Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

So very ready.

Stay strong, because they are weak.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

You are here: Home / Politics / domestic terrorists / Remember: “Charlottesville Was Always Coming Because of Choices the Republican Party Has Made”

Remember: “Charlottesville Was Always Coming Because of Choices the Republican Party Has Made”

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(KAConway/Jennifer Palmieri)
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Mr. Charles P. Pierce, at Esquire, is a wise man:

… [W]hen anybody, especially the president*, talks about what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend, from the Citronella Putsch on Friday night, to the violence on Saturday morning, to the graphic fulfillment of the philosophy behind these lunatic laws on Saturday afternoon, tells you that what happened in Virginia has anything to do with “polarization,” or that it is a problem equally shared by Both Sides, that person is trying preemptively to pick history’s pockets.

Every Republican who ever played footsie with the militias out west owns this bloodshed.

Every Republican who ever spoke to, or was honored by, the Council of Conservative Citizens and/or the League of the South owns this bloodshed.

Every Republican administration that ever went out of its way to hire Pat Buchanan, and every TV executive who ever cut him a check, and every Republican who voted for him in 1992, and everyone who ever has pretended his views differed substantially from the ones in the streets this weekend, owns this bloodshed…

Anyone who followed the presidential campaign saw this coming. Frankly, I’m surprised there wasn’t more of it. Every Trump rally came with an implied promise of some kind of violence. Sometimes, the promise was fulfilled. Sometimes it wasn’t. But it was the dark energy behind that whole campaign. For all the relentless chin-stroking about the economically anxious and forgotten white working class, and for all the prayerful coverage of Donald Trump’s “populist” appeal, there was no question what was driving events on the Republican side.

If they merely wanted change, they had 16 other Republican candidates to choose from. But that wasn’t what got them out to the rallies, to bathe in that dark energy and chant their imprecations. That wasn’t what got them to the polls in droves. The inside voice, carefully honed by four decades of practice, had gone silent in favor of saying out loud all the spells and incantations that had worked their magic ever since Harry Dent had written the original book of spells and handed it to Richard Nixon…

We now know what the reaction will be if the institutions of government, and the people in them, get so sickened by this administration that they act to rid the country of it. Is there any doubt that a president* who, after the events of this weekend, can’t even see fit to rid himself of the fascists around him, including the ludicrous Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Ph.D., wouldn’t balk at encouraging paranoid violence as a means of self-preservation? Is there any doubt that a president* who could not even muster the gumption or the outrage to criticize Nazis for what they are wouldn’t blink at bringing the temple down on his own head either out of pure childish pique, or because he doesn’t know any other way?

Except for himself and (possibly) his family, there is nothing this president* cares enough about to keep from destroying it if he thinks he has to do so. And, if he thinks he has to do it, he will use whatever tools are at hand, because why wouldn’t he? Nobody in the party he purportedly leads has shown any willingness to do anything more than moan about how Troubled they are at what he’s doing. And a lot of what his administration is doing comes from the same place in our history out of which James Fields, Jr. and his automobile came barreling in the summer sunshine of a Saturday afternoon. The administration still employs Kris Kobach for the purpose of suppressing minority voters. The administration is still in court defending the rights of oppressed white college applicants. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is still the attorney general, and a lot of people are trying to get the inside voice to speak again. Somebody never stopped whistling Dixie…

Today:
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Reader Interactions

180Comments

  3. 3.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    Richard Spencer doesn’t think President Trump condemned his movement today. He called it “kumbaya” nonsense, & said Trump didn’t mean it.

    What are the odds that 20 years from now Spencer clinches the GOP nom for president?

  5. 5.

    Jeffro

    The alt-right/Nazis/white whatevers know full well that this president* supports them to the hilt. They hear his late, weak, and forced condemnations and know that he’s only doing it to buy them more time to continue infecting this country.

    Fortunately, their numbers are very, very small. But the tacit supremacy-supporters in the GOP…why, adding in those folks, that adds up to about 46% of voters, apparently. Or at least, it did last November. This is why it’s important to stay in their faces and see if any of them might have any sense of shame left at all, because now Trumpov is down to about 34%. Message? Keep banging!!

  6. 6.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Intel said Monday that CEO Brian Krzanich was leaving President Trump’s American Manufacturing Council, the latest executive to distance himself from the president following the weekend’s events in Virginia.”

    His statement is a bit both-sidesy, but he does call out the racists
    I have already made clear my abhorrence at the recent hate-spawned violence in Charlottesville, and earlier today I called on all leaders to condemn the white supremacists and their ilk who marched and committed violence.

