Google honored Black History Month last year by showcasing the ‘Most Searched’ Black icons in culture, sports, and political history pic.twitter.com/PEUmbtEzUP
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) February 1, 2021
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The People’s View
- Follow me at my new venture: Reclaim the Fight Spandan Chakrabarti
- Ignore the bait: Why it’s the right strategy for Democrats to focus SCOTUS fight on health care Spandan Chakrabarti
- BIG: Judge halts Trump administration attempt to shortcut the census Spandan Chakrabarti
- Trump doesn't want peaceful transition of power. Legally, it doesn’t matter. Spandan Chakrabarti
- Fauci goes off on Rand Paul Spandan Chakrabarti
Smartypants
- How the Radical Right's Embrace of the Great Replacement Theory Is Tied to Overturning Roe v. Wade
- The Lie Embedded in Carlson's Great Replacement Theory
- Can Democrats Work With the "New Right" on Anti-Trust Issues?
- Alito's Embrace of Junk Science Will Make Several Forms of Contraception Illegal
- Biden: "This Is No Longer Your Father's Republican Party"
Steve Benen
- Questions surround 'confusing, conflicting' police response to Texas shooting
- Rev. Al on honoring those who died in tragedy: We must live the life they would want us to live
- Emergency physician offers public health solutions to the gun crisis
- Group aims to change young people's minds about guns
- Uvalde students speak out after surviving school shooting
The Obama Diary 
Good Morning! Happy Hump Day!
Thank you, Nerdy!
Good Afternoon, Georgia Peach!!! 🍑🍑🍑
Congrats on 1st.
Hey Sweet Neighbor!
Lead Impeachment Manager Jamie Raskin makes case against former President Trump at impeachment trial.
—“Best oral argument I’ve ever heard” (Neil Katyal)
Rep Raskin is a treasure – not just as a leader, a legislator, a litigator, but as a roll model for what it means to be a caring human being.
Wishing for all of you a moment to reflect on today being our 4th Wed with Joe Biden as POTUS and Kamala Harris as VP.
We must never take for granted that reality because it was far from inevitable and, in fact, if Trump had responded aggressively to COVID, by this time last year, it might never have been possible.
So, in that context here’s my tweet for the day –
You nailed it, again, Bob! ❤
“Serena Williams and her Experience with Pulmonary Embolisms”
(https://vascularcures.org/2018/01/13/serena-williams-and-her-experience-with-pulmonary-embolisms/)
—off topic..was taken by Ms. Williams’ in her interview with Colbert last week.
Laurence Tribe:
“It was brilliant of the House Managers to weave their constitutional argument for why the Senate must be able to try, convict, and disqualify an ex-president with no January Exception into a factual tapestry centered on the 13-minute video. Spellbinding and compelling.”
Republicans: we put the ‘mock’ in demockracy
Thank you NW, thank you everyone, big hugs all around..
🕊🙏🏼🕯💙🕯🙏🏼🕊
“It was bad.”
Senator Chris Coons calls the Trump defense in the impeachment trial bad:
“This was the Four Seasons Landscaping of the legal profession.”
Hilarious from pouty trump lawyer (paraphrazing): “You, you just don’t want to face Donald Trump on the ballot.”
Um YEH….he must be disqualified times a thousand.
The Senator from Colorado had me in tears with his closing statements.
Good afternoon TODVille. What an episode in our lives.
One of the defense arguments is that tRump did not incite the riot but simply exercised his first amendment right.
If the mob did not storm the Capitol at the behest of tRump, why then did they disband and leave ONLY when he FINALLY told them to do so?!?!?! More evidence that they were taking their instructions from him.
Maggie Lena Walker – First Woman to Own a Bank in the United States
Maggie Walker was born to enslaved parents on July 15, 1864 in Richmond, Virginia. After the Civil War, her mother worked as a laundress and her father as a butler in a popular Richmond hotel. As a teenager, Walker joined the Independent Order of Saint Luke (IOSL), an African American fraternal benefit society. The IOSL was established to provide aid to its members, especially when sick or upon death. Community service was a high priority. Maggie Walker was heavily involved in the IOSL for the rest of her life.
