On the positive side of things, the bizarre e******n of an unpopular president in 2016 has mobilized the American people to levels not seen since WW2. Recently, the ACLU, which for about 100 years has served the civil interests of the people against corporate and government oppression through legal mitigation, introduced a new mobilization program called PeoplePower which is established to educate people on methods of resistance. This is the first time the ACLU has done something like this and the move has no doubt been influenced by an equally unprecedented tripling of it's membership since the e******n.

The ACLU has been close to numerous anti-Trump rallies and has expressed a concern about some of the violence and vandalism at some of these demonstrations. Although the occurrences are not as prevalent as right-wing media portrays, they are nevertheless a concern because the only value they provide is to Trump and his f*****t supporters that use these infrequent examples to characterize the entire resistance movement, but more importantly, it's wasted energy that doesn't accomplish anything for the cause.

There is little doubt that the flood of signups and funding, not just for the ACLU but for just about all the advocates of civil rights, is a sign that massive numbers of Americans are mobilizing and the sparks of violence we've seen at some of these demonstrations is most likely the result of too much energy without constructive channels and this is why the ACLU is creating PeoplePower. To help people channel their frustration and outrage into constructive actions, something the ACLU has a lot of experience with.

The reason why I am calling this a silver-lining rather than a mere consolation is that the attack on America by the right is nothing new. The Bush Administration was a clear attack on the American people and their civil rights and yet the resistance was minimal. Of course the 9/11 attacks were instrumental in developing a perceived state of affairs that caused many would-be resistors to "go along" with the need for increased security. But Trump's dogmatic agenda seems to exceed the cover of all rational thought and has become the catalyst that the resistance to f*****m has been needing for at least 15 years. And if organizations like the ACLU's PeoplePower and Bernie Sander's OurRevolution can help temper the raw energy of resistance into an effective machine for protecting American values it will definitely be one of the brighter turns in our history.

With a new movie about King Kong coming out, a whole segment on NPR was dev**ed to proving that the fictional King Kong monster is actually a commentary on black people. The show interviewed Robin Means Coleman, a professor of Afro-American studies at the University of Michigan who specializes in studying King Kong.

Yes, you read that right: a professor of Afro-American studies whose specialty is...King Kong.

Coleman said:

King Kong was a metaphor for black masculinity. This is a big black man, a big black ape who is absolutely obsessed with ... white women.

More commentary from other sources:

Kong is often conceived of as the monstrous embodiment of the African-American experience, a powerful "primitive" being forcibly taken from the tropical realm where his hegemony is absolute and displayed in bondage as a figure of exotic amusement (though not, curiously, as a beast of burden, as were the historical African s***es). He escapes and asserts not only his physical prowess but also, potentially, his sexual prowess by abducting Fay Wray's Ann Darrow, the blond, virtuous personification of w***e A******n womanhood.

Clutching the object of his forbidden, impossible desire, Kong is chased to the pinnacle of the inescapably phallic Empire State Building (a freshly-built structure in 1933 whose appearance in an iconic piece of cinema helped allay scepticism about it from both potential tenants and from the wider public). There, his savage defiance of the democratic capitalist order (and of firmly-defended racial taboos) sees him executed summarily by biplanes.

It doesn't take a Ph.D. to see echoes of American's fraught historical discourse on race in such a tale. It evokes colonialism, the s***e trade, Reconstruction, minstrel shows, Jim Crow, w***e s*******y ... miscegenation and urbanization[.]

This is ridiculous. Yes, in the past, some r****ts have compared b****s to monkeys. But that does not mean that all portrayals of monkeys are about black people.

In the original Planet of the Apes movie, the main chimpanzee was played by Roddy McDowall, whose voice was obviously very white-sounding (and more than a little gay). No one said the Planet of the Apes movies were about black people.

In Star Wars, the character of Chewbacca is obviously monkey-related. But no one says Chewbacca is a slur on black people.

Is Disney's Jungle Book r****t for having a monkey in it? Is Tarzan r****t as well? And what about computer games like "Donkey Kong"? Is "Donkey Kong" a game made by r****ts who want to give white people the ability to make black people jump in the air repeatedly?

Of course not. This is all ridiculous. Without any real r****m to talk about, "professors" like Coleman have to justify their pay by making this stuff up. The ridiculous part is how the liberal media takes this seriously. If they are so concerned about r****m, maybe they should look farther afield to the black people being held as s***es today in North Africa.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/03/liberals_say_king_kong_equals_black_people.html

I remain unclear on the answers to several important questions regarding The Affordable Care Act, its repeal and its replacement.
I'm hopeful the folks on OPP can help me out here. I realize I will get some amount of emotional invective, which is of course everyone's right to share. But I am more interested in a logical exploration of what is wrong and how to fix it.

1 - What are the parts of the ACA that so many people find objectionable? Please be specific.
- What is the path to fixing those things?
2 - The Republican leadership has had eight years to develop an alternative plan.
- Why was that plan not ready to roll out immediately? It seems to me that there has been ample time to not only develop an alternative, but to refine it and sell it to the American people. Why is this not a slam-dunk?