Internet Outrage.

Included with the purchase of a gold ear cuff, the note read, “‘Dear Ivanka, Thank you so much for your web order! We’re happy to let you know that the proceeds of your sale have been generously donated to the American Immigration Council, the Everytown for Gun Safety organization, and the Hillary Clinton campaign.”

The note was signed, “Best, Jill + Sabine,” with the Instagram photo captioned, “Dear @ivankatrump, #thanksbutnothanks #payitFORWARD.”

There’s no internet outrage quite like the outrage of Trumpians. The owners of jewelry store acknowledged Ivanka Trump’s purchase, and posted this to Instagram, where upon there was a trumplosion, so to speak.

“Loooooosers ! Say buh bye to your company,” wrote ilianaruizjcj.

fearss33 wrote, “Brag it up!! Very poor business choice! Your company is fucked!!”

“Disgusting! Keep your political views to yourself. Run your business with class. Hope you loose [sic] lots of money from being so ignorant,” added valleygrrrl, with another commenter chiming in, “I’m utterly in shock of your display of professionalism. I hate to, no actually ladies I’m not afraid to say but karma is a b*tch and I know it will come back to hurt you.”

Things weren’t much better on Facebook, with Beau Patterson calling them, “Self-serving, tacky tw*ts,” and JJ Lars, adding, ” F*cking worthless c*ck suckers!”

Laura Fleckenstein advocated trying to damage their business, writing, “I just sent them about 100 emails. Block up there [sic] business.”

And no comment thread infested with Trump fans would be complete without an all-caps rant, courtesy of Susan Phipps: “EVERYONE BOYCOTT LADY GREY..WE HAVE NEVER OF HEARD OF THIS CHEAP UGLY JEWELRY.. BUT WHAT FEW CUSTOMERS THEY DO HAVE NEED TO BOYCOTT..RUDE..DISREPECTFUL UNGRATEFUL BUSINESS..AND REALLY UGLY JEWELRY! IT MUST BE HARD FOR THOSE WHO WROTE THIS LETTER TO BE SO JEALOUS OF A RICH..SUCCESSFUL..BEAUTIFULWOMAN LIKE IVANKA WHO IS LOVED BY MILLIONS! #boycottladygrey”

I’m afraid Ms. Phipps of the all caps rage is a fine example of someone who doesn’t take out 10 seconds to think anything through.  “Cheap ugly jewelry.” “Really ugly jewelry.” Um, that cheap, really ugly jewelry was purchased to be worn by the “rich…successful…beautifulwoman” Ivanka Trump. Ooopsie.

Full story here.

Twitter, Oh Twitter IV.

Shutterstock.

Shutterstock.

Twitter is pulling a “look at us, we’re doing something, we really are, look!” They are busy suspending accounts which they think are promoting extremism and terrorism.

Twitter said Thursday it has suspended 235,000 accounts as part of its crackdown on accounts that have violated policies on the promotion of extremism and terrorism over the last six months. With the latest move, the total number of suspended accounts in the past year has reached 360,000.

In February, the microblogging platform announced that 125,000 accounts had been banned for the same reasons since mid-2015. Twitter joined the fight against terrorism after it faced criticism over the level of extremist content that was detected on its network. Twitter said daily suspensions of terrorism-linked accounts have jumped 80 percent since last year and that such suspensions usually rise just after terrorist attacks.

“The world has witnessed a further wave of deadly, abhorrent terror attacks across the globe,” Twitter said in a statement. “We strongly condemn these acts and remain committed to eliminating the promotion of violence or terrorism on our platform.”

Twitter said it has expanded its teams that review reported violations, and also expanded the number of groups it works with to counter violent extremism online.

[…]

“Our work is not done,” Twitter said on its blog post, adding: “Our efforts continue to drive meaningful results, including a significant shift in this type of activity off of Twitter.”