  8. 8.

    Adam L Silverman

    It was reported earlier this evening on MSNBC that the President was upset about being forced to have to make his statement earlier today.

  9. 9.

    clay

    Off-topic, but maybe not: The band Wilco has a song available for purchase called “All Lives, You Say”. All proceeds will be donated to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

  10. 10.

    efgoldman

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    CEO Brian Krzanich was leaving President Trump’s American Manufacturing Council

    No matter what these guys really believe deep inside, they know that failing to cast out racists/racism can have a pretty strong influence on the bottom line, that no amount of PR can help.

  11. 11.

    Suzanne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    It was reported earlier this evening on MSNBC that the President was upset about being forced to have to make his statement earlier today.

    Well, he could just go fuck right off and then he wouldn’t have to do it.

  14. 14.

    Kay

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Picture a very long conference table with Trump, Ivanka and Jared sitting alone at the head. When I worked for a caterer and we had to make it look like a wedding reception wasn’t poorly attended we had to remove place settings and stre-e-e-tch the chairs out and around. Turn an emptiesh 8 into a full 6, or even a 4! Trump might know that trick, actually.

  15. 15.

    Adam L Silverman

    Did anyone see this in real time? The whole thing was completely insane. And seems to be a microcosm of where we are at this moment.

  17. 17.

    Another Scott

    @Adam L Silverman: Some sharp reporters there.

    :-/

    His tweet this evening made that abundantly clear even if one didn’t see the video of his comments. As I said downstairs, it wasn’t the quantity of his remarks that people were upset about on Saturday, so “[making] additional remarks” wasn’t the solution.

    But he’s too brain damaged to see that, and him being upset about the reception is proof that it wasn’t sincere…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  22. 22.

    sharl

    Ashley’s been having a field day trolling #Brands, and sometimes patience and persistence pays off:

    Ashley Feinberg‏ @ashleyfeinberg Aug 13

    .@GotMilk where do you stand on the pepper spray nazi

    Got Milk @GotMilk 1 hour ago

    As milk processors, we share values of unity, respect & equality. We won’t leverage recent incidents to promote ourselves or our products.

    built to shrill‏ @theshrillest 37 minutes ago

    Leave the milk people alone

    Ashley Feinberg‏ @ashleyfeinberg

    Replying to @theshrillest @GotMilk

    i won’t apologize for holding milk processors to a higher standard

  23. 23.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I want to add to Republicans who should take ownership of this Willard Romney and his bringing trump in to make robocalls in OH and MI not despite but because of birtherism. One of the Mittlets went full birther, and the old robot attempted “humor” with his “No one has ever asked to see my birth certificate! Ha ha ha”
    and there was lots of birtheresque rhetoric in that campaign. “The president doesn’t understand what it means to be an American…”
    Gingrich: Foodstamp President
    Sununu: I wish this president would learn how to be an American

    And Romney’s niece, current head of the RNC (I think is her title) hired birther dingbat to be an official RNC spokeswoman. She had to hire her away from CNN.

  26. 26.

    Villago Delenda Est

    And Pierce is absolutely right about this. They’ve been cultivating these slime molds for 50 years.

  27. 27.

    Adam L Silverman

    @lamh36: It is Boykin laying into Dennard. When Joy Ann Reid would have him on during the campaign he always struck me as someone trapped between recognizing that who he was fronting for was a highly dubious individual and recognizing that that highly dubious individual was the one buttering his bread. I don’t have any sympathy or empathy for him, but it was pretty clear what the dynamic was.

    I did see that segment with Symone Sanders. She’s fierce and I mean that in a good way.

  28. 28.

    lamh36

    Oh and…

    @lamh36:

    @BrandonTXNeely
    When an African American CEO resigned from the Manufacturing Council it took Trump 54 mins to attack him When 2 white CEO’s leave…silence

  30. 30.

    Mike J

    @lamh36:

    (lets see how many of you ole BJ foagies :-) understand this bit of pop culture…LOL)

    The I don’t know her interview was 15? 20? years ago. I’d think old fogies were the only people who knew it.

  32. 32.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman: Who the fuck is Paris Dennard? And Keith Boykin’s face while Dennard spoke…. Holy fuck. Dennard seems to be what rikyrah calls a “slave catcher.”

  34. 34.

    jl

    ” Spencer took Trump’s words seriously but not literally. ”

    That’s what Trump’s own people say we are supposed to do.

    What is Fox News broadcasting now? Hours of patriotic band music and parades?

