Yeah, about that Charlie Hebdo cover…

Mano Singham has a good post up about all the upset. As for me, this was my comment there:

Y’know, I don’t really see how this is different from noisy christian assholes saying ‘god’ was punishing Texas for having a gay mayor and allowing abortion. Yet that’s acceptable, and the mockery on the part of Hebdo isn’t.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/kevin-swanson-hurricane-harvey-is-gods-judgment-on-houston-for-having-a-very-aggressively-pro-homosexual-mayor/

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/dave-daubenmire-hurricane-harvey-is-judgment-on-houston-for-abortion-and-having-had-a-lesbian-mayor/

They are saying it’s the victims’ fault, too. No one is yelling about that.

I can’t get all that worked up about the cover. Is it nice to mock victims of a not so natural (climate change) disaster? No. Are there lots of people in Texas, who while they may not be outright nazis, share many a view with them? Probably. Is the United States swirling down the drain of fascism fair game? Yeah, I think it is. When you’re presenting a HUGE fucked-upness on the world stage, you have to learn to take it now and then, and before reacting, at least give yourself a few moments for thinking.

I gave two examples of people who consider themselves to be patriots, conservatives, and christian. They are pointing their minatory finger, and that of Jehovah straight at Texas, and all those victims of the flood. Oh yes, goddidit, and it’s all their fault. They are unabashedly placing the blame on the victims, and yet, not even a whimper of protest, let alone a roar. Until all those fine, outraged Americans find enough spine to spit in the face of their fellow christians hollering judgment, I think you should sit down and be quiet. Look to home, and deal with all the assholes and wannabe terrorists right here. They are everywhere, all around you. Try to have something to say about that.

ETA: Oh, we have another fine example! Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos (R-TX):

Quebec’s Minister of International Relations Christine St-Pierre called Pablos to express her sorrow and condolences on behalf of the people of the Canadian province. She also offered equipment and manpower.

Pablos turned it down. Instead he asked for “prayers from the people of Quebec,” the minister relayed.

Understandably, the neighbor to the north was shocked.

“It was a conversation about how devastating the situation is and we want to express our support to the people of Texas,” she told CBC News in an interview.

Isn’t that just splendid, Americans? Goodness, how those republicans do look after your best interests. We deserve every drop of fucking mockery directed our way. Via Raw Story.

Sunday Facepalm.

The immaturity of so many conservative, christian white males is, at times, unbelievable. Like so many toddlers who never saw a reason to mature emotionally or intellectually, too many of them are in seats of power, or close to them, and happily enable swathes of equally immature assholes to continue in asshole behaviour and rhetoric. One leading the pack in the immaturity stakes is the ever noisy Wayne Allyn Root. Once again, he’s spitting and frothing about women, but specifically, liberal women. And liberal men, just the worst y’know.

On his Wednesday radio program, right-wing commentator, conspiracy theorist and Donald Trump–obsessed sycophant Wayne Allyn Root gushed about President Trump’s rally in Arizona the night before, rejoicing that Trump is “a real man” to whom liberals just don’t know how to respond.

Root said that he, like Trump, is also “a real guy’s guy” and was treated the same way by all the “liberal, spoiled brat, lucky sperm club pussycat” wussies he encountered while attending Columbia University.

Mr. Root never stays quiet over just how much he’s a “real man”, a “real man’s man”, and a “real guy’s guy”. Honestly, if he got himself a neon suit advertising his base insecurity, it would be more subtle. He makes sure to tell people, frequently, how efficiently he can beat people up, because that’s one of those markers of a real man. He makes sure to mention, often, that “locker room talk and vulgarity towards women is real man stuff, too. Now, those one the liberal and humanitarian side of life are assigned to people who can’t cope with a “real man.” I’ve said before, and I’ll say again, most of us know exactly how to deal with such types. They are commonly known as assholes.

“Liberal, spoiled brat, lucky sperm club pussycat” wussies. :Laughs: Sometimes, I really do think it’s a pity such men can’t genuinely hear themselves. This is almost painfully pitiful, and an old, old song.

