Blinded by the White.

Rudy Giuliani speaks to Fox News host Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade (screen grab).

A panel of white hosts and pundits on Fox News asserted that Donald Trump’s Tuesday speech to a nearly all-white audience in Wisconsin showed that the Republican presidential nominee did not “take the black vote for granted” like they said Democrats had done for years.

On Tuesday, Trump traveled to West Bend, Wisconsin — which is 95 percent white — to ask “for the vote for every African-American citizen struggling in our society today who wants a different and much better future.”

Trump campaign adviser Rudy Giuliani joined three white Fox News hosts — Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade — on Wednesday to praise Trump’s African-American outreach.

“Consider how dangerous that was,” Giuliani opined. “Going into Milwaukee in the middle of the riots and talking about law and order. But also talking about what needs to be done to help minority communities, African-American communities, poor communities to come out of the situation that they’re in. No one has offered answers like that together.”

[…]

“When he looked and said, ‘I know there’s a problem in the community, I’m not ignoring you, I want your vote,’ Republicans don’t even go for the black vote and Democrats take it for granted!” the Fox News host added. “Therefore, the African-Americans and minorities are the losers in this situation. He addressed that last night!”

“He addressed it directly,” Giuliani replied. “And he addressed the big problem we’ve had for maybe 30, 40 years and why we can’t crack through. The Democratic Party, including Hillary Clinton, takes the black vote for granted.”

“More food stamps, more welfare, more dependency programs, more blaming it on government,” he declared.

Y’know, I’m pretty sure that all those people of colour, in a town which is 95% white, know exactly what Trump thinks is the problem: people of colour. It’s pretty damned insulting to attack and insult persons of colour, then going on to state that they are just a wee bit stupid, voting against their own interests by voting democratic. These peoples’ mouths never met a foot they didn’t like. Yikes.

Via Raw Story.

Dakota Access Pipeline Standoff.

Courtesy Standing Rock Dakota Access Pipeline Opposition
Police line up before protesters near the construction site of the Dakota Access oil pipeline.

The controversial Dakota Access Pipeline project is back in the news. Over the weekend, tribal activists faced off against lines of police in Hunkpapa Territory near Cannon Ball as construction crews prepared to break ground for the new pipeline, while Standing Rock Sioux governmental officials resolved to broaden their legal battle to stop the project.

On July 26, 2016 the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe was stunned to learn that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had given its approval for the pipeline to run within a half-mile of the reservation without proper consultation or consent. Also, the new 1,172 mile Dakota Access Pipeline will cross Lake Oahe (formed by Oahe Dam on the Missouri) and the Missouri River as well, and disturb burial grounds and sacred sites on the tribe’s ancestral Treaty lands, according to SRST officials.

Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners will build, own and operate the proposed $3.78 billion Dakota Access Pipeline and plans to transport up to 570,000 barrels of crude oil fracked from the Bakken oil fields across four states to a market hub in Illinois. The pipeline—already facing widespread opposition by a coalition of farmers, ranchers and environmental groups—will cross 209 rivers, creeks and tributaries, according to Dakota Access, LLC.

Standing Rock Sioux leaders say the pipeline will threaten the Missouri River, the tribe’s main source of drinking and irrigation water, and forever destroy burial grounds and sacred sites.

“We don’t want this black snake within our Treaty boundaries,” said Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II. “We need to stop this pipeline that threatens our water. We have said repeatedly we don’t want it here. We want the Army Corps to honor the same rights and protections that were afforded to others, rights we were never afforded when it comes to our territories. We demand the pipeline be stopped and kept off our Treaty boundaries.”

[Read more…]

33.

Whitehouse.gov
One of the most dramatic shifts in federal-Indian relationships occurred under the administration of Harry S. Truman. His presidency marked the end of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Indian New Deal and the beginning of the termination era.

One of the most dramatic shifts in federal-Indian relationships occurred under the administration of Harry S. Truman.

When Truman took office in 1945, Indians had unprecedented autonomy under the Indian New Deal, enacted more than a decade earlier by Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Indian New Deal abolished the allotment program, allowed tribal communities to organize their own governments and ushered in an era of hope.

Under Roosevelt, Indians enjoyed a 12-year reprieve from aggressive assimilation policies. They had breathing room to regenerate tribal governments and reclaim land.

