TRUMP IS DRAGGING AMERICAN DEMOCRACY INTO A LITTER BOX

Beneath the Spin*Eric L. Wattree

Contrary to popular belief, Black people don’t have a moral obligation to be stupid

TRUMP IS DRAGGING AMERICAN DEMOCRACY INTO A LITTER BOX
YET, CONGRESS IS FAILING TO USE ITS MOST POWERFUL WEAPON AGAINST HIM

At this point even Donald Trump supporters recognize that he has the self-serving and anti-intellectual immaturity of an 8-year-old. Due to his childish irresponsibility, in just over two years he’s caused the United States to go from the most respected nation on Earth to the laughingstock of the world. And so far, the United States Congress has become complicit in his dysfunction by allowing him to drag the nation into a litter box.  Clear evidence of that is in the short time that Trump has occupied the Oval Office, the nation has gone from engaging in serious, if often disingenuous, political debate, to indulging in childish name-calling, spitball fights, and blatant obstruction of justice over Twitter. That’s a horrible image for a once great nation.
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Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tried to justify congress’ inaction by pointing out that Trump is trying to goad congress into premature impeachment proceedings in order to galvanize his base in preparation for the 2020 election, and since the GOP is in control of the senate, any attempt to remove him from office would fail at this point. So the smart thing to do is to hold hearings on the Mueller Report and educate the public on why Trumps impeachment is necessary.
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So, while Pelosi has an excellent plan, Trump is stonewalling her efforts by blocking all congressional subpoenas for documents and witnesses for congressional hearings, which makes it impossible to educate the public – at least, in a timely manner.
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Trump has declared that he is not going to cooperate with congress' constitutional right of oversight, and he has taken it upon himself to overrule the United States Constitution by declaring that any further investigations into his personal conduct is unnecessary, completely dismissing congress' constitutional right to oversight, and his Attorney General, William Barr – who’s supposed to be representing the people, not Trump - has declared that since a sitting president can't be indicted, neither can he be investigated. So, essentially, Donald Trump has placed himself above the law, and taken over the government.

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While both Trump, and Barr, know that this tactic is illegal, they’re trying to force congress to waste time by having to go to court. Trump’s betting his presidency, and freedom, on the hope that he can make it to the 2020 election, and just maybe, the GOP will be able to retake congress and kill the investigations into his criminality all together. Thus, congress seems to be between a rock and a hard place.

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So, what’s next to impossible to understand is, why isn’t congress invoking all of its powers to fight this blatant assault on our democracy? They’re spewing a lot of tough sounding language, but they're completely ignoring their most powerful weapon – their power of “Inherent Contempt", which allows them - as congress - to simply arrest a person, or fine them $25,000 a day, until they comply. Now, that would get a person's attention. It would make me show up a day early.

INHERENT CONTEMPT
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The National Constitutional Center states in it’s publication, Constitutional Daily, that “Justice Willis Van Devanter made perhaps the most famous statement of these powers in McGrain v. Daugherty, a 1927 Supreme Court decision about Mally S. Daugherty, the brother of former Attorney General Harry Daugherty.  A select Senate committee issued a subpoena for Daugherty to testify and to also surrender records from an Ohio bank. When Daugherty refused to comply after a second subpoena, the Senate passed a resolution issuing a warrant and authorizing a Senate deputy to take Daugherty into custody. Daugherty filed a habeas petition against his detention. A lower court ruled that the Senate exceeded its powers by detaining Daugherty, freeing him. However, the Supreme Court upheld his conviction, holding that under the Constitution, Congress has the power to compel witnesses and testimony “to obtain information in aid of the legislative function.”

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“Each house of Congress has power, through its own process, to compel a private individual to appear before it or one of its committees and give testimony needed to enable it efficiently to exercise a legislative function belonging to it under the Constitution,” Van Devanter said. 'This has support in long practice of the houses separately, and in repeated Acts of Congress, all amounting to a practical construction of the Constitution.'”

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It's been reported by several news organizations that Attorney General Bar has even taken to mocking Speaker Pelosi by jokingly asking her after he ignored a congressional subpoena, "Did you bring the handcuffs?" So, for congress to do anything less than utilize all of its Constitutional powers is to invite disrespect of congressional authority by both the people involved, and the public at large, because it makes congress look like they’re unsure of their own authority. The speaker should have Attorney General Barr locked up, because he's not only thumbing his nose at her, but at congress, the United States Constitution, and the American people.

