Civility is getting difficult to find in these Trump times.
For some, Fox News is the only place where one can find the truth, and for them ANY OTHER news channels is NOT acceptable. Arguments and sometime fights are taking place in hospitals lounges, restaurants and hotels over the news channel.
The disagreements aren’t not between, teenagers, Gen Y or even those carefree Millennials. They are between those snow capped Baby Boomers, who fight over remotes, push plates on the floor, and at times complain because they are forced to watch subversive television or hateful television.
Last week, a woman having early morning breakfast with her four friends between 70-87 (it was her birthday) complained about CNN being on. “Its not real news” she said and wanted the channel changed to Fox News.
The breakfast person refused, as there were others watching the newscast. The women angrily returned to the table with her friends. Suddenly, the women and her friends began chanting “Fake News, Fake News, Fake News , this went on for a couple of minutes.
On the television screen was the Thousand Oaks, shooting.
Perhaps there would be less outrage if the story was told by Wolf Blitzer or Jake Tapper.
There are many white men who are OUTRAGED!!! Here you have a black man stirring the racist pot. IF a white man said something about a Black man, they’d lose their jobs. Megan Kelly lost her job over “Blackface’ so here we have a black man calling white men terrorist, he should lose his job is only fair!
There are white men in this rapidly changing world who believe that they are under attack. It had gone too far and it far more difficult to be a white man in America and this morning advertisers and CNN will demand that Don Lemon lose his job.
THE OUTRAGE
In the course of a week, 14 bombs were mailed to prominent Democrats. On Wednesday, a white man attempted to enter a black church in Jeffersontown, Kentucky. Fifteen minutes later, he drove to near by Kroger Supermarket and killed two black people. As the gunman passed a white shopper in the parking lot he said, I won’t shoot you. Whites don’t shoot whites.” Saturday, a white man entered a synagogue and killed 11 worshipers and wounded six others including four Police Officers.
Cnn’s Don Lemon said Trump would have people believe immigrants are to be feared, but statistics reveal the biggest threats are home-grown. He went on to say, we have to stop demonizing people and realize that the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right, and we have to start doing something about them. So ,have to start doing something about them. There is no travel ban on them. There is no ban — you know, they had the Muslim ban. There is no white-guy ban. So what do we do about that?”
“the biggest terror threat in this country is white men.”
This is what some people heard! Other’s heard he called for a “white guy ban” Fox news said Lemon was ranting! Others called him a racist!
You decide, Listen.
There are many in this country who supported the Presidents ban on Muslims and individuals from the middle east based on a unsupported belief that, Muslims hate Americans and want to destroy America. The facts are white men are the principle source of terrorism in the United States and no one is proposing a ban on “white men” this is what I believe Mr Lemon meant.
When its not Fake News
Since 9/11 attacks in 2001, far-right violent extremists have killed 106 people in 62 attacks in the United States, while radical Islamist violent extremists have killed 119 people in 23 attacks.
From 2008 to 2016, there were almost twice as many terrorist incidents carried out on U.S. soil by right-wing extremists — many of whom are white — than by Islamist extremists. It showed there were 115 incidents involving right-wing extremists and that those that ended in death were more deadly than incidents carried out by other groups.
An analysis of the Global Terrorism Database by researchers at the University of Maryland published in 2017 shows a “sharp increase”in the share of attacks by right-wing extremists, from 6% in the 2000s to 35% in the 2010s. The share of attacks by religious extremists also increased, from 9% to 53% between the two decades.
White supremacists in the United States killed more than twice as many people in 2017 as they did the year before, and were responsible for far more murders than domestic Islamic extremists, helping make 2017 the fifth deadliest year on record for extremist violence in America, a new report states.
For decades,some members of the GOP have demonized immigrants from Mexico. They were accused of straining our resources and crossing the border to have babies and to get on welfare.
Presidential Candidate Donald Trump took it further, he said the people coming from Mexico were bringing drugs, bringing crime and-they’re rapist. There isn’t any subjective data that supports any of these claims.
