Have Fun, but Don’t Get Lost in Distraction.

1-xbhie71k8cn0qrodgh83dgLike most people, I’ve been having a bit of fun with Trump’s stupidity over Pence’s appearance at Hamilton, but it’s important to not get overwhelmed with this little distraction. It’s becoming increasingly clear that Trump does not plan to work as a president, or to treat the presidency as an actual political office. It would be more to point to change the name of this country to The Corporate Interests of the White One Percent, because that’s what is happening right under our collective nose. He plans to install his relatives into his “team” in spite of nepotism laws; he refuses to deal with his personal assets in the permitted ways; he’s more focused on the shoring up of his failing enterprises than anything else. Trump keeps handing key positions to very frightening people, who are more than willing to commit evil acts. So, sorry for the downer, but it’s important to keep up with what’s happening, rather than allow ourselves to be deluded by the idea that this presidency will just be a silly circus for the next four years. It may well be a silly circus, but it’s going to be a damn dangerous one, too.

Trump has decided on Sessions for Attorney General. Might as well change that to Inquisitor General, it’s much more suitable to Sessions’ inclinations and beliefs, which are frightening as all hells. Back when there was still some sanity in the republican party, they turned Sessions down for a federal judgeship as being too racist and extreme. That happened during the Reagan years. Yep. Starting to get an idea of what life might be like for everyone who is not pasty white? Combine Sessions being AG with Trump’s vow to reinstate stop and frisk. Do your homework on Sessions, because this news is every bit as bad as Bannon being appointed, perhaps worse. Sessions One. Sessions Two. Sessions Three. Sessions thinks anyone who smokes weed should not only be in prison, he thinks they shouldn’t get out. He’s also dead against the commutations of drug sentences President Obama recently signed.

Getting back to the President-elect for a bit, the kissing up is right on schedule, because you just don’t want to offend someone with all that money, right? We’re also marching straight into Kleptocracy, barely got to see Democracy leaving the building.

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That Trump Word (Continuation 8).

Video captures an immigrant cab driver reporting an assault by a drunk Michigan man (Screengrab).

Video captures an immigrant cab driver reporting an assault by a drunk Michigan man (Screengrab).

A Michigan man shouting “Trump” attacked an immigrant cab driver Saturday, mlive.com reports.

Yemaj Adem, an Ethiopian immigrant, described the rage he encountered last weekend after a man, later identified as Jacob David Holtzlander,  jumped into his cab along with five women. Adem said he assumed Hotzlander was with the women, but later discovered otherwise.

According to Adem, Holtzlander—whom Adem said appeared drunk—became agitated when the cab driver informed him his offer of $10 would not be enough to complete the trip.

“The first punch, I was surprised,” Adem told mlive.com. “I’ve never experienced this from a fare. Five years now and I’ve never had an issue.”

“When I heard that Trump word, I knew this was something different,” he added.

Via Raw Story.

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Native Lives Matter.

Courtesy Marlee Kanosh Button commemorating the 2012 death of Marlee Kanosh’s brother, Corey, created by the advocacy group National Unity Against Police Brutality.

Courtesy Marlee Kanosh
Button commemorating the 2012 death of Marlee Kanosh’s brother, Corey, created by the advocacy group National Unity Against Police Brutality.

There were at least eight fatal police shootings of Native Americans in October. “I’m overwhelmed,” said Marlee Kanosh, Paiute Tribe of Utah. Her Facebook page, Native Lives Taken By Police, is a source for information on police violence affecting indigenous people. With careful, respectful research and comprehensive coverage, she chronicles a terrible toll: Natives killed outright by police and those who die in custody.

The workload, which she does as a volunteer, is always heavy, but in recent weeks it has been unexpectedly worse. “I have so many deaths to look into now,” she said. “My notebooks are full. I have piles of paper everywhere.”

