BREAKING: EPA Admin. Pruitt resigns, President Trump tweets.
— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) July 5, 2018
Open Thread
by David Anderson| 290 Comments
This post is in: IOKIYAR, Open Threads, "Lock Her Up!!", I Can't Believe We're Losing to These People, I Can't Believe We're Still Talking About Fucking Nazis, Nobody could have predicted
BREAKING: EPA Admin. Pruitt resigns, President Trump tweets.
— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) July 5, 2018
Open Thread
This post is in: domestic terrorists, Open Threads, Post-racial America, Decline and Fall, Fucked-up-edness, I Can't Believe We're Still Talking About Fucking Nazis
good afternoon https://t.co/7xZfu86jDV pic.twitter.com/czRhpLu57W
— Kelly Weill (@KELLYWEILL) June 14, 2018
I’m a bad person. I envisioned an officeful of white supremacists, every one holding a coffee mug imprinted YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE CRAZY TO WORK HERE – BUT IT HELPS!!!…
… [Taylor] Wilson, a Missouri man who lives with his parents, boarded a cross-country Amtrak train in October with a backpack full of weapons and a plan to run the train off the tracks. While passing through rural Nebraska, Wilson allegedly pulled the train’s emergency brake, leaving it stranded on the tracks at 2 a.m.
While Amtrak staff swept the train, Wilson allegedly burst into the control room and took a place in the engineer’s seat, where a staffer found him “playing with the controls.”
“What are you going to do, shoot me?” Wilson allegedly asked the Amtrak staff who confronted him. “I’m the conductor, bitch.”
Amtrak staff pinned Wilson to the floor, while Wilson reached for the waistband of his pants, according to the criminal complaint. Police took more than an hour to respond to the rural scene. When deputies searched Wilson, he attempted to claim a bulge in his pocket was “my dick,” according to a criminal complaint. The bulge was actually one of two fully loaded guns Wilson was carrying on him, one of which was in the waistband he’d allegedly attempted to reach during the struggle…
One of Wilson’s associates told investigators that Wilson had been acting strangely since at least June, after joining an “’alt right’ Neo-Nazi group that he had found researching white supremacy forums online,” according to the criminal complaint. The associate told police that Wilson had expressed an interest in “killing black people” and had claimed to have been part of a group that pasted “Whites Only” signs in local businesses.
In August 2017, Wilson had marched at Unite the Right, a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Wilson was also involved in a road rage incident in May 2016, during which he allegedly pulled a gun on a black woman, according to the criminal complaint…
Yes, this guy obvs needs therapeutic assistance, but he also needs to be in a situation with more supervision than his parents seem capable of.
Late Night Open Thread: Missouri (Travelling) ManPost + Comments (64)
This post is in: Open Threads, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Are these Nazis Walter?, Assholes, I Can't Believe We're Still Talking About Fucking Nazis
Both Larry Kudlow and Peter Navarro said something on this morning’s news programs that bothered me a lot. My tweet thread is going viral, so I thought I’d share it. Looks like not everyone knows the history.
This is one more example of a reporter badly missing the point.
"Oh dear, Kudlow is upset and we can't figure it out."
No. That's not the news here, @shearm
1/ https://t.co/0lf9BaY8Z8— Cheryl Rofer (@CherylRofer) June 10, 2018
This is the tweet I quoted. Yes, a New York Times reporter.