Root said that liberal men “don’t know how to fight and they don’t know how to argue” and only pretend to care about issues “because you’re a guy and there are women in the room and you want to have sex.”

Lots of people want to have sex, it’s fun. Now, I’m privileged to know a whole lot of liberal people, many men among them, and they are excellent at argument, but I expect that wouldn’t meet Root’s definition, whatever it might be. Arguing is not compulsory in a relationship, which does or does not include sex. Lots of people don’t argue much, others do. I rather suspect that “argue” in Root’s lexicon means ‘be an obstinate asshole’. As for caring about issues, I imagine that matters on the other side of the camp, too, does it not? Those things tend to matter in whether or not people get together.

“It’s all B.S, is what it is,” he said. “All these liberal guys, they just want to win over women and look like a proud peacock in front of women because they know that liberal women want to hear this nonsense; ‘Oh my God, all I care about is poor people, that’s all I care about is poor people.’ And then they know, tonight they’re going to have sex with some stupid liberal woman who is ugly in the first place, because all liberal women are.”

:Laughs: I have never once, in all my long Hippie days, known a man who has said ‘Oh my God, all I care about is poor people, that’s all I care about is poor people.’ I have known men who do care about poor people, and that’s shown in their work and their actions, but they don’t pace a room packed with women, wringing their hands in refrain about the poor. That sort of idiocy seems to be the reserve of conservative christians, who are looking to make themselves rich while their flock gets poorer.

As for looking the proud peacock, I’d think the constant claims of being a “real man’s man, lookit my fists” and all that might just qualify, Mr. Root.

Via RWW.

White Supremacy: Just Background Noise.

Tucker Viemeister.

It’s a forlorn hope, that republicans might stumble over a conscience, discover their humanity and embrace that of others. It really does not seem to matter what the Tiny Tyrant does, there are those who will squink all over, in an attempt to cover over the massive piles of shit left in the wake of the Tiny Tyrant. As we have all been witness to, Trump gets worse, week by week, day by day.

As CNN noted on Friday, in the last four weeks alone, President Trump has fired chief strategist Steve Bannon, fired Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, hired and fired communications director Anthony Scaramucci, publicly shamed his own attorney general and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, banned transgender troops via twitter, made up two phone calls, thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for expelling American diplomats from the country, threatened nuclear war with North Korea, and defended attendees of a white supremacy rally.

And that’s not even half of it.

But Steve Cortes, a member of Trump’s Hispanic Advisory Council, said on Fox News Sunday morning that if Republicans just cut taxes, all of that will be background noise.

“Clearly, he had a tough week. There’s no way around that,” Cortes said.

“All presidents have tough weeks,” Cortes said Sunday. “I believe that will become background noise once we get taxes done, and once this economy starts growing the way it’s capable of.”

Yes, a tough week, brought on by the defense of fucking nazis being “fine people”. You opened your mouth, and Trump obligingly shit in it, and you decided to swallow it. Nice.

[…]

“The economy’s already accelerating. There’s a lot of optimism out there in the country,” Cortes said. “If we can throw tax cuts into the mix, I think this economy can absolutely take off, and then I think we’d see those poll numbers rebound very, very quickly for the president.”

There’s a lot of optimism out and about? Where? Oh, yes, in the crowds of nazis, sure. Everywhere else, not so much. Perhaps you should get outside once in a while. People are not optimistic about an idiotic, ignorant, maniacal bigot being in control of things, for a given value of control. People are not optimistic about not being nuked. People are not optimistic about not getting into yet another fucking war. People are not optimistic about bigotry being elevated to “great america” status. People are not optimistic about the blatant slaughter of all things which could help us avoid the worst disasters of climate change. People are not optimistic about the economy. The list goes on and on.

Rep. Dennis Ross (R-FL) made similar comments last week, telling Bloomberg that Trump’s comments about white supremacists were “frustrating” because he wanted to start focusing on tax reform.

“[It’s] very frustrating for those of us who want to start focusing on the issues ahead—tax reform, infrastructure, the debt ceiling,” Ross said. “I wished we would start focusing on those issues, and we need to start healing and bringing people together—instead of peeling back the scabs.”

