Monday Reads: The Great Unravelling

Posted: August 14, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , | 38 Comments

Good Morning Sky Dancers!

It’s another one of those Mondays where there are so many things to do and dig out of that I hardly know where to start.  This has been a year where keeping up with all the unraveling threads is a mythical task.  It requires a Greek deity to find them all and knit them back together.

Countries dependent on rule of law depend on functional institutions, intelligent and skilled participants, and commitment to the many parts and pieces that solidify social bonds.  We know that many of these social bonds and contracts are under attack and that many of the institutions designed to carry out the will of the people as stated in the Constitution are being undermined.  It feels as though we’ve entered a period where many groups have grabbed a loose thread and ran off with it so as to unravel as much as possible.

Much of this has been brought to you by fanatical Republicans and spineless Democrats who rarely take on a good fight and play go along and get along way too much. Republicans are in deep denial if they think all that’s gone on with Kremlin Caligula and Trumpism is not the fruit of their poison tree.

I’m saddened to read so many false equivalencies, whiffs, and denials by Republicans that cannot see that this is what they’ve been nuturing since the implementation of the Southern Strategy.  That link goes to Ben Shapiro who rightly calls out White Supremacists for being White Supremacists but immediately denies any connection or responsibility to feeding those beasts.

The Alt-Right Is Not Conservative. One of the hottest takes from the Left is that the alt-right represents the entire right — that what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia represented conservatives broadly. That’s factually incorrect, and intellectually dishonest. The alt-right is not just conservatives who like memes or who dislike Paul Ryan. The alt-right is a philosophy of white supremacy and white nationalism espoused by the likes of Vox Day, Richard Spencer, and Jared Taylor.

Then, we arrive at this:

6. The Left’s Malfeasance And Support For Violent Groups Like Antifa Grow The Alt-Right. Antifa was violent in Charlottesville.

And so it’s every one that’s not a conservative’s fault for not calling down and pushing out the usual group of anarchists–now designer labelled “antifa” akin to “alt-right”–and not the fault of the Republican Party that’s fed the Alt Right subgroups for decades.

I’m glad to see some one call white supremacists out for what they are.  ‘Alt-Right’ is a squishy mush of nothing. I equally wish we’d drop the new designer label of ‘antifa’  and just call the other nutters there what they are which is the usual assortment of anarchists who show up at everything to create chaos because that’s what anarchists do and want. However, as some one whose pre-defined political life was to identify with Republicans, libertarians and conservatives (forgive me I was a swimming in privilege as a white teen in a red state backwater) I have to remind you that none of this can be disowned by Republicans or movement conservatives.

I understand Ben is more “libertarian” than movement conservative but now that  I’ve decided labels are for cans let me say this.  The Republican Party owns this because they own the Southern Strategy and self-identified conservatives developed and exploited it. That’s something started in the Nixon years and played to the hilt with Ronnie Raygun and his welfare queens meme. It continues with a war against an inner city drug problem –crack–while sympathizing with what is mostly a white, rural phenomenon of meth/opiate addiction. It also includes the party’s take over by crazy religious extremists which are anything but conservative unless you consider theocracy preferable to a republic. We all need to call out the goofs on all sides. I’ve been as vocal in my criticism of kooky Jill Stein and positively worthless and whacky Bernie Sanders as I’ve been all along of Kremlin Caligula. But really, where are the adult Republicans and conservatives in the room when they allow Bannon, Gorka, and Miller into the West Wing?

You think a few folks would be uncomfortable if we’d have seen Jeremiah Wright as a strategist with an office in the West WIng next to the last president? You think Reid what let that happen? Seriously, you cannot dog whistle and appease the kooks and then expect to just brush them off when convenient. Every single Republican Strategist since the Nixon bunch has worked hard on that Damned Southern Strategy. I bailed in the early 90s because none of that damn stuff is what any of us in this country should be about. The Bernie appeasement going on with the DNC is just about as crazy but not quite as evil compared to having spent like 40 decades thinking you can convince a bunch of backwoods Hitlers and Christofascists that you’re going to do their bidding if they just vote for the guys that want to deregulate the government.  That’ a Faustian bargain and if you lay down with devils then you can’t complain when the world points out the horns you’ve sprouted.

