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It would be. Post any statement that supports your silly claim.
And who exactly are the 'white activists'?
Fact matter, unless you're a RW troll.
‘We Are Being Eaten From Within.’ Why America Is Losing the Battle Against White Nationalist Terrorism
Stopping White Supremacist Terrorism Should Start With Trump
https://time.com/5647304/white-nationalist-terrorism-united-states/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=20190808&xid=newsletter-brief
By Vera Bergengruen and W.J. Hennigan
6:02 AM EDT
When you think of a terrorist, what do you see? For more than a generation, the image lurking in Americans’ nightmares has resembled the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks: an Islamic jihadist. Not a 21-year-old white supremacist from a prosperous Dallas suburb.
But long before that young man drove to El Paso, Texas, on Aug. 3 and allegedly murdered at least 22 people at a Walmart crammed with back-to-school shoppers, it was clear that white nationalists have become the face of terrorism in America. Since 9/11, white supremacists and other far-right extremists have been responsible for almost three times as many attacks on U.S. soil as Islamic terrorists, the government reported.
From 2009 through 2018, the far right has been responsible for 73% of domestic extremist-related fatalities, according to a 2019 study by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). And the toll is growing.
More people–49–were murdered by far-right extremists in the U.S. last year than in any other year since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress in July that a majority of the bureau’s domestic-terrorism investigations since October were linked to white supremacy.
Yet the nation’s leaders have failed to meet this menace. In more than a dozen interviews with TIME, current and former federal law-enforcement and national-security officials described a sense of bewilderment and frustration as they watched warnings go ignored and the white-supremacist terror threat grow.
Over the past decade, multiple attempts to refocus federal resources on the issue have been thwarted. Entire offices meant to coordinate an interagency response to right-wing extremism were funded, staffed and then defunded in the face of legal, constitutional and political concerns.
Today, FBI officials say just 20% of the bureau’s counterterrorism field agents are focused on domestic probes.
This year alone, those agents’ caseload has included an investigation into an Ohio militia allegedly stockpiling explosives to build pipe bombs; a self-professed white-supremacist Coast Guard officer who amassed an arsenal in his apartment in the greater Washington, D.C., area; an attack in April at a synagogue outside San Diego that killed one; and the July 28 assault at a garlic festival in Gilroy, Calif., that killed three. Cesar Sayoc, a 57-year-old man from Florida, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Aug. 5 after pleading guilty to mailing 16 pipe bombs to Democrats and critics of President Donald Trump.
The FBI has warned about the rising domestic threat for years, but has not had a receptive audience in the White House. As a result, agency leadership hasn’t historically prioritized white-supremacist violence even among homegrown threats, for years listing “eco-terrorism” as the top risk, former special agent Michael German told the House Committee on Oversight and Reform in May.
Law-enforcement officials say the cancer of white nationalism has metastasized across social media and the dark corners of the Internet, creating a copycat effect in which aspiring killers draw inspiration and seek to outdo one another. The suspect in El Paso was at least the third this year to post a manifesto on the online message forum 8chan before logging off to commit mass murder. More people were killed that day in El Paso than all 14 service members killed this year on the battlefields in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
“Even if there was a crackdown right now, it’s going to take years for the momentum of these groups to fade,” says Daryl Johnson, a former senior analyst at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), whose 2009 report on right-wing extremism was lambasted by conservatives even before its release. “I’m afraid we’ve reached a tipping point where we’re in for this kind of violence for a long time.”
Right-wing terrorism is a global problem, resulting in devastating attacks from New Zealand to Norway. But it is particularly dangerous in the U.S., which has more guns per capita than anywhere else in the world, an epidemic of mass shootings, a bedrock tradition of free speech that protects the expression of hateful ideologies and laws that make it challenging to confront a disaggregated movement that exists largely in the shadows of cyberspace.
Law enforcement lacks many of the weapons it uses against foreign enemies like al-Qaeda. To defend America from the danger posed by Islamist terror groups, the federal government built a globe-spanning surveillance and intelligence network capable of stopping attacks before they occurred.
Federal agents were granted sweeping authorities by Congress to shadow foreign terrorist suspects. No comparable system exists in domestic-terror cases. Domestic terrorism is not even a federal crime, forcing prosecutors to charge suspects under hate-crime laws.
“White supremacy is a greater threat than international terrorism right now,” says David Hickton, a former U.S. Attorney who directs the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy and Security. “We are being eaten from within.” Yet Hickton says federal prosecutors are limited in how they try domestic cases. “I’d have to pursue a white supremacist with hate crimes, unless he interfaced with al-Qaeda. Does that make any sense?”
Then there is the problem of a Commander in Chief whose rhetoric appears to mirror, validate and potentially inspire that of far-right extremists.