The number of Natives who died in October is much higher than the monthly average found in a 2016 study by Claremont Graduate University scholars Roger Chin, Jean Schroedel and Lily Rowen. They uncovered 29 deaths in a recent 15-month period, for an average of about two a month. The October police-shooting fatalities occurred around the country—one each in Washington state, Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska and Nevada, along with three in Oklahoma.

[…]

Kanosh criticized police claims that citizens should simply follow orders to survive these encounters. “We have a saying here in Utah, ‘Comply or Die—It’s Not the Law!’” Kanosh said. “What about our rights? We didn’t put up our hands fast enough? Someone instinctively pulled up his pants when cops ordered him to crawl forward on his knees? How can we possibly know exactly what’s expected of us in these horrible situations? And because we don’t, we die?”

Police need to better communicate what exactly compliance entails, according to Chin. That’s because officers in different jurisdictions may expect the public to behave in unique ways, he explained. “For example, while most academies train officers to have a driver remain inside the vehicle during a traffic stop, I discovered on a trip to Louisiana that sometimes officers want individuals to exit the vehicle in order to see better what they are doing. The public needs to know these and other expectations.”

Full story is at ICTMN. And here is a very nasty dose of reality.

Still Think It Isn’t Facism?

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Our right to protest is going to be taken away. We have already seen the violation of rights when it comes to protesters – in Ferguson, it was one violation after another. The same thing has happened with many Black Lives Matter protests – people were told if they didn’t get on the sidewalk, they’d be arrested. It was quite convenient for the cops, as there was no sidewalk at that particular location. Another time, cops told protesters to disperse immediately, or they be arrested. A lot of people couldn’t do that, because they came by bus, and the cops shut down the bus terminal, so guess what? Arrested. Do I need to go back over what’s been happening at Standing Rock? The constant violation of rights on the part of the protectors? It’s already bad for those who have the strength and conviction to protest. It’s already dangerous. Cops are already completely out of fucking control. Cops are already murderous. Cops already have a wealth of bigots in their ranks. Pretty sure they have a wealth of Trump supporters, too. Protests, civil disobediance, the only tools of the powerless. We may not have those tools for long.

A Republican lawmaker in Washington state has proposed a new crime of “economic terrorism” to prosecute protesters who block streets, threaten jobs or endanger public safety.

State Sen. Doug Ericksen (R) said in a statement on Wednesday that he was preparing the bill for the next legislative session, KCPQ reported. The proposal comes after thousands of protesters took to the streets in opposition to President-elect Donald Trump.

“I respect the right to protest, but when it endangers people’s lives and property, it goes too far,” Ericksen said. “Fear, intimidation and vandalism are not a legitimate form of political expression. Those who employ it must be called to account.”

Under “economic terrorism” bill, protesters would be charged with a felony if they “intentionally break the law in an attempt to intimidate or coerce private citizens or the government by obstructing economic activity.”

Ericksen said that the law would also be extended “to those who fund, organize, sponsor or otherwise encourage others to commit acts of economic terrorism.”

The so-called “accomplices” could be “required to pay restitution up to triple the amount of economic damage,” Ericksen insisted.

“We are not just going after the people who commit these acts of terrorism,” the lawmaker warned. “We are going after the people who fund them. Wealthy donors should not feel safe in disrupting middle class jobs.”

For those pushing the idiot line, how ya doing with that, “nah, everything is okay, it’s not fascism” shit now?

Full story here.

Continuing on in regard to the normalisation of said fascism, NPR has enthusiastically jumped into the fascim pond, head first.

If you are curious about how racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric, and organizations dedicated to propagating the same are able to slip into the mainstream, do yourself a favor and listen to NPR’s Wednesday morning interview with Breitbart senior-editor-at-large Joel Pollak.

