←
→

Monday Reads: Stranger than Fiction and all that jazz

Posted: August 22, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: 2016 elections | Tags: , , , , |26 Comments

Good Afternoon!!!

0427-OLOCH-Britain-Loch-Ness

Today is the Anniversary of the first sighting of the Loch Ness Monster back in the 1930s.  I figure that’s as good of a place as any to start our reads today because everything else is a lot less believable. This is the type of monster sighting I’d like to read about. Unfortunately, it’s not the kind of monster sighting we get today.

Newly published documents reveal that a Scottish police official in the 1930s believed ‘beyond doubt’ that the Loch Ness monster existed. Expert Loren Coleman says it reveals the government’s longstanding policy to protect the mythic beast.

I’m pretty much turning into a victim of shaken head syndrome because I find myself doing that or picking my jaw up off the floor nearly daily. Every day there’s a monster sighting on the internet.  Perhaps having a major political party elect a known-nothing reality TV star for president has something to do with it.   Donald Trump has this way of bringing out the worst in people and bringing out the worst people. He is the monster we see today on the internet and on TV and he brings a lot of them with him.

This is not a headline I expected to see over the weekend or even these days. That is until the Donald stirred the White Supremacy pot. “Armed, Confederate flag-waving White Lives Matter protesters rally outside Houston NAACP.”    Houston, you have a problem.

White Lives Matter staged a rally outside the NAACP’s Houston headquarters on Sunday, sparking controversy and counter-protests in a city where racial tensions remain high after a string of recent incidents.

Clutching Confederate flags, white supremacist signs and, in several cases, assault rifles, roughly 20 White Lives Matter members stood on the sidewalk of a historically black neighborhood to denounce the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

“We came out here specifically today to protest against the NAACP and their failure in speaking out against the atrocities that organizations like Black Lives Matter and other pro-black organizations have caused the attack and killing of white police officers, the burning down of cities and things of that nature,” organizer Ken Reed told the Houston Chronicle. “If they’re going to be a civil rights organization and defend their people, they also need to hold their people accountable.”

Reed, who was wearing a “Donald Trump ’16” hat and a “White Lives Matter” shirt with white supremacist symbols, said protesters were “not out here to instigate or start any problems,” despite the weaponry and body armor on display.

Of course!  No one whose been listening to Trump spout his “second amendment solutions” advice has any malice or intent to do harm to anyone!  This guy in Tulsa, Oklahoma–as an example–was just exercising his metaphorical ness-1934constitutional rights a few weeks ago too!

For years, the Jabara family says, their Tulsa neighbor terrorized them.

He called them names — “dirty Arabs,” “filthy Lebanese,” they said.

He hurled racial epithets at those who came to work on their lawns, they alleged.

He ran Haifa Jabara over with his car and went to court for it.

And it all came to a head last week when the man, Stanley Vernon Majors, walked up to the front steps of the family home and shot and killed Khalid Jabara, police said.

“The frustration that we continue to see anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, xenophobic rhetoric and hate speech has unfortunately led up to a tragedy like this,” it said.

Or this guy that gunned down an Imam in NYC with his assistant.  Just a white guy waxing in that special first amendment way and exercising his second amendment solutions.article-2604176-06EBDC54000005DC-231_634x494

Saturday’s shooting was not the first incident of violence to hit this growing Bangladeshi community, which straddles the border between the New York boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn.

For years, attacks have happened, most frequently during Ramadan, the holiest month of the Islamic calendar, when activity at the five neighborhood mosques peaks. Police bolstered patrolling efforts and stationed officers outside of mosques during the month. For the most part, community members said their presence has been helpful.

But protection during Ramadan is not enough, Hoque said.

“I feel like 106 Precinct is very lazy because they don’t have enough patrolman in our area,” she said. At the rally, Hoque said she witnessed community members, usually on the side of the police, levy similar charges.

While some uneasy neighborhood residents believe the need for more robust policing is greater than ever, some younger community members feel it is time to lessen the community’s dependence on police.

On Wednesday afternoon, the men of Al-Furqan Jame Masjid were gathered in the prayer space, which amounted to little more than two adjoining rooms cooled by an array of three-armed ceiling fans. There, they discussed plans for succession and next steps.

