Black Lives Matter

You know his response is going to be "Your to stupid to get it, so I'm done here." Or, "Your skull is to thick to understand what is really happening." Don't forget that he will throw some sort of personal jab into the mix and then color everyone who would disagree with his "statements" as bigots/racists.

But Bill, we all know that Vox Media is precisely the sort of conservative propaganda arm of the GOP that would immediately jump in to protect Republican legislators accused of being KKK members. Founders Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas (along with the sports nerd Bleszinski) are well known right-wing activists who can't be trusted to ever tell the truth.

(To avoid a misunderstanding such as ones we've had in the past, with the above I am being sarcastic and my sarcasm is not directed towards you, but towards those who desperately want to believe the KKK accusations are true)

I wonder if the Daily Kos pulled it's story on this fraudulent revelation before or after this piece came out on Vox Technology.

I do get under your skin, don't I.

I think I'll allow bobsal to determine if my proposal is acceptable.

I see you understand how izzy operates.

You know I do not have a high opinion of Republicans myself but come on with the very idea that US senators of any party would be members of the KKK!

Yes the KKK had US senators as members in my grandfather days and was a political power in the south and even have fairly large rallies in my family northern home state of PA.

Their membership now is tiny however and getting smaller all the time.

From my reading a rough guess at the KKK current total membership in a nation of 350 millions is 5000 and at that they are broken up into small groups with no longer a central control of any kind.

Don't be ridiculous, I would never miss the apostrophe out like that or misspell a three letter word. I don't use stupid as an insult only as an observation. I don't particularly like Finn, but I don't think he's stupid, he's way too sneaky for that. You, as evidenced by the above quotation, clearly are very stupid indeed.

We are all lucky that OJ in his murder trial indeed got a jury of his "peers" and was found not guilt as a result as the gloves did not fit.

Strangely being on a jury and convicting anyone no matter the color of their skin is not enjoyable in any way.

Just a few weeks ago I was on a jury that ended up convicting a Latin gentleman on attempted murder charges by way of a knifing.

A momentary and pointless impulse resulted in the victim baring a large scare and severe medical effects for the rest of his life and due to the defendant age he is likely not to see freedom again.

Somehow I do not see juries on the whole not being as fair as possible to defendants no matter the color of their skin or the culture they come from as it is terrible taking someone freedom away.

Figures.

Well, should we learn that one or more of these Republicans is or was a member of the KKK, we can be certain that our progressive friends will be as forgiving of them as they were of the Grand Old Man of the Senate, Robert Carlyle Byrd of West Virginia who, while in his 20's, recruited 150 of his friends and associates to establish a brand spanking new chapter of the Klan in Sophia, West Virginia. Ever a leader of men, Senator Byrd won election to the highly esteemed position of Exalted Cyclops

Exalted Cyclops Byrd would later claim that he joined the Klan because it offered excitement and was anti-communist. He, infamously, wrote in a letter to the segregationist Democrat Senator of Mississippi, Theodore G. Bilbo:



He always did have a flowery way with words.

I'm sure he found terrorizing and assaulting race mongrels to be quite exciting.

In 1946, Byrd wrote a letter to a Grand Wizard stating, "The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the nation." However, in 1952, just before running for a seat in the House, the former Exalted Wizard announced that he had lost interest in the Klan after about a year, had stopped paying his dues, and dropped his membership. Maybe his chapter had run all of the blackest specimens of the wild out of Sophia and thus the role was no longer exiting. No mention, at the time, though of denouncing the Klan's ideology or activities.

It wasn't until some 30 years had passed that he decided the KKK might not actually be needed in the US. Apparently, it took the death of his grandson in an auto accident to cause him to realize that negro parents loved their children as much as he loved his.

While Democrats, in more recent years, were busy lionizing Byrd as the supreme parliamentarian of the US Senate they seemed to forgive and forget that he had filibustered and voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

It's of interest to note as well that he is the only US Senator to have voted against the appointments of both Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas to the US Supreme Court. Now we all know, thanks to Anita Hill and Teddy Kennedy, that Thomas may indeed have been a throwback to the darkest specimen of the wilds, but Marshall? Apparently, Byrd thought Marshall may have, at one time, been a commie so his opposition to Marshall's appointment, obviously, had nothing to do with the man's skin color. Ironically, Byrd claimed his opposition to Thomas was, in part, due to his comment about the hearings being a high-tech lynching of an uppity black. The former Exalted Cyclops was offended, I tell you offended, that Judge Thomas had the low character to inject racism into the hearing. Byrd viewed the comment as a "diversionary tactic" and said "I thought we were past that stage."

