Yo! Bad Republican Optics, Sen. Tim Scott & Michael the Black Man

African-American reach-out, Republican style?
Sen. Tim Scott tries to bamboozle black folks

The word of the day for me is optics.

Not the kind of optics associated with a complex scientific instrument like NASA's Hubble Telescope, which has been orbiting above our beloved planet since 1990 and to date has sent back hundreds of thousands of images and resulted in the publication of over 10,000 scientific research articles and papers.

No, I'm talking about the kinds of optics associated with political perception.

It defies belief that out of all the hyper-wealthy conservative members of the U.S. Senate, the braintrust of the Republican Party would trot out South Carolina Senator Tim Scott (the only African-American Republican in the Senate) to appear on-camera deceptively touting the GOP's "tax reform" plan as benefitting working and middle class Americans - then have him end it with the cringe-worthy catchphrase "#KeepYoMoney".

Not your, yo.

By the way my mom grew up in West Philly when African-Americans, Italian-Americans and Jews still lived in the same neighborhoods, Italian guys from Philly have been calling out Yo! to each other for decades.

Want to get hammered?

Watch the 1976 film Rocky and take a drink every time the title character, South Philly boxer Rocky Balboa, played by Sylvester Stallone, says "Yo!"

Now it's bad enough that the Republican-majority House and Senate have yet to pass a single piece of substantive legislation despite having the political "trifecta" benefit of having a Republican president in office - but they offer up their only black Senator to deliver an insulting catchphrase to bolster the illusion that their "tax reform" is not just a big tax cut for the rich?

As Gail Collins noted in her New York Times column yesterday, when White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, a former Goldman-Sachs executive who is one of the architects of the Republican "tax reform" effort, was asked if he could assure members of the working and middle class that their taxes wouldn't increase under the Republican plan he said he couldn't "guarantee that." 

So says the guy who received a whopping $285 million severance package when he exited Goldman-Sachs to join the Trump White House - no need to speculate on how much Gary's personal tax bill will shrink under the plan he's helping to craft. Cha-Ching!

Sen. Tim Scott delivering the "Keep yo money"
punchline on Wednesday in D.C.

What's really pathetic about all this Senator Scott tomfoolery is that I'm honestly not sure if the Republicans who thought up this latest PR disaster realize that it only reinforces their image as a bunch of culturally-oblivious stiffs who are perpetually and painfully out of touch with mainstream Americans.

As if having the black guy throw out a casual colloquialism commonly associated with African-American slang would suddenly convince people of color that Republicans have the interests of average Americans in their cold, compassionless hearts. 

Especially given that that the current tax overhaul being touted by Republican politicians in Washington, which seeks to radically lower the corporate tax rate, eliminate the estate tax and do away with the alternative minimum tax, is basically a mechanism for redistributing over $1.2 trillion in wealth to corporations and America's top earners.

Putting Tim Scott out there to promote the lie that Republican "tax reform" will benefit working and middle class Americans strikes me as culturally klutzy - it's not like he's a "man of the people".

As Jamelle Bouie observed in an article about Scott for Slate back in 2014, Scott's brand of "colorblind conservatism" is far more suited to the conservative white South Carolina constituents who elected him to office than it is to the mostly black South Carolina Democrats who overwhelmingly voted against him and his Tea Party policy positions. 

After all, Scott is the guy who introduced legislation that would cut off food stamps to any American worker whose wages were affected because of participation in a strike, as a then-member of the House, he voted against the 2011 deal to raise the debt ceiling to keep the government functioning.

He's basically a Tea Party guy who avoids speaking out on divisive racial issues like the controversial police killings of unarmed African-Americans like Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown - so it's disingenuous for the Republicans to trot him out as the public mouthpiece of a hokey phrase like "Keep yo money" when black voters in his own state don't even vote for him.

One doesn't have to point out the racist, misogynist xenophobe the Republican Party nominated as it's 2016 presidential candidate to recognize that the GOP has long since abandoned any pretense of concerning itself with the major policy issues concerns impacting people of color. 

Maurice Symonette (AKA "Michael the Black Man") 
at Trump's rally in Phoenix back in August  

Amongst the unsavory leftovers still remaining from Trump's toxic 2016 presidential campaign, few are more disingenuous or laughable than his pathetic attempts to reach out to the African-American community.

This was true long before Trump stood at a podium at a campaign appearance in the mostly white Lansing, Michigan suburb of Dimondale, shrugged his shoulders with that smirk and pitched black American voters with the question: "What have you got to lose?"