Trump talks about his ‘good genes’ constantly. His father was arrested in a KKK rally. He supposedly had a copy of Hitler’s tome next to his bed. His first real support and new AG is the World’s Oldest Living Confederate Widow who has a history of being a walking example of what the Southern Strategy was designed to attract.

So, Trump belatedly gave a speech today on the weekend violence that killed a young woman that was supposed to quell the negative comments about the “on all sides” comments on Saturday.  I’ve never really bought in to the old saying better late than never.  I still don’t.  

President Donald Trump directly condemned white supremacists and neo-Nazis in a statement from the White House Monday afternoon.

“Racism is evil — and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans,” Trump said in response to the attacks in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend.

“Those who spread violence in the name of bigotry strike at the very core of America,” Trump said.

“As a candidate I promised to restore law and order to our country and our federal law enforcement agencies are following through on that pledge,” Trump said. “We will spare no resource in fighting so that every American child can grow up free from violence and fear. We will defend and protect the sacred rights of all Americans and we will work together so that every citizen in this blessed land is free to follow their dreams, in their hearts, and to express the love and joy in our souls.”

Democrats and Republicans have excoriated Trump for his unwillingness to condemn the groups behind the violent protests that left one woman dead who was allegedly hit by a car driven by a man with ties to white supremacy groups.

After blaming the violence “on many sides” Saturday, Trump stayed silent for close to 48 hours, letting his trademark bluntness and campaign pledges to call terrorism what it is succumb to silence and vagueness.

Trump was asked by reporters after he spoke why he waited so long to condemn these hate groups by name and did not respond.

Feeling comforted yet?  I didn’t think so. The FBI and the DHS have repeatedly warned against the ongoing and escalating threat to our country from domestic terrorists of this ilk. Trump has ignored it and defunded the law enforcement agency studying it and charged with corralling it.

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security in May warned that white supremacist groups had already carried out more attacks than any other domestic extremist group over the past 16 years and were likely to carry out more attacks over the next year, according to an intelligence bulletin obtained by Foreign Policy.

Even as President Donald Trump continues to resist calling out white supremacists for violence, federal law enforcement has made clear that it sees these types of domestic extremists as a severe threat. The report, dated May 10, says the FBI and DHS believe that members of the white supremacist movement “likely will continue to pose a threat of lethal violence over the next year.”

The “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which attracted hundreds of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other members of the so-called alt-right, sparked violent clashes over the weekend. A woman, Heather Heyer, was killed by a car that drove into a crowd of people protesting the rally.

James Alex Fields Jr., the driver of the vehicle that struck Heyer, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder.

Since the outbreak of violence over the weekend, President Trump has been heavily criticized for not condemning racist groups. “We must remember this truth: No matter our color, creed, religion or political party, we are ALL AMERICANS FIRST,” he tweeted.

The FBI, on the other hand, has already concluded that white supremacists, including neo-Nazi supporters and members of the Ku Klux Klan, are in fact responsible for the lion’s share of violent attacks among domestic extremist groups. White supremacists “were responsible for 49 homicides in 26 attacks from 2000 to 2016 … more than any other domestic extremist movement,” reads the joint intelligence bulletin.

The report, titled “White Supremacist Extremism Poses Persistent Threat of Lethal Violence,” was prepared by the FBI and DHS.

The bulletin’s numbers appear to correspond with outside estimates. An independent database compiled by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute found that between 2008 and 2016, far-right plots and attacks outnumbered Islamist incidents by almost 2 to 1.

So, Republicans can distance themselves from the overt racism of the Alt Right but their policies say something else.  They pass and support voter suppression laws deemed racist by Courts.  They refuse to recognize the complaints on use of force by Police against persons of color and are looking to pass laws to make police brutality less actionable.  They violate the Constitution by trying to punish so-called Sanctuary Cities who refuse to help the Federal Government enforce racist and unnecessary deportation measures.

You undoubtedly can list more.  We keep having to cover this and many other racist and fascist Republican measures that are undoubtedly supported by the Alt Right.  Lawmakers are now trying to make it legal to run over protesters in many states and municipalities.  This is from The Miami Herald.  