The screed posted by the suspected terrorist in El Paso said he was motivated by a perceived “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” President Trump’s campaign has run some 2,200 Facebook ads warning of an “invasion” at the border, according to a CNN analysis. It’s a term he regularly uses in tweets and interviews.
“People hate the word invasion, but that’s what it is,” he said in the Oval Office in March. “It’s an invasion of drugs and criminals and people.” (The El Paso shooter said his actions were unconnected to Trump. A senior Administration official told TIME that the criticism linking the President’s rhetoric to violence was “unfortunate, unreasonable and obviously politically motivated.”)
In the wake of the El Paso attack, which was followed by a second mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, roughly 13 hours later, Trump promised to give federal authorities “whatever they need” to combat domestic terrorism. He said law enforcement “must do a better job of identifying and acting on early warning signs” and said he was directing the Justice Department to “work in partnership with local, state and federal agencies, as well as social-media companies, to develop tools that can detect mass shooters before they strike.”
But White House officials did not specify which new authorities are needed. Nor does the Administration’s record offer much hope. In the early days of his presidency, the Trump Administration gutted the DHS office that focused on violent extremism in the U.S. and pulled funding for grants that were meant to go to organizations countering neo-Nazis, white supremacists, antigovernment militants and other like-minded groups.
The El Paso suspect was born in 1998, three years after the worst homegrown terrorist attack in American history. The bombing of Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was carried out by Timothy McVeigh, a Gulf War veteran who wanted to exact revenge against the federal government for the deadly sieges in Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge, Idaho. The sprawling investigation that followed McVeigh’s attack, which killed 168 people, foreshadowed some of the challenges facing law enforcement today.
The bombing helped call attention to the threat of domestic terrorism. But that focus dissipated in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, which drove the full force of the U.S. national-security system into fighting Islamic terrorism. From 2005 to 2009, according to a Justice Department audit, the number of FBI agents assigned to domestic-terrorism probes averaged less than 330 out of a total of almost 2,000 FBI agents assigned to counterterrorism cases.
By the end of George W. Bush’s presidency, however, it had become apparent to U.S. officials monitoring such threats that something serious was brewing at home. The prospect of the first black President sparked a sharp rise in far-right groups, from so-called Patriot movement adherents to antigovernment militias, according to analysts at DHS.
The Secret Service took the unprecedented step of assigning Barack Obama a protective detail in May 2007, mere months into his campaign and long before candidates typically receive protection.
Johnson, who led a six-person group at DHS’ Office of Intelligence and Analysis, began working on a report about the rise of right-wing extremism. It warned that white nationalists, antigovernment extremists and members of other far-right groups were seizing on the economic crisis and Obama’s ascension to recruit new members.
Johnson was preparing to release his report when a similar study by the Missouri Information Analysis Center, meant for law-enforcement officers, was leaked to the public in February 2009. The paper, titled “The Modern Militia Movement,” linked members of these militias to fundamentalist Christian, anti-abortion or anti-immigration movements.
The report was pilloried by GOP groups and politicians for singling out conservatives as possible criminals. Missouri officials warned Johnson about the blowback he could expect for publishing a similar analysis.
But Johnson, who describes himself as a conservative Republican, says he thought the DHS lawyers and editors who worked on the report would provide a layer of protection from GOP criticism. “I didn’t think the whole Republican Party would basically throw a hissy fit,” he recalls.
But when the DHS report was leaked to conservative bloggers in April 2009, it provoked an outcry from Republicans and conservative media, who painted it as a political hit job by the Obama Administration.
DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, who originally issued a broad defense of the report, apologized to the American Legion for one of its most controversial components–a section that raised concerns about military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and subsequently being susceptible targets for recruitment by right-wing groups.
Johnson’s team was slowly disbanded; the number of analysts devoted to non-Islamic domestic terrorism dwindled from six to zero in 2010, he said.
The Missouri and DHS reports were early examples of how the fight against right-wing terrorism would be hamstrung by politics. For years, “there’s been a visceral response from politicians that if these groups are being labeled as ‘right wing,’ then it’s Republicans who are responsible for those groups’ activities,” says Jason Blazakis, former director of the Counterterrorism Finance and Designations Office at the U.S. State Department, who is now a professor at the Middlebury Institute in Monterey, Calif. “It’s unfortunate, but I think in many ways this has resulted and served this reluctance in the Republican side to take as strong of action as they could.”
In interviews, veterans of the FBI, DHS and other national-security agencies recalled moments during the Obama Administration when they realized the domestic-terror threat was expanding unchecked.
In January 2011, local police in Spokane, Wash., narrowly averted a tragedy when they redirected a Martin Luther King Day parade away from a roadside bomb planted on the route, loaded with shrapnel coated with a substance meant to keep blood from clotting in wounds.
