Cop Union: Accountability? Uh uh, Give Us Money.

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus can’t meaningfully discipline his officers under current contract rules. CREDIT: AP Photo/Eric Gay

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus can’t meaningfully discipline his officers under current contract rules. CREDIT: AP Photo/Eric Gay.

City leaders in San Antonio will soon vote on a new union contract for police officers that contains no reforms to accountability processes for cops, because the officers’ union wanted more money before agreeing to higher standards.

Mayor Ivy Taylor brought a seven-point list of reforms to union negotiators this spring, the San Antonio Express-News reports, but none made it into the contract. If the City Council ratifies the deal on September 1, the city will continue to face tight limits on how it can discipline officers.

Any misconduct records older than two years cannot be used to justify punishment for new incidents. Short suspensions that officers do not appeal get erased and converted into simple reprimands on their records after two years.

Taylor’s seven-point wishlist would have ended each of those rules, giving the Chief of Police greater ability to punish repeat offenders and examine patterns of behavior across an officer’s full career when deciding to suspend, demote, or fire a cop.

“The (police) chief (William McManus) and I feel that it is important, but the union was not willing to consider that and they wanted to be paid for any changes in the disciplinary process,” city manager Sheryl Sculley told the Express-News.

The contract already includes a 14 percent raise over four years. The raises union officials reportedly sought in exchange for reform would have been over and above those pay bumps — something that one activist called “essentially extortion.”

[Read more…]

A Match Made In Toxic Hell.

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Stephen K. Bannon.

Not long ago, Trump announced that he was bringing Breitbart’s Stephen Bannon aboard that thing he calls a campaign. This is not a good thing, given what an absolute festering sewer Breitbart is, and a good deal of the swirling shit can be credited to Bannon. So, now there’s going to be open catering to racists of all stripes.

If any more confirmation is needed of Donald Trump’s embrace of white nationalism, look no further than his selection of Stephen K. Bannon, the head honcho of Breitbart News, as his presidential campaign’s new chief executive.

With one hire Trump dispelled the fairytale he would act more presidential, while doubling down on his hate-powered campaign by allying with a toxic dump of racists, fabulists, and conspiracists posing as a news outlet. This move is perfectly aligned with Trump’s tin-foiled conspiracies that shot him to prominence beginning with blatantly fraudulent birtherism.

Just last October, a lengthy Bloomberg News profile of Bannon pronounced him “the most dangerous political operative in America.” The site’s founder, Andrew Breitbart, admiringly told the reporter that Bannon was the “Leni Riefenstahl of the Tea Party movement,” referring to the reviled Nazi propagandist.

As for Breitbart News, the Southern Poverty Law Center, commented that under Brannon’s tenure, the website has adopted the “key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right,’” including “Racist ideas,” “Anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant ideas.” (Though given the infestation of pop-up ads on Breitbart, it’s questionable if many readers make it past the panicky headlines into the ditch of festering slander and dissembling that follows.)

Trump has handed the keys of the Republican Party to Breitbart and the Alt-Right, the inevitable conclusion to decades of right-wing race-baiting and conspiracy-peddling.

Bannon’s trade is vicious slander, and he sits so far on the fringes even Glenn Beck blasted the Breitbart executive as “a horrible despicable human being.”

[…]

If racists have found a stepping stone to respectability in Breitbart, then Breitbart sees in Trump a vehicle to broaden its influence and fatten its wallet. Toward that end, its ethics are cheaper than a copy of Sarah Palin’s memoirs. Accusations dog the privately owned Breitbart that it pimped itself to Trump for an undisclosed sum of money.

It’s a match made in an outhouse. This is the path Trump took the moment he threw his hat in the ring by attacking Mexican immigrants as rapists, drug dealers, and criminals. Breitbart eagerly joined forces with Trump as have Stephen Bannon, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Roger Ailes, Ann Coulter, and every other grasping backstabber peddling hate.

