49 thoughts on “Picture This”

  1. wapo:

    John R. Lewis, a civil rights leader who preached nonviolence while enduring beatings and jailings during seminal front-line confrontations of the 1960s and later spent more than three decades in Congress defending the crucial gains he had helped achieve for people of color, has died. He was 80.
    His death was announced in statements from his family and from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Advisers to senior Democratic leaders confirmed that he died July 17, but other details were not immediately available.
    Mr. Lewis, a Georgia Democrat, announced his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer on Dec. 29 and said he planned to continue working amid treatment. “I have been in some kind of fight — for freedom, equality, basic human rights — for nearly my entire life,” he said in a statement. “I have never faced a fight quite like the one I have now.”
    […]
    Mr. Lewis’s final years in the House were marked by personal conflict with President Trump. Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, Mr. Lewis said, rendered Trump’s victory “illegitimate.” He boycotted Trump’s inauguration. Later, during the House’s formal debate on whether to proceed with the impeachment process, Mr. Lewis had evinced no doubts: “For some, this vote might be hard,” he said on the House floor in December 2019. “But we have a mandate and a mission to be on the right side of history.”
    Born to impoverished Alabama sharecroppers, Mr. Lewis was a high school student in 1955 when he heard broadcasts by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that drew him to activism.
    “Every minister I’d ever heard talked about ‘over yonder,’ where we’d put on white robes and golden slippers and sit with the angels,” he recalled in his 1998 memoir, “Walking With the Wind.” “But this man was talking about dealing with the problems people were facing in their lives right now, specifically black lives in the South.”
    [continues]

    and a tribute about him produced earlier this year

  2. excerpts from rollingstone obit:

    The son of Alabama sharecroppers and last living member of the “Big Six” group of civil rights organizers who led the March on Washington, Lewis dedicated his life to service and activism, including a 33-year career in Congress. At age 21, Lewis became one of the original Freedom Riders, beginning his lifelong fight for racial equity. While he was head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, state troopers beat Lewis and fractured his skull at the 1965 march on Selma, Ala., that became known as “Bloody Sunday.”
    “Racism is the deeply embedded psyche of America,” Lewis told Rolling Stone in 2019. “We cannot escape it. We cannot hide it in some dark corner. Racism is one of the great sins of America. We grow up in a race-conscious society. Since African-Americans came here — or were brought here — racism has been part of our government. Every so often this deeply embedded sickness raises its ugly head in different forms and fashion. We try to sweep it under the rug, we try to sweep it into some dark corner. But we must continue to do what we can to bury it so that it never rises again. To wash it from the shores of America.”
    […]
    In a statement, former president Barack Obama told a story about the last time he saw Lewis, at a forum with activists after the death of George Floyd. In a private conversation at the event, Obama said he told the congressman, “I told him that all those young people — of every race, from every background and gender and sexual orientation — they were his children. They had learned from his example, even if they didn’t know it. They had understood through him what American citizenship requires, even if they had heard of his courage only through history books.”

  3. With the passing of John Lewis yesterday I started down the path of wondering who would replace him and the other icons of the 1950’s and 1960’s Civil Rights battles.  These men and women offered their lives so others could enjoy a better life.  Lewis nearly lost his.
     
    Then I thought of the current mad king, SFB, sending military and other federal military types to D.C. and to Portland to prevent people from living a free life.  Lewis stood up to the imbecile early and was proven correct in his assessment of him. 
     
    Much has changed in the last fifty to sixty years in the Civil Rights movement.  And we have new leaders forming all the time.  There will be the lone wolf, or cowboy, operating on the fringe.  But, we also have those who lead.  They need to study people like John Lewis.

  4. On the same night America loses its conscience, Federal troops, masked, unidentified, and with unmarked vehicles gather up citizens without the knowledge of the State governor.  

    While I know this is Trump (or some evil handler) at their worst, what terrifies me even more, is the question:  Where are they dredging up the people to do these deeds?

