Monday, April 24, 2017

MADAM C J WALKER AS BLACK FEMINIST, A BIOGRAPHY

Life was hard on Sarah Breedlove from an early age. Her parents died when she was a child. She wound up marrying young. And her husband died by the time she was 20.
When Sarah Breedlove took her children and moved to St. Louis Missouri, the middle class women in the church she attended helped her to see herself as more than a washer woman. She learned philanthropy and entrepreneurship, both, from these church women. And she started her first charity drive at this black church
When a scalp condition caused her to lose her hair she became ashamed of her appearance.
She started her hair company by finding a solution for her own scalp condition. Later, when asked how she started her hair care business she would say that she prayed for a solution and a big African man appeared to her in a dream. She wound up ordering ingredients from Africa and used them to create a a shampoo and an ointment. With her own scalp healed and her hair began growing as it never had before she became a walking advertisement for product she was making in her own home.


Eventually she was selling her product door to door.



In 1906 she married Charles Joseph Walker and Ms. C J Walker was born. Mr. Walker would help her with advertising the business. They would travel door to door together, selling her products and demonstrating the products. They would eventually divorce when Madam Walker wanted to expand the business and Mr. Walker did not.



Madam Walker would eventually open a beauty school and then a factory. She hired black women to be "Walker Agents." Forty to fifty years after slavery, there were few job opportunities for black women other than that of domestic, with a few lucky women able to become teachers and nurses. But thousands of black women gained economic independence working for Madam C J Walker.


As her company grew, she encouraged the black women that worked for her to stand for racial equality and the equality of women.  She wanted her Walker Agents to show themselves not just as professionals but as people who give back to the community. During her 1917 Convention for Walker Agents, Madam Walker gave prizes to women that sold the most product and got the most clients but also to women who gave the most to charity.
At their Beauty Salons the walker agents would talk to clients about what black women could do to help their churches, their schools in their communities. (I'm reading a book right now that talks black women like these making the black church strong enough, connected to one another enough to make it good base for The Modern Civil Rights Movement a few decades later)

By 1910 The Walker Company had employed some 5000 black female agents around the world, and averaged revenues of about $1000 dollars a day, seven days a week...Upon her death in 1919, her will stipulated that two-thirds of her fortune go to various charities and that her company always be controlled by a woman



Contributor to the Black Women's Club Movement, Madam Walker was also a part of black suffrage and also the anti-lynching movement. She was a signer on the letter to President Woodrow Wilson, demanding that he make lynching a federal crime. She seems to have counted Ida B Wells, the original anti-lynching activist, as a friend and also contributed money to the NAACP's anti-lynching campaign.


She became famous nationwide when she contributed $1000 to the building fund of a YMCA for young black boys.  And it sounds like she may have built something in Indianapolis that sounds like one of the first malls, the Madam Walker Theater Center....


Madam C. J. Walker

Naturalista

Employer Of Black Women

Philanthropist


Political Activist


First Woman in the United States, of any color, to become a self-made millionaire  








Walker told her friend Ida B. Wells, the journalist and anti-lynching activist,
 that after working so hard all her life
— first as a farm laborer, then as a maid and a cook,
and finally as the founder of an international hair care enterprise
— she wanted a place to relax and garden and entertain her friends.

She also wanted to make a statement,
so it was no accident that she purchased four and a half acres in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York,
not far from Jay Gould’s Lyndhurst and John D. Rockefeller’s Kykuit
amidst America’s wealthiest families.
.
She directed....the architect
— to position the 34-room mansion close to the village’s main thoroughfare
so it was easily visible by travelers en route from Manhattan to Albany...
.