NPR apparently felt the need to invite on a Breitbart mouthpiece to put in a good word for Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s newly announced senior policy adviser. Bannon previously led Breitbart, a publication beloved by the so-called alt-right, a loose coalition of white nationalists, “identitarians,” neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, racists, and misogynists who were ecstatic over Bannon’s appointment. Pollak’s segment was a master class in obfuscation and a primer on how to flip the script and turn totally justified accusations of bigotry, misogyny and anti-Semitism into “reverse racism.”

“Let’s hear a defense of Steve Bannon,” NPR host Steve Inskeep began, offering a view of exactly what direction this interview would take.

Full story here. Mainstream media just can’t wait to propagate the happy thoughts about fascism spiel. I keep having scenes from a certain Twilight Zone episode in my head.

“A real good thing. And tomorrow… tomorrow’s gonna be a… real ‘good’ day!”

Then there’s this:

“This is not the French Revolution,” Bannon said, characterizing Trump’s achievement and goals. “They destroyed the basic institutions of their society and changed their form of government. What Trump represents is a restoration—a restoration of true American capitalism and a revolution against state-sponsored socialism. Elites have taken all the upside for themselves and pushed the downside to the working- and middle-class Americans.”

Who’s Calling Who Elite?

Bannon’s revolution is being led by the very people Trump demonized in his final political ads in Rust Belt states—the elite players in American finance and media. No one epitomizes that contradiction as clearly as the billionaire Mercers, and their long embrace of Trump’s new White House strategist, Bannon, who made a fortune at Goldman Sachs and in Hollywood before taking over Breitbart.

Full story here.

The Natural Reassertion of Biology (Continuation 7).

Daryush "Roosh V" Valizadeh.

Daryush “Roosh V” Valizadeh.

The laughable manosphere’s Roosh V is absolutely giddy over Trump’s win. If you aren’t familiar with this particular asspimple, have a wander at We Hunted the Mammoth. Roosh has all kinds of ideas, but they are always bad ideas which meet failure. One of those failed ideas was an attempt to make rape legal if it happened on private property. He’s quite thrilled to have a manly macho man as his prez, a dude who also doesn’t like fat chicks. Out of passing curiosity, I wonder if Roosh has bothered to ponder what Trump’s cabinet would make of his looks and name? There’s already talk of bringing back internment camps, like those which housed American citizens who happened to be Japanese. As usual, Roosh isn’t too good at that thinky stuff.

…We now have a President who will not encourage anti-male propaganda, rape culture, and female victimhood. While I do have minor concerns on the influence of his feminist-minded daughter, Ivanka, Trump will not continue the attack on men that has been institutionalized since the sexual revolution and accelerated during the eight years of Obama. Because our current cultural dystopia is the result of intense long-term manipulation, it is more than enough for Trump to simply not touch the gender issue to allow the culture to return to a more patriarchal order. Stop feeding the rot and it will die off, allowing biology to naturally reassert itself.

Full story here.

tranny_die-800x4301-800x430

Trans woman’s car vandalized in Denver, CO (Screengrab)

A transgender woman in Denver, Colo. woke up Wednesday to find her car covered in graffiti and hate messages, including a swastika and the phrase “fag die he she.”

“I got up this morning to go to work and the car was parked a couple of doors down,” Amber Timmons told Denver 7. “I came out and was surprised to see it all covered in graffiti and hate messages.”

Timmons’ car was covered in black paint with words like “tranny” and “Trump” drawn alongside Nazi symbols. She had previously written “love trumps hate” and “not my president” in erasable marker on her windows.

Full story here.

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All the Trumpty Dumptys.

Rep. Peter King. CREDIT: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais.

Rep. Peter King. CREDIT: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) spent some time deriding people. He first spent time moaning about all the protesters, then he decided to jump all over students for their inaction. There’s repub logic for you.

“These college students. I find it incredible. I dunno what would happen if a real war ever came. You think back to the greatest generation. And now you have these people, they’re having crying sessions, giving them comfort dogs, they’re giving them group therapy, they’re giving them consolation, because they’re so upset that Hillary Clinton lost the election,” said King.