A point of reference for some against Mexican immigration is the murder of Arizona Rancher Rob Krentz in 2010. Krentz’s property is near the Mexican border. The Krentz family was accustomed to undocumented migrants crossing their 35,000 acres. Because of this, many assumed he was killed by one of those undocumented migrants. His widow was convinced his was killed by an illegal immigrant. After an extensive search, no one has been linked to his murder. Today, many are convinced he was killed by a Mexican national.
Less than a year after the Death of Mr Krentz. Arizona passed a law requiring anyone suspected of being in US illegally to produce papers to the police.
Race Baiting 2018 (Donald Trump’s Evil Caravan)
Before I talk about our president current attempt to inject white fear in the midterms, I want to look back a few years.
But first thing’s first! What is “Race Bating?: The unfair use of statements about race to try to influence the actions or attitudes of a particular group of people
A look Back to 1986
In 1986, a convicted felon named Willie Horton — who was serving a life sentence for murder — was released from a Massachusetts prison on a weekend furlough program, during which time he escaped and raped a woman. Then-governor Michael Dukakis had supported the prison furlough program, and when he ran for President in 1988, his opponent, George H. W. Bush, used that to his advantage. The “Revolving Door” ad never mentions Horton by name, but the connection was clear and the ad received considerable news coverage.
Bush Played on the fears of whites who were terrified of blacks.
2018, President Trump, has told his base a Caravan is coming, filled with thugs, bad people, including people from the middle east. He has a few days to convince his base these horrific people filled with diseases (so says Fox News) will be here at any moment. In a world where facts don’t matter. These terrible people are walking and they only have 800 miles to reach our borders. Tuesday, if you believe the president. Bringing lawless people who will kill the men and rape the women. (a small exaggeration)
The footage is several years old and his story about Democrats allowing illegals in is patently false. Donald Trump is doubling down on his attack on brown skinned people using fear to get them to the ballot box.
Luis Bracamontes was first deported to his native Mexico in 1997, during the Clinton administration, after he was busted selling drugs. But, according to U.S. Immigration officials, Bracamontes managed return to the United States by 2001, when he was deported a second time for being in the country illegally. That was during the first year of the Bush administration.
Bracamontes was back in America again by 2002. He married a U.S. citizen and remained in the country even as the Bush administration deported people at a record rate, topped only by the Obama administration.
When Bracamontes shot and killed the two Sacramento county deputies in 2014, he had been deported once under a Democratic administration and once under a Republican administration. He had been back in the United States for at least six years during the Bush administration and five years under the Obama administration. He is currently on death row in San Quentin.
It’s 2018
Perhaps, some white men would have been more comfortable with CNN’s Jake Tapper or Wolf Blitzer talking about this subject. One would think, in 2018 we are beyond this. Apparently not.
By the reaction,s only black people should talk about black on black crime in cities like Chicago or Detroit. Or Hispanics in El Paso or Albuquerque. Don Lemon ins’t racist, he didn’t attack white men, he talked about the news and the double standard.
I can’t remember a time when a white reporter was dismissed after reading statics about black people or any other persons of color. I can remember when a reporter or personality was dismissed after saying spic, called black women nappy headed hoes, fag and other disparaging words or terms on air. Blackface, hasn’t been acceptable since the 1930’s neither are insulting ethnic impersonations.
A man walks into a Pet Store he is immediately drawn to the sounds of a parakeet. Who resides in this large elaborate cage. It was love at first sight, he had to have the bird.
The price was unimportant, he buys the bird and a small cage.
Arriving home, he clears a special place in the center of the room for the cage. He was excitedly awaiting for the bird to sing.. But the bird sat in silence on its perch. Hours passed. Perhaps it was the new surroundings? After a few hours the owner, thought the bird would be happier if the cage was similar to the cage in the pet store.
So he grabbed his keys and drove to the pet store and bought the large elaborate cage that was on display at the store. Even in it’s familiar surroundings the bird remained silent. He returned to pet store with his cell phone and at great expense bought every item in the cage and with his cell phone he took a picture so he could correctly stage the cage. Within minutes the cage looked exactly like the one in the store and yet the bird didn’t sing. So the owner walked away from the cage and left the bird alone. After a few hours, the owner was exasperated and screamed at the bird. I have given you everything, why wont you SING! The bird slowly opened its mouth and said, FOOD!