The shutdown of highways by protestors prompted several arrests, and lawmakers – most of them Republican – in many states introduced legislation with various levels of protection for drivers who hit protestors that were blocking streets. Some first responders have been fired for making jokes about running over Black Lives Matter protestors.

Miami has experienced roadway-blocking protests of its own: both the election of President Donald Trump and his inauguration prompted significant traffic snarls.

Florida Sen. George Gainer introduced a bill that would ensure drivers who “unintentionally” hit protestors who are obstructing traffic would not be held liable. It failed in committee.

Gainer told WUFT that he was motivated to file the bill due to protests in Miami and Tampa and anti-Trump protests across the country.

“They should have every right in the world to protest the things they disagree with,” Gainer said. “But they don’t have the right to randomly go out into the interstates and attack the cars, beat on the windshields, jump up on the hoods and act like they’ve been hit. In some cases, they set themselves up to be hit.”

In North Carolina, a similar bill passed the House on a 67-48 vote but died in the Senate. Other states that considered similar legislation include Virginia – where 32-year-old Heyer was killed – Oklahoma, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington, according to the Washington Post. Some states took the route of removing liability from drivers, while some simply increased penalties for blocking roadways.

Flowers and other mementos are left at a makeshift memorial for the victims after a car plowed into a crowd of people peacefully protesting a white nationalist rally earlier in the day in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

These bills are in response to BLM protests so don’t tell me the Republicans don’t own a huge role in today’s institutional racism. Here’s an old piece from The Atlantic with the right headline by Jeet Heer.  “How the Southern Strategy Made Donald Trump Possible.  In states like South Carolina, the mogul reaps the benefits of the GOP’s longstanding appeal to racism.”

It’s essential to remember that the Southern Strategy did not originate with cynical GOP pols and right-wing extremists, but was—ironically enough—first hammered out in the pages of National Review, the very publication that now excoriates Trump “a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP.” National Review can disavow Trump as loudly as it wants, but it was the magazine—and the conservative establishment that drew its political ideas and strategies from it—that created the politics that have now morphed into Trumpism.

Republicans own all of this.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Friday Reads: Nasty Women and Bad Hombres Unite

Posted: October 21, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: 2016 elections, morning reads | Tags: , , , , , , , | 39 Comments

Good Morning!

We continue to learn how resilient and fragile our form of democracy can be. Yes, Benjamin Franklin! We have a Republic and most of us are trying to keep it!   However, there is vast anger, ignorance, and hatred coming from the hearts of a segment of our population that is threatening our rule of law and government.  Here’s a great explanation of the situation from retired Justice David Souter who spoke on this very topic several years ago. We’re not seeing a discussion of ideologies. We’re seeing bigots throwing hate bombs. These folks have forgotten both their civics courses and their civility.

nasty-womanThis video and analysis comes from the Rachel Maddow news broadcast.

Here is that amazing clip of former Supreme Court Justice David Souter being frighteningly prescient about the decline of civic knowledge in America and the effect of that decline on the state of our democracy.

It’s hard to see how we can keep our Republic when we’re regaled with the autocratic leanings of extremely stupid, angry, and mean people that are our neighbors.  It’s manifest in what they send to our Congress and it’s manifested in the last eight years of absolute politically-mandated gridlock by one of our major parties who has an entire constituency made up of an ignorant people that are proving they do not want to be free people no matter how much they scream ‘liberty’.  They want white male privilege from years past. They want promises that no one can possibly deliver or keep. They’re losing because they want to stop change.

Republican Rep. Brian Babin on Thursday defended Donald Trump calling Hillary Clinton “a nasty woman” at the final presidential debate, saying “sometimes a lady needs to be told when she’s being nasty.”

Near the end of the debate Wednesday, Trump called Clinton “such a nasty woman” while she was answering a question on Social Security and Medicare. Trump’s comment elicited a strong rebuke online, where the #nastywoman went viral.

Appearing on the “Alan Colmes Show” on Thursday evening, Babin, a Trump supporter, was asked if he thought Trump’s comment was appropriate.

“You know what, she’s saying some nasty things,” the Texas congressman answered.

