Supporting the Troops

We are currently bombing 8 different countries.

Two of those countries we have been militarily involved with for almost 20 years, being Afghanistan and Iraq.

22 veterans per day commit suicide. About 20% of veterans have PTSD.

Minimum 200,000 civilians were killed in Iraq as of April 2017. About 31,000 civilian deaths in Afghanistan. Then you have all the bodies in Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan. 

We are allies with Saudi Arabia, whose government has the exact same ideology as ISIS. They are currently committing genocide in Yemen with United States weapons, which has caused mass starvation, a cholera outbreak, and a blockade of humanitarian goods, such as medicine and food.

We spend almost 800 BILLION DOLLARS (Dr. Evil voice) on our military PER YEAR. Yet, Flint still has poison water, 50% of workers in America make less than $30,000, the number one cause of bankruptcy is medical bills, and we have 50,000 homeless veterans. What am I getting at?

Maybe, just MAYBE, supporting our military and supporting offensive wars is not one in the same. MAYBE if you support our troops, you support them NOT getting PTSD or committing suicide because of wars of aggression that we started for financial/territorial gain. MAYBE, we should stop acting like you have to support bullshit wars to support the troops. I want the troops to stay alive, be healthy, and spend as much time with their families as possible. Sending them to the Middle East to fight random brown people for “freedom” (still not sure what that means) isn’t how we should support the troops. 

But what do I know? I’m a libtard.

Americas Toxic Relationship with Guns

This is America, the home of mass shootings, the home of the most guns per capita, and the home of blaming these incidents on mental health issues. I have heard multiple arguments as to why gun regulation is not going to help reduce the amount of gun deaths, and why less regulation will ultimately lead to a safer America. 

Now while I realize that Americans LOVE their guns and we are more than likely FAR away from any sort of regulation, I will still try my best to get the facts out there so that people at least know the consequences of their love for firearms.

1. The United States of America Has The Most Guns per capita on Earth

At 112.6 guns per 100 people, we are far and away the country with the most guns. We also have mass shootings at least once a month. The theory that the more guns a society has, the safer said society is, is debunked just by the numbers. Out of 251,000 reported gun deaths in 2016, 37,200 of those were right here in Murica’. In fact, according to Vox:

“The top six’s gun death tolls for 2016: Brazil was 43,200, the US 37,200, Mexico 15,400, Colombia 13,300, Venezuela 12,800, and Guatemala 5,090. Collectively, these countries made up less than 10 percent of the global population but 50.5 percent of the world’s gun deaths.” 

2. More than one mass shooting occurs every day in the United States

      In this New York Times article, it shows that there is a mass shooting (four or more individuals being shot) everyday, and on average, at least two. Of course we don’t hear about all of them, due to the fact that anything less than 5 deaths is deemed “not newsworthy” because it is such a frequent occurrence.

    

3. “Gun laws won’t stop criminals from getting guns.”

I have several responses to this, and I don’t even have to use numbers or data. Just a little bit of common sense. For instance, with this logic, murder laws should be taken off the books because “Murders gonna murder anyway.” Apply this logic with any other crime and you’ll see why it’s a shitty argument. “Rapist’s gonna rape anyway so why even have laws against it?”

My second response would be “Not everyone has access to the black market. So by reducing the EASE in which people are able to buy guns legally, would also reduce the overall number of gun sales because not everyone has street connects to obtain weapons.” 

The other part about this that makes me laugh is they use the two opposite sides of the argument to make the same point. “Well what about Chicago (which is really just a metaphor for black people/the hood)?” According to your own philosophy, Chicago (the hood) should be the SAFEST place in America. Everyone’s packing their tools and according to the argument of “less regulation = more safety”, this should lead to a decline in gun deaths. But when you bring this up, then they will say “But those are illegal guns.” Ok, so let’s say the laws of Illinois weren’t strict on the right to carry or own a gun, but the economic situation was still the exact same. Do you REALLY think that because the guns were legally purchased, that all of a sudden the gun death total would shrink? In Ed Lover’s voice “C’mon son.”