Not surprisingly a mere 8% of African-Americans voted for Trump - I've yet to meet one of them.

His actions and statements since his inauguration have demonstrated that not only does he not give a rat's ass about people of color, Hispanics and Muslims, he's openly played footsie with fringe white supremacists by, among other things, hiring at least four as top White House advisers and describing the alt-right "Tiki Torch Nazis" parading around Charlottesville with swastika imagery chanting "Jews will not replace us" as "decent people."

So I found it really odd that out of the approximately 4,100 people at that bizarre Trump rally in Phoenix back in August, a strange black guy named Maurice Symonette (who also posts online videos as Michael the Black Man) wearing a "Trump & Republicans Are Not Racist" t-shirt holding a "Blacks For Trump" sign just happened to be standing just behind the Rambler-in-Chief - where the cameras caught him fawning, oohing and cheering at virtually everything that was said.

As Nina Golgowski reported for the Huffington Post back in August, Symonette used to go by the name Maurice Woodside when he was a member of a cult called the Temple of Love led by a man named Yahweh ben Yahweh who enticed Symonette into joining the cult by walking up to him and saying "All white people are the Devil." - ben Yahweh was subsequently sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiracy to commit murder.

Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke

Symonette, who promotes a range of loony right-wing conspiracy theories, has frequently been seen photographed with his "Blacks For Trump" sign positioned in sight of the camera in ways that strongly suggest he's intentionally placed there by campaign staff and is quite likely paid to do so.

The only other black people I can think of that offer such enthusiastic support of Trump is the Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke who vilifies Black Lives Matter as a terrorist group.

You may recall his unhinged speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention, and recently his department came under fire after inmate Terill Thomas died in his cell after intentionally being denied water for 7 days.

The cowboy hat-wearing conservative firebrand has also drawn criticism from military veterans for festooning his police uniform with an assortment of pins and badges that have nothing to do with his actual service; including a Harley Davidson pin on his lapel according to a detailed analysis of his uniform decorations by the Washington Post.

Trump's African-American supporters also include former candidate on The Apprentice, Omarosa Manigault, who served as the Trump campaign's "director of African-American outreach" (when 88% of black Americans voted for Hillary...) and now serves in the White House in a position that really isn't all that clear - she's the one who proudly boasted that Trump has a list of "enemies."

It's weird enough that Trump is holding political rallies for the 2020 presidential race eight months into one of the most disastrous, unproductive and unpopular presidencies in U.S. history, but the fact that his most prominent black supporters are basically fringe right-wingers with views considered far outside the mainstream is a pretty sad indication of how widely despised he is by people of color in America - and how divisive he is as a president.

When you couple that with the Republican Party trotting out their only black Senator to try and bamboozle working and middle class Americans into believing that the GOP's tax cuts are going to put more money into their pockets, it's clear the Republicans have a huge optics problem.

What's not so clear is whether they're aware of it.

Harvey's Wrath & White Privilege in Charlottesville

Family Research Council Pres. Tony Perkins

Having seen and personally experienced the devastation of Superstorm Sandy here in New Jersey back in the fall of 2012, my heart goes out to the thousands of people and animals facing what some meteorologists are describing as a 500-year flood event.

Speaking of floods of Biblical proportions, it's ironic that Tony Perkins, the hyper-conservative gay-bashing president of the virulently anti-homosexual lobbying group the Family Research Council, had his home destroyed in flooding that hit Louisiana last week.

As Sky Palma observed in an article for Deadstate.org, on Tony Perkins' radio show in 2016, he piously agreed with self-described "Christian prophet" Jonathan Cahn that "Hurricane Joaquin was a sign of God's wrath for the legalization of gay marriage."

Joaquin killed 34 people and caused over $200 million in damage when it slammed into the Caribbean back in September of 2015 - so I'm guessing that Tony, who the Southern Poverty Law Center reports once spoke in front of a white supremacist group and purchased the mailing list of former KKK leader David Duke for a political campaign he was running, is coming to grips with the old adage that Karma is a bitch.

There's no question that Hurricane Harvey is shaping up to be one of the most devastating weather events to strike the continental U.S. in years, but it irks me when some journalists and media outlets excessively dramatize it or crank up the fear factor in their coverage.

Last night I was at my local having a couple of drinks and a news report came on the television with the graphic "Harvey's Wrath", and as I scanned some stories about the hurricane this morning on the Web, I noticed that a lot of outlets are using that same phrase to describe the damage.

