Oh, that fucking wall.

An agent of the border patrol, observes near the Mexico-US border fence, on the Mexican side, separating the towns of Anapra, Mexico and Sunland Park, New Mexico, on January 25. CREDIT: AP Photo/Christian Torres.

An agent of the border patrol, observes near the Mexico-US border fence, on the Mexican side, separating the towns of Anapra, Mexico and Sunland Park, New Mexico, on January 25. CREDIT: AP Photo/Christian Torres.

The projected cost for President Donald Trump’s border wall continues to rise, and Trump has no good plan to contain it.

On Thursday, Reuters reported that the border wall will be much more expensive than the $10 billion figure Trump repeatedly cited during his campaign or the $12–$15 billion cited by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) last month.

“Trump’s ‘wall’ along the U.S.-Mexico border would be a series of fences and walls that would cost as much as $21.6 billion, and take more than three years to construct,” Reuters reported, citing a U.S. Department of Homeland Security document the outlet obtained.

And it could end up costing even more than that.

“Bernstein Research, an investment research group that tracks material costs, has said that uncertainties around the project could drive its cost up to as much as $25 billion,” Reuters reports.

On Saturday morning, Trump responded to that news by assuring Americans that costs of constructing the wall will come “WAY DOWN” as soon as he gets involved in the negotiations.

<Tweets snipped.>

But Trump’s citation of the reduced cost of F-35s should give no one confidence he’ll be able to bring down the exorbitant cost of his border wall.

That’s because on January 30, Trump took credit for cost cuts to the fighter jets that were already put in place before he got involved. A Washington Post fact-check gave Trump’s claim that he was responsible for cutting $600 million from the F-35 program “Four Pinocchios.”

[…]

Trump has repeatedly taken credit for deals that were in the works long before he won the election or became president. For instance, he’s overstated his role in deals with Intel, General Motors, Fiat Chrysler, Ford, and Sprint to take credit for saving American jobs.

[…]

Last year, Reuters reported that U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents don’t think the type of border wall Trump has long supported is necessary for national security. Instead, they seek better equipment and technology.

Not only is this wall idea the epitome of idiocy, people tend to forget a different cost of such idiocy – the high cost imposed on animals, the environment, and various ecologies. This sort of arrogant assholery is little more than a chest-pounding display of cruelty, a game for bully boys. Unfortunately, such people don’t much give a shit about the planet which gives them life, or the diversity of life on our earth, which has no use for the concrete idiocy of naked apes intent on warring with their neighbours. You can read a bit about this high cost here.

Full story at Think Progress.

Jesus Wept.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

Oh, we are so very fucked. People in Iran are extremely upset with the Tiny Dictator, and there’s excellent reason for them to be. If Donny really wanted to do something about potential terrorists, he’d shut up, resign, and go back to watching teevee in Florida, at Mar a whatever it is. Unfortunately, he’s super busy, watching teevee in the white house. Seems to be where he gets all his information from, seeing as he doesn’t read, and his supposed intelligence briefings last around 20 minutes, while he’s preoccupied with super important shit, like how to be rude to a department store on twitter. Then there’s more teevee watching, and tweeting. Tweeting on his personal account, because apparently the POTUS account is beneath him. Or maybe it just reminds him of how fucking incompetent he is, and that he has no business in government of any kind.

On Friday morning, President Trump cited a Lawfare article in an attempt to build a case that the three judges U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit made a bad decision Thursday evening when they declined to reinstate his Muslim ban.

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump

LAWFARE: “Remarkably, in the entire opinion, the panel did not bother even to cite this (the) statute.” A disgraceful decision!

Indeed, the Lawfare article in question — entitled “How to Read (and How Not to Read) Today’s 9th Circuit Opinion” — does mention that the Ninth Circuit’s opinion didn’t cite a statute pertaining to “Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President,” a statute that “forms the principal statutory basis for the executive order.”

But had Trump read the article, he would’ve seen that the author — Benjamin Wittes, editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution — concluded that the court actually made the right decision.

[…]

Wittes concludes his piece by blasting the Trump administration’s “incompetent malevolence.”

“Eventually, the court has to confront the clash between a broad delegation of power to the President — a delegation which gives him a lot of authority to do a lot of not-nice stuff to refugees and visa holders — in a context in which judges normally defer to the president, and the incompetent malevolence with which this order was promulgated.”

