Poll Lurkers & Other Really Scary Things

Rigged U.S. elections? Meet Trump flunkie
Terri Lynn Rote of Des Moines Iowa

In light of today's Halloween holiday it seems appropriate to talk about scary stuff.

No ghosts or goblins or anything, though I'm sure a few of those will be lurking about this evening in search of candy.

There are some genuinely frightening things going on in America these days.

For example there is die-hard Trump zealot Terri Lynn Rote, a 55-year-old woman from Des Moines.



Over the past few weeks Trump has criss-crossed the country whipping his supporters into a conservative frenzy by spouting off baseless nonsense about nonexistent widespread voter fraud by Democrats.

But of the millions of Americans who've already cast early votes, the most high-profile case of genuine voter fraud was Rote, who was jailed last Thursday after being arrested for first-degree election misconduct (a felony in Iowa) after she tried to cast two votes for Trump in Polk County.

Perhaps scarier are the Trump campaign's calls for thousands of "poll watchers" to gather outside polling sites in communities with larger populations of African-Americans and Hispanics to "monitor" the voting process for signs of suspicious activity.

The proposition that people who support Democrats and happen to be non-white are plotting to descend upon the polls en masse with the intent of pulling a Terri Lynn Rote is as absurd as it is racist, but plenty of folks have swallowed the Orange Kool-Aid.

For example an unknown individual was reported to be videotaping the license plates of vehicles parked at an early-voting poll site in Durham, North Carolina.

Oath Keepers: ready for some poll watchin' !

The large coalition of voter rights groups known as Election Protection has mobilized thousands of volunteers, monitors and attorneys across the country to be prepared to confront and report those kinds of voter intimidation tactics.

Remember the anti-government militia group known as the Oath Keepers who showed up armed to the teeth on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri during protests against the killing of Michael Brown?

Last week they announced "Operation Sabot 2016" - a call for members of Oath Keepers, a right-wing extremist group comprised mostly of heavily-armed white former cops and soldiers, to head to the polls next Tuesday "undercover" to monitor poll sites for signs of voter fraud - which of course there's no evidence to prove actually exists.

The idea that armed members of this conspiracy-theory-prone posse will be lurking around the polls while citizens try and exercise their right to vote on November 8th is truly scary.

Kristen Clarke, the President and Executive Director of the Lawyer's Committee For Civil Rights Under Law, the organization heading up Election Protection, blames the Trump campaign's phony hysteria and unproven claims about voter fraud for the sharp rise in complaints about voter intimidation and misinformation received this year.

Clinton campaign General Counsel Marc Elias

As she observed recently:

"What we're seeing is basically a clarion call for people to go out and lurk outside polling sites, I think all of this presents cause for concern."

Trump's flagrant attempts to undermine public confidence in the 2016 presidential election is truly scary to the principles of Democracy.



Matt Taibi's scathing essay in the latest issue of Rolling Stone offers insight into the possible long-term consequences of Trump's effect on the American political system in the wake of his having ascended to become the 2016 GOP nominee.

But in the short-term he's having real effects on voter access to the polls next week.

As Rachel Stockman reported earlier today in an article on LawNewz.com, under the direction of Marc Elias, General Counsel for Hillary Clinton's campaign, Democratic party leaders in the key battleground states Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada filed lawsuits against Trump and his campaign advisor Roger Stone in federal court asking a judge to "stop the defendants from monitoring polls, verbally harassing voters, and following them around to take pictures."

But there's no real mystery to Trump's newfound "crusade for voter integrity".

Everything that comes out of his mouth in the coming days is either about the F.B.I 's questionable fishing probe into the emails of Clinton aide Huma Abedin a week before a presidential election, or imaginary voter fraud.

It's just an effort to deflect attention from the fact that he hasn't paid federal taxes in at least eighteen years, and the more than ten women who've accused him of being a sexual predator - including a woman who claims he raped her when she was only thirteen years old back in 1994 at a party.

Trump is due in court in federal December on that one - but that's less horrifying than a bunch of mishandled emails right?

Now THAT is scary.

Internet Trolls and a Noose in Mississippi

Writer & Alt Right target David French

If you're unfamiliar with the alarmingly far-right branch of conservatism on the American political spectrum known as the alt-right, then I'd recommend that you spend a few minutes listening to the interview Terry Gross did with National Review writer David French yesterday on Fresh Air.

Who is David French? For starters he's both principled and fairly conservative in his worldview.

He's a married Iraq War vet with three children, Harvard-trained lawyer and conservative writer for one of the more conservative periodicals out there.

That's why it's all the more remarkable to listen to him describe the extent of the virulent backlash of online hate and vicious internet trolling he, his wife and young daughter were subjected to after he emerged as one of the leading conservative thinkers in the "never Trump" camp.

According to his interview yesterday, it really started after he criticized the far-right racist xenophobe nutbag author Ann Coulter; you really should read the National Review article he wrote last week detailing the extent of the alt-right campaign against him.

It's not just shocking and disturbing.

It offers insight into a largely younger-skewing demographic that has oepnly embraced an aggressive white-identity movement with decidedly white supremacist leanings, one that is largely organized around social media and is far right enough to be hostile towards, and totally contemptuous of the Republican establishment in Washington.

Oh and they love Trump.

Trump campaign guru Steve Bannon 

Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon deserves a large measure of credit for building a large online tent-community where those who identify as alt-right could gather and reinforce their extremist views.

As the chairman of Brietbart Media, the Goebbels-like propaganda specialist turned Brietbart News into an online hub for racism, xenophobia and white supremacy.

Is it surprising that Trump tapped Bannon to head up his campaign?

Trumps' son Donald, Jr. (he of the quasi-mafioso 80's-esque Gordon Gekko hair style) is young enough, internet-saavy enough and enamoured enough with the language of the white identity movement to have likely been one of the insiders to suggest that Bannon would be a good pick to run the Republican front-runner's campaign.

You may recall Junior as the brainiac who tried to ape his father's use of Twitter to offend millions of people by trying to illustrate the "danger" of Syrian refugees fleeing civil war by comparing them to a bowl of Skittles.