“C’mon, have some guts, have some nerve, get out there, we’re supposed to be a great country. Are these the morons we’re counting on to be leaders in the future?”

They certainly can’t be more moronic than you, sir. [Full story.]

CREDIT: AP Photo/Seth Perlman.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Seth Perlman.

The Trumpoids are busy whipping up lists of everyone they should boycott. As might be expected, it’s a long and not terribly rational list.

While many in the country are protesting and condemning Donald Trump’s election as president, his supporters (including both the alt-right and other traditional conservatives) are trying to counter with their own demonstrations. At the top of their list of targets is PepsiCo, but it’s one of only many companies some are planning to boycott for criticizing Trump or otherwise working against what they believe to be his goals.

Full story here.

Ken Blackwell, who President-elect Trump selected to lead his domestic transition CREDIT: AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File.

Ken Blackwell, who President-elect Trump selected to lead his domestic transition CREDIT: AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File.

Then there’s Ken Blackwell, who is determined to get rid of all that queerness, in any way possible.

President-elect Donald Trump selected Ken Blackwell, a former Ohio secretary of state who ran for governor in 2006 and was crushed by a nearly 34 point margin, to lead up domestic policy for his presidential transition team. Blackwell is also a senior fellow with the Family Research Council, which the Southern Poverty Law Center designated a hate group because of its anti-LGBT positions.

Blackwell is not exactly shy about his anti-LGBT stance. Indeed, as The Guardian’s Scott Bixby notes, Blackwell claimed during his gubernatorial bid that homosexuality is a “choice” that “can be changed.”

Full story here.

The Fascism Spin Plays On.

The signs are there if you look for them. EPA.

The signs are there if you look for them. EPA.

Saad points out that CNN is fully onboard with the normalization.

Trump is the only person elected to the top job without political, diplomatic or military executive experience. And he ran a campaign rooted in breaking the mold of the gridlocked capital city. So no surprise that Trump is already approaching his presidency in an unorthodox manner.

Unorthodox? Really, that’s what they are going to go with. Great. Absolutely nothing about how Trump is an full blown ignoramus, a fraud, a failed businessman, a criminal with court dates coming up, and an unrepentant sexual predator. Nothing about the core of white supremacy now poised to infest the white house, either, because I guess that just got lost in the glitter storm of the new reality show. And that’s what’s happening, that’s the blinder expected to blinker the American public, and unfortunately, in large part, it’s going to work.

“I am the only one who knows who the finalists are!” FFS, this gold-plated idiot is treating the presidency like it’s another reality show, where he can do whatever the fuck he likes, and a team will make sure it’s scrubbed up nice for mass consumption. If you find yourself buying this vomit, wake the fuck up. This is not normal, this is not okay, this is terrifying, and it’s a nightmare come true.

The media is busy spinning an old evil, fascism, into a brand new, exciting, “outsider” kind of thing. It isn’t any of that. It’s plain old white supremacy, it’s plain old fascism. You can pour all the glitter you want on it, it’s still rancid shit, and it’s what we are all being fed.

James McDougall has a good article up at The Conversation: No, this isn’t the 1930s – but yes, this is fascism. Highly recommended.

The spread of fascism in the 1920s was significantly aided by the fact that liberals and mainstream conservatives failed to take it seriously. Instead, they accommodated and normalised it.

The centre right is doing the same today. Brexit, Trump and the far right ascendant across Europe indicate that talk of a right-wing revolutionary moment is not exaggerated. And the French presidential election could be next on the calendar.

Yep.

“Pres. Trump Says This Is Okay.” (Continuation 6)

Brittany Daughenbaugh. Facebook.

Brittany Daughenbaugh. Facebook.

Brittany Daughenbaugh couldn’t sleep, so the Capital University student decided to go on a Pokemon Go hunt in the early hours of Thursday morning. She had seen the men across Francis Street but paid them no mind. She was on the trail of a good catch.

