Sunday Facepalm.

Civil rights icon Colin Kaepernick and President Donald Trump, composite image.

It’s another Trump Tantrum™. Apparently, the Tiny Tyrant thinks he’s still in reality teevee land…

“If a player wants the privilege of making millions of dollars in the NFL, or other leagues, he or she should not be allowed to disrespect…our Great American Flag (or Country) and should stand for the National Anthem,” President Trump tweeted.

“If not, YOU’RE FIRED. Find something else to do!” the President of the United States insisted.

This is not an episode of ‘The President’, dumbshit Donny. You can’t pretend fire anyone. You can’t fire them for real, either. The twit’s tweets can be seen here. Naturally, the Tiny Tyrant couldn’t leave things be with that level of blunder, oh no…

“‘Wouldn’t you like to see one of our NFL owners, when somebody disrespects the flag, say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field,’” Trump reportedly said at the rally. Kaepernick is not currently employed by any NFL football teams, as he was not drafted after his controversial bended-knee protests during the National Anthem last year.

You can read the full story and reactions here.

In the meantime, the NFL Players Union is standing firm:

Takeo Spikes, M.B.A: “How about all of us get together & say, “get that “son of a btch” out of the White House.” #FukingDotard.

And Colin Kaepernick’s mom had something to say too…

Teresa Kaepernick: “Guess that makes me a proud bitch!”

You can read all about that here.

Naturally, the Tiny Tyrant just can’t let it rest:

The Fucking Idiot: “Roger Goodell of NFL just put out a statement trying to justify the total disrespect certain players show to our country. Tell them to stand!” More on that one here.

I have a suggestion for you, Donny. Go fuck yourself.

Death Squads For The People Who Ruined America!

Society6.com

Ann Coulter is at it again, this time opining about the Tiny Tyrant’s apparent waffling on Dreamers. Ms. Coulter has solutions to the incredibly evil problem of treating other people with care, dignity, and respect.

Last week, Coulter appeared on the “Todd Starnes Show” to discuss Trump’s apparent willingness to betray his campaign promise to oppose programs like DACA, which is designed to protect people who immigrated illegally to the United States as children.

“We have made as clear as you can possibly make it, we want less immigration,” Coulter said. “Stop dumping the third-world on the country.”

Y’know, Ms. Coulter, the original inhabitants of this country weren’t too thrilled with your ancestors deciding to park their arses here. You could do the nice thing and leave.

She then claimed that Trump was elected into the White House because of his stance on immigration and bemoaned Trump’s recent mixed signals on the DACA program.

“If he continues down this path, well I guess there are three options. There’s the organizing the death squads for the people who ruined America, because there will be no more hope,” Coulter said.

Well, your ancestors ruined Turtle Island, so I don’t think you get to whine about “your amerika” getting ruined. So, your solution is to what? Get a committee of milk white people who have passed a genetic purity test to decide which degree of white is acceptable, and which degrees deserve death? I don’t think there’s enough shut the fuck up in the universe for you, Ms. Coulter. You mouth this shit without a second thought, in the middle of a struggle against fascism, without any thought of all the shite supremacists out there who might think that’s a mighty fine idea. Or perhaps you’re counting on that.

After some hesitation Coulter continued, “I guess the other possibility is to – well I don’t think anyone would mind him being impeached. What’s the faction opposing that? And then at least we’ll get Mike Pence. But in terms of saving America, maybe a third party.”

The Religious Reich would oppose impeachment, and they have more power than you do, Ms. Coulter. Oh, a third party! Who might that be, Paul Ryan? Zombie Hitler? I’m sure we’re all in suspense here.

Via RWW.

Silly College Kids, Voting Is Not For You!

Ann Coulter, who is part of a trifecta of evil speakers, will be at Berkeley this month, but right now, Ms. Coulter thinks it’s fine to rant away about how college students should not be able to vote.