I get everyone’s reasons for wanting to keep their heat. Protection of themselves and their families in the event a crisis happens. I get it. That’s a very reasonable stance to take. I get going to the range to relieve stress. I think there are better ways, but not everything works for everybody. So I’m not judging.

All I’m asking of people is to look at the data. If you still don’t want any sort of reasonable regulation, such as background checks, the bans of high-capacity magazines, and the ban of guns that can fire large numbers of rounds in a very short period of time, then maybe you just don’t care that much about America’s extremely high number of gun deaths per year. By the way, I have never once heard a progressive argue for banning all guns, which seems to be the take away whenever a left wing person mentions the word “regulation”. Regulation is just a set of rules to make sure things don’t get out of control. As we can see, the lack of regulation has led to hundreds of thousands of gun deaths in my lifetime, and as far as I can tell, isn’t changing any time soon.

Why Nancy Pelosi Must Go

Besides the fact that Donald Tiny Hands endorsed her, there are multiple reasons why we shouldn’t be supporting her as Speaker of the House.

She takes way too much money from corporations and Wall Street, and she is beholden to them. Why do you think she is pro deregulation of Wall Street? Why do you think she is still against Medicare for All? Why do you think she won’t support a bill for $15 minimum wage? Because she’s trash and a sellout.

Nancy has literally made tens of millions of dollars while in government. Pure insanity if you don’t see a problem with this. It’s called corruption everyone. It’s the same shit that prevented Hillary from winning, the same reason workers haven’t seen a raise in wages since it was decoupled from productivity in 1982. 38 years of stagnant wages.

Look at this video where she mentions everything around Healthcare except the one program that would accomplish everything people say they want to accomplish, Medicare for All.





https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TZo3bdJv00Y


And what’s up with all the “let’s work together with Republicans” bullshit? I thought Trump was
the most evil President ever? You guys know he’s the leader of the party, right?

This is the problem with the current Democratic Party. To fix our problems, the first step is getting rid of Nancy Pelosi as the leader.

#VoteBarbaraLeeforSpeaker

Biggest Lessons from the MidTerm Elections

Biggest take away from the MidTerms? Progressive policies win. The other biggest take away? People still don’t F with the Democrats.

Andrew Gillum lost (although there were shady circumstances), Stacey Abrams lost (similarly crooked politics were played, we’ll call it cheating). David Garcia out here in Arizona lost, Beto O’Rourke lost, and you get my drift. The Democrats did indeed win back the House of Representatives by a SLIMmargin, the major thing to learn from this is what happened on the ballot initiatives.

Michigan legalized marijuana.

Florida gave voting rights back to over 1,000,000 convicted felons.

Utah (We see you Mitt Romney), legalized medical marijuana.

Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah all expanded Medicaid.

Missouri and Arkansas raised the minimum wage.

Massachusetts defended the rights of Transgender Americans.

The major point is, the Democratic Party has lost so much faith with their pro-corporate, pro-war, milquetoast policies that President Obama himself said were “moderate republican” policies. Running Hillary was a mistake that they still won’t admit to, so therefore they blame Russians, James Comey, Bernie Sanders (what the eff?), Susan Sarandon, Jimmy Dore, progressives who wouldn’t “fall in line”, racists, sexists, basically anybody else other than Hillary herself. 

I think this could truly be a teachable moment for Democrats who want to win. This is how. Be actual progressives. Richard Ojeda ran as a populist left wing candidate and overcame majorly in a district that Trump won by 49 points. He didn’t win, but the point is that if he closed such a wide gap, in a pro-Trump district, that with equal resources, he would’ve wiped the floor with his opponent. Same with Bernie in the 2016 primaries, same with basically every truly left wing candidate that lost. 

Maybe Jimmy is right, we not only need to run populist left wing candidates in the democratic party, but we ALSO need to vote and support all progressive 3rd party candidates as well, because that is the only way we can put enough pressure on the Dems to represent our interests, instead of their donors. 