[H]er new [white] neighbors were “puzzled” and “gasped in astonishment”
when they learned that a black woman was the owner.
“Impossible!” they exclaimed. “No woman of her race could afford such a place.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/national-trust-for-historic-preservation/do-big-things-madam-cj-wa_b_6029236.html
a



A
NNIE TURNBO M
ALONE




MALONE STARTED BY FOCUSING ON HEALTHY HAIR


BUT WITH THE HELP OF AN AUNT SHE WOULD  CREATE CHEMICAL STRAIGHTENERS FOR BLACK HAIR


While experimenting with hair and different hair care products, she developed and manufactured her own line of non-damaging hair straighteners, special oils, and hair-stimulant products for African-American women.[4] She named her new product “Wonderful Hair Grower”[5] To promote her new product, Turnbo sold the Wonderful Hair Grower in bottles from door-to-door.[5] She began to revolutionize hair care methods for all African Americans....
One of her selling agents, Sarah Breedlove (who became known as Madam C. J. Walker when she set up her own business), encouraged Turnbo to copyright her products under the name "Poro" because of what she called fraudulent imitations and to discourage counterfeit versions.






Malone's business thrived until she wound up in a battle for control of her business with her second husband, Aaron Eugene Malone. She'd left some of the day to day affairs in his hands as manager. And he eventually claimed he was responsible for 1/2 of the success of the business.  She suffered another blow when a former employee also sued her, claiming credit for Annie Malone's success. This lawsuit forced her to sell property in order to pay the settlement. Eventually, the government would come after for back taxes.



* * * * * 

Like the light bulb, the relaxer probably had multiple simultaneous inventors in multiple places around the world that didn't know about each other. So I'm not sure who invented it first. 


Sunday, April 23, 2017

A BRIEF HISTORY OF HAIR RELAXERS

A repost
Madam C J Walker should probably counted as the original Naturalista.  Believe it or not, she did not invent the relaxer. G.A. Morgan did. Actually he and a woman named Annie Malone both invented relaxers.* 


 
MADAM C J WALKER
Some of us might turn up our noses at some of of Walker's ingredients these days--petrolatum, beeswax, copper sulfate, precipitated sulfur, coconut oil and violet extract. 



Another word for chemical relaxers (perms). 
must be retouched every 6 to 8 weeks,
and become reliant on them, like a crackhead on crack.


But she didn't sell chemical straighteners for hair. She did not invent the creamy crack. She didn't even invent the first hot comb. She only modified the french hot comb for black women.  

Sarah Breedlove, who would later marry and become Mrs. Charles Joseph  Walker, was into healing the scalp and healthy hair growth.















G.A. Morgan

Morgan, famous on black websites everywhere for inventing the gas mask and the traffic light, is one of the people who deserves some or most of the credit for inventing creamy crack, otherwise known as hair relaxer
In 1909, Morgan was working with sewing machines in his newly opened tailoring shop—a business he had opened with wife Mary, who had experience as a seamstress—when he encountered woolen fabric that had been scorched by a sewing-machine needle. It was a common problem at the time, since sewing-machine needles ran at such high speeds. In hopes of alleviating the problem, Morgan experimented with a chemical solution in an effort to reduce friction created by the needle, and subsequently noticed that the hairs of the cloth were straighter.
After trying his solution to good effect on a neighboring dog's fur, Morgan finally tested the concoction on himself. When that worked, he quickly established the G.A. Morgan Hair Refining Company and sold the cream to African Americans. The company was incredibly successful, bringing Morgan financial security and allowing him to pursue other interests.

Good Thing Mr. Morgan doesn't need the money from hair straightening how. Relaxer sales reportedly dropped 26% in 2014. Black women are still moving toward healthier, more natural hair styles.


ANNIE TURNBO MALONE



MALONE STARTED BY FOCUSING ON HEALTHY HAIR


BUT WITH THE HELP OF AN AUNT SHE WOULD  CREATE CHEMICAL STRAIGHTENERS FOR BLACK HAIR


While experimenting with hair and different hair care products, she developed and manufactured her own line of non-damaging hair straighteners, special oils, and hair-stimulant products for African-American women.[4] She named her new product “Wonderful Hair Grower”[5] To promote her new product, Turnbo sold the Wonderful Hair Grower in bottles from door-to-door.[5] She began to revolutionize hair care methods for all African Americans....
One of her selling agents, Sarah Breedlove (who became known as Madam C. J. Walker when she set up her own business), encouraged Turnbo to copyright her products under the name "Poro" because of what she called fraudulent imitations and to discourage counterfeit versions.

