Ben Carson refers to slaves as ‘immigrants’ in first speech to HUD

Samuel L. Jackson‏Verified account @SamuelLJackson  6h6 hours ago

OK!! Ben Carson....I can't! Immigrants ? In the bottom of SLAVE SHIPS??!! MUTHAFUKKA PLEASE!!!#dickheadedtom

Whoopi Goldberg‏Verified account @WhoopiGoldberg  3h3 hours ago

Ben Carson..please read or watch Roots, most immigrants come here VOLUNTARILY,cant't really say the same about the slaves..they were stolen

Nathan Engle • 3 hours ago
For such an educated man Dr Carson comes up with some surprisingly bad ideas.

guitarman121  Nathan Engle • 3 hours ago
Why?? Some immigrants DID come here on slave ships.

Nathan Engle  guitarman121 • 2 hours ago
It all comes down to homonyms - two words that sound the same. An emigrant is a person who decides to leave someplace and go somewhere else. They become an immigrant when they arrive at their new home. Slaves made no decision. They were kidnapped, sold like chattel, carried like baggage.  It's like that quote from Malcolm X, slaves didn't land on Plymouth Rock, it landed on them. Trying to compare the arrival of slaves with the arrival of Pilgrims or Irish or Hispanics is ridiculous.

Li  guitarman121 • 2 hours ago
Who? Can you name the ones that came on the boat by the millions? Stowaways is one thing, slaves on slave ships is another.

Procax Nothus  guitarman121 • 2 hours ago
There were some slavers down there too.

Icreatejobs  guitarman121 • 2 hours ago
If they paid you for your the ignorance in your posts, , you'd be rich.

John Hackley  Icreatejobs • 2 hours ago
RE: guitarman121: Never argue with an idiot, they will drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.

guitarman121  Icreatejobs • 2 hours ago
Challenge my point.

cupcake6  guitarman121 • an hour ago
he did, asked which one and you didn't answer. Which immigrants?

Jennifer Lynch Wheatley  guitarman121 • an hour ago
More 'alternative facts' ....

“My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain. Now all the archaeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs’ graves. But, you know, it would have to be something awfully big — when you stop and think about it, and I don’t think it’d just disappear over the course of time — to store that much grain.” ~ Dr. Ben Carson, Commencement Speech, Andrews University, 1998

Please keep defending the bottom of the barrel...

turquoisewaters • 17 minutes ago
Way too many loonies in this cabinet. First DeVos with her grizzlies, Ben Carson ... Really, there are more qualified people out there. Why does the nation have to put up with these people that have nothing but connections and donation money going for them?

turquoisewaters • 24 minutes ago
People think he must be smart because he is a neurosurgeon, but that seems to be a very specialized skill. He may be good with his hands, but not so much with his words.That was a pretty outrageous thing to say.

Doc2222  turquoisewaters • 6 minutes ago
He must be an idiot savant.

Go Figure • 2 hours ago
Immigrants? African American slaves were not immigrants-- they were prisoners. He sure fits in with the Trump administration, we can all agree on that.

By that reasoning, Jews were involuntary immigrants to concentration camps and ghettos in other countries. Really? They may have been moved from their country of origin - but clearly they were prisoners - not "immigrants". I know I shouldn't be surprised at the idiocy of Carson - but I am.

Truth_the_Whole_Truth • 2 hours ago
Do we call "Native Americans" who crossed by foot across continental land bridges immigrant "tourists"?

JeanSC  Truth_the_Whole_Truth • 2 hours ago
I think the people who keep saying "we're all immigrants" are deliberately giving short shrift to the First Nations; we might see this in their political decisions and disrespect for them. And BTW, scientists now think that some Native Americans came here by boat from northeast Asia.

Doc2222 • 8 minutes ago
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

owl905  Doc2222 • 5 minutes ago
The place where the Ministry of Plenty rations food.

owl905 • 13 minutes ago
From the tailing pond that brought you 'tell it like it is' and 'reject political correctness' comes a bigger piece of spin than the rotor on an Apache gunship. Ben Carson just delivered a new Administration low with his interpretation of kidnapping, imprisonment, auction as property, probable rape and torture, and a certain death sentence ... as "involuntary immigration".
The first step should be to attach him to an EEG and determine if there's brain damage at the root of his ugly utterance.