The thing is, I was at the @JustinTrudeau news conference, and he went out of his way to try to downplay tensions. He didn’t attack @realDonaldTrump in any way, other than restate Canada would retaliate for tariffs. Not sure what @larry_kudlow means re: “stabbed” US in the back
— Michael D. Shear (@shearm) June 10, 2018
Both Kudlow and Peter Navarro used the phrase "stab in the back" this morning. 3/https://t.co/ExQgAHHsnT pic.twitter.com/bUp8hnt7yp
— Cheryl Rofer (@CherylRofer) June 10, 2018
Hitler used it as an excuse (one of many) for the Holocaust. Those Jews stabbed Germany in the back, so they deserved whatever. 5/https://t.co/5ygDcUkC39
— Cheryl Rofer (@CherylRofer) June 10, 2018
There is a group of people in the United States who celebrate that history. They got the significance of two of Trump's cabinet using that phrase. 7/
— Cheryl Rofer (@CherylRofer) June 10, 2018
It's worth reading. Here's a sample. 9/ pic.twitter.com/iWcW3SG8zL
— Cheryl Rofer (@CherylRofer) June 10, 2018
Some questions coming up about how frequently "stabbed in the back" is used. I checked at Google Ngram. Big peak from 1930 to 1950, then not much and decreasing.https://t.co/p1OcUAemD3
— Cheryl Rofer (@CherylRofer) June 10, 2018
Stabbed in the Back – Kudlow and NavarroPost + Comments (189)
This post is in: Open Threads, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, I Can't Believe We're Still Talking About Fucking Nazis, Riveted By The Sociological Significance Of It All
What thing from your teenage years do you think should make a comeback?
— Eric Alper (@ThatEricAlper) April 26, 2018
The prevailing belief that Nazis are bad. https://t.co/kLt4CTg44C
— Geraldine (@everywhereist) April 28, 2018
Been too busy a news week to share this sooner — Michael Harriot’s report for The Root, “The Only Thing Missing From Georgia’s Neo-Nazi Rally Was Actual Neo-Nazis”:
When a white supremacist group planned a gathering that was supposed to surpass Charlottesville, Va.’s Unite the Right rally, the community prepared for the worst. Hundreds of police officers arrived in a small Georgia town outside Atlanta to keep the peace. Counterprotesters came out en masse to condemn the hate groups that were scheduled to show up.
But when it came to the actual neo-Nazis who were supposed to descend upon Newnan, Ga., on Saturday, they apparently responded to the National Socialist Movement’s Nazi-palooza invitation with the age-old indicator of ambivalence: “Who all gon’ be there?”
The New York Times reports that law enforcement officers greatly outnumbered the crowd at Saturday’s march organized by the National Socialist Movement, one of America’s largest white nationalist organizations, while the Atlanta Journal-Constitution estimates that “only a couple of dozen” actual white supremacists showed up…
As National Socialist Movement leader Jeff Schoep ranted about the scourge of skinny jeans and undocumented immigration, the crowd drowned out his speech about “standing on behalf of white nationalism, white patriotism and our history as American people.” City officials said that about 10 people were arrested, and the crowd was dispersed at 5 p.m…
Related, from the Washington Post, “‘Imploding’: Financial troubles. Lawsuits. Trailer park brawls. Has the alt-right peaked?”:
Eight months after a white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville ended in the death of a counterprotester, the loose collection of disaffected young white men known as the alt-right is in disarray.
The problems have been mounting: lawsuits and arrests, fundraising difficulties, tepid recruitment, widespread infighting, fierce counterprotests, and banishment from social media platforms. Taken together, they’ve exhausted even some of the staunchest members…
This post is in: Open Threads, All Too Normal, Assholes, Clown Shoes, I Can't Believe We're Still Talking About Fucking Nazis
TL;DR — when it comes to literal Nazis, always root for injuries.
First, there was this tragicomical story in the Daily Beast…
Prominent neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer might have to reveal its funding, thanks to a new court filing in a lawsuit against the website’s founder, Andrew Anglin.
Anglin is currently on the run from two lawsuits. One of those lawsuits, by radio host and Daily Beast contributor Dean Obeidallah, accuses Anglin of defamation after The Daily Stormer accused Obeidallah of orchestrating a bombing at a 2017 Ariana Grande concert in England. In a new filing in the case, Obeidallah asked a judge to let him enter a discovery process for Moonbase Holdings, LLC, a shell company The Daily Stormer used to make its financial transactions look more legitimate.
If granted, the discovery process could reveal who funded Anglin’s hate site.