Arguably one of the main reasons Bannon was hired by Trump was that he brought with him a ready-made online audience of haters aching to attach themselves to a mainstream political candidate who talked their talk and walked their walk.

After all, as Sarah Posner wrote in an August article about Bannon for Mother Jones, before Trump gave them a feeling of legitimacy and belonging, the alt-right was "a once-motley assemblage of anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, ethno-nationalistic provocateurs who have coalesced behind Trump and curried the GOP nominee's favor on social media."

Brietbart tech editor & Net Troll Milos Yiannopoulos

And use social media they have, in some truly alarming ways.

With a disturbing combination of anger, group-think and internet trolling, the alt-right has developed something of a "hive-mind", taking to their keyboards, cell phones and electronic pads to swarm en-masse upon unsuspecting victims who displease them.

Remember the unprecedented Twitter attack on SNL's Leslie Jones in the wake of many fanboys displeasure over Sony's all-female Ghostbusters remake this summer?

The outspoken Milos Yiannopolous, one of Bannon's Brietbart lieutenants, was largely responsible for fanning the flames on social media and encouraging the onslaught of flagrantly sexist and racist hate directed against Jones; Yiannopolous was finally booted from Twitter for his obnoxious online campaign - and Jones closed her Twitter account.

What's more troubling than the idea of a bunch of people developing an organic online campaign against an actor because they didn't like a movie, was that swarm mentality taken to a different level with writer David French.

With individuals posting offensive Photoshopped images of his young Ethiopian-born daughter and making threats against an Iraq war veteran's family simply because he criticized Donald Trump.

Miss. NAACP Pres. Derrick Johnson with Stacey
and Hollis Payton, parents of the victim

What's the broader impact of large numbers of often anonymous alt-right followers using technology and the internet to spread the message that virulent hate is okay?

Does it reach a point where it goes beyond the internet and starts to morph into reality?

Actions like the one taken against Jones and French aren't happening in a bubble; what kind of message is that sending to the millions of susceptible young minds who spend so much time on the internet?

Given the terrible and violent legacy of lynching in America, it was troubling to read about charges leveled in a press conference on Monday that a group of four white high school students from Stone High School in Wiggins, Mississippi snuck up behind a 16-year-old African-American boy sitting in a locker room, slipped a noose around his neck and then tightened it.

If that was some kind of sick joke it's certainly not remotely funny, and if it was an actual attack then those responsible need to be held accountable - especially since the incident took place on school grounds.

According to statements from Stacey and Hollis Payton, the parents of the boy, they contacted the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP after officials at Stone High School took no action against any of the four students involved - one of whom is the son of a local former police officer.

Stone High School, Wiggins, Mississippi

In a statement read by Derrick Johnson, the President of the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP, the same four students were supposedly part of a group of students who recently drove to the high school with Confederate flags draped on their vehicles.

The story has gone national so pressure to conduct a proper investigation will be ratcheted up on local school and county officials.

More details on this incident will likely emerge in the next few days.

As a former Boy Scout who spent time learning how to tie a variety of knots, I can tell you that it's not easy to tie rope into the kind of noose used to hang or lynch someone; where did those four high school kids learn to do that?

Did they learn that skill from parents, relatives or friends? And why would they do it?

Did they pick up that kind of toxic anger online while hanging around the fringes of the alt-right community?

I'm certainly not the only one who wants answers to those questions; and it's not unreasonable to surmise that the openly hostile racial climate fostered by Trump and his alt-right followers online, on TV and in rallies over the past months played some kind of part in making those four kids think that slipping a noose around a 16-year-old black American student's neck was okay.

Or maybe it was just a local-thing, after all Mississippi is the only American state left with a flag that contains the image of the Confederate battle flag on it.

My money is on those four kids having been exposed to the same kinds of intolerance we saw at Trump rallies all throughout the spring and summer - my guess is they're simply wannabe spawn of the Orange-Haired One and his alt-right legions.

Is It November 8th Yet?

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

With various news media reports about early voting results from across the nation starting to filter in showing Hillary Clinton starting to make impressive gains in Florida, Arizona and Texas, states that traditionally skew Republican in presidential races, the overt kinds of bush-league voter misinformation tactics that eyewitness reported from various counties in Texas, while loathsome to the basic principles of Democracy, are unfortunately not all that surprising.


Considering the GOP's obsession with suppressing voter turnout, such shenanigans are predictable.

Especially given the release on Wednesday of the results of a joint poll conducted by Reuters and Ispos that doesn't bode well for the Trump campaign; Ispos is a 41-year-old independent market research company based in Paris for those of you who may subscribe to the Orange-Haired One's baseless wide-ranging accusations that any poll unfavorable to him is "rigged."

The Reuters/Ispos poll conducted between October 20th and 24th reveals that a remarkable 41% of Republicans now believe that Clinton will win next Tuesday's election; versus only 40% who believe Trump will win.

While the delusional Republican front-runner can boast a significant advantage in support from white male non-college educated voters, if you look over the results of some of the straw polls taken in 2015 during the presidential primary races, winning the "Trump demographic" of the U.S. population in a national general election simply isn't enough to win a majority percentage of a popular vote.

As National Review writer David French shared in an interview with Terry Gross earlier today on Fresh Air, the Alt-Right quasi-white supremacist voter base that supports Trump with an almost cult-like devotion can be loud and angry; French claims they Photoshopped an image of his adopted Ethiopian daughter in a gas chamber after he publicly criticized Trump and right-wing fem-Nazi and author Ann Coulter. Really.

Even though all those Alt-Right anti-Semite bigot Trolls represent a relatively small slice of the overall American electorate, Republicans seem to be holding on to the slim hope that suppressing the votes of enough Americans of Hispanic descent, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, elderly and college students will be enough to push the Alt-Right into the majority in enough states but the math just doesn't add up.

No matter how much voter misinformation and intimidation takes place in Texas or elsewhere.

Sample ballot received - ready for November 8th

So I count myself pretty fortunate to be able to come home from work, open the mailbox and find my 2016 General Election Sample Ballot waiting for me.