JeanSC • 2 hours ago
The word "immigrant" can be defined to cover abroad spectrum of foreigners, as long as you add the correct adjective in front of it: "legal immigrant," "illegal immigrant." In Carson's way of using the word, slaves would be called "involuntary immigrants." Linguistically, I don't think there's anything incorrect about this - as long as the adjectives are there. It's still an awful euphemism, and unfortunately can be used to include people who were on a plane which was hijacked and flown to another country, with the hapless passengers being kicked out there. These people are not slaves. But Ben, it's so much easier to call slaves "slaves." The slavery status is more important than their foreign origin.
But Carson was WAY wrong in thinking that the first generation of slaves, those enduring the Middle Passage, had a dream about their descendants, and that it was placed here. I'm pretty sure those slaves had dreams about getting their own freedom while they were still alive, and being able to go home, like yesterday.

Go Figure  JeanSC • 2 hours ago
Yeah, right. By that reasoning, Jews were involuntary immigrants to concentration camps in other countries. Really? That's your argument?

owl905  JeanSC • 18 minutes ago
You should go back and redo elementary school, and get some sensitivity therapy on the side. Slavery wasn't an 'involuntary immigration' - it was life sentence and a death sentence.

John Hackley • 2 hours ago
Well qualified to be Secretary of HUD! He lives in a house, right?

veej7485 • 3 hours ago
ameture hour

Truth_the_Whole_Truth • 2 hours ago
PC police said "illegal immigrant" and "Muslim extremist" were not acceptable so Ben Carson does the same for "slaves" and the PC police do not like it!

relO627  Truth_the_Whole_Truth • 2 hours ago
Yea cause slaves are not immigrants.

guitarman121 • 3 hours ago
That bradd guy sure seems angry about something. These liberals are just ready to pounce on any republican because they are STILL mad that queen hillary lost.

Jennifer Lynch Wheatley  guitarman121 • an hour ago
Guitar man - this is how I see your argument..
Anybody else "but in the article Ben Carson clearly stated that the sky was blue." Guitarman response "no he clearly stated that the sky was red, you just can't comprehend it." Anybody else "here is the article verbatim and his speech - Ben Carson said and I quote "the sky is blue." guitar man you come back and say "no he said it was…" guitarman when are you going to stop gaslighting...you are quite laughable in your predictability.

cupcake6  guitarman121 • an hour ago
lame, you are still obsessed with Hilary huh ? move on

relO627  guitarman121 • 2 hours ago
Is that your guess?

guitarman121 • 3 hours ago
"Ben Carson just referred to *slaves* as "immigrants""

No, he didn't.

relO627  guitarman121 • 2 hours ago
So the willing people on slave ships were the immigrants?

"Slaves were hardworking IMMIGRANTS" Ben Carson's INSANE speech

"This Is Watergate": Trump Accuses Obama Of Wiretapping The Trump Tower

by Tyler Durden

Mar 4, 2017 8:11 AM

President Trump on Saturday morning alleged that his predecessor Barack Obama had “wire-tapped” the Trump Tower in October, before the election: “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” he wrote.

“Is it legal for a sitting President to be "wire tapping" a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!” he added in subsequent tweets. “I'd bet a good lawyer could make a great case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!”

Trump compared Obama's alleged activity to Nixon's bugging of the Watergate hotel. "How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!"

PRESIDENT TRUMP SANK TO NEW LOWS

WEST SACRAMENTO CA (IFS) -- Is it legal for a sitting president to make false accusations on something like this?  This is the same as make a "false" report to the police.

The FBI will have to investigate this claim and make a report to Congress.  As an average citizen, "false" claims could result in going to jail and paying high fines.  

