Oh, For Fuck’s Sake. What. A. Twit.

Donald Trump again lashed out at President Barack Obama in a wounded tweet — and he was buried in online mockery.

The president-elect — who will keep using Twitter as “a really exciting part of the job,”according to his press secretary — pulled out his phone Wednesday morning to continue the feud that erupted when Obama suggested he could have beaten Trump.

Emphasis mine. Upon reading that, there was a headdesk with a bounce. A Twitter mosquito thinks he’s going to run a whole country. In light of the recent news that President Obama has been declared the most admired man of 2016, and this is the ninth time President Obama has been chosen as most admired man, I suppose we can expect that to occupy Trump’s tiny mind for some time to come.

I really, really wish this was some sort of bad joke that was going to end.

Via Raw Story.

The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss.

A YouTube video from North Dakota’s new Gov. Doug Burgum. More of the same about Standing Rock.

A YouTube video from North Dakota’s new Gov. Doug Burgum. More of the same about Standing Rock.

Damn. Think about what was possible: A governor who is framing his entire administration on innovation just dismissed the most disruptive force in his state’s recent history. That is what Standing Rock is about. Instead of saying, “What can we learn from this? What can we do together?” The new governor relied on the screen saver that was there before; the idea that powerful forces will roll over the tribe and build the Dakota Access Pipeline without interference. Thank you.

Burgum also scratched away at an old story: The Obama administration created this problem.

But his larger message is that the state of North Dakota and its corporate partners are more powerful than any tribal government. Instead of a pause, a moment to engage in a government-to-government dialogue, the new governor emphatically says the pipeline will get built soon. No. Matter. What.

“Make no mistake, this infrastructure is good for our economy,” the governor said in his YouTube video. “And it’s the safest way to transport North Dakota products. Failure to finish it would send a chilling signal to those in any industry who wish invest in our state and play by the rules.”

[…]

The new governor could have reset the law enforcement battle lines too. Nope. “As a result of the Obama administration’s refusal to uphold the rule of law on federally owned land, both our citizens and local and state law enforcement have been put in harm’s way,” he said. “These actions are putting daily demands on the scarce resources of our state and local government.”

Those daily demands are because the state of North Dakota made it so. Pick a word: defuse, de-escalate, negotiate. There were so many better alternatives, ones that were dismissed in favor of sending in the cavalry. I have interviewed many government officials over the years that successfully reduced tension instead of using the police powers of a state. In every test the state failed in this regard and the new governor is following the same path.

I had hopes that Gov. Burgum would see the potential of the Standing Rock story as one that could make North Dakota a beacon. Think about this: This moment in history has brought indigenous people together in a way that’s unprecedented. And the world is paying attention to that. What an amazing opportunity, something that could stir the imagination of investors, entrepreneurs, and governments. Potential partners in a state that found a solution by working with tribes to solve an intractable problem.

The former governor blamed social media for this global perception. But that misses the point that the Standing Rock Tribe owns the story. And that won’t change because the new governor posts a video on his account. The problem is not social media. It’s the message that the State of North Dakota will use the rule of law, the police power of a state, to roll over a tribal nation. It’s a message of brute force instead of inspiration.

Same old tired shit. Same old tired white privilege. Nothing ever changes. Mark Trahant’s full column at ICTMN.

A Desperate Need for New Material.

Trent Bennett (Malvern Hig School).

Trent Bennett (Malvern Hig School).

Facebook, Oh Facebook XIV. A Science teacher in Arkansas has been saying nasty things about President Obama and the First Lady. You won’t need three whole guesses to figure out the nature of the remarks. Parents aren’t terribly pleased with Mr. Bennett.

Parents want an Arkansas teacher out of the classroom after he compared Michelle Obama to a chimpanzee — and then called the president a “spider monkey.”

Trent Bennett, a science teacher at Malvern High School, apparently made the comments on his personal Facebook page, reported KARK-TV.

One post refers to “Michelle Obummer … America’s First Chimp,” and the teacher then doubled down on his racist comments when a Facebook friend questioned him.

Bennett described the First Lady as a “nasty chimp,” and he called President Barack Obama a “spider monkey.”

He also complained about “monkeys” rioting after the police shootings of black Americans, and said protests during the American Revolution era were more valid because they were over taxation.