In mid seventies, The City of Sacramento opened the Convention Center. Leaders said the Center would generate millions of dollars for the city. Unfortunately, that didn’t go as planned, the center was losing money. Some believed a hotel of size, near the center would help generate business.
In 1988, the Hyatt Regency opened, it would be the largest hotel in the city with 503 rooms. The City of Sacramento subsidized the project.
Andy Plescia, deputy executive director of the city/county agency refers to as “a $13.3-million investment that’ll return about $28.5 million to local government within the decade.” Those returns will come in the form of tax revenues, a lease-back parking arrangement involving the city government, the city/county agency and the developers, and from expected land sale profits (under the terms of the 55-year ground-site lease, developers may opt to buy the property outright after the ninth year). Sam Burns, director of the Sacramento Convention and Visitors Bureau, thinks the Hyatt Regency will help attract another 25,000 convention delegates a year and generate $1 million in room tax for the city and $25 million for the local economy.
Once again, with the new hotel the convention center didn’t come close to generating those ambitious numbers for the city. The good news the city did eventually make a profit after the hotel was sold.
In the nineties, the money losing center was expanded again. Operators said, the convention center was too small and not competitive with other centers. According to”Eye on Sacramento” the City loaned the Center 7.5 million to cover negative cash flows.
Convention center operators said the center said it needed another component to become profitable. The twenty five story Sheraton Grand opened 2001 across the street from the center. With all the expansions and additions, what the center needs was CUSTOMERS.
*In the last 17 years, the Center has lost an astounding $268 million taxpayers dollars! $51 million in the last three years!
At 87% Sacramento currently spends nearly twice as much of its hotel taxes on the Convention Center than other cities. (The average is 45%) San Francisco’s spends 11%.
The Sacramento Convention Center is Sacramento’s “White Elephant”. Despite all the additions remains a drain on the city. With 87% of the hotel taxes going to the city, Sacramento has virtually no funds to promote tourism.
Eye on Sacramento says: City staff presented the council with a staff report that relied heavily on the city’s primary convention center consultant ,the firm of Conventions, Sports and Leisure International (CS&L). City staff cherry-picked data and findings from the CS&L study, but failed miserably to provide council members with crucial findings in the CS&L study that clearly states that an expansion of the Convention Center is not needed nor justified given market conditions.
In short, the city council was mislead by its staff into believing that its principal conventions center consultant was solidly in favor of the proposed expansion,when, in fact, it was opposed to it.
If this is true, then there are larger issues in City Hall.
The Vote to expand the center last December was unanimous! Mayor and council members approved Two hundred forty million dollars to expand the Convention Center. Which included adding a large ballroom to the plans . The convention center will be closed for 18 months so work can be done quicker than initially planned and to renovate the Community Center Theater.
The city reiterated that its general fund will not be used to pay off the debt. That’s far from the truth. If the convention center is unable to make its payments, the city has to cover the shortfall.
From the renderings, the new center and theater will be beautiful. Mayor Steinberg said: We are going to have a convention center and a community center theater that is equal to the vision of our great city.
Sacramento is a great city, over five hundred thousand people live within its boundaries. Like any other city Sacramento has many other needs. Cities build convention centers to generate income for the city.
As a business model ,the Sacramento Convention Center is a poor investment with little or no benefit to the majority of its citizens. If the Convention Center was operated by a private entity, the owners would have longed walked away from the project.
It is no secret, The Sacramento Convention Center is a drain on the city and yet those charged with expenditures in the cityunanimously approved spending 240 million dollars towards upgrading and expanding something that had never worked. In a city who’s budget is already at its limits due to increased pension costs.
City leaders often get it wrong. If they have one in Anaheim, we want one too. Prestige at any cost to the city. It doesn’t have to make sense, as long as we get one, just reach into the bottomless taxpayer cookie jar. The Sacramento Convention Center is a forty year old joke, that’s not funny. They’ve done everything imaginable to make it competitive with other convention centers in the state, and based on its history, it will be state of the art and has everything except CLIENTS.
