Facebook, Oh Facebook XVII.

Clay Higgins. © Facebook.

We open with republican congressman Clay Higgins, who seems to be a tad fuckin’ bloodlusty.

In a Facebook post, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), a viral YouTube star who was elected to Congress last November, argued that Christendom “is at war with Islamic horror.”

“Their intended entry to the American homeland should be summarily denied. Every conceivable measure should be engaged to hunt them down,” Higgins wrote. “Hunt them, identity them, and kill them. Kill them all. For the sake of all that is good and righteous. Kill them all.”

Oh, but it’s ever so bad that some of those people you so demonize feel exactly the same way, right? That makes them evil, but being an indiscriminate bloodthirsty killer is okey dokey if you’re white and at least nominally christian. Got it. Don’t go speaking like you represent America, either, because you sure as hell don’t represent me.

“Not one penny of American treasure should be granted to any nation who harbors these heathen animals. Not a single radicalized Islamic suspect should be granted any measure of quarter,” Higgins said in the post.

Oh stuff it, you obnoxious blowhard. This isn’t pirate land, and no one is after your “treasure”. What other nations do isn’t any of your business, Clay. Many of them are setting a fine example of how to be an excellent nation, and how to focus on integration, love, and empathy, rather than how to be a self righteous psychopath. Every single person who elected this fucking idiot? You should be godsdamned ashamed of yourselves.

Via The Hill.

Then there’s Harvard students…

Harvard College rescinded admissions offers to at least ten prospective members of the Class of 2021 after the students traded sexually explicit memes and messages that sometimes targeted minority groups in a private Facebook group chat.

A handful of admitted students formed the messaging group—titled, at one point, “Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens”—on Facebook in late December, according to two incoming freshmen.

In the group, students sent each other memes and other images mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust, and the deaths of children, according to screenshots of the chat obtained by The Crimson. Some of the messages joked that abusing children was sexually arousing, while others had punchlines directed at specific ethnic or racial groups. One called the hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child “piñata time.”

After discovering the existence and contents of the chat, Harvard administrators revoked admissions offers to at least ten participants in mid-April, according to several members of the group.

The Harvard Crimson has the full story.

Mr. Tweet’s Incoherent Ride.

Mr. Tweet has gone on yet another tweetstorm, this time, spilling the truth, which I’m sure was an accident. The Tiny Tyrant has become well unraveled after the terror attack in London, and the mass amounts of scathing scorn heaped on his head over his initial response. (That response was basically “guns! if you had guns…”).  Now he has unleashed a set of tweets which are garnering yet more scorn. I’m rather amazed his head isn’t burning at this point. This is the last tweet in a long line of them:

The Tiny Tyrant: “In any event we are EXTREME VETTING people coming into the U.S. in order to help keep our country safe. The courts are slow and political!”

You know what else is slow and political? You, dumbshit. So far, a near-fatal eyeroll hasn’t killed me, but if they keep happening at this pace…

President Donald Trump kicked off Monday morning with a tweetstorm calling for courts to allow a travel ban barring travelers from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S.

[…]

For months, the White House has argued that Trump’s ban on travelers was not a “Muslim ban,” even going so far as to delete a campaign statement on “preventing Muslim immigration.” In January, Trump claimed the media was “falsely reporting” that he had ordered a Muslim ban. That same month, Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Trump’s executive order “is not a travel ban.”

Yet at its core, Trump’s recent tweets speaks to the intent that he is indeed preventing Muslims from entering the United States. In hearings on whether to lift the injunction on Trump’s ban, judges cited the president’s previous comments about “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” as evidence that he’s specifically discriminating against Muslims.

Particularly with Trump’s “politically correct version” tweet, it would now likely be more difficult for his lawyers to continue to argue that he’s not intending to bar Muslims.

Think Progress has the full story on the import of these tweets, and Raw Story has a selection of choice responses to the Fucking Idiot.

The Tiny Tyrant, Disavowed.

Oh, poor li’l Donny, no church wants to own his decidedly not christian arse. The Tiny Tyrant has been disavowed.

A new CNN report on President Donald Trump’s fraught relationship to Christianity reveals that not only is the president unwelcome in his childhood church in Queens, but that the son of the last religious leader he was close to has publicly renounced him.

According to the report by journalist MJ Lee, the evolution of Trump’s quasi-Christianity took him from First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens, where he was raised and confirmed, to Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan.