Trump’s campaign is the Large Hadron Collider of white nationalism, smashing together the elemental prejudices of the right with terrifying energies and spawning new forms of bigotry. “Trump being Trump”means he is even likelier to lose the general election to Clinton.

But Trump and his white power posse will inevitably rise out of the ashes of defeat. They have a megaphone in Breitbart, a huge fundraising network, and millions of angry followers. The movement for white nationalism that Trump has consolidated can never be accommodated. It has to be destroyed.

Those final two sentences. Whether or not Trump loses, we still have a great deal to worry about. Now that white supremacy has had a resurgence, they’ll fight like hell against being pushed back to fringes once again. And if you think all those angry, toxic people were upset about having a Black president, how do you think they will feel about a woman?

Via Raw Story.

“Burn every single ni**er!”

Content Warning: Nasty, explicit racist language.

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A Massachusetts convoy of Trump supporters drove from Wrentham to Foxboro in their trucks, RVs and SUVs on July 31 and were caught on tape spewing racist epithets and calls for anti-black violence.

“Lynch the ni**ers by their d*cks!” said one driver, according to Winning Democrats, which highlighted a YouTube video of what the “Make America Great Again” convoy talked about on its CB channel when they thought no one was listening.

“Burn every single ni**er!” said another driver.

“All I know is we got plenty of trees to hang ni**ers from,” said another.

The convoy drove five miles from one township to another with their U.S. and Confederate flags waving.

“It would be nice to think that Trump supporters, once seeing and hearing how their comrades in idiocy truly behave, would have an epiphany of some sort and come to their senses,” wrote Charles Topher at Winning Democrats. “The problem is, they’re Trump supporters. They’re the ones driving those trucks.”

Video is below the fold.

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Hate by State.

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The Southern Poverty Law Center has a nice interactive map, showing all the organized hate groups by state. Check and see how surrounded you are. Two in ND. The one I knew about, because the asshole bought up a dead town not too far from us, and right on the doorstep of a rez, trying to set up a nazi town eden. It hasn’t worked out great, but they’re still there. Didn’t know about the one in Grand Forks.

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https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map.

Via The Advocate.

Neo-Nazism for Millenials: Trump Youth.

Jayme Liardi.

Jayme Liardi.

In spite of Trump’s latest effort to “reach out” to people of colour, his association with white nationalism, aka white supremacy, continues. Now there’s Trump Youth. Gosh, that doesn’t have a familiar ring at all. At this point, I wish Trump would expend more energy on his fake health letter, really make that work, and bail out. There is enough ugly in the world already without this sort of idiocy.

A website for the group encourages young voters to “[e]mbrace your destiny and become a part of the greatest battle the world has ever seen.”

“We Millennials are destined for greatness; no longer will we sit idle and watch everything our forefathers built be turned to dust,” the website says. “Our world is hurting, and it is up to us, the Youth, to become the Hero Generation and to save the world.”

In a video promotion for the Trump Youth group, Liardi asserts that “nations have been commandeered by an international criminal cartel, and this parasite is feeding on our energy.”

“It’s in Japan, it’s in China, it’s in Germany, it’s in America,” he warns. “If we don’t throw this parasite off our backs, the world will fall into chaos. These parasites want war, want destruction, they want slavery — and they’re getting them.”

[…]

Writing on his personal website earlier this year, Liardi said that he did not understand the “truth” about Adolf Hitler until he read Mein Kampf.

“I began to seek out the history without the propaganda– I wanted to understand the mind of the supposed most evil man in history,” he wrote. “So I studied the events leading up to the war, the german Weimar Republic, WWI and the climate of Europe in the early 20th century. And yes, I read Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’.”

“I quickly realized that I was not being given all of the facts–that what passes for history is merely rehashed propaganda from the war,” Liardi opined. “So [I] began to follow the trail of other patriots and freedom fighters before me, on a quest for truth, justice and an end to exploitation and enslavement.”

