who cheer his inanities and treat his schoolyard taunts and insults as if they were witticisms worthy of an Oscar Wilde. The restriction on large gatherings must have chafed him considerably and while he tried to hijack the daily pandemic briefing as a substitute for rallies, that was clearly not enough. So it is no surprise that he planning to hold rallies again.
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Review: Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich (2020)

I watched this four-part mini-series about Jeffrey Epstein. I thought that I knew the Epstein story pretty well but this series was an eye-opener mainly because it gave a voice to the many young girls who were abused and trafficked by Epstein. The number of such girls was astounding, way beyond what I had thought. Their description of how he groomed them and then took advantage of them were so disgusting that at the end of each one-hour episode, I actually felt dirty and had to watch some other show just to partially cleanse my mind.
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Terry Crews talks about being black in the NFL

Terry Crews was a professional football player in the NFL from 1991 to 1997 and since then has made a successful transition to acting, showing himself to have real comedy chops. I have only seen him on the comedy show Brooklyn Nine-Nine where he makes fun of his own muscular appearance. He is a real scene-stealer.

He talks with Seth Meyers about what it was like to be a black football player and how the coaches and trainers treated them differently from the white players. He describes the indignities he faced and a harrowing incident where, while he was still a high profile football player playing for Los Angeles, he was stopped while driving in California and police officers from two squad cars came to him with their guns pointed at his head.

He says that he welcomes the NFL’s change in stance on players kneeling in protests but that he never expected them to do it. He also says that the NFL should bring back Colin Kaepernick if they are to really show their sincerity.

Mitt Romney and his father

I wrote before how some Republicans are now starting to distance themselves from Donald Trump following his disgraceful response to the protests and demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd. I said that while we should welcome their defections, we should never let them forget their complicity in creating the kind of Republican party that enabled Trump to win the presidency, and have continued to support him on his rampage against basic norms and decency.
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Paula Jean Swearengin wins Democratic primary for WV senate seat

On Tuesday there were primary elections in several states and much media attention has rightly focused on the fiasco in Georgia where once again voters in De Kalb and Fulton counties, the latter where the city of Atlanta is, and where both have large black populations, faced lines that lasted for many hours to vote, a further example of how the Republican-controlled state government tries to suppress black votes by making it much harder for them than for white districts, by having far too few polling stations, malfunctioning equipment, and insufficient and inadequately trained poll workers.

But I want to focus on one good result that happened in a different state.
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