But Truman’s presidency marked the end of this New Deal and the beginning of Indian termination, a series of policies that sought—once again—to assimilate Indians. Billed as vehicles to integrate Indians into the wider nation and protect them from racial discrimination in the post-World War II era, termination policies dismantled trust relationships, relocated Indians to urban centers and stripped tribes of land and sovereignty.

“Truman parted with Roosevelt and with the philosophies of the Indian New Deal,” said Samuel Rushay, supervisory archivist at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum. “He adopted the termination policy out of good intentions because he wanted to encourage racial integration.”

Truman supported termination because he saw it as a way to protect equal rights and improve Indian lives through full participation as citizens, Rushay said. It also lightened the economic burden Indian services placed on the federal government.

“It’s important to remember that Truman tended to conflate Native American rights with the rights of other minorities,” Rushay said. “He saw them as individuals who should have individual rights and freedoms, but he did not take into proper account the importance of tribal culture. He didn’t understand that tribal relationships were an integral part of culture and identity. He didn’t know that by relocating Indians to urban areas he was cutting off their support.”

Within the first decade of the termination era, policies that Truman supported terminated more than 100 tribes, severing their trust relationships with the federal government. Termination defined federal Indian policy for the next 25 years and forever altered the dynamics between tribes and the federal government.

[Read more…]

Trump Loves Keystone XL.

Via ICTMN.

Interesting Timing…

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

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

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

[…]

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

[…]

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

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

Full story here.

The Paycheck Goes Bounce.

Well, if anyone wants a preview of Trump’s America, perhaps they should read about Trump Magazine. Carey Purcell worked for the mag, and has the insider view, at Politico.

I had been at Trump magazine for only four months when my first paycheck bounced.

We’d heard rumors of the company’s financial troubles, but I had no idea how bad it really was until my landlord called me one afternoon to tell me that my rent check hadn’t cleared. I logged into my online banking account and saw, to my amazement, that the magazine I worked for—the one with the billionaire’s name on the cover—had stiffed me. Although it was a stressful moment, the irony was not lost on me. It felt like I was living in an Onion article: “Luxury Lifestyle Magazine Can’t Pay Its Own Employees.”

It was the fall of 2006, and Trump magazine was my first job in journalism—albeit as the receptionist. I’d landed the gig by answering an ad on Craigslist. Fresh out of journalism school, I moved to New York with two undergraduate degrees, my student loans, some meager savings and dreams of becoming a theater critic. The receptionist gig paid a paltry $25,000 per year—barely minimum wage. And that was when the checks cleared.

Personally, I had never been a fan of Donald Trump and knew very little about the man. I had never seen The Apprentice and I was hardly a real estate expert. The piles of fan mail that arrived at our office addressed to him—filled with adoring testaments to his “genius”—amused me to no end. We received handwritten letters asking for money, a formal request for Donald’s daughter Ivanka to escort a woman’s son to his Junior Ring Dance at the Air Force Academy, and incoherent six-page rants about the state of the economy and how Trump was the only man who could fix it. One letter stated, “I sincerely hope you will run for president someday.”

Before I was hired at Trump, the magazine had already gained a reputation, most of which I wouldn’t find out about until after it folded. And by that time, I had been diagnosed with cancer and—thanks to Trump—lost my health coverage.

I don’t think anyone will be particularly surprised by what a slipshod con the whole thing was, an advertisement for Trump’s ego, and little more. It’s damn interesting reading, though, especially the financial aspects.

The whole story is at Politico.

That Is Pathetic.

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

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

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

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

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

‘That is pathetic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Via Gay Star News.

Trump Confederacy in Kissimmee.

KISSIMMEE, Fla. — The most controversial moment of a Donald Trump rally here Thursday night may have come before the bombastic candidate took the stage. For a solid 20 minutes, a Confederate flag with the words “Trump 2016” hung from the railing in the Silver Spurs Arena.

It was easily visible even as public figures like Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and Pastor Mark Burns gave warm-up speeches before the Republican presidential nominee took the stage. Then minutes before Trump began his speech, organizers asked the supporters who brought the flag into the venue to furl it.

The imagery harkens back to a heated debate throughout the South over the flag’s racist meaning after another mass shooting, in Charleston, S.C., which ended with the flag being removed from the capitol grounds. It also harkens back to a New York Times video that recently went viral that recorded unfiltered remarks by Trump supporters that were unabashedly racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic. Confederate symbolism makes an apperance there as well.

