A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Aspiring Republican candidate for Ilhan Omar's District Five (Minnesota) Congressional seat, Danielle Stella, in a Bloomington Police Department mug shot. (Photo Credit: Bloomington PD) Ever since Donald John Trump won the Presidential election in November of 2016, a wide assortment of white nationalists, Islamophobes, bigots, and neo-fascist candidates has crawled out of America's darkest corners and declared their candidacies for political office at the local, state, and federal levels. Many of these Trump-coattail candidates never get splashy headlines unless they are openly supportive of far-right groups like the American Nazi Party, such as Chicago's Arthur Jones, who (per reports by CBS News ), has declared his intention to challenge Democratic Congressman Dan Lipinski in the upcoming 2020 general election cycle: Self-avowed Nazi and Holocaust denier Arthur Jones is making another bid for Congress, two years after getting 26% of the vote in his failed bid a...

What are your thoughts on Trump tweeting that four liberal congresswomen should go home to the countries from which they came when three of them were born in the US? Frankly, I am not surprised in the slightest. Donald Trump has a long history of saying insensitive, degrading, racist, and xenophobic remarks about people of color and foreigners who are not from mostly-white European countries. In an August 2016 Time magazine story, readers were reminded of how then-Candidate Trump expressed his views about Mexicans: Donald Trump  kicked off his presidential bid  more than a year ago with harsh words for Mexico. “They are not our friend, believe me,” he said, before disparaging Mexican immigrants:  “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” He’s also not shy about his feelings about American citizens whose skin tone is darker than his own orange-tanned epidermis. During the 2016 Presidential campa...

Did ABC do the right thing in canceling “Roseanne” after her attack on Valerie Jarrett? Honestly, yes, and here is why. Ever since Donald Trump won the 2016 Presidential election, large numbers of people with animosity toward other people (liberals, people of color, immigrants, religions other than Evangelical Protestantism, and LGBQTs) have shed whatever cloak of civility they used to wear and now feel able to say whatever they like, whenever they want, consequences be damned. Apparently, Roseanne Barr, the one-time stand-up comic and star of the ABC’s hit comedy show that bears here name, is one of those individuals who feel that now that Trump is President, she can make any comment she likes on fora such as Twitter with no fallout whatsoever. Barr, of course, has always been a controversial celebrity. Several years ago, Barr posed in a Hitler disguise, standing in front of an oven with a baking pan of human-shaped cookies. It was a satirical photo taken for a...

Remember last week's failure of Donald J. Trump's much-touted American Health Care Act ("Trumpcare") to pass through the Republican-controlled Congress? You know, the President's ballyhooed and long-promised project to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act of 2010? Well, guess who Mr. Trump is pinning the blame on? Can you give me three guesses? Ready? Go! If you said that he, like all good leaders tend to do, took responsibility for Trumpcare's big failure last Friday, you'd be wrong. According to ABC News , Mr. Trump once again logged on to Twitter to accuse the GOP, especially the uber-conservative House Freedom Caucus. This influential group of  Republican members of the House of Representatives refused to sign off on the AHCA in part because it would leave millions of Americans without medical insurance. In a sarcastic tweet from his  @realDonaldTrump Twitter account, Mr. Trump said: The Republican House Freedom Caucus was abl...