DONALD TRUMP: THE WORLD’S MOST LYING, CORRUPT, AND INCOMPETENT BUSINESSMAN

The courts have just turned over Trump’s finances to congress. Trump wasn't trying to move Hell and Earth to keep that from happening for nothing. We're now gonna see what a corrupt fraud he is.
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We're soon gonna find that Donald Trump is, hands down, the world's worst businessman. He's never started a business that wasn't an abject failure. Recent reports by the New York Times - with just a sliver of the information they have now - revealed that Trump's entire image was built on a lie. His father kept him afloat while he was alive by giving him over $400 million, towards the end, and after his father died, Donald went into bankruptcy 6 times (count 'em, SIX TIMES!!!). As a result, he couldn't get a loan from ANY bank in America. Then the Russians came to his rescue in order to use his name to do business and launder money - they even had an office in Trump Tower!!!

PREDICTION: We're about to find that all, or at least most, of Trump's so-called wealth is actually Russian money. Trump perpetuated a lie about how much of a bigshot and great businessman he was, and then used that lie to rent his name to the Russians. The Russians then hung out a shingle under it to launder money and commit crimes all over the world. The Russians have a phrase for a person like Trump - "a useful idiot."

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Thus, this is a pivotal moment in American history and we're dealing with a world-class criminal in Donald Trump. So, the founding fathers expected congress to step up to the plate at a time like this. If they fail to do so, we can just flush our democracy down the toilet.

Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com

Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does. 

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COMMON SENSE IS GOD WHISPERING IN YOUR EAR

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

Contrary to popular belief, Black people don't have a moral obligation to be stupid.
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COMMON SENSE IS GOD WHISPERING IN YOUR EAR 
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I'm an independent thinker and far from a religious fanatic, but logic causes me to lean toward believing in a supreme force. I say, "Force" instead of "Being" because one of our biggest problems while trying to conceive of God is that we're so arrogant that we assume God has to have the same characteristics as we do. So, for me, God is simply whatever force is responsible for existence and the creation of the universe.
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Something had to cause the universe to come into existence, and whatever that something was, I call it God. Thus, God is whatever force, entity, or process that’s responsible for what we refer to as existence, regardless of whether God is a he, she, it, or the universe itself. That’s all we know, and all we need to know - and any preacher who claims to know anything beyond that is lying.
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But that said, I don't believe for a minute that God sits around watching everything we do to try to decide whether to punish or reward us. That's nonsense. The consequences of our behavior is what rewards or punishes us - if you do something stupid, like jump off a roof, you get a bad result, like a broken leg. So the mere thought that God is so preoccupied with man that he's fixated on whether we believe in him or not is simply a reflection of man's arrogance and exaggerated sense of self-importance. Why would God sit around throughout eternity jumping through hoops and doing magic tricks to try to get man to worship him? That's ridiculous. We're just not that important.  It would be the equivalent of our spending all of our time tap dancing in front of the toilet trying to earn the honor and respect of the germs under our toilet seat. Wouldn't that be stupid? Of course it would, and I doubt very seriously that the creator of the universe is stupid. Being stupid is man’s job, and we're not even that stupid.
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So let's take a moment and look at what man actually represents in terms of the universe in order to can get a little perspective. Our galaxy has over 200 billion stars, and the Sun is