On yesterday’s episode of the “Howie Carr Show,” Coulter vented about The Washington Post’s debunk of claims that massive voter fraud is taking place in New Hampshire; the Post found that many of the alleged fraud cases were actually out-of-state college students from casting legal ballots in New Hampshire.

Coulter first explained to Carr that she didn’t think students should be voting in states where they attend college if they don’t establish permanent residency in that state, but then said that it would be  “outrageous” for a college student to change her residency to her college town.

Oh right, you can’t manage to refute the WP’s finding, and you can’t manage any reasonable response, so the answer is “college kids shouldn’t be able to vote! they are too stupid brainwashed!” So, Ms. Coulter, why do you think it’s worth your time speaking at colleges, if it’s not an attempt to radicalize young people into being mindless ragebigots? That is the point, right? After all, you and Bannon and Yiannopoulos aren’t going to Berkeley to whip up a nice froth of hate just to be followed by a “hey, kidding! you’re too young and dumb to matter, thanks for the money, bye.”

On the social level, where humans in general lag way behind in forward movement, things tend to get better with each new generation. Each new generation tends to be more thoughtful, more mindful, more accepting, and more involved in what’s happening in their various worlds. Me, I think that’s a good thing. Us older folks, we have to be careful our brains don’t rust shut while we weren’t listening. It’s important to keep our brains and our viewpoints exercised, and I would never once consider stripping young adults of their right to vote, ffs, that’s barbaric. And damn stupid. Not to say it can’t be a challenge, listening to young people, but y’know, you need to remember that enthusiasm you had long ago before life pounded you into the ground a thousand times.

Coulter then reached the conclusion that “college kids shouldn’t be voting” at all.

“It’s just to get the results of 13 years of Chinese-style brainwashing,” Coulter said. “I don’t think that people should be able to vote until they’re 30.”

Yeah. Could this be retroactive? After all, if you want to strip years of voting eligibility away from young people, then all the voting you did for that 12 years, well, those need to be taken away. Let’s have decades of recounts! Then we could just fuck all the rules, and put certain people in office, or back in office, for periods of time. Fun, right? Calling this nonsense stupid is an understatement. Of course, given that Ms. Coulter is over 30, that makes things very convenient for her, doesn’t it?

Via RWW.

All Lives Splatter.

A Chelan County emergency services worker posted a disturbing joke to the county’s Facebook account, kidding about protesters being rammed three weeks after a Virginia protester was killed by a driver who did so.

The worker managing the county’s emergency services Facebook account posted a crude cartoon with an illustration captioned, “All lives splatter … nobody cares about your protest / Keep your ass out of the Road”

The as-yet unidentified poster included the note: “I don’t wish harm on anyone … but protesters don’t belong in the road!”

Mmm, you don’t wish harm on anyone, but you show a depiction of people being harmed because, “hey, it’s funny, and those libtards deserve it, lol!” I imagine if such was directed at you, emergency services worker, you wouldn’t find it so gosh darn amusing. I sure as fuck don’t. Handing J. Q. Public license to murder is not funny. It’s not funny that open murder is being written into law, because of course, dissent is evil, so you better do all your dissenting someplace legal, like your closet, where you can’t help to effect any change at all.

Chelan County Sheriff Brian Burnett apologized for the post on Monday, saying the non-commissioned employee intended to share it only on a personal account.

“Staff at Chelan County Emergency Management feel terrible that this inappropriate and hurtful post made it onto the Facebook page,” Burnett wrote in the news release. “Changes have already been made in procedure to assure nothing like this will ever occur in the future.”

Oh, and that makes it okay, does it, to change things so this sort of evil shit can’t make it to the official page? Naturally, having employees posting this vile poison on their personal accounts, that’s just dandy! Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think I’d want Chelan County emergency services anywhere near me. Your asshole employees would be just as prone to killing me as helping me, right, Sheriff Burnett?

In recent months, law enforcement workers around the country have been called out for posting the meme and similar statements.