Instead of coming across the passage he tweeted out from reading the article, it appears Trump was alerted to the Lawfare piece by watching Morning Joe.

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“For a sense of what is happening outside, he watches cable, both at night and during the day — too much in the eyes of some aides — often offering a bitter play-by-play of critics like CNN’s Don Lemon,” the Times reported.

Lifting material from TV news for a tweet is far from unprecedented for Trump. As Fortune reported on February 2, “At least five times since he took office… Trump has tweeted about policy ideas and thoughts that seem directly related to news that was being shown on channels such as Fox News.”

Among the instances are a tweet Trump posted threatening to pull federal funding from public colleges that came minutes after a discussion of the same topic on Fox & Friends, another where the president threatened to send “the Feds!” into Chicago that came on the heels of a discussion of violence in Chicago on The O’Reilly Factor, and a tweet blasting Chelsea Manning as “ungrateful traitor” that came just minutes after she was called the same thing on Fox News.

Really, it’s bad enough he is such an ignorant idiot, he could at least try to pretend he’s somewhat informed. The full story is at Think Progress. As if all this wasn’t quite bad enough, “contempt of cop” is going to get a whole lot worse. Trump wants stormtrooper protections, bigly yuuuge ones.

In a vague executive order signed at the official swearing-in ceremony for new Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Trump instructed Sessions to work with Congress to establish “new Federal crimes, and increase penalties for existing Federal crimes” to protect law enforcement officers.

More signalling than substance, the order gives executive agencies a broad directive for change without naming specific policy preferences. But you don’t need a divining rod to see where Trump is pointing his team.

Republicans have already embraced the idea of extending hate crimes protections to police officers. Trump’s rhetoric both before and after his election win made clear he will default to the side of police in any dispute with the public they serve. And three recent high-profile, ambush-style killings of police officers — one committed by a Trump fan and Confederate flag enthusiast in Iowa — have generated a sense of political urgency around officer safety.

Yet rather than deterring such rare and devastating assassinations, Thursday’s order lays down fertilizer for a frightfully dank new crop of routine police abuses.

Oh yes. Anyone who has ever had experience with cops knows how much they love tacking on any fucking charge they can think of, even given no reason whatsoever. This is not going to go well, and of course, it’s going to impact people of colour the most. Full story at Think Progress.

Let the War Crimes Begin…

President Donald Trump looks at a figurine given to him by a group of county sheriffs, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2017, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

President Donald Trump looks at a figurine given to him by a group of county sheriffs, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2017, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

The Tiny Dictator, who must apparently be appeased with toys and baubles, spent some time talking with airline people, and mouthing off about how great war crimes are. Whether or not he actually understands that what he was spewing does indeed constitute war crimes, anyone’s guess. It’s getting fucking darker by the day, and I’m afraid people are just going to start letting go and slipping under. I’m seriously trying not to, but it’s getting difficult holding your head above the never ending, rising tide of shit.

After talking about the condition of American airports, Trump said, “We spent 6 trillion dollars in the Middle East. We’ve got nothing. We never even kept even a little tiny oil well. I said, ‘Keep the oil.’”

Trump suggested that the oil proceeds could fund a major government infrastructure project. “We’ve spent 6 trillion dollars in the Middle East. We have nothing, and we have an obsolete plane system, obsolete airports, obsolete trains, we have bad roads. We’re going to change all of that folks. You’re going to be so happy with Trump. I think you already are.”

Plundering a country’s natural resources is a war crime according to the Hague Conventions, which prohibits destroying or seizing an enemy’s property, and according the Geneva Conventions, which simply states, “pillage is prohibited.” The U.S. is a signatory to both.

Trump claims to have been against the Iraq War from the beginning — he wasn’t — but argues that once the U.S. went in, the military should’ve pillaged Iraq’s oil.

During Trump’s first speech to CIA agents last month, he said, “We should’ve kept the oil… maybe you’ll have another chance.”

Think Progress has the full story.

Nazis, Nothing but Nazis.

Facebook.

Facebook.

Traditionalist Worker Party. In a shorter word, Nazis.

A white nationalist group plans to instruct participants on proper marching, how to create propaganda and on being “a voice for our people” at a conference in April at Jenny Wiley State Park in Floyd County.

The Traditionalist Worker Party, which claims to “take a stand for white working families,” will gather in the “98.35 percent European” community on April 28 and 29, according to its Facebook post, which has been shared more than 500 times. The post said the event would be held in Pike County but announced that the seminars, speeches and a dinner will be at nearby Jenny Wiley State Resort Park, which is in Floyd County.

