Making it safe for the bullies
Today in Trump’s Great America –
Bomb threats forced evacuations at Jewish schools and community centers in 11 states Monday, with the Jewish Community Center Association confirming threats in states ranging from Florida to Michigan. In Ann Arbor, Mich., police gave the all-clear after a Hebrew day school was threatened, forcing students to leave.
“Today, bomb threats were called into schools and/or JCCs in Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia,” the JCC Association of North America says. “Many affected institutions have already been declared clear and have returned to regular operations. All previous bomb threats to JCCs this year were determined to be hoaxes.”
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The Anti-Defamation League says there have been reports of bomb threats at a wide range of locations in and around New York, including “three in Staten Island, one in New Jersey, one on Long Island, one in Westchester.”
The ADL confirms threats were made Monday against a Jewish day school in Miami, a JCC in Asheville, N.C., and the upper school of Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Md. It also says there are unconfirmed reports of a threat in Birmingham, Ala.
The threats come after a weekend in which vandals damaged approximately 100 headstones at a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia — an act that came less than a week after a similar attack on a Jewish cemetery near St. Louis, where more than 150 graves were targeted.
Since the start of 2017, dozens of bomb threats have been made against Jewish community centers; this is at least the fifth wave of threats in the past two months.
Remember Trump’s response to the reporter who tried to ask him about the wave of anti-Semitic threats in recent weeks?
Watch his face while he listens.
https://youtu.be/wa1s2rIoefc
Don’t ever ask me to watch his face again…I am now going to have nightmares of that face…that is the face of someone saying “I don’t really give a damn” then he follows it by sit down, your question isn’t simple.
The question was simple. What are you going to do? It’s the answer that’s complex, and he can’t think with complexity.
I know. I’m sorry. But I think it’s too dangerous to look away.
What I saw wasn’t even “I don’t give a damn,” it was gathering anger and hostility. Pursed lips, scowling, twitching – the question was pissing him off. Everything pisses him off except lips planted firmly on his buttocks.
He dared to question the great, the all powerful Trump. Far be it Trump should answer any question that isn’t simple, or have to actually answer for his actions. He has never really been held accountable for anything. If things went bad, he slithered out from under them, leaving contractors holding the bills while he walked away with an enormous tax deduction. He calls that being smart. The rest of us call that being slimy. And he hates hearing in his reptilian brain just how reptilian he is.
Apologies to any actual reptiles that might hate being paired with Trump; real reptiles are interesting creatures. Trump is…fascinating in the same way that you can’t look away from a car wreck.
The way he talked to that Jewish reporter also looked a lot like the way he talked to April Ryan (who asked a question about the Congressional Black Caucus). His disdain & bullying are just disgusting to behold. Note that in both cases, the questions could have been fielded quite simply: “Anti-Semitism? Not good!” “Talk to the CBC & community leaders? Sure, why not.” Instead, he didn’t let either of them even finish, shouted over their questions, and insulted them. I have every confidence he’d like to send them away to be shot, for having the temerity to do anything other than stroke him.
Is it just my imagination or did the world’s least anti-Semitic person try and do the accent when quoting Netanyahu?
It was disgusting the way he shut the Jewish reporter down as though he were a contestant from Trump’s awful reality tv show (no, not this one, the last one)atbut at least he didn’t add insult to injury by calling him a liar or someth……oh!
You all know that passage from Dawkins’ The God Delusion, I trust; the one that lists the rather nasty attributes of the OT monster? Is Trump working his way through that list?
AoS – I think Trump may be starting his own, longer list.
1. The reporter bends over backwards to make it clear that he is not accusing Trump or anyone in his administration of being anti-Semitic, but Trump takes it that way anyhow.
2. To use a baseball analogy (sorry), the question is a hanging curve ball that any competent politician could have hammered out to the cheap seats. If you don’t have a basic strong condemnation of anti-Semitism on the tip of your tongue, it’s probably because you don’t think it’s something that should be vigorously condemned. .
Not even smart enough to try to invoke Islamic anti-Semitism as a smokescreen.
Also not even smart enough, apparently, to have grasped that one of the unofficial duties of the prez is to make statements about things like a sharp rise in anti-Semitic attacks.
I used to roll my eyes a little at that duty, when a prez would condemn the latest mass shooting, because it was so belaboring the obvious…but now that we’re stuck with a callous shithead who doesn’t even bother, I realize I was a damn fool to roll my eyes at them.