NC: No Jobs for You!

Before choosing Richmond, Va., real estate research firm CoStar Group was looking to take space at the 615 South College office tower (center) currently under construction in uptown. Rick Rothacker rrothacker@charlotteobserver.com.

Before choosing Richmond, Va., real estate research firm CoStar Group was looking to take space at the 615 South College office tower (center) currently under construction in uptown. Rick Rothacker rrothacker@charlotteobserver.com.

While that hateful bigot McCrory still attempts to hang onto his lost office, and refuses to admit all the damage done to NC by HB 2, it has come to light that HB 2 was the reason for a loss of a 732 job expansion. Odd, how the repubs refuse to address these reasons for job losses. Hate, bad for business!

Newly obtained North Carolina Commerce Department documents show House Bill 2 was the primary reason Charlotte lost a 732-job business expansion to Richmond, Va.

A day after real estate research firm CoStar Group announced plans to expand in Virginia, a North Carolina economic development official closed out the project file and listed the controversial LGBT legislation approved March 23 as the deciding factor.

In an Oct. 25 email to state officials, Garrett Wyckoff, senior manager of business recruitment for the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, said he changed the status of the CoStar project to “Closed Lost.”

“It is my understanding that we lost the project. I have selected the following reason for this status change: Local issues,” Wyckoff wrote in an email obtained by the Observer through a public records request fulfilled Thursday. For further explanation, Wyckoff added: “Spring 2016 Legislation.”

The Charlotte Observer has the full story.

Sunday Facepalm.

stonewall-national-monument

Paul Hair, co-author of Hating Jesus: The American Left’s War on Christianity, is a wee bit upset over some confederate statues being dismantled and moved.

Reuters reported on Nov. 19 that Louisville, Ky. began dismantling a Confederate monument for removal to a different location. The dismantling of the monument is part of the progressive campaign to destroy all reminders of the Confederacy. This campaign, in turn, is part of the larger effort to demonize and destroy all of U.S. culture.

Oh my, all of American culture is gonna disappear, oh no! Just once, I’d dearly like a specific, clear definition of what constitutes U.S. Culture. Genocidal Bigotry, check. Religious fanaticism, check. Religious terrorism, check. Slavery worshiped as a beloved tradition, check. White supremacy, check. Fanatical fetishisizing weaponry, check.  Okay, what else?

None of those things are anything to be proud of, they should be national embarrassments, but noooo, those are the good things, the moral things, oh my yes! Ugh.

Demonizing and destroying American culture includes elevating evil. This is why the Obama regime honored sodomy by designating the Stonewall National Monument in June of this year.

I have never know anyone to obsess on genitalia and all the things one might do with said genitalia like hetro Christians. Isn’t it bad enough that you all have a massive porn consumption problem? Couldn’t you focus on the problems with your own genitals and leave everyone else’s alone? Or perhaps you could try actually having fun with your equipment, might loosen you up a bit, make you happy for five minutes or something. Queer people are not evil, sex is not evil, and saving Stonewall has absolutely nothing to do with sex, you dimwit. I expect you know that, too, it just burns like crazy though, doesn’t it, having a monument to a time of great social change, wherein the majority of people decided to elevate their minds and hearts, and become inclusive, better human beings. Christians just hate that sort of thing, I know. I shall squeeze a tear out for you, Paul. It won’t be genuine, mind, but I doubt you’d care.

There already is a movement urging the incoming Trump administration to undo the Obama regime’s massive land grab. That land grab included designating the Stonewall Inn and many other areas of land as parts of national monuments.

Oh, you’re one to talk about a land grab, you genocidal believer in Christian Dominionism. That wasn’t a “land grab” it was a desperate attempt to save some small portion of our mother, our source of life, y’know, the planet we’re on. We only get one, and it didn’t come from any god, and there sure as hell isn’t any god pointing a cosmic finger and healing all the damage idiots like you are doing, and intent on doing yet more. Some of us think that things like the richness of family, friends, community, and a healthy eco-system which sustains and gives life are more important than a select handful of white assholes who think there can never ever be enough money or power in their pocket.

As for a “regime”, no there hasn’t been one of those yet, but you’re fair dripping at the one looming on the horizon, aren’t you? Disgusting.

There’s no reason those objecting to America honoring sodomy couldn’t join the larger movement to undo all the national monuments Obama designated at large. And if that effort proves successful, it then would make it possible to destroy the Stonewall Inn and wipe out its stain on American history.