Floyd County Judge-Executive Ben Hale said the group has a Constitutional right to meet, but the vast majority of county residents would not condone its views.

[Read more…]

No One Expects the Inquisition…

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It seems it’s not enough for Bannon to be busy Nazifying everything, he’s a Catholic Nazi, and he’s not a happy camper about the almighty church’s descent in ugly, ruthless power, having been at least somewhat defanged in recent centuries. Not enough, to be sure, as the church is constantly seeking ways to impose its particular brand of brutality, such as now buying hospitals everywhere, in order to impose a compleat lack of autonomy on women, and the “outreaches” in places where the church can handily refuse medical or other help unless someone agrees to convert, and making sure they lie their unholy asses off about life-saving contraceptives, like condoms. Even largely defanged, the Catholic church continues to do as much damage and harm as possible. That’s not even getting into all the child molesting the church handwaves, nor their ongoing protection via shuffling about of rapists. Even though I don’t think Pope Francis is all that different from his predecessors, to many Catholics, it’s seems he’s viewed as close to heretical – globalism! And making noises about caring for the poor. That sort of thing just isn’t on for those who are more than attached to all the wealth the church is sitting on.

At the root of things is the fact that the pope gave the boot to Raymond Cardinal Burke, a theological reactionary and a guy who was born 500 years too late to be the high cleric of his dreams. This touched off a major squabble with the Knights of Malta. They’re serious power brokers within HMC even though they dress like Albanian ushers and despite the fact that just talking about them makes me start hearing “Hail, Hail Freedonia” in my mind. Burke was their chaplain.

There’s a genuine rebellion brewing in HMC, holy obedience be damned, you should pardon the expression. And today, The New York Times adds a bizarre—but completely predictable—bit of information to the story of that rebellion.

In one of the cardinal’s antechambers, amid religious statues and book-lined walls, Cardinal Burke and Mr. Bannon — who is now President Trump’s anti-establishment eminence — bonded over their shared worldview. They saw Islam as threatening to overrun a prostrate West weakened by the erosion of traditional Christian values, and viewed themselves as unjustly ostracized by out-of-touch political elites. “When you recognize someone who has sacrificed in order to remain true to his principles and who is fighting the same kind of battles in the cultural arena, in a different section of the battlefield, I’m not surprised there is a meeting of hearts,” said Benjamin Harnwell, a confidant of Cardinal Burke who arranged the 2014 meeting.

Just as Mr. Bannon has connected with far-right parties threatening to topple governments throughout Western Europe, he has also made common cause with elements in the Roman Catholic Church who oppose the direction Francis is taking them. Many share Mr. Bannon’s suspicion of Pope Francis as a dangerously misguided, and probably socialist, pontiff… For many of the pope’s ideological opponents in and around the Vatican, who are fearful of a pontiff they consider outwardly avuncular but internally a ruthless wielder of absolute political power, this angry moment in history is an opportunity to derail what they see as a disastrous papal agenda. And in Mr. Trump, and more directly in Mr. Bannon, some self-described “Rad Trads” — or radical traditionalists — see an alternate leader who will stand up for traditional Christian values and against Muslim interlopers.

If it wasn’t clear already, it should be now. Stephen Bannon, the last descendant of House Harkonnen, is not someone who wants to “disrupt the elites,” or whatever techie garbage he likes to toss around. He wants to establish himself at the head of a new, worldwide authoritarian elite that will reach into every institution and that will demolish any of those institutions that stand in the way of what he wants. The man is a political thug, and Burke is a theological thug. Marriage made somewhat lower than heaven.

Given the rise of nazism and fascism across the globe, and the fascist grip firmly on uStates, it will pay to watch just where this unholy as fuck union is going to lead. Nowhere good, that’s certain, but when you combine this with the ongoing efforts to quash dissent, we are facing very dark days, and we need to gather our courage and commit to giving voice to every single wrong, every single outrage. Given the Catholic Church’s willingness to be corrupt as all hells, combining that corruption with what now taints many governments, along with the church’s unquenchable thirst for power…regardless of what people think, there are plenty of evil assholes in the church who will happily collaborate with nazis and fascists.

Full story at Esquire.

Satanic Sedition and Heads on Pikes.

