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.

Fire, Hatred, and Speed.

Sintesi Fascista (1935) by Alessandro Bruschetti. Photo courtesy the Wolfsonian-Florida International University, Miami Beach, Florida, The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr Collection.

Sintesi Fascista (1935) by Alessandro Bruschetti. Photo courtesy the Wolfsonian-Florida International University, Miami Beach, Florida, The Mitchell Wolfson, Jr Collection.

There’s a very interesting and excellent article at Aeon making the argument that while it’s quite easy to see the Nazi based fascism popping up everywhere, what we are actually facing is a more insidious fascism, one more aligned with the Futurists of Mussolini’s Italy, and its name is libertarian. Highly recommended reading.

Fascism begins as something in the air. Stealthy as smoke in the darkness, easier to smell than to see. Fascism sets out an ethos, not a set of policies; appeals to emotion, not fact. It begins as a pose, often a deceptive one. It likes propaganda, dislikes truth, and invests heavily in performance. Untroubled by its own incoherence, it is anti-intellectual and yet contemptuous of the populace even as it exploits the crowd mentality. Fascism is accented differently in different countries, and uses the materials – and the media – of the times.

Facism is hostile to egalitarianism and loathes liberalism. It champions ‘might is right’, a Darwinian survival of the nastiest, and detests vulnerability: the sight of weakness brings out the jackboot in the fascist mind, which then blames the victim for encouraging the kick. Fascism not only promotes violence but relishes it, viscerally so. It cherishes audacity, bravado and superbia, promotes charismatic leaders, demagogues and ‘strong men’, and seeks to flood or control the media. Even as it pretends to speak for the people, it creates the rule of the elite, a cult of violent chauvinism and a nationalism that serves racism.

The fascism of Thomas Mair (who killed the British Labour MP Jo Cox) or the now proscribed neo-Nazi National Action youth movement in the UK is so obvious; you can see it coming a mile away. The more insidious kind is the type being nourished across today’s libertarian movement. Its precursors are in Italy, not Germany, in the Italian Futurism that bolstered Benito Mussolini, in the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, and in the mythic Roman figure of Deus Sol Invictus.

In the Futurist manifesto of 1909, Filippo Marinetti, the movement’s poster-boy, articulated the emotional fascism from which political fascism stems: ‘[O]ur hearts are not in the least tired. For they are nourished by fire, hatred and speed!’ Steel was the archetypal material for Futurist sculpture, but there are materials of the mind, too: the steel of cruelty, the gunmetal of hatred: ‘We want to exalt aggressive action, the racing foot, the fatal leap, the smack and the punch.’

In contemporary libertarianism, there is a similar love of hatred, from the alt-Right libertarian news site Breitbart proudly publishing the UK libertarian writer James Delingpole’s paean ‘In Praise of “Hate Speech”’, to Sean Gabb who, as director of the Libertarian Alliance in 2006, said: ‘[W]e believe in the right to promote hatred by any means that do not fall within the Common Law definition of assault.’ (Gabb said this as he stepped forward to defend David Irving’s expression of Holocaust denialism.)  When Breitbart’s CEO Steve Bannon moved to become Trump’s chief strategist, his appointment was cheered by the former head of the Ku Klux Klan, and approved by the American Nazi party.

The character traits applauded by today’s libertarians – ambition, superbia, speed, drive, spin, success and spikiness – are the qualities the Futurists valued. There is fire here but never warmth; appetite but never food. If conviviality has an opposite, it is this: anti-vivial, anti-genial and, in its treatment of the future, anti-generative. UK libertarians call their online magazine Spiked, recalling both date-rape drugs and weaponry (as well as poor journalism that deserves to be spiked rather than published.)

Libertarians’ bullyboy mentality detests the sensibility of liberalism, and torments those they call ‘SJWs’ (social justice warriors). There should be no regulations to protect the weak, they say, and they loathe the vulnerable: the British journalist Milo Yiannopoulos, Breitbart’s star writer, having encouraged the racist and sexist abuse of the American actress Leslie Jones on Twitter, then mocked her, saying: ‘If at first you don’t succeed … play the victim.’ This attitude is proto-fascistic, to despise the victim for being vulnerable, using that weakness as a reason to treat them with contempt. The UK libertarian writer Claire Fox, though supportive of an open-border policy on migration, scorns individual or cultural sensitivity by promulgating the term ‘Generation Snowflake’ to describe people who might ‘melt’ in the heat of hate-speech or who want ‘trigger alerts’ to be issued over material that might traumatise survivors of sexual abuse.