“WWII was a turning point in human history. A battle of opposite ideologies. Nationalism vs Globalism, International Communism vs ‘Nazism’,” he said. “We too are at a [turning] point in human history; it is five minutes to midnight and we are quickly running out of time. Will it be Globalism or will it be Nationalism.”

https://youtu.be/m9H1-FOC2nY

Via Raw Story.

Oh, that will help. Yep.

Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump looks out at Lake Michigan during a visit to the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin August 16, 2016. REUTERS/Eric Thayer.

Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump looks out at Lake Michigan during a visit to the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin August 16, 2016. REUTERS/Eric Thayer.

U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has shaken up his campaign staff amid sliding poll numbers and signs of disarray, U.S. media reported early on Wednesday.

Trump made senior advisor Kellyanne Conway his campaign manager, and Breitbart News executive chairman Stephen Bannon has been brought on as the campaign’s chief executive, the New York Times reported citing Conway.

Paul Manafort would remain as campaign chair, it said. The Washington Post cited campaign aides as saying that while Trump respected Manafort, he felt “‘boxed in’ and ‘controlled’ by people “who barely knew him”.

I’m so sure that hooking up with Breitbart will make everything okay, oh my yes. Why, there would never be any inflammatory stupidity coming from there. :gigantic eyeroll:

This should be interesting, in a train wreck sort of way, especially as the RNC is going to try and make nice with Latino people. We’ll see what the Breitbart spin on that will be.

Via Raw Story.

Flood of Sewer Fetuses Will Spread HIV!

Carol Everett (Photo: The Heidi Group).

Carol Everett (Photo: The Heidi Group).

In the not enough facepalm in the universe category, Texas legislature has designated 1.65 million dollars to a non-medical based, anti-abortion group, on the basis of aborted fetuses flooding the sewers, and somehow or another, causing the general water supply to be contaminated with STDs or HIV, because that’s just oh so realistic. Honestly, this is so goddamned embarrassing.

Carol Everett is the founder and CEO of The Heidi Group, an anti-abortion organization that gives women health “advice,” but is not a medical provider and can’t perform any health care services.

Earlier this month, Everett testified at a hearing at the Austin, Texas statehouse on a proposed requirement that women either bury or cremate the remains of an aborted fetus. According to The Austin Chronicle, Everett testified about her concerns of an impending public health disaster if fetuses were flushed down toilets. She argued that the general public could be afflicted with STDs or even HIV due to fetuses flooding the sewer systems.

“What if one day something horrible escaped into the sewer system?” she said, as the audience snickered.

Everett’s claims are scientifically impossible.

Just days later, the Texas legislature awarded The Heidi Group $1.65 million in taxpayer money for the organization’s “health care services.” Their organization doesn’t provide health care services.

While the group’s website advertises “Helping Texas Women,” further examination reveals their claims to have “programs” lists merely a phone number, the page that offers to help women with pregnancy/infant loss says “Page Coming Soon” and if a woman needs a pregnancy test they have a list of links to crisis pregnancy centers, that counsel women against abortion.

“The Heidi Group exists to ensure that all Texas women have access to quality health care by coordinating services in a statewide network of full-service medical providers,” the website says. It doesn’t explain how this is different from a Google search.

The grant comes out of funding that previously went to Planned Parenthood before Texas politicians kicked them out of the program in 2012.

In an interview with the Texas Observer, Everett admitted that she’ll be forking over a lot of the money to crisis pregnancy centers, which an investigation showed lie to women about the realities of their reproductive health. She assures the Observer that the taxpayer funds will not go to administrative costs at The Heidi Group or the organization’s rent, but it will go to nurses and doctors in rural Texas that urge women against abortions.

“My goal is to reach that little girl in a small county with no hope of having anybody explain her birth control options or have her blood pressure checked,” she said.

The local CVS pharmacy and Walmart often have machines where people can have their blood pressure taken for free. Crisis pregnancy centers in Texas have been caught counseling women to use abstinence only as a birth control method and refusing to dispense contraception.

Full Story Here.

Girls Do Not Need A Prince.

