Tag: Extremism

Grand Valley Business Times repels Democratic business owners

Placard proposed to be displayed by businesses that advertise in the Business Times.

The Grand Valley Business Times (GVBT) has long been a source of business news in Mesa County, usually focusing on helpful items like what new businesses are moving in, the newest  soups at Zoup, and which authors will be appearing at the downtown bookstores. In his latest issue, though, the paper’s owner, Craig Hall, used his editorial column to denigrate and insult Democratic and progressive business owners in the valley, and criticize women who seek to control their own reproductive destiny.

The Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce takes off it’s fig leaf

Grand Valley Drainage District pipe choked with weeds. (Photo credit: GVDD)

If there is a shred of doubt left that the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce exists only to promote it’s own political ideology, it dispelled that notion today with an ad in the Daily Sentinel endorsing the Grand Valley Drainage District (GVDD) Board candidate notable for being the remarkably far less qualified person for the seat.

The Chamber endorsed the less-qualified candidate for one reason only: she opposes the fee imposed by the GVDD in 2016 to raise funds for crucial improvements needed to the Grand Valley’s stormwater drainage system. Residents pay an extra $3/month. The fees assessed to businesses are higher because their larger “big box” buildings and paved parking lots create far more polluted stormwater runoff than homes, burdening the valley’s drainage system more than residences do. The drainage system, designed in 1915 primarily to collect agricultural seep from fields, is already in bad shape and needs improvement and expansion to cope with the valley’s change from primarily a rural/agricultural area into an urban area. If runoff exceeds the amount of drainage capacity we have, the result will be flooding, property damage and damage to other important infrastructure, like roads.

Milo Yiannopoulos’s Grand Junction show cancelled

Milo Yiannopoulos

Grand Junction has been spared a potentially embarrassing and costly problem. A show by white supremacist provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos scheduled for April 14th at an undisclosed location in Grand Junction has been cancelled. The website for the event, “A Night with Milo, Grand Junction” says tickets to the Grand Junction event are no longer on sale. No more details are provided. The tickets had been priced at $40-$109 — expensive for any event in Grand Junction. Yiannopoulos was also supposed to appear in Las Vegas the night before the Grand Junction event, but that appearance has also apparently been cancelled.

Great news, and another win for Grand Junction’s growing liberal/progressive community.

 

How the President’s racism affects the western slope

President Donald Trump spent years spreading the racist lie that President Obama was born in Kenya. He’s publicly described Mexicans as rapists, called for a “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” said immigrants from Haiti “all have AIDS,” used the gang MS-13 to disparage all immigrants and called African countries “shitholes.”

Sad to say, but there are people in our own community who actually believe these things, and worse, and Trump is empowering them to more freely express their racism and xenophobia.

It doesn’t take, “like, a genius” to understand there is nothing adorable about being a “Deplorable”

 

Many ardent Trump supporters happily call themselves “deplorable,” making fun of a point Hillary Clinton tried to make during her 2016 campaign that many Trump supporters are racist, sexist, xenophobic and homophobic.

Members of Trump’s “Deplorable” contingents across the country, including those locally, typically deny they are any of these things, yet the Facebook pages of “Deplorables” groups (Trump supporters across the country who have personally labeled themselves “Deplorables”) do in fact reveal a strong component of sexist, racist, xenophobic and homophobic thought runs within these groups.

Trump accidentally admits Republicans deceptively sold the tax bill to the country

From the Washington Post, December 20, 2017:


To President Donald Trump: “We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country — the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms, and institutions; the flagrant disregard for truth or decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have all been elected to serve.” — Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ)

Trump just admitted the GOP’s tax cuts were deceptively sold

 December 20

President Trump was so excited about passing his first major piece of legislation Wednesday that he blurted out that the Republican Party had misrepresented the entire bill, handing Democrats some potentially troublesome talking points for the 2018 midterm elections.

Speaking at the White House just before the House prepared to sign off on the tax-cuts bill one last time, Trump reveled extensively in his win before turning things over to Vice President Pence to heap praise upon him continuously for a few minutes. It was a thoroughly unique spectacle, even as victory dances and Trump Cabinet meetings go.