At the time, it was one of the most sophisticated improvised explosive devices to appear in the U.S. Two months later, the FBI arrested Kevin William Harpham, 36, a former U.S. Army member linked to the neo-Nazi National Alliance. “I remember being like, ‘Wow, we have a problem,'” recalls former FBI agent Clint Watts, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “The belief was always that this would be al-Qaeda, not a former soldier who is a white supremacist.”
In 2011, the Obama White House released a strategy to “empower local partners” to counter violent extremism. As part of that plan, DHS official George Selim was put in charge of leading these efforts as director of an interagency task force in 2016. Selim’s office of community partnerships, which had been set up a year earlier, grew to 16 full-time employees and 25 contractors, with a total budget of $21 million. As part of its work, it had $10 million in grants for local programs to counter propaganda, recognize the signs of radicalization in local communities and intervene to stop attacks before they happen.
But the Obama Administration was wary of the political blowback, according to a senior government official familiar with the efforts of the FBI and DHS, and mindful of the government’s lack of legal authority to monitor domestic hate speech, obtain search or surveillance warrants, or recruit sources. Meanwhile, the threat continued to grow, fueled in online forums. In June 2015, Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old who posted on the neo-Nazi site Stormfront under the screen name “Lil Aryan,” opened fire in a black church in Charleston, S.C., killing nine parishioners.
Then Trump won the White House. In the new Administration, efforts to confront domestic extremism “came to a grinding halt,” says Selim. The new Administration redirected federal resources on Islamist terrorism. Barely a week into his presidency, Reuters reported that Trump had tried to change the name of the Countering Violent Extremism program to Countering Radical Islamic Extremism.
The Administration’s reconstituted Office for Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention saw its mission expand while its staffing and budget were slashed to a fraction of what it had been, according to a former DHS official.
“The infrastructure we had labored over for years started to get torn down,” says Selim, who also led counterterrorism efforts under George W. Bush. “It has been decimated in the past two years under this Administration.”
The Justice Department has also recently reorganized its domestic-terrorism categories in a way that masks the scope of white-supremacist violence, according to former FBI officials who say the change makes it harder to track or measure the scale of these attacks, which are often haphazardly classified as hate crimes or deferred to state and local authorities. The lack of clear data impacts the resources the FBI can devote to investigating them.
A second senior government official, granted anonymity to discuss the Trump Administration’s efforts, says that while FBI analysts continued to issue warnings about the alarming patterns of white-nationalist radicalization online, mid-level officials and political appointees quickly recognized that assessments that ran counter to what Trump was saying publicly would fall on deaf ears. “That could cost you a seat at the table,” the official says, “although there have been fewer and fewer tables to sit at and discuss intelligence and policy.”
As President, Trump has repeatedly downplayed the threat posed by white supremacists. He famously blamed “both sides” for violence at a white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. Asked if he saw white nationalism as a rising threat in the wake of a March attack on two New Zealand mosques by an avowed racist who killed 51 people, he countered, “I don’t really. It’s a small group of people.”
In a nation where a mass shooting occurs on average about once a day, it is easy to be cynical about the prospect of change. But following the El Paso and Dayton attacks, there are glimmers of hope, however slight.
The crowded field of Democratic presidential candidates has jumped on the issue, ensuring that the national spotlight of the 2020 campaign will keep the debate over guns and domestic terrorism from fading away. In Congress, Democrats have rallied behind legislation that would require DHS, the FBI and the Justice Department to address white supremacism and right-wing extremism, including training and information sharing.
Among law enforcement there has been a new push for domestic terrorism to be codified as a federal crime. “Acts of violence intended to intimidate civilian populations or to influence or affect government policy should be prosecuted as domestic terrorism regardless of the ideology behind them,” Brian O’Hare, president of the FBI Agents Association, wrote in a statement. Such a change would give prosecutors new tools to confront the threat of domestic radicalization.
There has also been a noticeable shift in how law-enforcement and government officials talk about these attacks. FBI agents, politicians and federal attorneys have become quicker to label extremist violence committed by Americans as “terrorism.” On Aug. 6, the FBI announced it was opening a domestic-terrorism investigation into the suspect in Gilroy, noting that the gunman had a “target list” of religious institutions, political organizations and federal buildings.
The day after the El Paso attack, the top federal prosecutor in western Texas declared that the incident would be treated as terrorism. “We’re going to do what we do to terrorists in this country, which is deliver swift and certain justice,” said U.S. Attorney John Bash.
This language matters, experts say. If we cannot call an evil by its name, how can we hope to defeat it? “You can’t really deal with the problem unless you acknowledge it exists,” says Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the ADL’s Center on Extremism, who has studied far-right extremism since the mid-1990s. “We need a consensus that this is a problem, and we need to get together, irrespective of people’s partisan beliefs or anything else, to confront this problem for the good of everybody.”