  35. 35.

    lamh36

    @realDonaldTrump
    Blocked
    More
    Feels good to be home after seven months, but the White House is very special, there is no place like it… and the U.S. is really my home!

    “the U.S. is really my home”… who da fuq talks like that

  36. 36.

    Shalimar

    @? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: If we still have elections 20 years from now? Very low. Republicans have come pretty close to maxing out the results their current racist coalition can achieve, and they only got this far through massive voter suppression. Even they know they eventually need to appeal to groups other than white males if they want to remain a viable party. Or we can become a dictatorship, if their billionaire masters have gotten tired of the bible-thumping hatred.

  37. 37.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    and on Kellyanne Conway… In one of the long write-ups she got a few months back, the reporter went and talked to her mother, who said she was glad to have a President who would say the word “God” again, and Obama would only go to funerals when “blacks” were killed. A few people (twitter types) expressed surprise that Conway let the reporters talk to her mother. There is no way KAC didn’t know her mother talks like this. The most benign explanation is that Conway sees this kind of hate-filled spew as “tellin’ it like it is”, the paranoid part of me speculates that she wanted the Deplorables to know she (Kellyanne) was from their tribe. But then I remember Deplorables probably don’t read a whole lot of glossy mags like Vanity Fair and New York.

  39. 39.

    Kay

    FireAndFuryPopehat‏ @Popehat 3h3 hours ago
    More
    Somebody tell Trump not even to bother inviting the CEO of that tiki company to fill one of the vacancies

    Guffaw.

  40. 40.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Shalimar:

    If we still have elections 20 years from now?

    Could people of good faith please stop doing this kind of thing? I know that everyone is worried, but creeping pessimism doesn’t help.

  42. 42.

    Miss Bianca

    @lamh36: I had an order come in today for a bundle of nine Tiki torches. I had to think for a second about whether or not I was going to lie and pretend that we were ought of stock. Then I had to think about what *that* pretend message might have said.

  47. 47.

    efgoldman

    @jl:

    That quote says deluded ignorant bigot to me.

    At least. Says racist lying sack of pigshit to me.

  48. 48.

    Kay

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    the paranoid part of me speculates that she wanted the Deplorables to know she (Kellyanne) was from their tribe.

    The theory might be right, though. I listen to Right wing radio sometimes. They don’t like Conway. They basically blame the people around Trump for Trump’s failures but the callers really don’t like Conway. The theme is she’s kind of a “gold digger”- using President Trump for her own benefit- which is so gross because it turns her into his wife/girlfriend. They also think she’s a bad mother- neglectful.

  50. 50.

    different-church-lady

    @jl:

    ” Spencer took Trump’s words seriously but not literally. ”

    That’s what Trump’s own people say we are supposed to do.

    dou·ble·think
    ˈdəbəlˌTHiNGk/
    noun
    noun: doublethink; noun: double-think
    the acceptance of or mental capacity to accept contrary opinions or beliefs at the same time, especially as a result of political indoctrination.

  51. 51.

    lamh36

    @Mike J: lol…it’s a popular meme cause of who the interviewer asked her about and the way in which Mariah answered the question…

    ETA: came back in force since then

    Then it became one of the goto petty memes…lol

  53. 53.

    Shalimar

    @? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: I wouldn’t assume Spencer is even remotely competent. He has basically built his position as white nationalist leader with family money rather than dues-paying supporters. He has never had a real job. Say every bad thing you can think of about Trump, but at least he has lived extremely well on his talent as a con man. He used up all his inherited family money decades ago.

  55. 55.

    DissidentFish

    @Omnes Omnibus: Paris Denard is often on NPR. I know I’ve heard him on Weekend Edition and I think on Here and Now also. I honestly don’t know how Michele Martin, who’s awesome, can speak to him. He is awful.

  58. 58.

    efgoldman

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I have a lot of ties because of work.

    I have a ton of ties, but when our group moved from Boston to RI in 2001, we went full business casual, so they’re just gathering dust except for the occasional wedding or funeral.

  59. 59.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Adam L Silverman: @jl: went spelunking for the quote and found Anne Laurie did a post on the not one not two but three KAC long-reads from last May. Anyway:

    President Obama “pitted the blacks against the whites,” she said. “If something happened to a black person, he and his wife were right there. But if something happened to a white person, you never saw them, did you?” Attending the inauguration with her daughter, Fitzpatrick was relieved to hear God mentioned for what she believed was the first time in eight years.