It is also a shame that President Trump skipped Civics classes in school.  He knows nothing about the inter workings of the United States Government and how it operates.  He continues to "drop" bombs and shoot himself in the foot over nothing, just to create a diversion away from the real issues.

Now Congress will demand an investigation into everything that President Trump and his family is involved in.  All tax returns, all bank accounts, all personal data and information will be given to Congress.

This is going to be one whale of a "blood letting" investigation, greater than Watergate could have ever been.  Bigger than the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. 

Even the "worst" fifth grader who can not read or write understands that the President has no power to ask for, order or direct a wiretap of any kind on anyone.  That power is only reserved to the Department of Justice.

What a shame that this president has sank to a new low in human relations and the role of the government to make such false statements and not pay for them.

The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC, also called the FISA Court) is a U.S. federal court established and authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law.

Now if President Obama did request to the FISA Courts for a warrant, then this is further evidence that "something" was going on, and that Candidate Trump's party did in fact have secret meetings with foreign governements and this caused great concern for the Obama administration.

This also confirms that President Trump has painted himself into a "corner" and again has confirmed these rumours as he has "tossed" his appointees under the bus, and he can not get out of the fact that the Logan Act may have been violated. -KHS

Dmitry Rybolovlev's Private airplane arrives in the same places as Trump Campaign

WEST SACRAMENTO CA (IFS)  -- I can not find a story on this.  David Cay Johnston's website - dcreport.org -- is having a hard time coming up.  "Report of Denial" or broken link keeps popping up. This story comes from Rachel Maddow's show on msnbc.  I saw it with my own eyes, but unable to pull up. -KHS

Randi Rhodes Show #YouTubeLive Stream

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A Brief History of Militarization in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

By Nicholas Myers

On August 3rd of 2016, I took a bus with the company Limousines de México north from Ciudad Chihuahua and across the U.S.-Mexico border into El Paso, Texas. For a white guy with a credit card and American Passport, the crossing was fast, comfortable, and benign. It is, of course, no secret that the same journey, for the hundreds of thousands who make clandestine crossings, can literally be a matter of life or death. Despite declining numbers of such crossings in recent years, deaths per hundred thousand migrants, according to a study from the University of Arizona, is on the rise and has been for some time. The study describes several factors driving this humanitarian crisis, among them “border enforcement and securitization practices initially instituted in the mid-1990s that effectively pushed would-be migrants into the most remote, hot, and dry regions of the desert borderlands.”

The increasingly militarized Mexico-U.S. border has gotten some good coverage in U.S. and Latin American media outlets. A quick Google search will generate dozens of articles, but see here and here and here and here and here. Such analyses often connect the phenomenon to changes in U.S. Border Patrol policy in the 1970’s or 1990’s, as border policy became increasingly dictated by counter-narcotics concerns. Additionally, they often point to the increasingly cozy relationship shared by the U.S. domestic security apparatus and the Pentagon in the post-9/11 era. Still others link border militarization with the creation of the U.S. Border Patrol in 1924. Of course all of these phenomena contribute, in various degrees, to the current situation in which border enforcement is characterized by the use of military technology for surveillance and disruption of migrant mobility, often with lethal results.

The historical antecedents of border militarization are part and parcel with my own work as a budding historian of the Borderlands region. At the same time, one of the goals of my research is to de-emphasize the presence of the Mexico-U.S. border in the region’s history. Seen as a place where two Platonic national/cultural identities meet and co-mingle, borderlands are often denied the possibility of being places in their own right. No matter how dynamic and dialectic the relationship with the states that comprise the two (or more) sides of the border, the relationship of periphery (borderland) to centers (states) takes precedence in the very act of labeling a region as “borderland.” Bringing a different kind of lens to bear – thinking about portions of the borderlands as unique places, as centers rather than peripheries – requires that we think about militarization of the area broadly, independent of national boundaries.

