Kinja reply list

Read More
cdwag14Michael Harriot
3/20/19 2:20pm
When? When is someone good enough for us? When is someone black enough? I’ve grown tired of the test to see if someone is authentically black for us especially when one of the people doing the questioning, Shaun King AKA Talcum X, is caping for Bernard Sanders. You know he of the “Guns In Vermont are different from Guns in Chicago.” The fact that she is rising in the DNC Polls means that a light will be shining on her very soon. The fact that Trump has yet to call her by name is not by coincidence, he is scared of her. If we are going to start the purity tests for 2020 we need to start with the male candidates first. If Kamala has baggage, Bernie, Biden & Beto have luggage stores.
Reply
- Read More
  CoachRic the Quiet (shhh!)cdwag14
  3/20/19 2:41pm
  To add to that I am tired of the purity tests. If we want to look for a candidate that is glorious and without sin we’d be better off looking for a GOD than a candidate. NO ONE IS PERFECT! With the aforementioned being typed we miss out and cancel our vote by trying to find a candidate without a blemish. find me a candidate without a bad decision on their record and I’ll show you a magician with the most finesse and a great PR team.
  Study and scrutinize the candidates to see which one aligns with your worldview, then vote. don’t expect to find an innocent one. To be honest, if a candidate isn’t a little dirty the candidate may not have what it takes to protect a nation.
  Reply
- Read More
  TheRealMarthaJones3.0cdwag14
  3/20/19 3:38pm
  And I’ve grown tired of this attitude that we should just settle for any ole bitch, instead of looking for and working towards, and pushing being better. Perfection doesn’t exist. Every person who’s ever received commendations in their line of work will tell you that but that doesn’t mean they don’t get up and strive towards it every day. And as an electorate, we should be doing the same thing.
  Reply
Read More
sTalkinggoat, first and last of his nameMichael Harriot
3/20/19 1:56pm
Thorough as always Michael. This is the article I’m going to link anytime anyone brings up Kamala Harris. People could claim that this was the past or she was just doing her job all they want but the fact that she went on the Breakfast Club and joked around about smoking weed while there are people still sitting in jail because she prosecuted them for weed crimes shows that she just doesn’t give a fuck. I don’t trust her at all.
Reply
- Read More
  AndTrollingIsHalfTheBattlesTalkinggoat, first and last of his name
  3/20/19 2:06pm
  Yes, but compared to everybody else available, how much would you say you trust her then?
  Reply
- Read More
  sTalkinggoat, first and last of his nameAndTrollingIsHalfTheBattle
  3/20/19 2:19pm
  I’m sick of having nothing but bad choices but to me at least there’s a big difference between someone like Bernie who might be clueless but at least is pointed in the right direction and Harris who was a literal foot soldier for mass incarceration and the police state. Shit like this why people don’t vote at all.
  Reply
Read More
ThoseAreDigimonMichael Harriot
3/20/19 2:07pm
In 2015, a judge refused to indict a man facing life in prison after it was discovered that a California prosecutor had falsified the defendant’s confession. Harris appealed, arguing that falsifying the confession wasn’t necessarily prosecutorial misconduct.
Reply
- Read More
  iculookinThoseAreDigimon
  3/20/19 2:38pm
  I went from genuinely being disinterested her for being smarmy and pandering to now actively disliking her. Funny how someone’s former record can do that.
  Reply
- Read More
  CoronerslabThoseAreDigimon
  3/20/19 3:07pm
  While I think Kern County prosecutor Robert Murray should of been fired, even if he counted it as a joke or not, but the defendant involved was guilty as hell.
  Efrain Velasco-Palacios was sentenced Wednesday to four years and four months in prison after pleading no contest to lewd or lascivious acts and unlawful sexual intercourse.
  This is two years after the original case.
  It may have been a last ditched effort to keep a sex offender off the streets. Would like to hear her side of it.