Chimps. Monkeys. You’d think a science teacher would have at least gone with ape, but I have a sneaking suspicion that perhaps Mr. Bennett doesn’t believe humans are apes. Anyroad, this comparison is as old as the hills and beyond tiresome. All you bigoted asswipes, you are in desperate need of new material. Good luck finding any, I have noted over the years that bigots aren’t terribly creative. Too much brain atrophy.

School officials have launched an investigation into Bennett’s social media activity, which they described as “inappropriate” and “insensitive.”

Parents and civil rights activists say Bennett should quit or be removed from his job over his comments.

“Someone like Mr. Bennett that has his mindset and believes this, has no business molding the minds of children that will lead us into the future,” said Rizelle Aaron, president of the Arkansas State Conference of the NAACP. “If the allegations are true, he needs to resign, if he doesn’t, then the NAACP will do everything we have legally to make sure he is terminated.”

Here’s hoping this creep does get kicked out. He has absolutely no business around children, with that amount of poison leaking out of him all over the place.

Via Raw Story.

The Deploraball.

Skinheads enact Nazi salutes (Shutterstock).

Skinheads enact Nazi salutes (Shutterstock).

Awwww, look, all the little nazis want to have a ball (I keep picturing them in Southern Belle type ball gowns), but they are fighting amongst themselves so much, it’s interfering with all their happy ball plans.

Alt-right leader Mike Cernovich, who is organizing the Deploraball, started a massive fight this week after he told popular alt-right Twitter personality @bakedalaska that he couldn’t attend the party if he was going to do Nazi salutes of the kind that white nationalist Richard Spencer encouraged during his talk at the National Policy Institute conference earlier this month.

@bakedalaska quickly took his grievances with Cernovich online to his 131,000 followers.

Let’s call these racist assholes what they are, shall we? White supremacist nazis. Well, wannabe nazis. Some of them don’t want to be overt however, they want to be undercover nazis. You can see the relevant tweets at the link.

@bakedalaska’s fan base quickly rallied to his side — and one of them even showed his support by burning a copy of Cernovich’s book in protest.

The neo-Nazis at The Daily Stormer quickly got involved and declared that Cernovich was a member of the “cuck/kike contingent of the Trump movement” who had “banned… heroes such as Richard Spencer and Sam Hyde” from attending the inauguration ball, while still inviting “Alt-Light figures attempting to kike-over the Alt-Right by making it non-racist and accepting of Jews.”

Tsk. I’m sure all of us rabid hordes of attacking parasites we now call activist progressives are about to dissolve into tears over the infighting. Yep, any second now, I’m sure.

Via Raw Story.

A Dumb Leader’s Apology.

Carl Paladino (WGRZ).

Carl Paladino (WGRZ).

Remember Carl Paladino? Paladino recently shrugged off his own son’s condemnation of his ugly bigotry, but apparently, the seemingly endless criticism and calls to remove him from the school board have provoked an apology from poor victim Carl, and it’s a doozy:

“I never intended to hurt the minority community… to them I apologize,” said Paladino, who was condemned by his own son on Christmas Eve over his racist tirade.

That said, Paladino was still upset at all the criticism that he received for his original statement, and he said that it has been “horrible… watching my family and friends react to the rabid hordes of attacking parasites we now call activist progressives.”

“It’s been a sick, combative year for America,” he continued. “We changed the direction of our country and beat back the demons for a few decades. I am proud to have been a part of the making of history. As for the vanquished progressive haters out there spewing their venom at anything that is a reminder of their humiliating defeat, irrelevance is tough to chew on. For the mean-spirited, disoriented press trying to find grounding and recover legitimacy on my back, pray that you still have a job next year because you have lost all credibility with the people.”

Paladino concluded his statement by stating emphatically that he is “certainly not a racist,” despite the fact that he said Michelle Obama should be “let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.”

Goodness. Yet another one of those “great” Americans who support Trump in “making America great again.” It’s gonna be a long three years until we can get the hell out of this hellhole of a country.

Via Raw Story.

The Persecution Files: Gohmert & Gaffney.

Catholics burning Protestants, a fine old Christian tradition.

Catholics burning Protestants, a fine old Christian tradition.