Right. Your idea of tax reform is handing tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires, and you’ve made sure there are zero safety nets for everyone else. That will cheer everyone up for sure. You don’t start healing and bringing people together by announcing that nazis are “fine people” and everything was really the fault of those filthy liberals. The reason those scabs peel back so easily is that there is a massive wound underneath, still oozing blood, covered over, but certainly not healed. Healing does not take place by ignoring a wound. Now the Tiny Tyrant and his henchidiots, like you, Rep. Ross, have dumped toxic wasted in the wound, and you want to talk healing. Isolation, genocide, and subjugation are not things which heal. They do not unite. And those things are what you stand for, handwaving reality, because those people, they don’t actually matter to you.

Think Progress has the full story.

The Tiny Tyrant: Sucking Marrow from Bones.

The Secret Service has a problem – they can’t pay their employees. The Tiny Tyrant’s profligate habits, and those of his family have sucked the bones dry. While there is an obligation on the part of the service to protect key people, the sheer amount of money wasted by the Tiny Tyrant is overwhelming. Three million dollars for every weekend jaunt. Millions more for every vacation the Kushners take, and they seem to take a lot of vacations every year. Millions more for overseas coverage. Millions more for Ms. Trump and the kid to stay in NYC for months on end. Then there are the little things, like $60,000 in golf cart rentals. This from the idiot who could not stop talking about President Obama golfing now and then. Sixty Fucking Thousand Dollars. And since the Chief Idiot won’t golf anywhere except his properties, guess where the money is going? Quite the fucking racket.

WASHINGTON — The Secret Service can no longer pay hundreds of agents it needs to carry out an expanded protective mission – in large part due to the sheer size of President Trump’s family and efforts necessary to secure their multiple residences up and down the East Coast.

Secret Service Director Randolph “Tex” Alles, in an interview with USA TODAY, said more than 1,000 agents have already hit the federally mandated caps for salary and overtime allowances that were meant to last the entire year.

The agency has faced a crushing workload since the height of the contentious election season, and it has not relented in the first seven months of the administration. Agents must protect Trump – who has traveled almost every weekend to his properties in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia – and his adult children whose business trips and vacations have taken them across the country and overseas.

“The president has a large family, and our responsibility is required in law,” Alles said. “I can’t change that. I have no flexibility.”

Alles said the service is grappling with an unprecedented number of White House protectees. Under Trump, 42 people have protection, a number that includes 18 members of his family. That’s up from 31 during the Obama administration.

Overwork and constant travel have also been driving a recent exodus from the Secret Service ranks, yet without congressional intervention to provide additional funding, Alles will not even be able to pay agents for the work they have already done.

The compensation crunch is so serious that the director has begun discussions with key lawmakers to raise the combined salary and overtime cap for agents, from $160,000 per year to $187,000 for at least the duration of Trump’s first term.

But even if such a proposal was approved, about 130 veteran agents would not be fully compensated for hundreds of hours already amassed, according to the agency.

“I don’t see this changing in the near term,” Alles said.

USA Today has the full story.

Oh, The Irony.

Ryan Roy, a former Pizzeria Uno cook who was fired for attending a white nationalist rally (Screen cap).

Ryan Roy, the charmin’ gent pictured above, was outed as a participant in the nazi mess in Charlottesville. He was identified by activists who don’t think nazis marching around is a great idea, and his employers (a South Burlington Pizzeria Uno), to their credit, promptly fired him. Naturally, Mr. Roy is being incredibly whiny about it all. Perhaps you shouldn’t choose asshole nazi as a lifestyle, given that it has consequences. Unfortunately, the massive overload of irony doesn’t seem to have impacted Mr. Roy at all. My head, on the other hand, feels right caved in.

In an interview with the Free Press, Roy decried the liberal activists who got him fired from his job and alleged they weren’t tolerant of his belief that white Americans should have their own country that is separate from all racial minorities.

Oh, well, open a beer, Mr. Roy, I’m a liberal who is happy to support you wanting your own country – get the fuck out of this one, and find one. I’ll drink to your good riddance. It’s my understanding that there are often islands for sale. Perhaps you could start there, and I’m sure in no time you could have Whitesylvania or whatever.