A Slate examination of the trend in August – “Run Them Down”: Driving into crowds of protesters was a right-wing fantasy long before the violence in Charlottesville – highlighted three police officers and one firefighter who were caught urging vehicle attacks on protesters. One Oregon cop was fired for suggesting that drivers “push the right” pedal when facing Black Lives Matter protesters.

Pigs will be pigs, won’t they? This is what happens when cops shops refuse to hire intelligent people. This is what happens when cops shops happily hire white supremacists and assorted dumbshit bigots. Then gives them a license to be homicidal prickshits.

Via Seattle PI.

No Miss Piggies! Unattractive!

Let’s take a look at Mr. No Unattractive Fatties:

Via Twitter.

We should all know that looks aren’t all that, and most people aren’t obscenely rich and have the option to completely remold their faces and figures, and to attempt to offput aging through various methods, some very questionable, like that of vampire wannabe Thiel. Apparently, President Pinchpork seems to think he’s devastatingly attractive as he is. Whether or not a person is intellectually engaging, has a sense a humour, is kind, and so on, those things matter. Looks? Not so much. Not that eye candy isn’t nice, what’s not to enjoy? There are plenty of people who make a living being eye candy, for everyone’s enjoyment. If that’s not your job though, then looks should not have jack shit to do with anything, while your actual abilities to do your job competently, that should matter.

RANCHO PALOS VERDES (CBSLA.com) — Trump’s exclusive Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles perched in picturesque Rancho Palos Verdes is now at the center of bias accusations. In legal documents first published by the LA Times, former staffers here unleashed a slew of ugly allegations against Trump in a lawsuit that has since been settled.

Among the accusations: Trump fat shamed employees at the golf club’s restaurant and demanded they be given the boot because of their weight.

A former catering director said this about the billionaire real estate mogul:

“I had witnessed Donald Trump tell managers many times while he was visiting the club that restaurant hostesses were not ‘pretty enough’ and that they should be fired and be replaced with more attractive women.’

Another staffer also said she was told to fire someone because they were too heavy:

“Mr. Stellio told me that I should do this because Mr. Trump doesn’t like fat people and that he would not like seeing (her) when he was on the premises.”

Staffers also reported fearing Trump’s wrath, so they replaced middle-aged hostesses at the restaurant with younger, more attractive women when Trump was visiting.

I wonder, given President Pinchpork’s hatred of fat, what the hell he sees when he looks in the mirror.

Trump’s organization called the claims totally bogus in the following statement:

“The allegations in the lawsuit were meritless. We do not engage in discrimination of any kind. The statements made by a group of former disgruntled employees are far from an accurate portrayal of what it is like to work at Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles.”

Let’s go back to the recent past for a moment:

Alicia Machado, who won the Miss Universe pageant in 1996, was photographed in May of this year in Los Angeles. Credit Emily Berl for The New York Times.

Alicia Machado, who won the Miss Universe pageant in 1996, was photographed in May of this year in Los Angeles. Credit Emily Berl for The New York Times.

This is the woman Trump called “Miss Piggy” “Miss Housekeeping” and “Miss Eating Machine”.  Wanting women to be walking skeletons is in no way reasonable, especially when those making such demands tend to be more than a bit well padded. It’s not as though President Pinchpork is demanding all the men who work for him be model level attractive and to be of sufficient thinness. So as far as the statement goes, I’ll issue an unequivocal bullshit. Pinchpork is a walking, talking horror show when it comes to womens’ bodies and clothing choices, and it’s not as though girls don’t have enough shit hurled at them from day one on that level. Men don’t need this sort of crap either, nor do they need anyone encouraging them to be judgmental assholes of shallowness. All my hopes to those suing.

Full story here.

Trumpholes, Ever Stupid. And Lazy.


Young bodies may more easily rebound from long bouts of sitting, with just an hour at the gym. But research suggests physical recovery from binge TV-watching gets harder in our 50s and as we get older. Lily Padula for NPR.