[…]

In the decadent days of the late Roman Empire, Deus Invictus, as patron of soldiers, was shown with a whip and a globe to emphasise dominance and invincibility; his solar rays were spiked. Deus Invictus is a ruthless enemy, the god unchained to scorch the earth. Deus Invictus is typified in libertarianism and personified in Trump’s solar solipsism, with his backdrop of gold curtains, Twitter-roaring against the unbearable restraints of respect or social justice. An ideology of monoism without plurality or otherness furious for its own freedom. An idiot divinity unleashed upon the world.

The full article is here. Highly recommended!

Who Ya Gonna Fear?

Richard Schmidt.

Richard Schmidt.

It was mere days ago that we learned that the Tiny Dictator and Crew plan to stop looking into domestic terrorism and white supremacist factions here in uStates. Then Madame Alternative Facts started lying her ass off about a terrorist action which never took place, then the Tiny Dictator himself lied left, right, up and down about terrorist acts happening and being ignored. That they have been repeatedly refuted, and proven to be lying should go without saying. There’s an absolute insistence on viewing terrorism as an outside, other thing, something which could never, ever be domestic in nature. It’s bullshit on a mean scale, but it’s being poured out at such a rate, people are getting buried by it. Naturally, all the fascists and nazis are thrilled by this insistence and consequent validation. (See the linked post for more.)

As Madame Alternative Facts will not shut the fuck up, and keeps spraying shit in everyone’s faces, let’s take a look at a terrorist action which was averted. The catch was accidental, the feds had been chasing down counterfeit sports jerseys and caps, and what they found was eye-opening, to say the least.

The year was 2012. The place was Bowling Green, Ohio. A federal raid had uncovered what the authorities feared were the makings of a massacre. There were 18 firearms, among them two AR–15 assault rifles, an AR–10 assault rifle and a Remington Model 700 sniper rifle. There was body armor, too, and the authorities counted some 40,000 rounds of ammunition. An extremist had been arrested, and prosecutors suspected that he had been aiming to carry out a wide assortment of killings.

“This defendant, quite simply, was a well-funded, well-armed and focused one-man army of racial and religious hate,” prosecutors said in a court filing.

The man arrested and charged was Richard Schmidt, a middle-aged owner of a sports-memorabilia business at a mall in town. Prosecutors would later call him a white supremacist. His planned targets, federal authorities said, had been African-Americans and Jews. They’d found a list with the names and addresses of those to be assassinated, including the leaders of NAACP chapters in Michigan and Ohio.

It was widely agreed upon, that here was a man who should not have been allowed a single gun, or even a single bullet. No one knew just how he managed to amass such an arsenal, especially as Schmidt was a convicted felon (manslaughter), who was barred by law from owning any firearm. Gosh, that worked well, didn’t it?

But Schmidt wound up being sentenced to less than six years in prison, after a federal judge said prosecutors had failed to adequately establish that he was a political terrorist, and he is scheduled for release in February 2018. The foiling of what the government worried was a credible plan for mass murder gained little national attention.

Everyone feeling comforted by the fact this man will soon be out of prison? Anyone want to say it’s okay, because he’s white, he couldn’t possibly be a terrorist? That Americans just can’t be terrorists?

For some concerned about America’s vulnerability to terrorism, the very real, mostly forgotten case of Richard Schmidt in Bowling Green, Ohio, deserves an important place in any debate about what is real and what is fake, what gets reported on by the news media and what doesn’t. Those deeply worried about domestic far-right terrorism believe United States authorities, across many administrations, have regularly underplayed the threat, and that the media has repeatedly underreported it. Perhaps we have become trapped in one view of what constitutes the terrorist threat, and as the case of Schmidt shows, that’s a problem.

Oh it’s a problem, alright, and this is not the first time the government has tossed away and hushed up reports on domestic terrorism. The prime directive seems to be “if we ignore it, it will disappear.” That’s magical thinking on a high level, and there’s no question we will pay for it. Memories are short for most people, and even one of the Tiny Dictator’s minions recently said that the Oklahoma bombing didn’t count, because too long ago. People should be questioning why that is never the case with outside terrorism. Nazism, white nationalism, white supremacy, whatever moniker you assign, is on the rise once again, and they are feeling proud, strong, and validated by the current government, which refuses to face reality. How many people will have to die in order to force a reality check? I don’t want to be one of them. I don’t want anyone to be one of them. Unfortunately, this sort of dedicated ignorance always has a very high cost.