–With reporting by ALANA ABRAMSON, TESSA BERENSON and JOHN WALCOTT/WASHINGTON
Write to W.J. Hennigan at william.hennigan@time.com.
This appears in the August 19, 2019 issue of TIME.
*God, guns, gays, flags, fetuses and fake news....don't sweat the algae.
* perfect segue to an appropriate hot Aug. night song....'pack up the babies and grab the old ladies.....'
We're dealing here with the same historical illiteracy that 'believes' because Abe Lincoln was a Republican it means that today's Republicans are politically and philosophically compatible with a man dead and gone for 154 fucking years,
Or that the massive defection, in the 1960's, of white southern Dems to the then new Jim Crow Party, the GO fucking P, has no significance or maybe never happened.
Historical illiteracy, fairy dust economics, science illiteracy/climate change denial and an appalling weakness for bat-shit conspiracy theories comprise the 'stupidity portfolio' we see posted here daily.
Gov. DeWine calls for lawmakers to pass red-flag law, stronger background checks to fight gun violence
https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/local-govt--politics/dewine-detail-gun-mental-health-proposals-today-trump-heading-dayton/iWN6pJ5le1JnAjtmBFUHVJ/
Local | Aug 06, 2019
By Max Filby and Avery Kreemer, Washington Bureau
Dayton Mayor Whaley calls DeWine’s proposals a ‘step in the right direction.
COLUMBUS —
Gov. Mike DeWine announced a list of policy proposals Tuesday to fight gun violence including red-flag laws and tougher background checks.
The governor’s action comes just two days after a gunman killed nine and injured more than 30 in Dayton’s Oregon District,
At a vigil in the Oregon District Sunday night, the crowd chanted at the governor to “do something.” He said that’s what he is going to do.
“I understand that anger,” DeWine said. “Some chanted ‘do something’ and they were absolutely right. We must do something and that is exactly what we are going to do.”
Red-flag law
The governor proposed a new version of a “red flag law” that the legislature has considered in the past. Red flag laws, also known as extreme protection orders, allow police or close family members to get a court order to remove firearms from someone who appears to be a danger to themselves or others.
DeWine’s proposed red flag law would protect “due process,” he said, by requiring a judicial hearing to be held within three days of a person’s firearms temporarily being confiscated.
If a judge determines a person is a threat to himself or herself, the gun owner could be ordered to get mental health care before their firearms are returned to them.
RELATED: President Donald Trump coming to Dayton Wednesday
The protection order could be extended for up to six months if necessary, DeWine said. The gun owner in question would also have the opportunity to apply to retrieve their firearms every three months, but would need to provide evidence that they no longer pose a threat, DeWine said.
“We have to empower people to get help for family or loved ones who may be a danger to themselves or a danger to others,” DeWine said.
Strengthening background checks and soft targets
DeWine called for stronger background checks across Ohio. He said checks should be performed for any gun purchase in the state, with the exception of gifts for a family member and other instances which he did not detail.
DeWine also wants to strengthen “soft targets” like the Oregon District, houses of worship and nonprofits. The operating budget provides nearly $9 million to help “harden” those soft targets.
The governor also proposed improving access to mental health treatment by freeing up psychiatric care across the state.
Hospitals lack beds, DeWine said, because they are filled up with court-ordered people. Nearly 80% of people in those hospitals are non-violent, he said.
DeWine asked the general assembly to pass a bill that would establish an outpatient procedure to free up more beds for people in need of psychiatric care.
Monitoring social media, other services
In the new state budget, $675 million in “wrap-around services” for schools to design individualized programs with local mental health providers and social service organizations to address social and emotional challenges of students, according to the governor’s office. The Ohio Department of Medicaid is investing $15 million in “telehealth” mental health services to students to reach children in more rural areas.
The Ohio Department of Public Safety will increase its monitoring of social media. It’s important, DeWine said, for individuals who post threats to be flagged before they commit a crime. He noted the Dayton shooter “clearly showed anti-social behaviors.”
DeWine wants to improve a school violence tip line for schools. The number 844-723-3764. Schools across the state, DeWine said are implementing a safety program to help their students and staff identify potential threats.
“We’re asking people to step up,” DeWine said. “If you see something (or) hear something, do something.”
Increasing penalties
People who break the law when it comes to buying, selling or owning firearms should face stiffer penalties, DeWine said.
The crime of having a weapon while under a disability should become a second-degree felony punishable by two to eight years in prison on a first offense and for subsequent offenses it should be a first-degree felony punishable by three to 11 years in prison, DeWine said.