Donald Trump is the Most Childish President of All Time

So the President of the United States is a giant child. Seriously. He’s a toddler in a 70 something year old’s body. Sometimes it’s cringe worthy, and sometimes his stupidity baffles me so much that it actually is quite entertaining and makes me laugh. Hard. 

The latest example of his temper tantrums being hilarious but also embarrassing to the entrie country would have to be the most recent back and forth between Donald J. Trump (the J stands for Juvenile, and not the dope MC from New Orleans) and Jim Acosta of CNN was so ridiculous I felt so many different things at the same time.

He literally called him a “rude, terrible person” which made me double over in laughter as it caught me so off guard that he would actually say that to a news reporter for simply asking a tough question regarding his immigration stance and the recent commercials he’s been running. 

The video of the exchange truly is very similar to that of a younger brother getting caught taking his older, more mature brother’s clothes without permission when the older brother simply asks him “Hey, did you borrow my hoodie?”

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=video&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiT8tPi-8XeAhWOrFMKHSqCAvMQtwIIKDAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DRa9zsPqrMJY&usg=AOvVaw1knfLHW9RHPOWif1RFM38J

Seriously, this is the President. He almost tried walking away from the podium before he realized “Wait, I’m the PRESIDENT. I can’t just leave the press conference and display the highest level of snowflakery imaginable. This was hilariously sad.

Famous Black Conservatives are Puppets

Candace Owens. Kanye West. Ben Carson. Colion Noir. Jim Brown. Alan Keyes. Stacey Dash. Herman Cain. What do all of these people have in common besides weak dap?

They are black/African-American/Melanated conservatives. And not just fiscally conservative (which we call ‘cheap’ in the regular black community) or socially conservative because of religion (like most black folks to be real). They are straight up right wingers who will beat the drum for war, anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, tax cuts for the extremely wealthy, removing social safety net programs, gun anarchy, anti-women’s health rights; you know, everything right wingers in the USA love. 

What confuses me about them, is even though they say things like “Black Lives Matter is not oppressed” but then claim they are victims of racism when ANTIFA protesters simply say things they don’t like at coffee shops. They always act as if racism is purely a thing of the past that black people hold onto because we’re just lazier than white people, until somebody does something they have an issue with, then they pull it out the bag. It’s almost like they know racism exists, but they don’t want to acknowledge it because it will push away the wypipo that support them.

I just want everyone above named to know that you are being used as a puppet. Faux Fox News loves bringing these people on so they can say “See? We aren’t racist. Even the blacks say it!” It’s basically when they have Milo Snuffleupagus spew anti-gay rhetoric so they can say “See? We don’t hate the gays, even the gay dude says it!”

This is a trick the right wing has been using forever. Take a person from whatever group you don’t like (for Hispanics we have Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, for women just pick any Fox News host, you get where I’m going) to spew hateful rhetoric about said group to absolve themselves from all scrutiny.  Here’s the thing about it though.

It has never worked, nor will it.

What the majority of us (black people) do is just stop inviting them to the barbeque. We write them off and just assume they are now with the otha side. So when you hear these people say “The problem isn’t black people being disproportionately murdered by police, the problem is black on black crime!”, ignoring the fact that black people go to jail and face actual punishment for our killings, whereas police RARELY do or “Black people vote democrat because of welfare”, which was a talking point created by Ronald Raegan which was based on lies, just remember that they are either purposely ignoring reality, or at best, extremely ignorant of the facts. Either way, you aren’t doing any damage to anyone other than yourselves when you are inevitably cast aside when they are done using you (I see you Stacey Dash).

Black people don’t need to be loyal to the Democratic Party considering they have been failing us for the past 30 years, but that DOES NOT MEAN we should vote republican. It means we need to vote based on the candidate and their policies, rather than party affiliation.  

Young Buck and LGBTQ+ Bigotry

Alright y’all, we gotta talk about this Young Buck situation.