The full article is in-depth, lots of links, highly recommended.

Satanic Sedition and Heads on Pikes.

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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…]

“3.49 ‘rounds down’ to three.”

This sixth grade student is held to a higher standard than the United States Department of Health and Human Services. CREDIT: AP Photo/Ty Wright.

This sixth grade student is held to a higher standard than the United States Department of Health and Human Services. CREDIT: AP Photo/Ty Wright.

The devil is in the details, so it’s said. There’s such a constant thower of thit, to quote Igor, that it’s very easy to miss the smaller things, the fine mitht of the thit thower, as Igor might say. First is the news that our current health regulators aren’t good at math. At all.

…Thus, for example, a fifth grade student is expected to understand that the number “3.49” is greater than the number “3.” The Trump administration, however, appears to be struggling with this concept.

Under the Affordable Care Act, “the premium rate charged by a health insurance issuer for health insurance coverage offered in the individual or small group market . . . shall not vary by more than 3 to 1 for adults” due to the age of the person seeking insurance. In other words, insurers may charge older consumers (who tend to have more health problems and thus are more expensive to cover) up to three times more than younger individuals, but no more than three times as much.

Nevertheless, according to the Huffington Post’s Jonathan Cohn, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) submitted a proposal which would permit insurers to charge older customers premiums that are “3.49 times as large as those for younger customers.” This proposal would be a federal rule, not a new law, so HHS apparently hopes to implement it without changing the law saying that insurers can only charge older customers 3 times as much, not 3.49 times as much.

According to Cohn, HHS would argue that this is okay because “3.49 ‘rounds down’ to three.”

If you find yourself prone to shrugging over this, have a second think. 3 and 3.49 might not seem like a big deal, but when you’re going to be charged that difference financially, it’s a big difference. It’s a difference which could determine whether or not you can afford healthcare. Full story at Think Progress.

Prepaid cash and credit cards have been a gold rush for the financial industry — and not everyone in the business plays fair with customers. CREDIT: AP Photo/Swayne B. Hall, File.

Prepaid cash and credit cards have been a gold rush for the financial industry — and not everyone in the business plays fair with customers. CREDIT: AP Photo/Swayne B. Hall, File.

In a very quiet move, consumer protections are going to be removed from pre-paid debit cards, and this will disproportionately affect those who are poor. We all know how much the GOP cares about poor people.

…But prepaid debit card companies are suddenly holding a get-out-of-jail-free card, courtesy of Sen. David Perdue (R-GA). Perdue is pushing legislation to override and permanently derail the CFPB’s three-month-old rules package for the cards, reviving even the most deceptive practices over expert advice to the contrary.

Prepaid debit cards now account for tens of billions of dollars in financial activity each year, creating a giant profit opportunity for the financial companies that issue cards to consumers. One Federal Reserve report in 2014 found the average customer pays $15 to $17 in fees each month on the cards, and that fees skew higher for customers who are black, younger than 15, widowed, or living in areas with relatively high rates of violent crime.

[…]

Only one major provider of prepaid cards charges overdraft fees. NetSpend, which does most of its business by partnering with storefront payday lenders, is uniquely reliant on the most deceitful species of fee-for-service practices.

Again, CFPB’s rule doesn’t bar the overdraft charges; it just forces companies to be honest and forthright about them. NetSpend couldn’t stand that sunlight. NetSpend and its parent company, Georgia-based TSYS, say they would lose some $80 million a year if consumers were finally protected from its policies.

Perdue and his co-sponsors say their move to end consumer protections for prepaid cards is about preserving access for consumers. The fact that it is also an $80 million favor to an unsavory financial company based in his state—and a thumb in the eye of the millions of people who have turned to the cards as a substitute for traditional bank accounts — is apparently a coincidence.

This will have a devastating effect on way too many people, and it’s doubtful most people will even be aware of this, and won’t be able to employ more vigilance against those looking to rob the poor and mire them into never-ending debt. Think Progress has the full story.

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.

“Obama Would Never Do That.”

Donald Trump, by Jason Mecier.

Donald Trump, by Jason Mecier.

