Trump pushes back against John Lewis

Before Trump even becomes President he's continuing to make news with his tweets. He went after Civil Rights legend and Congressman John Lewis. They're embedded below.

Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to......

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2017

mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk - no action or results. Sad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2017

What prompted those two tweets from The Hill:

Lewis on Friday told NBC News he wouldn’t attend next week’s inauguration, saying he doesn’t believe Trump is a "legitimate president."

"I believe in forgiveness. I believe in trying to work with people. It will be hard. It's going to be very difficult. I don't see this president-elect as a legitimate president,” Lewis said.

“I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected. And they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton,” he added.

“I don't plan to attend the inauguration. It will be the first one that I miss since I’ve been in Congress. You cannot be at home with something that you feel that is wrong, is not right.”

Click here for a map of Lewis' 5th Congressional district which mostly takes up the City of Atlanta, Georgia. And includes Morehouse College where I graduated with my BA in Political Science. Trump did engage in a form of generalization here, but got to admire his willingness to fire back. 

Hat-tip Instapundit...who to be honest really doesn't need my backlink, however, I just had to share this slam against the Smithsonian's African-American museum. It's a place I hope to visit when going to the nations capitol.

The nature of this slam is noted after doing a quick post about Justice Clarence Thomas inaugurating former Indiana Governor Mike Pence as the new Vice President. Glenn Reynolds hopes that the museum will actually one day acknowledge Justice Thomas' existence in Black history.

BTW, back to John Lewis, the Russians actually didn't really have to do anything. Hillary lost the election by herself. It turned out to be Trump's time and even though he was imperfect in many ways momentum proved to be on his side. If the country took issue with any hacking of information from the DNC or Hillary herself it would've certainly mattered in this election and we'd have been living under a President-elect Hillary Clinton. That didn't happen last year and with the uncertainty over the election I had been bracing myself.

The American Dream

I honestly don't know whether or not this should be viewed as sad or otherwise...

Get a load of this tweet about Assange...

Never let consistency get in the way of partisanship, right? pic.twitter.com/7e9TacfUYr

— Libertarian Party (@LPNational) January 4, 2017

Admitedly wikileaks and +Julian Assange are getting increased attention these days. Assange and that organization has always been around in someway, to be honest I've rarely paid much attention. At the same time his organization was able to influence the 2016 election and even better cleared up the thinking of a certain circle.

BTW, I've seen his interview with Sean Hannity, anti-corruption he says. Does anyone this he's exposed this with the Democrats and Secretary Hillary Clinton? 

Also this was a good tweet by the Libertarian Party.

The man in the arena

This should be my charge going forward seen and heard in a number of places. This was a quote used when Extreme Championship Wrestling went bankrupt in 2001. Posted to the ECW website by owner Paul Heyman.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.  

What will be your charge in 2017?

This is a quote from a speech made in 1910 by former President Theodore Roosevelt considered one of our greatest presidents.

Several income streams

I'm thinking more and more about many ways of earning income. These past two years, there has been a lot of luck in finding good jobs.

For example for the first time in life as of last year I work full-time and with benefits. It took some time to get there, but it's often a matter of luck or being in the right place at the right time. Of course as with life expect some unexpected circumstances at work.

Also I consider some goals for the new year and I want to always improve financially. Save money, find ways to make more money aside from working a job, keep an eye on my 401k account. There's always something that I can do to move ahead.

At least there's this article as a base for learning, perhaps as we all go forward in 2017 there are other articles to look for on personal finance.

2016 the year "they" got it wrong

[VIDEO] Steve Kornacki of MSNBC got some of predictions wrong and some of them were key ones such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Others well like Texas, Georgia or even Flordia - which isn't mentioned here but you see in it blue on his map - goes without saying. Texas and Georgia are solid red states and weren't likely to flip blue especially with the former US Secretary of State.

I very much hope Kornacki wasn't making these predictions on election night. He probably wasn't but sadly for him someone mashed up the footage of his pedictions with various networks namely NBC, CNN, or FOX News calling the states he suggests could flip to give Hillary Clinton her victory. And yet as the video notes from those aforementioned election night newscasts Donald Trump has been elected the 45th President of the United States. What a year, what an election.

Via Newsalert.

VIDEO: How Liberals really feel about black people

[VIDEO] The opposition I've heard to voter ID laws go back almost a decade to my time at Morehouse College. What you see these liberals say on that university campus in the above video I've heard from a professor when I was still in school. Blacks can't afford IDs, they can't get to a place to get ID, and probably more than that.