Anglin, who claims to be in Cambodia, has not responded to Obeidallah’s initial complaint, the Southern Poverty Law Center first reported. As a result, a clerk of court ruled declared Anglin to be in default, allowing Obeidallah to seek damages in Anglin’s absence. In his new filing, Obeidallah asks to investigate Moonbase Holdings before pursuing specific damages…
“At one point it appeared that Defendant Moonbase received approximately $3,405.70 per month in credit card donations through Hatreon,” the new filing in Obeidallah’s lawsuit reads. Hatreon is a crowdfunding platform beloved by hate groups, who are often banned from platforms like GoFundMe and Patreon.
Since February 9, 2017, the site has been down, its homepage displaying a notice that “pledging is currently disabled while we upgrade our systems.”
With Hatreon on hold, Anglin has claimed to be nearly broke…
.
Aaaand… here come the Nazi Rosencrantz & Guildenstern!
Have been reliably informed that Paul Nehlen just doxxed "Ricky Vaughn" over on Gab and if that statement makes no sense whatsoever to you, gentle reader, be grateful for your unfamiliarity with alt-right/anti-semite social media.
— Jeff B. (@EsotericCD) April 2, 2018
Paul Nehlen, a white nationalist congressional candidate from Wisconsin, took to https://t.co/UKYS4hYKxE yesterday to reveal one of the alt-right’s best-kept secrets: the identity of notorious Twitter troll @Ricky_Vaughn99. #OpDomesticTerrorism https://t.co/7CueRzaQF3
— Bella_ofA (@Bella_ofA) April 4, 2018
… The alleged dox appears to have grown out of a running spat between white supremacist Christopher Cantwell and infamous neo-Nazi troll Andrew “weev” Auernheimer. Weev has accused Cantwell of being a federal informant and Cantwell has responded by accusing weev of colluding with @Ricky_Vaughn99 to deliberately split the far-right movement between “vanguardists,” i.e. those who advocate for militant street action, and “mainstreamers,” embodied by Vaughn…
The dox comes at a pivotal moment for the alt-right, which has been embroiled in several publicity and legal scandals over the past few months. In February, Elliot Kline of Identity Evropa was revealed to have lied about his military service record. March saw the collapse of the Traditionalist Worker Party following Matthew Heimbach’s arrest for battery, domestic battery in the presence of a child, strangulation and intimidation during an affair with his benefactor and father-in-law’s wife…
The pseudonymous Ricky Vaughn Twitter account — named after a character from the 1989 film Major League — was highly influential in spreading the ideas of the racist alt-right in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Peaking at 62,000 followers and posting some 221,000 tweets, an MIT election study during the primaries ranked the Twitter account as more influential than the accounts of NBC News, Stephen Colbert, and the Democratic Party among many others.
[SingleTearPepeGIF] Open Thread: Sad Little Nazis in DisarrayPost + Comments (42)
This post is in: Go Fuck Yourself, I Can't Believe We're Still Talking About Fucking Nazis, Looks Like I Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue, Nazis- I hate these guys, Nobody could have predicted, Not Normal, Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
So, this happened, as reported in The Washington Post:
Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Trump said, according to these people, referring to African countries and Haiti. He then suggested that the United States should instead bring more people from countries like Norway, whose prime minister he met Wednesday.
As Josh posted at TPM, highlighting a blunt and unequivocal report on this over at CNN, such a pure distillation of racism is too blatant to be ignored, even by the most circumspect MSM venues.
There is, in a sense, nothing new here: anyone paying attention has known that Trump is and has been for his entire adult life a gaping maw of racism, a bigot who doesn’t just loathe black and brown people, but has a record of seeking to do them harm.
It remains astonishing to hear anyone in 2018 say such filth in their outdoor voice, but no one can say they’re surprised that if anyone in American public life were to go loud and proud on the crudest expressions of race-hatred, it would be the –tragic– occupant of the Oval Office, that tiny-fingered and terrified little scrub, Donald Trump.
But if Trump is merely making it more obvious that he’s a one-man lynch mob in waiting, now with the levers of power at his vicious disposal, there’s another set of accessories, the men and those occasional women they allow into the clubhouse who lead the Republican Party.