  Reply
Read More
Kool-Aid-CongoMichael Harriot
3/20/19 4:08pm
Thanks for this thoughtful, nuanced piece. As a Black and proud Bernie supporter (which makes me a lone wolf in The Root comments section) I’m usually down for seeing Black people win at every level.
Having said that, I have major problems with Kamala Harris, from her shaky record as San Fran DA, to her refusal to prosecute Steve Mnuchin (whose now running Treasury Department under Trump) and her “threat” to punish poor people who’s children had truancy issues. Also, it seems she as too friendly a relationship with Wall Street to actually implement strong economic change that will benefit everyone.
I’d still vote for her if she’s the nominee, but I’m sick of having to support Democrats who want to secure the bag for themselves (via political donations and backroom deals with the super-rich) and think simply being great on social justice issues is enough to satisfy the rest of the population.
Reply
- Read More
  SuzzeeKool-Aid-Congo
  3/20/19 4:20pm
  Some of the other complaints about Kamala might be legit but the truancy thing? Poor people more than anyone else should encourage their children to go to school. Getting an education is one of the key components of of escaping poverty. Punishing parents for not making sure their children attend school is might be a little extreme but sometimes necessary.
  Reply
- Read More
  Raineyb1013Kool-Aid-Congo
  3/20/19 4:43pm
  You're not a lone wolf but ghe pack around here is very small.
  Reply
Read More
HuskyBroMichael Harriot
3/20/19 2:49pm
Compare Harris’ record to Kirsten Gillibrand, who was far more right-leaning early in her career. No one mentions that before Garry McCarthy hid the tape of Lauan McDonald’s murder from Chicago’s citizens, he was hired by then-Mayor Cory Booker to crack down on crime in Newark, N.J., and was accused of multiple counts of corruption and misconduct. Is Bernie Sanders even a Democrat?
All of those folks are starting to feel the heat, though and I’m here for it. If you want to be the leader of our country, you should be more than prepared to face the heat on your past records, especially when it pertains to public office, it doesn’t matter if you’re a woman, black or white, walked in a few Civil Rights marches, went to a HBCU, smoked some weeeeed...etc.
Call.them.all.out.on.their.ish.
Reply
- Read More
  scottwrickettsHuskyBro
  3/20/19 3:43pm
  Yeah, we’ve had made mistakes. I’m disappointed Kamala can’t acknowledge she was wrong before. The same way she grilled William Barr for doubling down on the shitty crime legislation of the 90's, she’s doubling down on her shitty record on these things. If Gillibrand can say she was wrong, so can Kamala. I’d respect her more if she did.
  Reply
- Read More
  Lawyer_Applegatescottwricketts
  3/21/19 1:07am
  She’s a prosecutor at heart, and their ilk do not admit to making mistakes.
  Reply
Read More
whatamithinkingMichael Harriot
3/20/19 3:10pm
“The candidacy of Kamala Harris is a conundrum wrapped inside a riddle buried inside a Jamaican beef patty.” Hahaha, I literally almost fell off the chair! Man, how do you come up with these things? Good lord.
“Perhaps Harris is simply a politician.” Yes she is, and a rank opportunistic one at that. Not gonna support her in the primaries, and I am well aware that the forces that matter in the democratic party are pushing her big time. I don’t care and I won’t be browbeaten into supporting her. It would be a nightmare for me if she wins the nomination, but then it would be Trump on the other side, and that’s not complicated at all.
We share part of a Caribbean heritage and her personality-type brings back stories of the island “buffer class”. We need to learn from history. We can’t be crying out for justice yet support someone whose history shows otherwise.
Stacey Abrams or Andrew Gillum or my favorite Ayanna Pressley better jump in the race or Beto O’Rourke and Bernie Sanders and Julian Castro look very good right now.
And not loooking for trouble Michael, but i think you’re much too kind to Kamala Harris.
Reply
Read More
CoronerslabMichael Harriot
3/20/19 2:55pm
Gotta start worrying about Splinters influence on TR when the last two articles about Sen. Harris play up her bad quality and downplay the good ones.
At least Mr. Harriot’s was expansive, unlike Mr. Safir’s poorly defended hit piece.