Saturday, April 22, 2017

Get Ready For Ava DuVernay's QUEEN SUGAR Season 2


"When their father Ernest (Glynn Turman) dies, three estranged siblings Nova (Rutina Wesley), Charley (Dawn-Lyen Gardner) and Ralph Angel (Kofi Siriboe) must come together to save the failing Louisiana sugar farm they have inherited. With the assistance of their Aunt Violet (Tina Lifford) and her boyfriend "Hollywood" (Omar J. Dorsey), the three struggle through the difficulties of bringing the 800-acre farm back to life, while juggling their previous responsibilities. Season 1 of "Queen Sugar" is adapted from the novel of the same name by Oscar-nominated director Ava DuVernay and executive produced by Oprah Winfrey."

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/queen_sugar/s01/ 




Ava DuVernay made QUEEN SUGAR more like a movie than a television show. So it might take some folks, who don't love movies like I do, a minute longer than it took me to snuggle up to QUEEN SUGAR. But apparently a lot of people are getting that snuggling done because Rotten Tomatoes have it a 92% rating with the critics.

As for me, the thing I immediately loved about the Bordelons from the outset was the under-story being constructed from the very start.

There are details in this television show that only a black woman would make sure were present. And the story feels so black to me, I'm not sure some white people will get the show at all -- especially not white men.


Because I don't want to give the story away, let me just tell you about where each of the three Bordelon siblings begin their journey
Nova Bordelon is a secure looking insecure pro-black activist journalist who is trying to get an innocent(?) young black kid out of jail before the system destroys him with the help of a white cop boyfriend she's not sure is worth the racial trouble.
Ralph-Angel Bordelon seeks to replace his father and run the family farm. A good-hearted man-child with a son, he is just out of jail making horrendous, good, and bad choices all in the service of trying to prove he IS a man -- at the same time as he seeks being babied by the women of his family, especially his Aunty.
The corporate-ambitious sister, Charlie Bordelon, is the light-skinned trophy wife and manager of a basketball player husband who has just found out her life isn't as perfect as she thought.
These characters manage to be wonderful and aggravating at the same time. That means this character driven story is well done.


Black Male Incarceration

New Black Love

Old Black Love

Black Lives Matter,

Black Male Colorism

Interracial relationships

Ambition

Infideliy

Women's loyalties to one another

Black History

It's all there in the first season of QUEEN SUGAR
Season 1 is on Hulu now.

Season 2 starts June 20th and 21st.




Saturday, April 15, 2017

LeBron James To Open Public School For At-Risk Students In 2018

Feeling Rebloggy

Akron’s hometown, hardwood hero is delivering residents another gift in the form of education. LeBron James is in the works of developing and building his own school, I PROMISE, in a partnership with his LeBron James Family Foundation and Akron’s public schools. Announced Tuesday (Apr. 11) on the foundation’s Facebook page, the school will cater to children from the first to eighth grades and offer a four-year scholarship to those students who qualify.
The school is set to open its doors during the fall of 2018 and will drive a “STEM/Problem-Based Learning focus” in communion with the foundation’s “‘We Are Family’ philosophy” in order to cultivate a home for its students and families.
~VIBE.COM


And Read Even More: 

WHITE POLICE DISPOSABLE, BLACK LIVES, AND SHEILA ABDUS



The only reason SOME places in the U.S. are firing cops for beating up black folks is because they are damn afraid of Black Lives Matter. And that's a good thing. 

But within police departments, the underlying attitude that black lives are disposable has not changed. Attitudes like that do not change overnight. Attitudes like that have not changed over multile decades. Therefore, we need to keep a special eye out on what white police are doing in regards to the death of Sheila Abdus-Salaam --no matter how many black and brown faces wound up being put out in front of this investigation.

Keep your eyes open.


Some black folks are listing all her achievements as reasons she couldn't have committed suicide. 

Well, I don't believe in strong black woman. I killed off my inner strong black woman a couple of decades ago. But the white police jumped to "likely suicide" some 10 seconds after she was dead. And 10 seconds does not an investigation make (I might be exaggerating a little for effect. Let's say it was 10 seconds, give or take a few hours).
http://blackchickrocked.blogspot.com/2017/04/how-did-sheila-abdus-salaam-wind-up.html

If police don't have video of her walking into the river, a suicide note, or evidence that her doctor told her that her cancer is back that very morning, then there needs to be an investigation BEFORE the police come to a conclusion.


