Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

Cole, when it comes to calico cats, restraint is overrated.

“Joe Biden deserved better than he got from some folks in his own party.”

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

The Supreme Court is corrupt. Democrats must win in November and force court reform.

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

Republicans in disarray!

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Fani Willis claps back at Trump chihuahua, Jim Jordan.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

…and a burning sense of injustice to juice the soul.

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Be Careful Out There

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CNN just followed up on a story about how Russian trolls exploited people’s legitimate anger over the summary execution of Minnesota motorist Philando Castile to help Trump win the election. Here’s an excerpt:

By 2016, American prosecutors allege, the Internet Research Agency [Russian troll farm] was “primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton.”

According to prosecutors, an internal memo circulated in February 2016 read, “to use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump — we support them).”

Later in 2016, according to the indictment, the group began trying to discourage African Americans from voting.

One post on a fake black activist account highlighted by prosecutors read, “[A] particular hype and hatred for Trump is misleading the people and forcing Blacks to vote Killary. We cannot resort to the lesser of two devils. Then we’d surely be better off without voting AT ALL.”

Trump will do nothing to address this attack on our democracy since it benefits himself, and the Russians will continue to exploit the fault lines in our society since their last disinformation campaign was so wildly successful. So, how can we, as activists in our own communities, prepare for the onslaught?

The real activists in Minnesota modeled one way forward. They had no idea at the time that Russian trolls were exploiting Castile’s death, but they were skeptical when an anonymous person started organizing a local event online:

Around 8 a.m. ET on July 7th, less than ten hours after the shooting, a Facebook page began running ads targeted at people living near Minneapolis and promoting an event called “Justice for Philando Castile.”

The event was scheduled for the coming weekend and would take place outside the police department where the officer who shot Castile was based. Quickly, thousands of people expressed interest in attending.

But, to [Mica] Grimm, something didn’t feel right.

“So the activists really know each other here,” Grimm told CNN. “We’ve seen each other’s faces, and if we don’t know each other, then we know someone who knows someone.”

No one in the tight-knit community of activists seemed to know who was behind the campaign.

Grimm and her fellow activists questioned the troll who set up the account and persuaded him to give them the keys to the rally page by threatening to out him as an impostor if he didn’t. Then they staffed the event with experienced organizers. In doing so, they likely prevented the chaos and possible violence the Russian trolls hoped to foment.

We’ll have to be similarly smart to prevent disinformation campaigns from disrupting the upcoming midterms. Our government isn’t going to help us. We’re on our own.

Reader Interactions

123Comments

  1. 1.

    glory b

    My daughter is going to a protest today concerning the death of Antwon Rose, the high school student killed by police in a Pittsburgh suburb.

    She has spoken to a couple of protest leaders. They are pretty wary of getting their protest highjacked.

  2. 2.

    oldster

    The Russians figured out that W.E.B. Dubois was right about everything except the date:
    “The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.”

    It’s the problem of America, in every century since its founding, and if you can exploit it, you can weaken us, divide us, even make us vote in a pathogenic puppet who will do Putin’s bidding..

    This country mades its greatest strides towards civil rights when we needed to show the world that we were better than Russian tyranny. Then the Russians figured out that there was a solid segment of Americans who hated black people more than Russian tyranny. So they courted them, bribed them, and bought them outright. Because racists will betray America happily, if it will hurt people of color.

    And the Russians are still using American racism to undermine our power, domestically and internationally. They won’t be happy until they have fomented an outright civil war with blood in the streets.

    Thank god that there are enough sane Americans, of all colors, to see through it.

  3. 3.

    Patricia Kayden

    No one should be so gullible that a troll or a non-troll can convince them to voluntarily give up their voting rights. Especially now that the GOP is targeting non-voters for purging. I hope these tricks don’t work in November or 2020. We can’t afford it.

  4. 4.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Back during the first implementation of the Muslim ban, I attempted to start a protest at Mitch McConnell’s megachurch. I went to quiet parts of the local web, even reached out local DSA (which was useless – they’re no shows unless they’re the organizers). Anyway, a handful showed up, but we were met by a dozen cruisers – thing was a bust. Always wondered about the snitch.

  5. 5.

    Brachiator

    Great post. Gerrymandering. Voter Suppression. Disinformation campaigns.

    Gotta anticipate and navigate around all these obstacles just to get to the damn polls. It will make the victory sweeter.

  6. 6.

    Mike j

    Getting caught at this will now work almost as well as not. Every protest will be labelled a Russian thing.

  9. 9.

    MomSense

    We’re on our own fighting this Russian Cyber War. The GOP and trump administration have made a mockery of the oaths they swore.

  10. 10.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I think it was Chris Hayes who did a story last week on a campaign to get Clinton voters to “vote by text”. “Avoid the lines, text 555-NKVD to vote for Hillary!” It seemed to me, Luddite that I am, that would be something fairly easy to trace, no? To determine who set up the number and how many people tried to use it and where?

  11. 11.

    Juice Box

    We don’t know even now what stories were being spread by the Russians because their diffusion was so granular. Different groups with little overlap were targeted with very different stories. Haitian-Americans saw one story, Cuban-Americans another, Bernie-bros saw something else. It was a much more sophisticated campaign than the pro-Brexit campaign. It would be fascinating, if the results hadn’t been so tragic.