A vintage 1955 Buick Century Cailfornia Highway Patrol Car
These cars were specificly built for the CHP.
They had the Special 48 coupe body, Century engines and Roadmaster brakes (This was back in the day when GM built different engines and parts for each divison) They were among the first cars (Code name: Century 68) built specifically for police use. The half of cars were equipped with a three speed column shift manual transmission. The other half was built with a less reliable Dynaflow automatic transmisson.
Like all, 1955 Buicks, the (Century 68) featured updated styling with “tower” tailights and a large “widescreen” front grile. Century models carried, like the top-of-the-line Roadmaster, four portholes alongside their front fenders to denote the high-output of their V-8s. The Century series was Buick’s performer, combining the Special’s lightweight bodies with the Roadmaster’s 322-cubic-inch OHV V-8. The 9.0:1-compression-ratio engine inhaled through a Carter four-barrel carburetor and produced a gross-rated 236 horsepower at 4600 rpm.
“A Beast”
According to the April 1955 issue of Highway Patrolman Magazine, “During dynamometer tests, the car developed 148 horsepower at the rear wheels and reached a wheel speed if 108 mph against the 4-horsepower drag of the machine. At this point, the test was terminated abruptly when the rubber tread spun off the tires of one of the rear wheels that was being tested.
A Star is Born!
The Cailfornia Highway Patrol wanted to be featured in a TV series. The show, creative by Ziv World Television thought the show needed to have a broader police scope than the real CHP. The generic show name ” Highway Patrol” was adopted.
Episode were filmed in black and white over a two-day shoot on a small budget of less than $25,000 per episode and the shows had to be done on time. To keep cost down, “Highway Parol” was filmed almost entirety in then rural San Fernando Valley. This was decades before the malls,Calabasas and the Kardashians. The ads clained the stories were based on the experiences of highway patrol officers in all 48 states.
In the first two seasons the series received technical assistance from the California Highway Patrol. The patrol cars in early episodes are actual CHP vehicles with the show’s car door emblem covering the CHP emblem (sometimes a real CHP star is briefly visible). For instance, the 1955 Buick Century two-door patrol car seen in early episodes was built exclusively for CHP.
Unlike the California Highway Patrol, the agency featured in the TV series was more concerned with chasing criminals than enforcing driving laws. Local and county police officers were seldom if ever in evidence, only the Highway Patrol. With such a limited budget, there were very few car chases, crashes, and other motor mayhem that is more common in modern police dramas; scenes were often filmed on rural two-lane paved or dirt roads to save money and because Crawford’s own driver’s license was suspended for drunk driving. Excitement was mainly generated by Crawford’s own rapid-fire, staccato delivery of his lines, frequent shootouts, and numerous plot contrivances in which time was a critical factor, such as a hostage death threat, the escape of a violent criminal, a train derailment, or other imminent catastrophe.
“Highway Patrol” was on the air for four seasons from 1955 to 1959. It still airs in syndication.
It is said, there are only a couple of the Century 68 on the road, one wonders if the car spotted in Saramento is one of the two?
This Episode “Lady Bandit’s doesn’t feature the Century’s with the exception of the opening.
The Trump administration isn’t keen on Public Transportation. The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) is not distributing money earmarked for public transit. Many projects in cities across the nation including Sacratomatoville are waiting for federal funding have hit Trumps Wall Nearly 2 billion dollars is on hold. Construction has already begun in some cities awaiting funding to complete the projects.
The FTA says the reason the projects haven’t received funding is because they aren’t yet ready. The Transportation Department hasn’t set a specific date when the funds will be released. Many communities are hesitant to complain because it could result from in future delays.
In 2015, the astute citizens of Sacramento rejected the ridiculous ( measure B ) 4.4mile street car line between West Sacramento and Midtown called the Riverfront Street Car Project. The 100 million dollar line duplicates existing bus routes operated by Yolo County and Regional Transit.
Undaunted by the defeat, Council Member Steve Hansen and company went looking for extra funding for the project. Shortly after the election he told the Bee “We have identified all but $30 million of the funding we need, and we will work to find that $30 million.”
Did they?