As if a naturally occurring weather event was endowed with malice and somehow got pissed off and decided to intentionally strike the coast of Texas and Louisiana.

Some of the 120 members of the FDNY & NYPD
headed to Texas to assist with flood relief 

With Texas Governor Greg Abbott calling for federal aid, given my predilection for politics, I would point out that back in  January of 2013 when Congress was voting on additional aid for Sandy relief, 179 of the 180 no votes came from Republican Representatives.

And at least 20 of those no votes were from Texas Reps. Just sayin'.

As you watch Harvey unfold, and calls for federal assistance increase, remember that Donald Trump proposed cutting FEMA's budget by a whopping11%.

With thousands, of law enforcement, firemen and EMT's risking their lives to help rescue stranded victims who were either unable or unwilling to evacuate before Hurricane Harvey hit, it was reassuring to see that Trump woke up this morning and sent out a Tweet promoting a book by the unhinged nutjob Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke.

(No doubt traumatized storm victims huddling in shelters whose homes have been destroyed found THAT comforting.)

That said I wanted to take a few moments to pivot to the small fraction of bad cops that permeate the ranks of law enforcement.

Just because the Department of Justice under Attorney General Jeff Sessions has decided to essentially ignore the systematic racial bias that it's own research has found to be rampant within a number of police departments around the country, it doesn't mean the issue is going away anytime soon.

In recent days a couple of pretty disturbing examples have surfaced which demonstrate why Sessions' "ostrich head in sand" approach to a major human rights and justice issue in the United States seems so out of step with reality.

Bart Alsbrook

After an investigation by KXII-TV reporter Rachel Knapp, Bart Alsbrook, a reserve police officer recently named as the interim chief of the Colbert (Oklahoma) Police Department, was discovered to be the operator of two different Websites devoted to white supremacist / Neo-Nazi beliefs.

As Knapp's investigation revealed, Alsbrook's name and address were found on documents used to register both Websites, ISD Records and NS88.com - both of which sell a range of offensive racist memorabilia including patches, records and videos aimed at the fringe white supremacist subculture.


According to KXII-TV, Alsbrook was also identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as being the Texas coordinator of a group called Blood and Honour - a slogan listed on the Website ISD Records.

As a result of Knapp's investigation, this morning Tom Porter of Newsweek reported that Alsbrook is stepping down from the Colbert Police Department.

Much more disturbing is the New York Times article by Frances Robles published on Friday about the newly released video footage showing a white supremacist protester at the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia two weeks ago who pulls out a handgun, yells out the word "Nigger" and fires a shot into a crowd of anti-racist protesters.

A community activist quoted in the article was quoted as saying that there was a group of Virginia State Police behind a barrier about ten feet from the shooting at the time but none of them did anything when the shot was fired even though they clearly heard and saw it.

That kind of reaction stands in stark contrast to the heavily-armed riot police in Ferguson, Missouri who assembled en masse (complete with armored vehicles) when crowds of peaceful protesters gathered to protest the killing of Michael Brown back in 2015.

An as-yet unidentified man firing into a crowd of
protesters in Charlottesville as State police watch

It's not my intention to focus on the "few bad apples" in the proverbial barrel, guys like Bart Alsbrook, or Ray Tensing, the University of Cincinnati police officer who was wearing a t-shirt with a Confederate flag on it under his uniform when he inexplicably gunned down unarmed African-American motorist Sam DuBose in 2016 after a routine traffic stop, are not isolated examples.

The ranks of law enforcement are populated by a lot of people like that.

Individuals whose personal racial or ethnic bias calls into question their ability to conduct their jobs objectively in accordance with the oath they take to protect and serve.

Do police officers have the right to their own personal beliefs? Sure they do.

But when those beliefs or views obstruct their ability to do their duty, and such actions come to light in the media, it undermines community trust in, and respect for, law enforcement.

So they make it harder for the vast majority of police officers who do the job the right way; like the men and women working to rescue flood victims in Texas and Louisiana right now.

It's unfortunate that the negative actions of the few outweigh the positive actions of the many, as a black guy in America I get that - I'm sure there are many Sheriffs in American who find former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's actions repugnant.

(Leave it to Trump to pardon a bigot convicted by a federal court of using his authority to systematically violate people's Constitutional rights, especially a man whose shown absolutely no remorse about it.)