  13. 13.

    Bobby Thomson

    It’s worse than we thought. Trolls appear to have taken over the Senate minority leader position.

  15. 15.

    EriktheRed

    One thing I’ve run into a lot on twitter are self-described Democrats who want to push the narrative that Dems are only anti-Trump and have no other agenda. When pushed to justify this stance, they’ll first trumpet their bona fides and then when pushed further, their rhetoric devolves into Faux News talking points.

  16. 16.

    ruemara

    @Patricia Kayden: There are a ton of young people who’ve absorbed the both sides, Dems aren’t doing anything message. They never believed in voting because it never got that bad. Whoops.

  17. 17.

    Yarrow

    We’ll have to be similarly smart to prevent disinformation campaigns from disrupting the upcoming midterms. Our government isn’t going to help us. We’re on our own.

    Other governments are introducing courses on spotting Russian influenced disinformation and propaganda. We need something similar. Since our government at the moment certainly won’t do something like that we need others to step up. Has anyone seen any kind of effort along those lines?

  18. 18.

    p.a.

    This is the Hoover-era (and later) FBI M.O. as well, tweaked for the digital age. Use undercover agents and informers to discredit protest/justice movements.

  22. 22.

    piratedan

    and the main source of combating this, a functional free-press is mostly controlled by people who treat News as revenue, or those who are wholly engaged in the propaganda because it simply pays better.

    We have a long hard slog ahead of us, I am hopeful that our propensity for the trudge stands us in good stead. When the indictments drop illustration the depth of the treason we’ve been dealt, makes me wonder if there won’t be a whole wing needed for the likes of the Murdochs, Sinclairs and whoever owns the TFNYT, because these people have been the main conduit for setting the narrative and providing cover for it whenever the façade is peeled back.

  23. 23.

    kindness

    Who is going to tell the right wingers they should look out for the trolls? Would it matter? They love these trolls. Trolls & Fox News get their blood flowing. It’s their crack cocaine.

  25. 25.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @M4: it enrages and confuses a certain kind of Leftie that their favorite talking points and policies aren’t as popular as they think they should be, so they blame “spineless Dems!”

  27. 27.

    rikyrah

    @Brachiator:

    Great post. Gerrymandering. Voter Suppression. Disinformation campaigns.

    Gotta anticipate and navigate around all these obstacles just to get to the damn polls. It will make the victory sweeter.

    Yep, this is what we’re battling.

  28. 28.

    The Ancient Randonneur

    @kindness: Explaining the simplest of things to them is an exercise in futility. You’ll have a better outcome explaining the Gaussian Copula to a classroom of 2nd graders.

  30. 30.

    CarolDuhart2

    One suggestion of course: work with already established groups. Not that they are impervious, but relationships are harder to spoof that way.
    Be wary of calls to violence: agent provocateurs want arrests to discredit the movements and get leaders in jail-especially dangerous with post 9/11 terrorism laws.

    When are the organizing and protest teach-ins going to start?

  32. 32.

    M4

    @Bobby Thomson: yeah, and it’s read and believed mostly by democrats/liberals/lefties. I’m just saying that it’s possible to echo that line while still being an earnest democrat who just hasn’t sifted through the (waist-deep!) media bullshit.

  33. 33.

    Jeffro

    Trumpov Threatens Harley-Davidson With Taxes ‘Like Never Before’

    President Trump on Tuesday threatened the iconic motorcycle company Harley-Davidson with severe taxes and a public revolt that would eventually put the 115-year-old firm out of business, blasting the Wisconsin firm for a plan to move some operations outside the U.S. as a way to avoid getting caught in the middle of an escalating trade war.

    Trump also accused Harley-Davidson, without providing any evidence, of intentionally misleading Americans by saying the firm was moving some operations out of the U.S. in response to new tariffs imposed by the European Union.

    The intensity of these attacks, which he typically only uses when referring to political opponents, came in a series of Twitter posts.

    (the Twitter posts are quite insane)

    I was feeling bold, so I had to tweak my RWNJ dad and brother over all this:

    Speaking as an American first and liberal second, I’m perfectly fine if Trump’s eventual intervention is led by America’s CEOs instead of Occupy hippies. Whatever works.

    (please read full article at link to see the prez’s actual tweets against an American company)

    Keep in mind this started with Trump’s broader tariffs slapped on European goods, which begat the targeted tariffs (such as on Harley-Davidson motorcycles) from the EU. Harley-Davidson moves to shift some production over there (so they won’t get hit with the tariffs) and voila…Trump slams H-D.

    I think we’re going to have to make Economics 101 a job requirement, starting in 2020…

    Catherine Rampell is also compass-sharp this morning (I think she’s enjoying writing about the economic aspects of politics quite a bit, imho)

    Factory Workers Aren’t Getting What Trumpov Promised

    A little more than a year ago, Trump invited executives and union representatives from Harley-Davidson to the White House. There he vowed that the motorcycle manufacturer would flourish under his economic stewardship.

    “Thank you, Harley-Davidson, for building things in America,” he said. “And I think you’re going to even expand — I know your business is now doing very well and there’s a lot of spirit right now in the country that you weren’t having so much in the last number of months that you have right now.”