People who commit a felony while in possession of a firearm would face an additional one to three-year prison sentence under DeWine’s proposal. DeWine asked the legislature to pass a law that would require a three to five year prison sentence for those who brandish a gun while committing a felony.
The act of “straw purchasing” guns in order to give them to another individual is already illegal under Ohio and federal law. However, DeWine is called on the Ohio House and Senate to increase the penalty for a straw purchase to a second-degree felony punishable by two to eight years in prison.
DeWine recommended that a person who possesses a gun they know was illegally obtained should be punished in the same manner as a person who bought it, by increasing the penalty to a second-degree felony punishable by two to eight years in prison. DeWine also asked the general assembly to boost the penalty for improperly providing a firearm to a minor to a third-degree felony punishable by up to three years in prison.
Lawmakers and advocates react
Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley said she thought the governor’s proposals are a “step in the right direction.
“Last year, the Ohio Legislature was debating extreme proposals about arming preschool teachers. Today, we’re finally talking about common-sense ideas like universal background checks. I appreciate Gov. DeWine listening to the people of Dayton, and following his prayers for our community with action. I hope the legislature will follow his example,” Whaley said.
State Sen. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering, said she was “encouraged,” by the long list of proposals DeWine released but noted that they still have a “long way to go” before becoming law.
“I think the community should be encouraged that he’s working on it,” Lehner said. “Hopefully we’re going to see them pass.”
Lehner has expressed support for the creation of red flag laws in the Buckeye State. But, she said she’s a little concerned about the number of hearings and steps that would be required by DeWine’s proposed protection orders.
State Rep. Niraj Antani, R-Miamisburg, said he needed to know more details before he could say whether he would support each of DeWine’s proposals. Any red flag law would need to have some form of due process upfront instead of after a person’s firearms have been temporarily confiscated.
Rather than a specific focus on guns, Antani said he thinks any future legislation should focus more on removing violent individuals from society or getting them the help they need. The time for the legislature to start considering DeWine’s proposals is now, Antani said.
“I believe that the general assembly should come back immediately to begin discussing this,” Antani said. “There’s no reason to take a break when we came back for other bills this summer.”
State Rep. Jim Butler, R-Oakwood, said it’s important to identify “violently and severely mentally ill” individuals early, and allow them due process before restricting that individual’s ability to buy a gun.
Butler declined to comment on which of DeWine’s suggestions he agreed or disagreed with, or whether he thought DeWine’s proposals would be passed through the Ohio Legislature, but he said he felt it was the duty of the Legislature to protect Ohioans and prevent further tragedies.
“One area is not enough. We need to look at all areas and come up with a comprehensive solutions,” Butler said. “I do think there needs to be some significant reforms passed.”
State Sen. Steve Huffman, R-Tipp City, said that while he needs more time to look into the details of DeWine’s proposals, the Legislature should look into all proposals with the intent of stopping future mass shootings.
Huffman said that he, Senate President Larry Obhoff and the rest of the Senate is dedicated to looking into every option.
“The vast majority of this in intertwined into mental illness,” Huffman added. “I don’t think anybody would dispute that anybody who would do these mass killings has a mental illness.”
Input from gun-rights supporters
When developing the policy ideas, DeWine said he and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted worked closely with the gun owner community to make sure that they felt the proposals didn’t infringe on due process or second amendment rights.
Jim Irvine, president of the Buckeye Firearms Association said he’s not worried about anything the governor proposed Tuesday, though he said his organization will need to take a closer look a the details.
“Nobody likes what happened…What can we do about it (while) respecting the rights of the citizens and making it work?” Irvine said. “I believe the governor has shown, not just today but through his life that’s what he wants to do.”
You fuckin' idiot. Trump doesn't bother with a dog whistle, he's too openly racist and stupid to fool or gaslight anyone with an IQ # above room temperature. You are too.
Not EVEN the notorious outlier Rasmussen shows Trump beating Biden.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_biden-6247.html
RCP Average 3/27 - 8/1 -- -- 49.8 41.3 Biden +8.5
Though 8/1. Watch how it widens in the next post-shootings polls, you poor sap.
Al Franken: "Learn the Damn Speech!
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212358259
As found on FB~
Few things here...
1) Al Franken was railroaded into resigning and should still be in the Senate.
2) I miss his ability to communicate intelligently with humor.
3) I miss him and his point of view. He just posted the following and I thought I’d put the copy/paste function to good use for your convenience. So. Without further ado, Senator Al Franken...
“Learn the Damn Speech!
One of the most frustrating parts of being an American during these past couple years has been trying to process the sheer tonnage of lies, the endless vitriol and stupidity, the unyielding crassness, cynicism, and self-aggrandizement, not to mention the sheer cruelty coming on a daily basis from Donald Trump. It is so overwhelming that it all sort of blends into one nightmarish mountain range of bullshit.