So, NPR had a health article up about prolonged sitting, and how it affects health, particularly mobility in those of us who are older. Nothing new about that, but I suppose people need to be reminded to get off the couch now and then. The title of the article is ‘Get Off The Couch Baby Boomers, Or You May Not Be Able To Later.’ This was turned into a Twitter campaign, to urge older folks to exercise more. Rather than taking the exhaustive and ever so difficult route of clicking a link and reading the article, ever moronic and lazy Trumpholes assumed this was political, and Democratic a/o liberal in origin, and tweeted their outrage all over the place.

So now the democrat party slogan is “Get Off The Couch Baby Boomers” Typical, demand others who worked, built, suffered do more for them

You can see much more of the idiocy of those who assume, rather than know what they are talking about at Raw Story.

A New White Excuse: “I Was At Standing Rock!”

Courtesy Wind Over Fire Healing Arts Center/Facebook
A New Age “ghost dance” held in southwestern Minnesota has many indigenous people wondering just when the cultural appropriation will end.

White “aggrieved entitlement” people. They never seem to run out of excuses for their bloated sense of entitlement, of helping themselves to the least little thing; of exploiting marginalized peoples. It’s damn near a way of life for many white people. When it comes to “new age” rites, seems to me there’s a wealth of pagan history to mine, gosh, you might even find some you’re related to in some way.

Towards the later days at the No DAPL camp, I wasn’t quiet about all the entitlement-minded white people there, who had no use for the rules laid down by the people running things. Because of course, rules, they are never for white people are they? I wasn’t quiet about all the white protest/event tourists, either. People who were there to honestly provide support and help, no problem. As usual though, they weren’t the ones making a fuss or making it all about them, because they knew it wasn’t about them. They knew that in the end, they would go home, and not have to deal with it all.

In Minnesota, there’s a group who recently held their 2nd annual “Ghost Dance”. When called on this, they denied it was a ghost dance. They said it was a “Ten Moons” dance. Then they decided to go with “Ghost Dance isn’t exclusive to Indigenous people! Lots of cultures had ancestor dances! China! Africa! So it isn’t indigenous in nature.” Oddly enough, their not indigenous at all dance is decidedly indigenous in appearance, and specifically so. The history of the Ghost Dance is a dark one, once the colonials got terrified and started up more wholesale slaughter, and brutally oppressed indigenous peoples all the more out of fear. It’s not a toy for white people to play pagan. It’s not yours. It’s not your culture, it’s not your history. If non-indigenous people ever wonder why various rites and dances have been closed to outsiders, look no further.

“It would be great if everyone just joined together,” said Laven, discontented by the scrutiny of their ceremony and the charges of cultural appropriation. “We have enough crap. I was at Standing Rock, and I hear the Native Americans, and I had heard them.”

Oh my. What a fine example of white entitlement. There’s really nothing else like it. Golly, white people have had enough crap! It’s just like everything indigenous people have gone through! And now, Standing Rock is the latest excuse. Fuck you, Ms. Laven. A universe of fuck yous. You have not heard one godsdamn thing. You don’t give one little shit about indigenous people or their struggles. All you care about is exploiting them to make money. I hope you are bad-mouthed from here to the end of the galaxy, because that’s the very least of what you deserve.

Full story at ICTMN.

Yeah, about that Charlie Hebdo cover…

Mano Singham has a good post up about all the upset. As for me, this was my comment there:

Y’know, I don’t really see how this is different from noisy christian assholes saying ‘god’ was punishing Texas for having a gay mayor and allowing abortion. Yet that’s acceptable, and the mockery on the part of Hebdo isn’t.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/kevin-swanson-hurricane-harvey-is-gods-judgment-on-houston-for-having-a-very-aggressively-pro-homosexual-mayor/

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/dave-daubenmire-hurricane-harvey-is-judgment-on-houston-for-abortion-and-having-had-a-lesbian-mayor/

They are saying it’s the victims’ fault, too. No one is yelling about that.

