Archive for July, 2017

Black Minister Leaves Southern Baptist Convention Over Its Support of Trump, Alt-Right – Atlanta Black Star

Minister Lawrence Ware has served the Southern Baptist Convention for nearly 10 years. (Image courtesy of Oklahoma State University).

In a scathing open letter published in The New York Times this week, an African-American minister announced his departure from the Southern Baptist Convention over the churchs reluctance to denounce white supremacy and its outward support of President Donald Trump.

Lawrence Ware, who serves asco-director of the Center for Africana Studies at Oklahoma State University and has been an ordained minister at the convention for nearly a decade, renounced his denomination Tuesday, July 17, noting that while it wasnt an easy decision, it was a necessary one.

As a Black scholar of race and a minister whos committed to social justice, I can no longer be a part of an organization that is complicit in the disturbing rise of the so-called alt-right, whose members support the abhorrent policies of Donald Trump and whose troubling racial history and current actions reveal a deep commitment to white supremacy, Ware wrote.

He explained that his decision was ultimately spurred by an event earlier this year when a prominent Black pastor from Arlington, Texas, introduced a resolution at the groups annual convention denouncing the white supremacist and alt-right movements. Conference leaders initially refused to hear the resolution but later approved a revised version that excluded a denunciation of the curse of Ham theory and added details of all the good Southern Baptists have done for Black people and nonwhites.

Ware argued that the resolution shouldve been immediately adopted, but it wasnt.

A contingent of predominately white, old-guard members refused to take the resolution seriously, even while many Black and progressive clergy members advocated its adoption, he wrote. It wasnt until chaos ensued that a reworded resolution vowing to decry every form of racism, including alt-right white supremacy, as antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ was adopted.

Among other things, Ware highlighted the fact that over 70 percent of white evangelicals, many of whom are Southern Baptists, approve of President Trumps job performance. He also touched on the churchs history of pro-slavery attitudes and its outward support of segregation during the civil rights movement.

Though the church issued a formal apology for its support of slavery in 1995, Ware insisted that enough still hasnt been done to address the institution of white supremacy within the SBC. He then called out several churches for remaining silent about Trump and the rise of the alt-right while being hostile toward social justice movements like Black Lives Matter.

I love the church, but I love Black people more, Ware concluded. Black lives matter to me.I am not confident that they matter to the Southern Baptist Convention.

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Black Minister Leaves Southern Baptist Convention Over Its Support of Trump, Alt-Right - Atlanta Black Star

The political forces that destroyed TrumpCare – The Week Magazine

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This time, it seems like TrumpCare may really be dead.

On Monday night, Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) officially jumped ship from the Senate health-care bill. That brought the official "no" vote count to four, which is two more than Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) could afford to lose. Then, on Tuesday, McConnell's "plan C" to simply repeal ObamaCare also met a swift defeat when three Republican moderates announced they couldn't support it.

Watching all this go down, I keep coming back to one of MSNBC host Christopher Hayes' favorite phrases: "political gravity."

Democracy is supposed to be a feedback loop between voters and politicians: The politicians try to pass bills, those bills actually affect voters' lives, voters respond with activism and votes, and politicians respond by changing course. But a lot of political reporting implicitly assumes that the consequences of bills don't affect their fates. All that matters is legislative and political strategies: the most inventive partisan games, the cleverest salesmanship, the most creative deal-making. It can take real work to pause and remind yourself that, as Hayes puts it, "the basic political gravity of whether you make people's lives better or worse matters."

TrumpCare has been one of the most dramatic tests of Hayes' thesis in years.

Washington insiders love to say that it's virtually impossible to cut or eliminate big entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid once they've been established. If you give people generous cash aid or affordable health care, you're going to make their lives meaningfully better. Spread those benefits over a large enough portion of the population, and no politician will touch them. They may make a lot of noise about cutting them. They may even get overly enthusiastic and try to cut them, like the GOP did with Social Security privatization back in 2005. But they'll inevitably chicken out when they see how their constituents would be affected.

Ever since its creation, it's been unclear if ObamaCare's subsidies were enough to cross this threshold into political invincibility. But in its zeal, the Republican Party decided to go beyond just repealing the health-care law and tried to massively cut pre-ObamaCare funding for Medicaid as well. So it looks like Hayes' political gravity theory checks out.

But there's a wrinkle.

If the human destruction wreaked by cutting Medicaid and ObamaCare's subsidies is ultimately what killed TrumpCare, you'd expect Republican moderates to be the ones who stuck the knife in. But three of the four hard "no's" Lee, Moran, and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) sit on the Republicans' extreme right. They scuttled the bill because it didn't cut and destroy enough.

Does this overturn the political gravity thesis? I don't necessarily think so. The key is understanding what the Republican base wants.