 

Twitter/@KNKNOKU Image caption Kim Jayeon could not have expected that a tweet would have cost her her job.

Twitter/@KNKNOKU
Image caption Kim Jayeon could not have expected that a tweet would have cost her her job.

Gamergate in Korea. Every bit as bad, and I’d say worse.

On the face of it, the slogan “Girls do not need a prince” doesn’t seem that controversial.

In many parts of the world, it would pass as the kind of thing any young woman might wear without prompting a second look.

But when the actress, Kim Jayeon, tweeted a photograph of herself wearing the garment, she generated a storm and lost herself a job.

She was the voice of one of the characters in a South Korean online game called “Closers”. Gaming is very big in South Korea, as much a part of the culture as football.

Fans of “Closers” inundated Nexon, the company which produced the game, with complaints. Many of the complaints, according to female activists, were offensive and anti-women.

Nexon quickly bowed to the protesters and sacked the actress. It told the BBC that she would be paid in full for her work but her voice would not be used on the game.

It issued a statement saying it had “recognised the voices of concern amongst the Closers community”, adding that “we have suddenly decided to seek a replacement in the role”.

The full story is at BBC.com.

Interesting Timing…

Ivanka Trump and Wendi Deng Murdoch went “sight seeing” in Dubrovnik, Croatia (Photo: Instagram).

Ivanka Trump and Wendi Deng Murdoch went “sight seeing” in Dubrovnik, Croatia (Photo: Instagram).

While Donald Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort is under fire for tight relationships with pro-Kremlin allies and Trump is denying he asked Russia to hack Hillary Clinton, Trump’s eldest daughter and senior Trumpsitting manager is jet setting all over Croatia with Wendi Deng Murdoch, who is Russian president Vladimir Putin’s girlfriend.

According to Gawker, Ivanka Trump posted a photo on Instagram over the weekend with her friend, who happens to be the ex-wife of Rupert Murdoch and the current girlfriend of Putin.

[…]

People magazine cites a longtime friendship with Murdoch, who fixed Trump up with now-husband Jared Kushner.

[…]

It is less than 90 days until the election in November, Trump’s campaign is in a polling free-fall and Ivanka Trump taking a vacation with the Russian president’s girlfriend probably doesn’t help the campaign.

It seems no one in the Trump family has the slightest ounce of sense. I guess being accustomed to doing whatever you want because loads of money isn’t conducive to thoughfulness.

Full story here.

Curing LGBT people from their affliction.

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Illinois, like many states, passed legislation called the Youth Mental Health Protection Act, to ban the practice of a “failed and discredited non-therapy that attempts to change the unchangeable,” as Equality Illinois put it.

But now five pastors have come together to sue based on religious freedom. They believe they should be exempt from the bill because of their religion and designation as a church and religious institution. Like many churches and religious businesses over the years, when they see a law they don’t like they claim First Amendment protections. This argument could be made with any law, however. There could be an argument that slavery and servitude not to mention abuse of one’s children and family could be sanctioned by The Bible, and thus laws outlawing it should be allowed in the church as part of a “religious freedom” exemption.

Pink News reports Pastor Steven Stultz of Nu-Church Apostolic Ministries of East Garfield is one of those seeking to use the torturous technique on LGBT people. Claiming, “In 1 Corinthians 6:9, the Apostle Paul writes to those who had overcome many sins including homosexuality, stating, ‘such were some of you’ but you were changed through God’s healing,” he said. “I have personally witnessed many people change their sexual orientation through counseling and know it is possible. The government is interfering into someone’s private decisions. This ban on counseling creates fear in the people most in need of comfort and support.”

The pastors’ attorney insists this is a ban on those who seek spiritual guidance at difficult times where they are questioning their sexual orientation.

“Each person should be free to receive Biblical and spiritual counseling from the pastor of their choice to help them orient their sexuality,” said John W Mauck from Mauck and Baker LLC.

Most recently, a Texas teen was forced into a “pray away the gay” boarding school after she tried to take her girlfriend to the prom. The litigation in her case is ongoing and the court documents have been sealed, but she was ultimately released, after trying to escape.