ParadiseLButts1

William Blake‘s illustration of Satan as presented in John Milton‘s Paradise Lost. Illustration was made on c. 1808.

Rick Wiles has decided there’s a Satanic Panic going on, and of course it’s being orchestrated by none other than former President Obama.

“We are witnessing a full-blown Marxist/communist resistance movement, a revolution in America,” Wiles said. “The chief banker funding the Purple Revolution is billionaire George Soros and the chief community organizer directing the insurrection in the streets is none other than Barack Hussein Obama … My gut feeling says Barack Obama is on the phone day and night and he is directing the protests, he is organizing, he is giving clear instructions to the people what to do and how to carry it out.”

Waitaminute, who decided the colour of the revolution? I’m good with purple and all, but we should have been asked. Oooh, it’s Wiles’s gut! I’ll just bet it’s a fact factory, of the alternative sort. I’d love to hear from Pres. Obama! What with being super powerful and stuff, he has my number, right? As for the constant refrain of Soros!, I haven’t seen a bloody penny. If people are getting paid for activism, it’s news to me and everyone else down here in the purple.

Wiles, who repeatedlycalled for Obama to be arrested and imprisoned when he was still in the White House, said that the recent protests against Trump are nothing short of sedition, which is itself inherently satanic.

“This is outright sedition,” he declared, “and we have laws in the United States against sedition…. What the Democrats are doing, and the news media and the Obamanista bureaucrats inside the government agencies, what they are doing is, these are acts of sedition.”

Sedition is so defined: incitement of discontent or rebellion against a government. Sedition is one of those concepts that finds itself entwined on the thorny ground of hallowed free speech. It’s rarely charged, (in uStates) and when it is, most people are acquitted. In 1917, Art Young did this political cartoon (click for full size):

[Read more…]

Confirmed. Fuck.

Education Secretary-designate Betsy DeVos arrives before testifying on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2017, at her confirmation hearing. CREDIT: AP/Carolyn Kaster.

Education Secretary-designate Betsy DeVos arrives before testifying on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2017, at her confirmation hearing. CREDIT: AP/Carolyn Kaster.

Think Progress has the story. All the bad news is at Pharyngula, where I first saw this, and experienced that caved-in, sinking chest feeling, in spite of being heavily medicated.* All I can say right now is go read. Read, and renew your conviction and commitment to fight back. We are in situation dire as fuck.

*Dealing with extreme stress right now, PTSD shit. Likely to be on the erratic side for a bit, can’t focus right now. There will also probably be mass amounts of typos, please be kind in your corrections.

Sunday Facepalm.

Donald Trump and Wayne Allen Root (YouTube/screen grab).

Donald Trump and Wayne Allen Root (YouTube/screen grab).

There’s a bowlful of facepalm this Sunday. We’ll start with Smarm-master Wayne Allen Root, who has decided that all people who oppose Tiny Dictator Trump are mentally ill.

“There is not much that needs to be said,” Root declared. “They’re unhinged, they’re off the rails, they’re mentally ill. The Democratic Party has Trump Derangement Syndrome and they are no longer an opposition party or a leading party; they’re not willing to come to the table and work, they’re not willing to vote on Supreme Court nominees, they’re just looking to block and boycott. They’re crazy and so we have just got to run the country and ignore them … I think we have got to erase Obama like he was never there.”

Root went on to encourage the state of California “to leave the union” because “it would be the best thing to ever happen to America, conservatives, the Republican Party [and] patriots. My God, if California seceded with its fifty-plus electoral votes, we win every election for the rest of history.”

“We don’t want California as part of this country anymore,” Root continued, adding that he’d also love to see New York, Illinois, Maryland and all of New England likewise secede and “let this country be a nice conservative country run by people like Donald Trump and Wayne Root.”

Just the idea…*shudder*. You would either find me out of the country, or in a seceded state. Interesting, I suppose, that it doesn’t at all occur to Root what would happen to their dictatorship if California, New York, Illinois, Maryland and all of New England did leave all the conservative idiots on their own. Not only would their economy bottom out, but there would be one heck of a brain drain. RWW has the full story.

We now move on to Pastor Carl Gallups, who is railing on about immigration, and how it’s ‘god’s’ punishment. I wish these jackasses would be specific. Really can’t see Set or Dionysus or a host of other gods doing something so psychopathic and petty.