But along the way, Trump basically admitted that the GOP’s talking points on the bill weren’t exactly honest in two major ways.

While talking about the corporate tax rate being cut from 35 percent to 21 percent, Trump said, “That’s probably the biggest factor in our plan.”

Trump’s shocking U.S. District Court nominees


Three of President Donald Trump’s nominees for U.S. District Court judgeships have gone down in flames in the last few days for reasons that make Americans scratch their heads about how they could ever have been nominated to in the first place.

Trump’s nominee for U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, Matthew Spencer Petersen, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, December 14, 2017 and was forced to admit he had never tried a single case in any court of law, and had never filed a single motion or conducted even one deposition on his own over the course of his entire legal career. He was also stunningly unable to answer even the most basic questions about legal procedures common to federal courts.

Rep. Scott Tipton just voted to end many of your tax deductions

Colorado House Rep. Scott Tipton

Republican western slope House Representative Scott Tipton just voted to increase the national debt by more than a trillion dollars and alter the federal tax code in ways that will likely create hardship for many of his constituents. Every Democrat and thirteen Republican House members voted against the bill, but Tipton wasn’t one of them. The vote was a relatively close 226 in favor to 205 against.

Tipton voted to pass HR-1, the Republican “tax reform” bill which ends many of the deductions people have long used to help reduce their taxable income. Here are some of the things the bill will do:

Read the fine print: Republican “tax reform” bill injects religious dogma into the tax code

You don’t typically think of a tax reform bill as a vehicle to push a religious agenda onto the rest of the country, but Trump’s “tax reform” bill does exactly that.

Buried deep inside the Republicans’ proposed “tax reform” bill is a provision conferring rights on “unborn children,” which the bill defines as “a child in utero…a member of the species Homo Sapiens, at any stage of development.” The provision appears on page 93 of the 429-page bill, in a section amending the rules on “529 plans,” which are tax-free investment accounts that allow families to save for a child’s college education. People have long been able to set up 529 plans for children that don’t yet exist, but changing the wording of the law intentionally enshrines recognition of the unborn into federal law, something anti-abortion activists and supporters of fetal “personhood” have long sought to do.

Trump’s tax reform bill is full of tricks

AZ Senator Jeff Flake’s bombshell speech about Republicans’ “complicity in this alarming and dangerous state of affairs” with Trump as U.S. President

Arizona Senator Jeff Flake: “Leadership does not knowingly encourage or feed ugly and debased appetites in us.”(Photo: Washington Times)

Arizona’s Republican Senator Jeff Flake made a hair-raising speech on the Senate floor today, announcing he will not run for re-election and declaring he “will no longer be complicit or silent” in the face of President Trump’s “reckless, outrageous and undignified” behavior.

Now, ten months into his presidency, Trump has shown stalwarts of his own political party as well as the rest of the nation that he is unfit to lead the country.

The question now is, what can we do about it?

Following is the full text of Senator Flake’s bombshell speech:

Local Public Discussion Tonight about Charlottesville, Racism and the Difficulties Local Minorities Face, Hosted by Black Lives Matter GJ

Local KKK flier

Are you disgusted and distressed with Donald Trump putting neo-Nazi hate groups on the same moral footing as the people opposing them? Disgusted with the outright bigotry being manifested in our country?

Many local residents are.

As more fliers promoting the KKK turn up around the Grand Valley, racist supremacists cause violence and death in Charlottesville and hate is increasingly manifested more freely even right here in Mesa County, Black Lives Matter-Grand Junction is opening up its monthly meeting to everyone tonight so citizens can air their thoughts on the recent acts of hatred being displayed in Charlottesville and even in our own town.

Trump tells murderous Filipino President Duterte he’s “doing an unbelievable job on the drug problem” in his country


A recently-released confidential transcript of an April, 2017 phone call from President Donald Trump to Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte reveals Trump praised Duterte, telling him he’s been “doing an unbelievable job on the drug problem” in his country.