    I may have been a bit unfair about the language, but the racism can be smelt through the internets.

  62. 62.

    burnspbesq

    @Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):

    Since neither Duke nor Central are fully back in session yet, it will be interesting to learn who was responsible.

    I was thinking, as i was driving home tonight, that all it would take to prevent a recurrence of the mayhem in C’ville would be … two RPGs. Just wipe out the statues of the traitors late at night.

  66. 66.

    NotMax

    @Omnes Omnibus

    Don’t wear ’em myself but have probably almost 200. Each time a male in the family died, his ties would somehow always find their way, unsought, to me.

    Some really outrageous ones too, which came in handy over the years as costume adornment for theater productions.

  67. 67.

    sigaba

    @Adam L Silverman: Paris was farting talking points but going into the whole I’m-blacker-than-thou discourse is extremely unsettling. It reminds me of Alfre Woodard in Bob Roberts and not in a good way.

  70. 70.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Kay: They basically blame the people around Trump for Trump’s failures but the callers really don’t like Conway. The theme is she’s kind of a “gold digger”- using President Trump for her own benefit- which is so gross because it turns her into his wife/girlfriend.

    Interesting, because as someone said, as I went digging around for that quote from her mother, one of the quotes I saw (maybe Anne Laurie’s, I was scrolling) is that while KAC is very good at playing the ditz (this was her schtick during the Clinton years and when she was one of Maher’s regulars), I think she’s actually very smart and was one of the reasons trump got close enough to ooze into office. She was said IIRC to have kept him relatively on-message in the last weeks of the campaign. As to “gold digging”, I believe our own Dr Silverman has said her real employer is Rebekah Mercer, and I believe him. I’m sure she loves having a WH office, but she didn’t need trump’s money.

    And it is gross to suggest that she’s trump’s mistress. Again, I hate her, but…

  71. 71.

    Adam L Silverman

    Found it, couldn’t remember the news service that had covered Trump being forced to make today’s remarks.
    apnews.com/395f6966223043babc448e9eae97c6b8

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Bowing to pressure from right and left, President Donald Trump condemned white supremacist groups by name on Monday, declaring “racism is evil” after two days of public equivocation and internal White House debate over the deadly race-fueled clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia.

    In a hastily arranged statement at the White House, Trump branded members of the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists who take part in violence as “criminals and thugs.”

    Loath to appear to be admitting a mistake, Trump was reluctant to adjust his remarks.

    The president had indicated to advisers before his initial statement Saturday that he wanted to stress a need for law and order, which he did. He later expressed anger to those close to him about what he perceived as the media’s unfair assessment of his remarks, believing he had effectively denounced all forms of bigotry, according to outside advisers and White House officials.

    Several of Trump’s senior advisers, including new chief of staff John Kelly, had urged him to make a more specific condemnation, warning that the negative story would not go away and that the rising tide of criticism from fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill could endanger his legislative agenda, according to two White House officials.

    The outside advisers and officials demanded anonymity to discuss private conversations.

  73. 73.

    lamh36

    @maggieNYT 14m14 minutes ago
    More
    POTUS retweeting one of the Pizzagate conspiracy theorists 2 say he’s being treated unfairly in criticism of his response to Charlottesville

  77. 77.

    scott (the other one)

    @Adam L Silverman: This middle aged, (lower) middle class white male does not understand how Paris Dennard can possibly see Donald Trump in anything remotely resembling a positive light. I do not get it.

  78. 78.

    Adam L Silverman

    @lamh36: Ah Posobiec. Tied to Flynn. Member of a Slavic nationalist group. Friend of Roger Stone. Can’t keep his mouth shut on social media.

  79. 79.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @NotMax: Aside from two skinny ties that my dad had from his mod days that I grabbed to go with his suits from then that I appropriated when I was in college in the early ’80s, all of my ties are my own original things. I also have never received gift ties, so they are my choices.

  81. 81.

    JGabriel

    Local Milk Steak (ZeddRebel) via Anne Laurie @ Top:

    He [Trump] sees racists wearing MAGA hats instead of white hoods and thinks Cha Ching Cha Ching.

    I’ve been thinking for a while now that, like the fascists who were called *brownshirts*, we should start calling Trump’s white-nationalist neo-nazi klan-klub: *redcaps*.

  82. 82.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Correct, she is the in house pollster for Rebekah Mercer. Her husband is a partner at a white shoe law firm. She’s also done polling for Pence and some other GOP campaigns, but even when she’s done that, over the past several years she’s been on the Mercer payroll. Just like Bannon.