A stain on American history. I rather think that white Christian colonials were (and are) a stain on Turtle Island, and on Turtle Island history. Perhaps it’s time for a different movement, one to dismantle, bit by bit, every single fucking church on Turtle Island. All of them, gotta go. You stand for every evil, for every single one of your so-called sins. That’s a stain that needs scrubbing out.

Source.

Trumpgrets.

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It seems that reality is slowly sinking in to some of those who voted for Trump, who now find themselves bewildered, angry, and sorrow-filled over the great tough dude they voted for. So much so, a tumblr has been started, compiling all the regrets. A great many of them have to do with Trump’s lack of action on the imprison/kill Clinton business. These people really thought he meant that isht.

tumblr_ohhkupvv6g1vms0a7o1_1280

@realDonaldTrump PLEASE SHUT UP. Can’t you just ignore and zip it until you take office? The more you speak the more I regret my choice.

https://trumpgrets.tumblr.com/ * #Trumpgrets.

Trump’s Carrier Con.

President-elect Donald Trump at Carrier’s Indianapolis plant on Thursday. CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

President-elect Donald Trump at Carrier’s Indianapolis plant on Thursday. CREDIT: AP Photo/Evan Vucci.

If you think that Trump somehow “came through” on that jobs business, you need to think again. All Trump did was play a game, showering a billion dollar business with tax cuts and money, money, money, that is going to end up being pulled out of the taxpayers of Indiana’s pockets, some way or another. Close to 1,500 jobs are still moving to Mexico. So, great save, Donnie. Rather than swallow the bullshit whole, spend a few minutes of your day reading, not only about the details of this supposed great move, but how the media is complicit in selling the con, assuming most people will simply take it all as truth, and too many will do that. Don’t be one of them.

Carrier also confirmed in a press release on Wednesday night that it is getting economic incentives from the state, which “were an important consideration.” Various outlets reported that those incentives will amount to $7 million over a decade, or $700,000 a year.

At the event, Trump claimed that 1,100 jobs will remain in the state, which he said could go up and “is a minimum number.” Yet at least half of the company’s Indiana jobs will still go to Mexico. United Technologies, the parent company for Carrier, is still going to move 700 at the Huntington plant, while not all of the 1,400 jobs at the Indianapolis job are being retained.

Meanwhile, Indiana residents will shoulder the cost of the $7 million incentive package. But if past evidence is any guide, they won’t get much actual benefit for it.

The full story is here, go read, be informed. In the meantime, mainstream media has been spinning all this as “harsh consequences” threatened by Trump have worked in the case of Carrier. Couldn’t be farther from the truth. Yes, Trump did make noise about punishing corporations who wanted to move jobs out of the country, but the reality is that he’ll give them whatever they want, if they agree to keep “some” jobs in uStates. I can’t imagine who actually thought Trump would in any way be harsh when it came to corporations, he’s all for corporations, and he’ll make sure they get ultra sweet deals, while they continue to screw over workers, who will barely make a living wage, with zero safety net under them. There’s a full article about the media spin here, go read.

Yet the day after his speech, prominent media outlets ran with headlines saying that Trump is threatening to crack down on companies that move production offshore. They focused on his threat of “consequences,” despite the deal he actually struck with Carrier that includes no such consequences and despite other parts of his speech where he promised benefits to companies that threaten to leave.

Swastika Cupcakes and…(Continuation 11)

Swastika cupcake (KPNX/screen grab).

Swastika cupcake (KPNX/screen grab).

PARADISE VALLEY, Ariz. – Sweet treats at a Jewish teen’s birthday party in Paradise Valley turned into an offensive message after young party goers decided to decorate their cupcakes with swastika symbols.

Pictures of the swastika topping began spreading on social media after the teen’s mom posted about what happened on Facebook, writing that she hoped it could be used as a teaching moment for parents.

According to the post the girls are all friends and told the Jewish teen’s mom they did it to “be funny.”

The teen’s mother also posted that her daughter and the girls at the party had just had a lesson on the holocaust, so she believed they knew very well what the symbol meant.

Carlos Galindo-Elvira, the director of the Anti-Defamation League in Arizona says parents need to teach their children about the meaning symbols tied to acts of hate like the swastika.

“When you joke with symbols like the swastika you begin to normalize them and make it very casual within our society,” Galindo Elvira told 12 News.