Mohamed Amen, an Egyptian-American police officer in the community affairs bureau, was among the men seated in front of the crowd of 30 men.

During his comments, Officer Amen reiterated that morning’s news: the charges against Oscar Morel, the suspected killer, had been changed from second-degree murder to first-degree murder. If convicted, he explained, the assailant could face life in prison without parole.

“Alhamdulilah,” a few men murmured in unison. Thank God.

Then he addressed the matter of motive. “I can tell you that the hate crimes unit is conducting its own investigation,” he said.

Travel.Scotland, Oddities. pic: June 1969. American submarine expert Dan Taylor sits in the cockpit of his 20 foot submarine at Loch Ness, where he will go underwater to search for the Loch Ness Monster. PPP

Travel.Scotland, Oddities. pic: June 1969. American submarine expert Dan Taylor sits in the cockpit of his 20 foot submarine at Loch Ness, where he will go underwater to search for the Loch Ness Monster. PPP

It does seem that some Republicans and former Trump supporters are beginning to understand that Trump appears to be leading a movement of white nationalists and supremacists.  This is despite the attempt by some to dress the wolf up in sheep’s clothing.

Donald Trump is alienating his own supporters because of his sometimes “erratic” and inflammatory ad hominem attacks, according to a focus group held Saturday by pollster and Republican strategist Frank Luntz.

“He was my first choice. But just along the way, he has — I guess you can say he’s lost me,”  one participant said in the focus group, which aired Sunday as a segment on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “I’m not saying there’s no chance of turning but he’s become outrageous. I mean, we all have thoughts, but I think he speaks without thinking.”

The panel, conducted in Pennsylvania, only had a handful of attendees that were still committed to supporting the GOP nominee. Several more participants once backed Trump but no longer do.

“When he initially began to run, he gave voice to a lot of the frustrations that I was feeling about how government is working or more to the point not working,” one man, Michael R., said. “But since then, he’s been running as a 12 year old and changes his positions every news cycle, so you don’t even know where he stands on the issues.”

Another, Howard E. chimed in: “Whenever somebody makes a derogatory comment to him, like in a democratic convention, Trump feels like he needs to attack that person. And he says things that are crazy. And I keep asking myself: is this the kind of person I want to handle the nuclear codes?”

Luntz followed up, asking, “what’s the answer?”

Howard responded: “No way.”

If Republicans are looking for a kinder, gentler, more presidential Donald Trump, they aren’t getting him today.  He was more preoccupied with gossiping about Morning Joke and Mika then doing outreach to African Americans with “nothing to lose”._63417388_olderpiclake_getty

On Monday morning he trained his Twitter fire at the MSNBC show “Morning Joe,” formerly one of his favorite places to campaign.

 Trump criticized “Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski in highly personal terms, calling her “off the wall, a neurotic and not very bright mess!”

He also implied that Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough have been secretly dating. He called them “two clowns.”

The comments about Brzezinski were reminiscent of Trump’s highly personal attacks against Fox host Megyn Kelly.

The co-hosts were in the middle of a three-hour live broadcast at the time and had been highly critical of Trump earlier in the morning.

Scarborough responded during a commercial break, stating that “Clinton is targeting key swing states today while Trump starts his day obsessed with cable news hosts while channeling Gawker.”

He ended the tweet with one of Trump’s favorite put-downs: “SAD!”

More people are beginning to worry that his end game is actually to start a Alt-right/White Nationalist media empire given his thrown in with both Alec Jones and Steve Bannon.Calgary_Herald_281057

Has Donald Trump given up on winning the White House and “pivoted” (this might be his real pivot) to a full-blown effort to build a national following that will outlast the election, perhaps allowing him to establish a media empire with him at the helm — one that caters, at least to some degree, to a white nationalist or “alt-right” audience? Was that his plan all along?

The last few days have brought fresh reporting and evidence that suggest this is where Trump is really headed, a scenario that a numberof observers (your humble blogger included) have been speculating about for months. I thought it would be useful to round up this evidence:

* Vanity Fair media writer Sarah Ellison reports in a radio interviewthat Trump has had private discussions with his inner circle about “how to monetize” the new audience he’s built up. As Ellison puts it, this potential goal should no longer be seen as “speculation.”