At a certain point, the brain gives up. There is no sense trying to remember his childish taunts, malicious calumnies, and transparently empty boasts. Just wait a few minutes. There’ll be a new one.
Keeping track of, let alone cataloguing, his daily stream of effluent, quickly became an impossible exercise, especially, I would imagine, for the poor souls whose job it is to do just that. But every once in a while, I will find a new category of affront that screams, “point me out!”
And that is Trump’s unwillingness to step up during a moment of national pain and deliver a speech meant to provide some comfort to Americans in a manner that makes you believe he gives shit.
Remember, this is a guy who criticized President Obama for using a teleprompter. Yet, when he spoke yesterday about the tragedies in El Paso and Dayton, his expressionless face appeared to be mounted on a swivel-head, turning mechanically from one prompter to another in a way that suggested that he was reading the words for the first time and that he really felt he had better things to do.
Mr. President, when more than thirty people are randomly gunned down by two men in two American cities within hours of each other, and one of the killers had written a manifesto borrowing heavily from your own words, it’s time to step up and at least say something that, while not particularly comforting, (not your forte), at least sounds sincere.
Some tips. Practice the speech. Start by reading it. Several times. That way, when you say the words for the cameras, they will seem familiar to you and you may understand why you are saying what you’re saying.
Try to rewrite the speech, if just slightly, in your own words – enough to make it sound like you mean what are saying. Don’t gin up emotion if you don’t have any to gin up. But at least make an attempt to pretend that you grieve for those who died and their friends and family.
Don’t go to El Paso. Or to Dayton. But especially El Paso. The families and friends of those who were massacred there have every right to believe that your words from the moment you started your campaign at Trump Tower, then throughout your campaign, and to the very day of the shooting – that those words encouraged the shooter and that their loved ones may very well be alive were it not for the hatred you’ve been spewing almost daily.
Give the speech – a new speech – that expresses heartfelt sadness and grief. Do it from the Oval Office, not from one of your golf courses. And try to make it sound like you’re sincere, even if you’re not. That will require some work. But it will be worth it. Understand how desperate all of us are for some reassurance that there are indeed limits to your unfeeling cruelty. Please. Not just for the people of El Paso and Dayton. But for all Americans.”
~ Al Franken
No, the points are that Ivanka doesn't know shit, that guns are too readily available to exactly the people who shouldn't have them and that the POTUS is a moral imbecile with an inflammatory mouth.
World Economy Edges Closer to a Recession as Trade Dread Deepens
By
Enda Curran
and
Katia Dmitrieva
?August? ?7?, ?2019? ?3?:?11? ?AM Updated on ?August? ?7?, ?2019? ?9?:?59? ?AM
Yield curve indicates investors expected protracted weakness
Central banks from Wellington to Bangkok shock with rate cuts
Trade War Has Cost 1% in Terms of Global Growth, Gurria Says
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-07/world-economy-edges-closer-to-a-recession-as-trade-fears-spread
The escalating trade war between the U.S. and China is nudging the world economy toward its first recession in a decade with investors demanding politicians and central bankers act fast to change course.
The latest setback hit German industrial production, which in June registered its biggest annual decline in almost a decade, highlighting the severity of a manufacturing slump in Europe’s largest economy. In the Asia-Pacific region, central banks in New Zealand, India and Thailand made surprise interest-rate cuts trying to safeguard their economies from global headwinds.
In the U.S., recession risk is “much higher than it needs to be and much higher than it was two months ago,” Lawrence Summers, a former U.S. Treasury secretary and a White House economic adviser during the last downturn, told Bloomberg Television. “You can often play with fire and not have anything untoward happen, but if you do it too much you eventually get burned.”
Summers, a Harvard professor, still sees a less than 50/50 chance that the U.S. enters a recession in the next 12 months. Investors are much more bearish: A closely watched segment of the yield curve, the difference between 10-year and three-month U.S. Treasury debt, inverted the most since 2007, indicating bets on protracted weakness.
Economic Risk on the Rise
The risk of recession has increased in most of the world's biggest economies
Source: Bloomberg surveys, median probability of a recession in the next 12 months
U.S. stocks fell in New York, bonds rallied globally, and havens including gold and the yen gained ground. The yield curve for both the U.S. and German economies are flashing warning signs of a downturn.
As U.S.-China trade relations sour, policy interest rates are going down. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand on Wednesday stunned investors by dropping its benchmark rate by 50 basis points, double the expected reduction and sending the kiwi tumbling. Thailand also surprised, cutting by 25 points. India’s central bank lowered its rate by an unconventional 35 points.