I’ll say your work isn’t done, it isn’t even started yet. Hell, it isn’t even acknowledged. I don’t have any problem with suspending accounts which have no point except to spread hatred and violence, but I can’t help seeing this as a smoke and mirrors move on the part of Twitter execs who do not want to face the real problem – that their platform is made for, and largely supported by trolls who delight in vicious harassment. Twitter has been taken to task about this so many times now, and they always have excuses, there are always plenty of harrumphs and paragraphs of glib nothingness, but no solutions provided, no changes made. Oh yes, they banned Milo whateveritis, and while I’m sure that helped some, this still leaves just about every woman and person of colour on that platform open to vile harassment on a large scale. No one should have to be utterly exhausted at the end of each day, attempting to filter and block, just because they want to engage in some friendly banter, update, or exchange news. Twitter could be a good platform, but it would require sweeping changes, and Twitter would have to take a hit by removing their troll base, and I’m pretty sure that won’t happen.

Via Raw Story.

Trump Will Make Jesus Come Back.

Frank Amedia.

Frank Amedia.

Frank Amedia, a pastor who says he is serving in a volunteer capacity as Donald Trump’s “Christian policy” liaison, said last month that God told him last year that Trump would win the GOP nomination and that he believes Trump has been “raised up” to help pave the way for the Second Coming.

Amedia spoke with Steve Strang, the founder of the Pentecostal magazine Charisma, on Strang’s podcast on the day Donald Trump effectively won the Republican presidential nomination; the podcast was posted online last week.

[…]

“In this instance, it’s not because Donald Trump has heralded his faith or the name of God, but the Lord has put His favor upon him, and how amazing it is that the favor of God can overcome so many mistakes, so many bumbles, so many things that otherwise we would think would destroy somebody in business, destroy them in politics, destroy them in relationships. But yet it’s very evident it was the will of the Lord to do this and here we sit now.”

Amedia then told Strang that he believes there is “a skirmish going on” in the “heavenlies” right now that “is the beginnings of the preparation of the way of the coming of the Lord.”

As part of this preparation for the Second Coming, he said, a “breaker anointing” has taken place, giving Trump the power to break up “established norms” that have not served the “Kingdom of God.” (This is a reference to a passage in the Old Testament Book of Micah about the end of days.)

Breaking up the established norms. Hmm, okay, I think that can be translated as “only white, straight christians who are politically incorrect are okay, yessir!”

“And this breaker anointing is manifesting in so many different facets on earth today,” he said. “One of them is the political realm, one of them is right here in the United States, and I perceive that Donald Trump has been raised up with that breaker anointing to just begin to crush all of the strangleholds that have been placed upon this country. And, let’s face it, this country influences the world. And the positions that he’s taken, albeit in not quite the personality that you and I would walk out into, is accomplishing in establishing a lot of what were established norms and are established norms that haven’t been very effective at all on serving the principles of the Kingdom of God.”

Um, Frank, I hate to break this to you, but just up there ^, you were yakking about Jesus coming back, raining down destruction and all that; now you’re yakking about how Trump is gonna make this a god huggin’ power to be feared country again, dominating the world, and taking its rightful place as bestest country ever. I think you need to pick here. Hmmm. Jesus or power. Power or Jesus. Power…or what now?

Via Right Wing Watch.

Cool Stuff Friday.

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The California Pipevine Swallowtail (Battus philenor hirsuta) is a locally rare butterfly within San Francisco. Now, thanks to California Academy of Sciences aquatic biologist, Tim Wong, the butterfly species is gradually repopulating in the area again.

The biologist built a greenhouse for the butterflies in his own backyard. It had all the perfect conditions for butterflies to grow – sunlight, temperature fluctuations, and an occasional nice breeze. He also learned that the butterflies only feed on one plant – the California pipevine (Aristolochia californica), which was pretty hard to track down. After a while, Wong found the plant in a botanical garden, which allowed him to take a few clippings of the plant. Once his butterfly paradise was built, Wong transported 20 caterpillars to it and let them grow. Now, around 3 years later, his butterfly home is thriving, and he’s not stopping yet!

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This is just so very cool. You can see more here.

The Emperor Has No Balls.

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Most of this post will be under the fold. It’s best to be aware that once something is seen, it’s seen. If you don’t want to see naked, don’t look. If you don’t want to see Trump, don’t look. If you don’t want to see Naked Trump, seriously, don’t look. Now that’s out of the way:

According to the Washington Post, anarchist artist collective INDECLINE has placed naked statues of Trump around the country Thursday morning. They were unveiled in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cleveland and Seattle. INDECLINE posted videos of itself making the statues on YouTube.