Colmes asked again if the comment was appropriate, to which Babin responded, “Well, I’m a genteel Southerner, Alan.”

“So that means no?” Colmes asked.

“No, I think sometimes a lady needs to be told when she’s being nasty,” Babin replied. “I do.”

“My assessment is that Mrs. Clinton has got so much baggage–” Babin added. “I think she’s done some nasty things.”

After Colmes repeatedly pressed the Texas congressman, he said he agreed with Trump’s assessment of Clinton as a “nasty woman.”

bad-hombreThis is the mindset of the putrid form of patriarchy held up by the worst forms of American-styled christianity. It’s the one that has totally poisoned the Republican party. This crazy Congressman is the same form of “genteel southerner” that would prefer racial minorities be “put in their place” and any member of the GLBT that tries to live openly and authentically be put to death.

In his long career as an accomplished journalist working across the American South, Steve Crump has come face-to-face with hatred and bigotry.

The Emmy-winning journalist spent time reporting on the Ku Klux Klan in which he, a black man, interviewed members of the organization, people who by their very membership profess to hate him due to the color of his skin.

For all that, though, Crump, 59, told The Washington Post that he’s never felt the blunt hatred he did in Charleston, S.C., on Oct. 8.

Crump, who works for WBTV in Charlotte, was in Charleston working on a story about cleanup following Hurricane Matthew. Along with his camera crew, he was filming near the southern tip of the peninsula when he came across a young white man, he and later police identified as 21-year-old Brian Eybers, holding an iPad, apparently producing some sort of “citizen journalism,” as Crump put it.

The man, watching the WBTV crew, was narrating his story into the tablet when Crump caught wind of what he was saying.

“He basically said, ‘There’s a black guy here. No, wait a minute, he’s a slave. No wait a minute, he’s a ‘n-word,’ ” Crump told The Post.

Added Crump, “I went from 0 to 60 in an instant, just like that. I just turned to [my cameraman] and said, ‘We need to get this guy on tape.’” (The result can be viewed above, with offensive language bleeped.)

We have people that want all their problems solved by the government.  They are not Democrats asking for Social Nets or investments in education.  They are people that think if the government would just get rid of people not like them, they’d have everything. They are authoritiarians. They want people punished for nearly anything they deem offensive. They want women to stay home and be slaves to their husbands. They want nothing of folks who practice religions other than theirs and folks that have any kind of cultural or physical difference unlike theirs.

They believe absolute shit like abortions occur in the ninth month. They are illiterate of science and human physiology. They are part and parcel of the Trump cult. They are extremist Republicans. They are enabled by every Republican that won’t stand up to them or has quit standing up to them.  The Republican party put together the FrankenTrumpers.screen-shot-2016-10-20-at-11-27-14-am

Donald Trump painted a picture of abortion in America in which doctors are “rip(ping) the baby out of the womb” the day before a baby is due to be born. However, medical experts have refuted that claim.

Trump said the following at the debate:

I think it’s terrible if you go with what Hillary is saying in the ninth month you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby.

Now, you can say that that’s okay, and Hillary can say that that’s okay, but it’s not okay with me. Because based on what she’s saying and based on where she’s going and where she’s been, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month, on the final day. And that’s not acceptable.

An estimate by the federal government reveals that 91.4% of abortions in the United States occur within the first 13 weeks of pregnancy. Only 1.3% of abortions occur later than 21 weeks into pregnancy. Zero occur on “the final day,” which by definition would not be an abortion, it would be classified as an infanticide.

imagesThe right wing’s appalling lack of knowledge about basic human reproduction and physiology continues to assert itself into the lives of woman and their families. It’s a government intrusion in to the decisions of doctors and patients and it stops the use of live saving and pregnancy preventing methodology.  It is all because of a bunch of gullible religious lunatics follow a political and powergrabbing group of evil ministers we have roaming this country. The Farewells are one of many examples. It’s never been about life.  It’s about white men controlling the lives of women and children.  Here’s a great breakdown of what was right and what was wrong about that abortion discussion from the last debate by Dr. Jennifer Gunter.