“Suddenly, they’re behind me,” Daughenbaugh, 20, said Monday. One man wore a “Make America Great Again” hat and the other a “Trump-Pence” sweatshirt.

She said the sweatshirted man grabbed her arm and told her, “Don’t you worry, honey. President Trump says this is OK.” He then punched her in the face and the arm. She fell, hit her head on the pavement and blacked out.

[…]

She wrote a lengthy Facebook post Friday about the attack, in part as a warning to other Capital students to be careful, but also to encourage only nonviolent opposition to the bigotry and aggression.

“Protest and fight, but do it peacefully. Do not burn the flag. Do not vandalize. Do not fight hate with hate,” she wrote. “The only way to fix this is with willpower, passion and love.”

Her post drew scores of comments of support, but one man wrote that the facial bruise in her Facebook photo was a “terrible makeup job.”

“Take your agenda and lies someplace else and quit trying to get attention and smear someone’s name,” he wrote.

Full story at The Columbus Dispatch.

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OUR Walmart.

Chicago, ILLINOIS - NOVEMBER 29, 2013: Striking Walmart workers and supporters protest outside a Walmart Neighborhood Market store on Black Friday (Shutterstock).

Chicago, ILLINOIS – NOVEMBER 29, 2013: Striking Walmart workers and supporters protest outside a Walmart Neighborhood Market store on Black Friday (Shutterstock).

Walmart has long been the toughest nut for labor organizers to crack, as the company’s brutally effective anti-union campaigns have regularly crushed unions’ efforts to get workers to sign up.

However, a labor group called OUR Walmart has come out with a new mobile application that Walmart workers can use on their phones to help them organize for better wages and benefits — and it seems that Walmart is not happy about it.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Walmart has sent out warnings to all of its employees that they should not download and install the WorkIt app onto their devices because it will allegedly swipe all their important personal information. In reality, the Journal notes, it only asks users to register and share their job titles and Walmart store numbers — and its permissions do not include location data, contacts or photos.

The purpose of the app is to help workers communicate with one another so they can learn about their rights as employees, as well as to develop strategies for improving workplace policies. While there are already a lot of online forums where Walmart employees gather to talk about issues at work, OUR Walmart wants to give employees a centralized hub to help them with all of their complaints and questions.

Full story here.

Right Wing Rumbling.

confederate-flag-814x458

Right wingers have been polishing their rhetoric and goddidits, and they are increasingly leaving the halls of right wing for alt right, throwing their lot in with the white supremacists.

Michael Hill, president of the neo-Confederate League of the South has had plenty to say:

Once the globalist-progressive coalition of Jews, minorities, and anti-white whites stops reeling in confusion from the results of yesterday’s election, we can expect them to start striking back with trickery and violence. Thus, we as Southern nationalists face both danger and opportunity.

Now, more than ever, we need tight organization and numbers to help drive a stake through Dracula’s heart and keep him from rising once again to menace our people and civilization. No mercy should be shown to the enemies of our God, our Folk, and our civilization. None would be afforded us.

Dracula? How did a literary figure get into this? I’m sure that stands for someone or something, but right now, I don’t give a damn. It’s idiocy. Why not invoke the ever popular zombie apocalypse? As for no mercy would be afforded them, oh, that wins some sort of hyperbole prize. These people start crying over criticism, which is what they tend to call being treated mercilessly. Hill also had a warning for all those pure Southerners:

…So here is my warning to the victors: do not go back to sleep and think all is well. If you don’t finish the job by routing your enemies and driving them into the sea while you have the chance, they will re-group and be back at your throats in no time! You have been given a reprieve by God (probably undeservedly so); do not give your enemies and His a reprieve.

Their goal is to dispossess you of everything. If you have not heard that over the past year, then you have not been listening. Just what the hell do you think multiculturalism, diversity, and tolerance are all about? Your enemies care nothing about those things. They are merely used as weapons against you for your dispossession and ultimate destruction. The sum of their effect is White Guilt.