    This week, Harley-Davidson became among the highest-profile casualties of Trump’s escalating trade wars.

    Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs had already raised the company’s input costs, because those metals are among the primary raw materials it purchases. Worse, the European Union last week “punched back” against those metal tariffs with retaliatory countertariffs of its own, including an additional 25 percent tax on Harley-Davidson motorcycles shipped from the United States.

    On Monday, the company announced that it had no choice but to shift more of its production out of the United States.

    Harley-Davidson, whose U.S. factories are in Wisconsin, Missouri and Pennsylvania, is hardly the only firm buckling under the weight of Trump’s brilliant trade dealmaking. Don’t take it from out-of-touch East Coast elites like me; check out all the coverage from local papers and other news organizations around the heartland, documenting the damage.

    Mueller will put plenty of these clowns away for good, eventually, but it’s good to see Trumpov finding yet another way to be a drag on his and the GOP’s fortunes this fall.

  35. 35.

    raven

    Tommy the Traveler

    ‘Tommy the Traveler’
    After he’d developed an extensive network of contacts, Tommy apparently sold his services to the Buffalo FBI field office, a hundred-strong outfit, because of long-time concern over Old Left activity in the industrial heartland. But because he was extreme in his proposed provocations and considered a little nutty (he had a lot of military gear including an M-1 rifle, grenades, and a pistol), the FBI cut him loose, recommending him to the Ontario County Sheriff for undercover drug work on the campuses. When later interviewed by CBS’s Walter Cronkite, the sheriff defended Tommy showing students how to build bombs as “perfectly proper behavior for a police agent attempting to infiltrate student radicals.”

    In his narc role, Tommy finally succeeded in realizing his violent anti-antiwar agenda. At Hobart College in Geneva NY, he persuaded a couple of impressionable freshmen to toss a Molotov cocktail into the campus offices of the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) in the basement of a dorm with students sleeping above. The culprits received short jail sentences, while in the end Tommy the instigator got off nearly scot free. During that campus visit he’d also set up and fingered several other students for a NY State Police drug bust which had turned into a riot. The bust briefly brought Tommy local celebrity, and he even considered running for the office of county sheriff. He went on to study criminology, worked as a police officer in Pennsylvania, and later in life became a horse and cattle breeder. More recently, he was spotted as a Civil War re-enactor in Oklahoma. Tommy still gets around.

  36. 36.

    Brachiator

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: RE: I think it was Chris Hayes who did a story last week on a campaign to get Clinton voters to “vote by text”. “Avoid the lines, text 555-NKVD to vote for Hillary!”

    NKVD. Initials of old Soviet interior ministry.

    Breaking. Supreme Court upholds Trump travel ban…

    The US supreme court has upheld Donald Trump’s travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries, in a significant victory for the administration and a blow to anti-discrimination advocates.

    In a 5-4 ruling handed down in Trump v Hawaii on Tuesday, the court accepted the government’s argument that the ban was within the president’s power to craft national security policy and his authority to “suspend entry of aliens into the United States”.

  40. 40.

    A Ghost To Most

    @LAO: I’ve been assuming and preparing for much worse. My Nazi family got my attention (and my absence) a decade ago.

  41. 41.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @zhena gogolia: I will say it again, ask your wingnut relatives how is a Trump staffer being refused service because the store owner finds the Trump staffer’s views offensive any different than a store owner refusing service to a homosexual. It goes without saying the wingnut has a clear, easy and logical expectation why these two are different and not just bald face hypocrisy from a bunch of wusses who love to dish it out, but can’t take it, so they should share it with the rest us.

  44. 44.

    rikyrah

    UH HUH

    Quickie: In 2010, Republicans Won Because of Incivility and Anger

    Let me take you back, way, way back, all the way to the ancient age of 2009 and 2010. A black Muslim man was uppity enough be president. Evil Democrats had majorities in both the House and Senate. And a brave rebel named Mitch McConnell was willing to stop any legislation from ever being passed again. Simpler times, man, simpler times.

    A noble band of patriots called “the Tea Party” decided to take their country back or make it great again or something because the black Muslim and the evil Democrats had dared to give them health insurance. So they took their righteous anger to town hall meetings held by the Democrats and any Republicans who dared to want to work with the black Muslim, and they ranted and raged until they silenced anyone who wanted to talk about issues until many members of Congress decided to just avoid town halls with their constituents.

    And, of course, the media condemned the incivility, and Republicans lost because they couldn’t control their more radical voters.

    Oh, no, wait. The media, for the most part, wanted to understand the rage of the tri-corner hat-wearing yokels, and the 2010 blood red tide turned the Congress Republican. Yeah, that happened.

    Rage works. We’re angry because they want to take away health care, imprison children, and gut the government. Learn to ride the wave, Democrats, or you’re gonna just ebb and break before you ever reach shore

  47. 47.

    Mai naem mobile

    Fuck McConnell. Fuck Gorsuch. Fuck Roberts. Fuck Thomas. Fuckity fuck Alito. All undemocratic scum. The next Dem POTUS should pack the court.

  48. 48.

    Platonailedit

    The rw sc upholds the twitler’s travel ban.

    So many warnings. Went unheeded by dem voters.

  49. 49.

    rikyrah

    This is how authoritarianism works.