“Obama would never do that.” Turns out that sentence is the magical key to manipulating Trump into doing whatever someone wants. Honestly, when it comes to manipulating the president of a country, I’d like it to be more difficult than that. That’s the sort of manipulation used on a wayward two year old.

The one way a White House staffer can get President Donald Trump to do what they want is by telling him that President Barack Obama would never have done it, a new report reveals.

According to the Independent, an anonymous staffer leaked that the way military leaders were able to urge Trump to act on the failed Yemen raid was by telling him Obama didn’t want to do it.

General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, were reportedly able to persuade Trump to move forward by claiming Obama would never have been so bold to actually go through with it.

Full story here.

Multi-Million Dollar Deals.

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In a lawsuit filed today, First Lady Melania Trump revealed her intention to leverage the presidency to ink new “licensing, branding, and endorsement” deals worth many millions of dollars. In the filing, Melania Trump’s lawyer described the position of First Lady as a “once-in-a-lifetime” money making opportunity. She told the court she intended to pursue deals in “apparel, accessories, shoes, jewelry, cosmetics, hair care, skin care, and fragrance.”

These kind of endorsement deals would be especially lucrative while Melania Trump is First Lady and thus “one of the most photographed women in the world.”

So many Trumpoids just wouldn’t shut up about how nice it would be to have a “classy” (read: white) first lady. Yes, that’s class alright, nothing but a laser focus on how much the wallet could be fattened, and how often her face would be plastered all over. Used to be, that sort of behaviour would have been termed crass.

According to the lawsuit, because of the Daily Mail’s inaccurate reporting, these business opportunities will be less available to her while her husband is in the White House.

The strategy Melania Trump lays out in her lawsuit is similar to the one already being executed by President Trump.

Most people already know how Trump has refused to divest, how he has openly violated the constitution, and how he’s leveraging his position to make more money, but if you don’t, head over to Think Progress.

The Resistance and The Democratic Party.

Senate Democrats must make up their minds about how to handle President Trump. CREDIT: AP Photo/Alex Brandon.

Senate Democrats must make up their minds about how to handle President Trump. CREDIT: AP Photo/Alex Brandon.

The Democrats won’t be leading the resistance, they are reluctantly following it, and it’s past time to commit. There’s an excellent, in-depth article at Think Progress about what the Dems are doing, and what they aren’t doing. Highly recommended reading.

…With protesters flooding airports in the cities that have actually been victims of terrorist attacks, American voters got their first glimpse of how Democrats might dig in against the new administration’s attempts to abandon longstanding U.S. values. Elected officials didn’t just offer moral support; they showed up in person and lent the power of their office to a concrete effort at combating injustice.

But even then, Democrats were not leading a resistance. They were racing to catch up with the people who moderate strategists and elected officials within the party’s fraying Congressional minority have been ignoring for years.

A gap has opened up between federal officeholders with a “D” next to their names and the wide majority of Americans who do not like President Trump. Staunch Senate resistance to Trump’s ill-suited and ethically challenged cabinet nominees last week suggests some in Washington are beginning to wise up. But the week also offered more evidence that Democrats believe voters will reward them for cooperating with Trump where possible — a misguided notion that would leave the party standing apart from protesters and resistance groups, and create a political vacuum strong enough to swallow the party for good.

For all the party’s faults, and all the harm its corporatism has done to left-of-center political ideas and public policies, further breakdown in Democratic cohesion and backbone would leave Americans without any meaningful opposition to Trump’s backward ideas — and no hope of rescuing the world’s largest free society from self-inflicted oblivion.

People who seek political office tend to view themselves as leaders. But Democrats find themselves instead following a wave of energy they cannot claim to have originated. While it may sting the ego to be behind the leading edge of anti-Trump resistance, the party and its individual members have a perfect opportunity to position themselves as joiners, helpers, and colleagues of a budding populist movement.

Both the Democratic Party and the country are better served by these leaders becoming a part of that movement rather than by attempting to manage it — or appearing to betray it in the name of Beltway compromise.

I can’t emphasise the truth of the above enough. The notion of playing along or picking your battles is one which alienates all those who see the rapidly widening cracks under our feet. It’s often a snort of disgust to be heard after a democrat decides to compromise, like affirming Ben Carson, the idiot’s idiot, to be in charge of housing. There isn’t time for democrats to make up their mind here, while shuffling their feet and having debates over the merit of this, that, or the over. It’s time for quick thinking and action. It’s troubling, to say the least, that those traits aren’t common ones in those who make up political parties.