Christians just love the idea of persecution. Generally speaking, throughout all of Xian history, the persecution was applied by them, towards pretty much everyone, including those Xians who decided to do things a bit differently. The history of Xianity is a particularly nasty one, and it’s not at all like they like to paint, with them the humble, willing martyrs so terribly persecuted. The initial church, the Catholic one, had a death grip on many world leaders, as well as too much of the population. The had terrible wealth and power, and used it. Ages went by with the constant spilling of blood, all the wars, the crusades, condemning countless children and adults to death. All the declarations of heresy. The inquisition. Oh, all those witches to torture, burn, and hang. A Christian’s work is never done. Once divisions took place, those who rejected Catholicism got busy torturing and killing those who wouldn’t renounce Catholicism (as in Hawaii), and so on. A history replete with brutal oppression, burning with fanatical hatred and writ in blood. The majority of Xians, anywhere in the world, know very little about actual history. They know the insipid stories they are fed, and little more. Learning on your own when you’re any flavour of xian is frowned upon, and quickly discouraged. Learning has this nasty habit of shedding light, and making a person curious and questioning. Not a good thing when it comes to religion. You are, to steal from Futurama, to choose to believe what you have been programmed to believe.

Christians to this day insist they are persecuted, oh yes we are, they cry, while stamping their feet. This never ending cry is often deafening here in uStates. Recently, the ever delusional Louie Gohmert and Frank Gaffney went on and on about it.

[Read more…]

Profiles in Cowardice.

Reddit.

Reddit.

“Make America Great Again.” That phrase presupposes there are great people who happen to be Americans who will make this amazing transformation take place. I’m willing to concede that most Trumpoids are indeed great in their own minds, however, outside of that, not so much. Let’s have a look at some of these Trumpoids, all of whom are more than willing to shout “make America great again!”, and see where their paths have taken them on the way to said greatness.

Andrew Anglin -- via Wiki commons.

Andrew Anglin — via Wiki commons.

Andrew Anglin, who runs The Daily Stormer website, now says he plans to lead a march in the town aimed at Jews in the community.

“We are planning an armed protest in Whitefish,” Anglin wrote. “Montana has extremely liberal open carry laws, so my lawyer is telling me we can easily march through the center of the town carrying high-powered rifles. I myself am planning on being there to lead the protest, which has been dubbed ‘March on Whitefish.’”

According to Anglin, he claims he will be busing in “skinheads from the Bay Area,” adding, “Currently, my guys say we are going to be able to put together about 200 people to participate in the march, which will be against Jews, Jewish businesses and everyone who supports either.”

“We have to stand up to these people, and we have to force an apology,” The Forward reports Anglin wrote. “This will be an absolutely massive victory for our cause. We have never done this before.”

[…]

Prior to the 2016 presidential election, Anglin claimed that “Virtually every alt-right Nazi I know is volunteering for the Trump campaign.”

It seems that part of making America great again is to 1) be a nazi, and 2) do something about those awful Jewish people. Gee, that doesn’t sound familiar at all. :insert near-fatal eyeroll here:  Via Raw Story.

Moving on to a group profile of sorts, many of those poised for American Greatness™ were thrown off balance by Trump tweeting Happy Hanukkah to Jewish people. (It seems that all those “great” American Trumpoids have a serious mental block when it comes to Trump having a Jewish daughter and son-in-law.)

There are more blustery upsets of the MAGA kind at Raw Story.

Merry Christmas and Long Live the King!

Reint-a-Claus (Fritz Liess).

Reint-a-Claus (Fritz Liess).

The Twittersphere has been exploding throughout the holidays, and with good reason. Apparently, not one person in the “Trump Team” is capable of anything except gaffes, which they happily publicize all over the place, then have to rush in and try to spin it with very poor excuses. Normally, I’d say this would be a banner time for comedians, except they are in fear of all those Trumpoids, who seem to be singularly humourless.

On Sunday, the Republican National Committee (RNC) tweeted out a Christmas greeting that included a reference to a “new King.”

“Merry Christmas to all!” wrote RNC Chairman Reince Priebus and co-chair Sharon Day, according to TheHill.com. “Over two millennia ago, a new hope was born into the world, a Savior who would offer the promise of salvation to all mankind. Just as the three wise men did on that night, this Christmas heralds a time to celebrate the good news of a new King. We hope Americans celebrating Christmas today will enjoy a day of festivities and a renewed closeness with family and friends.”

Twitter users were baffled and a little horrified to see a major political party calling its Republican-elect a “king” before he’s even sworn into office.