“I think it kind of just proves my point, proves a lot of what I think, not that I needed further proof,” Roy said. “I think it’s group think.”

Oh, rats below. You were the one in a large group, carrying torches, and chanting “blood and soil” and “Jews won’t replace us”, and you want to accuse others of group think.

Roy freely admitted to attending the rally, which he said was designed to advocate turning the United States back into a “white” country.

“Obviously I would advocate for racial separation and racial nationalism or repatriation or even a return to — our country was a white country up until the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Act,” he said.

“Our country”.  You can fuck right off, Mr. Roy. This isn’t your fucking country, and it most certainly was not white when you colonial thieves showed up and starting slaughtering everything in sight. You want white? Fine, march yourself off and find a place you can be deliriously white. It will not be this country, who has no use for fucking nazis.

Via Raw Story.

Oh, That Evil Science!

Members of the National Socialist Movement (Neo-Nazis) during a 2010 march to the Phoenix Federal building (John Kittelsrud/Flickr).

Do you remember when asshole extraordinaire, Craig Cobb got genetically tested? He’s the nazi who tried to set up NaziTown here in nDakota. Mr. Cobb wasn’t terribly pleased with his results, only 86% European. Ooops. He immediately dismissed the remaining 14% as “statistical noise”, and ran to Stormfront to dispute the results. Stormfront’s heyday was quite a number of years back, but it’s still populated with scads of delusional white people, many of whom have turned to genetic testing to affirm their whiteness. That evil science though, it just doesn’t care about a nazi’s sensibilities, and the results have had some interesting results.

With the rise of spit-in-a-cup genetic testing, there’s a trend of white nationalists using these services to prove their racial identity, and then using online forums to discuss the results.

But like Cobb, many are disappointed to find out that their ancestry is not as “white” as they’d hoped. In a new study, sociologists Aaron Panofsky and Joan Donovan examined years’ worth of posts on Stormfront to see how members dealt with the news.

It’s striking, they say, that white nationalists would post these results online at all. After all, as Panofsky put it, “they will basically say if you want to be a member of Stormfront you have to be 100 percent white European, not Jewish.”

But instead of rejecting members who get contrary results, Donovan said, the conversations are “overwhelmingly” focused on helping the person to rethink the validity of the genetic test. And some of those critiques – while emerging from deep-seated racism – are close to scientists’ own qualms about commercial genetic ancestry testing.

[…]

The team winnowed their results down to 70 discussion threads in which 153 users posted their genetic ancestry test results, with over 3,000 individual posts.

About a third of the people posting their results were pleased with what they found. “Pretty damn pure blood,” said a user with the username Sloth. But the majority didn’t find themselves in that situation. Instead, the community often helped them reject the test, or argue with its results.

Some rejected the tests entirely, saying that an individual’s knowledge about his or her own genealogy is better than whatever a genetic test can reveal. “They will talk about the mirror test,” said Panofsky, who is a sociologist of science at UCLA’s Institute for Society and Genetics. “They will say things like, ‘If you see a Jew in the mirror looking back at you, that’s a problem; if you don’t, you’re fine.'” Others, he said, responded to unwanted genetic results by saying that those kinds of tests don’t matter if you are truly committed to being a white nationalist. Yet others tried to discredit the genetic tests as a Jewish conspiracy “that is trying to confuse true white Americans about their ancestry,” Panofsky said.

[…]

For the study authors, what was most interesting was to watch this online community negotiating its own boundaries, rethinking who counts as “white.” That involved plenty of contradictions. They saw people excluded for their genetic test results, often in very nasty (and unquotable) ways, but that tended to happen for newer members of the anonymous online community, Panofsky said, and not so much for longtime, trusted members. Others were told that they could remain part of white nationalist groups, in spite of the ancestry they revealed, as long as they didn’t “mate,” or only had children with certain ethnic groups. Still others used these test results to put forth a twisted notion of diversity, one “that allows them to say, ‘No, we’re really diverse and we don’t need non-white people to have a diverse society,'” said Panofsky.