Although Trump was close to Marble’s former reverend and author of the bestselling self-help book “Power of Positive Thinking” Norman Vincent Peale, the late pastor’s son has publicly rebuked the president. Prior to the election, Peale’s son John said he “cringes” when Trump invoked his father’s name on the campaign trail.

“I don’t respect Mr. Trump very much. I don’t take him very seriously. I regret the publicity of the connection,” Peale’s son wrote. “This is a problem for the Peale family.”

The Peale family weren’t the only ones to distance themselves from Trump — during the campaign, Marble Collegiate issued a statement rejecting Trump’s claims that he attends their church and stated he “is not an active member.”

Though the Trump family is reportedly church-less, the president enjoys touting the religiosity of his supporters.

Looks like the list of people who have no use at all for the Tiny Tyrant is growing by leaps and bounds. Full article at Raw Story.

Sunday Facepalm.

Okay, this is going to be something of a roundup, because there is a whole lot of facepalm to be had on this fine Sunday. We start with that Prince of Purple Prose, Lance Wallnau, who simply gets goofier and more absurd as he attempts to find good things about the Tiny Tyrant. His latest took place on a Christian Cruise of Nuttery.

“That same unpredictable, erratic Twitter twitch that he has is in the hand of the Lord,” Wallnau said, asserting that Trump’s tweets about China forced Chinese president Xi Jinping to come to America “to try to just get a handle on him because he’s tweeting these crazy tweets.”

That meeting was fortuitous, he explained, because it happened just as Trump ordered airstrikes on Syria for its use of chemical weapons against civilians.

Wallnau said that “it was the hand of the Lord” that Trump bombed Syria while President Xi was visiting because that move showed China that it must take steps to rein in North Korea.

On top of that, Wallnau celebrated Trump’s ignorance about world events, saying that he doesn’t have to understand these sorts of issues because “when you are anointed, you can get away with a lot of things.”

Where to start? I suppose ‘unpredictable, erratic Twitter twitch’ suits Jehovah well enough; it is a bundle of psychopathy, whims, and tantrums. I rather doubt the Tiny Tyrant’s Twitter Twitch has forced anyone to do anything. Meetings with global leaders is standard protocol anytime there’s a new president Fucking Idiot in the white house. The supposed reason for the Syria bombing was Ivana Jr’s upset over those poor babies. I expect it was more in the line of “I can use my toys! Look what I can do!”

I have described the current regime in terms of Nineteen Eighty-Four more times than I can count, and now I don’t think that’s quite enough. Yes, people can get away with a lot of shit here in Amerikkka if they have enough money, are white, and in particular, in politics. We have an outdated constitution, which is closer to dogma than policy, and a highly broken, fucked up political system. It’s not being anointed. Although, I wouldn’t be averse to oil being dropped all over Donny, followed by a ton of glitter. I’m evil like that.

Via RWW.

Yesterday, Religious Right pundit Michael Snyder unveiled “a list of 100 things liberals hate about America,” warning that if liberals get their way, “the country that you and I love so much today will be gone forever.”

The list of things liberals hate about America includes big trucks, big cheeseburgers, Jesus, Israel and Dolly Parton.

Oh, Sweet Zombie Jesus, this post would be a mile long if I tackled each item on the list. I will note that Jesus comes in at #29, well below both Trump and Pence. Pretty sure that qualifies as some kinda sin. If you’d prefer to stay away from Charisma News, and who could blame you, RWW has the full list. And for the record, I like Johnny Cash. Just sayin’.

And then there’s trumPence, trying to sound all veeply, opining over why climate change became an issue at all:

Pence hailed Trump for demonstrating “leadership” by pulling out of the international accords and standing “without apology for the American people.”

He added that he was perplexed as to why people, particularly liberals, even care about climate change: “For some reason or another, this issue of climate change has emerged as a paramount issue for the left in this country and around the world.”

I can answer your bafflement, sir – we don’t want to fucking die, and we don’t want to live in utter hellholes, tortured in every way, before we fucking die. Not so sure if I mind if you drop dead and spare us the oxygen.

Via RWW.

And last, we have that sterling moron, Wayne Allyn Root, who, after boasting about his abilities to beat the shit out of a liberal, went on to whine about how mean young people are, especially on Twitter. After that, he went on a rant about race. I’ll let you good folks click over and read that part, I haven’t had enough tea or functioning server for that one yet.

Despite his tough talk, Root spent a good portion of his radio program yesterday complaining that vulgar liberals were being mean to him on Twitter, at one point saying that calling him “old” is no different than calling a black person the N-word.