Oh look – we now have an official godling and a king. Oh joy. The idiot lunatics are in charge. You can see some of the choicer twitter reactions at Raw Story.

Yes, We do Elect Dumb Leaders.

Carl Paladino, who co-chaired Donald Trump’s New York campaign, and is a school board member, wrote out his wishlist for 2017:

1. Obama catches mad cow disease after being caught having relations with a Herford. He dies before his trial and is buried in a cow pasture next to Valerie Jarret, who died weeks prior, after being convicted of sedition and treason, when a jihady cell mate mistook her for being a nice person and decapitated her.

2. Michelle Obama. I’d like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.

3. Someone with a brain, a set of balls and a lack of fear who has enough money so as to not owe anyone anything once elected and who believes in a market economy.

4. We need a $50 million dollar train station as much as we need parasitic people like Lou Ciminelli, 80% of the school board and the dizziness of socialistic progressive politicians who never signed the front of a paycheck. At best 400 people a day take a train. They are not complaining about exchange or Depew. We are already the laughingstock of America for having the dumbest elected leaders ever. Why add to it.

How sweet. Perhaps the good people of Buffalo will take a look, and decide this person really shouldn’t be on the school board, for more than one reason. Going by Mr. Paladino’s lack of grammar, and general ignorance, he wouldn’t pass a standard high school test.

Via Raw Story.

Gas Station Moon.

moon

Yesterday, the president-elect appointed private space advocate and businessman Charles Miller to the NASA transition team.

[…]

Last year, Miller led research that concluded private and international partnerships could make it 90 percent cheaper for NASA to set up a permanent, crewed base on the moon. The lunar base could theoretically be used to mine water from the moon’s craters and split it into hydrogen and oxygen—rocket fuel—to sell to private companies. By turning the moon into a gas station, there are hopes that these mines could make space exploration cheaper and easier.

Oh, there’s an idea, let’s get busy destroying the moon while we finish killing our earth. Yep, that’s bound to work. The colonial mindset, it never dies. Like mindless termites, gnawing and chewing through everything, with destructive glee. I have nothing outside a gigantic, near-fatal eyeroll.

Via Raw Story.

An Arms Race It Is!

Cult-of-Trump-4

Yesterday, Trump tweeted about how more nuclear weapons are needed, making a lot of people tense and unhappy. Your worries have just doubled down, because Trump has not had a single thought about this, just ran right into things with his brain shut and mouth wide open: now we need an arms race! Gosh, won’t that be fun.

On Friday, MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough said President-elect Donald Trump endorsed a nuclear arms race during a brief phone conversation they had with him earlier that morning.

“Mika asked the president-elect when we had the opportunity what his position was on — trying to clarify the tweet yesterday regarding the nuclear arsenal,” Scarborough said, referring to a tweet Trump published on Thursday calling for the United States to “greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”

“And the president-elect told you what?” Scarborough said to Brzezinski.

“Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass,” she replied. “And outlast them all.”

Trump’s statement directly contradicts the spin spokesman Jason Miller offered Thursday afternoon in an effort to downplay Thursday’s tweet — spin that interpreted Trump’s comments as merely warning about “the threat of nuclear proliferation.”

[…]

Trump’s comments Friday indicate Miller had it wrong. The president-elect is actually endorsing a nuclear arms race, not warning about the dangers of one, because he’s confident the United States would somehow always win.

Trump’s position represents a break from the nonproliferation efforts the United States has led for decades. As ThinkProgress detailed last spring, international nonproliferation agreements reduced the number of operational warheads in the world from a high of 64,452 in 1986 to 10,315 in 2015. The president-elect’s statements suggest that downward trend will come to an end.

Friday is far from the first time Trump said reckless things about nuclear weapons. During an interview last March with Chris Matthews, Trump said he was open to using nukes if the situation called for it and questioned why we’d make them if we never intended to use them. During a Fox News interview the next day, Trump wouldn’t even rule out the possibility of using nukes in Europe.

“Europe is a big place,” Trump said. “I’m not going to take cards off the table. We have nuclear capability.”

“Europe is a big place.” The sheer idiocy of this man makes me despair. Trump is the compleat ignoramus, an Ignoramus’s Ignoramus. No attention span. No knowledge. No ability to think. No mindfulness. He doesn’t read, at all. No books, no newspapers, nothing. He “skims, glances”. Christ, we are so fucked.