* The New York Times reports today that in July, Trump’s campaign “spent more on renting arenas for his speeches” than he did on setting up a national field operation, leaving him with no operation to speak of. That is consistent with the idea that Trump (as I’ve speculated) is very consciously sinking most of his resources into a format (rallies) that allows him to continue staging his unique form of raucous WWE-style political entertainment, and building an audience that thrills to it, rather than winning a general election.

Sunday Express Article 230751 Zoom InMeanwhile, Campaign Mommy Kellyanne Conway insists that the Donald doesn’t hurl any personal insults. 

In February, Conway called Trump’s attacks on rivals like Cruz “vulgar.”

“Do I want somebody who hurls personal insults,” she asked on CNN, “or who goes and talks about philosophical differences?”

On Sunday, though, Conway claimed that Trump’s tone has changed and that he’s already made a pivot “on substance.”

“He doesn’t hurl personal insults,” she said. “What he’s doing is he’s challenging the Democratic Party. He’s challenging Hillary Clinton and President Obama’s legacy.”

She’s been mommysplaining her “pivots” from the Cruz campaign to the Trump nearly all weekend.  It’s really pretty disgusting and disingenuous which appear to be her trademarks.  However, there’s no way to mommysplain Steven Bannon who has been labelled “the most dangerous political operative in America” and wants to take down establishment Republicans as well as democrats.  Check this piece about him out even though it’s from last year.

While attacking the favored candidates in both parties at once may seem odd, Bannon says he’s motivated by the same populist disgust with Washington that’s animating candidates from Trump to Bernie Sanders. Like both, Bannon is having a bigger influence than anyone could have reasonably expected. But in the Year of the Outsider, it’s perhaps fitting that a figure like Bannon, whom nobody saw coming, would roil the national political debate.

 

The biggest scare now is that Trump has been priming the pump about rigged elections and evil media plots against him.  Given that his followers now regularly threaten the media and a few of them are using their second amendment solutions are immigrants, what can we expect when he loses?  Will we have the police dealing with the well-armed League of Angry White men?

“Among the values most necessary for a functioning democracy is the peaceful transition of power that’s gone on uninterrupted since 1797. What enables that is the acceptance of the election’s outcome by the losers,” said Steve Schmidt, the GOP operative who was McCain’s campaign strategist in 2008.

“Here you have a candidate after a terrible three weeks, which has all been self-inflicted, saying the only way we lose is if it’s ‘rigged’ or stolen — in a media culture where people increasingly don’t buy into generally accepted facts and turn to places to have their opinions validated where there’s no wall between extreme and mainstream positions. That’s an assault on some of the pillars that undergird our system. People need to understand just how radical a departure this is from the mean of American politics.”

Should Trump opt not to concede after a loss or deliberately roil his supporters and spark uprisings by refusing to accept the legitimacy of the election results, he would still have little recourse to alter a significant electoral victory for Clinton. Only if the election were close, hinging on one or two states where there were alleged voting irregularities, could Trump seriously contest the result in court.

But beyond who wins the White House in November, many Republicans fear that Trump’s efforts to diminish people’s confidence in mainstream media, fair elections and politics itself will have a lasting impact.

I’m expecting a good deal of these dudes will not go quietly into that great night.  Frankly, I hope the police are up to it.  There’s a reliance on conspiracy theories and monster sightings that scares the bejeebus out of me.  It’s hard to know what exactly what folks like this will do when backed into reality.  The Donald Trump monster is not fake in the traditional sense of monster sightings.  He’s more than real even though everything he promises, affirms as truth, and does is not particularly real.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

26 Comments on “Monday Reads: Stranger than Fiction and all that jazz”

  1. quixote says:
    August 22, 2016 at 1:36 pm

    About the only nice monster in all this, Nessie. I was looking at that second picture down and it struck me that those look very much like small near-shore waves lapping on a beach. In which case Nessie would be about three or four inches big. I don’t know of any freshwater aquatic animal that could look like that (no strange lake octopods, for instance) but I’m not a specialist.