Root said that he has been the target of “the most disgusting, low down, revolting profanity-laced, filthy, wash your mouth out with soap gutter language you ever heard from liberals” on Twitter. He was particularly upset by the fact that “every single young liberal in the world, every single one of them [was] calling me ‘old man,’” despite the fact that he is only 55 years old.

“There’s no difference in when you call someone ‘old’ versus when you call someone the N-word,” Root said. “There’s no difference. It’s a lack of respect. It’s filthy. It’s disgusting.”

Root said he was shocked by the racism of the “millions and millions of Hillary voters, Bernie voters, Obama voters, liberals in general, young liberals who think anyone over the age of 30 should be called an old effin’ white man.”

“Every young liberal in this country, from what I’ve seen answering me, needs a bar of soap to wash their filthy little mouths out and maybe a mother with some class who would have taught them something about how you speak to somebody,” he stated.

I’m 59 years old, looking at 60 in November. Yeah, I’m old. So what? I know when I moan about old people, in particular, old white men, it’s not their age as much as that their brains atrophied about 50 years previously. As an old hippie, I well remember don’t trust anyone over 30. We had that on stickers, man. Nothing new under the sun, and at 55 years old, Root should at least be aware of hippies and the counterculture. It’s not an insult to be called old. Lots of places, societies have a great deal of respect for their elders. I suggest if you’re getting such flak, it’s because your tiny pea brain is indeed atrophied, and there’s that whole fucking idiot business. You really need to climb down off that cross, Mr. Root, it’s very flimsy and about to collapse.

RWW has the full story.

The War On Autonomy.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Mary Altaffer.

It seems I never come to the end of people who weakly defend the Tiny Tyrant because Pence. “He would be worse!” I am very tired of hearing that. No, he would not be worse. We’ve had theocrats in office before, remember George faith-based initiatives and abstinence only Bush Jr.? He was a born-again christian theocrat. So yes, Pence would be a theocrat, and while Trump cannot be accurately described as such, he’s acting as  theocrat, so what fucking difference does that make? None. At least Pence would be less likely to let the nukes fly. Although, that said, Pence is up to his pasty neck in the Russia business, too.

Women have been repeatedly targeted in the Fuck You Care Plan, and Trump is happily enabling the ‘moral objection’ shit, along with making some very dangerous moves in regard to abortion. Trump also didn’t waste anytime in removing guidelines and protection for transgender people, including children, and wiped out many protections in place for all LGBT peoples. Trump is more than happy to give the Religious Reich whatever they want, and in return, they will do whatever they think is necessary to keep his abundant arse in power.

The Trump administration is poised to roll back access to birth control by severely weakening Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate —  and, at the same time, dangerously weakening the distinction between “religious” objections and “moral” objections to reproductive health care.

During the Obama years, the birth control wars largely focused on the tension between people seeking contraceptive coverage and religious employers who object to birth control in some form or another. Both Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and Zubik v. Burwell, the two contraception cases heard by the Supreme Court in the last several years, involved employers who objected to providing birth control coverage on religious grounds.

Yet a handful of hardliners — the March for Life, the Alliance Defending Freedom, Justice Samuel Alito — have tried to blur the line between religious objectors and moral objectors. While cases like Hobby Lobby and Zubik involved claims that people with religious objections to the law often have the right not to follow it, the hardliners would extend this right of defiance to people who raise moral objections not rooted in religious belief.

That’s a major shift that would seriously undermine the efficacy of the law as a whole. And, in a document leaked to Vox’s Dylan Scott and Sarah Kliff, the Trump administration appears to embrace this shift. Under the rule described in this document, employers who do not want to provide birth control coverage to their employees will be permitted to do so so long as they claim that doing so would violate their “moral convictions.”

Think Progress has the full, in-depth story.

On May 31, 2009, Scott Roeder killed Dr. George Tiller, a late-term abortion provider, in Wichita, Kansas. By all accounts, Roeder waited in the pews of Tiller’s church, and then following service, he walked into the church foyer and shot him directly in the forehead. Roeder, who was staunchly anti-abortion, committed murder because of Tiller’s national prominence as an abortion provider. Now, eight years later, the country is recreating and expanding the same environment of extremist views that allowed for Tiller’s murder.