She was African American
She was Muslim
She championed LGBT rights

Emboldened by the election of KKK endorsed Donald Trump, 

there's nobody the white supremacists want dead more. The only reason she might not be a prime target is because she isn't so high profile, nationally speaking. 

Even so, the police need to do a thorough investigation before they come to a conclusion about the death of someone so important -- same as they would for a heterosexual white man of high stature.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sheila-abdus-salaam-body-of-trailblazing-judge-washes-up-nyc-hudson-river/



Thursday, April 13, 2017

AISHA HINDS AS HARRIETT TUBMAN GIVES AWARD WINNING PERFORMANCE ON UNDERGROUND


I've seen a few one woman acts on stage. And I may have seen a few in documentaries. But I've never seen anything like the mesmerizing performance I just saw given by Aisha Hinds on television as Harriett Tubman.


In this Wednesday Night episode of WGN's UNDERGROUND, Tubman is giving a speech to white abolitionists in Philadelphia.

Tubman doesn't just tell about her life as she's been asked. Furthermore she doesn't just tell of the beatings and horrors. She tells about what happened in her life and what some specific episodes in her life taught her about what freedom means. In the second half of speech, she talks about the immediate future, about courage, about her faith in God leading her forward She also talks about the willingness to give up her life, if God would have it be so, while also planning to live a long life.   
As I've said before, one of my favorite things about slave stories written by black people lately is that they do not leave the white women out. Miss Anne's, or this case Miss Susan's, hand is reported as having been on the whip repeatedly and for sport. 

Fictionalized account or not, this should be required watching in every school and every church in America --especially white churches in America.


By the time Hinds as Harriett is done, she has even reached forward out of history to take a swipe at Donald Trump and his "Make America Great Again" slogan.

Aisha Hinds gave an incredible performance, an award winning performance. I'm certain she'll win awards for this episode of UNDERGROUND. It's just a matter of how many. As the show ended, I couldn't help but think of Viola Davis' Oscar Speech, the one where she said all black woman lacked in Hollywood was opportunity.

On Opportunity 
If a black man named John Legend hadn't taken his relatively new found power and used it to tell our own black story of slavery, hadn't put his power and money into UNDERGROUND, we never would have gotten to see the performance.

And if John Legend wasn't a feminist, you bet your bottom dollar that there wouldn't have been a push to have Harriet Tubman, a black woman, telling us who she was an entire episode and what attitude one should always have when an enemy is coming for you.

This episode of UNDERGROUND was so outstanding, it got it's own article in the New York Times. Aisha Hinds was interviewed for the article. I giggled a little bit when I read the episode was called HARRIET TUBMAN'S TED TALK before the episode was even written.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/12/arts/television/underground-harriet-tubman-aisha-hinds-interview.html


Even if you've never seen UNDERGROUND before, this was a stand alone performance. You can buy this episode on Amazon and probably iTunes too. Have your children watch it. This is another one of those cheap and easy history lessons. 





Here's a link to Season 1 of UNDERGROUND on DVD. The story of the MACON 7 begins here. From this point, if you're not interested in starting UNDERGROUND, you should be able search and find and buy the individual HARRIET TUBMAN episode called MINTY (SEASON 2, EPISODE 6) for $2 to $3. 
http://amzn.to/2ovIIyh

* * * * *

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

How Did Judge Sheila Adbus-Salaam Wind Up Dead In The Hudson River?

Feeling Rebloggy
The body of the United States’ first ever female Muslim judge was found Wednesday afternoon in the Hudson River near Manhattan, according to a Wednesday New York Post report.
Sheila Abdus-Salaam served as an associate judge of the Court of Appeals. She was the first African-American woman to serve on New York's top court. She was 65.
She had been reported missing earlier in the day, the newspaper reports.