Insisting that this is all part of “spiritual warfare,” Gallups said, “What’s happening now is a big, heavy dose, a seismic shift of common sense, rule of law and human decency is beginning to come back in vogue and the left and their counterpart in the demonic realm, they are screaming, ‘Oh, it’s utter chaos, it’s utter chaos.’”

I haven’t been in any demonic realm, nor have I been screaming “oh, it’s utter chaos” either. I have been doing my best to wake people the fuck up, that’s a bit different. Fighting and Resistance are not the same as quivering in panic, just so you know.

He went on to explain that while “the world is so concerned about the flood of refugees and illegal immigrants that are violating our boundaries and borders,” it can all be traced back to God’s punishment on America for teaching evolution and allowing gay rights and legal abortion.

No, no, no, no, no. I’m not at all concerned about refugees. I am concerned about all the things which are forcing people to flee their countries. I’m fine with the people, it’s all the war, intolerance, and other nastiness I’m primarily concerned with, because it’s those things which need to change. No one has been violating boundaries or borders. It’s a fucking nonsensical concept anyway. Human imposed borders have been shifting for as long as there have been humans. Same thing goes with migration. People move. *Shrug*

“Here’s what I have been saying for years before this date,” he said, “and that was: Look, we have violated the borders of our children’s minds, for 100 years we have told them that they come from monkeys and that there is no God. We have violated the borders of their souls and their spirits. We have violated the borders of the womb in America and have destroyed 60 million children. We have violated the borders of sexuality, we have violated the borders of family, we have violated the borders of marriage, we have violated the borders of gender. And now, as a judgment from God or as discipline from God, our own geographical borders are now being violated.”

Oooh, yes, introducing children to the concept of thinking, then teaching them how to think, yeah, that’s evil. We don’t come from monkeys, you dipshit. We’re apes. It’s an ‘all in the family’ kind of thing. Can’t we have a law somewhere that prohibits idiots from spouting off about biology until they have had to study it? Yeah, yeah. I can dream.

“The borders of the womb.” :chokes: There’s no one uterus, dude. Individual uteruses are not parts of a hive-uterus. A uterus is a bodily organ, not an entity. A uterus is not an individual. Said organs are inside many individuals, who supposedly have control of them, just like the rest of their organs. Many individuals with uteruses aren’t remotely interested in you or anyone else’s opinion on them. As far as my uterus is concerned, consider it an undiscovered country. No one is welcome.

Borders, borders, borders. You’re boring me to death with this obsession. So Jehovah has gotten all pissy and decided to just now do this immigration thing, eh? So, you’re a dyed in the wool idiot, too. I have to say, ol’ El Shaddai has lost his touch. It got so bent out of shape over a lack of hospitality that he crispy crittered two cities, and turned a sorrowful woman into salt, for the great crime of grieving over her lost family and home. If continuing immigration is all it has, I think your god is past its used by date. Just sayin’. RWW has the story.

Last is right wing lawyer, Larry Klayman, who thinks he’s really onto something with suing our former president:

Right-wing attorney Larry Klayman appeared on Steve Malzberg’s Newsmax program today to discuss the lawsuit he has filed against former President Obama for allegedly inciting a protestor opposed to President Trump’s ban on refugees and immigrants from several predominantly Muslim nations to “assault” him at Los Angeles International Airport over the weekend. That “assault” apparently consisted of carrying a sign and yelling at passengers.

“Someone with an Arabic accent, a female, charged at me and others in a very aggressive and provocative way,” Klayman said, “causing us fear of immediate bodily injury or death—that’s the standard for assault. She was obviously egged on by President Obama after he left office, in his private capacity, when he was giving a call to arms, in effect, to protesters to continue this mayhem and destruction.”

Obama was likewise responsible for the violent protest at Berkeley University last night, Klayman said.

Klayman insisted that his lawsuit “has great merit” and that he looks forward to proving that Obama “is responsible … for assaulting me Sunday evening.”

I have run right out of comment. I am so tired of dipshit idiots. RWW has the story and video.

Trump Shall Set Us Free…

CREDIT: AP Photo/Jay Reeves.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Jay Reeves.

On Thursday, internet racists celebrated another perceived victory: Reports that President Trump will soon remove white nationalist groups from a federal effort to study and neutralize extremist radicalization, and rebrand the program to focus solely on groups associating themselves with Islam.

The Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program partners government agencies with community organizations in hopes of preventing people from being radicalized into various types of terror and hate groups. Its primary focus has always been in Muslim communities, but the Obama administration designed it to also encompass the American far-right groups that propagandize to people like Dylann Roof.

News of Trump’s plan to reverse that symbolic recognition of right-wing threats prompted a wave of celebration in white nationalist circles.

“Donald Trump wants to remove us from undue federal scrutiny by removing ‘white supremacists’ from the definition of ‘extremism,’” the founder and editor of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer (which takes its name from a Nazi propaganda publication) wrote in a post on the site. “Yes, this is real life. Our memes are all real life. Donald Trump is setting us free.”

This interpretation overstates the scope of Reuter’s report somewhat. The meme-filled Daily Stormer post alleges that changing the CVE program and renaming it to focus solely on “Islamic extremism,” as Trump puts it, would also extend to to calling off FBI scrutiny and taking white supremacists and neo-Nazis off of extremist databases. That would actually require separate action from Trump.

But in Trump’s move to take even some measure of scrutiny off of far-right extremism, The Daily Stormer sees a direct parroting of their own writing and a reward for the far-right’s role in getting Trump elected.

“It’s fair to say that if the Trump team is not listening to us directly (I assume they are), they are thinking along very similar lines. We helped get Trump get [sic] elected, and the fact of the matter is, without Alt-Right meme magick, it simply wouldn’t have happened,” the post continues. “This is absolutely a signal of favor to us.”

And so it goes among the fascist nazi crowd all over. They are crowing, beyond happy, because they feel validated. They have been validated. Another excruciatingly clear message that killing “those” people doesn’t matter, it’s okay really, just don’t kill white people.

“Amazing my government no longer targets me as an enemy,” wrote one. “It’s now officially understood at the the highest levels that we are soooo much better than the kidnapper terrorist pedophile left,” wrote another.

I don’t, I just don’t have words today. Right now, I need more tea and a bout of dinosaur watching, just to assure myself we aren’t up in flames. Yet.

Full story at Think Progress.

A Chilling Silence.

Police officers patrol at the pyramid outside the Louvre museum in Paris,Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. CREDIT: AP Photo/Thibault Camus.

Police officers patrol at the pyramid outside the Louvre museum in Paris,Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. CREDIT: AP Photo/Thibault Camus.

The Tiny Dictator Trump is busy tweeting about the horror and awfulness of an attempted attack, by knife, at the Louvre in Paris.

An attacker at France’s storied museum the Louvre was shot and seriously wounded Friday morning, and the incident elicited a predictable response (in tweet form no less) from our new Commander-in-Chief.

Donald J. Trump

✔ @realDonaldTrump

A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.

All manner of anti-Muslim idiots have been busy tweeting their little heads off about this, also. What’s interesting is what they are studiously ignoring:

The Louvre attacker allegedly tried to attack security forces outside the museum with a knife. Though details are unclear, some French media reported the attacker yelled “Allahu Akbar”— “God is great” in Arabic — while rushing a soldier. It’s important to note that the attack resulted in a whopping zero deaths.

Rewinding to Monday, a mosque in Quebec, Canada was attacked and six worshipers were killed and others wounded. Trump’s response? Silence.

The attacker, 27-year-old Alexandre Bissonnette, “was known in the city’s activist circles as a right-wing troll who frequently took anti-foreigner and anti-feminist positions and stood up for U.S. President Donald Trump,” the Globe and Mail reported. “His online profile and school friendships revealed little interest in extremist politics until last March, when France’s far-right National Front Leader Marine Le Pen visited Quebec City, inspiring Mr. Bissonnette to vocal extreme online activism, according to people who clashed with him starting around this time.”

Also on Monday, White House Senior Counselor Kellyanne Conway made up an attack in Bowling Green, Kentucky to justify Trump’s recent Muslim ban.

A right-wing troll. Anti-feminist. Trumpoid. We certainly know plenty of people just like Mr. Bissonnette, we get to deal with them every day on the ‘net, and have been for years on end. All of the people busy howling about an attempt which failed are quickly turning their heads and whistling over the six people murdered in Quebec. This too, is a result of the normalisation, and it is a terrible, deliberate misdirection, one which blatantly points out that murdering “those” people is okay. In support of that, the alternative facts lady is busy making up big batches of bullshit to shovel down gullible throats.

Via Think Progress.

How Much In Common?