    I’ve just enjoyed the concept of Nessie in the past and haven’t paid much attention. Does anyone know whether the skeptics have already thoroughly dissected the wave size issue?

  2. Enheduanna says:
    August 22, 2016 at 2:13 pm

    No big fan of Mika’s here but the neurotic woman thing is straight out of the Misogyny 101 playbook. How tone deaf does a man have to be to call a professional woman, who does not exhibit one-tenth the degree of crazy he himself does – “neurotic”? Almost everything this clown says is projection.

    • dakinikat says:
      August 22, 2016 at 2:54 pm

      Yeah. Noticed he went straight for the sexist tropes.

    • Fannie says:
      August 22, 2016 at 4:08 pm

      She stood by with Snot in the morning and virtually did nothing to stop the insanity They went out of their to give him posture and a platform to stage him. Now they see the monster they created, and he isn’t leaving by noon tomorrow. He’ll double down, they know what his sickness has been about. There is no cure, no recovery, just ashol Trump.

  3. joanelle says:
    August 22, 2016 at 2:24 pm

    Terrific post Kat, more Clinton emails found by FBI???
    Good grief!

  4. janicen says:
    August 22, 2016 at 3:05 pm

    Got this email today. Sad but inevitable. I hope the great works of the Clinton Foundation continue:

    Dear Janice,

    When I left the White House in 2001 and returned to life as a private citizen, I wanted to continue working in areas I had long cared about, where I believed I could still make an impact. That’s what the Clinton Foundation has tried to do, by creating opportunities and solving problems faster, better, at lower cost so that more people are empowered to build better futures for themselves, their families, and their communities. I am grateful to everyone in the U.S. and across the world who has been involved in our work, and especially grateful to Chelsea for her role in increasing scope and impact.

    From day one, the Foundation has pursued its mission through partnerships with governments, the private sector, other foundations, and philanthropists, creating networks of cooperation that are focused on results. In 2005, we convened the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) to give people all over the world the chance to do the same thing.

    These efforts have improved millions of lives around the world. For example:
    More than 11.5 million people in over 70 countries have access to lifesaving HIV/AIDS drugs at 90 percent lower cost through our affiliated Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), including more than 800,000 children. That’s more than half the adults and three quarters of the children on treatment today.

    CHAI has also organized the training of thousands of health care workers as part of an effort to address critical shortages in poor countries and help others build strong, self-sufficient health systems, and expanded access to high-quality, low-cost treatment and diagnostics for many other diseases and conditions.

    Through our work with the affiliated Alliance for a Healthier Generation, more than 18 million students in over 31,000 American schools, in every state, now have healthier food and more physical activity options, and our agreements with the beverage industry have reduced the caloric intake from drinks by 90 percent in the vast majority of U.S. schools.

    Our Health Matters Initiative is working in six communities to improve health and has worked with innovative drug companies to help reverse opioid overdoses and combat prescription painkiller misuse by lowering the cost of autoinjection naloxone and making naloxone nasal spray available to every high school in the U.S. at no cost.

    The Foundation’s Haiti initiative has promoted sustainable investment resulting in the planting of more than 5 million trees, the development of 5 new agricultural supply chains benefiting more than 4,000 smallholder farmers, and support for more than 20 entrepreneurial businesses. And members of CGI’s Haiti Action Network have made more than 100 Commitments to Action to strengthen the health, education, agriculture, and infrastructure sectors.

    Our climate change projects have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by more than 33,500 tons annually across the U.S. We’ve also partnered on reforestation and land restoration efforts in South America and East Africa, and are working with island nations to develop renewable energy projects and reduce dependence on expensive imported diesel and petroleum.

    More than 500,000 people in Latin America are benefiting from social enterprises that connect people to job training, supply chains, and entrepreneurship opportunities.

    More than 105,000 farmers in East Africa have dramatically increased their yields and their incomes.