I can’t get all that worked up about the cover. Is it nice to mock victims of a not so natural (climate change) disaster? No. Are there lots of people in Texas, who while they may not be outright nazis, share many a view with them? Probably. Is the United States swirling down the drain of fascism fair game? Yeah, I think it is. When you’re presenting a HUGE fucked-upness on the world stage, you have to learn to take it now and then, and before reacting, at least give yourself a few moments for thinking.

I gave two examples of people who consider themselves to be patriots, conservatives, and christian. They are pointing their minatory finger, and that of Jehovah straight at Texas, and all those victims of the flood. Oh yes, goddidit, and it’s all their fault. They are unabashedly placing the blame on the victims, and yet, not even a whimper of protest, let alone a roar. Until all those fine, outraged Americans find enough spine to spit in the face of their fellow christians hollering judgment, I think you should sit down and be quiet. Look to home, and deal with all the assholes and wannabe terrorists right here. They are everywhere, all around you. Try to have something to say about that.

ETA: Oh, we have another fine example! Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos (R-TX):

Quebec’s Minister of International Relations Christine St-Pierre called Pablos to express her sorrow and condolences on behalf of the people of the Canadian province. She also offered equipment and manpower.

Pablos turned it down. Instead he asked for “prayers from the people of Quebec,” the minister relayed.

Understandably, the neighbor to the north was shocked.

“It was a conversation about how devastating the situation is and we want to express our support to the people of Texas,” she told CBC News in an interview.

Isn’t that just splendid, Americans? Goodness, how those republicans do look after your best interests. We deserve every drop of fucking mockery directed our way. Via Raw Story.

Sunday Facepalm.

The immaturity of so many conservative, christian white males is, at times, unbelievable. Like so many toddlers who never saw a reason to mature emotionally or intellectually, too many of them are in seats of power, or close to them, and happily enable swathes of equally immature assholes to continue in asshole behaviour and rhetoric. One leading the pack in the immaturity stakes is the ever noisy Wayne Allyn Root. Once again, he’s spitting and frothing about women, but specifically, liberal women. And liberal men, just the worst y’know.

On his Wednesday radio program, right-wing commentator, conspiracy theorist and Donald Trump–obsessed sycophant Wayne Allyn Root gushed about President Trump’s rally in Arizona the night before, rejoicing that Trump is “a real man” to whom liberals just don’t know how to respond.

Root said that he, like Trump, is also “a real guy’s guy” and was treated the same way by all the “liberal, spoiled brat, lucky sperm club pussycat” wussies he encountered while attending Columbia University.

Mr. Root never stays quiet over just how much he’s a “real man”, a “real man’s man”, and a “real guy’s guy”. Honestly, if he got himself a neon suit advertising his base insecurity, it would be more subtle. He makes sure to tell people, frequently, how efficiently he can beat people up, because that’s one of those markers of a real man. He makes sure to mention, often, that “locker room talk and vulgarity towards women is real man stuff, too. Now, those one the liberal and humanitarian side of life are assigned to people who can’t cope with a “real man.” I’ve said before, and I’ll say again, most of us know exactly how to deal with such types. They are commonly known as assholes.

“Liberal, spoiled brat, lucky sperm club pussycat” wussies. :Laughs: Sometimes, I really do think it’s a pity such men can’t genuinely hear themselves. This is almost painfully pitiful, and an old, old song.

Root said that liberal men “don’t know how to fight and they don’t know how to argue” and only pretend to care about issues “because you’re a guy and there are women in the room and you want to have sex.”

Lots of people want to have sex, it’s fun. Now, I’m privileged to know a whole lot of liberal people, many men among them, and they are excellent at argument, but I expect that wouldn’t meet Root’s definition, whatever it might be. Arguing is not compulsory in a relationship, which does or does not include sex. Lots of people don’t argue much, others do. I rather suspect that “argue” in Root’s lexicon means ‘be an obstinate asshole’. As for caring about issues, I imagine that matters on the other side of the camp, too, does it not? Those things tend to matter in whether or not people get together.