     

  7. Behind Trump’s attack on American citizens 

    Two days ago, Stephen Miller promised a “major announcement next week about how this president will be using the authorities of the federal government to come to the rescue of these long-suffering citizens” in cities with liberal mayors “refusing our generous hand offering help.”

    Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, Reps. Earl Blumenhauer and Suzanne Bonamici, and the U.S. Attorney for Oregon have all called for an investigation into “the unrequested presence and violent actions of federal forces in Portland.”

    One of our legal beagles needs to provide an opinion.  Isn’t this behavior by Federal troops in violation of the  Military Code of Justice part about obeying illegal orders?

     

  8. tRUPM’s troops abducting citizens off of the streets of America.  How is that legal? It’s not.  It’s unconstitutional. Impeach and remove him, now!

  9. US Attorney for Oregon Requests Investigation Into reported arrests of Portland protestors

    “Based on news accounts circulating that allege federal law enforcement detained two protestors without probable cause, I have requested the Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General to open a separate investigation directed specifically at the actions of DHS personnel,” Billy Williams said in a statement Friday. Williams is the top federal law enforcement official in the state.

  10. Rep. Lewis was the keynote speaker at LP’s college commencement. The theme was make trouble. Took a bit of explanation to LP to help him understand what he meant. He eventually got it but didn’t have much context to help him get it. He’s gotten it over the past year thanks to the racism writ large of police killings of black people. How ironic that SFB has started using DHS storm troopers to suppress dissent – if it is related to racial bias. John probably will be rolling into his grave. RIP, John. You gave this country a good life’s work. 

  11. TX hospitals are filling up (some overflowing) with COVID patients/victims of tRUMP’s plague.   This is not a hoax.  Folks are sick, including more that I know, even family, now.   

  13. Remember all the new laws passed in 2004 to “protect America” from all the terrorists.  Haste make bad laws, think the misnamed Patriot Act.  There was one that allowed the president to protect monuments and other federal properties, this is the one SFB keeps bringing up to save confederate flags and statues. 
     
    There was at least one more allowing the president to use federal law enforcement agencies to be deputized to do law enforcement.  Many federal statutes and regulations include phrases that those enforcing that statute can arrest without a warrant, I had that in what I did a long time ago as a federal investigator.  But, we also knew that that was a last resort, not something that was ever expected to be done.  Well, it looks like the millers and boltons and anti-Americans are using those phrases to attack, kidnap and arrest Americans.  The legal part is maybe a stretch, we should be seeing action today by the various legal groups. 
     
    With at least one known illegal arrest, that is what happened when the Pinochet style militia grabbed and detained a man without his consent, held him for hours and when he demanded a lawyer, was released without being charged, there maybe enough to have a federal judge place an injunction on SFB.  Of course the imbecile will scream to the Supremes, and it will be up to them to say stop it.

  16. I suggest that the Government of the Great State of Oregon is obliged to use whatever force necessary to curtail the illegal incursion of a rogue federal presence into its sovereign territory. If deemed appropriate by the legislature and executive body of Oregon mutual aid from neighboring states should be sought. I recognize that lethal force may be necessary and appropriate in the maintenance of the state’s sovereignty.

  17. Anyone with bated breath waiting for a carefully typed, deeply  thoughtful and reverent tweet from a SFB staffer?  We can be sure the  imbecile will never write it.  Pelosi has ordered the Capitol flags to half staff, anyone waiting  for SFB to do the same?
     
    Lewis dying must have SFB digging out a big tube of A&D ointment.

  18. It’s time for the citizens of Portland to grab flags, lie down around the fascist vehicles, and sit back against the vehicle doors. Hold the vaders hostage until wolf, cuccinelli, barr and trump all resign. 

    The good guys should bring flags so we know which team is which. 

    Maybe, tape some russian (soviet) flags to the fascist vehicles.

  19. Those “invaders” are supposedly there to protect Federal buildings.  How about a ring of Portland police surrounding them to restrain them from going anywhere other than the buildings they are “protecting”.  

    Oh and order the car rental place leasing them the vans to shut down and reclaim the vehicles.