…The initial stirrings of a real resistance movement in Washington run contrary to an old party conviction — one that guided Democrats into their early capitulations, and which still lurks behind wishy washy statements on Trump’s Supreme Court nominee and in closed-door meetings about “Triangulating Trump” on infrastructure and trade.

Leaders think that Republicans will operate in good faith so long as Dems do likewise. If they show how reasonable they can be, the moderate thinking goes, Schumer’s gang can pick off some Republican votes on the truly odious nominees.

But while this kind of horsetrading might have made some sense with Obama in the White House, it is flat-out nuts to accord Trump’s party the same faith.

Trump’s approval ratings are already down from the record lows that greeted his inauguration. Millions are already in the streets marching against him. He is bringing sycophants to the CIA to clap for him in front of the press. He’s telling Congressional leadership that voter fraud is real because a golfer told him a story once. His political brand is emboldening the men’s-rights crowd and the modern white supremacist movement, two allies sure to further taint his reputation.

It is hard to craft “be reasonable” into an effective political brand even in more stable times. Obama-era Democrats should have learned that lesson in 2010 and 2014 as Republicans were rewarded for years of hardline obstruction.

Another truth. For the whole of the Obama administration, rethugs pulled every filthy trick in the book, even to the point of shutting the government down in a massive tantrum, to get what they want, and no one in the democratic party seems to learn from that behaviour – they continue to behave as though being submissive and conciliatory will work, when it’s been shown time and time again that it won’t. When you’re up against an immoral force, caving is never an effective strategy.

 The few voters who pay obsessive attention to political news may notice Democrats’ commitment to being the adult in the room and reward it. But most Americans won’t see or hear about or understand the intricate machinery of Democratic grownup-ism. They will instead see flashes of Democrats collaborating with Trump, blurring the brand distinction between a Democratic vision for the future and Trump’s bug-eyed retreat into fear and vengeance.

Digging in to fight every battle, on the other hand, would ensure that even casual viewers hear Democrats blasting a constant bullhorn of objection, defiance, and “no.” Becoming the party of no in opposition to Trump would put Democrats on the moral high-ground. The approach urged by party moderates, though, actively privileges a different, stodgier set of values over those of justice, equality, tolerance, and broad economic opportunity.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. And yes.

Senate collegiality is a value. Continuity of administrative competence in Washington agencies that directly touch Americans’ lives every day is a value. Deference to the 46 percent of 2016 voters who put a madman in the White House is a value, too. But they are not ideas that can rekindle a party.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. And yes.

The absolutist rejection of Trump policies on Capitol Hill is a prerequisite for Democrats’ resistance efforts. But it is not, on its own, a resistance movement.

Movements happen in streets, living rooms, diners, bars, and churches. They operate from communities upward. Their structure is bottom-up rather than top-down, which can leave would-be leaders of a Trump resistance who hold federal office on unsure footing. If they attempt to stake out leadership positions on behalf of airport protesters and women’s marchers and defiant federal bureaucrats, will they appear to be big-footing organic populism that’s driving them left?

But it is not complicated to hedge against this risk. Democrats simply have to go to the people directly.

[…]

If there are in fact any Trump moderates, they are severely outnumbered within his movement by dyed-in-the-wool anti-liberals genuinely eager to ban Muslims, wall off Mexico, and lock up every black woman who cusses at a cop. Democrats can speak to the gettable independent voter and say “no” to all things Trump at the same damn time — and there is simply nothing they could ever say that would split loyalists from their glib, TV-savvy president.

So instead of trying to out-argue the ogre in the White House, Democrats must bypass him and the national media figures that jump at his every little mendacity like a crow leaps at a shiny pebble. They must communicate directly with the people. And in doing so, they must surrender their sense of being entitled to call themselves leaders — and embrace instead the power of following.

Many more yeses. Think Progress has the full article, highly recommended.

The Forgotten and Missing Songs.

A photo of the lost spool. Photo: University of Akron.

A photo of the lost spool. Photo: University of Akron.

A long-lost wire spool — containing recordings of German songs that Jewish prisoners in Nazi concentration camps were forced to sing, and Yiddish songs they sang in rebellion – was recently located by accident in the University of Akron archive where it had been mislabeled, the UK’s Daily Mail reported on Friday.