    A stolen Supreme Court seat by the ruling party becomes the deciding vote for a partial ban on a religious minority from entering the United States.

    Our republic and its founding principles are crumbling before our eyes. https://t.co/0BPKQAvyC7

    — Zac Petkanas (@Zac_Petkanas) June 26, 2018

  50. 50.

    rikyrah

    The theft of Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court seat is legitimately the greatest heist in world history.

    — Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) June 26, 2018

  51. 51.

    JPL

    @LAO: This is from Scotusblog and it doesn’t make sense, except to say I sold my soul in 2000 so why redeem myself now.

    Justice Kennedy’s concurrence says, essentially, that there are some things that are unconstitutional that the Judiciary is not in a place to correct or address. It’s subtext is pretty close to the surface, and seems designed to chastise the Executive while agreeing with the majority that there was not anything the Court could do about it..

  56. 56.

    randy khan

    For those who were wondering about the impact of the stolen Supreme Court seat, today we learn that it’s okay to tell doctors what to say about abortion, but not okay for fake clinics to be required to tell pregnant women about abortion, and that the Muslim ban is okay. Both 5-4, with the exact lineup you’d expect. In fact, Gorsuch has provided the 5th vote on maybe half a dozen cases this term so far, all of them going the opposite of the way you’d have expected if Garland had been seated or if Clinton had appointed someone.

    (It’s worth remembering that the Muslim ban that the court considered was considerably watered down from the original Muslim ban, so it’s not quite as bad as it could be, but it’s still not good.)

  57. 57.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Jeffro: Speaking as someone who works in manufacturing, it’s hard to emphases how badly Trump screwed the pouch with his silly little trade tariff. The Labor costs for Asia are about the same as the US now, or close enough not to matter, so the whole industry trend is In-sourcing for quality reasons. Trump solved that problem by increasing the material costs.

    In fact it’s so calculated I bet it will come out that Trump or his family his heavily invested in Asian Out Sourcing companies.

  58. 58.

    Bruce K

    If you all will forgive me, I’m going to be a bit uncivil.

    I hope every one of the bastards who made today possible suffers for it. Not just their feelings being hurt. I’m talking about all of them, Trump, Pence, McConnell, Ryan, Bannon, Hannity, Limbaugh, all of them dying in excruciating agony, preferably involving piano wire in some way, and then spending eternity in an afterlife of acid and hellfire.

    I don’t acknowledge any middle ground here any more. You’re either fighting the evil in some way, even if it’s only with your voice, or you’re enabling it and deserve to share their fate.

  60. 60.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @p.a.: Technique was used by the Okhrana (the Tsar’s secret police) back in the 19th Century.

    OT note to Alain: Damn site is still forgetting my nym and email address.

  61. 61.

    Cacti

    Funny thing. Alleged progressive Ed Schultz encouraged Dems to stay home in 2010.

    He now works for Russia Today.

  64. 64.

    JPL

    @LAO: It’s sad that President Obama didn’t know he had the authority to ignore parts of the
    Constitution. The entire opinion reads like hogwash, we don’t have the authority to correct it is up to congress. Didn’t he rule against the state of FL’s court in their elections, or was that just a nightmare.

  66. 66.

    Wild Cat

    @Cacti: He was such an obvious whore even Randi Rhodes called him out constantly as a right-winger on Air America well before he hit MSNBC.

  68. 68.

    Doug R

    @M4:

    @EriktheRed: I’ve seen people I know well, and know to be Dems, echoing this on Facebook. Places like the intercept push it too.

    Getting the feeling that Glenn Greenwald is a paid Russian asset.

  70. 70.

    Hill Dweller

    @Mnemosyne: I’ve already seen multiple “liberals” on Twitter claim the Garland nomination suppressed Dem turnout in 2016. The said, they’ve been absolutely roasted for saying it.

  71. 71.

    Brachiator

    Polling mania:

    Axios co-founder: Trump is beating Washington at its own game

    The more President Donald Trump antagonizes his critics, the more Republicans seem to support him, Axios co-founder Jim VandeHei told CNBC on Monday morning….

    Trump’s overall approval rating hit 45 percent last week, matching the highest level of his presidency, which happened in the first week after his inauguration, according to Gallup’s weekly poll…

    “There’s this weird dynamic taking place: The more the president says things that outrage his critics, his critics go even more bananas, which then have the effect of making Republicans want to support Trump even more,” even if they don’t like what he’s doing on trade or at the border on immigration…

    VandeHei said the president is the most isolated he’s been since taking office. “He is definitely on his own more than any point in his presidency. He’s doing the communication. He’s doing the policy.”

    “It’s creating mass amounts of chaos internally,” but voters seem to be focusing on the strengthening economy and jobs picture and a possible nuclear deal with North Korea instead of all the noise….

    I think this misses a key point, which Democrats need to keep hitting.

    People are, and should be outraged not by what Trump says, but by what he does that hurts people and that hurts the country.

  72. 72.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Doug R: yes, but entirely possible he doesn’t know it.

    Or that he knows and has rationalized it.

    OT: Pete Wiliams speculating that Kennedy will announce his retirement. Pointless gossip until he does or doesn’t, but it does make me wonder if that would, fucking finally, get ‘progressives’ talking about judges.