only one of them. It takes the Sun, along with Earth and it’s other 8 hitchhikers, traveling at 828,000 mph 230 million years to orbit around our galaxy just one time.  Yet, our solar system, with its 9 planets, is only a microscopic dust particle in our galaxy, and our galaxy itself, in terms of the universe, is nothing more than a microscopic dust particle in space.
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To make sense of the distances we’re talking about here, on January 19, 2006 we launched the space probe, New Horizon, for the planet Pluto in our own solar system. It was the Fastest man-made object ever launched from Earth.  It sped through space at 36,400 mph. That’s 24 times faster than an AK 47 military rifle bullet. Yet it took New Horizon until July 14, 2015 (9 years, 6 months) to reach Pluto – and again, that’s just in our own solar system.
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Thus, if Earth was your house in Los Angeles, Pluto would be a flea in San Diego, and Alpha Centauri, the closest neighboring star to the Sun, would be an elephant in China - and that's just within our galaxy. There are over 200 billion stars, equally as far away from one another, in just our galaxy alone, and there are more galaxies in the universe than there are grains of sand on every beach, every desert, and every ocean floor on the planet Earth – and that’s just in the observable universe that's still expanding in every direction at the speed of light. But even with the enormity of that, our entire universe could be merely a speck of dust under the toenail of some gigantic being. Yet, man thinks he can tell other men what's on God's mind!!!? That's utterly ridiculous.
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If you’re a Christian, do you believe that God sent Jesus to all the hundreds of trillions of worlds in the universe? Or maybe you believe that we're so special that we're the only speck of dust in the universe with life on it?  It might seem that way, but the only reason that we don’t see other beings is because even if they lived right next door to us (which they do), even traveling at the speed of light, it would take them 137 thousand years to get here, because the next closest star to the Sun, Alpha Centauri, is over 24 trillion miles away.  So, think about that – in order to just drop in for a cup of coffee they would have had to leave home 135 thousand years before Jesus was born, and they won't get here for another 133 thousand years - and again, that’s just our closest neighbor!  
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So, man is way too full of himself. God must be falling out laughing at our arrogance (if he even remembers who we are), because man is clearly on the mother of all ego trips. Whenever I'm unfortunate enough to even be in earshot of a preacher I have to laugh, because I view what most people call a sermon as a comedy routine. And I always ask myself, "Will you listen to this fool! I wonder does he actually believe this nonsense himself!!?" Even though many of his "flock" think God is fixated on us and worried about whether we believe in him or not, in terms of the universe, man is trillions of times less significant than a germ under a toilet seat in Uzbekistan - and the other side of  the religious coin is just as ridiculous. Anyone who claims that the universe just sprung up out of nowhere and says, "Prove that God exists" is just looking for an argument. So, the appropriate response to such people is quite simple. You simply say, "Look around you, fool!", and then walk away.

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The so-called realms of Heaven and Hell are also right out of Mother Goose. Both are simply concepts created by man to control other men, to get them to dig deeper into their pockets when they pass the collection plate. The entire concept just reeks of man’s tendency to threaten and/or bribe other men into subservience. In fact, the only reason we have religion at all is to justify our cruelty towards other men. Whenever we want to kill other men, we first seek approval from God through religion. In fact, I remember how the idea of a military chaplain struck me as strange when I was in the Marine Corps. Think about it - "Dear Lord, please help us to kill more of them than they do of us." What!!!?  So, if God was indeed watching man and evaluating our worthiness, he would have hit the delete button long ago.
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And finally, let's take a look at what we refer to as “The Holy Bible”. That book is

nothing more than a collection of the superstitious rantings of 3000-year-old dead men. They didn’t know any more about God than we do today. They were the Pat Robertsons of their time – and just as clueless. Just because a man was born 2000 years before you doesn't mean he was either smarter than you, or knew any more about God (Common Sense 101). The fact is, in most cases he was dumber than you. 

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If a man passed out in the town square 2000 years ago, and then Jesus sprinkled water in his face and brought him around, many of the people back then would have thought that Jesus brought him back from the dead.  Or if Jesus was walking along the beach with the setting Sun reflecting on the wet sand, it would have looked to many like he was walking on water, and they would have wrote about it in what was to become "The Holy Bible" - and those are the kind of things many of you are getting all dressed up  every Sunday morning and paying a preacher to keep telling you about in his spoken-word concert. As hard as times are, you're paying a man a tenth of your earnings to regale you with tales of pure ignorance. 

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Because the fact is, no book written by man can tell you anything about God, because

no man has ever met God. We can only know God’s will by what he has done, and as I’m very fond of telling anyone who will listen, God made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man to think, not to believe in talkin’ snakes.  God anticipated our needs when he created us, and he gave us the intellect to answer our own prayers and to live the kind of life that would create Heaven right here on Earth if used properly. But if used improperly, we can also create our own Hell, which we seem to be doing as we speak.
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So, God doesn’t require a Pat Robertson or T.D. Jakes to speak for him, nor do we need the Bible as a user’s guide to dictate how we should live our lives. Do fish need a swimming coach, or do birds need a compass and calendar to know when to fly South? No they don't. They’re born with that knowledge, just as we were born with the common sense to survive in our environment. We just need to follow that common sense and stop paying preachers to tell us what God's wants. Man is the only animal on Earth that fails to do so. God demonstrated his will when he gave each of us our very own brain, so we should use it. If you'd just listen to your common sense, God would tell you in no uncertain terms that snakes don't talk, and no matter how much you pay a preacher, he will not be able to stop you from dying, or get you into Heaven once you do.
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That brings us to the concept of good and evil. It’s a very simple concept - good is 