According to the report, the retrieved spool was one of a set of 200 recordings of interviews conducted right after World War II with displaced Holocaust survivors in Germany, Italy, France, and Switzerland. The interviews, with at least 130 Jews, were conducted by Dr. David Boder in 1946 for the purpose of preserving the history of the “unspeakable horrors” they had endured at the hands of the Nazis. During Boder’s talks with the survivors, some recounted and sang the songs in question.

According to the Daily Mail, all the oral histories that Boder recorded were transferred in 1967 to the Nicholas and Dorothy Cummings Center for the History of Psychology at the University of Akron in Ohio.

Because Boder had mentioned the songs, recorded at a refugee camp in Henonville, France, in his subsequent writings, researchers were puzzled as to why they did not feature on any of the spools. The mystery was solved when media digitizer Jon Endres sifted through the three boxes in the Cummings Center archive that contained the recordings and came upon a spool that had mistakenly been entered into the system with a typo. Rather than being filed as the “Henonville Songs,” it was labeled as the “Heroville Songs.”

After digitizing the recording, Endres wrote in a blog post, he was “blown away.”

Dr. David Baker, the Margaret Clark Moran Executive Director of the Cummings Center, said of the find: “I think it is one of the most important discoveries from our collections in our 50-year history. That we could give the world the melody to a song sung by those sentenced to their death through forced labor during one of the most unspeakable horrors of the 20th century is remarkable.”

One example of such a song is “Undzer shtetl brent” (Our Village is Burning) by Mordecai Gebirtig, performed by Gita Frank, who explains in the introduction that it was once sung by the composer’s daughter in the cellars of a Krakow ghetto. Intended to inspire Jews to rebel against the Germans, the original words were changed to “The Jewish People Are Burning.”

You can read more here, here, and here. The last link has full sound clouds. So much sorrow here, and we find ourselves surrounded by those who think such horror is just fine.

A Fitting Trump Logo and Two Border Walls.

tucker-viemeister-nazi-trump-logo-design-graphics-hero

© Tucker Viemeister.

American industrial designer Tucker Viemeister has designed a logo for Donald Trump based on Nazi insignia to reflect the billionaire’s “racist hate mongering”.

The logo, featuring a tilting letter T inside a white circle on a red background, resembles the swastika symbol used by the Nazis.

Viemeister created the logo in April last year, before Trump became the Republican party’s official presidential nominee, posting it on Twitter along with the words “I hope they [Trump’s supporters] don’t like it!”

He also published the design on his website with a short statement that says: “Design can show what bad things have in common, like this logo I created for Trump’s campaign of bigotry and violence.”

Following Trump’s inauguration as president and his introduction last weekend of the controversial executive order banning people from seven Muslim-majority countries entry to the United States, Viemeister said the logo had new and sinister relevance.

tucker-viemeister-nazi-trump-logo-design-graphics-_dezeen_1704_col_1

“Obviously the logo is a spin on the Nazi insignia because there is a correlation between Trump’s racist hate mongering and the Nazis,” he told Dezeen.

“I’m worried that his followers will adapt it for the very opposite reasons I made it,” he continued. “They might like that connection with those white power fascists.”

“I wish I could make something that would help those followers become more inclusive and tolerant so that we can all work together to solve the issues that we all confront.”

Via Dezeen. Tucker Viemeister’s site. Moving on to the fabulous IKEA border wall! Simple! Inexpensive! Can be put together with one hex key! Only two people required!

WallUS

Washington (dpo) – “Too expensive!” “Too complicated!” “Unrealistic!” – This is the sort of criticism US President Donald Trump is currently facing over plans to build a wall along the border with Mexico. An offer from home furnishings brand, IKEA, could solve all of these problems with a single blow.

The Scandinavian furniture maker has offered the USA a practical, ready-made solution with “Börder Wåll”. All they need to do is pick it up in a van from the nearest IKEA branch and put it up where they want it to go. Totalling US $9,999,999,999.99, “Börder Wåll” is significantly cheaper than a conventional wall. Estimates suggest that a conventional wall would cost between US $15 and $25 billion.