“I don’t expect these things to last more than 30 or 45 minutes,” an anonymous spokesman for INDECLINE told the Post. “But I would love to watch some irate 65-year-old Trump supporter try to take thing down with his bare hands.”

[Read more…]

Cop Union: Accountability? Uh uh, Give Us Money.

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus can’t meaningfully discipline his officers under current contract rules. CREDIT: AP Photo/Eric Gay

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus can’t meaningfully discipline his officers under current contract rules. CREDIT: AP Photo/Eric Gay.

City leaders in San Antonio will soon vote on a new union contract for police officers that contains no reforms to accountability processes for cops, because the officers’ union wanted more money before agreeing to higher standards.

Mayor Ivy Taylor brought a seven-point list of reforms to union negotiators this spring, the San Antonio Express-News reports, but none made it into the contract. If the City Council ratifies the deal on September 1, the city will continue to face tight limits on how it can discipline officers.

Any misconduct records older than two years cannot be used to justify punishment for new incidents. Short suspensions that officers do not appeal get erased and converted into simple reprimands on their records after two years.

Taylor’s seven-point wishlist would have ended each of those rules, giving the Chief of Police greater ability to punish repeat offenders and examine patterns of behavior across an officer’s full career when deciding to suspend, demote, or fire a cop.

“The (police) chief (William McManus) and I feel that it is important, but the union was not willing to consider that and they wanted to be paid for any changes in the disciplinary process,” city manager Sheryl Sculley told the Express-News.

The contract already includes a 14 percent raise over four years. The raises union officials reportedly sought in exchange for reform would have been over and above those pay bumps — something that one activist called “essentially extortion.”

[Read more…]

Among Those Arrested…

Scatter Their Own Juliana Brown Eyes-Clifford and Scotti Clifford get arrested during the Dakota Access Pipeline confrontation. Photo courtesy of Arlo Iron Cloud.

Scatter Their Own Juliana Brown Eyes-Clifford and Scotti Clifford get arrested during the Dakota Access Pipeline confrontation. Photo courtesy of Arlo Iron Cloud.

Juliana Brown Eyes-Clifford and her husband, Scotti Clifford, were among the arrested on Monday at the Sacred Stone Camp.

“This is about water and land,” said Juliana Brown Eyes-Clifford who along with her husband Scotti Clifford, both from the band Scatter Their Own, were arrested. “We have to take a stand to protect the water and land for generations to come.”

Via Lakota Country Times.

ETA: The latest update from Sacred Stone Camp:

Aho ma relatives wopida dida tanka for all your support as you know many of our defenders have been arrested and the camp has grown considerably in size we are struggling to feed everyone and to get our defenders bailed out things we could not do without your support.. pls contribute in any way that you are able. prayers and donations we are very grateful for everyones help.. water is life the most sacred elder of creation without her all life stops..

If you can help, with money, signal boosting, your presence, supplies, please do.

I featured their music some time ago, and here it is again.

Scatter Their Own, Scotti Clifford and Juliana Brown Eyes-Clifford (Oglala Lakota). Scatter Their Own website.

Scatter Their Own, Taste The Time.

Scatter Their Own, Don’t Fear to Tread.

Scatter Their Own, Earth & Sky.

You can read more about Scatter Their Own here.

Dakota Access Standoff Calls on Obama.

The Camp of the Sacred Stones has swelled from a few dozen to more than 2,500, according to Standing Rock Sioux Tribe officials. They are calling for further review of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the end of July without a full environmental assessment. Courtesy Little Redfeather Design/Honor the Earth.

The Camp of the Sacred Stones has swelled from a few dozen to more than 2,500, according to Standing Rock Sioux Tribe officials. They are calling for further review of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the end of July without a full environmental assessment. Courtesy Little Redfeather Design/Honor the Earth.

Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II continued calling for peace and nonviolence as demonstrations continued at a construction site for the Dakota Access oil pipeline, a day after a federal district court in North Dakota granted a temporary restraining order against those it deemed were interfering with the work.

“As we have said from the beginning, demonstrations regarding the Dakota Access pipeline must be peaceful,” Archambault said in a statement to reporters on August 17. “There is no place for threats, violence or criminal activity. That is simply not our way. So, the Tribe will do all it can to see that participants comply with the law and maintain the peace. That was our position before the injunction, and that is our position now.”