THIS IS A HAPPY MAN

BECAUSE HE LIVES BY COMMON SENSE

having the intelligence to follow your common sense, and evil is failing to utilize that intelligence - or to be too ignorant to realize that if you shoot and kill somebody’s father or son, chances are, they’re gonna come back and kill you. It’s as simple as that. Thus, the key to living a good and happy life is to become an efficient and independent thinker with the intelligence to follow your common sense. 
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So, this entire article can be boiled down to one sentence - "Never give the Bible, preachers, potentates, or anyone else's ability to think priority over your own, because common sense is God whispering in your ear."

THIS IS A MISERABLE MAN

BECAUSE HE LACKS COMMON SENSE

Eric L. Wattree

Http://wattree.blogspot.com

Ewattree@Gmail.com

Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does. 

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LET US EMBRACE KNOWLEDGE OVER SWAG

Beneath the Spin*Eric L. Wattree

Contrary to popular belief, Black people do not have a moral obligation to be stupid.

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LET US EMBRACE KNOWLEDGE OVER SWAG

I'm under no illusions. No one man corners the market on either knowledge, wisdom, or intellect, but I hate rap, and it’s impossible to overstate the passion that I bring to that hatred. It’s right up there with my hatred of Donald Trump and the Klan. But let me try to give you just a glimpse of just how much I hate that genre - I’d rather spend a day in jail, than a day listening to rap in the arms of Halle Berry, and I mean that.  At least in jail I could spend the day sleeping or reading a magazine and not be subjected to fingernails scraping against a blackboard of ignorance to the monotonous beat of a drum machine.
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And I wasn't the only one of my generation who hated rap. Don Cornelius of Soul Train fame also hated it. The New York Times reported,  "While Mr. Cornelius had somewhat reluctantly but warmly embraced disco on his show, he had more misgivings about the advent of hip-hop and rap, which he thought were degrading. 'I could do it. I could be like ‘yowassup!’ But I’d look stupid,' he once told an interviewer."
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Yeah, I know – many of our people swear by rap music, but when I was a kid, I swore by Bozo the Clown too, until I acquired the knowledge and

sophistication to outgrow him. But rap seems to have a quality about it that lulls the mind into a state of somnambulism that people tend to never outgrow - or causes them to be, as they used to say back in the day, stuck on stupid. That’s one of the reasons that we have a subculture of 40-year-old teenagers walking around in sneakers and baseball caps and still sleeping on their mommas' couches.
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Personally, I think the drone-like monotony of inane lyrics set against the backdrop of a monotonous drum machine lulls the mind to sleep. That’s why the White establishment promotes it and allow its Black purveyors to get rich by disseminating it. It helps to promote Black stupidity.
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History should have long since made it clear to us that the White establishment doesn't tolerate anything that enlightens the Black community in any way. But they love rap, because it makes Black people look like ignorant and inarticulate savages, and according to them, it tells the truth about who we are - the product of nasty bitches and hoes who don't even have sense enough to pull up our pants.   

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But I don't blame young people for this. They grew up with this assault on Black intellect in full swing, so it's normal to them. They think it's just the way of the world. I blame the older generation, who instead of taking the time to raise their kids, just fed 'em and sent them to their room to be raised by the White man and MTV. As a result, many of these kids don't even know who they are. We've let the White man inform them of who they are and what they represent - and instead of the White man telling them about their long history of creative intellect, he told them they're just a bunch of fools and idiots whose primary goal in life is to strut around in gold chains, gaudy glitter, killing one another, and slandering the very womb of their culture - their mothers, sisters, and grandmothers! - as bitches and hoes.

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  KEEP IT GANGSTA, DAWG!

I BEAR WITNESS

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I sit, I watch,
and I grow ever more obsolete
as I bear witness.