She attended a local school in Richmond and upon graduation, began teaching. She married Armstead Walker, a successful brick maker, in 1886. As a result, Walker was forced to resign her teaching position because married women were prohibited from teaching. She became more involved in the IOSL, rising through the ranks to attain the highest leadership position within the organization. Under her leadership, the IOSL grew in membership, mission, and purpose.
Walker had a vision to better her community by increasing access to employment, education, and financial instruments such as mortgages and personal loans—all areas where segregation prevented Black people from accessing mainstream options. In 1903 she convinced those who would listen to her to bring together about $9,400 and opened the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, becoming the first woman of any race to preside over a savings institution at a time when only a handful of women held power in corporations. “We need a savings bank,” she said. “Chartered, offered and run by the men and women of this order. Let us have a bank that will take nickels and turn them into dollars.”
Through the IOSL, Walker also founded, financed, and edited a newspaper, The Saint Luke Herald. She also founded and financed a department store, St. Luke Emporium. The focus of these entrepreneurial endeavors was not individual success, but rather community advancement. To run these businesses, Walker employed a workforce made up primarily of Black women in areas that provided higher wages than physically laborious, menial household work. Under Walker, Black women worked as stenographers, accountants, journalists, and secretaries.
Really gorgeous swbluega, thanks.
swbluega, what you’ve done is so important. Even our own mother’s lives seem from a distant era that is lost and hard to convey. Our mother had an impossible journey from poverty to being determined to make things better for her kids…just couldn’t get her to really open up or write it down. Photos were never a thing either in our family…no camera!
You’re welcome, bridgeriverpass
In addition to her entrepreneurial pursuits to increase economic access, she gave her time and money philanthropically to support organizations that sought to better the lives of African Americans, particularly African American women. Walker believed that everyone had the capacity to give, stating “there are few of us who can give much; but there are thousands upon thousands who can give little, and the combining of the mites will produce the much, so necessary to success.”
Thank YOU, SW. This was informative, interesting and new to me. I am soooo , soooo very proud of my ancestors and their problem solving determination.
{{{ 💕vc💕}}}
You’re welcome, VC. They are more impressive because of the limited resources and obstacles they had to overcome.
Yes, plus the fact they don’t give up!
AND, from all I have seen they also do not give way to debilitating bitterness!
*I* am amazed sometimes at how unexpectedly just the reading of some of these obstacles pulls up a deep burning anger in me on their behalf.
For a moment I’m reminded of what Kimberly Jones said at the end of her video re Black Lives Matter, after she’d listed some of the injustices Blacks suffered – “And they are lucky that what Black people are looking for is equality and not revenge.”
“And they are lucky that what Black people are looking for is equality and not revenge.”
So true.
Beautiful story, beautiful history, I grew up in Maryland, just next door, and no way I ever heard of this amazing woman.. thank you for posting it, swbluega. May all these real lives come to show us how much of a difference we each may make, if we try.
You’re welcome, WPW. It’s a learning experience for me too. So many unsung heroes beyond the ones that are “standards” of Black History Month.
Thank you for sharing Maggie L Walker with us, swbluega.
What an inspiration!
Excellent video about her!
You’re welcome.
And thanks for adding the video, Bob.
Laurence Tribe, professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard, speaks to Hayes:
“What you just played was a good example. When Mr. Castor purported to quote the Constitution and said “Judgement shall not extend beyond removal from office” he was lying by stopping the sentence there. Because it goes on. It says “and disqualification from holding future office”.
THAT is what this is all about.
So it wasn’t just a bad argument. It was a distortion of everything.
And we shouldn’t forget how powerful the argument on the other side was. It wasn’t just that the (trump) president’s lawyers basically sucked. It was that the lawyers for the House of Representatives, the ones who spoke, Raskin, Cicilline, Neguse, did a brilliant job showing that the text of the Constitution and the history. The whole purpose of the Impeachment power to protect the country from would-be tyrants, who are most likely to do damage at the very end when it comes to the point of transition. The whole point would be destroyed if we couldn’t hold this trial. And that’s why it was obvious that the correct answer is we have to continue this trial.”