  73. 73.

    Tilda Swintons Bald Cap

    @Mnemosyne: “Stop blackmailing me with the Supreme Court.” “Hillary is history’s greatest monster.”
    Next term, no abortion or birth control, rampant firearms.

  77. 77.

    Calouste

    So the Russians explicitly admitted that they supported Sanders, together with Donnie Dementia?

  78. 78.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Apologies for the repeat if this is the reason people are bringing up Greenwald, but… good christ

    Glenn Greenwald
    What the GOP did in blocking Obama’s last SCOTUS appointment was outrageous, but those assuming Merrick Garland would have voted to invalidate Trump’s travel ban are making assumptions inconsistent with his judicial record

  79. 79.

    M31

    @Brachiator:

    The US supreme court has upheld Donald Trump’s travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries, in a significant victory for the administration

    more like a significant victory for ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban.

    SO MUCH WINNING

  82. 82.

    Paul W.

    @Mai naem mobile: This.

    Fuck civility, fuck this court and the way they treat every decision differently depending on the outcome they want. We now have another 30 years of work on top of the 10 Trump has already put in place in just the last 18 months alone.

    The next Democratic president and Congress are going to have to overreach just to get back to neutral and use the powers that are being given by this Court to then override it.

  83. 83.

    Dorothy Winsor

    The site is still not letting me read comments easily. I’m not abandoning the place of course, just checking in occasionally to see what I can do. Take care, jackals.

  84. 84.

    Yarrow

    @Cacti: Anyone who encourages someone not to vote is suspect. They are encouraging people to voluntarily surrender their rights. That is not a thing people who believe in democracy do.

  85. 85.

    Kay

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    It’s a long, really boring campaign to prove that Trump is the same as the Democrats over there.

    Every day. It’s a bore. I wonder if his readership is dropping off. He makes the same point, over and over and over, doesn’t matter the issue- “both sides”.

    They’re kind of irrelevant at this point, the libertarians, the fake liberals. It’s purely punditry. There’s no political action of any kind. It’s like Trump has stymied them in some way- they can’t go against him so they’re stuck screaming “both sides” over and over.

    They can’t join the Democrats and they can’t renounce Republicans, so they’re like professional political critics. Useless, for all practical purposes. I suppose they can donate to the ACLU. That’s permissible under the “both sides” frame.

  86. 86.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Brachiator: I am having a flash back to “Good News For Conservatives” during the last half of the Bush Admin. Seriously, this Kidnapping Scheme of Trump’s has generated the most public anger since 911 and somehow that’s a win for Trump?

  88. 88.

    Kay

    @glory b:

    My daughter is going to a protest today concerning the death of Antwon Rose, the high school student killed by police in a Pittsburgh suburb.

    That’s a heartbreaker. I cannot bear that he wrote about it in english class, said he was afraid of being profiled.

  89. 89.

    TriassicSands

    Our government isn’t going to help us. We’re on our own.

    o

    Not only will “our” government not help us, it is actively working against us. With the full support of five, corrupt, and thoroughly agenda-driven members of the SCOTUS, the government is doing everything it can to subvert democracy and turn this country into a one-party banana republic.

    Led by religious zealots Gorsuch and Alito and lunatic Clarence Thomas, the Court is dismantling the separation of Church and State. Their racial and religious bigotry are now driving the Court’s social issue decisions. A woman’s right to control her body, never adequate, is now fully at risk. As soon as Kennedy retires, Roe v. Wade should be overturned and back alley abortions will be the only choice for moderate to low income women. The rich, including those who have supported anti-choice candidates, will simply find care elsewhere — a minor annoyance.

    If stupid and ignorant voters who should be voting Democratic continue to fail as responsible citizens, they will bear full responsibility for the destruction of our country. Our responsibility is to do everything we can to get every American who should be voting for Democrats to not only vote, but also to get their friends and relatives to vote. Ignorance and apathy are our biggest enemies right up there with the Republican Party, Trump, and the five right wing SCOTUS justices. The problem is we can’t do anything about the fascists until we get our side to vote.

  90. 90.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Before Trump’s term is up, Americans will need visas to travel to most countries in the world, and those will be difficult to obtain. This list will likely include Mexico, and potentially Canada. Trade will be slammed shut, travel decimated and the world in a recession, all while we’re told to “give him a chance – the promised prosperity is just around the corner”. Police will be militarized against protest and disrespect, and our supine judiciary will just be worse, augmented by more Federalist Society trolls. Women, minorities, labor will be relegated in a big way

    At this point, violence is inevitable. Question is, does it wait for more consolidation, or does it happen now?

    In any event, the Trump voting Syrian Christians I know just got the surprise they weren’t expecting – now their relatives are on the other side of an impenetrable travel block. I also have an old law school classmate who liked to visit her family and birthplace in Iran every year or two, and due to reciprocity, is now barred. That sucks for her.

    Maybe Bill Ayres can rekindle The Weathermen. Seems that we need them a shitload more than Quakers.

  91. 91.

    Kay

    @schrodingers_cat:

    It’s not even a game. Games are sometimes fun. They’re professional critics and they take themselves very, very seriously.