Since Trump came into office, his administration and the Republican-majority Congress have been on a mission to impede the rights of people — especially women, girls, and their providers — from accessing constitutionally protected health care services. Earlier this month, the House passed the American Health Care Act (AHCA) of 2017 which Trump vehemently supported. The AHCA disproportionately targets women: domestic abuse, rape, pregnancy, C-section, and maternity care can all be considered preexisting conditions. Less than two weeks later, Trump expanded the Mexico City Policy, also known as the Global Gag Rule (GGR), a death wish for women around the world seeking abortion services. The GGR, newly named “Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance,” says that foreign aid can go only to organizations abroad that “neither perform nor actively promote abortion as a method of family planning.” The rule could affect up to $9 billion in funding that is also used to combat health concerns like HIV/AIDS, Zika, and more.

Trump, an accused sexual assault perpetrator, has always promoted violence and hatred against women, including being able to access safe and legal abortions without criminal prosecution. During his candidacy, Trump said that women who seek abortions should be subject to “some form of punishment” if the procedure was banned in the United States. Trump eventually changed his mind (his fourth position on abortion in just three days) and claimed that only “the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman.” Nonetheless, this position still leaves abortion providers on the hook for performing a medical procedure that should be decided on by only a doctor and their patient. This kind of rhetoric would only embolden people like Roeder.

Allowing extreme policies against reproductive rights will increase the numbers of unintended pregnancies, which will increase the number of unsafe abortions. If pregnant peoples’ rights to immediate services are curtailed, this will undoubtedly cause a delay in options. As a delay continues, so does the potential for an unwanted pregnancy which could cause seeking a late-term abortion — the same abortions performed by the late Tiller. That, in turn, allows people — who are like Roeder — to effectuate their extremist views on those seeking healthcare services, including but not limited to abortion and family planning options.

Think Progress has the full, in-depth story.

Today marks the beginning of Pride Month. The Regime, however, is not celebrating. They aren’t even mentioning it, no. Instead, it’s all about:

Yep. You can read all about it here.

A Smithsonian Noose and Lynching Threats.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Facebook).

Yet another noose has been found at The Smithsonian, this time on the floor of an exhibition about segregation.

A noose, a symbol of racial lynching, was found on Wednesday on the floor of an exhibit about segregation at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution officials said.

[…]

“The Smithsonian family stands together in condemning this act of hatred and intolerance, especially repugnant in a museum that affirms and celebrates the American values of inclusion and diversity,” the institution’s secretary, David Skorton, told the staff in an internal email. “We will not be intimidated.”

Full story here.

Professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor has been forced to cancel portions of her book tour, thanks to coverage from Fox News, who painted her as an evil anti-Trump person.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor delivered the commencement address last month at Hampshire College, and Fox News aired a portion of the 20-minute speech Sunday that called attention to her criticism of President Donald Trump, reported The Stranger.

Taylor, a Princeton University professor of African-American studies, described the president as a “racist, sexist, megalomaniac,” and the Fox News report suggested that she was encouraging activists to lawlessly thwart the Trump agenda.

After the report on her “Anti-POTUS tirade” aired, Taylor said she has received more than 50 hateful and threatening emails — some of which were issued with such specificity that she canceled portions of a tour to promote her new book, “From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation.”

“Shortly after the Fox story and video were published, my work email was inundated with vile and violent statements. I have been repeatedly called ‘n****r,’ ‘b*tch,’ ‘c*nt,’ ‘dyke,’ ‘she-male,’ and ‘coon’ — a clear reminder that racial violence is closely aligned with gender and sexual violence,” Taylor said. “I have been threatened with lynching and having the bullet from a .44 Magnum put in my head.”

She accused the conservative network of airing the report in an attempt to silence her and other Trump critics.

“I am not a newsworthy person,” Taylor said. “Fox did not run this story because it was ‘news,’ but to incite and unleash the mob-like mentality of its fringe audience, anticipating that they would respond with a deluge of hate-filled emails — or worse. The threat of violence, whether it is implied or acted on, is intended to intimidate and to silence.”

This awful reactionary shite on the part of conservatives everywhere is seriously out of hand. Not long ago, PZ had a post up which included a terrifying view of how the GOP thinks, and they think that liberal people are so darn scary, it justifies hiring Three Percenters and Oath Keepers and the like to protect them, because us evil liberals think they are Nazis. Yes, well…if you’re willing to embrace white supremacist ideology and hire Nazis, you should probably expect that sort of thing. People are being murdered; threats are amping up; hate crimes are again spiking. We must carry on fighting, more than ever before.