A good two weeks before the November 8th election the Mercer County Commission of Registration mails out easy-to-read sample ballots that tell you where to vote, what time the polls open and close, what candidates will be on the ballot, which party they represent and detailed instructions on how use the voting machine when the curtain closes.


You get to practice if you need to!

What a novel approach to the American electoral process, using government resources to make sure that registered voters are educated on what they need to do to vote well in advance of the upcoming general election so that they are prepared when they arrive at the polls on November 8th.

We may bitch and moan about high taxes here in Mercer County, New Jersey, but unlike certain counties in Texas, our local government does ensure a pretty efficient and well-run election process that includes voter education and poll sites where all you have to do is walk in, give your name, sign on the dotted line, and walk in and participate in the electoral process.

I'm not saying it's perfect or without flaws (much like American Democracy) but it works and unlike the Orange-Haired One's lunatic assertions you can't simply "rig" it as Putin did in Russia in 2012.

Of course that doesn't mean Republicans in Texas and other states aren't trying their best to do so to prevent the landslide that even they sense is coming.

Me I don't need a landslide, I just want to cast my vote to do my part to ensure that Trump goes back to doing what he does best so we can finally be relieved of having to hear about his toxic Tweets, boorish behavior and constant denigration of everyone and everything.

So we can get back to the business at hand, not the least of which is getting obstructionist U.S. Senate Republicans to do their jobs and put the nomination of Merrick Garland to vote so the Supreme Court can properly function as an institution.

Is it November 8th yet?

Republican Chicanery At Texas Voting Booths

Election law expert Rick Hasen

Today's 'Fresh Air' segment with NPR's Terry Gross interviewing author, law professor and Election Law Blog creator Rick Hasen was an interesting snapshot of what may or may not be in store for the November 8th elections in just under two weeks.

And an interesting dissection of some of the outlandish claims of rampant voter fraud that have been levied by Donald Trump in recent weeks.


Despite the delusional Orange-Haired One's apocalyptic warnings of an imaginary nationwide Democratic plot to rig the upcoming presidential elections, as Hasen observed in one of his entries on his Election Law Blog today, early signs based on eyewitness accounts and complaints from Texas are that it's actually Republicans engaged in widespread voter fraud of a more sinister nature.

Haden posted a link to the October 25th press release by the Texas Civil Rights Project highlighting samples of some really troubling reports from early voting in three counties in the Lone Star State: Harris, Bexar and Denton.

The TCR Project notes that during the course of the two-day period covering Monday October 24th and Tuesday October 25th, the Election Protection hotline logged approximately 200 calls and emails identifying complaints that include poll workers in the Bayland Park Community Center and the Metropolitan Multi-Service Center in Harris County incorrectly telling early voters that they were required to show photo ID.

They also posted a link to a photo taken on Monday by a voter who went to the Castle Hills City Hall in San Antonio to cast an early vote showing a sign posted on the wall of the election sight that wrongly states, "Photo ID required for Texas Voters"

Notice that the sign says a concealed weapons carry permit is acceptable ID to vote but not a college ID? Outrageous.

This sign is not true and has no business being posted in a voting site in Texas let alone a city hall.

Back in July a panel of federal judges from the 5th Circuit Court struck down the Texas voter ID requirement prior to the start of early voting - so Texans do not have to present photo ID in order to be able to vote.

As Kristen Clarke, President and Executive Director of the Lawyers' Committee For Civil Rights Under Law observed, "Across Texas we are seeing local elections officials undermine the weight of the 5th Circuits' ruling striking down the state's voter ID law as discriminatory."

The Texas Civil Rights Project also detailed reports from Denton County of at least one individual being turned away from a poll center in Flower Mound, TX for not having a photo ID and an armed man walking along talking to voters waiting in line in Carrollton, TX.

Is this 2016 or 1916?

Fortunately the Election Protection initiative has partnered with more than 100 other groups including the Brennan Center For Justice, the NAACP, Common Cause and the League of Women Voters to provide up-to-date voter rights information, grass roots support and legal experts to confront this kind of chicanery and misinformation engineered by desperate Republicans who know their policies and candidate are a lost cause amongst mainstream American voters.

Trump can continue to childishly pound the podium and prattle on about his righteous indignation over imaginary fears about non-existant plots by Democrats to "rig" the upcoming elections.

But as reports from the front lines in Texas show, in truth it's actually Republicans on the local county and state level who are using intentional misinformation, intimidation and ignoring federal court rulings in order to try and rig the outcome of the 2016 election process.

Despite the presence of many fair-minded Americans from both ends of the political spectrum and from all races and ethnicities in the Lone Star State, there's still something dark at work deep in the heart of Texas.

Especially when some elections officials are knowingly ignoring federal rulings on voter restrictions that violate the law of the land.

Racism's Superstitious & Toxic Tinge & Asatru in America

Virginia resident & 1st Amendement
advocate Brian Eybers

Earlier this morning I was reading an interesting article in the Washington Post by Travis Andrews about a 59-year-old African-American television reporter from Charleston, South Carolina named Steve Crump who confronted a 21-year-old white man named Brian Eybers for uttering derogatory racial slurs at him on the street.

As the article reports, Crump is an Emmy Award-winning journalist for WBTV who has covered, among other topics, issues of race, ethnicity and culture for years across the American south.

Two weeks ago he was doing a routine stand-up report on a Charleston street about the cleanup efforts from Hurricane Andrew when he heard Eybers, who was standing nearby, begin to mutter a series of racial slurs.

You may recall that I used to work as a television reporter in Trenton, NJ.

So let me just say that shooting a stand-up outside on a street or a public place isn't easy.

We're all familiar with those quick 30 to 60 second intros TV reporters will do in front of courthouses, hospitals or accident scenes that set up the story - then after the piece runs the camera will come back to the same scene for a brief "outro" conclusion where the reporter wraps up the report with "This is so-and-so for WABC coming to you from XXXX."

Shooting intros and outros like that in front of a camera is difficult because of everything going on around you, cars passing, random people stopping to look at you, or other unpredictable things that reporters have to try and block out while talking into the camera.

Stuff like a bee flying around you, or a truck horn drowning out the sound, forcing you to cut and start it again can make it really hard and even frustrating - you'd be surprised at the off-camera curses that fly out of reporters mouths when a take gets interrupted.