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I bear witness

to a once vibrant people greedily gulping down society’s hemlock. Even as they claim to be “keeping it real,“ they continue to maim, kill, and despise their own in hot pursuit of the prime directive with the passion of a sheetless klan.
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I bear witness
to Black fists in the air in false solidarity promoted by self-serving poverty pimps as the world looks on and giggle at crooked fingers pointed elsewhere.
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I bear witness
to the superficial attempt to ban the “N-word” while the new "un-niggas" stand around watching children killing children and fathers drugging sons, as they celebrate, lionize, and enrich those who denigrate the very womb of their culture with impunity.
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I bear witness
to a generation of lost knowledge, cut off from its roots by Ronnie’s “Just say no” generation of crack, greed, death, and political corruption; A generation where the new N-word is pronounced “Responsibility” and the keepers of the flame completely ignore the destructive power of bitch, slut, whore, and tramp.
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I bear witness
to the reckless disregard of the words uneducated, irresponsible, and classless. Should we not ban these words as well, or should we ban banning words altogether as we celebrate their meaning?
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Yes, I do bear witness.
I bear witness to a new world -
a world where gross ignorance comes disguised as enlightenment, and funky sneakers look down with disdain upon the sweet smell of Florsheim; a world where saggin’ pants and gaudy glitter enable country bumpkins to masquerade as elegant, and the exquisite surrender of eloquence is the very essence of what it means to be hip.
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Where's Langston? Where's Baldwin? Where's Oscar Brown, Jr?
We need you stormin' this beach, because . . .
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I now bear witness
to a world where motherhood stands alone, to be “dope” renders a smile, and posterity is forced to embrace the wind for paternal sustenance; A world where the walking dead strut about rapping the wisdom of idiocy, and we praise the illiteracy of vulgar nursery rhymes as profound; a world where the mother of salvation's final gasp is compared to the pigmentation of brown paper bags.
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Malcolm, Martin, where are you?
I once stood with a crowd.
Now seemingly alone, I'm forced to bear witness -
horrific witness . . .
to the imminent demise of our people,
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And my heart bleeds.

******

When I was young I’ve lived the street life. During the 50s and 60s my father was the Iceberg Slim of drugs in Los Angeles - in fact, I knew Iceberg (or Rob) when he moved to Los Angeles. As a result of that background I started going in and out of jail between the ages of 12 and 19 years old multiple time. In fact, as a teenage I spent more time in jail than I did on the street.  But as an adult I've dedicated my life to steering our people in a more productive direction. I've sought to emphasize our potential for education and knowledge over stupidity. We must begin to understand that the adversity that we've endured has made us MORE rather than less, so we must use our creative intellect to make knowledge the new "soul." 
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When I was young and going in and out of jail, the bulls used to laugh at my budding intellect. That was one of their favorite pastimes, laughing at Black ignorance. That's what sent me on my journey of intellectual development. Even as a child I recognized that Black people weren't ignorant, we were simply undereducated.
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I soon found that I was right. Now, I can laugh at their ignorant asses, and I often do. Whenever you want to kill a bigot without going to jail, all you have to do is prove to him that he's not your intellectual equal. That'll cause him to  die a thousand deaths every time he thinks about it. Look at how fixated Trump is on Barack Obama. It's killing him that Barack Obama, that "uppity" Black man is obviously more loved, brilliant, and competent than he is. Obama has proven that he's everything that Trump has always wanted to be, and without even busting one sweat bubble. So knowledge is the best revenge, not swagger. Swagger just makes you look like a goddamn fool - and you are, if you think that swagger improves your image.
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That's the message I want to get across to my people - and if we adjust our focus and stop being distracted by the frivolous, we have the potential to do just that. Instead of learning nursery rhymes, we should be learning math, and instead of indulging in swag, we should be developing class. Because the White man is not only dumbing down Black people in order to indulge his greed, he must also dumb-down his own people to maintain power. How are you going to get a society of highly educated and intelligent people to follow a raving idiot like Trump? You've got to dumb them down. But what they're not considering is that we have to have somebody that's smart enough to run the country - that's where Black opportunity comes in. We should be gorging ourselves on knowledge, because there's no better time than now to level the playing field.  