    I don’t think they object to state power at all, frankly. I think they’re a group of people who are frustrated they don’t have state power, but are too lazy to run for anything. I hate the smugness, the assumption that they would be better, smarter, more ethical. Talk about facts not in evidence. I would bet 50 bucks if they WERE in power they would be authoritarian themselves- they have a real zeal for punishment, denouncing, shaming. There’s a prosecutorial impulse over there that doesn’t gibe with how they want to be perceived.

  92. 92.

    japa21

    Why am I having edit buttons showing up on Kay’s comments. Nobody but hers. I never want to edit Kay’s comments, they never need editing.

    ETA: Okay, when I went to enter the above, noticed nym, etc. was missing. Put it in and, voila, the buttons on Kay’s comments disappeared. Plus nym, etc. now showed up again. So ignore everything I ever write.

  95. 95.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Doug R:

    Once upon a time, we had a nice NSA program that required data retention with could be accessed by due process, granting government the theoretical ability to figure out where things like foreign attempts to manipulate elections. Thanks to the efforts of “hero” Snowjob and his intrepid mouthpiece Greenwald, the fears of every pasty, pudgy loser in a greasy “Han Shot First” tshirt were stoked, and they interrupted their gaming and misogyny to express fear that their porn, hentai and brony habits would potentially be available. Combine that with the paranoia of seditionists that their racism, weapon trading and violent antigovernment plots would implicate them in criminal conspiracies, and it was the perfect storm to strip us of the people and capability that would have made 2016 different.

  96. 96.

    Haroldo

    @Dorothy Winsor: Further, the site is not saving my name for comments (not a huge inconvenience given my fondness for lurking).

    ETA: Miracle! That maladay seems to have been cured. Thanks, Alain.

  97. 97.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Kay: Its not a game but they cover it like it is. Who is up, who is down, who is winning. They rarely delve into the policies and their impact .The game is not funny or enjoyable for us, but it is for them. They are both the audience and the commenters. They support team R.

  98. 98.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    I have an acquaintance from high school days who was pretty tight with some good friends. This acquaintance came from a really fucked up German-American family – his dad was a WWII veteran who’d lost a leg in the war and was so virulently racist and anti-semitic, you really didn’t know which side he fought on, Anyhow, for whatever reason, I wound up being in his first wedding and later stood as godfather for his oldest daughter. I actually handled his dad’s fucked up probate, did some work for his siblings from time to time, so when he’d call with little questions, I’d help him as a courtesy.

    Anyway, I knew he’d gone completely around the bend after moving to Ocala – enthusiastic contributor at Stormfront and NatVan, some kind of podcast. He took on a job doing long haul trucking after several other failures when he called, sometime between 2011-2014. I asked how he was doing, and he advised that he had a Russian girlfriend and got there a few times a year. I was surprised, as truckers usually don’t have that kind of money. Here was the weird part – he expressed that he planned to retire to St Petersburg. I told him I was surprised, that the city was super expensive and that I didn’t think that his meager leavings from social security would support him in such a place. He ignored that and said the following:

    “The United States is doomed, and guys like me will want to be out. The blacks and jews…”

    At this point, I said I had to go, and hung up.

    I wonder what he participated in or knew? I wonder what he’s been paid or promised?

  99. 99.

    CarolDuhart2

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Those violent stunts did several things: create Nixon’s “Silent Majority” and “Law and Order” justifications that created the Drug War, and the majorities that were so terrified of the violence that they voted them in. Secondly, you can’t outshoot the police or change minds by blowing up somebody’s shop or house.

    Two movements came out of the Seventies successfully, and they were both non-violent: the LGBT movement and the Women’s movement. By not getting into shoot-outs, they had the ability to move minds first locally, then nationally.

    Trump desperately needs something, anything, to galvanize his base. They are a cult, and cults are usually unsuccessful in transferring affection and action to other people. Only if he can goad terrified moderates into voting for them does he have a chance at all.

  100. 100.

    Steve in the STL

    Thank god I’m in bargaining and can’t fully digest these horrendous Stephen Miller-inspired SCOTUS opinions that are clearly show that the rule of law is dying as rapidly as Arctic ice.

    As I understand from my brief reading, the only viable way to abort a fetus now is to shoot and kill the pregnant woman?

  101. 101.

    smintheus

    This op-ed by Fintan O’Toole in the Irish Times is excellent.

    To grasp what is going on in the world right now, we need to reflect on two things. One is that we are in a phase of trial runs. The other is that what is being trialled is fascism – a word that should be used carefully but not shirked when it is so clearly on the horizon. Forget “post-fascist” – what we are living with is pre-fascism.

    It is easy to dismiss Donald Trump as an ignoramus, not least because he is. But he has an acute understanding of one thing: test marketing. He created himself in the gossip pages of the New York tabloids, where celebrity is manufactured by planting outrageous stories that you can later confirm or deny depending on how they go down. And he recreated himself in reality TV where the storylines can be adjusted according to the ratings. Put something out there, pull it back, adjust, go again.

    Fascism doesn’t arise suddenly in an existing democracy. It is not easy to get people to give up their ideas of freedom and civility. You have to do trial runs that, if they are done well, serve two purposes. They get people used to something they may initially recoil from; and they allow you to refine and calibrate. This is what is happening now and we would be fools not to see it.