“Their side uses the threat of violence and intimidation because they cannot compete in the field of politics, ideas, and organizing,” she said. “The true strength of our side has not yet been expressed in its size and breadth, and so they believe they are winning. We have to change this dynamic and begin to build a massive movement against racism, sexism, and bigotry in this country. I remain undaunted in my commitment to that project.”

I stand with Professor Taylor. The right insists that liberals are horrible, violent people, because we do things like criticise, and protest. Oh yes, there are those vicious letter writing campaigns, too. There’s a hell of a lot of projection on the Right Reich’s side, and they are willing to embrace actual violence along with Nazism.

Full story here.

Oh lord, that face.

U.S. President Donald Trump, right, speaks to British Prime Minister Theresa May during in a working dinner meeting at the NATO headquarters during a NATO summit of heads of state and government in Brussels on Thursday, May 25, 2017. CREDIT: AP Photo/Matt Dunham, Pool.

Oh, PM May’s face. Definitely in the a picture is worth a thousand words camp. Meanwhile, the Tiny Tyrant looks blissfully oblivious, he must be talking about himself. He certainly seems to be unable to process other people’s expressions, or he simply may not register them because they are, to him, unimportant. According to a report in the Belgian daily Le Soir, what the Tiny Tyrant discussed was … golf courses. Yep. His golf courses, natch, and how awful Ireland and Scotland were, not letting him do whatever the fuck he wanted. Quelle horreur!

Donald Trump is, above all, a businessman, Belgian daily Le Soir concluded after his visit to Brussels, a city Trump derided during the campaign as a “hellhole.”

He talked about governing with the language of business and was receptive only to concrete talking points, getting lost in theoretical discussions, the paper reported based on interviews with Belgian officials and sources involved in the meeting. He seemed to have “no idea” about economic issues facing Belgium and knew “even less” about the importance of Belgian trade to the United States.

And, when he did have an idea about issues facing the European Union — of which Brussels is the de facto capital — those ideas seemed formed entirely on his experience building golf courses, the paper said.

“He made many references to his personal business. He explained, for example, the function of Europe based on his difficulties doing business in Ireland,” the paper reported.

“Every time we talk about a country, he remembered the things he had done. Scotland? He said he had opened a club. Ireland? He said it took him two and a half years to get a license and that did not give him a very good image of the European Union.,” another source added. “One feels that he wants a system where everything can be realized very quickly and without formalities.”

Think Progress has the full story of yet more reports of just how unimpressive and disastrous the Tour of Trump™ happened to be, leaving many a priceless photo in its wake.

Oh Good, A War Room. That’s Sure To Help.

Trump speaks to U.S. troops at Naval Air Station Sigonella in Sicily, Italy, on May 27. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters).

A war room. Why? All the scandals engulfing the Tiny Tyrant, of course. The mere fact that the Tiny Tyrant feels this is a situation of war lends credence to the malignant reality reaching out with a stranglehold on us all. This is a siege mentality overlaid on an already highly unstable and paranoid mindset.

President Trump and his advisers, seeking to contain the escalating Russia crisis that threatens to consume his presidency, are considering a retooling of his senior staff and the creation of a “war room” within the White House, according to several aides and outside Trump allies.

Following Trump’s return to Washington on Saturday night from a nine-day foreign trip that provided a bit of a respite from the controversy back home, the White House plans to far more aggressively combat the cascading revelations about contacts between Trump associates, including Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and Russia.

White House officials are also trying to find ways to revive Trump’s stalled policy agenda in Congress and to more broadly overhaul the way the White House communicates with the public.

That includes proposals for more travel and campaign-style rallies throughout the country so that Trump can speak directly to his supporters, as well as changes in the pace and nature of press briefings, likely including a diminished role for embattled White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

Oh right, a “return” to campaigning. A good portion of Trumpholes have now figured out that supporting him is akin to having your hands filled with a steaming pile of shit, so I don’t imagine the campaign rally trail will be quite so happy this time around. This also means that Trump will once again be preaching and hollering hate everywhere, in an attempt to provide a salve for bruised egos everywhere, a place for people to lay blame. Like last time, I also expect there will be another spike in hate fueled violence, on top of the one which is still ongoing.

It would be truly great if every person in uStates could figure out that campaigning is not the same as presidenting, and it has been made more than obvious which one Trump can manage, and which one he clearly cannot manage.