WBTV reporter Steve Crump

So I share all that to say that it's hard enough for TV reporters speaking into the camera outdoors, so I can't imagine what it was like for Steve Crump, a veteran reporter who's interviewed members of the KKK, to have to hear Brian Eybers intentionally muttering overtly racist comments within earshot.

Instead of loosing his composure, Crump grabbed his cameraman, walked over to where Eybers was leaning against a wall and began to interview the guy about why he was making racist slurs and what his beliefs were.

Their brief exchange, detailed in the Washington Post article, offers insight into the irrational, nonsensical, insidious and always toxic nature of racism.


In some ways the story reminded me of the random and confusing nature of Minnesota police officer Tim Olson's decision to confront and arrest pedestrian Larnie Thomas for simply walking along the street; the subject of Wednesday's blog.

What was going on inside the minds of Olson and Eybers when they laid eyes on two complete strangers with dark skin minding their own business?

In the same way behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner's famous 1947 experiment demonstrated that pigeon's could be conditioned to develop unusual superstitious beliefs around being fed, the complexity of racism in the United States is such that some people seem to be conditioned by society into irrational patterns of thinking triggered by the mere sight of someone with dark skin.

Conditioned how? Through constant exposure to the inherent subconscious racial bias ingrained into images in advertising, popular entertainment, news media coverage, education and court and legal systems - it's complex and the myriad results are fear-based and disturbing.

Followers of Asatru pose for photos

A trained white policeman sees a black man walking on the street, his first instinct is to stop and confront him.

A white man sitting on a Charleston street watching a black reporter doing a report on hurricane cleanup efforts feels compelled to pick up his iPad and begin uttering derogatory racial slurs into the device; to who and for what reason we can only guess.

The adoption of these kinds of beliefs rooted in a distorted perception of those seen as "other" has also impacted religious beliefs.

The spring 2016 issue of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report had an interesting article about the rise of Asatru in America; a neo-Pagan religion that the SPLC describes as "an offshoot of the racist Odinist religion that emphasizes the magical elements of pre-Christian European polytheism, paying homage to Norse gods like Thor."  

As the SPLC reported, after a lengthy investigation in November of 2015 the FBI conducted raids that led to the arrests of five people in Virginia in connection with a domestic terror plot to shoot up and bomb black churches and Jewish synagogues to try and spark a race war.

Charles D. Halderman, 30, (an associate of the Aryan Brotherhood with 17 prior felony convictions), Ronald Beasley Chaney III, 33 and Robert C. Doyle, 34 were among those arrested after two of them met with undercover FBI agents posing as weapons dealers.

Chaney and Doyle are supposed followers of Asatru, a religion that the SPLC has been reporting on since at least 1998 "which revives a pre-Christian pantheon of Norse gods, is appealing to white supremacists because it mythologizes the virtues of early Northern European whites - seen as wandering barbarians deeply involved in a mystical relationship with nature, struggling heroically against the elements." 

Asatru has gained particular popularity amongst prisoners aligned with Neo-Nazi and white supremacist gangs, but it's also gained a foothold amongst those who see it as playing into some of the same fears harbored by many white Trump supporters.

Americans whose marginalization in a vastly unequal economy geared towards the 1% has, in part due to Trump's divisive rhetoric, been transformed into a strange persecution complex that views African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Muslims and non-white immigrants as a kind of existential threat to their jobs and "way of life".

Anti-Bolshevik Nazi propaganda poster
with Nordic symbolism

As the SPLC reports, Asatru is closely linked to Odinism, a similar neo-Pagan religion rooted in Nordic mythology that was embraced by many leaders of the Third Reich in Germany; for example the double-rune SS symbol is a link to Nordic symbology.

But while Asatru is recognized as an official religion in Iceland and many followers chafe against it being associated with hatred and bigotry, as an article in
ThinkProgress.com reported in 2015, thousands of whites in America are drawn towards what they view as a more exclusively "white" religion - unlike Christianity whose followers come from all ethnicities and races.

One of the byproducts of the Republican party's open embrace and "mainstreaming" of bigotry, xenophobic anti-immigrant hysteria and prejudicial thinking in America is the open alignment of various elements of the white supremacist movement with the GOP and their orange-haired presidential candidate.


Both former KKK Grand Dragon David Duke and former KKK member Don Black, creator of the white supremacist Website Stormfront, famously encouraged the listeners of their respective radio programs to support and vote for Donald Trump.

Republicans, and the right-wing media machine that shapes modern conservatism, have given legitimacy to nonsensical and disproved theories like Birtherism which seeks to undermine the President because of the color of his skin, and thus they've given free reign to the kinds of fringe, extremist views repeated by their unhinged presidential candidate - and embraced by those who support him.

Those views have been allowed to flourish and grow but they're not rooted in rational thinking, facts or science, but in the kind of superstition, ignorance, baseless paranoia and fear that spark some members of law enforcement to arrest people for walking down the street or shoot and kill unarmed people for no apparent reason.

Or motivate a guy sitting on the sidewalk to start hurling racial slurs at a black television reporter who's simply doing his job.  

Is the Republican party responsible for the actions of officer Olson or Brian Eybers? Hard to say.

But I'd bet you a drink at the bar which presidential candidate they'll both be voting for.

"Manner of Walking", Deborah Danner & Chief Cunningham's Apology

Walking While Black? Larnie Thomas

The recent release of cell phone video of an African-American Minnesota man named Larnie Thomas being arrested in broad daylight for walking along a street by white plain clothes police officer Tim Olson certainly isn't the most egregious example of highly questionable and excessive use of authority by members of American law enforcement to go viral.

But it does serve as a sobering and troubling reminder of how entrenched racial bias, subtle or not, on the part of some U.S. police officers, can turn even the most routine of activities into something perceived as criminal or dangerous - based on a distorted perception clouded by an individual's race.

There's nothing to suggest that officer Olson is a "racist".


But it's important to try and understand what prompted him to stop his unmarked vehicle and confront Thomas.

Remember this was a pedestrian, an American citizen who was walking along the street minding his own business who'd committed no offense.
 