“It’s a joke!” “It’s funny!” No, it’s not a joke. No, it isn’t funny. I never see an explanation as to just what makes this sort of thing funny. All I see is an increase in an empathy deficit in people. That’s no joking matter either. Via KPNX.

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No Citizenship for You! Or You! Or You!

CREDIT: AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana.

I had thought that Richard Dawkins was the prime example of old, white, straight male privilege spilling out all over Twitter like toxic waste. We have a new winner for that position, one Donald Trump. For fuck’s sake, if he can’t control himself on effing Twitter, what does that say for when he’s handed the keys to the country?

Adorable, isn’t it, electing a jackass who doesn’t know one thing about government, history, the constitution, or the bill of rights. These are things you should know from grade school, but as we’ll see in an upcoming post, Trump doesn’t think that sort of thing matters, no. It’s just as well to keep in mind that this may well be another smoke screen, give the rubes something to watch, while I do this next evil thing. It’s best not to forget the proposal for legislating “economic terrorism“, aka protests. Everyone in the resistance has to keep all this in mind. Okay, back to the current idiocy:

But even setting aside Trump’s unconstitutional call to criminalize flag burning, which became a staple of American conservative politics long before Trump emerged as a presidential candidate, Trump is calling for something even more extraordinary. He wants to strip citizenship — and with it, voting rights — from political dissidents. Federal law does permit Americans to lose their citizenship after “committing any act of treason against, or attempting by force to overthrow, or bearing arms against, the United States,” but flag burning is a far cry from treason or armed rebellion. It is a political statement, and democracy depends on the free expression of political ideas.

The president-elect of the United States has proposed stripping a political protester’s very status as an American. In the process, he would take away that person’s ability to vote — and thus to vote for someone other than Donald Trump. Today, Trump proposes this consequence for a very specific category of speech that most Americans view as odious. But once a person’s voting rights can be made contingent upon their beliefs, or their silence, then elections become increasingly meaningless.

We have to remember that Trump isn’t done appointing people as of yet; we have to remember that people with truly repugnant views control the senate and congress, so there’s little point scoffing with a “can’t happen”. We’ve seen what can happen. If that “economic terrorism” bill goes through, and there’s no particular reason to think it won’t, especially given Standing Rock, this isn’t quite as impossible as it seems right now. It doesn’t even matter whether or not Trump means what he says, he said it, he said it in a very public manner, and all the bigots, white supremacists, and other weak people who are desperate for a chance to kick others will embrace it. Welcome to the Nightmare.

Via Think Progress. * Support The Resistance.

McCrory, Please, Just Leave.

Credit: Youtube.

Credit: Youtube.

Pat McCrory has been hanging onto his office like grim death, refusing to believe that voters want his sorry arse out of office and gone. It’s voter fraud! It’s every conspiracy in the world! I won’t leave! I’m afraid his toddler act is beyond tiresome at this point, and it’s quite clear it’s tiresome to everyone else, too.

The North Carolina State Board of Elections Monday issued an order dismissing keys election protests from Gov. Pat McCrory’s campaign, dealing a harsh blow to the incumbent governor’s hope for reelection.

ABC 11 reports the decision affects 52 counties where Republicans filed protests alleging people were ineligible to vote. The board of elections instructed those counties to dismiss any protest that “merely disputes the eligibility of a voter.”

McCrory’s challenger Roy Cooper called the decision a “devastating blow” to the incumbent governor’s campaign. Cooper currently leads McCrory by over 9,000 votes.

So, McCrory, get the bloody message already, please. Exhibit a bit of maturity for a change. No one wants a governor, not even a former governor who does nothing but have one juvenile tantrum after another. Via Raw Story.

Seeing Through The Distortion.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko.

CREDIT: AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko.

It’s not a simple matter, cutting through the constant distortions and lies which characterize the new administration here in uStates. There’s a strong inclination to simply dismiss Trump as an irrelevant blowhard, but that’s not the smart thing to do, because whether or not Trump has the slightest idea of what he’s doing (not much, in my opinion), the people behind him, those appointed and who now have unprecedented power, they do know what they are doing. They also know what they want. There are certain similarities to the Bush Jr. regime, but there’s much more “baffle ’em with bullshit” and “give them a reality show!” going on here. With Bush, there was a deadly calculation put into the manipulation of the public at large. Fear was whipped up to a point that people were willingly signing their rights away. I’d like to think that isn’t going to happen again, but it’s already in process. Whatever rights we thought we had are being carved away in great swathes, there’s no subtle whittling away here. Too many people simply want a ‘good’ show to watch, and Trump is capable of that much. What’s shameful here is that so much of the public doesn’t seem to want much more than that. If they ever do wake up, it will be much too late.