Apparently, you can take the Exalted Cyclops out of the Klan, but you can't take the Klan out of the Exalted Cyclops, because in a 2001 interview Byrd, told Tony Snow:



The Dean of the Senate died in 2010 at the age of 92 and at his funeral was eulogized by President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and former President Bill Clinton.

If such an array of esteemed Democrats (one, himself a black man) could not only find it in their hearts to forgive the former Exalted Cyclops but to fill the sunny afternoon air of Charleston, WV with fine words and high praise for the Klansman, surely no Democrat will blink an eye or utter a word should the allegations against any of these four Republicans prove to be true.

A concluding note of interest is that in the fine tradition of the US Senate, Byrd's surviving family members were generously paid $193,400, the amount of salary he would have earned as a Senator in the following year. Of course the six figure sum wasn't amassed through the personal donations of his fellow Senators, or fellow Democrats, the Democrat controlled Congress passed an appropriation bill specifically crafted for the purpose. After all, they knew that the American people, including the roughly 13% who are race mongrels and indeterminate percentage who are "white niggers" would want their tax dollars to go the onetime Exalted Cyclops' family.

Primary source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Byrd#Ku_Klux_Klan

I really hate to ask this question, but would you have had any problem with Robert Byrd if he had joined the Republican Party? (Politics frequently override principle. Here's a personal example I'm not proud of: In November of 1970 when I was quite partisan as a liberal, I was relieved to see Senator Ted Kennedy reelected despite the terrible Chappaquiddick scandal. I was wrong. He should have been prosecuted for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne.) Were Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms (not to mention many others) any better? By the way, in 1971 Republican President Nixon would have appointed Byrd to the Supreme Court; but Democratic Senators said they would vigorously oppose his nomination. In 1991 when David Duke ran for Governor of Louisiana, he received the majority -- yes, the majority -- of the white Republican vote. What does that say about your party?

You're saying the 1964 Civil Rights Act shouldn't have been opposed? Well, Ronald Reagan, William Buckley and the entire political conservative movement opposed civil rights legislation and the civil rights movement. Jim Crow was a conservative social institution, and the Ku Klux Klan was a conservative group. Today conservatives are denying their own record regarding civil rights in the 1950s and the '60s.

I'm not being partisan here. I even voted for McCain in 2008, but now I'm a nonvoter. I'd have to violate my conscience to vote for candidates of either party now. (It doesn't matter anyway because I live in a one-party state -- Texas, the reddest of the red.) The point is that I'm just a tired, disillusioned 65-year-old guy who's not playing politics anymore. IMO both parties have become way too extreme. The recent excesses of the liberals provoke an extreme reaction from the other side, and so it goes.

I learned about Robert Byrd's odious past when I finally became interested in national politics at the late age of 19. Had I lived in West Virginia, I would have voted against him every time he was up for reelection. I wouldn't have cared if he was a Democrat or a Republican.

I really hate to ask this question, but why are we trying to drive by watching the rearview mirror by talking about Robert Byrd? This is as bad as the black guy in the hood who claims that he cant do anything because is great great great grandparents were cotton picking slaves.

You have a point. But if Finn hadn't brought up Byrd, I wouldn't have posted.

Besides, I'm just a nobody posting in a powerless forum.

epigenesis

And it has been 35 years since the last Klan Lynching, and that was only two guys so it was not really a Klan thing...I think we can move on from our fear of the KKK.

So you're saying that if someone like that can join the Democrat party, the very notion that American politics has a Left wing is absurd. That's why your Conservative Media is always complaining about its Liberal bias.

Your point is well taken.

Bullshit.

Ku Klux Klan member executed over 1998 Texas murder
Agence France-Presse
Agence France-Presse
21 Sep 2011 at 20:50 ET
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WASHINGTON — Lawrence Brewer, a 44-year-old white man affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, was executed Wednesday for the racially-motivated murder of a disabled black man in 1998, prison officials said.

Brewer was pronounced dead at 6:21 pm local time, 10 minutes after receiving a lethal injection charged at Texas’ Huntsville Prison.

His execution had been overshadowed by the controversy raging around the execution of another death row inmate in Georgia, Troy Davis, who appealed multiple times and whose case prompted international outrage.

Even Gloria Rubac of activist group the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement said Brewer was “not a sympathetic person.”

Commenting on the brutal 1998 murder of 49-year-old James Byrd, Brewer told US media: “As far as any regrets, no, I have no regrets… I’d do it all over again, to tell you the truth.”

Brewer and two co-defendants were convicted of torturing and killing the disabled victim by dragging him behind their truck, and later “leaving his decapitated and dismembered body to be found the following day by citizens and law enforcement officials,” Texas officials said.


Texas executes man in 1998 dragging death [Updated]
September 21, 2011 | 4:32 pm

Texas execution

One of three people convicted in the 1998 dragging death of a black man in Jasper, Texas, was executed Wednesday night for his part in the slaying, the Associated Press has reported.