[…]

These media elites (and others of their elite ilk) look forward to the demise of old white America and the rise of a new paradigm in which they will hold sway. You will be dispossessed, sequestered in the equivalent of ghettos, and will be a despised and hated minority in the country your ancestors built.

Just once, I’d like for one of these clowns to acknowledge that they just love ghettos, as long as they aren’t in them. Those ancestors of yours did not build this country. They stole it through genocide, then had slaves do the actual work.

You, by God’s grace, may have been given a short reprieve from this scenario. Redeem the time! As for me, I recommend that we get busy with Southern independence. We need our own country, and it must be run by us for our own interests. It must once again be White Man’s Land.

I’m just fine with you founding White Man’s Land. First of all, you need to get the fuck out of this country, find a place which is completely uninhabited, purchase it, and there ya go, white fantasy land! You won’t do that though, because at the bottom of it all, you’re a chickenshit. You wouldn’t have the slightest idea of how to run your little ‘country’ or island, or whatever you found. Via RWW.

Elsewhere, Mike Huckabee has been waxing folksy on what a great president Trump will be, wait, the greatest ever, you betcha!

Horowitz’s annual “Restoration Weekend” allows far-right activists to mingle with conservative elected officials. This year, Steve Bannon, who left Breitbart News to run Trump’s presidential campaign and has since been named the president-elect’s chief strategist, was scheduled to attend, although we have not been able to confirm that he actually showed up. Milo Yiannopoulous, a Breitbart editor and apologist for the racist alt-right movement, was given an award.

In remarks to the conference that were broadcast on Periscope by Andrew Torba, the CEO of an alt-right version of Twitter, Huckabee told attendees that Trump “will turn out to be one of the great presidents of our time and may be one of the greatest ever.”

[…]

He also said that Trump would make sure that government agencies “will run a fair show,” saying that in contrast he would have had to “seek asylum in some foreign country” if Hillary Clinton won the presidency “because I knew I was going to be a target.”

Again with this remarkable hyperbole. Does anyone even think about Huckabee? I don’t. There’s such a need for puffery in the old white guys’ club, they are just so darn important they have to keep reminding people of it. Via RWW.

Sam Rohrer is positive that Trump’s being elected was god’s doing. He doesn’t say which god. Maybe Loki. Jim Bakker is of the opinion that Trump’s election is the greatest miracle ever. Janet Porter is gleeful over the green light to illegalize abortion. More dead women, ain’t that great!

David Kupelian, of World Net Daily, has declared that a very particular disaster has been avoided:

“We would have seen how evil works if we had Hillary Clinton as president,” Kupelian said. “She would have literally driven many people insane. I mean that in a clinical way.”

While older people would have responded to a Clinton presidency by praying more and stocking up on food and supplies, Kupelian asserted, young people would have been driven over the edge and soon started carrying out mass killings.

“To have an outright criminal married to a certified sexual predator in the White House and to glorify that and all that is implied in society elevating these people back into positions of ultimate power, as basically the rulers of the world,” he stated, “to a lot of young people whose souls and views are still being formed, they’d go nuts. And you’d see more acting out and criminality and people doing crazy things. You’d say, ‘My God, how did that happen? Why did this person go and shoot up a classroom of people?’ and so forth. I’m saying, you elevate somebody like that to the president and you unleash hell.”

People have elected a criminal and a sexual predator to the presidency, and fascism has been unleashed. We can go ahead and call that hell.

Standing Rock Update.

gun

The image, above, is a real image.  It is not photoshopped.  A photographer by the name of Colin McCarthy captured this moment on his Instagram account (@Colinnnnn) and said the following:

Friends at #standingrock please be safe, this man just plowed through a peaceful prayer ceremony waving a gun, injuring 2 people and then proceeded to fire 7 shots into the air. Women, children and elders all running to get out of the way…

So there’s that.

Gyasi Ross’s full article here.

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