First and foremost, this entire situation shows how much more progress we still need to make in the area of LGBTQ+ bigotry. It also shows that protecting people’s privacy is very important, and any acts to “expose” others typically have a pretty negative backlash. So where do we start?

The first audio leaked is Young Buck on the phone with Glamour Mizz, a transgender woman who put out footage on her Instagram page performing a sexual act on a man, who was later identified as Buck Marely AKA Buck Shots AKA Young Buck of GGGG-Unit. At no point in this clip do you see Buck’s face or any other identifying physical characteristics. It’s just a dude wearing a coat who looks as if he is about to receive some oral pleasure. The reason we know this is actually Mr. Buck is because the audio leak of a phone call, where you can hear Young Buck and Glamour Mizz discussing taking the video down. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzdE8R1h8xs

As you can hear from this first call, Buck is almost threatening Glamour and saying that people are getting shot, people are getting hurt, and it’s all because she leaked this phone call and now he has to essentially fix the damage. At this point, another Tennessee dude named “Cookup Boss” began capitalizing off of the controversy. He began releasing many Instagram videos clowning Buck for being with what they call “a punk.” Apparently this is a slur for transgendered folks that I never heard before this past month. I digress…

Young Buck then challenged Cookup to a “fade” (a scrap, a fistfight, a beatdown) for making comments on the situation. In this video, he also adamantly denies being with Ms. Mizz or even knowing her.

http://hiphopdx.com/news/id.48297/title.young-buck-on-transgender-viral-video-rumors-aint-shit-gay-about-me

There is a second phone call that leaked, and this is the one that actually made me sad for everyone involved. You can hear Buck CRYING as he is begging and pleading with Glamour to take the video down. He even offers to pay her $2000 in exchange for a statement in which she would tell the world her page got hacked, she doesn’t know Buck, and that it is NOT him in the video. They are both yelling at each other throughout the call, and for so many reasons I feel terrible for everyone involved, except Cookup. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xNW0vCC7q0

Now that you have the backstory, I have questions for Glamour and Young Buck, as well as some general points I feel need to be made.

1. Glamour, why would you put a video of yourself doing anything sexual with anybody on Instagram? What ever happened to keeping your private lives private? Too many people in your business and things always get messy.

2. Young Buck, if it’s not true, which you repeatedly went on Instagram proclaiming, why are you offering to pay her to take the video down?

3. Glamour, you recently stated that you plan on “exposing” more rappers/entertainers. What is there to expose if you don’t think there is anything wrong with being trans (which there isn’t for the record)? Why do you continue to threaten to expose people if there is nothing wrong with what you’re doing?

4. Buck, you’re in a gang. For anyone who understands gang culture, it is a sad reality that the majority of gang affiliates are bigoted AF when it comes to the GBTQ+ community (I left the L off on purpose because most hood dudes/street guys are cool with Lesbians.) You should either drop your flag or not participate in ANYTHING that you will have to ask people to lie and cover up later. 

5. The YouTube comments are outrageous. It is extremely clear to me that so many people still don’t understand what it means to be transgender, and as a result are calling Young Buck gay. Trans people are not “tricking” people for fun, they actually identify with the opposite gender as their biological sex. It would almost be as if I, as a straight male who identifies as a man, was forced to wear a dress, lipstick and heels every day. I would be so out of my element and incredibly uncomfortable, I would be miserable.  Same with trans people who aren’t able to live as the gender they truly feel they are.

6. Glamour, you aren’t helping the cause. By feeding into the “I’m gonna expose these rappers” narrative, you actually take away from the fight that trans people, such as my friend Brianna Westbrook are partaking in. If at some point we want the world to acknowledge trans women = women and trans men = men, then “exposing” rappers as “gay” when they engage sexually with you hurts the cause. 

There is still a lot of progress which needs to be made, and unfortunately, people continue to feed into a narrative that is not only incorrect, but dangerous when trans people are already targets for violence.