Now if Thomas had been acting erratically, or was posing an immediate danger to himself or other drivers by, for example, walking in traffic along a major highway where walking is illegal, Olson stopping the guy would make sense.

But by all accounts Xerxes Avenue in Edina, Minnesota where Thomas was walking is a quiet two-lane street that runs through a quiet tree-lined neighborhood of suburban homes - and the posted speed limit is 30 MPH.

So it begs the question, was the stop simply a pretense by Olson to "check" Thomas out and see what he was doing? Did Olson think Thomas "seemed out of place"?

Ferguson Municipal Court / revenue factory

It's been well established that a number of American police departments have created intentionally ambiguous low-level "offenses" as a legal pretense to be able to justify randomly stopping and questioning: or even detaining or arresting someone.

Remember the infamous "manner of walking" citation used by the notoriously racially-biased Ferguson, Missouri Police Department? Almost sounds funny, but it's real.

If you recall, a 2015 Department of Justice investigation found that 95% of people charged with Ferguson's "Manner of Walking in Roadway" municipal ordinances were African-American.

In the wake of the global outrage over the Ferguson police working in collusion with the local courts to systematically use minor infractions levied against African-Americans to create more revenue, those ordinances have been quietly removed or modified.

If you look closely at Ferguson's municipal codes regarding pedestrian infractions, Sec. 44-344 "which pertained to manner of walking along roadway", Sec.  44-341 "which pertained to crossing at right angles" and Sec. 44-349 "which pertained to use of right half of crosswalks", were all "modified" by a municipal ordinance on April 26, 2016.

Officer Olson arresting
Thomas for walking

But to get back to Larnie Thomas' flagrantly bogus arrest in Edina, even though officer Olson initially claimed that he stopped Thomas for walking in the middle of the street, the woman who videotaped the widely-viewed arrest footage contradicted the officer's claims.

According to an article about the incident by Mike Mullen posted on CityPages.com, Janet Rowles, a motorist who is white, intentionally pulled over to film the confrontation because she was concerned that Thomas would be unfairly treated by police officers "because of his ethnicity."

She told reporters that she passed Thomas in her vehicle as he was walking, and she says he was "literally walking down the white line that marks the shoulder" - and he couldn't walk on the sidewalk because of construction taking place.

Had Rowles not filmed the incident and spoken up on behalf of Thomas, he may well have been jailed and charged.



But in the wake of the video showing how Thomas was unfairly manhandled by Olson and another officer, the charges (which included disorderly conduct) were quickly dropped and the local city council has apologized for the incident.

But the kind of racial bias demonstrated by officer Olson before and during Thomas' arrest is still rampant and deeply ingrained within the minds of some police officers in departments all over the country.

Local activist groups including the local chapter of the NAACP have called for the department to release a detailed plan on how to handle such incidents in the future, and have demanded that Olson be suspended without pay pending an investigation to determine if and how racial bias played a role in Thomas being stopped and arrested.

Last night in the Bronx, that kind of internalized bias unquestionably played a role in the death of a 66-year-old mentally disabled African-American woman named Deborah Danner.

Deborah Danner, 66

The incident occurred last night so complete details of what happened haven't yet been released, but as NY 1 reported, police were called to the scene early Tuesday evening in response to a woman acting erratically in an apartment in the Castle Hill section of the Bronx.

Witnesses who live in the building are quoted as saying Danner has exhibited strange behavior before including (allegedly) talking or yelling to herself.

When police arrived they managed to persuade her to put down a pair of scissors she was holding, but at some point she picked up a bat and supposedly tried to swing it at an NYPD sergeant  - who then shot her twice in the torso.

Now it wouldn't be fair to make a judgement about the sergeant's actions, maybe he felt threatened.



But both New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and the newly appointed Commissioner of the NYPD James O'Neill were quick to condemn the shooting as a mistake.

DeBalsio conceded that "Something went horribly wrong here."

Not to be a smart ass but yeah, I'd say a lot of people are wondering why armed police officers responding in force to reports of a woman with an established record of mental issues didn't think to try and use a taser to subdue the woman.

Maybe that's just me. I'm not bashing the cops or anything, I'm just calling into question their decision to think that a loaded handgun was the correct answer to confront a 66-year-old woman with a record of mental disabilities inside her own home.

Hearing voices and talking to themselves? Sounds a lot like garden-variety paranoid schizophrenia to me; if these cops showed up and found Danner inside a room waving a pair of scissors why not just shut the door and call a family member or a mental health professional to deal with an individual like that?

Wellesley PD Chief Terry Cunningham

It's not like those cops were blindly walking into a hostage-situation inside a bank being held up by some kind of heavily-armed posse.

If you're confronting a mentally-ill person inside their own bedroom waving a pair of scissors, or a bat, why not just shut the door and wait for someone trained to deal with situations like that?



Sadly the incidents in Edina, Minnesota and the Bronx, New York seem to have overshadowed a much more positive reaction to the problem of police bias by one of the largest and most influential police unions in America.

As NPR reported, earlier this week Wellesley, Massachusetts Police Chief Terry Cunningham, who serves as the head of the International Association of Police Chiefs, issued an unprecedented apology on behalf of the union "for historical mistreatment of communities of color".

When the historical significance of a nationwide union of high-level police officials taking the rare opportunity to issue a public statement acknowledging the need to address a "historic cycle of mistrust" gets overshadowed by actions that demonstrate the extent of racial bias that still exists within the law enforcement community, it's not just irony.

It's a symptom of a far deeper issue that continues to impact the dignity and lives of American citizens.

And so 66-year-old Deborah Danner joins the list of The Counted, one of 863 people in the United States to be killed by members of U.S. law enforcement in 2016 - just one of 50 in the month of October alone.

Crosscheck: GOP's Voter Suppression Data Monster

U.S. states where Crosscheck is used

With growing numbers of the Washington-based Republican establishment writing off Donald Trump's chances to win, all bets are off for GOP efforts to retain their majority in the Senate and the House next month when Americans head to the polls.

Paul Ryan's recent conference call to Republican lawmakers likely covered the importance of the GOP's ongoing ten-year mission.