  86. 86.

    Kay

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I know but a Donald Trump employee can hardly complain that Donald Trump’s base is horribly sexist. It’s a real dilemma for her, huh? Part of the secret to her success is attracting horrible people, who then judge her when things aren’t going well for the douchebag she works for, because they have to explain it somehow and it ain’t gonna be Trump’s fault.

    I don’t listen to her because I don’t watch cable anymore but to me she looks somewhat harried and always exhausted- so like every other working mother of small children I know. I find her more sympathetic than Ivanka, not that it matters, because I’m not her target demo.

    The Trump people could have done a lot of things differently. For thing that could have had the humility to recognize he barely won and done some outreach to people who didn’t vote for him, you know- bank a little goodwill for when the inevitable crash came- but they decided not to. They’re high rollers! Risk takers! They bet the wad on the Trump base. Oh, well. Bad bet.

    Everyone thinks it’s scary now but wait until his most loyal followers become disenchanted. They were angry people when he won and they still believed all his bullshit. They’re going to be even angrier when it starts to sink in.

  92. 92.

    efgoldman

    @JGabriel:

    we should start calling Trump’s white-nationalist neo-nazi klan-klub: *redcaps*.

    Nope. That’s disrespectful of the honorable profession of railroad porters, which was one of the few jobs African Americans could get back in the day, and who wore red caps and went by that name.

  93. 93.

    Lyrebird

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Thanks for that. I also loathe KAC and the agenda she’s working herself ragged to advance.

    One of the pettier reasons I want the whole raft of Republican strategists and maladministrators to be fully discredited is to get some hints that American society is getting less prone to falling for KAC’s and MacEnany’s brand(s) of smiling lies. Underestimating them won’t get us there!

  95. 95.

    jl

    @Omnes Omnibus: Trump is a fool. I don’t think he owes the Nazis his election. And he has wound up with this toxic brew as his base because of his own stupid and reckless and hateful choices since election night. I keep recalling his interviews during the campaign where he calmly promised he would leave off all the bigot and nasty BS, that he claimed he knew was a gimmick to get through the GOP primary, for a much more dignified, less rough, more inclusive and mature presidential mien. He could have done it easily, if he was one tenth as competent as he thinks he is. But he threw all the better possibilities of his term (which isn’t saying much, but it is something), the moment he started acting like an ass the day after election.

    Either he was lying through his teeth when he re-assured people during the campaign that there would be a new presidential Trump after he was elected, or he is such a feckless undisciplined ass he can’t manage himself from one minute to the next.

  96. 96.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Kay: The Trump people could have done a lot of things differently. For thing that could have had the humility to recognize he barely won and done some outreach to people who didn’t vote for him, you know- bank a little goodwill for when the inevitable crash came- but they decided not to

    A lot of people observed that if trump had brought to an infrastructure bill– even a shitty one– the energy and persistence he brought to the Muslim ban, he’d have really fucked over the Dems and the GOP.

    They bet the wad on the Trump base. Oh, well. Bad bet.

    Josh Barro wrote a piece today that trump in the last few days has made it harder for his Deplorables to pretend they’re not deplorable. trump’s peeps need to believe themselves when they say “I don’t have a racist bone in my body, but… “

  100. 100.

    Lizzy L

    @Kay: His “most loyal followers” will never desert him. But that group is going to get smaller and smaller as he is further exposed for the incompetent grifter that he is. All the whining and excuses about unfairness and fake media will not keep people from peeling away. Eventually, I believe, the group that’s left will be small — but vicious, mostly insane, and occasionally very dangerous. Think Oklahoma City.

  101. 101.

    different-church-lady

    @jl:

    Either he was lying through his teeth when he re-assured people during the campaign that there would be a new presidential Trump after he was elected, or he is such a feckless undisciplined ass he can’t manage himself from one minute to the next.

    Not mutually exclusive.

  103. 103.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman: Exactly. Bannon, Miller, and Gorka aren’t the problem in the White House. Trump is. I don’t see Kelly as helping; it’s gone bananas since he came to the White House.

  104. 104.

    jl

    Ah, those dang ‘bothers’! OK, add in some “stupider that I can imagine a human could be”, and I could go with ‘both’.

  105. 105.

    JGabriel

    @efgoldman:

    That’s disrespectful of the honorable profession of railroad porters, which was one of the few jobs African Americans could get back in the day, and who wore red caps and went by that name.

    Sorry, didn’t know that. Apologies to anyone I inadvertently offended through my ignorance.