One of the challenges for Sacramento and a few other cities is funding. Transit agencies have to round up funding for the rest of the project, get agreements with contractors and other third parties, develop cost estimates and prove that they can manage a project of its scope. Then the FTA reviews the projects and rates them. Projects must earn a “medium” rating to obtain funding. To qualify for Trump dollars, cities need to secure all of its non-federal funding first. Sacramento hasn’t, as a result the project is in jeopardy.
According to Eye on Sacramento, The California Transportation Commission provided 25 million dollars and the 30 million dollar rejected by the voters? May come from the Cap and Trade funds.
Where did the money come to work on the project, thus far?
These desperate times for supporters of Downtown Riverfront Street Car Project. Failure to meet all the requirements could mean the end of the line. Last December, the group representing the Downtown Riverfront Street car requested for 3.5 million dollars in Proposition A1 funds from the cash strapped Sacramento Regional Transit District.
Proposition 1A (High Speed Rail Act 2008) bond proceeds are to made available for capital projects on other passenger rail lines to provide connectivity to the high-speed train system and for capacity enhancements and safety improvements to those lines.
RT’s Board of Directors denied the request. It would consider releasing the 3.5 million dollars after the Federal Transportation District approved the project.
The issue for RT is if the street car financing isn’t nailed down, those fund may not be available for other projects. The Street Car project was an agenda item at last weeks RT meeting.
The story of Zhalisa Clarke — a black woman who was minding her own business at a Raley’s in Citrus Heights when cashier accused her of shoplifting and called the police — didn’t make national news.
It could have. In fact, it should have.
Like Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, the black men who, in April, went to a Starbucks for a business meeting and soon found themselves being handcuffed by Philadelphia police, Clarke went to Raley’s for the most innocuous of reasons: to go grocery shopping.
She and a friend, who is Asian American, were headed on an extended camping trip and were stocking up. They spent quite a bit of time wandering the aisles looking for the right food and condiments., and in Clarke’s case, apparently a little too long looking for a vegan spread.
I imagine female to male violence has always been around. You see lot of it on social media ,where a female or females will taunt a male and hit him . Random men on the subway to Bus drivers. Females slapping often hitting men as hard as they can. Usually, these are young women, often traveling in packs.
A few months ago, a very young woman cut in line at the R Street Safeway When the man in front of her objected, she called him a racist. I was behind him and his wife and said he wasnt a racist, and she was wrong. As I was talking to wife, the young woman pushed past him and his wife and attempted to chest bump me and ordered me to stop talking! I’m double her weight and stand more than a foot taller. I left the line to defuse the situation . She told the man in front of her, she would be waiting for him outside. As she and her freinds were leaving the store, the very young woman kicked a display getting the attention of the security guard.
At an early age, males are taught never to strike a woman. NEVER ! There isn’t an asterisk here. It doesn’t matter if she attacks you. You shall NEVER hit a woman! I have seen alcohol fueled women attack the bouncers at nightclubs, often without provocation, Young women in groups attacking men, provoking men. Men who retailate are often restrained and sometimes attacked by other men.
Recently, there was a commotion at the 12th Light Rail Station, a thirty-ish woman was slapping kicking, yelling and biting a late thrity-ish male. Angry, yes, out of control, yes. There were two groups, one group was horrified and the other entertained, capturing the drama with their cell phones. You could feel some of the slaps. As the male was attempting to protect himself from the blows, she was screaming and threatening to get other males she knew to “beat his ass” .
After landing some stinging slaps, he slapped her, knocking her to the ground. None of the men stepped in. When she stood up, her nose was bleeding. Her voice grew higher and stronger than before ,the words she used were unrecognizable. As she walked towards him, he raised his hand. She said, “he would be dead later” for hitting a woman! She called him faggot and a punk for hitting a woman. She was crying now. She looked towards the four women for sympathy, and couldn’t fine a sympathetic eye.
As a light rail trail entered the station, she started screaming at him again. She screamed as they boarded the train. Suddenly he jumped off the train through the rear doors as they were closing and started walking towards downtown.
One of the men, at the station said “these females are crazy, you can’t go just walkin up to some man and start wailing on him and expect him to stand there and take it!” “I would have beat her ass the second time she hit me!”