First of all, we don’t “rip” anything in OB/GYN. In surgery, we use sharp dissection and blunt dissection, but we don’t rip. Some women do tear during a vaginal delivery, but that’s not a doctor ripping the baby out. Even with a forceps delivery, I wouldn’t call it ripping. We also don’t rip tissues during c-sections.

Perhaps we can forgive Donald Trump for not knowing this as it is hard to believe that a man who bragged that he doesn’t change diapers and said he wouldn’t have had a baby if his wife had wanted him to actually physically participate in its care would have attended the birth of his own children. It’s certainly not for the faint of heart as there is, after all, lots of blood coming out the “wherever.”

Trump’s statement, as incorrect as it may be, supports the fallacy of the due-date abortion. It is a common anti-choice narrative that women come in at 39 weeks and have some kind of abortion for fun or out of boredom and that we doctors are only to happy to comply. I’m sure some people think there are Groupons. The more graphic the description of the procedure, the better as it helps to distract from the facts.

Talking about abortion from a medical perspective is challenging when you are not a health care provider. Even someone familiar with the laws can get confused. For example, Mrs. Clinton made an error speaking about late-term abortion when she said it was a health of the mother issue. Typically, it is not (it’s almost always fetal anomalies). However, this error on Clinton’s part only underscores how important it is for politicians to not practice medicine.

To put it in perspective, 1.3 percent of abortions happen at or after 21 weeks and 80 percent are for birth defects. Put another way, 1 percent of abortions that are at or after 21 weeks and are for birth defects and 0.3 percent of abortions are at or after 21 weeks and are not for birth defects (some of these will be health of the mother and a very few will be for other indications)

Trump’s writers for his speech last night continued to show how mean-spirited, lying, and ignorant this section of the Republican Party has become.  The Alt-Right and its minions show no civility in any instance.  They can’t even hold it together for a speech for children’s charities in front of a Cardinal, a roomful of clergy, and plutocrats and politicians.  Trump was booed quite a few times for jokes that were not jokes or funny. Many of his remarks were just outright horrible barbs at one of the nation’s leading public servants. You may not agree with Hillary Clinton on the issues, but you cannot deny her life of public service to this country and to its children without being seriously misled, wrong, ignorant or evil.  Trump actually had a good joke or two but couldn’t restrain himself to just jokes.

Ever the entertainer, Trump was probably responsible for the biggest laugh of the night but also the event’s loudest boos — until this year, booing was unheard of at the dinner.

The high point of Trump’s remarks started as a comment on media bias. Complaining about why the media is so much harder on the Trumps, Trump brought up how the media loved Michelle Obama’s recent speech but then “my wife gives the exact same speech and people get on her case. And I don’t get it. I don’t know why.

cjones10222016-e1476982148865That was a joke.  It was not out of line and it got his point of media bias across to the audience.  Then he degenerated into just calling Clinton corrupt then saying she had no business being here because she’s anti-catholic.  The booing ensued. It would be shocking under normal circumstances.  It is no longer shocking with Trump and the current crop of Alt-Right wing nuts in charge of the Republican Party.

Never before have we seen anything like this since right before the Civil War. Look how that turned out.

Trump’s announced many times now that he’s reserving judgement on the outcome of this national election. Meanwhile, the polls show him losing much ground.  He never held the high ground but even the swamps are turning on him.  Obama has never been more popular. The margins of the polls in many states indicate that the Democrats will take the Senate and are closing in on taking the House. If this happens, we will know our Republic is still working.

But, what will we do with the losers?  It doesn’t appear like they want to wake up to the fact that they are seriously out of step with the majority of the American people.  It’s a relief to know that most of us are not like them in anyway.  But we know one thing. They have guns. They have anger.  They’ve been enabled and babied for too damn long.

Have a great day!  Let us know what’s on your reading and blogging list today!!!

Friday Reads: Men and the mass Penistyeria surrounding Hillary Clinton

Posted: August 26, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: 2016 elections, Afternoon Reads, American Gun Fetish | Tags: , , , , , , , | 49 Comments

manocide!!!

Good Afternoon Skydancers of all shapes, sizes, sex and such!