The portion of the region I study – the arid and mountainous area roughly composed by the Mexican States of Sonora and Chihuahua and U.S. States of Arizona, New Mexico, and (far Western) Texas – has long existed outside of any meaningful state-level control. For the majority of the region’s history, it was no meeting place of states. It was, in fact, no state place at all. In the sixteenth century, Spanish colonial officials included the area in what they referred to as La Gran Chichimeca, a name derived from the Nahua term Chichimec used to describe the nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples of the North beyond the control of the pre-contact Aztec (Mexica) Empire. Spanish conquerors quickly adopted the term and put it to their own use, discursively aggregating a vast array of ethnic groups into a single category characterized by an inability to become Christians and thus subject to “just war” and enslavement. Subsequent Spanish expansion into the north was thus not a single act of conquest but rather an on-going process of warfare, enslavement, and genocidal depopulation. In this context, war was not an exceptional state but a persistent one, protecting the rich mines of the north and securing the indigenous slave labor needed to operate them.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, as my own archival research has confirmed, the relentless raiding of equestrian indigenous peoples, most notably the Apache and Comanche but also the Navajo and Ute, had begun to unravel colonization efforts in the Internal Provinces of New Spain, a vast area of what is now much of northern Mexico and the western United States. Carlos III, newly crowned Bourbon monarch in Spain, sought to remedy the situation via a new set of military governors that would report directly to the crown. Drawing on a plan first proposed by the Marquis de Rubí and later carried out by Comandante General Teodoro de Croix, the colonial government worked to expand and rearrange a system of military forts known as Presidios in such a way as to form a line that would restrict the north-south mobility of indigenous raiders and protect the Spanish settlements and mines below. The presidial line, composed of military garrisons placed at a strategic distance from one another on an east-west axis, arguably formed the first border in the region. This border, however, existed entirely within the bounds of territory claimed by the Spanish Empire. The presidial line was a rampart, a military disruption of mobility within the region. Newly constructed and well-funded presidios quickly became centers of population (today’s twin cities of El Paso and Juarez were, for example, the site of a presidio). Not only were civilians enticed to move closer by security and economic opportunity, but the service of presidial soldiers was often rewarded with land grants in the area. Collections of eighteenth-century presidial records are awash with soldier’s and former soldier’s petitions for land as compensation for military service. Within the Provincias Internas, military and civilian government had become one and the same. Colonial military presence actively regulated mobility, and military service was often inscribed into property and thus into the very land itself!

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Did President Trump cause the death of Chief Petty Officer Owens?

WEST SACRAMENTO CA (IFS) -- The timeline is indisputable.  President Trump signs the Executive Deportation Order that caused American Cooperatives in Yemen to be denied entry into the United States, and because of this, they gave up the secret mission and that's when Seal Team Six was ambushed hours later.  Bad timing?  You bet.  Was this preventable? You bet again.  The mission should have been first, then the Executive Order after the mission.

The president spoke of Chief Petty Officer Owens as a "pal" or "buddy" of his, using his first name and disregarding his professional rank and position.  I don't believe the president has ever met with Petty Officer Owens -- ever in his life. - KHS

By The Independent News, UK

William Owens’ son, William “Ryan” Owens, was killed on 29 January in a special forces raid on an al-Qaeda base – the first US serviceman to die in combat under the Trump administration. 

The mission had not been signed off by Barack Obama but Mr Trump approved the plan days after taking office. 

Mr Owens said he had rejected an invitation to meet the President when Mr Trump travelled to Delaware to be present for the transfer of Ryan’s remains. In addition to the death of the Seal, 20 civilians were killed in the attack, along with 14 al-Qaeda militants. Despite this, the White House claimed the mission was a success.

“I told them I didn't want to make a scene about it, but my conscience wouldn't let me talk to him”, Mr Owens told The Miami Herald.

The father, who served in the military himself, called for a full investigation into the circumstances that led to his son’s death. 

"Why at this time did there have to be this stupid mission when it wasn't even barely a week into his administration?”, he said. “Why?

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said three reviews of the raid will be carried out by the US Department of Defense. One will investigate Mr Owens’ death, another will look into the killing of civilians and the third will probe the loss of a helicopter during the mission.

Mr Spicer also repeated his claims that the mission “achieved its objectives” and “was successful in helping prevent a future attack or attacks on this nation".