According to government press secretary, Sean Spicer, President Trump is currently inspecting the offer:

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The simple, Scandinavian designed border wall (with a 5 year guarantee) is primarily made of pressboard with a birch effect and can be assembled with the help of a hex key. A 12,000 page instruction manual with easy-to-understand pictures makes construction child’s play – as long as there is not a single screw missing.
“However, assembly requires two people: one person can hold the wall while the second screws it together”, it states in IKEA’s offer.
The basic model of the wall is 33ft (10 m) tall and 1,954 miles (3,144 km) long, although the height and length can be extended as desired.
IKEA has already announced that it will design other products in the next few weeks that will be compatible with “Börder Wåll”. According to inside sources, this includes products such as the “Gåwk” watchtower and the “Råtåtåtåtåtå” spring-gun.

Via Postillon. German version here. (No, this is not for real. There’s no Ikea border wall, okay?)

Then there’s the wonder of The Pink Wall:

Mexican firm Estudio 3.14 has visualised the “gorgeous perversity” of US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall along the countries’ border.

In response to the controversial proposal, a group of interns at the Guadalajara-based studio came up with a conceptual design that would celebrate Mexico’s architectural heritage.

 

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The giant solid barrier would run 1,954 miles (3,145 kilometres) uninterrupted from the Pacific coast to the Gulf of Mexico, and be painted bright pink in the spirit of the 20th-century buildings by Pritzker Prize-winning Mexican architect Luis Barragán.

“Because the wall has to be beautiful, it has been inspired in by Luis Barragán’s pink walls that are emblematic of Mexico,” said the studio. “It also takes advantage of the tradition in architecture of megalomaniac wall building.”

Estudio 3.14‘s Prison-Wall project – developed in collaboration with the Mamertine Corporation of the United States – was undertaken to “allow the public to imagine the policy proposal in all of its gorgeous perversity”.

Visuals show the barrier traversing hills, desert, a river, and the border city Tijuana. The structure would also incorporate a prison to detain those attempting to cross into the US.

“Moreover, the wall is not only a wall,” said Estudio 3.14. “It is a prison where 11 million undocumented people will be processed, classified, indoctrinated, and/or deported.”

The team suggests that the wall could employ up to six million personnel. It could also incorporate shopping centre straddling its width, and a viewpoint from which US citizens could climb up and look down onto the other side.

A series of graphics to accompany the proposal range from posters calling for workers, to US currency emblazoned with the wall’s pink trail.

Via Dezeen. Estudio 3.14.

Paid Protesters and Offenses Against ‘God’.

AP Photo.

AP Photo.

Louie Gohmert, not exactly known for any sort of rational viewpoint, has now picked up the banner of “Paid Protesters!” and running with it. For the most part, there isn’t anywhere Gohmert is taken seriously, except for Breitbart. Yes, Fascist Daily has embraced the daft Gohmert.

That congressman is Louie Gohmert of Texas, who is well known for his crazy talk, such as his statement that gay men make ineffective soldiers because they’re getting massages from their lovers all day. But Breitbart and its ilk treat him as a serious person.

“This is fake news,” he said of the protests against Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch. “This is people who are just out there to create the appearance of obstruction. You know, Patrick Poole, remember back in one of the demonstrations on the Mall, caught one of the guys: ‘Hey, how much are you getting paid?’ He said, ‘$15 an hour. I thought everybody was getting that.’ They’re getting paid. The Soros money gets spread around.

As usual, rethugs seldom care about the source of their information. No one loves bullshit quite as much as conservatives.

Poole, by the way, is a conspiracy-minded blogger who regularly rails against “radical Islam.” It’s not clear what protest on the National Mall Gohmert is referencing, but several right-wingers have asserted that Soros funded the Women’s March on Washington and paid its participants — something the fact-checking site PolitiFact rated “Pants on Fire.”

Get those facts right before you twist them to pieces, okay? As usual, Ann Coulter has been waxing glib about the Tiny Dictator, never getting a single fact right, because hey, they have alternative facts, and those are better, right?

She particularly praised Trump’s executive order banning entry to the U.S. by residents of seven majority-Muslim countries, and his ban on refugees in general. “And as I wrote in my column in Breitbart, it’s not just that we’re worried they’re going to shoot up a gay nightclub or a community center in San Bernardino, the Boston Marathon, Fort Hood, 9/11 — that isn’t the only purpose to this,” she said. “What’s the upside? We keep bringing in all of these elderly, sickly poor people. They aren’t fleeing anything except not as good or free health care in Yemen as in America. We have our own poor people. We have our own elderly.”