Hayes:
“Yes your characterization of the president’s lawyer’s performance was shared by a lot of people watching on TV and in the gallery. Senator Bill Cassidy is an interesting case. Because when Rand Paul brought that motion, that point of order to basically object to Constitutionality before the trial even began, it was 55 democrats voting to proceed, 45 republicans voting against. There was one vote that switched, and that’s Senator Cassidy today. (And here he is explaining in part why he switched his vote…”one side’s doing a great job and the other side is doing a terrible job”.) It was a breath of fresh air to see that there is a persuadable gettable vote in that gallery.”
Tribe:
“It sure was.
But I would point out that the issue is not grading what kind of a job the two sides did.
The issue is how to preserve our Democracy, our freedom. Our right to live as a self-governing people depends on being able to vote out some guy who was doing a terrible job, killing half a million people almost because of how he mishandles the virus. Doing all kinds of bad stuff. But if our attempt to vote him out of office can be over-ridden, not just by a lot of frivolous law suits. But when they fail, by twisting the arms of the Secretary of State of Georgia. And when that fails, storming the Capitol, killing cops, threatening to hang the Vice President, threatening to assassinate the Speaker of the House.”
Tribe:
“And if they can get away with that with no accountability through the impeachment process – well then our democracy is gone! What we have worked for, for 235 years, is gone!
That’s what we should be focused on.
We can’t afford, as Jamie Raskin so eloquently said, we cannot afford to have the secret January exception to the Constitution and to the idea that no-one is above the law.
Because our Republic will be lost if we have it.
That’s the issue and that’s what the next few days will focus on.
That visual presentation was powerful. It’s not just ‘a picture’s worth a thousand words’. That was worth more than all of ‘War and Peace’. You just look at that, and as Amy Klobuchar pointed out, you can see the president engaged in the worst kind of insurrection against our country.
That has got to lead to his permanent disqualification. That’s what the trial is about.”
Tribe:
“The consensus is obviously based on the Constitution’s text, the history.
Our whole history is based on the idea that you have to have a way of permanently disqualifying someone who has shown himself to be an existential danger. And the moment you convict and remove somebody, they’re obviously no longer an officer of the United States. If that meant you couldn’t go on to sentence them to permanent disqualification, then that whole part of the Constitution would be erased.”
Hayes:
“At one point, Trump’s lawyer appeared to want to argue that it was an affront to the Constitution to consider permanent disqualification, despite the fact that in said Constitution there is the option of disqualification in precisely those words.”
Tribe:
“And it was an important option. The Framers knew that that was the most important thing you could do. Because it was people who had already left office who were the danger when they would come back!
That was the whole point of writing the impeachment power the way they did.”
As usual, Republicans are not taking their role as “jurors” seriously. In what other court can jurors pay attention if they feel like it, or participate in the trial the way they want to.
As with the last impeachment hearing, and the hearing on yesterday, they have already made up their minds. What are the chances that 17 Republicans will vote to convict?
GOP needs the votes that Trump brings in…one way or the other.
imo Dems have to go big. Trumpies ain’t hiding how much they want a fascist dictatorship.
“Legal Scholar Brian Kalt: Trump Lawyers Cherry-Picked Points From My Writing ”
How Donald Trump’s legal team misrepresented his work in their legal argument in the impeachment trial.
They’re liars.
This ain’t it. He’s done.
Dudette, I gave him a side eye when he started popping up on my teevee! Geez, put foot, sock anything, in yr mouth. Dood, stop. OK fork in it! 😂😎😏😷
Detroit Free Press:
“Shirkey falsely claims US Capitol attack was staged, not carried out by Trump supporters”
Senate Majority leader Mike Shirkey, the highest ranking Republican elected official in Michigan,
recently said he believes the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol was not carried out by supporters of former president Donald Trump, calling the idea a “hoax” and stating that the attack was “staged.”