THE HOOD RAT

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Baby,
I’m sure you know that I love you.
You’re everything I need.
You fit the bill of all my desires,
a perfect match for all of my dreams.
From the moment I first laid eyes on you,
You were everything I craved -
that luscious vision from across the tracks,
that delicate flower beyond my blade.
*
But what you ask is foreign to me.
You need something that I’m not.
You said, just tweak my nature a little bit,
and you’ll give everything you’ve got.
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But that "tweak" you need is who I am -
it’s my essence, can’t you see?
How can you speak of loving my soul, but
not the hood rat that is me?
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While "hood rat" may seem trite to you,
it’s the essence of my being.
So forget about what all the other’s say,
here’s what it means to me:
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I’ve been brutally dragged through the pits of hell,
yet, managed to survive,
well educated and fully functional,
when I came out the other side.
I scrounged the lessons taught at Harvard,
because knowledge, I found, was free.
But they’ll never obtain the lessons I’ve learned,
or the knowledge that makes me, me.
*
While the "elite" may have heard a mournful Trane,
or Miles muted in the night,
but not in the context of hunger and pain,
or hopelessness, hatred, and blight.
*
So while I've lived the life of a hood rat,
I’ve reaped a knowledge that money can't buy;
a knowledge passed on to my son and daughter,
which has greatly enhanced their lives.
*
Thus, I wouldn't change a thing in my life -
I’ve faced Hell and passed the test.
I have a PhD in adversity,
that's made me much more,
rather than less.
*
So unlike the people at Harvard and Yale, who
try to buy intellectual clout,
they only study the genius of Miles and Trane,
while I'm who they’re blowin' about.
*
So when snobs try to slur me as "just a hood rat,"
I say, "thank you," and don’t take offense.
I take great pride in surviving the travails in my life,
That’s what gives me my confidence.
*
The Ivy League degrees of those of means
are only paper compared to mine;
while they have a "receipt" for knowledge obtained,
my lessons are ETCHED within my mind.
*
I can teach philosophy to Aristotle
with the adversity that I’ve endured,
so any snob who tries to match my wit,
will come up short, and that’s for sure.
*
Snobs walk about quoting Socrates and such,
through their "education" they are prone;
but while they’re spewing the thoughts of various dead men,
I spend my time developing my own.
*
Never give the thoughts of ANY man
priority over our own;
You must collect the facts, and think for yourself,
that’s where Harvard and Yale has gone wrong.
*
Preacher, politician, potentate,
whatever their point of view,
God didn't bless them with any knowledge
that he failed to bestow on you.
*
So being seen as a hood rat has its advantages
against racists of limited wit;
I simply quietly wait for their condescension,
then show ‘em that they ain’t shit.
*
While God made birds to fly and fish to swim,
he gave man thought and that's the key.
So any man who thinks he's superior
will have to PROVE his wit to me.
*
Thus, knowledge is the key to set us free,
no matter what the people say,
and there’s nothing more formidable than
a knowledgeable hood rat,
which you’re looking upon today.
*
Yet, these are the things you want me to purge,
and spurn the life I’ve led,
but I’m sorry, my love,
as much as I love you,
the soul of a hood rat is my edge.

,

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The piece below is the kind of thing that I'd like to see coming from our people, where excellence in music, poetry, and the eloquence of true knowledge and sophistication takes priority over ignorance and swag.
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I'm literally sick to death of seeing such a brilliant people being dragged down by a modern-day minstrel show. The link below is an example of music and poetry that’s been inspired by excellence and a knowledge of craft, instead of trying to get by on ignorance and swag. Rap is the music of the lazy-minded who don't want to bother to learn to play an instrument, or obtain the knowledge to write coherent poetry. All they want to do is learn to recite vulgar nursery rhymes to a drum machine. So if they're that lazy-minded by nature, what are the chances that they have any wisdom whatsoever to bestow?
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But I shouldn’t even have to point this out, because anyone with any kind of intelligence should be able to immediately see that rap is a musical assault on the brilliance of John Coltrane to embrace the minstrel show of Stepin’ Fetchit, and poetically, it's an attempt to obliterate the eloquence of Langston Hughes and James Baldwin in an attempt to promote Mother Goose. So, anyone with any kind of  mind at all should be able to easily see that we’re moving backwards. We're allowing our children to be led and influenced by some of the most ignorant people in the Black community.
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THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HIP-HOP AND ART