The media doesn’t often focus on the attitude of the Trump crowds. Even in this latest case, as tends to happen at Trump rallies, such symbolism got brushed aside as the crowd got whipped up over other matters.

[…]

Most importantly, Trump was speaking in a suburb of Orlando two months after the Pulse massacre and hours after meeting with pastors and evangelicals during an event critics have called an anti-LGBT gathering. Trump made mention of the Orlando attack, saying more people should have reported shooter Omar Mateen to the FBI: “People knew he was demented.” In fact, Mateen was interviewed multiple times by the FBI based on complaints placed by those who knew him.

Clearly building off the closed-door discussions with leaders at the American Renewal Project conference in Orlando earlier in the day, Trump appealed to social conservatives in the room. “The evangelicals took me to a point that I never even thought we could reach,” he said. “All around the country we did well.”

The Advocate has the full story. Speaking of the intense anti-LGBT gathering in Orlando, again, Marco Rubio just will not shut up about being a keynote speaker, and keeps on attempting to defend his stance, while at the same time, telling people not to be judgmental. Hypocrisy knows no limit where Rubio is concerned:

ORLANDO — In a speech laden with scripture, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio on Friday compelled church leaders at a conference here to “abandon the spirit of judgment” against LGBT neighbors. The remarks came on the two-month anniversary of a shooting at the Pulse night club located about 10 miles from the religious gathering.

[…]

Rubio was the headline speaker for The American Renewal Project’s two-day event in Orlando, and on Friday devoted much of a 30-minute speech to encouraging preachers to create an accepting environment free of discrimination. “In order to love people, we have to listen to them,” he said. “When it comes to our brothers and our sisters, our fellow Americans, our neighbors in the LGBT community, we should recognize that our nation, while the greatest nation in the history of mankind, is one with a history that has been marred by the discrimination against and the rejection of gays and lesbians.”

He also emphasized his continued opposition to marriage equality, saying his faith called for the elevation of the “union of one man and one woman.” But he said Christian leaders should understand many gays and lesbians felt “angry and humiliated” that the law until recently did not recognize their own loving relationships. “Many have experienced sometimes severe condemnation and judgment from some Christians,” Rubio said. “They have heard some say that the reason God will bring condemnation on America is because of them. As if somehow God was willing to put up with adultery and gluttony and greed and pride, but now this is the last straw.”

[…]

Rubio’s anti-LGBT record is lengthy. The senator doesn’t support the Equality Act proposed in Congress, for example. It would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the 1967 Civil Rights Act, ensuring protection from discrimination in housing and employment. When he had a chance to vote in 2013, Rubio voted against passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which some moderate Republicans helped pass 64-32 in the Senate, though it would stall in the House. But his discriminatory policy stands don’t stop there. Rubio has in the past said letting LGBT people adopt children is a “social experiment” that he opposes. He also opposed reversing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that required LGBT people to stay closeted while serving in the U.S. military.

The Advocate has the full story.

Diagnosing Tea Party Style.

Dr. Jane Orient (Screen cap via NewsMax TV).

On Wednesday, pro-Trump website Breitbart published Dr. Jane Orient’s unfounded speculation that Hillary Clinton could be “medically unfit to serve,” referring to Dr. Orient as the “executive director of a physicians’ organization.”

AAPS is a small nonprofit organization with Tea Party ties that prioritizes “individual liberty, personal responsibility, [and] limited government.” Their journal, as Mother Jones reported, has published articles suggesting that abortion causes breast cancer, that vaccines cause autism, and that AIDS is not caused by HIV. (Breitbart, naturally, has publishedarticles lending credence to at least two of these disproven theories.)

The AAPS also has a long history with the Clintons as well. The organization’s “About” page prominently features its opposition to the 1993 Clinton health care plan. In fact, the organization spent the better part of the ’90s embroiled in litigation against the former first lady, first suing her in 1993 to gain access to the records of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform. Eventually, in 1999, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the Clinton administration.

[…]

Orient is quite the Trump fan, which of course, make her long distance diagnoses perfectly okay, yessir.

“Surely [Trump’s] style can be abrasive and blunt,” she wrote. “But a huge number of ordinary Americans cheer him, probably because he said what they were thinking.”

