Donald Trump caught lying ... again

Jake Tapper: Will you renounce David Duke's endorsement?
Donald Trump: Who?
Tapper: From the Ku Klux Klan.
Trump: Never heard of it.

— Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) February 28, 2016

I don't know anything about David Duke, OK? I don't know anything about what you're even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. So I don't know. I mean, I don't know — did he endorse me or what's going on? Because I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists. And so you're asking me a question that I'm supposed to be talking about people that I know nothing about." - Donald Trump to CNN's Jake Tapper, Feb. 28, 2016

From the New York Times, Feb. 14, 2000:

Mr. Trump painted a fairly dark picture of the Reform Party in his statement, noting the role of Mr. Buchanan, along with the roles of David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, and Lenora Fulani, the former standard-bearer of the New Alliance Party and an advocate of Marxist-Leninist politics.

"The Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a neo-Nazi, Mr. Buchanan, and a communist, Ms. Fulani," he said in his statement. "This is not company I wish to keep."

Apparently Reince Priebus wasn't watching the same debate the rest of us were

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Tonight we saw another spirited debate between the most diverse & well-qualified group of presidential candidates in history #GOPDebate

— Reince Priebus (@Reince) February 26, 2016

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30 seconds of chaos at the GOP debate

Here's where the GOP debate went completely off the rails.

Posted by Ezra Klein on Thursday, February 25, 2016

Donald Trump explains his popularity: 'I love the poorly educated'

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How can that be, you ask?







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No more marches or candlelight vigils, please. We need a leader.

King Carter.

His name was King Carter. He was 6 years old, a first-grader at Van E. Blanton Elementary School.

The little boy who wanted to be a police officer when he grew up, was killed Saturday afternoon while playing outside with friends at his Northwest Miami-Dade apartment complex.

Let that sink in. Read those three heart-wrenching sentences again from this morning's paper, if you have to.

Now, read this sentence from a Dec 27, 2015 Miami Herald story: "Through November this year, 30 children and teenagers have been killed by gunfire in Miami-Dade County and more than twice that many have been shot."

Yes, it's happened again...another child has been shot and killed.

And the community's response?

From this morning's Miami Herald story: "anti-violence activist Tangela Sears, whose own son was fatally shot, is organizing a march at the complex Sunday at 2 p.m."

I'm sorry, Ms. Sears, but we don't need another goddamned march or candlelight vigil. Or any more speeches, editorials, hand holding or prayer meetings.

It's been almost 10 years since 9-year-old Sherdavia Jenkins was caught in a crossfire and shot dead.

At an event held two years ago to mark her death, they read the names of children who were homicide victims in Miami-Dade County during Jenkins’ short life.  There were 108 names on the list.

The 10th anniversary of her death is a few months away...but nothing has changed. Kids are still dying.

So, no more marches, please. What the community needs is a leader.

After Hurricane Andrew devastated much of South Dade in 1992, one man stepped up and took charge.

From a December 2008 Miami Herald story: 

Alvah Chapman.

[Alvah] Chapman's influence was certified soon after Hurricane Andrew, when he answered a phone call from President George H.W. Bush, who urged Chapman to assemble a citizens' task force that would help direct recovery efforts.

Already retired — although engrossed in crusades against drugs, crime and homelessness — Chapman reluctantly agreed.

"I thought it would be good if somebody else led the effort," he confided in a rare interview. "This town shouldn't be dependent on someone who is retired."

He insisted on learning firsthand how the storm had disrupted lives. One day, driving through a predominantly black area, he saw an elderly woman on the porch of her wrecked home.

Chapman introduced himself to Dollie Buxton. Soon a small crowd of Buxton's neighbors came to share their Andrew horror stories.

This ramrod straight, vastly wealthy, unmistakably Southern gentleman listened intently. Finally he asked: "What are you going to do?"

"We're going to rebuild," Buxton said.

"Maybe we can help," Chapman replied.

From that conversation came Chapman's name for the task force: We Will Rebuild.

Alvah Chapman is no longer with us.