"We're very comfortable with how the mission was executed and we'll let the Department of Defense go through that review process and then see where that leads us," he said

“For two years prior, there were no boots on the ground in Yemen — everything was missiles and drones — because there was not a target worth one American life. Now, all of a sudden we had to make this grand display?"

"Don't hide behind my son's death to prevent an investigation," he added.

American Beauty - To Kenny, Yours, Jayne Mansfield

WEST SACRAMENTO CA (IFS) -- Growing up in the 1950's and 1960's, as a young man, my idols from the movies and into my real life were the lovely ladies by the names of Jayne Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe.  They were everywhere.  Not to exclude Jane Russell and many many other great American Beauties of that era.  

What America saw in beauty was only blondes, platinum blondes and curvy ladies with small waists. They were the idea of the motion picture industry that saw nothing else.  In rebroadcasting "The Wayward Bus" with Mansfield, Joan Collins and the bevy of stars on the screen, it left nothing to the imagination to any one, including, a cheating husband with a daughter and false teeth to  swoon over the straight piecing breasts that stuck out like torpedoes to puncture the eyes and minds of the average Joe.

I was one of those "Average Joes."  I was still a "kid" back then.  But I was being broom to carry on a great American male tradition.  And I was part of that hypnotic effect put on men from real women who wanted to get ahead in a man's world.  

Jayne Mansfield by far was one of the smartest "Self-promoted artist of all time" in her era.  She understood big breast and blonde hair, and teased the movie men -- to no end.  Today, she would be on the same playing field as with "Keeping Up With The Kardashians",  and the rest of following heard.

The movies have changed very little.  Even guys of color with lots of money who produce motion pictures, still manage to instill the ladies of that era into our current lives and project them upon the silver screen in our minds.  The Mansfields, Monroes, Lombards, Russells of those bygone years still effect each and everyone of us personally to this day.  

These ladies live on -- in the likes of Hallie Berry and eye candy for the "Average Joe" to lose his mind on.   I personally thank the gods of beauty and my humble chance to envision one hour of my life with anyone of these great ladies of American Beauty in all their colors, sizes, shades and splendid glory.  I love you all.  Now let me replace my dental plates back into my mouth, as I was breathing to deep and hard. -KHS 

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Dual US and Somalia citizen elected president of Somalia

Grand Island man elected president of Somalia

Mohamed A. Mohamed, a Grand Island resident and former prime minister of Somalia, has been elected president of the African country. (Buffalo News file photo)

By Jane Kwiatkowski Radlich

Published Wed, Feb 8, 2017

A Grand Island man was elected president of Somalia today in that war-torn African country's first presidential election in decades.

Mohamed A. Mohamed, 54, a former prime minister of Somalia who worked at the state Department of Transportation office in Buffalo, was picked to be the country's president by its Parliament, the Associated Press reported.

Mohamed beat nearly two dozen candidates, including the incumbent president to win the job.

A former prime minister who holds dual Somali-U.S. citizenship has been declared Somalia's new president. 

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Voting started Wednesday in Somalia's groundbreaking presidential election amid a security lockdown that has closed the capital's international airport.

"This is an historic opportunity for the people of Somalia who finally have a leader who will put their needs and priorities first," said Joel Giambra, the former Erie County executive and close friend of Mohamed.

"His objective will be to establish peace and prosperity inside his homeland by aggressively going after terrorists. This is an opportunity for our new president to collaborate with a new world leader who happens to be from Grand Island."

Mohamed has been campaigning in Somalia for nearly a year, said Intisar Mohamed, his daughter who lives on Grand Island.

Mohamed, the former prime minister of Somalia and founder of the Tayo political party, was one of two finalists considered by the Parliament,  The other finalist was Somalia's incumbent president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.

Somalia, a country wracked by terrorism for years, is one of the seven predominantly Muslim countries from which President Trump barred all travel in an executive order issued Jan. 27.

"This could have a big impact on the fight against terrorism," Giambra said of the Somali election. "You could have a new president in Somalia and a new president in Washington and they happen to be from the same state."