Pastors, go fuck yourselves, please. You aren’t offering comfort, aid, or help. You’re looking for governmental help in kidnapping, imprisoning, and torturing people. While that’s certainly biblical, it has no place among thinking, compassionate, rational people who are living in the 21st century.

Via Raw story.

That Is Pathetic.

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“That is pathetic.” I haven’t heard such a lovely sentence in quite a long time.

It’s been just over a year since same-sex marriage became legal nationwide in the US, and it turns out the fundraising buckets at homophobic anti-equality campaigns are looking a little empty.

National Organization for Marriage, the main US group opposing same-sex marriage, has launched a desperate plea for cash from its dwindling supporters.

And halfway through the campaign, it looks like it’s not going very well.

‘We’re now three weeks into our drive — the halfway point — and we have only received 256 contributions from our members. We’re only 17% toward our goal of receiving 1,500 membership contributions of at least $35,’ Brian Brown, the president of NOM, said in an email to the group’s supporters.

‘That is pathetic.

‘Unless this situation improves drastically right away, NOM will have little choice but to cut some of the critical programs we have underway and not pursue some of our most important work to protect you and other supporters of marriage from being targeted by LGBT extremists and their allies in government.’

NOM then lists all the horrific homophobic and transphobic things they would like to do if they only had the funds to get rid of that pesky ‘equality’ laws. He blames ‘LGBT extremists’.

That includes influencing Congress to pass a First Amendment Defense Act, which is similar to the ‘religious freedom’ law in Indiana that caused such outrage, and as well as fighting ‘President Obama’s dangerous gender “identity” agenda”.

‘I really don’t believe — I just can’t imagine the thought — that NOM’s members have quit fighting for the institution of marriage as a union between man and woman,’ Brown said.

‘And yet, only 256 of you have responded with an urgently needed membership contribution during this critical period.’

‘If NOM has to scale back, the fight for marriage and religious liberty is seriously weakened,’ he added.

It looks like NOM is finally dying, and that’s a very good thing. I suspect the reason for that though, is that conservatives are seeing an easier to attain road with all the current religious liberty laws, so it’s not like the fight is over in the least. That said, I couldn’t be happier to see the ugliness that is NOM wither away. It’s about time.

Via Gay Star News.

Arizona Cop Terrifies Tourists.

Artist Ken Walton ad daughter Wren -- Facebook.

Artist Ken Walton ad daughter Wren — Facebook.

In a post going viral on Facebook, Ken Walton describes being arrested at gunpoint by an Arizona Highway Patrol officer who threatened to shoot him in the back in front of his 7-year-old daughter.

Here’s what Ken says happened:

My daughter and I are from San Francisco, on vacation, traveling through the Southwest. Today we were driving from Hoover Dam to the Grand Canyon in a Toyota Camry we’d rented from Fox Car Rental in Las Vegas. In Williams, Arizona, as I exited Interstate 40 to head north toward the Canyon rim, I was pulled over by an AHP officer who’d been tailing me for a couple of miles. I hadn’t been speeding, so I wondered if perhaps the car had a broken taillight or something. I rolled down my window and waited.

Suddenly, the officer rapped on the rear passenger side window with his pistol. My daughter, who was sitting inches from the barrel of his gun, jumped with fear as the officer yelled at me to roll down the front passenger window, his service weapon pointed directly at me. I knew something was terribly awry and I tried to remain calm, keeping my hands visible as I slowly fumbled for the window controls in an unfamiliar car. My daughter rolled down her window and I explained that we were in a rental car, that we had no weapons, and I was having trouble figuring out how to roll down the front passenger window from my driver’s side door. The officer didn’t listen, and kept yelling louder and more insistently, ordering me to comply with his request as he leered at me down the barrel of his pistol. My daughter panicked and tried to get out of her booster seat to reach forward to roll down the front window, and the officer screamed at her not to move as he pointed his pistol at her.

[Read more…]