While much remained fluid Saturday, the beefed-up operation could include the return of some of Trump’s more combative campaign aides, including former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who was fired nearly a year ago, and former deputy campaign manager David N. Bossie, who made his name in politics by investigating Bill and Hillary Clinton for two decades. Both of them have already been part of ongoing discussions about how to build a “war room,” which have been led in part by chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon.

[…]

“Go to the mattresses,” a line from “The Godfather” film about turning to tough mercenaries during troubled times, has circulated among Trump’s friends, according to two people close to the “war room” discussions.

Well, how … apt.

Meanwhile, White House counsel Donald McGahn is mulling expanding his office, and an outside legal team led by Marc E. Kasowitz is readying to meet with Trump and guide him, including on whether he should continue to comment on the Russia probes on Twitter.

Kushner has played an active role in the effort to rethink and rearrange the communications team, improve the White House’s surrogate operation, and develop an internal group to combat the influx of negative stories and revelations over the FBI’s Russia probe, said someone with knowledge of the coming changes.

“The bottom line is they need fresh legs; they need more legs,” said Barry Bennett, who served as a political adviser to Trump during the general election. “They’re in full-scale war, and they’re thinly staffed.”

[…]

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy White House press secretary, is being considered as a replacement behind the lectern and is likely to appear on camera more often in coming weeks. White House aides have also talked about having a rotating cast of staff brief the media, a group that could include officials such as national security adviser H.R. McMaster. Having several aides share the briefing responsibilities could help prevent Trump — who has a notoriously short attention span — from growing bored or angry with any one staffer.

Shuffle, move, scoot, change, whatever the fuck. The key words in the above would be: 1) Trump 2) short attention span 3) bored 4) angry. The problem? Trump. The solution? Get rid of Trump.

Aides and allies of Trump say they have come to the realization that unflattering stories about Russia will be part of the daily conversation for the foreseeable future and acknowledge that the White House has been ill-equipped to handle them.

Christopher Ruddy, a longtime Trump friend, said the White House has been caught flat-footed on many of the Russia stories.

“Because they did not believe there’s anything to it, they’re playing catch-up to get their side of the story out,” Ruddy said.

Oh, fucking bullshit! Bullshit. This didn’t take anyone by surprise, they just assumed he’d get away with it, like he has before.

Being outside of Washington among his supporters, particularly in a state he won last year, energizes Trump and provides a way for him to communicate without the filter of the media, his advisers say.

“The conventional ways of communicating are not working for them,” one adviser said, adding that Trump should consider Facebook Live sessions and get out on the road “as frequently as possible.”

“They have to get the campaign brand back,” the adviser said.

Oh yes, the brand. All you need is hate and the brand. Intelligence, compassion, competency? Nah, who the hell needs those things?

“I hope he’ll travel more and do these rallies once a week,” Bennett said. “You get to say whatever you want to say, and you don’t have to take questions.”

You know what would be great? If lots and lots and lots of people showed up at said rallies, and refused to stay quiet and listen, and yelled out all their questions about just how he’s fucking everyone and everything over, and why does he hate America so damn much.

There’s much, much more at The Washington Post.

Breitbart: 281st Place.

The substantive impact of Steve Bannon’s exit from the NSC on foreign policy remains to be seen. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters.

Seems that Breitbart has lost its way, no longer able to whip hateful, conservative bigots into a convenient froth anymore. They now find themselves playing defense, and it is not working out for them. I, I … just can’t seem to conjure up a tear.

This year was supposed to be a time of triumph for the “alt-right” website Breitbart.com and its readers. The website’s CEO Steve Bannon became one of the most powerful men in the country, a senior White House adviser with a reputation for ruthlessness in the name of forwarding his white nationalist ideology.

However, according to Vanity Fair‘s Tina Nguyen, Breitbart.com has been racked by internal struggles in recent months and is seeing its once-plentiful traffic numbers take a steep dive.

[…]

“Just a few months later, the numbers have a different story to tell,” said Nguyen. “As of May 26, 2017, according to Alexa.com—the same web-ranking analytics company that Breitbart drew its numbers from in January—Fox News is the 64th most-trafficked site in the country. Huffington Post is at 60. Buzzfeed is at 50. The Washington Post, on the strength of a series of eye-popping scoops, is at 41.”

“Breitbart,” she said, “is in 281st place.”