President Duterte has had death squads gun down approximately 7,000 Filipino citizens in the streets of his country since June, 2016, in a systematic program of extrajudicial killings. Often the killers, many of whom reportedly received compensation for each person they killed, plant evidence to try to justify the killings.

Reality Check: Does Your Political Affiliation Match Your Best Interests?

Here’s a question for Mesa County workers:

When was the last time your political party helped make your life better?

If you can’t think of anything, there’s a reason.

The dominant political party in our area has long been the Republican Party, but if you work for a salary or hourly wage, or have a small business, are registered as a Republican and think the Republican party has your best interests at heart, think again.

Trump Appoints White Nationalist, Anti-Feminist Steve Bannon as “Chief Strategist”

Article published by Breitbart News that encourages fat-shaming of women, the way Trump did to the former Miss Universe, Alicia Machado

Article published by Breitbart News that encourages fat-shaming of women, the way Trump did to the former Miss Universe, Alicia Machado

President Obama is trying to calm the fears of people abroad about a Trump presidency, while here at home Trump is stoking public fears of his presidency by his appointment of Steve Bannon a his “chief strategist.”

Who is Steve Bannon?

You might want to sit down before you read this.

Steve Bannon is the executive chairman of Breitbart News, a far right wing commentary website known for championing views of the “alt-right,” a white supremacist fringe ideology that has raised alarm bells for its chest-pounding, misogynistic, race-baiting, and anti-Muslim positions. Breitbart and the so-called alt-Right oppose multiculturalism, immigration, feminism and have a strong disdain for diversity. Breitbart News has actually carried articles with headlines saying “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy,” “The Solution to Online ‘Harassment’ Is Simple: Women Should Log Off,” “There’s No Hiring Bias Against Women in Tech, They Just Suck at Interviews,” and “Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew.”

Petition Asks the Electoral College to Make Clinton President

Donald Trump mocks a disabled reporter: now school children are doing the same

Donald Trump mocks a disabled reporter; now school children are doing the same

A Change.org petition is circulating asking the Electoral College to make Hillary Clinton president. It has gotten 4.36 million signers so far, and it’s aiming to get 4.5 million. The petition reflects the fears of at least half the country over Donald Trump’s apparent win in the November 8 election.

Trump’s win in the electoral college unleashed an unprecedented wave of racial and ethnic intimidation across the country, with perpetrators emboldened by Trump’s racially and ethnically-charged campaign, which won him an endorsement by the KKK.

Focus on the Bright Spots in the Election

sunrise-sunset-sun-calculatorHalf the country woke up this morning despondent, demoralized and in utter dread of what a Trump presidency will mean to this country. We’ve never had a president before who confessed on video to sexually assaulting women and who is endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan. We’re about to find out what that’s like, but everyone — including conservatives — might end up being surprised by what Trump will actually do while he’s in office, since he earned a 76 to a 91% lie rate for everything he said while on the campaign trail. The New York Times even dubbed him “Lord of the Lies.” If it was the right wing’s goal to throw a molotov cocktail into the government of the country they supposedly love so much, then they succeeded.

CO U.S. Senate Candidate Darryl Glenn: Pregnancy Resulting from Rape is a “Gift from God”

Colorado’s Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, Darryl Glenn, addressed a group of people in Jefferson County in 2015, telling them that pregnancy resulting from a rape is a “gift from God.”

Glenn is running against Democrat incumbent Michael Bennet.

Donald Trump Jr. to Appear in Grand Junction

screen-shot-2016-09-21-at-3-22-55-pm

Donald Trump Jr. poses with an elephant he killed. He holds the hacked-off tail of the elephant in his left hand.

leopardtrump

Donald Trump’s sons pose with a leopard they killed on a trophy hunt.

Tomorrow evening at 6 p.m. Donald Trump Jr. will appear in Grand Junction at the Mesa County Fairgrounds, nominally to talk to sportsmen.

Donald Jr. likes to kill rare and endangered animals in expensive trophy hunts overseas. He is supposed to be speaking about “wildlife conservation.”

Anyone who can stand to be in the presence of a human being like this, or who can manage to do it without losing their stomach, is invited to attend.