Archambault also alluded to President Barack Obama’s 2014 visit to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, and his offer of help, noting that back then he did not ask the President for anything.

“I just showed him the reality of our lives,” Archambault said. “I believe both he and Michelle Obama were touched. So now if there’s any way he can intervene and move this pipeline off our treaty lands, I’m asking him.”

The temporary restraining order, dated August 16, prohibits the named defendants “and unidentified individuals,” designated as John and Jane Does, “from interfering with its right to construct the Dakota Access Pipeline (the “Pipeline”) in accordance with all local, state, and federal approvals it has obtained,” read Dakota Access LLC’s request to the court. Construction was halted due to “safety concerns,” the company said.

People vowing to protect the waters of the Missouri have gathered on land along the river owned by Standing Rock tribal member LaDonna Allard. The Sacred Stone Spiritual Camp, as it is called, has been occupied since April. It swelled from a few dozen a week ago to more than 2,500 by August 17, according to an estimate by tribal officials.

The court sided with Dakota Access LLC and granted the restraining order on the grounds that the permits were valid and thus give the company the right to start construction on the portion that will cross Lake Oahe, which was formed by the Oahe Dam on the Missouri River.

“Dakota Access has obtained the necessary easements and rights of way to construct the Pipeline in North Dakota and the necessary federal, state, and local permits for the Oahe Crossing,” the court said in its motion. “In accordance with the permits and approvals obtained for the Pipeline project, Dakota Access has commenced construction activities in North Dakota.”

[…]

The $3.8 billion, 1,172-mile-long pipeline would cross the Missouri River itself, in addition to the lake. Standing Rock Sioux Tribe officials say that in crossing Lake Oahe and the Missouri River, the pipeline would disturb burial grounds and sacred sites on ancestral Treaty lands. Archambault said that over the past several days he had met and spoken with everyone from demonstrators, to tribal government and spiritual leaders, to state and local law enforcement officials.

“In all of these meetings, my message has been consistent—we need to work together in peace,” he said. “And, as I continue to spread this message, I believe that the word is getting out. Standing Rock wants there to be peace.”

The chairman said he has also met over the past year with federal officials from numerous agencies “to express the Tribe’s strong opposition and to let them know that we will be heard,” and noted the upcoming hearing on the tribe’s lawsuit against the Army Corps.

“Our basic position is that the Corps of Engineers has failed to follow the law and has failed to consider the impacts of the pipeline on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe,” he said.

Also pending is a lawsuit filed by Dakota Access LLC against Archambault and several others simultaneously with the motion for a restraining order. The suit was filed after Archambault and about a dozen others were arrested during the demonstrations on August 11. Construction began on August 10.

Numerous tribes have expressed support for the Standing Rock Sioux, responding to a request for “proclamations, resolutions and/or letters of support,” the tribe said in an August 15 statement. All the tribe wants, Archambault said, is that the pipeline not be built across Treaty lands.

Sacred Rock Camp.  –  Rezpect Our Water.  –   Via ICTMN.

A Match Made In Toxic Hell.

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Stephen K. Bannon.

Not long ago, Trump announced that he was bringing Breitbart’s Stephen Bannon aboard that thing he calls a campaign. This is not a good thing, given what an absolute festering sewer Breitbart is, and a good deal of the swirling shit can be credited to Bannon. So, now there’s going to be open catering to racists of all stripes.

If any more confirmation is needed of Donald Trump’s embrace of white nationalism, look no further than his selection of Stephen K. Bannon, the head honcho of Breitbart News, as his presidential campaign’s new chief executive.

With one hire Trump dispelled the fairytale he would act more presidential, while doubling down on his hate-powered campaign by allying with a toxic dump of racists, fabulists, and conspiracists posing as a news outlet. This move is perfectly aligned with Trump’s tin-foiled conspiracies that shot him to prominence beginning with blatantly fraudulent birtherism.

Just last October, a lengthy Bloomberg News profile of Bannon pronounced him “the most dangerous political operative in America.” The site’s founder, Andrew Breitbart, admiringly told the reporter that Bannon was the “Leni Riefenstahl of the Tea Party movement,” referring to the reviled Nazi propagandist.