Not to explore the depths of outer space like the Federation, but their darker mission to systematically and illegally prevent large blocks of American voters, who statistically tend to vote Democratic, from voting by taking advantage of an assortment of questionable "Voter ID" laws passed by majority-Republican state legislatures.

Republicans also have a monster to help them with that.

Not Trump, they created that monster but he's long since fled the castle to roam the countryside and they're no longer able to control him - and according to a recent New York Times article chronicling disturbing claims of his creepy, unwanted sexual groping and kissing by multiple women, Trump has a really hard time controlling his hands too.

The Republicans have a digital monster called Crosscheck that uses skewed data with intentionally oversimplified search parameters to systematically disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of people across the nation from exercising their right to vote.

As Greg Palast reported in an article in the September 8th issue of Rolling Stone, one of the most important tools Republicans will be using to try and retain control of Congress is officially known as the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program.

Crosscheck mastermind Kris Kobach

According to Palast's research, thanks to Republican-majority state legislatures, some twenty-eight different states across the nation (see map above) use Crosscheck to compare names, the last four digits of Social Security numbers and birthdates.

All under the guise of trying to uncover individuals registered in more than one state who may vote twice; an almost non-existent offense Republicans falsely trumpet as being rampant.

Crosscheck was the twisted brainchild of one of the truly mad professors of Republican politics, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, creator of the same Arizona law that allowed Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio to direct his deputies to illegally pull over thousands of Hispanic drivers to check their immigration status.

On Tuesday a federal court filed criminal contempt charges against Arpaio for refusing a court order to stop using sheriff's deputies to engage in immigration enforcement after slews of complaints from registered U.S. citizens of Hispanic descent being pulled over because of their ethnicity.

So how successful is Kobach's Crosscheck program?

According to Palast's article: "Crosscheck has tagged an astonishing 7.2 million suspects, yet we found no more than four perpetrators who have been charged with double-voting or deliberate double registration."

Greg Palast & some of the names flagged by Crosscheck

In an earlier article about the Crosscheck program that Palast wrote for Al Jazeera back in 2014, an analysis of lists containing over two million different names flagged by the Crosscheck system in the states of Georgia, Virginia and Washington revealed that the lists were "heavily weighted with names such as Jackson, Garicia, Patel and Kim - ones common among minorities, who vote overwhelmingly Democratic."

So what it boils down to is that Kobach is essentially an architect of reactionary laws of dubious merit that sanction the targeting and profiling of American people of color and ethnic minorities based on the unjustified conservative-fueled fears of minor civil infractions.

Kobach's brand of "shake the tree and a bad apple will fall out" legal chicanery is part of the larger overall Republican strategy to secure majorities in Congress; as Palast notes, the majority of the twenty-eight states where Crosscheck is used have majority-Republican state legislatures.

So when those tight Senate races in critical swing states like New Hampshire and Ohio come down to the wire, Republicans hope Crosscheck and it's database full of faulty data will make the difference.

Sound absurd? Par for the course for the party that nominated a serial sexual predator as it's nominee for president.

GOP Split Widens; Trump Debate Fallout

Bill's expression pretty much sums it up

It was a chilly 46 degrees outside this morning here in central New Jersey when I got up at 6:30 to grind some beans for coffee, the frosty fall weather was a stark contrast to the surreal landscape of the heated second presidential debate last night in St. Louis, Missouri.

A landscape where Donald Trump once again seemed to exist in some kind of parallel universe based on his bizarre perception of reality.

Who won the debate last night largely depends on who you're supporting and who you ask; but there's little question who came off as genuine presidential material.

With post-debate opinion polls and television ratings still being tabulated last night, Fox News quickly declared Trump the winner, despite his unhinged and often rambling performance where he seemed to randomly throw just about anything in his arsenal at Hillary Clinton; hoping something would stick that would overshadow the toxic press generated by the release of his 2005 Access Hollywood conversation with Billy Bush last Friday.

Like CNN, the Washington Post declared Clinton the winner for reasons that were pretty clear for anyone who watched or listened to Trump trying to out-Trump himself.

From my vantage point listening to the debate on NPR, Donald Trump's decision to use a relentless, hyper-aggressive attack strategy against Hillary Clinton ended up backfiring on him; particularly given his desperate need to try overcome the perception among many women that he's a crude, insensitive misogynist.

Billy Bush & Trump torpedoing his 2016 presidential bid

On that count he failed miserably.

The Donald's desperate attempt to try and deflect global attention away from the massive public backlash against the vulgar comments he made about using his "star power" to grope unsuspecting women simply ended up reinforcing the tape.

His overbearing bully mentality was on full display as he petulantly badgered both of the moderators of the event, Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz, and continually interrupted Clinton during her efforts to answer - almost as if he was confirming the widely held perception of his contempt for women.


Throughout the event I followed some real-time reactions to the debate on Twitter and there were numerous comments about how Trump seemed to almost physically stalk Clinton around the debate stage; shadowing her movements and at times physically hulking over in a way that was somewhat predatory and creepy.

Trump's efforts to relentlessly attack Clinton on issues like foreign policy only served to reveal how little he understands about diplomacy, military strategy and global political affairs.

At one point, in an effort to deflect Clinton's accusation that his bizarre infatuation with Russian President Vladimir Putin stems from the fact that both he and members of his campaign personally benefit financially with ties to Russia through business interests, Trump retorted dismissively that  (in true Sgt. Schultz fashion) "I know nothing about Russia."

Before quickly contradicting himself by adding, "I know about Russia, but I don't know about the inner workings of Russia."

This guy lies so effortlessly and habitually that he sometimes trips himself up.

ABC's Martha Raddatz proved deft as co-moderator

In a particularly heated exchange when Martha Raddatz repeatedly tried to nail Trump down on what his strategy would be to resolve the crisis in Syria by reminding him that his running mate Mike Pence had advocated the use of American military forces, Trump shot back:

"He and I haven't spoken and I disagree."

Directly contradicting one's own vice-presidential candidate in front of a televised audience of over 60 million people less than a month before the election?

Probably not a good sign for a campaign, nor was displaying a petty child-like resentment over the fact that Pence justifiably chastised Trump on Saturday over the lewd comments from the video.