If Bush and Rove constructed a fantasy world with a clear internal logic, Trump has built something more like an endless bad dream. In his political universe, facts are unstable and ephemeral; events follow one after the other with no clear causal linkage; and danger is everywhere, although its source seems to change at random. Whereas President Bush offered America the illusion of morality clarity, President-elect Trump offers an ever-shifting phantasmagoria of sense impressions and unreliable information, barely held together by a fog of anxiety and bewilderment. Think Kafka more than Lord of the Rings.

It is tempting to suppose Trump built this phantasmagoria by accident — that it is the byproduct of an erratic, undisciplined, borderline pathological approach to dishonesty. But the president-elect should not be underestimated. His victories in both the Republican primary and the general election were stunning upsets, and he is now set to alter the course of world history. If he does not fully understand what he is doing, his advisers certainly do.

Steve Bannon, former head of the white nationalist outlet Breitbart News, is Trump’s Karl Rove. He knows. In a recent interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Bannon suggested that the key elements in his strategy are dissimulation and “darkness.”

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The Disavowal That Wasn’t There.

President-elect Donald Trump, left, gestures as he talks to the media as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie looks on at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster clubhouse, Sunday, Nov. 20, 2016, in Bedminster, N.J. CREDIT: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster.

President-elect Donald Trump, left, gestures as he talks to the media as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie looks on at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster clubhouse, Sunday, Nov. 20, 2016, in Bedminster, N.J. CREDIT: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster.

I remember talking with Rick about all the white nationalists and supremacists embracing Trump, and he said “but he disavowed them”, and I said “no, he didn’t”. People might think Trump did disavow all the racists and nazis worshiping at his feet, but he really didn’t, anymore than he disavowed and condemned all the acts of hate which started during the election process, and continue. A weak and muttered “Sad. Stop. Don’t do that.” doesn’t mean a thing, and all the white supremacists and every other brand of racist and bigot well know that. They also know his supposed disavowal doesn’t mean a thing. If you’re someone who did vote for Trump, and has been trying to salve your increasingly uneasy conscience, at least be as smart as all those racists you “didn’t vote for”, and understand that it’s not what Trump sort of says that matters, it’s what he does, and what he’s doing is appointing white supremacists and zealous racists. Think Progress has a very good article about that so-called disavowal.

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Oh, Just Deduct Those Millions of People.

The liar continues to lie. For people who are interested in the truth, Think Progress has the full story.

Donald Trump presented no evidence to support his outlandish claim, and that’s because none exists. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in this or any presidential election, and certainly not on the order of “millions of people.” One of the only documented cases of actual voter fraud in this election came when a Trump supporter tried to vote for him twice.

Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote has grown significantly since Election Day as large states like California continue to tally their votes. Her margin of victory now stands at more than two million votes, by far the largest gap by a presidential candidate who lost the election.

Trump supporters have pointed to fake news websites like InfoWars, which claimed that Clinton’s popular vote win was the result of three million illegal votes by undocumented immigrants and dead people. During the campaign, Trump himself repeatedly tweeted memes and fake stories from white supremacist websites as fact.

My previous posts on fake news, especially on facebook: one, two, three. A recent post on the Facebook Fake News problem.

South Dakota: Ramping Up the Transgender Hate.

Trans man Terri Bruce helping deliver petitions against the anti-transgender bill back in February. CREDIT: AP Photo/James Nord.

Trans man Terri Bruce helping deliver petitions against the anti-transgender bill back in February. CREDIT: AP Photo/James Nord.

Earlier this year, Gov. Dennis Daugaard vetoed a hateful anti-trans bill after meeting with some transgender people. In that case, face time worked, and it worked well. Unfortunately, bigots are never content to give up on their irrational hatred and fear, and insist on a foundation of outright lies.

After North Carolina stole the spotlight last year with its passage of HB2, it’s easy to forget that 2016 started with a fierce debate about transgender rights in South Dakota. Though a bill to require discrimination ultimately lost to a veto, the state clearly isn’t done trying to ban trans students from the bathrooms that match their gender identity.