In response to a subsequent question about what steps might stand in the way of Trump using nukes if he becomes president, Hayden said, “The system is designed for speed and decisiveness. It’s not designed to debate the decision.”

That’s reassuring. (For the sarcasm impaired: heavy sarcasm.)

Via Think Progress.

“You Can’t Get Help”.

Photographer: Grzegorz Krysmalski.

Photographer: Grzegorz Krysmalski.

Oh Trump, promising jobs, a better economy, oh my! People who truly bought that load of rotten tripe, I feel sorry for you, but only a little, because it didn’t take much to find the truth of the matter. Trump is known for providing jobs, he just doesn’t pay people. As for people who do get paid, well, most of them aren’t those uppity Americans who want a working wage.

As Donald J. Trump, the man who’s entire campaign was predicated on bringing American jobs back to America, vows to keep his promise to the people, a Virginia winery owned by son Eric Trump is petitioning to government for the opportunity to hire foreign workers, the New York Post reports.

The request, filed by the Trump Winery on Dec. 2 and posted online by the Department of Labor Wednesday, show that the Trump-owned vineyard is requesting six foreign workers under the federal H-2 program, a temporary work visa that allows US employers bring foreign labor.

According to the application, Trump Vineyard will pay the H-2 workers $10.72 an hour for 40 hours a week, as well as an unpaid lunch break. It will run from January until June 2017.

The winery also requested visas for workers in 2014 and 2015. This should not be a surprise, it came out, over and over and over and over and over during the endless campaign that many of the workers hired for various Trump enterprises were those dreaded illegal people, who were tireless and excellent workers, who also agreed to a lower wage. If you’re now angry, or feeling sorry for yourself, try to figure out why in the hell you ignored all this at the time.

Trump ran on a pro-worker populist platform throughout his campaign, and maintained that image despite numerous reports indicating the president-elect hires foreign workers at his establishments, including his Florida estate Mar-a-Lago.

A New York Times report published in February revealed the Trump Organization rejected hundreds of US applicants in favor of hiring foreign workers:

“[N]early 300 United States residents have applied or been referred for jobs as waiters, waitresses, cooks and housekeepers there,” the New York Times wrote. “But according to federal records, only 17 have been hired. In all but a handful of cases, Mar-a-Lago sought to fill the jobs with hundreds of foreign guest workers from Romania and other countries.”

“You can’t get help,” Trump told MSNBC’s Morning Joe in September, defending his company’s decision to hire guest workers over US citizens. “Getting help in Palm Beach during the season is almost impossible.”

You can’t get help. A full translation: you can’t get submissive help for cheap in the pool of American workers.

Via Raw Story.

A White Christmas.

Ann Coulter (Shutterstock)

Ann Coulter (Shutterstock)

Ann Coulter attended VDARE’s Christmas Party, piling yet another conservative onto the unapologetically white supremacist platform. We’re going to be seeing more of this, like Bill O’Reilly’s recent adoption of white supremacy. I had thought the normalisation of fascism and the open agenda of white supremacists might take at least a short while, but apparently not. The open embrace of white supremacy should be ringing alarm bells all over the place, but I no longer have even the smallest bit of faith in people hearing those alarms and waking the fuck up.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reported Wednesday that Coulter was spotted Dec. 9 at VDARE’s annual gala and even gave an impromptu interview to John Derbyshire — a U.K. expat famous for being too openly racist for the National Review.

[…]

“VDARE’s list of contributors, in fact, is akin to a Rolodex of the most prominent pseudo-intellectual racists and anti-Semites,” wrote the SPLC’s Stephen Piggott. “They include names like Jared Taylor, who once wrote that black people are incapable of sustaining any kind of civilization; Kevin MacDonald, a retired professor who wrote a trilogy claiming that Jews are genetically driven to undermine the Christian societies they often live in; and the late Sam Francis, a white nationalist ideologue who wrote several key racist books.”

This is Coulter’s second star turn at a white nationalist event since the fall, Piggott noted, “In September, she spoke to the annual “Writers Workshop” event put on by the anti-immigrant and white nationalist publishing house The Social Contract Press (TSCP).”

The TSCP is a Michigan-based publishing house that specializes in the writing of white supremacists.

[…]

The election of Donald Trump has emboldened many U.S. racists and spurred them to reveal their true colors.

Via Raw Story.