“It’s all B.S, is what it is,” he said. “All these liberal guys, they just want to win over women and look like a proud peacock in front of women because they know that liberal women want to hear this nonsense; ‘Oh my God, all I care about is poor people, that’s all I care about is poor people.’ And then they know, tonight they’re going to have sex with some stupid liberal woman who is ugly in the first place, because all liberal women are.”

:Laughs: I have never once, in all my long Hippie days, known a man who has said ‘Oh my God, all I care about is poor people, that’s all I care about is poor people.’ I have known men who do care about poor people, and that’s shown in their work and their actions, but they don’t pace a room packed with women, wringing their hands in refrain about the poor. That sort of idiocy seems to be the reserve of conservative christians, who are looking to make themselves rich while their flock gets poorer.

As for looking the proud peacock, I’d think the constant claims of being a “real man’s man, lookit my fists” and all that might just qualify, Mr. Root.

Via RWW.

White Supremacy: Just Background Noise.

Tucker Viemeister.

It’s a forlorn hope, that republicans might stumble over a conscience, discover their humanity and embrace that of others. It really does not seem to matter what the Tiny Tyrant does, there are those who will squink all over, in an attempt to cover over the massive piles of shit left in the wake of the Tiny Tyrant. As we have all been witness to, Trump gets worse, week by week, day by day.

As CNN noted on Friday, in the last four weeks alone, President Trump has fired chief strategist Steve Bannon, fired Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, hired and fired communications director Anthony Scaramucci, publicly shamed his own attorney general and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, banned transgender troops via twitter, made up two phone calls, thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for expelling American diplomats from the country, threatened nuclear war with North Korea, and defended attendees of a white supremacy rally.

And that’s not even half of it.

But Steve Cortes, a member of Trump’s Hispanic Advisory Council, said on Fox News Sunday morning that if Republicans just cut taxes, all of that will be background noise.

“Clearly, he had a tough week. There’s no way around that,” Cortes said.

“All presidents have tough weeks,” Cortes said Sunday. “I believe that will become background noise once we get taxes done, and once this economy starts growing the way it’s capable of.”

Yes, a tough week, brought on by the defense of fucking nazis being “fine people”. You opened your mouth, and Trump obligingly shit in it, and you decided to swallow it. Nice.

[…]

“The economy’s already accelerating. There’s a lot of optimism out there in the country,” Cortes said. “If we can throw tax cuts into the mix, I think this economy can absolutely take off, and then I think we’d see those poll numbers rebound very, very quickly for the president.”

There’s a lot of optimism out and about? Where? Oh, yes, in the crowds of nazis, sure. Everywhere else, not so much. Perhaps you should get outside once in a while. People are not optimistic about an idiotic, ignorant, maniacal bigot being in control of things, for a given value of control. People are not optimistic about not being nuked. People are not optimistic about not getting into yet another fucking war. People are not optimistic about bigotry being elevated to “great america” status. People are not optimistic about the blatant slaughter of all things which could help us avoid the worst disasters of climate change. People are not optimistic about the economy. The list goes on and on.

Rep. Dennis Ross (R-FL) made similar comments last week, telling Bloomberg that Trump’s comments about white supremacists were “frustrating” because he wanted to start focusing on tax reform.

“[It’s] very frustrating for those of us who want to start focusing on the issues ahead—tax reform, infrastructure, the debt ceiling,” Ross said. “I wished we would start focusing on those issues, and we need to start healing and bringing people together—instead of peeling back the scabs.”

Right. Your idea of tax reform is handing tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires, and you’ve made sure there are zero safety nets for everyone else. That will cheer everyone up for sure. You don’t start healing and bringing people together by announcing that nazis are “fine people” and everything was really the fault of those filthy liberals. The reason those scabs peel back so easily is that there is a massive wound underneath, still oozing blood, covered over, but certainly not healed. Healing does not take place by ignoring a wound. Now the Tiny Tyrant and his henchidiots, like you, Rep. Ross, have dumped toxic wasted in the wound, and you want to talk healing. Isolation, genocide, and subjugation are not things which heal. They do not unite. And those things are what you stand for, handwaving reality, because those people, they don’t actually matter to you.