As we continue forward with the election of the first woman president, we also continue backward with the number of outrageous lies, misogyny, CDS, and downright paranoia that some folks seem to get every time they see or hear Hilary Clinton.  This week I realized that I could no longer listen to Donald Trump read from his teleprompter without wanting to hurl a few things. (Yes, you can read all the double entrendre you want into that comment.)

I’ve really had it with any one that could possibly demonize one of the most tightly and ethically run global charities in the world that basically saves lives let alone any one that thinks a bunch of emails that show absolutely nothing are deserving of more inspection that say, some one who hides their tax information and owes tremendous amounts of money to the governments of China and Russia.  Why does racism and misogyny seem to have so many working class folks enthralled? Are that many people really that stupid, evil, or gullible?

So today’s pictures and snark are due to the misogyny of some gun fetishists/death vendors from Maine who are well known for posting hildabeastsome of the worst Alt-Right shit in the world on their store sign.  Observe the original nastiness there on the sign and then enjoy how feminists are taking it back. Remember, these jerks are most likely tuned in to the wonderful world of Steven Bannon who is known for the website that asked if parents would rather see their children get feminism or cancer. No more to do lists for me!  Now I have a Vagenda that includes Manocide!!! 

A picture of the sign in front of the Raymond, Maine shop made its way to Twitter and inspired women everywhere to start tweeting their own vagendas. In these satirical to-do lists, women casually list “manocide” in between tasks like meetings, laundry and fitness classes. Others swap out the term for phrases like “oppress men” and “crush a man’s soul.” Many next-level trolls are including other tasks everyone assumes feminists prioritize day to day, such as “eat kale” and “queer stuff.”

One expert troll deserves true internet praise for rigging it so the web address http://www.vagendaofmanocide.com/ redirects to Clinton’s official campaign donation page. According to The Daily Dot, whoever registered the domain did so privately, “so there’s no way of knowing who they are or what their real vagenda is.”

And in case you were wondering more about the sign that inspired all of this, it turns out this isn’t out of the blue for Gulf of Maine Gunsmithing. In fact, hateful slogans seem to be the arms dealer’s choice of words for its sign. Locals has posted photos of different variations of the sign to shop’s Facebook page.

14034952_10153967510123512_2950858829410499185_nSo, here’s my daily Vagenda.  Hope you all realize that I lead a very boring life now. I’ve already been chided for bumping manocide to spot 3 on the list but hey, Temple has to eat and I have to earn a paycheck. Manociding is an expensive hobby, you know.  Anyway, seriously, empower yourself with a VAGENDA!

6:00 am. Arise. Wrap your cardigan-sheathed hands around a mug of hot cardamom lemon water; squint into the distance from your craftsman veranda. Breathe authentically. Pick off a passing man with your bespoke porch rifle.

A good start is to visit www.vagendaofmanocide.com.

So, yesterday, Hillary Clinton connected the dots between the Alt-Right and the crazy Trump Campaign themes like sending an ultra right wing nationalist from the UK to give a speech on Brexit in a very confused Mississippi. Oh, BTW, if you didn’t watch Rachel connect the dots between Campaign Mommy, Der Fuhrer Trump, and Steven Bannon and Hedge Fund Billionaire and right wing asshole Robert Mercer, please go watch now. How poor white people can get taken down the river by these snakes is beyond me.

RACHEL MADDOW (HOST): Before becoming Donald Trump’s new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway ran a Super PAC she ran one of the SuperPACs that supported Ted Cruz in the primary. You might remember in the Republican primary this year there were a whole bunch of different SuperPACs that supported Ted Cruz. They were all called some variation of Keep The Promise. She ran the group that was called Keep The Promise 1. They ran millions of dollars in anti-Donald Trump ads, incidentally, which is kind of ironic given what her job is now.

But more important than that, she ran this Keep The Promise PAC. She ran the iteration of all the Ted Cruz supporting PACs, she ran the one that was almost entirely funded by a single donor. All the money in that PAC basically came from one source. It came from New York City hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer. He gave the money, Kellyanne Conway ran that PAC. Robert Mercer and Kellyanne Conway, they supported Ted Cruz in the primary, not Donald Trump, but once Trump won, once Cruz dropped out, that mega-donor Robert Mercer and Kellyanne Conway, they decided to switch horses, they decided to keep working together. She stayed in charge of the PAC. They changed its name. They started running anti-Clinton ads to help Trump instead of anti-Trump ads to help Cruz. But as a multi-million dollar donor to that effort — we’ve talked about here on this show, Robert Mercer, this hedge fund billionaire appears to have become the single largest funder now of the effort to elect Donald Trump for president.