But that is the other conundrum. Should TR focus on the front running black presidential nominee only, while leaving the front running white nominees to Splinter and Jezebel, or should they try to focus some of that journalistic styling on the Sanders or Biden Conundrum.
Reply
- Read More
  BitterSweetCoronerslab
  3/20/19 6:05pm
  In my not terribly important opinion - I’d love to see TR tackle all the candidates with the same attention, because I want to see all of them investigated by thorough, thoughtful people with different points of view. I’d especially like to see the white candidates put through the same wringer because one of this crowd is going to be the Dem candidate (and tRump is likely to be the republican one) and more information is always better than less.
  Reply
- Read More
  CoronerslabBitterSweet
  3/20/19 8:03pm
  I really would feel less bitter towards the whole thing if they announced they would do that. It does feel in bad faith to isolate one candidate and air everything without doing the same for the rest.
  Especially the front runners.
  Reply
Read More
weapon-a the first try suffers no trollsMichael Harriot
3/20/19 4:56pm
Conundrum indeed... None of these polititians have perfectly clean hands. Every one of them is either naturally shady AF or has had to do something shady in order to get to a place where it’s possible for them to run for President.
It can’t be wrong to call them out for their BS or to be unexcited for their candidacy, but we shouldn’t let Perfect be the enemy of Good. Nor should we allow those who would do us exponentially more harm win because we are unwilling to hold our nose to vote for someone who will almost certainly be an infinitely better President than Trump.
Even when we have documented evidence that someone has failed the community she claims as her own, and which she is currently asking for support.
I get not wanting to let that go. The slow AF incremental improvement people of color have recognized since the Civil Rights movement of the 60's isn’t good enough anymore. It hasn’t been for a very long time. Cynics and the ill informed still don’t grasp that this is why many people were so emotional when Obama was elected in 2008. Not cause they thought racism was over, but because we took a huge leap in a single election cycle - or we seemed to anyway. Electing Obama President was something we’d worked toward for generations, and the backlash over those election wins brought us Trump and the proverbial multiple steps backwards.
The 2018 Congressional election which brought us stellar women of color to Congress is a step forward. As much as Harris deserves to be held accountable for her record, like Mike, I wonder if we are holding her to a higher standard than we would a black man or a white man or woman.
Biden has baggage we shouldn’t simply overlook. As do many others. Almost all the others.
Think about this for a second: Rick Ross whose music many of us play everywhere was a damned C.O. He’s only a rapper, but he held brothers and sisters who look just like his listeners in the belly of the beast too. No one seems to care.
I’d wager that every one of us reading this blog knows someone who earns a paycheck funded in some way by the Justice system. We know some of those people ain’t shit, but some are decent people who either are simply working a job without trying to hurt anybody, or are actively attempting in some way to improve the system.
Wow...This was way longer than I’d intended... Hard to support Kamala Harris, but rather her than Trump.
Reply
Read More
My KinjaMichael Harriot
3/20/19 2:05pm
Is she at a point in her career where she values the power of the office she seeks and is willing to make actual change or is this just another Harris Opportunity? “Taken at her word, Harris is exactly what America needs.” My uneasiness says it’s the latter and she knows how to pull people’s strings. Sociopaths are master manipulators.
Reply
- Read More
  blackjackMy Kinja
  3/20/19 2:14pm
  she’s not a sociopath, I do believe she really cares.
  Reply
- Read More
  My Kinjablackjack
  3/20/19 2:29pm
  I’m saying her behavior of caring only for her own ends and using 60 (known) human lives to obtain her goals smacks of neuropathic disorder. Giving her the benefit of the doubt just because she’s Black or female doesn’t cover for her past. Will she be held accountable if in office? She doesn’t seem to want to answer for her wrong doings. That’s what is unsettling.
  Reply
Read More
TrumpsTinyHandsMichael Harriot
3/20/19 3:50pm
Should we root for everybody black?
I would argue no, and for exhibit A I would to enter into evidence Ben Carson.
Reply