  106. 106.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @jl: Based on his life, I think that he is completely down with the White Supremacists. He just lacks the courage to say so.

  108. 108.

    Lyrebird

    @Adam L Silverman:

    he has a long history of actions and statements that show he’s largely in agreement with them (emphasis mine – L).

    Okay now y’all have better info than I do, but I will mouth off anyhow: I am way more convinced of the above than that he knows who he owes… Quite possible that even his largest debts, financial and otherwise, are too numerous to keep track of. During the election, he had many opportunities to turn his own and his fathers’ track record of racial discrimination into a big PR win with even the least shred of remorse, of acknowledging having needed to learn a different point of view. Woulda fit perfectly with his “we need to do better for the inner city” song and dance. But no.

    I’m so sick of this stuff but am praying that more people pull an Orrin Hatch and suddenly become aware that the coffee aroma is strong enough to crowd out all our oxygen (as in waking up).

    Random absurdity in a serious situation – the nazis were chanting “you will not replace us” ??? and even “Joos will not replace us”… what my kid hopes for these days is to grow up and turn Unitarian anyway, so he can have Christmas (more bling) and Hannukah (more nights*!) and extra apples for Rosh Hashanah too.

    *of gift-giving rather than of the official holiday…

  109. 109.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    in re trump’s ‘advisory council’

    Ben Wikler‏Verified account @ benwikler 1h1 hour ago
    Campbell’s CEO is on Trump’s advisory council. Until Bannon’s fired, staying on that council means brand risk of being called #SoupNazis

  110. 110.

    LesGS

    @JGabriel: Do you know who the Redcaps are in fairy-tales? A type of goblin which gain their power from their caps that they must dip regularly in fresh blood.

  112. 112.

    efgoldman

    @JGabriel:

    Sorry, didn’t know that.

    You’d have to be of a certain age, and also conversant with train travel in the old days. But yes, the porters and the cooks and wait staff in the dining cars (when there WERE dining cars) were all black and strongly unionized.

  113. 113.

    Adam L Silverman

    The good news is that it wasn’t terrorism. The bad news is someone deliberately used their car as a weapon to hurt people in a restaurant.

  115. 115.

    Lizzy L

    @Adam L Silverman: A group calling itself “Patriot Prayer” has been given a (federal) permit to hold a pro-Trump “Free Speech” rally at Crissy Field in San Francisco. The venue is in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Seems pretty clear to me that they are hoping to provoke a violent reaction. They won’t have guns, unlike the nazis in Charlottesville.

  117. 117.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: He doesn’t like being handled. Can’t take being told what to do. The more order Kelly brings over all and McMaster brings to the national security interagency process the more he is going to act out and lash out.

  120. 120.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Adam L Silverman: not to nitpick a tragedy, but that tweet makes it look like he targeted the little girl. As I understand it, this was some kind of suicide attack, the guy had tried to kill himself a few days earlier.

  123. 123.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Omnes Omnibus: But these guys are awesome! (not MPs)
    wearethemighty.com/articles/britains-most-awesome-rank-the-pioneer-sergeant?utm_content=buffer1fe61&…

    The Royal Army, as well as the armies of some commonwealth nations, has a peculiar rank in its structure that allows the soldier to wear a full beard and apron and carry a large ax while on parade.

    Pioneer sergeants, as they are known, date back to the 1700s when the men selected for this duty were expected to act as a unit blacksmith as well as a sort of early combat engineer, cutting the way through forests and other obstacles to allow other troops to move behind them with additional equipment and arms. They also had … other duties.

  124. 124.

    LesGS

    @Lyrebird: Hey, and then a lot of Unitarians do the Pagan thing too, and you can to the Strega Nona thing on January 6th, and get even more loot!

  125. 125.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Lizzy L: They won’t legally have guns. And if they have enough folks with conceal carry permits from the California counties that issue them, then they’ll also legally have concealed guns.

  126. 126.

    Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]

    Because this is an open thread, I’m going to be moving from Maui to Albuquerque in December for a year or two. My dissertation adviser has a research grant that I am a perfect Post-Doc for.

  128. 128.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman: I know. OTOH, I don’t trust Kelly farther than I can throw him based on his performance at DHS. He seems to be a fellow traveler on FP. McMaster, I hope that the guy who wrote the book is still in there and that he is fighting against worse.

  129. 129.

    lamh36

    @jl: Donald Trump’s favored child converted to the Jewish faith, the same favored child gave him 2 half Jewish grandchildren…if he can’t be bothered to condemn Nazis even with this circumstance he either feels he owes them too much or he feels exactly as they do.