So who's going to step forward this time and fix things? Alberto Carvalho? Alonzo Mourning? Carlos Gimenez? Michael Putney? Luther Campbell? Delrish Moss? Mike Grieco? Xavier Suarez? Philip Levine?

Someone needs to step up and organize something along the lines of 1992's "We Will Rebuild" effort.

Who wants to step forward and build a coalition of leaders, law enforcement heads and business people who maybe, just maybe, can come up with some solutions?

Any takers?

How many more kids have to die before someone gets off their ass and decides that enough is enough?

Nelle Harper Lee | April 28, 1926 - Feb. 19, 2016

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Rick Bragg: This Book Changed My Life

My first copy was dog-eared and sunbaked, the pages brittle and brown, as if the paperback had rested in the back window of an old Pontiac instead of on a library shelf. Some kind of pestilence—water bugs, I believe—had gotten to it before I did, and it was hard to tell, as I turned to that first page, which of us would get more from it. I was an ignorant teenage schoolboy and read it because a teacher told me to, prodded as if by pitchfork down the hot, dull streets of a town called Maycomb in the desolate 1930s, and pressed into the company of a boy named Jem, a mouthy girl named Scout, and an odd little chucklehead named Dill whom, I am fairly sure, I would have beaten up and relieved of his milk money. I would have preferred the Hardy Boys, preferred to gallop alongside the Riders of the Purple Sage, but I was afraid of teachers then, and so I read. “Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town … Somehow, it was hotter then … There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go …” I missed a few words, bug-eaten or besmirched, but I read on, to a shot-down rabid dog, and a neighbor, Boo Radley, in hiding, and a young black man named Tom Robinson who is wrongly accused of raping a young white woman. And, of course, there is Atticus Finch, the lawyer who offers reason, and kindness, and some thin hope. He tries to save Robinson, but, as the pages turned, I saw that it would take more than one good Alabama man to make this sorry world all right.

To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960, but it was the middle 1970s before it reached the Roy Webb Road in Calhoun County, Alabama, and me. I began reading Harper Lee’s novel in the skimpy shade of a pine outside my grandmother’s house, fat beagles pressing against me, begging for attention, ignored. At dark, I kept reading, first on the couch, a bologna sandwich in one hand, then in my bed, by the light of a 60-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling on an orange drop cord. When my mother came in from her job as a maid and unplugged my chandelier, I replayed the story in my head until it was crowded out by dreams. I woke the next morning, smelling biscuits, and reached for the book again.

Continue reading by clicking here.

An open letter to Miami's TV station news directors

TO: Liz Roldan, CBS Miami
Migdalia Figueroa, NBC6
Tom Gonzalez-Diego, WSVN
Bill Pohovey, Local 10

Hello all

Following last night's news that President Obama plans to visit Cuba next month, I'm sure you're all very busy this morning making plans to send crews to the island.

But I'd like to take a moment of your valuable time to ask a favor.

I'm sure part of your coverage will be local reaction to the President's visit to Cuba.

And predictably, most all of you, will dispatch a reporter or two to the Versailles Restaurant.

But here's a newsflash: In my more than 50 years in Miami, I've discovered that Cuban-Americans don't just congregate outside the Versailles. They can be found almost anywhere. Trust me, I've seen them.

So here's my request: Next month, instead of tying up live trucks, reporters and photographers at the Versailles whose job it will be to beam back pictures and sound bites that we've all seen and heard thousands of times before, why not think outside the box and have your reporters fan out across the county and get reaction from a cross section of South Floridians?

As I wrote last August, the only people you'll find at the Versailles when a Cuba-related story breaks, are a "small group of demonstrators [who] represent no one but themselves. They show up because they know the TV cameras will be there. And the TV cameras show up because they know the demonstrators will be there. It's lazy journalism." 

I'm surprised that none of you have figured that out by now.

Put another way, pictures of Miguel Saavedra screaming into a bullhorn contribute nothing to anyone's understanding of the story. Zero, nada, zilch.

At this point the only pictures we need to see of Saavedra are those that show him setting himself on fire.

Thanks for your time.