A member of the Ku Klux Klan who says his name is Gary Munker poses for a photo during an interview with AFP in Hampton Bays, New York on November 22, 2016 (AFP Photo/William EDWARDS).

A member of the Ku Klux Klan who says his name is Gary Munker poses for a photo during an interview with AFP in Hampton Bays, New York on November 22, 2016 (AFP Photo/William EDWARDS).

If you support Trump and/or his “policies”, you might want to check just how much you have in common with the KKK. Obviously, open white supremacist scum love him to pieces, but there are a lot of people who aren’t white supremacist scum who voted for our tiny dictator, and you really should be aware of the company you keep.

Ending illegal immigration, building a border wall and preventing terrorists from coming into the U.S. are a handful of the points on Klu Klux Klan leader Will Quigg’s checklist for “making America great again.” And Quigg, who says the nation was “founded to be free, white and Christian,” feels confident that President Donald Trump’s promises to grow the economy and prevent “illegal aliens” from coming into the U.S. are aligned with the KKK’s visions for America.

Quigg, a Grand Dragon and King Keagle of the Loyal White Knights’ West Coast chapter, isn’t the only KKK member excited by the prospects of a Trump administration. As a high ranking member of an infamous white supremacist organization, Quigg said he sees everyday how the rhetoric of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan is resonating with people who want to join or who have recently been recruited by the Klan.

“We’ve seen a rise in [Klan] membership in the last two years, well, ever since Trump put in his dollar to get into the race. And especially every time he would say something that was not socially acceptable on a mainstream level,” Quigg told International Business Times in a phone interview.

If you think things like ethnic cleansing, genocide, putting people into ovens, and so on are not good things, perhaps it’s time to have a think about your viewpoints. And, if you tell yourself bullshit lies like this:

These days, people join the Klan not because they are racist or supremacists, but because they want to help other white people, he said.

You need to stop lying to yourself and face up to the fact that yes, you are a racist and white supremacist.

Full story here.

The Stream Protection Rule. Pffft.

The Stream Protection Rule is an update to existing mining regulations. It compels companies to restore the “physical form, hydrologic function, and ecological function” of streams after mining operations are complete. And, it calls for monitoring pollution levels in streams near surfaces mines.

In Appalachia, mining companies regularly blow the tops off mountains to access stores of coal beneath, a practice known as “mountaintop removal.” They dump the debris into valleys below, filling rivulets and contaminating downstream water supplies. Mining firms have decapitated more than 500 mountains in Appalachia and buried some 2,000 miles of streams, according to Appalachian Voices, an environmental advocacy group.

This poses a threat to wildlife and people who live nearby. Numerous studies link mountaintop removal to higher rates of cancer and heart disease among residents of neighboring communities.

[…]

“The rule spells out best practices for reclaiming land and reforesting with native species. It strengthens protections for ephemeral streams that are necessary for good water quality and quantity downstream,” said Davie Ransdell, a retired surface mine inspector for the state of Kentucky. “In my view, it’s also a job generator, since it prevents mining companies from just pushing material over the hill and into streams below.”

[…]

Lawmakers will likely vote Wednesday to overturn the rule, using the Congressional Review Act, which gives Congress the power to scrap executive actions issued in the last 60 working days.

“I would encourage the House to act quickly so that we can send this resolution to the president’s desk as soon as possible,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said in a statement. Throughout his career, McConnell has opposed coal mining regulations. He also blamed what he called “Obama’s War on Coal” for the decline of the mining industry, although energy experts say it is largely the low cost of natural gas that is responsible for coal’s demise.

According to the Center for American Progress, the 27 representatives that sponsored or co-sponsored the Congressional Review Act bill received nearly $500 million from mining interests last year.

And there you have the bottom line of rethugs everywhere. Their only line – how well will their pockets be lined? They don’t give a fuck about the planet, they don’t give a fuck about clean water, they don’t give a fuck about wildlife, and they don’t give a fuck about people other than themselves. The full story is at Think Progress. In the same vein, the rethugs are looking to help big oil by making bribery and a lack of transparency okay again:

The House will vote as early as Wednesday to nullify a rule that makes it harder for U.S. oil companies to engage in bribery and corruption in developing countries.

In June 2016 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) finalized the “Disclosure of Payments by Resource Extraction Issuers” rule, requiring oil, natural gas, and mining companies to publicly disclose the billions of dollars they pay to foreign governments for drilling rights around the world. This rule — meant to promote transparency and fight corruption — now faces the prospect of repeal as Republicans look to rollback a myriad of Obama administration rules.