Sources tell the Post that there were no visible signs of trauma or physical injuries suggesting foul play."
~THE HILL 


Read Morehttp://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/328591-report-body-of-countrys-first-female-muslim-judge-found-in 


IN TRUMP'S AMERICA,
IN THE MIDDLE OF
THWARTED MUSLIM BAN #2,
WHERE THE WHITE SUPREMACISTS 

ARE EMBOLDENED BY
TRUMP'S CHOICE OF 

ALT-RIGHT WHITE NATIONALIST 
STEVE BANNON 
AS AN ADVISER

IF THERE'S NO SUICIDE NOTE,

THE POLICE BETTER BE INVESTIGATING THIS LIKE THIS IS A MURDER.


Tuesday, April 11, 2017

ASIAN CUSTOMER BLOODIED AS HE IS FORCIBLY REMOVED FROM UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT

"Passengers on a United Express flight from Chicago to Louisville, Ky., were horrified when a man was forcibly removed — violently wrenched from his seat and physically dragged down the aisle — apparently to clear a seat for airline staff. Videos of the scene have prompted calls to boycott United Airlines.
On Twitter, a representative of the United said the flight in question was "overbooked" and that "one customer refused to leave."  "


 NPR reports there that United wanted to put United crew members in the passenger seats so they could staff another plane at the destination.  United Reportedly offered $800 to get people to voluntarily switch planes -- which I'm finding hard to believe. Nobody wanted to stay in Chicago for $800? Even if you spend $300 on a room and going to and from the airport, you clear $500. And what percentage of passengers could possibly a connecting flight in Kentucky?  

Some of the details are missing from this story.  I'm sure of it. But this callous response from United (read it below) supports the circumstantial evidence that this wouldn't have happened to a white customer...no matter what.
"This is an upsetting event to all of us here at United," company CEO Oscar Munoz later said in a statement. "I apologize for having to re-accommodate these customers."
 Um...no that's not cutting it.  And this is the second incident involving United and inappropriate behavior of staff -- but that situation a little borderline.
Apparently two girls were wearing leggings instead of business attire required for PASS members (fly for almost nothing as relatives/friends of United Employees. But the requirement may be sexist depending on WHO does the interpreting of what's "appropriate")  


In this case, United doesn't have a leg to stand on.

Having police (?) drag someone off a plane because you want the seat for an employee? No.  The video below is nothing short of incredible.  I just cannot imagine this happening to a white person. I can barely imagine it happening to a person of color....yet it happened.







The other question is this:  Did the cops over react?

Making money is the bottom line. But if United overbooked the flight and screwed up the plan to get their staff to their next flight in Kentucky, then they should have upped the anty to $1000 or $1200 until they got a taker. Anything...but drag a passenger off the plane.

I don't care what the fine print says. If I'm in my seat already, I fully expect to get to my destination because I've paid for the service already.  I'd ticked off if I got bumped BEFORE I got on the plane. If they demanded I get off a plane I was already on? I'd be too afraid I'd get shot as a black person to resist the way this man did. But I'd be hot.

In other words, unprofessional behavior by United is the source of this mess. Using fine print to refuse to honor your contract is b.s. And my paying for a ticket to go from A to B at time X is a contract. This is why that overbooking crap ought to be illegal anyway -- though this really didn't have anything to do with overbooking.  


Furthermore, airlines should be required to figure out who is supposed to be on the plane BEFORE they get on the plane for security reasons alone.

Again, I wonder how much this man's race had to do with

1) his selection despite saying he is a doctor that has patients to get back to



2) how he was physically manhandled. 

United to answer for this. 


The city of Chicago should answer for this too because I'm hearing the police --not some sort of security company -- were involved in this. 


Why are police, paid by state tax dollars, acting like bouncers for a private company?  Police are supposed to policing people for being violent or impacting safety in a negative way --- not to protect United's financial bottom line.

  • Again, this passenger was being bumped so another United Crew could be transported to the plane they were supposed to be flying out of the destination airport. So this entire ordeal should be seen as being about United's profit margin.
So why were actual policemen involved in this? 

I need more information. Because this does not make sense -- not even from a "money making is everything" perspective.  Then again, once you involve the police, the potential for violence increases geometrically...because they're not even going to jail when they murder people.