While tight labor markets globally and the recent shift by central banks should provide a cushion, economists are starting to war game for how a recession could happen. Their fears are mainly centered on the damaging effects of tariffs.
Under one scenario, U.S. President Donald Trump would carry through with his latest threat to impose 10% tariffs on a further $300 billion of Chinese goods, drawing a retaliation from President Xi Jinping. While the direct cost of those tariffs is likely to be small, it is the uncertainty created by a further escalation of the trade war that could weigh on investment, hiring and ultimately consumption.
Morgan Stanley economists predict that if the U.S. puts 25% tariffs on all Chinese imports for four to six months and the country hits back, a global economic contraction is likely within three quarters. The tensions also extend beyond the U.S and China to include Japan and South Korea as well as Britain’s future relationship with the European Union.
Global Fallout
The worry is without a trade truce soon, markets will extend their recent slide and uncertainty-plagued companies would pull back further on investment, extending the pain of manufacturers to the services sector. Then, an otherwise tight job market would start to crack and consumers would retrench.
While central banks would likely cut interest rates and perhaps resume quantitative easing, that may no longer be enough to revive animal spirits this time and governments might not be fast enough to loosen fiscal policy.
“With no end in sight, there are significant downside risks to our forecasts for U.S. and global growth,” Bank of America Corp. economists warned clients this week. “If the trade war escalates -- this could include a more explicit currency war -- uncertainty would be considerably higher and financial conditions much tighter.”
What Bloomberg’s Economists Say
“Asset purchases -- if the ECB and others take that path -- will be less effective this time than they were in the past. Conventional policy space is limited. Unconventional policy is of limited effectiveness. Best hope it’s not needed.”
--Tom Orlik, chief economist
Much depends on consumer and corporate confidence.
JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s global manufacturing purchasing managers index already shows contraction. With Germany in a funk, the European Central Bank is poised to unleash a renewed round of stimulus as soon as September, potentially including a rate cut further into negative territory, to fight a deepening slowdown.
German output down most in almost a decade as trade war bites
In the U.S., manufacturing growth has slowed for four straight months and Citigroup Inc. equity strategists have cut their earnings forecast for S&P 500 companies.
Then there are consumers. Those in China and the U.S. have continued to spend, perhaps encouraged to by tight labor markets. But JPMorgan economists reckon the pace of global hiring in the second half of this year will slow to its softest since 2012-13. One early warning sign: Car sales in China are reeling from a historic slump.
Barely finished cleaning up from their last recessions, central banks are swinging back toward rescue mode. Having cut rates a week ago for the first time since 2008, the Federal Reserve is on course to do so again next month and investors are pricing in further action by year-end. That’s despite Chairman Jerome Powell’s signal that he’s undertaking more of a mid-cycle adjustment than a pronounced easing cycle.
Trump on Wednesday upbraided the Fed again, citing the three rate cuts in Asia-Pacific in the past 24 hours. “They must Cut Rates bigger and faster, and stop their ridiculous quantitative tightening NOW,” the U.S. president tweeted. “Incompetence is a terrible thing to watch, especially when things could be taken care of sooo easily.”
But this time around, central bankers may not be powerful enough given rates are already low and further action may not offset the fallout from the trade troubles. Investors surveyed recently by Bank of America Corp. identified monetary policy impotency as their biggest concern.
Central Bank Rate Cuts
“We are using interest rates to fix problems that they cannot solve,” said Patrick Bennett, head of macro strategy for Asia at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in Hong Kong.
An added complication is the U.S. Treasury’s decision this week to label China a currency manipulator after China allowed the yuan to weaken past 7 against the dollar for the first time since 2008.
“We have gone from some degree of uncertainty to bucket loads of uncertainty yet again,” said Fraser Howie, who has two decades of experience in China’s financial markets and co-wrote the 2010 book “Red Capitalism.”
It's the stone cold truth to anyone who is not either a bigot or a supporter of bigots.
Anyone who pushed or fell for the birther crap is a bigoted moron.
You mean this? I'm thinking Ivanka is no one to speak credibly about gun violence while her daddy's GOP refuses to pass even the most commonsensical gun control regulations....assault weapons ban and closing background check loopholes.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-ivanka-trump-chicago-gun-violence-lori-lightfoot-20190806-xijpu5evarberpah2xapdo65da-story.html
Before her inauguration as Chicago’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot visited the White House to meet with Ivanka Trump and begin building a relationship that she hoped could lead to help in solving some of the city’s deepest problems.
But this week, Lightfoot engaged in a public battle of words with the president’s powerful daughter, who in a series of tweets on Tuesday drew attention to the city’s gun violence and provoked an angry response from Chicago’s mayor.
Early Tuesday, Ivanka Trump drew renewed national attention to Chicago’s problems with gun violence by writing, “As we grieve over the evil mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, let us not overlook that Chicago experienced its deadliest weekend of the year.”