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The problem with rap and hip-hip is it's not grown peoples’ music. Grown folk's music sounds like this: 

"When she walked through the door she seemed to float on a cushion of air. Her understated beauty seeped into my soul and drench the very air.
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"At that very precious moment, I knew life would never be the same. My new life had begun, with no more childish games.
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"Goodbye, street-life, you're no longer home. Goodbye drugs, I'm no longer prone. Goodbye road dawgs, it was fun until the end, but the end now stands before us, with my queen who just stepped in.”
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But hip-hop sounds like this:
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"The bitch came through the door and my jaws hit the floor. Now other stanky hoes, I will definitely ride no mo."
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Educated adults don't want to hear that kind of childish, swaggerin' bullshit. It constitutes vulgar nursery rhymes for people with the mentality of children - and it’s recited by people who don't know the difference between a comma and a semicolon.
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Wake Up, my people!

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Here's what poetry is suppose to sound like, 
not a collision between ignorance and a drum machine:

Eric L. Wattree

Http://wattree.blogspot.com

Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
.
Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does. 

Sphere: Related Content

WHY ISN'T CONGRSS USING ITS MOST POTENT WEAPON - ITS POWER OF INHERENT CONTEMPT?

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

WHY ISN'T CONGRSS USING ITS MOST POTENT WEAPON - ITS POWER OF INHERENT CONTEMPT?

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Congress needs to stop playing games and start playing hardball against the Trump administration instead of running their mouths about the actions that they “may take if” Trump is not responsive to their authority.
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Donald Trump and the GOP are not paying the house any attention – they can’t afford to because their backs are up against the wall, so they don’t have any other options other than to ignore congress. They’ve obviously come to the conclusion that nothing would be worse than the truth coming out, so they’ve decided to obfuscate and stonewall. 
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What makes that such a severe problem for the nation is since Donald Trump is all but illiterate, he’s incapable of even beginning to grasp the seriousness of the Constitutional crisis that he’s setting in motion.  In addition, he doesn’t care, because he’s not interested in the impact that it’s having on the country. It’s all about “the Donald”, and he simply can’t afford to allow America a glimpse into his criminal empire, because it’s all built on smoke and mirrors and if contaminated by truth, it’ll all come tumbling down. Even Trump ally, Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said - and during a hearing, no less - that “Trump is a fucking idiot."  I rarely agree with Sen. Graham on anything, but in this case, no truer words were ever spoken. 
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Think about it. As much as Trump likes to brag about what a great man he is, if he didn’t have a lot to hide, he’d not only allow us to see his taxes in

order to put us in awe over how fantastically rich he is, but he’d give us a guided tour through the entire Trump empire to prove what a genius he is. That’s his braggadocious nature. So, the fact that he’s taking such extreme measures to hide his finances tells us something very suspicious is afoot – either he’s not even close to being as rich as he claims to be, or he's afraid it will reveal how deeply involved in Russian money laundering and crime he is, or maybe, both.
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We know three things about Trump’s finances – first, that his father financed Donald’s false narrative of a successful businessman until his death; secondly, every business venture that Donald has engaged in on his own has been an abject failure, and finally, after his father died, the only thing that kept him from having to go on welfare was a trust fund from his father and the Russians paying him to use his name to launder money and engage in other nefarious activities.
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So again, congress needs to stop playing games with Trump. They should ask Trump’s people to either come before a congressional committee or to submit documents only once. If they fail or refuse to do so, congress should issue a subpoena. Thereafter, if they fail to respond to the subpoena, congress should invoke their “inherent contempt” powers and fine them $25,000 per day and/or throw them in jail until they comply. Congress has that right under the Constitution - and without even having to go to court. That way the American people can be educated and pressure can be placed on the Republican senate prior to initiating impeachment. In addition, Pence, who was brought into the administration by Paul Manafort, could also be impeached for his connection to Michael Flynn, which would preclude a pardon of Trump.
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It's been reported by several news organizations that Attorney General Bar has even taken to mocking Speaker Pelosi by jokingly asking her after he ignored a congressional subpoena, "Did you bring the handcuffs?" So for congress to do anything less than utilize all of its Constitutional powers is to invite disrespect of their authority by both the people involved, and the public at large, because it makes congress look like they’re unsure of their own authority. The speaker should have Attorney General Barr locked up, because he's not only thumbing his nose at her, but at congress, the United States Constitution, and the American people.

