A statement by the President: pic.twitter.com/liWE4rlleF
— Real Press Sec. (@RealPressSecBot) August 16, 2017
Update Thank you to Adam for finding live footage of Trump’s current Cabinet meeting:
by David Anderson| 229 Comments
This post is in: Hail to the Hairpiece, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Bring on the Brawndo!, Fucked-up-edness, Go Fuck Yourself, Good News For Conservatives
A statement by the President: pic.twitter.com/liWE4rlleF
— Real Press Sec. (@RealPressSecBot) August 16, 2017
Update Thank you to Adam for finding live footage of Trump’s current Cabinet meeting:
This post is in: Hail to the Hairpiece, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, Bring on the Brawndo!
Trump says there are ‘serious’ leaks and ‘leaks where people want to love me’https://t.co/0611ruD2Y6
— Jason Leopold (@JasonLeopold) August 11, 2017
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Thanks so much for your contributions, GOP…
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Apart from all the [facepalm]s, what’s on the agenda for the evening, or the weekend?
This post is in: domestic terrorists, Getting The Band Back Together, Open Threads, Post-racial America, Protest Is the New Brunch, Bring on the Brawndo!, Flash Mob of Hate
Best way to stop Alt-Right and Neo-Nazi violence in #Charlottesville is to show up in the thousands and #DefendCville-not ignore the threat. pic.twitter.com/ZrJBFr9C3Y
— It's Going Down (@IGD_News) August 10, 2017
Poor little Charlottesville (so close to DC, so far from… the concrete canyon haunts of scary urban types, ifyouknowwhatimeanandithinkyoudo) is not looking forward to the weekend. Per the SPLC:
Hundreds of Alt-Right activists and white nationalist extremists are set to descend on the small community of Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday in what’s shaping up to be the largest hate-gathering of its kind in decades in the United States.
“Unite the Right” is expected to draw a broad spectrum of far-right extremist groups – from immigration foes to anti-Semitic bigots, neo-Confederates, Proud Boys, Patriot and militia types, outlaw bikers, swastika-wearing neo-Nazis, white nationalists and Ku Klux Klan members – all of whom seem emboldened by the Trump presidency…
Those Out’n’Proud racists better bring their RVs and camper tops, because I am happy to note that the local Airbnb is not sympathetic. Per the Washington Post:
… As city leaders worked Monday trying to defuse an increasingly tense situation, the lodging rental company Airbnb quietly booted users who it believed were searching for lodging to attend the rally.
The company confirmed they had taken action in a statement to NBC29: “When through out background check processes or from input of our community we identify and determine that there are those who would be pursuing behavior on the platform that would be antithetical to the Airbnb Community Commitment, we seek to take appropriate action including, as in this case, removing them from the platform.”
That stance didn’t sit well with the rally’s organizer, Jason Kessler.
“This is outrageous and should be grounds for a lawsuit,” Kessler told The Washington Post on Monday night. “It’s the racial targeting of white people for their ethnic advocacy.”…
What a fragile snowflake. To quote my Orange-bred granny: Go boil yer head, it might be useful then [as cabbage soup].
Much more on the proposed rally and counter rallies here, here, and here — in the NYTimes:
… [T]he rally’s leaders have complained in their social media posts of a “heckler’s veto,” saying that the counter-protests are effectively censoring their free speech rights.
“There is just an incredible amount of discrimination from the city government and other elements of the community to keep people from eating at the restaurants they want to eat at, to keep people from renting,” Mr. Kessler said. “There’s just an enormous amount of hostility.”
Asked if he was surprised by the pushback, he said, “I think that I’m surprised by the venom and rancor from some individuals. It’s a little over the top.”
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Apart from hoping the bigots are seized by a great confusion & fright causing them to turn on each other with the same rancor, what’s on the agenda as we wrap up the week?
This post is in: Dolt 45, Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Bring on the Brawndo!
Millennial: your generation got houses and jobs
Boomer: yes but we lived with constant fear of nuclear winter
Millennial: hold my avocado
— Ken Norton (@kennethn) August 8, 2017
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Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, what’s on the agenda for the day?
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These (bad) numbers have held for a week or so. Actually getting a bit worse, if anything… pic.twitter.com/1fuZ08gAgE
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) August 8, 2017
I have yet to encounter a Trump supporter who thinks this is even mildly bad news. https://t.co/kwtUHg7toj
— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) August 8, 2017
(Jeff Danziger’s website)
Wednesday Morning Open Thread: (Avocado) TOAST!Post + Comments (161)
This post is in: Open Threads, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Bring on the Brawndo!, I Can't Believe We're Still Talking About Fucking Nazis
the swastika will always be Nazis for Westerners. our minds reflexively conjure the worst evil imaginable. but lmao at these designs pic.twitter.com/Pd4yYEO8op
— Pam Groovey (@PamGroovey) August 7, 2017
Full disclosure: I have a lovely leather-bound ten-volume Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling from the 1890s that I could only afford because there is a certain then-trendy ‘Indian’ symbol imprinted in the gold decorations on the spine… and the used-book dealer didn’t care to advertise to the obvious 1970s market. But as daywear? Uh, all the many nopes.