It really wouldn’t take much for the ranks of wannabe nazis to implode. The full story is here.

On Postponing The 2020 Election.

Republican. A synonym for every evil thing.

A chilling new poll conducted by scholars Ariel Malka and Yphtach Lelkes, which they write about in the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog today, finds that not only do nearly half of Republicans falsely believe that President Trump won the popular vote in 2016 and that nearly 70 percent believe that “millions of illegal immigrants voted” in the election, but that  more than half would support postponing the 2020 presidential election “until the country can make sure that only eligible American citizens can vote” if Trump were to propose it.

Malka and Lelkes caution that this whole situation is hypothetical and that people’s views might be different if faced with the situation in reality. But they write that their findings, at a minimum “show that a substantial number of Republicans are amenable to violations of democratic norms that are more flagrant than what is typically proposed (or studied).”

It’s worth remembering that one of the many conspiracy theories that the right-wing media propagated about President Obama was that he would invent some kind of crisis in order to justify staying in office for a second term, or even indefinitely.

Just in case Trump doesn’t nuke us all to death, we can look forward to this shit. RWW has the full rundown on all the conspiracies which were rife when an actual President was in office.

Real Men With Testosterone!

Wayne Allyn Root is thrilled, right down to his little…toes. He’s swimming in a sea of testosterone, and loving it. There’s an abundance of eyeroll coming up, guard yourself.

Root, who just last month repeatedly voiced his disgust that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand had cursed during a speech, couldn’t stop praising Scaramucci’s vulgarity or his amazing manliness.

“It looks like we’re getting the trannies out of the military and we’re getting the real men in the White House,” Root crowed as he bragged that he, like Scaramucci, grew up in New York and therefore knows how to fight and has no problem knocking people’s teeth out.

Root is always talking about fighting, about being able to beat anyone up. In my experience, people who talk constantly about their ability to fight aren’t any good at it. Also, in my experience, reasonable people don’t take glee in the idea of physically fighting. No, transgender people in the military aren’t going anywhere. Just because Donny tweets something, doesn’t make it the TwitterLaw™ of the Land.

“Real men with testosterone, that’s what needs to run America,” he said. “He’s my kind of guy, he’s a real man with testosterone … We finally got people in office with personality instead of a bunch of country club losers and the whole world is freaking out that Trump is going to block transgenders from being in the military and that you’ve got guys like Trump and Scaramucci with our locker room conversation. You know what? This is the real world! Wake up. This is how you become successful. I’ve made millions of dollars in the business world and everyone I’ve dealt with talks like this.”

A vulgar asshole who is incapable of keeping his own counsel. Yeah, that’s what needs to run America. Oh, people with personality, that’s what all this is! Yes, I think we’re all aware that government in this lost country is now an incredible cringefest of a reality show. Far be it from me to decry your personal taste in entertainment, Mr. Root, but this pile of shit does not belong in government, on any level. Just how do you think the Tiny Tyrant is going to block transgender people from the military? He doesn’t have the power to wrinkle his nose and twitch it so.

You know what? That’s not the real world, you dipshit. That’s your fantasy land. The fantasy land of incompetent sociopaths. So, every single person you have ever dealt with talks like that. I guess you would deal mostly with organized crime a great deal then. Good to know.

“In private, this is how guys talk,” Root continued, “and unfortunately, we have a society that doesn’t want men to be men anymore. You want men to be women! I’m sorry, men aren’t supposed to be women, men aren’t supposed to be gay, men aren’t supposed to be transgender, men are men! And you gotta let us be. We like football, we like wrestling, we like MMA, we like boxing, we like beautiful women in bikinis and we say it out loud and if you don’t like it, we don’t really give a damn. That’s what guys are like and Anthony Scaramucci and Donald Trump and Wayne Root are men and you know what? Tough.”