    My take, he’s a racist P.O.S. who’s rather hang with white folks than those colored folks

  133. 133.

    smintheus

    Has anybody on our side been paying attention at all to what the Putin-Trump axis means? This isn’t hard to figure out. It’s now gone way beyond the same old both-sides-do-itism from our pathetic news media.

    Trump’s “many sides” means one specific thing: “Everybody’s to blame, so nobody’s to blame.” It’s the distilled essence of most of Putin’s international propaganda. Trump did not pick up on that resonance accidentally. His campaign and his presidency have both been propped up not by any real philosophy of his own but by the ideology that Putin has supplied them with. And that ideology is that everything everywhere is going to hell so why pick on Putin’s vile behavior.

    That’s what this is all about: Nobody’s to blame so stop pointing fingers.

    Of course that’s the only ideology that the Nazis have ever been able to hide behind. They knew how much they needed Trump, just as Trump needs them to fulfill the promise of making things everywhere go to hell.

  135. 135.

    Millard Filmore

    @JGabriel:

    Sorry, didn’t know that. Apologies to anyone I inadvertently offended through my ignorance.

    As someone that adored railroads as a boy, and came to the horrible realization that few others shared my obsession, I forgive you.

  137. 137.

    Adam L Silverman

    @lamh36: She converted. That means the grandchildren are 100% Jewish. Of course this ignores the fact that Judaism in 2017 is a religion not an ethno-nationality as it was 2,000 years ago.

  138. 138.

    Lizzy L

    @Adam L Silverman: They have the right to both open and concealed carry in federal parks. Hell, they can carry open loaded guns in a federal park. But in order to get to the park they have to travel through the city and county of San Francisco, and SFPD is not going to be happy about idiots with loaded guns moving through the city.

  140. 140.

    Adam L Silverman

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: I’m aware of how it works. That in most places they are may issue and hard to get. But my understanding is that in the more rural counties it is closer to shall issue.

  144. 144.

    rk

    He’s tweeting crap again. Quoting an alt-right conspiracy theorist now. UGH! Will be never be free of him? Sorry I don’t know how to link to tweets (maybe it’s better that way).

  145. 145.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Adam L Silverman: I felt the same weird relief that such a terrible thing couldn’t be politicized here. It’s very strange how our rightwing spent years denigrating France (and “old Europe”, and “the chocolate-making countries”), yet terror attacks in France generate more rightwing rage, and often more news coverage, than US military personnel killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. And it’s one of the those things you can’t blame on trump. He domesticates, so to speak, every terror attack in Europe (an attack in Nice or Rouen “When will we learn?” Who’s “we”?), but I don’t remember him joining in on the O’Reillyesque/Jonah Goldberg foolishness about “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”, etc.

    @Omnes Omnibus: yeah, to quote the great Hank Hill, that boy ain’t right.

  147. 147.

    Yarrow

    @Omnes Omnibus: I don’t trust him either.

    I saw you mention McMaster. I saw him on a Sunday show this week (maybe MTP?) and was just as unimpressed as the previous times I’ve seen him. Maybe he’s fighting the good fight but it’s not apparent when he gives an interview. Not everyone is good in front of a camera, so that could be part of it.

  150. 150.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yep. Two Soldiers were killed in northern Iraq yesterday or the day before. Got almost no coverage here at all. Nimitz, which has just gotten on station to provide air support for Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, waved off a F18/A Super Hornet with engine trouble rather than risk a ramp strike. Diverted the bird to Qatar where it crashed into the runway at Qatar International. The pilot safely ejected. Also no coverage.

  152. 152.

    NotMax

    @NotMax

    Long neglected brain cell fired up.

    Off topic: One the actors playing a porter in that production had the unforgettable name of Quitman Fludd III.

    (Saw it on B’way and the name leapt out of the Playbill and burrowed into the gray matter.)

  153. 153.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Patton’s darker younger brother

    Matt Oswalt‏Verified account @ MattOswaltVA 5h5 hours ago
    Steve Bannon looks like Eric Trump immediately after drinking from the false Grail
    I miss having a president who never felt the need to make a formal statement reassuring the American public he was anti-Nazi

  156. 156.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Yarrow:I was a junior officer with HR. I worked with him, arty supporting cav. I also drank with him a bit. He became a bit of a hero (was one in combat) to reform oriented junior officers. It delayed his promo to general. He may be bad at TV, I hope that he is good at no war.

  166. 166.