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2021/02/09/mike-shirkey-insurrection-hoax-trump/4455506001/
–Impeachment Insurrectionist enablers in Congress want Dems to move on, nothing to see here. ..
–However (as Maddow has been saying) sorme state GOP officials are not moving on.
“Arizona Senate
plans vote on contempt over election audit; Maricopa County supervisors seek restraining order”
https://azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2021/02/08/arizona-senate-republicans-vote-contempt-maricopa-county-supervisors-election-audit/4435515001)
—this article still not accessible.
Will the SC thugs listen?
Angeli, whose costume and painted face had helped make him an icon of the incursion, was arrested by the FBI and charged with six criminal counts, including two felonies, that could net him 28 years in prison. He has been ordered held in custody in D.C. pending trial.
Angeli said that his incarceration “has permitted me to start reanalyzing my life,” the statement said.
Among the aspects of his life, he has re-analyzed was his support of Trump.
“I am deeply disappointed in former President Trump,” Angeli said in his statement. “He was not honorable. He let a lot of peaceful people down.”
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-breaking/2021/02/08/arizona-qanon-shaman-jake-angeli-apologizes-raiding-us-capitol/4445701001/
Trump didn’t let me down because I never supported his racist behind.
Eff! Stay in Big House a long, long while!
Congressman Stacey Plaskett:
Walking us through new detailed timeline footage showing breaching of Capitol gates, which begins as Pence starts to preside over certification. At 13:49 on June 6 Capitol Police declared it a riot. Now showing inside view as they break the window and enter the building.
…trump is to blame.
Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett…sorry am stunned by what is going on
New Zealand’s parliament has backed down in a dispute with a Maori MP who refused to wear a tie.
Rawiri Waititi was allowed to address the chamber, a day after being ejected for breaking its dress code by wearing a traditional pendant called hei-tiki instead of a tie.
The parliament speaker later said ties would no longer be required as part of “appropriate business attire”.
Mr Waititi said it was a “win for the many generations to come”.
It means that parliament is a place that people “can freely express their cultural identity”, he told the BBC’s Newsday programme.
“This was always about the greater cause of the subjugation and assimilation that Maori have had to face for the past 181 years,” he said.
Mr Waititi was ejected from parliament on Tuesday over a rule that male MPs can only ask questions in the debating chamber if wearing a tie.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56009060
Good for him.
Thank you. Missed this while I was watching the horrendous other “event.” Ugh.
As Hillary said, this pool of jurors is corruptly complicit and contaminated. Those who voted against the EC certification should not even be in this hearing let alone vote.
Of course, the coward won’t.
They are all fucking cowards.
If he had any guts, he should have spoken then and there instead of ‘staring’. That would have had more impact.
exactly.
also, too, it took mittbot more than a month to know this?
fuck your ‘feelings’, where is your vote to impeach?
yup, what Hillary said.
why only half? I would say the whole lot of them are.
corrupt complicit cowards.
I see that mark cuban folded like a cheap suit within 24 hours .
LIVE…
yet, we will ignore them. treasonous sickfucks.
Trump doesn’t care about Pence.
the thug never gave a shit about anybody except himself.
Damn, I got a ride on Star Trek Discovery & ended up in this idiot’s alternate effing world??!! Heck outta here, I’d rather deal w/ Klingons! 😎😂😷
😂
So cute!
So much venality, so little consequence.
If the traitorous treasonous seditious thug gets away with this, remember, all the whole other multitude of corrupt & criminal activities of his minions in the admin, congress, senate and particularly that porcine pig of a bill barr gets swept under the carpet with zero accountability.
Woman who took private plane to Capitol attack has regrets: ‘I bought into a lie’
“Not one patriot is standing up for me,” Ryan said. “I’m a complete villain. I was down there based on what my president said. ‘Stop the steal.’ Now I see that it was all over nothing. He was just having us down there for an ego boost. I was there for him.”
https://deadstate.org/woman-who-took-private-plane-to-capitol-attack-has-regrets-i-bought-into-a-lie/
Do stupid things wilfully, reap the rewards unwillingly.