Robert Mercer is also reportedly the single largest funder of Breitbart.com. And so this one guy, Robert Mercer, the money man, right? He ends up being sort of the missing link. He ends up being the thing that explains, I think, in a lot of ways, why the Trump campaign is this strange thing that it is now. When the Trump campaign decided to fire the last guy in charge, Paul Manafort, and put these new folks in charge, it was an interesting and sort of inexplicable thing that they simultaneously —  they didn’t fire Paul Manafort and then pick a new person to replace him. They fired Paul Manafort, but then they brought in two people. They came up with two new job titles. Campaign Manager and Campaign CEO, okay. They brought in two people at once. Kellyanne Conway, who ran Robert Mercer’s Super PAC, she’s a very familiar figure in Republican politics.

[…]

But she didn’t come onto the campaign alone, right? She came on as campaign manager, Donald Trump’s top funder apparently installed her at the top of the Trump campaign, but he also simultaneously, on the same day, at the same time installed this other guy. This guy from Breitbart as the Campaign CEO. Robert Mercer is the money man behind both of these folks, behind Kellyanne Conway and her PAC which started as a Ted Cruz thing and then became a Donald Trump thing. Robert Mercer was the money behind that, Robert Mercer is also the money behind Breitbart.com. He funded them both to the tune of millions of dollars. He is the thing explains why those two otherwise unconnected individuals both came on at the same time, on the same day, to take over the Trump campaign.

Here’s the event.  Hillary’s speech starts at about 7:30 into the video.

The Alt-Right and their allies are either denying it really exists or blaming Hillary Clinton for it. 

“Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia. He is taking hate groups mainstream, and helping a radical fringe take over the Republican Party,” Clinton said at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada. (A video ad released Thursday covers much of the same ground.) She said Trump’s rhetoric was “like nothing we’ve heard before from a nominee for president of the United States from one of our two major parties.”

Over more than a half-hour of sustained attack, Clinton added little new material to the record. Instead, she methodically plotted Trump’s known ties, in what appeared to be an effort to energize her own voters and, in particular, to give pause to Republicans who have grudgingly opted to make their peace with a candidate they don’t love. As she had in June, Clinton again labeled Trump “temperamentally unfit to be president of the United States.”

Vile Breitbart hell realm being Milo Yiannopolous–the devildude thrown off twitter for the racist trolling of black comedienne and actress Leslie Jones–said it was all Hillary’s fault. Now, I am going to attribute his quote to its source but go to the Breithbart site at the risk of needing eyebleach and a stomach transplant.

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WTF is wrong with a huge number of working class white people?  I mean seriously, is clinging to your guns, your religious delusions, and your overt racism so important that you don’t realize you’re basically ruining your life and any chance your children for good jobs?  And you’re voting for the very same folk who keep you down?

We are now living in a decade with such gross levels of income disparity that the 99% believe that the 1% that has been left to them is something literal, as if it were a sliver of an apple pie, for example. Therefore, if a group — such as Black Lives Matter — comes along at this moment and says that it wants access to the pie, rather than welcoming allies who will help challenge everyone’s ability to access what the top 1% has, it becomes seen as one more group that is going to need to share the scraps that are left. Further, because working class Republicans have been convinced that “no new taxes” and “no big government” — policies that best serve the interests of the super wealthy — are the way to go, again, that panic about how little that’s left gets stoked even higher. The resentment pyres are fanned. The irony, of course, is that if the working class could unite as a political bloc, they could perhaps change the structure so that some of the income disparity that separates us from the super-rich would be re-released back into the economy, which would benefit us all. White working class racism hinders the progress of white working class economic progress. 