Hey!  I'm Moving To:  BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM

Monday, April 10, 2017

UNSTABLE ABLE v UNSTABLE MABLE AS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF


a repost

ON BOMBING SYRIA

In theory, almost nobody would have a problem with taking it to Assad...if we lived in a vacuum where no other countries exist. In reality, we've already seen the consequences of executing an entrance strategy while having no exit strategy; Iraq was/ is/ always-will-be a U.S. foreign policy disaster.

And I don't care what anybody says, breaking Iraq helped break Syria.

Arab Spring or no Arab Spring ISIS is made up of the Iraqi soldiers left Iraq unemployed after the U.S attempted regime change in Iraq. Saddam Hussein may have been an evil dictator, but he was holding Iraq together. If Iraqis were ready and willing to kill and die to throw Hussein off their backs, they would have set it off themselves. We shouldn't have done it on their behalf (<-- a="" font="" lie="" was="" which=""> 
Bush Jr. was capitalize on the panic of 9/11 and get white people to actually believe Iraq had something to do with 9/11...so we could get to the second largest oil reserves in the world a little more easily.

Iraq wound up being a

You Break It, You Bought It

Scenario




Syria could wind up being a
"You Break It Some More. You're Gonna Wind Up Buying It
Cause
You're The One That Got Caught Holding The Bag
Scenario

But, regardless of what was right and what was wrong in this particular action, what scares me is that Mean Tangerine is more than a little stupid. ("Nobody knew healthcare could be" soooo "complicated.") It scares me that Trump is capable of seeing dead children in Syria at 4:02 PM and ordering a military strike at 4:05 PM. Think about it. Trump saw some half-baked story on Obama and wiretapping, and he's tweeting it x-minutes later. More than one news outlet has linked what he's watching on television and what he says he believes in a tweet the next day.

This time, instead of just tweeting after he saw dead children in Syria on television, he ordered 59 bombs dropped on an airbase halfway around the world

...as if have never been children dying horribly in every war the U.S. has ever had a hand in.

It actually scares me that we aren't really talking about the decision making behind a huge, SUDDEN flipflop that involved bombing another country -- regardless of what "the right move" actually was in the moment with Syria. Mean Tangerine might have gotten lucky THIS TIME. But the next television info-tainment quasi-news show might prompt him to bomb something that gets us into something we can't back out of.
And I'm actually having a problem being confident the intelligence is accurate this fast.

* * * *

LET US VISIT THE ALTERNATE UNIVERSE
WHERE HILLARY WON JUST FOR A MOMENT

Imagine, for a moment, that Hillary's stance on foreign policy was isolationist all through her presidential campaign-- like Trump's actually was. Imagine she said Syria's internal problems were Syria's. Too bad, so sad for them. To be more specific, imagine that she did not want to bomb multiple military targets in Syria --as she did in reality-- and instead wanted to put "America First" just like Donald Trump said during his campaign and repeated not three days before bombing Syria.

Pretend Hillary said, just three days before dropping bombs in somebody else's civil war, "I'm not and I don't want to be president of the world. I'm president of the United States, and from now on its going to be America First"

By any stretch of your imagination can you envision Hillary Clinton NOT being called unstable and emotional if she did an about face based on a picture of a man holding two infant sons that just died of a chemical attack?
Can you, instead, imagine the unstable memes and genuine worry on the faces of white men on news shows everywhere?
I can.
All we're getting from the white, mostly male, talking heads right now is "What an about face for Trump? Is this an actual policy change? Is this a one-off?"

And I'm not talking about sexism in regards to being "fair" here. I'm talking about the male dominated press complete failure to even discuss Mean Tangerine's emotional and mental fitness to be president. If someone without a penis had done this, every news outlet you can name would whispering about women and emotional responses compromising logic.

And in my opinion, this is actually a legit concern in his case. Trump's complete turn around based on a photograph of children dying and deciding to bomb Syria makes him about as stable as a teenage boy who just found his girlfriend kissing another guy --a whole four weeks after he became captain of the high school football team.

  • Did he actually think about how Russia and Iran would respond?

  • Did he care about any responses anywhere?

  • Did somebody do that part of the thinking for him?