Company's Line Of Rainbow-Themed Swastika T-Shirts Backfires https://t.co/FIvX2UoLke
— NPR Business (@nprbusiness) August 7, 2017
… In a video posted on its Facebook page on July 12, the company (tagline: “Questioning Boundaries”) says that for thousands of years, the swastika meant something positive: “But one day, Nazism. … They stigmatized the swastika forever.”…
However, there were a few supporters of the effort. Andrew Anglin, the founder of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website, praised the shirts: “I have been trying to do this for years, and I am thankful that hippies are finally getting on-board with that particular project. … I endorse these shirts,” he wrote.
It wasn’t exactly the response KA Design had hoped for. The company responded to the burgeoning controversy first with an about-face, putting out a redesign that incorporated a red slash through the swastika. However, by Monday afternoon, a search on the Teespring.com page for the newly redesigned t-shirts returned only an error message.
On the company’s Facebook page was a post announcing that “Hatred and Nazism have won.”…
Even straining to give KA Design every possible credit, it should’ve been obvious that its announced target market is almost as fearful of cultural appropriation as of the obvious West-centric implication.
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Apart from cheap laffs, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Monday Evening Open Thread: <em>Seriously</em>, Dudes?Post + Comments (115)
This post is in: All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Blatant Liars and the Lies They Tell, Bring on the Brawndo!, Meth Laboratories of Democracy, Sociopaths, Somewhere a Village is Missing its Idiot
Update: I swear that when I started writing this DougJ’s post was not in the queue. Anyway…we’re all grownups here (Schpeake Fer Yerself!–ed) so I’m guessing we can read one piece and then another. Or not. Enjoy!
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Joe Arpaio is now on his way to being an old lag, and if that conclusion is decades late, it still behoves us to get our schadenfreude on:
The longest-serving lawman of the state’s most populous county, where he became a national figure known for immigration raids and sweeps aimed at rounding up illegal migrants, was found guilty Monday of contempt of court. He faces up to six months in jail.
Arpaio’s crime, you’ll probably recall, was to keep on doing what he’d been doing after a federal judge told him to stop:
Arpaio had conducted the sweeps under the federal 287 G Program, which enables some local law-enforcement offices to act as quasi-immigration agents. In 2009, the federal government rescinded this power, but Arpaio refused to stop. In 2012, Arizona U.S. District Court Judge Murray Snow, ordered an injunction against Arpaio’s office aimed at ending the sweeps, but still, Arpaio refused.
I fortunately don’t have any personal experience here, but I have it on good authority that judges really, really don’t like it when you ignore them.
Arpaio tried two lines of defense:
During the criminal trial, which consisted of a five-day trial in June and July, Arpaio’s attorney’s argued that Snow’s order was unclear and that though the sheriff had made mistakes, they weren’t willful violations of the order. He also argued that Arpaio delegated much of of the enforcement responsibilities to his subordinates, and that he should not be held responsible for their actions.
Again, I don’t think telling a judge that they f**ked up in their legal writing is a terribly persuasive strategy, and as for the “my employees suck, I don’t” argument, I’m reminded once again that the Party of Personal Responsibility™ is a f**king crock. Hence, the man’s a convict.
It is, alas, apparently unlikely that white supremacist poster child Arpaio will actually go to jail for his crime.
But whatever his sentence, this outcome makes me smile.
Here’s Loki, the Trickster God, in the glass I’ll raise when the clock hits 0-whiskey-00 this evening.
Image: Egon Schiele, The Door is Open, 1912.
by David Anderson| 200 Comments
This post is in: Hail to the Hairpiece, Bring on the Brawndo!, Bring On The Meteor, Nobody could have predicted, Not Normal
I’ll stomp on Betty for a moment:
In all seriousness, this is a sad story. Not a laugher. Guy sold his company, divorced his wife, didn’t see his kid's birth, for…. this.
— Sam Stein (@samstein) July 31, 2017
Scharden should be freuded here.
Unless someone is in uniform and is receiving a direct order to serve at the White House, why would anyone work for Trump. The competent have mostly disqualified themselves by signing multiple never-Trump letters during the campaign. The hacks are being forced out by Bannon. And now the boot-lickers see that boot licking is not enough if they are manifestly incompetent.
This is not normal.