As NJ.com reported early this morning, the open tension between the two running mates was underscored by Pence's decision to cancel a fundraising appearance that was scheduled for today in front of the Ocean County Republican Organization in Tom's River, NJ.

Paul Ryan to Trump: You're fired!

The growing and palpable tension within the highest ranks of Trump's campaign wasn't limited to his running mate either.

On Sunday RNC Chair Reince Priebus, campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and NJ Governor Chris Christie all canceled scheduled appearances on the Sunday morning network news talk shows.


Leaving loyal attack dog Rudy Giuliani to fill in and embarrass himself by trying to spin Trump's bragging about sexual assault as playful "locker room banter."

But there's arguably no bigger sign of the epic split within the Republican party than House Speaker Paul Ryan's announcement this morning via private conference call that he will no longer make any campaign appearances to support Trump and will instead turn the focus of the party establishment towards protecting the GOP majority in the House for the upcoming November elections.

He stopped short of telling Republicans not to vote for Trump, but he effectively wrote off Trump's chances to win and shrewdly committed to making a series of nationwide campaign stops to support Republican Congressional races; a last-ditch effort to sever Trump's toxic reputation from the party establishment before he costs the GOP majorities in both the House and the Senate.

In doing so Ryan kept his own 2020 presidential ambitions alive while simultaneously cutting Trump off from campaign funding from the party's major donors; many of whom have long since turned their spigots of cash towards tight Senate races in places like New Hampshire.

So if a presidential candidate has had a crappier four weeks in his life in the history of American politics, I'm not sure what it is.

Two consecutive nationally-televised debate losses, a moronic petty Twitter feud with a former Miss Universe contestant whom he fat-shamed when she was only eighteen, the revelation that he hasn't paid federal taxes in at least eighteen years, and the release of the 2005 tape of him bragging about sexual assault.

Oh, and earlier this morning Trump's Taj Mahal Casino finally closed in Atlantic City after 26 years, sadly resulting in over 3,000 people loosing their jobs; Trump once bragged that it was the "Eighth Wonder of the World".

So much for his "genius" as a businessman.

As my friend Geoff the Economist text'd me earlier today: "Well at least we don't have to worry about having to call Donald Trump Mr. President."

The Vulgar One

Melania & Donald in happier(?) times

A couple minutes ago a news alert from Reuters popped up on my phone with the announcement that Melania Trump has has decided to accept her misogynist husband's apology even though she found his videotaped comments "unacceptable and offensive."

For good measure the former Slovenian model added that her husband "has the heart and mind of a leader." 

Now I seriously doubt she wrote that, nor am I sure of what kind of behavior or comments pass as leadership qualities in Slovenia, but here in this country crass vulgarity that demeans women is generally not what Americans regard as reflective of the attributes of the leader of the free world.

Especially not when over 50% of the population is female, and the orange-haired candidate in question already has a lengthy track record of misogynist statements and accusations of rape.

At this moment Melania Trump may or may not be regretting the decision to stand up in front of millions of people at the Republican national convention in Cleveland and attest to her husband's character; but she has to be feeling humiliated in the eyes of the world.

Maybe she knew he was a vulgar borderline rapist all along, but if she didn't, then like millions of other people around the globe; she sure does now after the release of a 2005 video of Trump talking to Access Hollywood host Billy Bush on a bus just before making an appearance on the soap opera 'Days Of Our Lives'.

By the way, did you know that Billy Bush (born William Hale Bush) is a privileged, private school-educated scion of THE Bush family? His father Jonathan is the brother of George HW Bush, the 41st president.

Given the open contempt the Bush family has for Trump, doesn't take a genius to figure out  how the Washington Post got a hold of the now-infamous video tape of Trump.

Utah Rep Jason Chaffetz dumps Trump

While a number of high-profile Republican politicians who'd pledged their support for Trump months ago have quickly moved to publicly distance themselves from The Donald's toxic brand, it's way to late for that kind of symbolic public rebuke

Smug GOP Rep Jason Chaffetz, whose spent the bulk of the last three years keeping hearings on the exhausted specter of the Benghazi attacks on the U.S. Embassy alive in order to tarnish Hillary Clinton's reputation, told Utah's Fox 13 news, "I'm out."

The feisty self-righteous Republican from Utah joins embattled Freshman New Hampshire Senator New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte in turning their backs on Trump's presidential bid.

Locked in a tight race in New Hampshire to save her Senate seat, Ayotte's last-minute attempt to save her political ass comes just days after she called Trump a "role model" during a Senate debate with her opponent, NH Governor Maggie Hassan.

But again, it's too late for that.

Ayotte  knew she was up for reelection this fall, and despite that she's tried to have her political cake and eat it to by wish-washingly stating that she would support Trump, but not endorse him; which strikes me as a half-ass attempt to be able to capitalize on a Trump presidential victory, but protect her political self respect in the event of a Clinton landslide by being able to say she never endorsed him.

GOP VP candidate Mike Pence

Unfortunately you have to stand for something and pick a side, Ayotte did neither (especially after laughingly trying to assert that she "misspoke" after getting called out for calling Trump a "role model") and she may pay for that with her Senate seat.

Finally there's Republican vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence.

Who so far seems to have escaped accounting for his support of discriminatory anti-LGBTQ laws and draconian anti-abortion laws.

Pence embarrassed himself in the recent vice-presidential debate with Democrat Tim Kaine by pretending not to know anything about the slew of lies his running mate has uttered in the past two years.

Yesterday, in the wake of the release of Trump video, the even-tempered right-wing Indiana Governor had enough and promptly canceled a scheduled campaign appearance in Wisconsin before releasing a statement saying that he too was "offended" by his own running mate's comments and would "pray" for him.

Like the majority of the Republican establishment, Pence has to be privately fuming that he and the GOP have hitched their wagon to the vulgar star that is Trump.

Republicans can express all the righteous indignation they want to, they have only themselves to blame for the mess their party finds itself in.

They knew a monster was loose back in March during the Super Tuesday primaries, and they watched it smash through a wall and wander off into the woods.