  • Did this man just up and decide he wanted to look like a bad ass while the president of China was sitting next to him?
* * * * *
There may be some upside to this bombing. There really may be. But if there is, Trump isn't the one who thought it out. He's not capable. So if the military is the one pumping him up, we need to be worried. Because when you're a hammer (the military) everything looks like a nail (bomb the crap out of X)

A leader who can't think and lead on his own is something to worry about.

I've been damn glad to hear that some are seeing smoke signals over D.C. that seem to saying that the White Nationalist Bannon, lost his seat on the National Security Counsel and is losing favor after having embarrassed Trump twice with the Muslim Ban and Healthcare. But who's the main puppet master of the "leader of the free world" right now? His son-in-law? (<---i ask="" believe="" can="" font="" have="" i="" t="" that.="" to="">

There's also the possibility that Trump is thinking, that he's thinking about polishing his image same as always.

ME, MYSELF, and MINE is all he really thinks about consistently. So this time, let's assume that this has NOT changed. That would mean the bombing is communication and self-promotion of some kind.

Attacking Syria puts an easy victory in his cap during his first 100 days -- that's otherwise been dismal. His NSA choice had to resign, FBI director called him a liar to congress, his Muslim Bans have been stopped twice, and Repeal and Replace flamed out spectacularly.

Making himself look good while not doing much may be all he has left. Making himself look good while sending a few messages might be even better.


POSSIBLY SYRIA BOMBING MESSAGES:

I. TO CHINA (with the Chinese President sitting right there)

"Take care of North Korea or we will"
"See this is what we'll do in your backyard if you don't lean on North Korea as hard as you can."
(That bombing in Syria happening during the meeting with China's President must have seemed sent directly from hyper-masculinity heaven.)

II. TO N. KOREA

"This is what might happen to you. Keep it up with the missile testing."

C. TO S. KOREA

"Shaking in your boots aren't ya? Don't worry. I'm your friend. You need to act like you're more grateful though. You better pay your fair share of .....something." (wink wink)

D. TO RUSSIA With Love

"I hit a practically valueless target except for the optics. Let's just cool this bro-mance off a little. We can play kissy-face again after the FBI and CIA probes are over."


E. TO ISRAEL

"See, I'm on your side."

F. TO IRAN

"Bring it b*tches."

G. TO UNITED STATES VOTERS
"See, I'm not in Russia's pocket. See! No reason to investigate me.

H. TO IRAQ

"I'm just over here rattling your cage. Don't worry, I'm sending more troops into Iraq again."


SYRIA BOMBING OUTCOME
If only 6 or 7 Syrian army personnel were killed, and planes were still taking off from the airfield today, what was the bombing other than a message?

Only time will tell if the action is going to be worth the reaction that we have yet to see.

But one thing seems certain: Trump can't do this again in Syria without serious consequences. 1) He's made Putin look stupid

Russia signed agreements with president Obama that were supposed to reduce/elminate aggression. Trump violated that (after Russia already did in my opinion)  
Russia also told the United Nations(?) there weren't chemical weapons and Russian troops were SUPPOSEDLY sitting on a base where the chemical weapons were launched from -- if our intelligence is correct. Trump's United Nations Ambassador called the Russians incompetent or "played for fools"
2) Russia's reaction may be to refuse to communicate and coordinate where their troops will be in Syria at any given moment...which kept Russia and U.S. Troops from accidentally blowing each other up in Syria for months.

This agreement/ open line of communication to coordinate military aircraft movement was the method by which Trump was able to tell Russia about bombing the airbase before it began. Russia was able to move their personnel out of the way
So now the U.S. cannot bomb Syria again without the risk of hitting Russian troops, right?
All this for 6 or 7 dead at a bombed Syrian Airport that can still launch planes?

Sooo...um...How many of our troops are over there right now? I don't know. But I know it's a number a hell of a lot larger than 6 or 7.

I think bombs as messages is a reckless maneuver . I think making a move sans any big picture or a plan is stupid (Republican Marco Rubio, while cheering Trump on admitted there's no overall plan.) I think you should only drop bombs when you're going to war to win.

However, I also wonder if Trump looking unstable might give our enemies pause.

His being seen as Unstable Able might not be the worst strategy in the world ...if whoever is holding the puppet strings right now actually knows what he's* doing