    And, through Too Small to Fail (TSTF), we are working with the faith-based community, pediatricians, community and business leaders, and Head Start educators to provide parents with resources in everyday settings to support their young children’s early brain and language development, and have reached 155,000 parents with tips through direct text messages.
    I have found great joy in simple moments shared with people who are benefiting from our work: holding a baby who is alive and healthy because he now has access to AIDS medication; planting rows of seeds with smallholder farmers in Malawi and hearing about how our programs have lifted their incomes, enabling them to send their children to school and electrify their homes; meeting with female entrepreneurs in Peru who are earning a good living for the first time in their lives by providing essential goods to their remote communities. This work has been my life for the last 15 years, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

    Since Hillary began her presidential campaign in 2015, Chelsea and I have made it clear that the work the Clinton Foundation started should continue if Hillary is elected, but that changes would be necessary. While it would be presumptive to assume a victory in November, now that Hillary is her party’s nominee, it would be irresponsible not to plan for it.

    If Hillary is elected president, the Foundation’s work, funding, global reach, and my role in it will present questions that must be resolved in a way that keeps the good work going while eliminating legitimate concerns about potential conflicts of interest. Over the last several months, members of the Foundation’s senior leadership, Chelsea, and I have evaluated how the Foundation should operate if Hillary is elected. Throughout the process, our top priorities have been preserving our most important programs, supporting the people who work for the Foundation and its affiliated programs, and resolving legitimate conflict of interest questions.

    If she is elected, we will immediately implement the following changes: The Foundation will accept contributions only from U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and U.S.-based independent foundations, whose names we will continue to make public on a quarterly basis. And we will change the official name from the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation to the Clinton Foundation.

    While I will continue to support the work of the Foundation, I will step down from the Board and will no longer raise funds for it.

    Much of the Foundation’s international work, like that of most global NGOs, is funded in part by donor governments’ bilateral aid programs. If Hillary is elected, we will transition those programs out of the Foundation to other organizations committed to continuing their work. Doing this in a way that ensures continuity and is respectful of all the employees working around the world will take time. We will complete these transitions as soon as we can do so responsibly.

    With respect to CHAI, I will step down from the Board. We, along with the CHAI Board, are additionally considering a range of options to ensure that its vital work will continue and will announce details soon.

    The Clinton Foundation was originally established to build the Clinton Presidential Center and Library in Little Rock, and the work there will continue regardless of the outcome of the election. Since opening its doors 12 years ago, more than 4 million people have visited the Center and it has helped to inspire new generations of leaders—including through the Presidential Leadership Scholars program, a bipartisan educational partnership with the George W. Bush Presidential Center, the George Bush Presidential Library Foundation, and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation. The Center has lived up to my vision and much more, including as an important educational and cultural resource and driver of economic growth for the Little Rock community.

    Finally, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) has accomplished even more than I dreamed when it began in 2005, and we’ve made the decision that the Annual Meeting this September will be the last, and that we will no longer hold our CGI America meetings. Nine years ago in my book Giving, I wrote, “I want to continue these meetings for at least a decade, with the objective of creating a global network of citizen activists who reach across the divides of our interdependent world to build real communities of shared opportunities, shared responsibilities, and a genuine sense of belonging.” That is exactly what CGI, its members, and its dedicated staff have done.

    We started CGI to create a new kind of community built around the new realities of our modern world, where problem-solving requires the active partnership of government, business, and civil society. We’ve brought together leaders from across sectors and around the world both to talk about our challenges, and to commit publicly to actually do something about them. It was something different, but our bet paid off: there was a hunger for the chance to make an impact that brought together people and organizations with the resources to make a difference with people who have the knowledge and experience to turn good ideas into action. Corporations, governments, and non-governmental organizations began combining their strengths and finding entirely new approaches to old problems. CGI quickly became an embodiment of what works best in the 21st-century world, and what has been behind all of the Clinton Foundation’s work since the very beginning: networks of cooperation.

    This partnership model, which may seem self-evident today, was simply not how philanthropy and corporate responsibility worked over a decade ago. Today, members of the Clinton Global Initiative have made more than 3,500 commitments that are already improving over 430 million lives in more than 180 countries. These projects will continue to make an impact around the world and in the U.S. The idea that working together beats going it alone has caught on well beyond our CGI community.