Her praise for Trump supporters continues: “They are sick of being pushed around and disrespected by the politically correct crowd who are hypersensitive about almost everything—but constantly spew profane, obscene, and vulgar language that demeans American and Christian culture and blames it for all the world’s evil.”

[…]

In her blog post, Orient repeats the usual conspiracy theories about the former Secretary of State’s physical condition. First, she comments on the photograph of Clinton supposedly having difficulty with a set of stairs, which was actually taken after an accidental slip.

“Did she simply trip?” Orient asks. And then, breathlessly: “Or was it a seizure or a stroke?”

In addition to that bit of grossly unethical speculation, Orient uses circuitous, Trump-esque phrasing to paint a picture of an ailing Clinton.

Instead of using the signature Trump phrase “many people are saying,” for example, Orient says that “it is widely stated that [Clinton] experienced a fall that caused a concussion” (emphasis added). She opines that certain videos of the Democratic nominee, “if authentic,” are “very concerning.” And she packs a mouthful of qualifiers into her claim that an object in a Secret Service agent’s hand “purportedly might have been an autoinjector of Valium” (emphasis added).

[…]

The irony of Orient adding fuel to that fire is that she herself is critical in the blog post of people who are “tossing out psychiatric diagnoses” such as narcissistic personality disorder to criticize Trump. …But even when asked why she would critique lay diagnoses of Trump if she engages in speculation about Clinton, Orient insisted that her choice was not unethical or hypocritical.

“Asking questions based on observable events is not engaging in unfounded speculation,” she told The Daily Beast. “I feel it would be irresponsible to ‘choose’ not to raise important questions.”

Via The Daily Beast.

ZAPP presents…Famous Trump Quotations!

Nothing else today will be anywhere near as cool as this gift from Billy West, so this is Cool Stuff Friday. :D

ZAPP presents…Famous Trump Quotations! pic.twitter.com/cFq1rQ4veY

— Billy West (@TheBillyWest) August 11, 2016

ZAPP presents…Famous Trump Quotations!#MakeAmericaBrannigan pic.twitter.com/2Cls63Gc8G

— Billy West (@TheBillyWest) August 11, 2016

Zapp presents…Famous Quotations from Donald J Trump#MakeAmericaBrannigan pic.twitter.com/cyDReNPT7U

— Billy West (@TheBillyWest) August 11, 2016

Zapp presents…Famous Quotations by Donald J Trump!#MakeAmericaBrannigan pic.twitter.com/sk43xwslwg

— Billy West (@TheBillyWest) August 11, 2016

ZAPP presents…Famous Trump Quotations!#MakeAmericaBrannigan pic.twitter.com/guqadM7P02

— Billy West (@TheBillyWest) August 12, 2016

MAKE AMERICA BRANNIGAN!

Where the Confederacy Is Rising Again.

John Savage at Politico has an in-depth article about the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who not only continue their constant fight to keep confederate statues, symbols, and flags in place and protected, but are now planning a massive confederate monument, at the intersection of Interstate 10 and Orange’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, in the town of Orange, East Texas. Nothing subtle about that.

…Throughout this tempest, the Texas chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, an aging army of deeply religious, federal government distrusting, neo-Confederate true believers, has emerged as a steadfast defender of Confederate iconography. The Texas SCV only claims about 5,000 members, but their ideology carries significant weight in the state. SCV members sued the University of Texas in an effort to stop the removal of the Jefferson Davis statue. They distributed more than 1,000 Confederate flags in Fort Worth after the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo banned the Confederate battle flag. Wherever someone wants to rename a school or remove a statue that honors the Confederacy, the SCV’s members soon follow.

But the Texas SCV is not only fighting against the disappearance of Confederate symbolism, they are behind the construction of what is likely the largest Confederate memorial built in a century — a multi-ton shrine nearing completion in an east Texas town near the Louisiana border. For the SCV, this battle is not just about protecting a Confederate heritage, it’s about resurrecting it, restoring that heritage so that they will continue to have something to protect.

[…]

Jim Toungate is the adjutant of the Williamson County chapter of the Texas SCV, and Savage had a long interview with him at his residence.

[Read more…]

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For the Flat Earthers Out There:

ICE clashes with Chicagoland weredogs over the weekend (Fiction)

Interesting Timing…

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The Paycheck Goes Bounce.

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Diagnosing Tea Party Style.

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ZAPP presents…Famous Trump Quotations!

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