But like many people of different races, ethnicities and religious backgrounds, I'm left wondering why a group of Virginia State Police just stood there while a white man pulled out a gun and fired it into a crowd in broad daylight, and did nothing.

As someone observed on Twitter about this disturbing 37-second video, it is the very definition of white privilege in America - especially considering the number of unarmed African-American boys and men who've been shot and killed by police officers who simply THOUGHT they had a gun.

It's a troubling reminder that the way people are treated by police officers in this country can be very different depending on the skin color (in the case of the guy in Charlottesville) of the person who pulls the trigger.

Weirdos In Wisconsin: Defending the KKK, Odd Sheriffs & Walker's Revenge

How're those charter schools working Gov Walker?

These are truly strange times we are living in.

Depending upon how you voted back on November 8th, yesterday's Electoral College vote confirming Donald Trump's victory was either a cause for celebration, or a depressing reminder of the current state of American democracy.

Bill Clinton was clearly not pleased.

In Wisconsin, where Tea Party puppet Republican Governor Scott Walker's very first state budget back in 2011 included $800 million in cuts to public schools while expanding charter school vouchers for Milwaukee students, an African-American teacher was recently relieved of her teaching duties at the Business and Economics Academy of Milwaukee after she sent a letter to parents of her seventh grade students explaining a class assignment for them to write an essay defending the Ku Klux Klan as a persuasive writing assignment.

Now I don't know that charter school teacher personally or anything, nor am I a teacher, but you can teach persuasive writing to seventh grade students without having them think up ways to defend a white supremacist terrorist organization.

Seriously, between her highly inappropriate classroom assignment and the unhinged right-wing Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke's recent call for people to take up "pitchforks and torches" against the federal government, the White House, the Department of Justice and what he calls "big media", black folk in Wisconsin got some strange-ass ideas.

Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke

If you thought Sheriff Clarke's bizarre right-wing spiel at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland earlier this summer was out there, take a couple minutes and watch some of his demented rant against the amorphous evil of big media.

Which, in the sheriff's eye, includes the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC - I'm guessing the First Amendment just isn't really his thing.

If you watch that video clip, remember this guy is the Sheriff of the fifth-largest city in the American mid-west.

Either he seals himself in a hermetic chamber and binge watches Fox News while listening to Alex Jones at night, or he's a got a serious man-crush on Arizona's xenophobic soon-to-be ex-Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

You heard about Arpaio's Fake News Extravaganza press conference last Thursday when he tried rekindling the long-debunked Birther Theory?

Yup, now that Sheriff Joe's incessant hate-mongering has lost him his Sheriff's badge, he's resorted to proving that President Obama's birth certificate is fake - equal parts pathetic and strange.

But getting back to Wisconsin, in case you were wondering, Gov. Scott Walker's loopy brand of dehumanizing conservatism has only gotten weirder since he was one of the first presidential hopefuls to be bounced from the 2015 Republican Clown Car.

Scott Walker's hit-list includes the gray wolf. Really.

As Sophia Tesfaye reported in an article on Salon.com today, Walker sent a letter to Donald Trump requesting that the federal government loosen regulations to allow his state the autonomy to drug test food stamp recipients, increase premiums on Medicaid and legalize the hunting of the almost-extinct gray wolf.

Did Walker send his Christmas fantasy list for Santa to Trump by mistake?

Has Scott Walker reached the point where hunting the endangered gray wolf into extinction is a "freedom" to be cherished?

Does the gray (or timber) wolf represent some kind of existential threat to Walker's brand of way-off-the-ranch conservatism?

As Defenders of Wildlife's gray wolf fact-sheet notes, these amazing creatures play an important role in keeping the ecosystem in balance that scientists are just starting to fully understand.

Mankind almost killed them all off in the 1930's and they're just now starting to repopulate their species and return to habitats they once thrived in, so maybe Walker wanting to let people kill them all is just some kind of heartless and petty f*** you to animal rights activists?

Or perhaps Walker thinks he can score some cheap points with Trump by requesting the right to hunt one of North America's most endangered species in order to please the fake news-Tweeting Trump-spawn Donald Jr. and Eric - who like to flaunt their manhood by posing next to photos of endangered species they kill.

Regardless of his motivation, Gov. Walker still comes off as a spineless nincompoop from the same state that gave us tax cut fetishist Speaker Paul Ryan and Trump's newly appointed White House Chief of Staff, former RNC Chair Reince Priebus.

Like I said, strange times - and equally strange Republican men.