     

  24. Might even need a double circumvallation. 
    4 flash mobs assembling from 4 different directions converging on the perps and facing inward, followed by a second wave of flash mobs, repeating the process, but upon arrival at the objective, facing outward.
    “Roll down the window, SIR.” 
    “Do you know what you did wrong, SIR?”
    “Sir, you and your companions are under arrest, for causing a disturbance and possibly also impersonating a police officer, driving without a license, automobile theft, false arrest and kidnapping. Hand me your weapons, SIR.”
    “Now, SIR, I’ll need your identification documents, SIR.”

  26. Now SFB is playing catch and release. The guy that tRUMP’s goons illegally arrested has a case, right?   
    RIP – Gone too soon, but he’s earned his rest.   I hope that he saw the recent progress of BLM gave him some peace. 

  28. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/18/us/portland-arrests-federal-authorities/index.html
    The DHS has become positively Orwellian under tRUMP.  BLM wants  to defund police.  tRUMP wants to militarize our streets.  President Biden doesn’t want to do either of those things.  (Yes, it’s time to start calling Joe POTUS, calling things that are not as though they were.).  I’m with BLM if it’s a binary choice.  It’s not, but that’s what tRUMP wants folks to believe.    What’s being done is unconstitutional, so what horrible thing is he using this new, horrible thing as a distraction?    He still hasn’t said beans about bounties on American troops, even though he posed with a desktop full of beans…which is an ethics violation.  Promoting beans?  Well, he’s just a huckster who’ll sell anything…because he has no soul.

  32. won’t be long before tv & twitter full of  the storm troopers quelling portland protestors in Rump campaign ads. 

    hope someone is combing the spectator crowd for political operatives taking pictures, maybe waving phony placards with incendiary slogans that will be useful for his new tack to smear joe. 

  33. Ugh, Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN just said the type of chemo RBG is getting is just “palliative, not curative”. In these cases even younger patients usually live no more than a year, he said. 

  35. Craig

    She has already stated that she would stay only as long as she could keep up with the cases.  So far this year she has written the most judgements other than one more by John Roberts.  The new session will start the First Monday in October.  

    She has had a long, productive life.  I just don’t want McConnell to pull any nonsense and that we get through the election without any massive voter suppression and cheating.  

  36. The game is afoot, Watson…….gestapo being deployed .
    They gonna shoot the moon. 

  39. Hypocrisy has never been a problem for Mitch. He’s very comfortable with it. 

  40. x-r, I LIKE this!
    “tape some russian (soviet) flags to the fascist vehicles.”

  41. If RBG dies, Moscow Mitch won’t be able to move fast enough to name, nominate, and put in a new supreme from “the list”.  He won’t care one wit that he’d be a hypocrite! 

  42. Let’s not hang crepe for RBG, please.  She’s still with us and if the chemo is keeping the lesions at bay for now, let’s just wish her the best and let her carry on as long as possible.   I think that all but two of the justices can see/will admit that tRUMP is wiping his giant backside with the US Constitution.  
    If tRUMP keeps ramping things up/pulling dangerous and illegal stunts like in Portland, he may hang himself.   Donald J. tRUMP is not a Republican.  He is fascist.  
    If Moscow Mitch, Lindsey and the rest of the Hee-Haw gang won’t own up to that and separate themselves from him/stop propping him up, they are dooming America, as well as themselves and how history remembers them.   

  44. sturge- I don’t mind your band picture being up there.  I wish John Lewis hadn’t passed on and that his pics weren’t up there.  

  47. Just saw our local news run a teaser saying that a Kentucky couple was placed on house arrest for failure to honor a self quarantine order issued by their local health department. I wonder if they’re related to that idiot county clerk who tried to fuck with voting there last year. The stupidity is strong with those ones. They wouldn’t sign self quarantine papers with the health department asked him to sign after the wife tested positive for COVID-19 because they didn’t like the wording of the papers. The shame is they have a kid, so they’re passing their stupidity genes along to the next generation.

  48. A friend told me that during the 1918 pandemic there were virus or flu courts that dealt specifically with those who didn’t wear a mask. That way the regular courts weren’t tied up.

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