    One of the basic tools of fascism is the rigging of elections – we’ve seen that trialled in the election of Trump, in the Brexit referendum and (less successfully) in the French presidential elections. Another is the generation of tribal identities, the division of society into mutually exclusive polarities. Fascism does not need a majority – it typically comes to power with about 40 per cent support and then uses control and intimidation to consolidate that power. So it doesn’t matter if most people hate you, as long as your 40 per cent is fanatically committed. That’s been tested out too. And fascism of course needs a propaganda machine so effective that it creates for its followers a universe of “alternative facts” impervious to unwanted realities. Again, the testing for this is very far advanced.

    But when you’ve done all this, there is a crucial next step, usually the trickiest of all. You have to undermine moral boundaries, inure people to the acceptance of acts of extreme cruelty. Like hounds, people have to be blooded. They have to be given the taste for savagery. Fascism does this by building up the sense of threat from a despised out-group. This allows the members of that group to be dehumanised. Once that has been achieved, you can gradually up the ante, working through the stages from breaking windows to extermination.

    It is this next step that is being test-marketed now. It is being done in Italy by the far-right leader and minister for the interior Matteo Salvini. How would it go down if we turn away boatloads of refugees? Let’s do a screening of the rough-cut of registering all the Roma and see what buttons the audience will press. And it has been trialled by Trump: let’s see how my fans feel about crying babies in cages. I wonder how it will go down with Rupert Murdoch.

    To see, as most commentary has done, the deliberate traumatisation of migrant children as a “mistake” by Trump is culpable naivety. It is a trial run – and the trial has been a huge success. Trump’s claim last week that immigrants “infest” the US is a test-marketing of whether his fans are ready for the next step-up in language, which is of course “vermin”. And the generation of images of toddlers being dragged from their parents is a test of whether those words can be turned into sounds and pictures. It was always an experiment – it ended (but only in part) because the results were in.

    And the results are quite satisfactory. There is good news on two fronts. First, Rupert Murdoch is happy with it – his Fox News mouthpieces outdid themselves in barbaric crassness: making animal noises at the mention of a Down syndrome child, describing crying children as actors. They went the whole swinish hog: even the brown babies are liars. Those sobs of anguish are typical of the manipulative behaviour of the strangers coming to infest us – should we not fear a race whose very infants can be so devious? Second, the hardcore fans loved it: 58 per cent of Republicans are in favour of this brutality. Trump’s overall approval ratings are up to 42.5 per cent.

    This is greatly encouraging for the pre-fascist agenda. The blooding process has begun within the democratic world. The muscles that the propaganda machines need for defending the indefensible are being toned up. Millions and millions of Europeans and Americans are learning to think the unthinkable. So what if those black people drown in the sea? So what if those brown toddlers are scarred for life? They have already, in their minds, crossed the boundaries of morality. They are, like Macbeth, “yet but young in deed”. But the tests will be refined, the results analysed, the methods perfected, the messages sharpened. And then the deeds can follow.

  102. 102.

    Kathleen

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Sadly my senator Sherrod Brown tweeted thanks and pledge of support for Trump’s tariff actions. I’m surprised frankly that he didn’t seem to calculate the impact of on companies. He is a very bright man. I can see how he considered show of support for Ohio workers who lost jobs to outsourcing. Why he failed to calculate impact on business and subsequent effect on operations and employment I cannot understand.

  103. 103.

    different-church-lady

    Social media addiction is not helping a goddamned thing. I don’t care how many grandchildren you’re “staying in touch with”.

  105. 105.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @CarolDuhart2:

    Nixon’s “silent majority” had been seething since Brown vs Board. They didn’t need more encouragement.

    Without Elijah Muhammad, Stokely Carmichael or Malcom X, would MLK’s nonviolence have achieved what it did (fleeting though it’s been)? If there were harsher voices waiting in the wings, would white America have pushed back as hard on trying to set back civil rights?

  108. 108.

    Brachiator

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Glenn Greenwald
    What the GOP did in blocking Obama’s last SCOTUS appointment was outrageous, but those assuming Merrick Garland would have voted to invalidate Trump’s travel ban are making assumptions inconsistent with his judicial record

    Goddam Greenwald is a goddam fool!

    He should have stopped at “appointment was outrageous.”

    He is either a Russian agent or a purity dope who lives in a fantasy land. Greenwald and his cohort will never be able to elect their dream progressive candidate unless Trump is impeached or contained, and the entire Republican majority swept away by a cleansing Blue electoral tide.

    ETA: Damn. Just saw the breaking news about the Supreme Court “pro-life” clinics decision. Damn. Damn. Damn.

  109. 109.

    Brachiator

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    Without Elijah Muhammad, Stokely Carmichael or Malcom X, would MLK’s nonviolence have achieved what it did (fleeting though it’s been)?

    Yes.

    If there were harsher voices waiting in the wings, would white America have pushed back as hard on trying to set back civil rights?

    Probably.

  110. 110.

    rikyrah

    @Yarrow:

    @Cacti: Anyone who encourages someone not to vote is suspect. They are encouraging people to voluntarily surrender their rights. That is not a thing people who believe in democracy do.

    TELL IT

  111. 111.

    JWL

    Michelle Goldberg of the NY Times today wrote the finest synopsis of The State Of The Union 2018 that I’ve yet read or expect to read. Way to go, Michelle.