Think Progress has the full story.

The Tiny Tyrant: Sucking Marrow from Bones.

The Secret Service has a problem – they can’t pay their employees. The Tiny Tyrant’s profligate habits, and those of his family have sucked the bones dry. While there is an obligation on the part of the service to protect key people, the sheer amount of money wasted by the Tiny Tyrant is overwhelming. Three million dollars for every weekend jaunt. Millions more for every vacation the Kushners take, and they seem to take a lot of vacations every year. Millions more for overseas coverage. Millions more for Ms. Trump and the kid to stay in NYC for months on end. Then there are the little things, like $60,000 in golf cart rentals. This from the idiot who could not stop talking about President Obama golfing now and then. Sixty Fucking Thousand Dollars. And since the Chief Idiot won’t golf anywhere except his properties, guess where the money is going? Quite the fucking racket.

WASHINGTON — The Secret Service can no longer pay hundreds of agents it needs to carry out an expanded protective mission – in large part due to the sheer size of President Trump’s family and efforts necessary to secure their multiple residences up and down the East Coast.

Secret Service Director Randolph “Tex” Alles, in an interview with USA TODAY, said more than 1,000 agents have already hit the federally mandated caps for salary and overtime allowances that were meant to last the entire year.

The agency has faced a crushing workload since the height of the contentious election season, and it has not relented in the first seven months of the administration. Agents must protect Trump – who has traveled almost every weekend to his properties in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia – and his adult children whose business trips and vacations have taken them across the country and overseas.

“The president has a large family, and our responsibility is required in law,” Alles said. “I can’t change that. I have no flexibility.”

Alles said the service is grappling with an unprecedented number of White House protectees. Under Trump, 42 people have protection, a number that includes 18 members of his family. That’s up from 31 during the Obama administration.

Overwork and constant travel have also been driving a recent exodus from the Secret Service ranks, yet without congressional intervention to provide additional funding, Alles will not even be able to pay agents for the work they have already done.

The compensation crunch is so serious that the director has begun discussions with key lawmakers to raise the combined salary and overtime cap for agents, from $160,000 per year to $187,000 for at least the duration of Trump’s first term.

But even if such a proposal was approved, about 130 veteran agents would not be fully compensated for hundreds of hours already amassed, according to the agency.

“I don’t see this changing in the near term,” Alles said.

USA Today has the full story.

Oh, The Irony.

Ryan Roy, a former Pizzeria Uno cook who was fired for attending a white nationalist rally (Screen cap).

Ryan Roy, the charmin’ gent pictured above, was outed as a participant in the nazi mess in Charlottesville. He was identified by activists who don’t think nazis marching around is a great idea, and his employers (a South Burlington Pizzeria Uno), to their credit, promptly fired him. Naturally, Mr. Roy is being incredibly whiny about it all. Perhaps you shouldn’t choose asshole nazi as a lifestyle, given that it has consequences. Unfortunately, the massive overload of irony doesn’t seem to have impacted Mr. Roy at all. My head, on the other hand, feels right caved in.

In an interview with the Free Press, Roy decried the liberal activists who got him fired from his job and alleged they weren’t tolerant of his belief that white Americans should have their own country that is separate from all racial minorities.

Oh, well, open a beer, Mr. Roy, I’m a liberal who is happy to support you wanting your own country – get the fuck out of this one, and find one. I’ll drink to your good riddance. It’s my understanding that there are often islands for sale. Perhaps you could start there, and I’m sure in no time you could have Whitesylvania or whatever.

“I think it kind of just proves my point, proves a lot of what I think, not that I needed further proof,” Roy said. “I think it’s group think.”