The GOP is actually fairly fractured. Its white working-class voters sign up for the party's culture wars, but dislike its economic platform in practice. Meanwhile, its rich supporters salivate over its economic platform and donate accordingly but find some of its cultural excesses off-putting. The real Republican base the voters on board with both the party's economic and cultural agendas consists primarily of well-off, socially right-wing older white people. But that's a group that's becoming a smaller and smaller portion of the electorate. Meanwhile, Americans who lean left on economics have always been a majority, and Americans who lean left on culture are expanding their share of the population. So the Democrats' natural base is expanding, while the GOP's natural base is shrinking. The Republican base knows this and so they're becoming increasingly angry and more extreme.

The political gravity that Hayes speaks so eloquently about made sure the GOP couldn't scrap ObamaCare and replace it with nothing. Even TrumpCare, cruel as it may be, is just a badly designed adjustment to ObamaCare. But this other big political force the increasingly radical impulses of the GOP also played an important role in the end of TrumpCare. The Republican base knew TrumpCare was just ObamaCare-lite, and they weren't willing to settle for it.

That second force was pushing up as political gravity was pulling down. And TrumpCare got crushed in between.

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The political forces that destroyed TrumpCare - The Week Magazine

Did Halimah Yacob delete info about Indian descent from Wikipedia page? – The Independent

Speaker of Parliament Mdm Halimah Yacobs Wikipedia page appears to have been edited recently. Her page now does not show that she is a Singaporean politician of Indian descent as it previously did.

Her page may have been spruced up in anticipation of the upcoming Presidential election which Mdm Halimahis considering contesting.

The presidential election this year has been reserved for Malay candidates.

There has been wide speculation about whether Mdm Halimah qualifies since she is an Indian Muslim, whose father is of Indian origin.

This was disclosed in an ST article in 2013 when Halimah was selected to be the new Speaker of Parliament after her predecessor, Michael Palmer, resigned from politics due to his marital affair with a PA woman.

In the article, itmentioned: Her (Halimahs) Indian-Muslim father was a watchman who died when she was eight years old.

In fact, news of Halimah becoming Singapores first woman speaker also made its way to India.The Hindudescribed her as an Indian-origin politician.

It has been revealed that despite her ancestry, Mdm Halimah has been certified as a Malay by the Malay Community Committee at least three times in 2001, 2006 and 2015 when she was fielded as a Malay minority candidate during the general elections.

It is a requirement for minority candidates contesting general elections toto be certified as a member of his or her respective ethnic community.

If she chooses to contest the presidential election set for September, Mdm Halimah will be required to certified as a Malay candidate once again, by afive-member panel that will assess whether prospective presidential candidates belong to the Malay race.

Perhaps Mdm Halimahs Wikipedia page was edited to avoid claims and speculation that she is unfit to run in the presidential race, even though she is a certified Malay. The deletion of her ancestry, however, may have backfired as netizens circulating the photo have taken the edits as evidence that Mdm Halimah is trying to bury her origins.

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Did Halimah Yacob delete info about Indian descent from Wikipedia page? - The Independent

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Local student attends STEM program in Dallas – Del Rio News Herald

Del Rio 11-year-old Kenneth Alexander returned Friday from the National Youth Leadership Forum Pathways to STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) program at the University of Texas in Dallas, where teacher-selected students have the opportunity to explore careers options in STEM fields.

Michele Schetter, Alexanders fifth grade teacher at Ruben Chavira Elementary School, nominated him to participate in the five-day STEM program. The programs curriculum focused on areas including medical science, engineering, leadership and crime scene investigation, Alexander said.

It was a full day. He came home mentally exhausted, said his great-aunt, Sylvia Cyprian, who accompanied him to Dallas.

It was longer than school hours, Alexander added.

During the medical science segment, Alexander, Chaviras fifth grade class president, said they learned about different medicines and how to take their pulse. His class also dissected cow hearts.

The crime scene investigation class focused on an age-appropriate scenario, in which they located a map and treasure chest that were stolen by pirates, he said. The program also included a robotics challenge, which he took to easily given his experience with the districts robotics program, he said.

While in Dallas, Alexander spent time with his aunt, uncle, brother and sister, sightseeing, swimming at the hotel pool and watching Spiderman Homecoming at LOOK theater. They also enjoyed a meal at Medieval Times, he said.

When Alexander isnt excelling in STEM-based programs, he said he enjoys playing video games, basketball, and football. He said he hopes to play for the Dallas Cowboys like his favorite athlete, Ezekiel Elliott. Hes played football since he was eight-years-old and was recently named most valuable player on his football team, he said.

He comes home all beaten up and bruised and sore and does it again the next day, said Cyprian.

This coming fall, Alexander will enter San Felipe Memorial Middle school as a sixth grader, where he will take advanced courses in technology, Spanish and art, he said.

Im very grateful for all my blessings. I would like to thank the community for a successful fundraiser that helped with the universitys tuition as well as all who helped during the fundraiser, he said.

He thanked his mother and stepfather, Jessica and Victor Gonzalez, for allowing him to attend the program my sister, Nevaeh for her support, and my uncle and aunt Robert and Sylvia Cyprian for taking me to Dallas. Special thanks to my grandfather, Jessie Barrera and my great grandparents, Salomon and Hilda Riojas for their continued support.

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Local student attends STEM program in Dallas - Del Rio News Herald