Mohamed met Giambra while working on the former county executive's campaign in 1999. In 2000, when Giambra took office Mohamed took a job with the county working on affirmative action compliance.

"It's all pretty cool," said Giambra. "Here's a guy with a family on Grand Island. He has dual citizenship. When he was prime minister, he brought stability. He started paying policemen."

Mohamed has unfinished business in his struggling homeland where the election has been postponed four times since November, said his daughter.

"He loves his country," said Intisar Mohamed, who is 24. "At the end of the day that's where he was born."

Born in Mogadishu, Mohamed worked for Somalia's ministry of foreign affairs in the mid '80s. In 1985 he was transferred to Washington and worked in the Somalian embassy for four years.

After applying for asylum, his daughter said he moved to Buffalo because it has a large Somali refugee community.

Mohamed was working for the state DOT in Buffalo when he met briefly with Somalia's President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed in New York in 2010, according to a report in The Buffalo News. Later that year he was tapped by Ahmed to be prime minister of Somalia. He served for eight months.

"After so many years of turmoil, he served at a time when the people of Somalia lost hope," said his daughter. "The people were hanging by a thread. He made sure the foundation was proper."

Today, Mohamed's campaign slogan -- Dalka Danta Dadka (the land, the needs, the people) -- has resonated with many Somalis, said Intisar Mohamed, who monitors social media to track her father's campaign.

Today's vote in Somalia was not a popular vote, she noted. Parliament members select the president based on the sentiment of their constituents.

After the first Parliament vote tally, incumbent president Mohamud held a slim lead over Mohamed, 88-72. Two runners-up -- a former president and current prime minister -- finished with 49 and 37 respectively.

In a runoff, the Parliament chose Mohamed as president.

With Somalia eight hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, Mohamed's family and friends remained fixed on the web.

"The challenged he faces are mammoth," said Giambra, but he's well-equipped to deal with them with the U.S. as an ally."

SmithBits Radio for February 7- 2017

Listen to "SmithBits Rant and Rave Radio for February 7 - 2017" on Spreaker.

Torture Memos author John Yoo says Trump has gone too far

BY MALLORY SHELBOURNE - 02/06/17 08:32 AM EST

John Yoo, a former Justice Department attorney known for writing legal memorandums on enhanced interrogation tactics known as the Torture Memos, says President Trump has gone too far in his use of executive power.

In a New York Times op-ed on Monday, Yoo argues that Trump's use of executive power is worrisome.

“He should understand the Constitution’s grant of executive power,” Yoo wrote, referencing Alexander Hamilton, who co-wrote the Federalist Papers, a series of essays on the Constitution.

“He should share Hamilton’s vision of an energetic president leading the executive branch in a unified direction, rather than viewing the government as the enemy. He should realize that the Constitution channels the president toward protecting the nation from foreign threats, while cooperating with Congress on matters at home.”

Yoo said Trump, as commander in chief, does not have the constitutional authority to order the construction of a border wall, nor does he have the power to terminate trade deals negotiated by Congress, like the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Yoo said that Trump’s executive order imposing a temporary ban on nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries entering the United States “falls within the law,” but noted reports that Trump had originally sought a “Muslim ban.” Yoo said such an order would “violate the Constitution’s protection for freedom of religion or its prohibition on the state establishment of religion.”

“Had Mr. Trump taken advantage of the resources of the executive branch as a whole, not just a few White House advisers, he would not have rushed out an ill-conceived policy made vulnerable to judicial challenge,” he wrote.

Senator Chuck Schumer: Betsy DeVos is "Least Qualified" of Trump Appointees

FEBRUARY 6, 2017 | CLIP OF SENATE SESSION

Senator Chuck Schumer: Betsy DeVos is "Least Qualified" of Trump Appointees Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) calls on his Republican colleagues to oppose Betsy DeVos' nomination to be Education secretary, saying, "Now is the time to put country before party." He accuses DeVos of conflicts of interest, criticizes her views on public schools, and questions her expertise about education policy.