[Updated 4:41 p.m.: Earlier reports said the execution was scheduled.]

The racially motivated killing of James Byrd Jr. stunned the nation, sparking protests, inspiring the movie "Jasper, Texas," and leading to state and federal hate-crime legislation.

One of Byrd's sisters planned to be in Huntsville, Texas, for the execution; another planned to hold a prayer vigil in Jasper, according to the Beaumont Enterprise.

The night he was killed, Byrd had accepted a ride home from a white man he knew, Shawn Berry, then 24, and two of Berry's friends -- John King, then 23, and Lawrence Brewer, then 31. King and Brewer were later identified as white supremacists.

Brewer, now 44, was the one scheduled for execution.

Instead of taking Byrd home, the men drove him down a remote county road, beat him unconscious, urinated on his body, chained him by his ankles to the truck and dragged him for three miles. When the truck made a hard turn at a bend in the road, Byrd's head struck a cement culvert and he was decapitated. The three men then dumped his remains in front of an African American cemetery and went to a barbecue.

The three were later tried and convicted of Byrd's murder. Brewer and King received the death penalty, while Berry was sentenced to life in prison. King is appealing his sentence, but Brewer had no appeals pending late Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the Texas attorney general's office told The Times.

In a July interview with Beaumont's KFDM-TV, the first Brewer has granted since he was convicted in 1999, he admitted driving the truck but said he was not responsible for killing Byrd.

"I know in my heart I participated in assaulting him, but I had nothing to do with the killing as far as dragging him or driving the truck or anything," Brewer said.
Brewer told KFDM that he was willing to die.

"I'm for the death penalty. I feel that if you take a life you should pay for it by taking your own life if you're actually guilty of taking a life," Brewer said.

He also said that for him, the death penalty will be a relief.

"This is a good out for me," he said. "I don't want a life sentence, period, with or without parole. I wouldn't be happy with that."
RELATED:

Dragging death haunts quiet Texas town

Jasper sheriff battled ghosts of East Texas

Crime and context: Texas atrocity raises questions for all Americans

-- Molly Hennessy-Fiske in Houston
Photos: James Byrd Jr., left, in a 1997 family photo. Lawrence Brewer, right, one of three men convicted of Byrd's death. Credit: Associated Press

An on the other hand.........

Police Are Three Times More Likely to Kill a Black Person Than a White One — When Will the Madness Stop?

America is years away from a level playing field when it comes to racial equality.
By Chris Sosa / Care2
November 3, 2015

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Swiss police cordon off the site of a shooting in Wilderswil, southeast of Bern, on November 3, 2014

We’ve all seen the histrionic social media posts attempting to denigrate Black Lives Matter and racial equality efforts by claiming whites are the "real" victims. While the constant barrage of awful police brutality incidents involving Black Americans would seem to refute this, anti-Black conservatives often claim to have the stats on their side. Fox News has gone so far as to suggest that Black Lives Matter is the real culprit, suggesting it's a "murder movement" and a "hate group."
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Let’s take a look at what the actual numbers show. First of all, the memes are incorrect by default. We actually have no idea what the exact number of people who die at the hands of police each year is. The data we’re seeing is a subjective estimation based upon volunteer reporting, because we don’t actually keep accurate statistics for these deaths. What we do know is that the number we're getting is too low.
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However, using the flawed data we do have, we can work with those statistics to attempt getting an idea about the racial percentages. Using numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Politifiact highlights: “Over the span of more than a decade, 2,151 whites died by being shot by police compared to 1,130 blacks."

By now, your far-right friends may just throw up their hands and go, “Well, that settled it!” But, unfortunately for them, these stats actually prove that advocates against racial injustice are clearly correct.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the country is 77 percent white (62 percent if you remove white Latinos) and only 13 percent Black. Despite a lack of easy, concrete data on the issue, Politifact finds through its analysis of existing data that police are around three times more likely to kill a Black person than a white one.

The disparity doesn’t end with police killings. Black Americans face a consistently racist outcome in any interaction with the criminal justice system. Black folks are thrown into jail at roughly six times the rate white people are incarcerated. They're imprisoned at 10 times the rate of whites for drug offenses. And Black individuals convicted of crimes are left in prison for nonviolent offenses almost as long as whites are for actual violent offenses.

Despite the equivocation of white supremacists who try to conceal the real experiences of Black Americans, the numbers are devastating.

We have a responsibility to correct the record when anyone tries to make the preposterous claim that white Americans are somehow victimized as a group in any way. Being Black in America is demonstrably dangerous.

While a needed uprising against systemic racism is taking place, we have many years of work to do before any claim can be made that the U.S. operates on a level racial playing field.