    Lyrebird

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    He may be bad at TV, I hope that he is good at no war.

    Fingers, wrists crossed on the “no war” front… And the “bad at TV” part at least sets him apart from other folks in that Cabinet.

    I do not assume that “doing this for honorable or at least strategic* reasons” guarantees success. That also means that I’m not going to take specific moves by the Republican maladministration as evidence against his reasons or his character.

    *”strategic” like “gee let’s not waste lives of our troops in a f)(#*g war with f*&#g Venezuela”

    Don’t know whether I’m being tactically or strategically stupid by staying up this late. Should change course regardless.

  171. 171.

    LesGS

    @Lyrebird: My kids got the Solstice presents on the winter solstice, then stockings & grandparents’ presents on Christmas Day, and then stuff in their shoes on Befana’s Day on January 6th. We celebrated Hanukkhah at church, but, in our family celebrations, never personally appropriated that holiday. Though I’m sure the kids wouldn’t have minded…

  173. 173.

    Ruckus

    @lamh36:

    My take, he’s a racist P.O.S. who’s rather hang with white folks than those colored folks

    That would fit well with the last 50 yrs of his life.

  175. 175.

    Fair Economist

    @JGabriel:

    I’ve been thinking for a while now that, like the fascists who were called *brownshirts*, we should start calling Trump’s white-nationalist neo-nazi klan-klub: *redcaps*.

    Hmm. In English folklore, a redcap is a “malevolent, murderous goblin”.

    Fits perfectly!

  176. 176.

    sharl

    I haven’t been able to track down confirmation of this, but it’s such a lovely picture…
    Sweet baby photo of Heather Heyer, sleeping in the arms of her…father?/grandfather?/uncle?…

    That little baby grew up believing in goodness and justice and standing up to hate. Heather Heyer. Say her name. pic.twitter.com/82noPD35uU— George Wallace (@MrGeorgeWallace) August 13, 2017

  177. 177.

    SFAW

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I have a lot of ties because of work. But I don’t put that in my bio.

    What a coincidence! I used to “tie one on” a lot because of work, and I, also, do not put that in my bio.

  178. 178.

    John Waldron

    This is what I posted on my FB page back in November 2016 after the election: “It’s the end of the world as we know it” keeps going through my head. Remember the most obvious personality trait of Trump is his narcissistic and anti-social pathology; and, by winning this election you bet his ego is ten times bigger than before and he is completely assured that he is right about everything. He is now in power. There will be little or no checks and balances against him in his cabinet; those that will deal with him will do so in an obsequious and deferential manner…just look at all the groveling that took place during the election and will continue to do so now. I wonder how many Republicans are lining up and flattering this ass hole of a man? I question that our institutions are strong enough to withstand Trump and his cohorts, the alt-right and the ugly violent-racism long rooted in this country that he has conjured back into existence. It will not be a peaceful time…” it’s the end of the world as we know it.” I still fear for my country…an unwilling Vietnam veteran.

  179. 179.

    TooTall

    Am I surprised that Neanderthal scum still think this way? Not really. I am a 50 yr old Virginia native, growing up in school learning about how “honorable” General Robert E. Lee was, because he refused to fight the offer as General for the Union army, and instead accepted the position of General of the Confederate army, because he could not find against his native Virginia. Standard classroom history lesson in Virginia schools. We had a State Holiday in February, called “Lee/Jackson Day” honoring Gen. Lee & Stonewall Jackson. When the Federal holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King was established, Virginia refused to give Dr. King his own holiday. Instead, they renamed their existing state holiday, “Lee/Jackson/King Day.” Yes. The irony is just that deep. The Virginia state capital, Richmond, has a wide street called Monument Boulevard, filled with Confederate statues, which are still there today. It is still a source of city pride today that these statues are there. Not shame. Growing up there, this kind of thinking was the norm of the day.

    I do not feel this way. I do not support these racist scum. I hate what they stand for. I went to school at the Univ. of Va, and am crushed at the thought of the Nazi invasion of my alma mater, and the murder they have brought there. But I understand how they have been indoctrinated into hateful thinking, and I don’t know how to undo the years of decades of hateful thinking inside them.

    Classify them as domestic terrorists, and take away their rights of free speech, right to bear arms, and right to assembly? You bet. Tell me I am wrong. Give me a better answer. Please.

  180. 180.

    Interrobang

    @JGabriel: Calling them “redcaps” would probably be unfair to the historical redcaps, who were (usually black) Pullman railroad porters. But I like the spirit of the idea.

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