I understand the need for such laws to insure that election workers know who's voting in their respective precincts. Plus many arguments in favor is that well if it's about access to getting IDs authorities can come to your home and even then you need not have to go to your local motor vehicles department to get an ID. Here in Chicago many of us have a voter registration card, no picture ID but certainly if an election judge asks is something you can provide to them when you vote at your precinct.

BTW, in my experience as a voter no election judge here has ever asked to see my voter registration card or a picture ID. Well maybe it's not yet law in Chicago or in the state of Illinois to ask for a picture ID to vote. Regardless it has never happened.

So the man you see in the above video, Ami Horowitz visits Berkeley, CA to speak to people on a university campus to express their feelings on voter ID laws and whether or not this suppresses Black votes. Then Horowitz travels to Harlem, NYC to find a Black person who doesn't have an ID, doesn't know where their local motor vehicles office is located, knows anyone who doesn't have an ID, doesn't have access to the internet, or even can't visit their local motor vehicles department.

The video above was posted to YouTube not long before the 2016 elections. Hat-tip Newsalert!

BTW, Morehouse is located in Georgia if you want to know that state's experiences with voter ID check out Peach Pundit. I'll especially share this link which shows the legal fight over the enactment of this policy. A judge dismissed this policy as a "poll tax" in his ruling.

It's been 8 years already

I was mostly all over this back then all the way through the culmination of the impeachment process which saw our Ousted governor removed from office. Blago was replaced by then Lt. Governor Pat Quinn who served from 2009 to 2015 which he was succeeded by Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.

Since the time of Rod Blagojevich it seems no Illinois governor has really inspired strong confidence in state government. It could've been Gov. Quinn but he lost his bid for re-election and according to some analysts I've read didn't give Illinois voters a real reason to vote for him. He had some strong accomplishments such as an increase in the state income tax that proved to be temporary, the abolition of the death penalty, and gay marriage. Otherwise not much other than that.

On the other hand his immediate predecessor now a felon for his activities as Governor and serving time in federal custody seems largely forgotten. Other than the crimes he was convicted and his dramatic removal from office.

Our current Governor his main accomplishment is holding the state budget hostage in exchange for some needed reforms. I hope someone around him will help him change his strategy so that he can eventually get those needed reforms. And he needs to start his re-election bid soon so a change in course is necessary now.

In the meanwhile today, we observe the arrest of former Governor Rod Blagojevich for amongst other charges attempting to put President Barack Obama's old US Senate seat up for sale. It happened 8 years ago today and was noted by Rich Miller who said when the news broke of Rod's arrest his Capitol Fax site crashed from the traffic.

It was big news when a Governor of an important state is arrested by any police authorities. FBI, state police, or city police it doesn't matter. Regardless as the pic above indicates this was most certainly a shame.

Black working class males

This article from the Christian Science Monitor I found on Tuesday over at Instapundit makes a case of how Black working class males can relate to the White working class males that voted strongly for Trump last month. The issues are similar if not much worse for the Black working class.

In the same breath there was mention of a local employment agency in the NY Times and client companies being sued for discrimination. The client companies who needed workers preferred hispanics to Blacks with the excuse for this being Blacks didn't want to do the work, however, the preferred workers according to the article were illegal and may not be as willing to stand up for themselves. Or more accurately, "They are so scared to raise their voice and say, ‘Hey, this is not fair.’"

This is old news in fact as this past summer the Capitol Fax blog posted about this.

To lighten the mood

[VIDEO] Time to lighten the mood around these parts from the election to a dead mall to a death of a Head of State Dictator. Perhaps we need a little humor around here.

Back in the early 1990s when I was a young buck, Nick at Nite aired an original series called On the Television. Basically it was a pseudo critic show as two critics which I liken to Siskel & Ebert types who review a variety of TV programs. Most of the programs were essentially satires of the TV programs of the time.

The program itself hasn't been seen on TV at all in a while because I learned due to some bankruptcies and other economics the show proved expensive to even air in syndication. Thankfully a few of the satirical TV programs or more accurately sketches were uploaded to YouTube almost a decade ago.

Some of them are quite hilarious and some of them are in my humble opinion quite unwatchable. The sketch you see above involves game show rules. The first one was just dumb explaining heads or tails.

The second one was confusing and was very funny as a result. Even the contestants aren't sure how to play that game.