Sigh. Yes, cupcake, we all know what regressive assholes are like, everyone gets to deal with them. That does not mean people approve, or like you. Most of us just don’t want to be trapped in the same room with any of you, and wish to the universe you would learn to shut the fuck up. Men do not have to be neutered willow wands to enjoy homosociality, and there’s nothing wrong with men being able to be free and open about the things they like and dislike. Like sportsball? Great. Don’t like sportsball? Great. You’re one of the worst things to happen to the concept of masculinity, Mr. Root, and thankfully, most men are well aware of that. All you do is follow an outdated concept of masculinity which traps you in a tiny bubble of thought and action, forcing you to live next to no actual life, because you have to constantly feed this notion of what a manly man you are. It’s a fake masculinity, one which demands of men that they never be who they actually are, and that is  terribly pathetic.

Via Right Wing Watch.

It’s All About The Pizza, Ayyyy!

Palermo’s Pizza.

“What part of Donald Trump is not elite? The business side, the politics side, the inheritance side?” BBC reporter Emily Maitlis asked.

“Oh my god, there’s so many things about the president. How about the cheeseburgers, how about the pizzas that we eat?” Scaramucci replied.

“Everyone eats cheeseburgers, pizzas, what are you talking about?” the reporter fired back.

I’m with the reporter. A love of certain foods does not make an everyman.

Scaramucci then accused Maitlis of “coming across a little elitist” and said he grew up in a middle-class family with a “tight budget” and “little to no money.”

He said Trump understands the “common struggle” even better than he does.

“He knows how to operate in the elitist world and has unbelievable empathy for the common struggle that’s going on with the middle-class people and the lower middle-class people,” he said.

Oh sure, he understands the “common people”. Having daddy hand you a million bucks in seed money, that’s a very typical thing, happens to most commoners, right? Oh, and the language! “Common struggle”, pretty sure that’s shortspeak for commoners, because Tiny Tyrant fancies himself royalty. As for empathy? Oh, please. Pull the other one, it has bells on. It is totally unbelievable that Trump has any empathy at all. I would love to see someone point Trump at a typical lower middle class house, and tell him he had to take all his vacations in it, rather than his mansion in Florida, for a month. He wouldn’t be able to do it. Although you probably could park him in a Pizza Hut for a day, if the pizza was free.

Via The Hill. (Video at the link.)

The Most Precedential Presidential Of All!

Toddler Trump, by Sham.

In one of his “FEED MY EGO” rallies, the Tiny Tyrant waxed idiotic about being presidential:

At a campaign-style rally in Ohio, President Donald Trump claimed he could act more “presidential” than any previous White House occupant, with the exception of President Abraham Lincoln.

“And I say – great schools, smart guy – it’s so easy to act presidential,” Trump claimed. “But that’s not going to get it done.”

“With the exception of the late, great Abraham Lincoln, I can be more presidential than any president that’s ever held this office,” Trump claimed.

“It’s real easy,” Trump added.

I agree, it’s easy enough to act presidential. That’s not the same as being presidential. And I wouldn’t be so fast to rate your acting abilities, Donny, they are abysmal. You haven’t been able to get one fucking thing done, unless you count regressively banning transgender people from the military. That’s hardly some great feat, you incompetent fuckwit. The only reason that was done was to give the Religious Reich another gift from their Theocalypse wishlist.

Have you informed the ghost of Andrew Jackson that he’s been supplanted by Lincoln?

You can see some of the replies to this latest declaration at Raw Story.

Speaking of Neo-Nazi Assholes…

Tucker Viemeister.

In the previous post, Richard Spencer’s sugar daddy was revealed. Now, Spencer and his nazi buddies are busy talking themselves up again, and just loving the current regime in all its chaos and idiocy.

As Salon reports, Michael Peinovich, the creator of alt-right podcast network The Right Stuff, spoke with leader Richard Spencer and an anonymous former GOP staffer ‘Jazzhands McFeels’ on Sunday about the administration’s lack funding for domestic terrorist groups.

“He’s going to give us space to operate, and frankly, it is space to destroy,” Peinovich said of Trump.

“Now is the time that we have to make hay while the sun shines,” ‘Jazzhands McFeels’ argued, insisting the alt-right should take advantage “while these investigations of ‘domestic terrorist groups’ are not being funded by the government, they’re not being pushed by the Department of Homeland Security.”