Jack Heyd, a Republican man living in Box Elder, South Dakota, has filed a ballot initiative that is almost an exact copy of the bill that failed to become law this past year. It dictates that all public schools would have to define sex as “the physical condition of being male or female as determined by a person’s chromosomes and anatomy as identified at birth.” Trans students would not be allowed to use facilities that match their gender identity; the only accommodations that would be allowed would be to segregate them to single-occupancy restrooms, unisex restrooms, or facilities to which faculty members hold a key.

Heyd, who founded the Committee to Ensure Student Privacy to support his efforts, explained that he thinks allowing trans students to use facilities with other students is unsafe and “opens privacy up beyond any reasonable measure.” He worries about people going into restrooms for “nefarious” reasons.

Oh, those nefarious reasons! Christ, I am so tired of the obfuscation, bullshit, and outright lies, and that’s nothing compared to what transgender persons are feeling or going through at any given moment. I’m also tired of pointing this out, but once again: ever since public lavs were segregated, which was not that long ago, there’s been absolutely nothing stopping anyone from going into one, whether their gender appeared to match the sign on the door or not. I’ve been in both, more than once, it’s a bloody lav, who cares? (When you’re having a long thirsty night at your local gay bar, really, no one much cares where you go, as long as you make an effort to actually get to a toilet first.) I might add that no one has been particularly concerned about that, for decade upon decade upon decade, and no, transgender people aren’t a brand new thing. People I know who are transgender are just like other people, well, decent people anyway, and just want to be able to do all the things people do, including being able to go into a public lav to conduct private business without finding themselves in fear of their lives. All this hate legislation is, is a call to make transgender people live in fear every single day of their lives, just in order to make a bunch of assholes, usually so-called Christians, happy and smug in their “godly” hate.

There is zero truth to the idea that transgender people put anyone at risk in public lavs. Don’t want to read? Then listen:

A rapist will rape, and generally speaking, rapists take the path of least resistance. You aren’t going to find rapists leaping out of the proverbial bushes, spending a ton of money on wardrobe, cosmetic procedures, and figuring out how to do their make up just so, in order to waltz into a public lav and do harm. Why in the fuck would they? All they have to do is walk right in. I’ll also point out that public lavs are not popular places for rape or sexual assault. It’s always interesting that the hate brigade focuses on people who might have penises going into the womens’ lav. No one much seems to care about transgender men in mens’ lav. If you really really want to be safe, your best bet is to bar heterosexual men from all public lavs forever. Funny how that legislation never comes up.

As someone who is often in genderfluid dress, I’m not comfortable with some smug asshole deciding what gender I am, or what I may or may not be packing under my clothes. That’s my business, and when I’m in a public lav, I go into a stall, conduct my business, and leave. Why in the hell anyone else thinks they have a right to go poking about, I don’t know. People come in all shapes, sizes, looks, and we all dress in different ways. Seriously, there’s just no way to be sure – so how about everyone has to strip naked in front of all public lavs from now on? Or maybe everyone has to have a karyotype card, and you better hope you aren’t one of the ones with an interesting chromosomal arrangement, because those happen a lot, and you might find yourself a decidedly different gender than you thought you were, and no, of course it won’t matter if you insist you’re a specific gender. How on earth would you know that, after all, it’s down to your chromosomes, right? Oh, and you smug haters get to pay for all the karyotype analyses which will be required.

Or maybe all those smug, hateful assholes could just stop. Stop spreading filthy lies, stop hating, stop being in love with irrational fears. Maybe we could all get some serious good lavatory design going on, go completely inclusive – stalls for everyone! Along with basic societal politeness, which would dictate you don’t get overly nosy about people who are in a public lav for the same reasons you are.

All you sDakotans with good sense, gear up for the fight, it’s on again. Let’s not let the assholes win, okay?

Full story at Think Progress.

“Time for a Tree and a Rope” (Continuation 9).

Burnet County Judge James Oakley made racist comments on Facebook (Facebook.com).

Burnet County Judge James Oakley made racist comments on Facebook (Facebook.com).

According to the Austin Statesman, County Judge James Oakley is under fire for typing “Time for a tree and a rope” under a mugshot of accused cop-killer Otis Tyrone McKane, who was arrested on Monday in San Antonio and charged with the shooting death of police Det. Benjamin Marconi.

Oakley has since taken down the post, but blogger Larry Landaker of PEC Truthwatch was able to take a screen capture of the offensive comment before it disappeared.

Via Raw Story.

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