INHERENT CONTEMPT
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The National Constitutional Center states in its publication, Constitutional Daily, that “Justice Willis Van Devanter made perhaps the most famous statement of these powers in McGrain v. Daugherty, a 1927 Supreme Court decision about Mally S. Daugherty, the brother of former Attorney General Harry Daugherty.  A select Senate committee issued a subpoena for Daugherty to testify and to also surrender records from an Ohio bank. When Daugherty refused to comply after a second subpoena, the Senate passed a resolution issuing a warrant and authorizing a Senate deputy to take Daugherty into custody. Daugherty filed a habeas petition against his detention. A lower court ruled that the Senate exceeded its powers by detaining Daugherty, freeing him. However, the Supreme Court upheld his conviction, holding that under the Constitution, Congress has the power to compel witnesses and testimony “to obtain information in aid of the legislative function.”

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“Each house of Congress has power, through its own process, to compel a private individual to appear before it or one of its committees and give testimony needed to enable it efficiently to exercise a legislative function belonging to it under the Constitution,” Van Devanter said. “This has support in long practice of the houses separately, and in repeated Acts of Congress, all amounting to a practical construction of the Constitution.”

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This is a pivotal moment in American history and we're dealing with a world-class fool in Donald Trump. So the founding fathers expected congress to step up to the plate at a time like this. If they fail to do so, our democracy is down the toilet.
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Trump has just declared that he is not going to cooperate with congress' constitutional right of oversight, and he has taken it upon himself to overrule the United States Constitution and has declared that any further investigations into his personal conduct is unnecessary, completely dismissing congress' constitutional right to oversight, and Attorney General Barr has declared that since a sitting president can't be indicted, neither can he be investigated. So, essentially, Donald Trump has taken over the government.

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Trump is obviously so ignorant and uninformed regarding the underpinnings of America’s democratic laws and traditions, and so self-serving, greedy, and in fear of the revelations in the Robert Mueller Report that he’s completely untethered to the democratic principles that most of us take for granted. As we speak – and as we twerk, and watch our baseball, basketball, and football games -Trump is currently testing the limits of America’s willingness to defend our Constitution. He's fully prepared to turn the United States of America into the Autocratic States of Donald Trump. And Trump is transparent. That’s why he’s so fixated on the word, “coup.” He wants to be America’s Putin - and yes, it can happen here. If Trump and Mitch McConnell's stacked Supreme Court goes along with him, at that very moment, we no longer have a democracy, but a kleptocracy like in Russia, which, it seems, is Trump's ultimate goal. He's already mentioned adding 2 years to his presidency to make up for the 2 years "wasted" on investigating him, and Michael Cohen, his long-time attorney and "fixer", said that he suspected that Trump wasn't going to give up power without a fight.

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Michael Cohen: "I fear Trump won't peacefully give up the White House if he loses the 2020 election."

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It is essential, therefore, that congress be resolute in confronting this blatant assault on our democracy. It is also essential that congress meets this challenge to our way of life with unapologetic vigor. This is no time for speeches, nor, polite accommodations, and congress must make that point abundantly clear by bringing criminal charges against Attorney General Barr for committing perjury before congress.  That will serve two purposes – first, it will send a very powerful message to Trump’s other minions, and secondly, it will make Barr unavailable to interfere in the remaining cases still pending from the Mueller investigation. Because Barr has made it very clear that he represents nothing less than a fox in the hen house.  He will find a way to sabotage any evidence pointing to Trump's unlawful behavior in any case within his purview. That's what he auditioned for, and why Trump hired him.

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So while the GOP is missing in action and playing political games as usual, it’s important for the responsible members of congress to recognize that this is not simply business as usual. This is the most serious assault on the United States Constitution in the history of this country - and by the most clueless individual who has ever set foot in the Oval Office. It's one thing to have a tyrant like Richard Nixon in office who's testing the limits of our democracy, but yet another to have a mindless illiterate with autocratic aspirations in office who doesn't even know that there are any limits. So this is the most dangerous situation this nation has ever faced, and it must be addressed as such. It is essential that we snatch it, and Trump, out by the roots - and fast.

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TRUMP INCOMPETENCE

Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com

Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does. 

 

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