Contrasting Trump’s administration with a hypothetical Hillary Clinton presidency, Peiovich added the alt-right would “probably be facing f*cking [racketeering] charges or some shit like that,” adding the movement has “to use these four years to grow into something that can’t be defeated by that kind of thing.”

[…]

“I hope the way that [Trump] is looked back on in history is that he was the vehicle that moved the alt-right movement, the white identity movement in the United States, back into the forefront of the political scene,” Peinovich said.

And that alone should be reason enough for impeachment. Via Raw Story.

“The velvet tyranny of political correctness.”

Richard Spencer and William H. Regnery II.

Lance Williams at Reveal has an absorbing article up about the person and money behind neo-nazi Richard Spencer. For many years, Regnery’s notions about race got him kicked out of one organization or another, but the rise of the Tiny Tyrant has made many of  his dreams come true.

Long before Donald Trump’s election ushered in an era of resurgent white nationalism, a disaffected Republican named William H. Regnery II was brooding about the demographic plight of white people and plotting their rescue.

Like Trump more than 20 years later, Regnery, the wealthy scion of a famous GOP family, had an increasingly dark view of a changing America: As he wrote, the U.S. had become a crime-ridden society with bad schools, high taxes, an intrusive government and a penchant for political correctness that was “morphing into an intellectual tyranny.”

Worse, “a flood of immigrants were changing the look of America from a palette of prime colors to a third-world monochrome,” he wrote in a rant that would be at home on the bookshelf of Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon. “Instead of a lingua franca, the country clanged with many foreign tongues.”

By 1999, he had come to believe that the only future for white people in North America was a reconfigured continent with a white-only homeland carved out of the former United States.

[…]

Through his family’s famed conservative publishing house, Regnery had been on a first-name basis with the cream of the Republican establishment. But by 2006, his public views on race left him ostracized from the GOP.   

Now, he’s back. Working behind the scenes, the retired Chicago business executive has played an important role in making his ultra-right views a part of America’s political conversation in the era of Trump.

In what he has described as his crowning political achievement, Regnery discovered Richard Spencer, the mediagenic agitator who invented the term “alt-right.” In 2011, Regnery made him the frontman for his white nationalist think tank, the National Policy Institute, providing Spencer the platform to launch the alt-right movement.

The full article is here, recommended.

Scaramanga Scaramouche Scaramucci: Two-Faced Turnabout.

Anthony Scaramucci CREDIT: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster.

Oh what a different song he sings! Scaramucci was no fan of the Tiny Tyrant, but of course, he’s contorted himself into a complete 380. While he has been busy scrubbing his past tweets, he can’t control all the times he ranted about what a rotten egg Trump is, and how he should stick with real estate. Whatever Scaramucci’s talents might be, he’s not so great at the spokesperson business, having attempted a tight mouth denial about Russia, citing an anonymous source, only to spill that his source was Trump in the overwhelming heat of a second question.

This is Scaramucci, ranting about Trump in 2015:

In 2015, Scaramucci appeared on the Fox Business Network to talk about politics. They played a clip of Donald Trump attacking “hedge fund guys.”

Scaramucci responded with an extended rant against Trump, calling his new boss “another hack politician” and “anti-American.” He said Trump’s rhetoric is “very, very divisive.”

He wasn’t done.

“It’s very very divisive. I’ll tell you who he’s going to be president of,” he said, looking into the camera, “you can tell Donald I said this, the Queens County Bullies Association. You gotta cut it out now and stop all this crazy rhetoric spinning everybody’s heads around.”

Another host interjected that it was rich that Scaramucci finally drew the line with Trump’s rhetoric on “hedge fund guys,” after everything Trump had said about women.

Scaramucci agreed with her.

“I don’t like the way he talks about women, I don’t like the way he talks about our friend Megyn Kelly, and you know what, the politicians don’t want to go at Trump because he’s got a big mouth and because [they’re] afraid he’s going to light them up on Fox News and all these other places,” he said. “But I’m not a politician. Bring it. You’re an inherited money dude from Queens County. Bring it, Donald.”

Think Progress has the full story.