They were the ones who accepted the devil’s bargain — trade American democracy to wield power through the presumed-to-be biddable Trump. And now they face, and routinely fail, the test their notionally smart and stable leader poses for them: stick with Trump, or defend this norm or that.
As everyone reading this knows, to date, it’s been Trump, and to hell with the notion of democratic governance, any of the expectations of the Founders and their heirs. From judges to taxes to tolerating personal corruption in the White House, and on to the terrifying surrender of huge swathes of government to incompetent cronies, to the attempted capture of law enforcement as a tool of the president, and more, through the whole wretched catalogue, the GOP has chosen to see nothing, to hear nothing, to say nothing — and thus has associated themselves with each sin, all the blows to traditional forms, and every outright felony the Trump crime family commits.
And now this: Trump, uttering out loud the hate soundtrack that loops constantly through his lizard brain. This time, he was so obvious as to make it clear even to the meanest comprehension (not implying anything about CNN). There’s no hidden meaning, no subtext in his words. This ain’t eleven dimensional chess or brilliant electoral strategery. January 11, 2018 ain’t the day that Donald Trump became President.
It’s the one on which he reminded us exactly what kind of president he is, what kind of leader the GOP accepts, welcomes, follows.
And thus the test: every single GOP member of Congress, every cabinet official, every White House staffer who fails to condemn this statement, owns it — along with all the sentiments and intentions behind it. They become the bigots, aiders and abettors of the worst impulses in the public sphere. They are to be named and shamed; small children should grimace to see them and each of us will spit on the sidewalks as they pass.
Or, more practically — every single one facing the voters in 2018 and as long as Trump is present on the American political scene has to be asked where they stand on shithole countries. Ryan and McConnell and all the rest have to be made to choose: Trump and the worst tendencies in our country, or not.
/rant over. Only this to add: my stomach hasn’t unknotted since I read this. Not to Godwin, or anything, but it’s a truly sad day when the President of the United States utters words that would have fit perfectly in Adolf Hitler’s mouth.
Image: Hieronymous Bosch, The Last Judgement, betw. c. 1482-1516
This post is in: Open Threads, Post-racial America, Republican Venality, Assholes, I Can't Believe We're Still Talking About Fucking Nazis
Diversity is not our strength. Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, “Mixing cultures will not lead to a higher quality of life but a lower one.” https://t.co/ZlMXzcc87w
— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) December 8, 2017
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This will indeed be a tough year for competitors in the Worst Person in National Politics Award, but Steve “Pigmuck” King is a dependable, oft-tested professional!
People say Republicans don’t have a big tent, which isn’t fair. It’s large enough to encompass white supremacists around the world. https://t.co/qcZgRW4nGA
— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) December 8, 2017
Just a member of Congress quoting a piece of blood-and-soil racism by Europe's leading neofascist. https://t.co/mEZKBKgjXG
— The Immortal Arthur Fist (@attackerman) December 8, 2017
Seems sort of inconsistent for an unreconstructed Confederate to be against building your society by importing people of other races.
— (((Dan Middleton))) (@DMiddletonCbus) December 8, 2017
This is what abject terror looks like when you're an old white Christian dude watching the societal order change. https://t.co/CAhdCUg3OH
— shauna (@goldengateblond) December 9, 2017
There’s an Archie Bunker kind of racism in America that’s troubling that we hope some effort and energy and education will overcome. And then there’s @SteveKingIA racism, dark and dangerous, heel clicking racism. https://t.co/386Pdy7bGK
— Tony Fratto (@TonyFratto) December 8, 2017
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Despite that, he’s *not winning the wider argument…
Only 7 percent of Americans say that growing diversity makes their country a worse place to live.
That's less than a quarter of the number who say that in the UK and Germany. pic.twitter.com/1RXGzHjnOK
— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) December 10, 2017
Open Thread: Steve King Will Not Be Out-BigotedPost + Comments (154)