:Must not drink tea when reading: Not as good or free health care in America? Okaaaaaaaaaay, we’re on another planet now, right? Because on the planet known as Earth, the country known as America has never had good or free health care. People don’t completely uproot themselves and place themselves in tenuous and frightening position because American healthcare. This is jaw-dropping willful delusion.

Well, so much for “Give me your tired, your poor,” plus Coulter doesn’t generally express much concern about impoverished American citizens. And several studies have indicated that neither legal nor undocumented immigrants are a drain on social services. Check out The New Republic’s analysis here. And, of course, some of the attacks she cited were committed by people born in the U.S. (Surprisingly, she did not mention the Bowling Green Massacre.) But misleading rhetoric like Coulter’s is exactly what builds support for Trump’s xenophobic policies.

The republican insistence on any and all terrorism being “outside” once again emphasises their view on domestic terrorism: oh, that? No, no such thing. America has a huge problem with homegrown terrorism, and the denial continues, and we will pay for that, because all those homegrown terrorists think they are home free in the Fascist States of America now. They aren’t far wrong, either.

We’ve been reporting a lot on the past week on potential Trump executive orders affecting LGBT people. First there were rumors that he would undo President Obama’s executive order prohibiting companies with federal contracts from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. He then announced he would not, a decision that was reportedly influenced by daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner — although they are hardly real allies of LGBT people.

Some on the far right were not pleased with Trump’s decision. Among them was Alan Keyes, who worked in the Reagan administration and has sought the presidency, both as a Republican and as a member of minor parties.

Oh goody, yet another World Nut Daily talking head. This is sure to be predictable: Queer Bad! Transgender Terrifying!

“The existential perpetuation of humanity depends upon procreation,” Keyes wrote. “The relations between man and woman, with a view to human procreation, toward which they are naturally impelled, therefore involve unalienable right.” LGBT people, according to Keyes, are “impelled by their own will and preference toward lifestyles that have no special regard for the common good.” And they “deny and disparage the God-endowed natural right of procreation,” he added.

People have the right to eschew procreation altogether, y’know. Some people want sprogs, some people don’t. The key here being people. Their particular orientation doesn’t matter. All manner of hetero people can’t have sprogs, but still want them. Do they get booted onto the icky queer pile?

Keyes may be more pleased about another LGBT-related executive order, a draft of which was obtained and published by The Nation last week. It would provide companies, nonprofits, and even government employees a broad license to discriminate, without repercussions, against LGBT people and anyone else who offends a certain set of religious beliefs. The protected beliefs are that only heterosexual marriages are legitimate, that sexual relations are reserved for such marriages, that life begins at conception, and that gender is fixed at birth. White House spokesman Sean Spicer has refused to confirm or deny that the order is under consideration. We haven’t seen the far-right media weighing in on it yet, but activist groups such as the National Organization for Marriage are pushing it.

Another thing that didn’t please the far right last week was the Boy Scouts of America’s decision to admit transgender boys. “The BSA folded on God and how he ‘made them male and female,’” wrote Brent Bozell in a column on Townhall. “In today’s culture, the secular left lets man overrule God. This cowardly shell of an organization should just scrap the references to God, and every God-respecting church should jettison their Boy Scout units to the nearest secular gathering place.” He of course ignores the fact that an increasing number of churches accept and affirm transgender people — and these congregations most likely respect God.

That would be one particular god. That particular god is rejected by a whole lot of people. It has no place in my head or life. I am, as ever, amused by the whole “made them male and female” crap. Yeah, yeah, and supposedly, they were made in Jehovah’s image, too. Christians never ever think that through.

The Advocate has the full run down on fascism today.

 

A Peek Through the Window…

Via Twitter.

Via Twitter.

The NY Times has a look into the state of things in the white house. If anything, I’d say the article tries much too hard to be kind to the Tiny Dictator, and to paint him in a good light. You need to look past all the sweet icing smeared about, and pay attention to the substance. The Times describes Trump as an “outsider” president, which is utter bullshit. Trump is a sociopathic con man with absolutely no political experience. Tell the fucking truth! The substance is not at all good. As it turns out, the executive order Trump signed, placing Bannon on the NSC? Trump didn’t have the slightest idea that’s what he was signing, and he’s busy sulking about it now. Apparently, we not only have an unpresident who won’t look in the rearview mirror at all, but one who won’t read “his own” orders prior to signing. Outside of the whirlwind clusterfuck, Trump seems to spend most of his time rattling about the white house, watching television and tweeting.

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