Stupid is as stupid does. Sorry, so not sorry for your dumb arse!
Senator who voted for anti-trans ‘bathroom bill’ busted in hotel with underage boy.
https://deadstate.org/senator-who-voted-to-protect-bathrooms-from-trans-people-caught-in-hotel-with-underage-boy/
of course, the thug did.
He is married with three children and was also the manager for Donald Trump’s campaign during the primaries.
of course, the thug was.
Guy who says God sends natural disasters to punish gays has his home destroyed in a natural disaster.
Tony Perkins, president of the anti-gay religious lobbying group the Family Research Council, had his home destroyed by the massive flooding ravaging Southern Louisiana this week.
Although no one wants to celebrate a person losing their home, the destruction of Perkins’ house isn’t without irony, considering that he’s claimed in the past that natural disasters are God’s way of punishing an increasingly gay-friendly world.
Calling into his own radio show, Perkins described the flood as being of “biblical proportions,” adding that he and his family will have to live in a camper for 6 months until the damage is repaired.
But Perkins was careful to point out that this particular flood wasn’t because of the gays, but rather an “incredible, encouraging spiritual exercise to take you to the next level in your walk with an almighty and gracious God who does all things well.”
https://deadstate.org/guy-who-says-god-sends-natural-disasters-to-punish-gays-has-his-home-destroyed-in-a-natural-disaster/
and she is telling it only now? what a hack.
Goodnight TOD.
Beauty Break
A little more beauty. Enjoy!
Quietly gettin’ it done.
If you have HBO/HBO Max, please check out this incredible documentary, Black Art: In the Absence of Light profiling prominent African Artists. Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, who did The Obamas portraits for the National Portrait Gallery are among the artists featured.
They elected a thug as govnor. Literally. What else did they expect.
Hope the establishment dems have some thing resembling even like a plan instead of putting up rearguard fighting in the last minute as usual.
Hmm 🤔
I love that!
That just about sums up the GOPees, no? Cowardice and complicity.
Yup.
THREAD
And the GOP Senators who choose not to convict.
Yep – 100 percent!
She is always right when it comes to rethugs and the traitor.
the useless bw hacks like her get fixated on pols, others are just underlings.
how did they get a bad kennedy?
Don’t know. Too many Kennedy’s?
Biden admin to name refugee advocate director of task force to reunite separated families, say sources
Michelle Brané’s refugee organization is part of the committee tasked by a judge with finding, reuniting more than 600 migrant children with their parents.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/biden-admin-name-refugee-advocate-director-task-force-reunite-separated-n1257255
Can’t wait for all the leftover garbage from 45 to be picked up, so we can get back as a country to hearing what our new administration is accomplishing for the American people! Each day, we’re one day closer to moving forward, but thank God the orange demon is no longer in the White House. Still can’t believe we did that! Yay!
Goodnight, TOD and all the ships at sea!
Why is this not considered jury tampering? Is there a process to disqualify senators from voting for doing something like this?
Letter indicates that other agencies investigating the matter — including the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the United States Attorney’s office for the Northern District of Georgia, were are contacted by subjects of the investigation. The Fulton County DA is the one agency with jurisdiction that is not a witness to the conduct that is the subject of the investigation.
“…duty demands that this matter be investigated, and if necessary, prosecuted in a manner that is free from any appearance of conflict of interest or political considerations.”
Related to fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery on February 23, 2020:
Good Morning Family! Check out Forever FLOTUS’ lastest project! ❤️
This is HUGE! A Black woman is slated to sit on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, y’all! 😭
More on Dr. Cook and why this is such a big deal…
Furthermore…
This is so wrong!
Thank you Mr. President!
New post.
https://obamadiary.wordpress.com/2021/02/11/waffles-mochi/
One of the greatest black entertainer ever if not the greatest, Michael Joe Jackson, they want to erase him from history. But it won’t happen, even if Oprah think it should.