    It’s been one of the great honors of my life to be part of this special community, and I hope the hard work and benefits of CGI’s great staff and its members’ creative cooperation will keep rippling out into the world. The commitment model has been adopted by other forums and I hope that more will do so, or that new organizations will arise to do this work. While this year will be the last for the CGI Annual Meeting and CGI America, I hope and believe we can and should preserve CGI University (CGI U), our meeting that brings university students together to develop innovative solutions to important challenges in the U.S. and around the world.

    In addition to continuing CGI U and all of the activities of the Clinton Presidential Center, the Foundation will also continue those domestic programs that can be maintained with the funding restrictions we announced today.

    The process of determining the Clinton Foundation’s future if Hillary becomes President has not been easy. It’s an unprecedented situation, so there’s no blueprint to follow. Part of what has made the Foundation successful over the last 15 years has been our understanding that solving problems and creating opportunities faster, better, and in the most cost-effective way sometimes means changing course.

    Working alongside so many passionate people around the world who share our goals and believe in our approach has made these 15 years one of the most rewarding chapters of my life, as I know it has been for Chelsea. While my role in that work will change, the work itself should continue because so many people are committed to it and so many more are relying on it.

    Chelsea and I are very proud of what the Clinton Foundation, its affiliates, and its partners have accomplished, and we are profoundly grateful to the staff, to those who have funded our work, and to all the people with whom we have worked and from whom we have learned so much. We will try to be faithful to them, their values, and their work in effecting this transition as quickly and effectively as possible.

    Sincerely,

    Bill Clinton

  5. palhart says:
    August 22, 2016 at 3:14 pm

    I just unfriended a college classmate who put up on her Facebook page a friend’s explanation to evangelicals that Trump was sent to destroy the destructive spirits (?). (I had to friend the classmate in order to receive alumni news this past spring.)

    Not even close. The DT monster IS the destructive spirit brought to us by the evil GOP.

  6. Enheduanna says:
    August 22, 2016 at 3:46 pm

    Hey this is fun! I don’t do the Faceborg thing so I only get what’s going on over there vicariously. Anyway Cher campaigning with Hillary!

    http://wonkette.com/605785/cher-stumping-for-hillary-clinton-is-bestest-thing-your-gay-ass-will-see-all-week

  7. pdgrey says:
    August 22, 2016 at 4:06 pm

    Thanks Dak, “I’m pretty much turning into a victim of shaken head syndrome because I find myself doing that or picking my jaw up off the floor nearly daily”. I have been feeling the same.

    http://bigstory.ap.org/article/d98c99e8626549d984d3695ac6ef589f/racism-and-talk-religious-war-trump-staffs-online-posts

    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/stephen-bannon-donald-trump-alt-right-breitbart-news

    http://www.newsweek.com/did-colin-powell-advise-hillary-use-private-email-492376

    And I remember this, also stupid “lefties” trying to find Powell the hero.
    http://www.salon.com/2013/08/01/colin_powell_denies_affair_after_reported_guccifer_hack/

  8. Fannie says:
    August 22, 2016 at 4:16 pm

    As to the article what to do if he is defeated: Go live in the Soviet Union

    • quixote says:
      August 22, 2016 at 10:22 pm

      Um, what? You must mean just the totalitarianism? I can’t see the Orange Baloney Blob redistributing any wealth to the working class!

  9. pdgrey says:
    August 22, 2016 at 5:47 pm

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/watch-helen-mirren-handle-herself-like-a-boss-in-this-sexist-1975-interview_us_57bafbfae4b03d513689554f?section=&

  10. contrask says:
    August 22, 2016 at 6:32 pm

    John Oliver – must watch this! http://flavorwire.com/587526/john-oliver-delivers-message-directly-to-trump-drop-out-and-tell-america-the-campaign-was-a-satire

  11. vger says:
    August 22, 2016 at 8:36 pm

    Every candidate for President, I believe, does need to go through a certain level of scrutiny and examination. However, what is it with this obsession with thousands and thousands of Hill-mails when Trump won’t release tax returns, company financials or anything that would serve to scrutinize him at the same level. This is just nuts.

  12. Mary Brown says:
    August 23, 2016 at 11:12 pm

    The only good thing about Bannon and Conway is that neither have ever run a political campaign, much less a presidential campaign. With any luck, they will be totally inept at it, no matter how nasty and awful they are.

←
→