Web analytics can be a woolly discipline, Nguyen noted, but across the board, Breitbart’s numbers are suffering. “ComScore estimated that Breitbart had nearly 23 million unique visitors during the month of November 2016, but only drew 10.7 million in April 2017, a 53 percent drop. Last month, the site had fewer visitors than it did in April 2016, when 12.3 million people visited the site.”

[…]

Breitbart.com has walked the line of the acceptable, spewing out thinly-veiled hate pieces about feminists, people of color and anyone deemed to be “politically correct.” But now, with its enemies purportedly routed and their nominee in power, Breitbart doesn’t know what to do with the inchoate rage that it has inculcated among its users.

Full story here.

None So Blind As The Faithful.

Screen Grab. Playable video at link.

The willful blindness of some people never ceases to baffle me. I’m not much a one for taking things on faith, and I never take any politician on faith of any kind. Politics being what they are, an arena for game playing, with rewards for lying and other duplicitous behaviour, it strikes me as pure folly to rely on faith in the words of any politician, and in particular when it comes to someone like Trump. I’m not overly inclined to being sympathetic to Trumpholes, but it’s difficult to not have compassion for those who feel betrayed as result of their blind faith in a person who did not deserve it in any way. The best they can do now is to get damn active in The Resistance, and try to atone for boosting the Tiny Tyrant into place.

An upstate New York man who sold many of his possessions last year to fund a months-long tour playing music at Trump rallies now regrets his vote for the Republican candidate.

“I had everything riding on the fact that he was going to make things better,” Kraig Moss told the Associated Press. “He lied to me.”

Then-candidate Donald Trump looked Moss in the eye at one rally in Iowa and told the grieving father he would help end the drug epidemic that had claimed his 24-year-old son, whose ashes accompanied the truck driver to 45 rallies.

“He promised me, in honor of my son, that he was going to combat the ongoing heroin epidemic,” Moss said. “He got me hook, line and sinker.”

Post-election analyses found that Trump over-performed in Rust Belt counties ravaged by public health crises — such as drug and alcohol addiction and suicide — but the president’s budget released this week slashes funding for addiction treatment, research and prevention.

Medicaid funding would shrivel under Trump’s 10-year plan, which could devastate coverage to an estimated three in 10 adults addicted to opioids.

[…]

Trump promised during the campaign and after his election to help families suffering from the opioid epidemic — but his voters feel betrayed by the president’s focus on tax cuts, military spending and border security.

“I didn’t see this coming,” said Paul Kusiak, of Massachusetts, who told Trump the candidate about his sons’ successful battles with addiction. “I’m trying desperately to have hope and take the president at his word.”

[…]

“Inside I’m screaming,” said Sandra Chavez, of Sacramento, whose son died from an infection related to drug use. “We’re going backward with Donald Trump’s plan.”

Trump has proposed cutting funds for addiction research, prevention programs, drug courts and prescription drug monitoring, as well as eliminating support for training of addiction professional.

Justin Butler, a 36-year-old Trump voter from Cleveland, fears he will be back on the streets, using drugs and selling them, if Medicaid stops paying for addiction treatment.

“He’s turning his back on people,” Butler said. “He’s a liar.”

It’s one hell of a harsh lesson, and none of these people, in spite of voting for Trump, deserves to be tossed aside like so much trash. None of us deserve that. That said, as noted earlier, being sorry isn’t enough. Regretful Trump voters need to channel that disappointment and betrayal into working for The Resistance, and to now work to get the Tiny Tyrant unseated.

Via Raw Story. There’s a similar story, about a Trump voter who is completely dependent on SSI, finding out she most likely will not have that anymore under the Tiny Tyrant.

Speaking of the Trudget: Poverty Is A State of Mind.

Ben Carson. Getty Images.

I just got a post up about The Trudget and Rethuglican “compassion”, and then I see this little gem from Ben Carson, who seems to think that poverty is a state of mind, rather than a very concrete situation of having no money and no resources. When it comes to Carson, Fucking Idiot is not enough of a descriptor.

During an interview with Sirius XM radio on Tuesday, Mr Carson suggested people are poor because they learned the “wrong mindset” from their parents.

The retired neurosurgeon oversees a department that manages housing for the country’s low-income population.

His comments quickly drew sharp criticism on social media.

“I think poverty to a large extent is also a state of mind,” he said in an interview that aired on Wednesday.

“You take somebody that has the right mindset, you can take everything from them and put them on the street, and I guarantee in a little while they’ll be right back up there.

“And you take somebody with the wrong mindset, you can give them everything in the world, they’ll work their way right back down to the bottom.”