    Also: “The whole world’s watching” was a chant heard outside the democratic convention in 1968 Chicago. No doubt it’s also true in 2018. That noted, the people of the planet will need to practice no uncertain patience with us at this point. They must trust to our freedoms of speech and ultimately our votes to right our ship. Either that, or fuck off altogether if they wish us ill, as Putin’s Russia most certainly does.

    That’s because the Americans fascists in the republican party are going for broke, as evidenced in today’s disgracefully un-American decision to uphold the GOP’s travel ban (not “Trump’s travel ban”, by the way). No doubt political fights will get much uglier in the United States before our ship is righted. Democrats needn’t worry, either, about that outcome. They need only fight to effect it.

    I’ll contend that facing up to unpleasantly vital truths is form of political civility. Refusing to acknowledge vital truths in matters of war and peace, for example, is degrading to political discourse. I would also contend, fatally so.

    The evil implications inherent in America’s decision to launch the 2003 plot to War in Iraq continue to plague us, and will until Americans acknowledge that great crime as being one. We owe it to the war’s dead and maimed, to ourselves, and to the peoples of the world. It is what a great people should do when they fail, and tragedy ensues.

    The good news? No American will be harmed in the telling. No American will be denied their freedoms, or property, or be otherwise molested for democratic politicians to finally acknowledge Americans were stampeded into waging that goddamn war. For the love of god, the guilty and their allies have lived in peace and at complete liberty for a full 15 years now. Two of the last three (losing) democratic presidential nominees, both of whom aided-and-abetted the swine that plotted it, are certainly no worse off for their catastrophically wretched judgement. But they wrong no matter their reasons, and it’s 15 years past time they admit it publicly. It is literally the least they can do in service of the country at this point. I’d implore them “let it be your their last hurrah”. History will celebrate them if they do. Be that as it may, the direct correlation between the plot to war and the rise of Trump’s America is as plain as day. Democrats can no longer afford to turn a collective blind eye to it, nor should they. Here endeth the sermon

  112. 112.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Honestly, I can sympathize. Half the time Democrats don’t do what I want either. It’s just… they should consider whether their complaints are helping or hurting, once in a while.

  113. 113.

    CarolDuhart2

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: It wasn’t their criticism, it was the riots and violent activities (like robbing banks and such) that scared people. They never were able to create the viable movement necessary to carry us through after King’s death, either. It was up to legacy orgs and Jesse Jackson to even have a post-King movement at all. The Panthers and the NOI turned on each other instead of mobilizing resistance to the backlash.

  115. 115.

    dww44

    Along the lines of disinformation, hacking, and other cyber activities that can upend the established order, I just got email confirmation that Booman Tribune site had been hacked. Happened a couple of days ago, so I emailed booman himself and he answered in the affirmative when I asked.

    While his mobile site is working and one can access individual articles via a search engine or other links, the homepage won’t load. He’s looking for cheaper options than the several hundreds he’s been quoted to restore/repair his site.

  116. 116.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    OK, let me try and break through the nonviolence fetish some have, in order to get people to recognize that tens or hundreds of thousands peacefully protesting will get ignored or laughed at.

    Would South Africa have given in and accepted Mandela’s position had it not been for fear of deserved slaughter at the hands of those even more radical?

    Or how about this “both sides – Jew and Nazi – should be civil” from a mid-30s Quaker.

    When nonviolence is a counterproductive farce

  117. 117.

    dww44

    Along the lines of disinformation and cyber attacks on our democracy, it seems that Martin Longman’s site, “Booman Tribune” has been hacked. For a couple of days I’d been getting server error messages when trying to access and emailed him today and he confirms his site was hacked, that the mobile site is working, but that the home page isn’t. If one knows of specific articles they can be accessed. It will cost hundreds to repair/restore and he’s searching for cheaper options.

  118. 118.

    CarolDuhart2

    There’s a difference between “standing up for yourself” and mindless violence that distracts from the message, brings on police repression, and turns away moderates through fear. Mandela and the ANC tried terrorism for a while and rejected it as ineffective. King won his battles, the Panthers who came later didn’t. King was able to at least nurture a few acolytes, Huey Newton didn’t. The 2000 riots of Seattle did nothing to slow down globalisation or even inform people about it.

    Also it’s interesting to note that it’s easy to say and be violent without caring about the fate of those caught up in it. It won’t be those people who go to jail and lose their livelihoods.

  119. 119.

    Brachiator

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    OK, let me try and break through the nonviolence fetish some have, in order to get people to recognize that tens or hundreds of thousands peacefully protesting will get ignored or laughed at.

    What violent revolutions have you led or participated in?

  121. 121.

    Ruckus

    @MomSense:
    Those oaths are just another way to lie. And of course they lie as easily as they breathe, so an oath means zip to conservatives.

  123. 123.

    Brickley Paiste

    @different-church-lady:

    It’s been apparent to thinking people for a long time that facebook, twitter, etc. make people dumber.

    That people continue to use them EVEN AFTER THE DISCLOSURES OF FACEBOOKS COMPLICITY IN sharing data with Cambridge Analytica pretty much underlines the fact that people care more about sharing cat photos than having a functioning democracy

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