As for Breitbart News, the Southern Poverty Law Center, commented that under Brannon’s tenure, the website has adopted the “key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right,’” including “Racist ideas,” “Anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant ideas.” (Though given the infestation of pop-up ads on Breitbart, it’s questionable if many readers make it past the panicky headlines into the ditch of festering slander and dissembling that follows.)

Trump has handed the keys of the Republican Party to Breitbart and the Alt-Right, the inevitable conclusion to decades of right-wing race-baiting and conspiracy-peddling.

Bannon’s trade is vicious slander, and he sits so far on the fringes even Glenn Beck blasted the Breitbart executive as “a horrible despicable human being.”

[…]

If racists have found a stepping stone to respectability in Breitbart, then Breitbart sees in Trump a vehicle to broaden its influence and fatten its wallet. Toward that end, its ethics are cheaper than a copy of Sarah Palin’s memoirs. Accusations dog the privately owned Breitbart that it pimped itself to Trump for an undisclosed sum of money.

It’s a match made in an outhouse. This is the path Trump took the moment he threw his hat in the ring by attacking Mexican immigrants as rapists, drug dealers, and criminals. Breitbart eagerly joined forces with Trump as have Stephen Bannon, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Roger Ailes, Ann Coulter, and every other grasping backstabber peddling hate.

Trump’s campaign is the Large Hadron Collider of white nationalism, smashing together the elemental prejudices of the right with terrifying energies and spawning new forms of bigotry. “Trump being Trump”means he is even likelier to lose the general election to Clinton.

But Trump and his white power posse will inevitably rise out of the ashes of defeat. They have a megaphone in Breitbart, a huge fundraising network, and millions of angry followers. The movement for white nationalism that Trump has consolidated can never be accommodated. It has to be destroyed.

Those final two sentences. Whether or not Trump loses, we still have a great deal to worry about. Now that white supremacy has had a resurgence, they’ll fight like hell against being pushed back to fringes once again. And if you think all those angry, toxic people were upset about having a Black president, how do you think they will feel about a woman?

Via Raw Story.

Baltimore: Lawyers, Cops, and Nazis. UPDATED.

A 2002 rally by neo-Nazi group the National Alliance (Flickr Creative Commons).

A 2002 rally by neo-Nazi group the National Alliance (Flickr Creative Commons).

A lawyer hired by the city of Baltimore to defend police officers in court has long-standing connections to a neo-Nazi group, but insists that his “crazy ideas” do not affect his work.

The New York Daily News reported Thursday that attorney Glen Keith Allen is a longtime supporter of the National Alliance, a group the Southern Poverty Law Center calls “explicitly genocidal” and which is characterized as a hate group.

Allen admits he joined the National Alliance because, “I was in the U.S. Army from 1978 to 1982 and I had some pretty awful experiences with black people there, to be honest.”

While he is not currently involved in the Freddie Gray case, Allen has defended the Baltimore Police Department in court, notably in a current lawsuit brought by Sabein Burgess, a black man says he was wrongfully convicted and spent 19 years in prison before being released in 2014.

[…]

In spite of Allen’s insistence that he left the National Alliance in the 1980s, he was still paying membership dues in 2003. The 65-year-old attorney also attended a Holocaust-denial conference in 2007, but denies that his views affect his work for the city in any way.

“I have an unblemished record in 30 years of practicing law…I have the highest ethical standards and zealous representation of my client, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the city,” he told the Daily News.

The Anti-Defamation League said that the National Alliance “dehumanize(s) both blacks and Jews, depicting them as threats to ‘Aryan culture’ and ‘racial purity.’”

Federal Election Commission (FEC) documents show that Allen is a donating member of the American Eagle Party, a fringe right group led by a man named Merlin Miller who says that Israel planned the 9/11 attacks in cahoots with the U.S. government.

“Should I be fired from the city of Baltimore because I have crazy ideas about 9/11?” Allen said.

I think you should be relieved of your position because you’re a nazi, Mr. Allen. Apparently, this doesn’t bother the city of Baltimore or cops in the least. It would certainly bother me, but I guess cops are tossing away any pretense of a standard these days.

UPDATE: Mr. Allen has been relieved of his position with the city. You can read about it here.

Via Raw Story.