Oh, rats below. You were the one in a large group, carrying torches, and chanting “blood and soil” and “Jews won’t replace us”, and you want to accuse others of group think.

Roy freely admitted to attending the rally, which he said was designed to advocate turning the United States back into a “white” country.

“Obviously I would advocate for racial separation and racial nationalism or repatriation or even a return to — our country was a white country up until the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Act,” he said.

“Our country”.  You can fuck right off, Mr. Roy. This isn’t your fucking country, and it most certainly was not white when you colonial thieves showed up and starting slaughtering everything in sight. You want white? Fine, march yourself off and find a place you can be deliriously white. It will not be this country, who has no use for fucking nazis.

Via Raw Story.

Oh, That Evil Science!

Members of the National Socialist Movement (Neo-Nazis) during a 2010 march to the Phoenix Federal building (John Kittelsrud/Flickr).

Do you remember when asshole extraordinaire, Craig Cobb got genetically tested? He’s the nazi who tried to set up NaziTown here in nDakota. Mr. Cobb wasn’t terribly pleased with his results, only 86% European. Ooops. He immediately dismissed the remaining 14% as “statistical noise”, and ran to Stormfront to dispute the results. Stormfront’s heyday was quite a number of years back, but it’s still populated with scads of delusional white people, many of whom have turned to genetic testing to affirm their whiteness. That evil science though, it just doesn’t care about a nazi’s sensibilities, and the results have had some interesting results.

With the rise of spit-in-a-cup genetic testing, there’s a trend of white nationalists using these services to prove their racial identity, and then using online forums to discuss the results.

But like Cobb, many are disappointed to find out that their ancestry is not as “white” as they’d hoped. In a new study, sociologists Aaron Panofsky and Joan Donovan examined years’ worth of posts on Stormfront to see how members dealt with the news.

It’s striking, they say, that white nationalists would post these results online at all. After all, as Panofsky put it, “they will basically say if you want to be a member of Stormfront you have to be 100 percent white European, not Jewish.”

But instead of rejecting members who get contrary results, Donovan said, the conversations are “overwhelmingly” focused on helping the person to rethink the validity of the genetic test. And some of those critiques – while emerging from deep-seated racism – are close to scientists’ own qualms about commercial genetic ancestry testing.

[…]

The team winnowed their results down to 70 discussion threads in which 153 users posted their genetic ancestry test results, with over 3,000 individual posts.

About a third of the people posting their results were pleased with what they found. “Pretty damn pure blood,” said a user with the username Sloth. But the majority didn’t find themselves in that situation. Instead, the community often helped them reject the test, or argue with its results.

Some rejected the tests entirely, saying that an individual’s knowledge about his or her own genealogy is better than whatever a genetic test can reveal. “They will talk about the mirror test,” said Panofsky, who is a sociologist of science at UCLA’s Institute for Society and Genetics. “They will say things like, ‘If you see a Jew in the mirror looking back at you, that’s a problem; if you don’t, you’re fine.'” Others, he said, responded to unwanted genetic results by saying that those kinds of tests don’t matter if you are truly committed to being a white nationalist. Yet others tried to discredit the genetic tests as a Jewish conspiracy “that is trying to confuse true white Americans about their ancestry,” Panofsky said.

[…]

For the study authors, what was most interesting was to watch this online community negotiating its own boundaries, rethinking who counts as “white.” That involved plenty of contradictions. They saw people excluded for their genetic test results, often in very nasty (and unquotable) ways, but that tended to happen for newer members of the anonymous online community, Panofsky said, and not so much for longtime, trusted members. Others were told that they could remain part of white nationalist groups, in spite of the ancestry they revealed, as long as they didn’t “mate,” or only had children with certain ethnic groups. Still others used these test results to put forth a twisted notion of diversity, one “that allows them to say, ‘No, we’re really diverse and we don’t need non-white people to have a diverse society,'” said Panofsky.

It really wouldn’t take much for the ranks of wannabe nazis to implode. The full story is here.