Meanwhile, reality should set in some where as more Republicans who have served Republican presidents endorse Hillary 2016_08_25_VagendaOfManocide-3_21574365186Clinton.  Carlos Guittierez is the latest outspoken endorsement.  The one that happened today is one we could skip completely because it’s icky Paul Wolfowitz. Not one living former White House economic adviser is voting Trump and only one of the Republicans is toying with gadfly libertarian airhead Gary Johnson.

Served Under Republicans

“I have known personally every Republican president since Richard Nixon. They all showed a real understanding of economics and international affairs. The same was true of Mitt Romney. Donald Trump does not have that understanding and does not seem to be concerned about it. That alone disqualifies him in my judgement.” —Martin Feldstein, chairman under President Ronald Reagan, opposes Donald Trump

“Mr. Trump has not laid out a coherent economic worldview, but one recurrent theme is hostility to a free and open system of international trade. From my perspective as an economics policy wonk, that by itself is disqualifying. And then there are issues of temperament.” —Gregory Mankiw, chairman under President George W. Bush, opposes Donald Trump

“He would have to change both many of his positions and his character.” —Richard Schmalensee, member under President George H.W. Bush, opposes Donald Trump and will vote for Hillary Clinton

“It seems highly improbable that [Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson] will win but I cannot bring myself to vote for either Trump or Clinton. A large enough Johnson vote may constrain the next president to some degree.” —William Poole, member under President Ronald Reagan, opposes both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton

“On the trade issue alone, I wouldn’t support either one. As an economist, free trade is not something that’s a partisan kind of issue and to have both parties being protectionist is unacceptable.” —Jerry Jordan, member under President Ronald Reagan, opposes both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton

Donald Trump’s “views on international economic policy…are fundamentally flawed in so many ways.” Also, “there are a number of things he had stated, implied that collectively present a fear-based, xenophobic, judgemental personality.” —Matthew Slaughter, member under President George W. Bush, opposes Donald Trump and will vote for Hillary Clinton

2c0c849e63c562e6a70c9d18bca7cd03The writing may already be on the wall if this Quinnipiac poll is right.  Notice the Strump never mentions polls any more?

In the battle of the unloved presidential candidates, Democrat Hillary Clinton tops the magical 50 percent mark among American likely voters, leading Republican Donald Trump 51 – 41 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University National poll released today.

When third party candidates are added to the mix, Clinton gets 45 percent with Trump at 38 percent, Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson at 10 percent and Green Party candidate Jill Stein at 4 percent, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University Poll finds. This survey of likely voters can not be compared with results of earlier surveys of registered voters.

Women and non-white voters propel Clinton in the head-to-head matchup. Women back her 60 – 36 percent. Men back Trump 48 – 42 percent. White voters back Trump 52 – 41 percent. Non-white voters back Clinton 77 – 15 percent.

A total of 44 percent of American likely voters like Clinton “a lot” or “a little,” while 47 percent dislike her “a little” or “a lot,” and 8 percent hate her.

A total of 35 percent of voters like Trump “a lot” or “a little,” while 53 percent dislike him “a little” or a lot,” and 10 percent hate him.

“We are starting to hear the faint rumblings of a Hillary Clinton landslide as her 10-point lead is further proof that Donald Trump is in a downward spiral as the clock ticks,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

“Trump’s missteps, stumbles and gaffes seem to outweigh Clinton’s shaky trust status and perceived shady dealings. Wow, is there any light at the end of this dark and depressing chapter in American politics?”

American likely voters give both candidates negative favorability ratings, 41 – 53 percent for Clinton and 33 – 61 percent for Trump. In fact, 37 percent of likely voters say they would consider voting for a third party candidate.

In this very negative race, 64 percent of Trump supporters say they are voting mainly anti-Clinton, while 25 percent say they are voting pro-Trump.

If you actually go to that survey link and read some of the questions they asked, you’ll start thinking that all national polls arevag_2885819k push polls these days.  I can’t take any more of this untrustworthy/likability shit.  It’s like a freaking self-fulfilling prophecy.  It does seem, however, that she is safely on her way to the U.S. Presidency. Hang on and get ready for more misogyny and CDS.

What’s on your reading, blogging and VAGENDA list today?  (Yes, male allies, your “woman card” from the Clinton Campaign makes you an honorary Vagina holder too!!!