Has someone been giving poverty-ridden peoples ‘everything in the world’? I haven’t heard anything to that effect. Most people who find themselves in poverty simply want the basics, along with opportunities to get out of perpetual poverty. Unfortunately, Amerikkka is set up to keep poor people poor, and keep the filthy rich sucking the marrow out of everyone else’s bones.

Ben Carson, there simply is not enough Fuck in the universe for you.

BBC News has the full story, along with some choice responses which were tweeted.

The Fiscal Interests of the Unborn.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Mick Mulvaney (R) listens as U.S. President Donald Trump meets with members of the Republican Study Committee at the White House in Washington, U.S. March 17, 2017.

In a stunning display of republican “compassion”, Mick Mulvaney defended the $3.6 trillion cuts to domestic programs in the tragic Trudget. Rather than address all those who desperately need assistance to simply put food on their table; people who already face a tangle of red tape to get the slimmest of benefits, Mulvaney waxed dispassionate about the fiscal rights of the non-existent. It’s great, just fabulous, to take food away from living children, because of Mulvaney’s grandchildren, who are at this point, non-existent. But hey, the potentiality of grandchildren, well, that’s important! Much more important than poor children, who barely have enough food to keep them alive.

It should not need to be pointed out that food which allows for subsistence is a terrible thing when it comes to children. Children who are not eating enough have an awful time trying to concentrate, they do poorly in school, and aren’t very active physically, because that takes energy, and when you don’t have enough fuel, well, you get the picture. The domestic programs in place can barely manage to get enough food to families, it’s not as if it’s a massive bounty. There is a massive, horrible problem in America when it comes to hungry children. That problem keeps getting buried, stuffed in the back of closet, and given the Trudget, it seems as though republicans think it’s okay if they just get on with starving, as those hungry children are not important at all when weighed against the non-existent.

During a hearing about the $3.6 trillion in cuts to domestic programs included in President Trump’s proposed budget, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney made a case that the fiscal interests of the unborn should take precedence over the lives of present-day Americans — or at least those who rely on food stamps to eat or public schools to educate their children.

During a hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) grilled Mulvaney about the budget’s 25 percent cut to food assistance for the poorest Americans.

“Mr. Mulvaney, at least 20 percent of people eligible for SNAP don’t even receive SNAP because of stigma and other reasons,” she said. “So there are more people who need SNAP benefits… And you have a 13 percent cut in the Department of Education. The most vulnerable kids who need — ”

Mulvaney cut her off and made an impassioned case that people like Lee aren’t sufficiently concerned about his “unborn grandchildren.” He said:

What about the standard of living for my grandchildren who aren’t here yet? Who will end up inheriting $30 trillion in debt? Fifty trillion dollars in debt? A hundred trillion dollars? What about their standard — who’s going to pay the bill, Congressman? That’s what this is all about. That’s what this new perspective is. Who is going to pay for all the stuff you just mentioned? Us? Or somebody else? And I suggest to you if it’s important enough to pay, to have, then we need to be paying for it. Because right now, my unborn grandchildren are paying for it, and I think that is morally bankrupt.

And there you have it, the rethuglican rationale in all its ugliness – the non-existent are paying, and that’s bad, really super-evil! I had no idea the non-existent had pockets to pick.

Think Progress has the full story.

White Genocide In Space!

Oh, the moans! The whines! The cries of the incredibly privileged white dudes! Will no one think of the bros? I can answer that one: No. You’re free to fuck off and not watch the new Trek, which, horror of horrors, is not stuffed to the starship ceiling with white men.

The new series Star Trek Discovery stars Asian actress Michelle Yeoh as the ship’s captain and black actress Sonequa Martin-Green as her first officer — and this has caused some Trekkies to fret about the lack of white men in charge.

While the overall reaction to the new Star Trek trailer has been positive — although there are the usual complaints from Star Trek fans about continuity errors — one group of fans is particularly upset about the show’s diverse cast of characters.

As both Heat Street and Daily Kos point out, the series’ YouTube page has been bombarded by comments labeling the show a “SJW” plot aimed at shoving “political correctness,” “forced diversity,” and even “cultural Marxism” down viewers’ throats.

Additionally, some angry Twitter users have even proclaimed that the show’s diverse cast is evidence of a “white genocide” conspiracy aimed at eliminating the white race from the face of the Earth.

Trailer from here.

Hee. Oh my, it’s a day to get drunk on tears. Via Raw Story.