There's nothing they can do about their monster at this point, after all they created it in their own lab with their subservience to the Tea Party and tacit approval and tolerance of bigotry, homophobia, misogyny and xenophobia.

Now the monster has taken over the party of Lincoln and 'Family Values' and replaced it with something nasty and vulgar.

Can you recall a time when both a vice-presidential candidate and the presidential candidate's wife both publicly acknowledging being offended by something the candidate said?

Can't wait to see what Giuliani and Christie have to say about that on the Sunday morning new talk shows tomorrow - how do you defend the indefensible?

Reflections on PTSD & Rossellini's 'Paisan'

A U.S. soldier comforts a comrade following action near
Hatkcong-Ni in Korea, August 28, 1950

Trump's latest political gaffe about PTSD last night was just too much for me to stomach.

On Monday the same tough guy who got his daddy to help him get a medical deferment based on bone spurs to avoid the Vietnam War, showed up at an event hosted by the Retired American Warriors PAC and insulted the veteran attendees by suggesting that combat vets who suffer from PTSD aren't "strong" and "can't handle it."


In doing so Trump, whose bone spurs miraculously healed themselves once America began to withdraw combat troops from Vietnam, once again demonstrated an appalling lack of understanding of war and the myriad stresses combat veterans serving in military conflicts have been forced to face for generations.

If he understood anything about PTSD it has nothing to do with lack of strength or the ability to "handle(s) it"; it's a deep psychological trauma that is the byproduct of the horror of war.

You know who I feel sorry for? The thousands of American veterans affected by PTSD who've been manipulated into pledging their support for Trump by the calculated conservative media distortion of Hillary Clinton's record and the unprecedented vilification of President Obama.

Each of those vets are going to have to face the decision to support a deceptive Republican presidential candidate who revels in portraying himself as a brash Hawk on defense, yet avoided military service in Vietnam, lied about his financial contributions to a veterans charity, mocked Senator John McCain for the years he spent as a POW in North Vietnam (where he was ruthlessly tortured) and just yesterday demonstrated a simplistic, superficial grasp of PTSD - in front of a crowd of veterans no less.

First-time actress Carmela Sazio in Paisan

Once I read that story last night, I just turned off the radio and my computer to delve back into the work of noted Italian director Roberto Rossellini.

A man who deftly explored the impact of PTSD on both soldiers and civilians during World War II in his classic war trilogy; three neorealism films he made between 1945 and 1948, exploring various aspects of the Italian experience during World War II.


Rossellini is my latest foray into Italian neorealism films, last week I watched the first chapter in his war trilogy, Rome, Open City, a compelling but disturbing 1945 fictional account of the Italian partisan's efforts to fight the Germans during the occupation of Rome, centering around a brave priest's attempt to protect an Italian Resistance leader from being captured by the Gestapo; a film which Rossellini managed to shoot during the actual German occupation.

Last night I watched the second chapter in the trilogy, Paisan (1946), a powerful examination of the impact of the German invasion and occupation of Italy on the lives of a variety of characters in different parts of the country.

Unlike Rome, Open City, a story following a specific set of characters over the course of the film, Paisan is a series of six different unrelated short stories (each written by a different writer) following vignettes from the lives of unrelated characters in different parts of Italy at various points during the German occupation.

The stories are fictional, but each is introduced with a descriptive documentary-style narrative; they serve as brief summary-introductions of the different chapters of the invasion and occupation of Italy by the German Army.

The first follows a squad of American soldiers who come upon a church in a small town where civilians are hiding from the Germans; they ask a young local Italian girl to lead them past German minefields on the coast so they can scout a German position.

In the neorealism style of Vittorio De Sica (The Bicycle Thief), Rossellini cast non-actors in the main roles to enhance the sense of realism; the actress who plays the main character from the first story (pictured above) Carmela Sazio had never acted before, yet she gives an intense, emotionally impactful performance.

U.S. soldier Joe serenades street kid Pasquale in Paisan

Interestingly the second story follows a young orphan played by Alfonsino Pasca who befriends a drunk African-American soldier found wandering the streets of Naples named Joe, played by Dots Johnson - a former taxi driver and musician from New York.

Joe is a lonely Military Policeman in the Army who's exhausted from the war and longing for home; yet he wrestles with the bleak reality that the home he comes from is a hardscrabble, poverty-stricken existence and recognizes that his life in the Army is actually better.


In the photo above, Joe sits on a pile of rubble using his imagination to fly back to New York City to eat a lavish imaginary meal in a restaurant on Broadway; the young street hustler Pasquale can't understand English, and Joe only knows a few words of Italian but they find a way to communicate and bond in an almost father-son like relationship.

In the strange final scenes of this chapter, Joe is escorting a convoy of American Army supply trucks the next day when he spots Pasquale and confronts the boy about having stolen his boots after passing out the night before, forcing him to take him to his home to get his boots back.

When Joe and Pasquale arrive at the latter's neighborhood in the hills just outside the city, Joe glimpses the extreme poverty of urban Naples brought about by the war for the first time.

Joe and Pasquale enjoy a puppet show

He glimpses crowds of impoverished Italians forced to seek shelter in large caves, as if recognizing something of a mirror of his own existence in America, without a word Joe turns, gets into the Jeep and drives away.

It's a reflection of the intense social commentary layered throughout neorealism-style films, but I found it fascinating that an Italian director found it important to glimpse the African-American experience from the Italian perspective.



As if Rossellini wanted to emphasize the commonalities between poor African-Americans and poor Italians in terms of their places in their respective societies in a post WWII world.

The other four vignettes of Paisan are equally compelling (Wikipedia offers a brief summary of each story) with fascinating characters, but in true neorealism fashion, the endings to each of their stories is strictly non-Hollywood.

The fates of each of the characters in Pasisan is emotionally moving, but in a reflection of the harsh reality of war, their stories conclude with sobering reminders of the truth of the incalculable suffering of WWII.

Paisan is more than just an example of masterful filmmaking, seen in the light of the ongoing suffering in places like Syria, Afghanistan and parts of Africa where wars continue to rage, these six vignettes are timeless sobering meditations on the human condition that are just as relevant today as they were seventy years ago.