“On the same day as the Senate is considering the nomination of former Exxon CEO as next Secretary of State, the House of Representatives is deciding whether or not to vote to license the bribery and corruption that the oil industry has lived off for decades,” Corinna Gilfillan, head of the U.S. office at Global Witness, said in a statement. “We cannot stand by while the interests of a few powerful oil companies trump the safety and values of our country. We need this law to protect investors, developing countries, and our own national security interests.”

That story is here.

Silencing Dissent.

Demonstrators holds banners and signs as they protest during a march in downtown Washington in opposition of President-elect Donald Trump, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2017. CREDIT: AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana.

Demonstrators holds banners and signs as they protest during a march in downtown Washington in opposition of President-elect Donald Trump, Sunday, Jan. 15, 2017. CREDIT: AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana.

As people critical of President Trump’s Muslim ban flocked to airports this weekend to show their support for immigrants and refugees, one major airport decided to crack down on protesters.

Denver International Airport (DIA) began enforcing a rule on Sunday that requires anyone interested in demonstrating to submit an application seven days in advance. The regulation was challenged by protesters, including one who recorded a video criticizing Denver Police Commander Tony Lopez for violating his First Amendment rights.

There’s more about the Denver situation at the link.

But the movement toward limiting protesters’ free speech rights is not confined to the terminals of DIA. In anticipation of an active protest movement during Trump’s administration, multiple Republican-controlled states are currently pushing for legislation that would discourage and even criminalize nonviolent, public demonstrations.

In Minnesota, a billpassed a Republican-controlled committee last week that would allow cities to sue protesters in order to collect money to pay police forces required at the demonstration. Lawmakers drafted the legislation in response to massive Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in the state after a police officer shot and killed Philando Castile.

This sounds very much like what happened here in nDakota and the water protectors. People will get bilked for money, and I’d put odds on that money being used the way it was here, to purchase military toys for cop shops. All the better to threaten you with, my dear. Being able to sue anyone who protests will have the very chilling effect of shutting down effective protests, because too many people will not be willing to face such a consequence; most people can’t afford to face such a consequence. Allowing a lawsuit against people for exercising their constitutional rights, does that sound like a democracy to you? Speaking of picking pockets…

And in Michigan, Republican lawmakers are attacking both unions and protesters by pushing legislation that would increase fines against picketers to $1,000 per person per day of a picket and $10,000 per day for an organization or union involved in the picket. The bill passed the state House of Representatives in December, but was set aside by the Senate.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that will be an end to such legislation though, it won’t be.

Taking a different tactic, four other states are considering anti-protest laws that would target demonstrators who protest on the streets, according to The Intercept. The bills have all been introduced in the last few months as responses to high-profile protests by Black Lives Matter activists and opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline that shut down highways.

The Intercept summarized the bills that Republican lawmakers have proposed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Washington, and Iowa:

In North Dakota, for instance, Republicans introduced a bill last week that would allow motorists to run over and kill any protester obstructing a highway as long as a driver does so accidentally. In Minnesota, a bill introduced by Republicans last week seeks to dramatically stiffen fines for freeway protests and would allow prosecutors to seek a full year of jail time for protesters blocking a highway. Republicans in Washington state have proposed a plan to reclassify as a felony civil disobedience protests that are deemed “economic terrorism” … And in Iowa a Republican lawmaker has pledged to introduce legislation to crack down on highway protests.

“This is a marked uptick in bills that would criminalize or penalize protected speech and protest, and every person should be alarmed at that trend,” she said, calling the bills unconstitutional. “We should also be alarmed by the attitude they betray, which is that when Americans get out into the streets and make their voices heard — recently, in record numbers — their elected representatives’ response is not to listen to those concerns but to attempt to silence and criminalize them.”

“That goes against the very fabric of our constitutional democracy, and legislators introducing these bills should be ashamed,” she added. “To try to silence those who are speaking up right now is a betrayal of American values.”

Yes, they should be ashamed, but they aren’t. That’s because there is no democracy anymore. Gone, vanished, set on fire and up in smoke. Silence people, quash dissent, order compliance. If you can’t see where we are headed, it’s because you refuse to see.

Full article at Think Progress. Mano Singham has a post up about the revival of an old quash favourite: COINTELPRO. Oh, such bad news.