“With 7 dead and 52 wounded near a playground in the Windy City — and little national outrage or media coverage — we mustn’t become numb to the violence faced by inner city communities every day,” she tweeted.
Lightfoot took exception to the remarks and made her feelings known during a news conference after her so-called Accountability Tuesday meeting with Chicago police brass to review the city’s police strategies and response to violence.
A livid Lightfoot said Trump got key facts wrong in her online comments and falsely implied that all the injuries happened in one incident. If Ivanka Trump cared, Lightfoot said, she should have reached out to city officials.
“It wasn’t a playground, it was a park. It wasn’t seven dead. It wasn’t 52 wounded in one incident, which is what this suggests.
It’s misleading,” Lightfoot said. “It’s important when we’re talking about people’s lives to actually get the facts correct, which one can easily do if you actually cared about getting it right.”
No asshole that IS the salient difference that renders the false equivalence arguments that you critical thinking impaired jackasses are falling on your faces trying to make, moot.
You brought up Scalise's shooting apropos no cause and effect.
FBI is looking into the white supremacist shit behind at least two recent shootings.
THAT'S what president used enema water is stoking every time he opens his vapid, bigoted, race baiting mouth.
I didn't forget about it. Was the Scalise shooter linked to any comments from Bernie or from any other Dems?
So, zero shootings incited by Dem politicians.
My point stands unrebutted, my question unanswered.
Amply supported by factual reporting of what Trump has actually said, done and not done.
Yeah, he fueled the execrable Southern Strategy.
When you create push back through support of needed civil rights/voting rights legislation are you responsible for creating a racial divide, increasing racial tensions?
Or are those opposing such as, or more, responsible? Which was the more moral position?
Whether LBJ said it or not Red State America is largely the Old Confederacy, the formerly solid Dem South, and the Great Plains, effectively since the '68 elections.
Carter, Clinton, Gore were 'native sons' who only temporarily breached that Red Wall.
Did LBJ really say that "We have lost the south for a generation"?
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/199opr/did_lbj_really_say_that_we_have_lost_the_south/
submitted 6 years ago by Philosopher1976
Wikipedia said that Johnson made this statement to an "aide" upon signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and I've read elsewhere that he told Richard Russell this before signing the Act. What evidence is there that he actually made this statement?
Regardless of whether he made this statement, did Johnson believe that he was harming the Democratic Party long term by pushing for the Civil Rights Act and, later, the Voting Rights Act?
If so, and you feel comfortable answering -- I realize this is hotly debated -- what were his motivations for harming the Party? I've read Caro's account but I'm interested in other views.
Bill Moyers has mentioned this quote. He was an aide to LBJ before embarking on a long career in public broadcasting. This is from his book Moyers in America:
When he signed the act he was euphoric, but late that very night I found him in a melancholy mood as he lay in bed reading the bulldog edition of the Washington Post with headlines celebrating the day. I asked him what was troubling him. "I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come," he said.
I always understood it to be pretty straightforward: He knew that Republicans would be able to appeal to Southern Whites. I only read the first Caro book so you could say where his mind was at better than I could. I think it's funny that if anything, he underestimated the impact. 50 years is longer than a generation!
And there was this obvious Reagan dog whistle speech:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan%27s_Neshoba_County_Fair_%22states%27_rights%22_speech
Reagan's Neshoba County Fair "states' rights" speech
As part of his 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan made an appearance at the Neshoba County Fair where he gave a speech on August 3, 1980. Critics claim that Reagan's choice of location for the speech (the fairgrounds were about 7 miles from Philadelphia, Mississippi, a town associated with the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in 1964) was evidence of racial bias.
During his speech, Reagan said:[1]
I still believe the answer to any problem lies with the people. I believe in states' rights. I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level, and I believe we've distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the Constitution to that federal establishment.
He went on to promise to "restore to states and local governments the power that properly belongs to them."[2] The use of the phrase was seen by some as a tacit appeal to Southern white voters and a continuation of Richard Nixon's Southern strategy, while others argued it merely reflected his libertarian economic beliefs. [3][4]
Yeah, 'states rights' has always been about economic beliefs. My ass.
Because words and tone matter. And because Trump is a disgrace in both areas.
He's a publicly incendiary bigoted prick, unlike anyone who has occupied the WH in our lifetime.
No one disputes that race relations worsened, but neither can one dispute that Obama did not create the birther conspiracy or any of the other conspiracy theories about him. Those were created by bigoted morons.
Odd that you believe that the right has no culpability in worsening race relations.
Post a link to the opinion piece with the allegations.
Did it strike you as surprising that no one reportedly opened fire on any of the Trump supporters?
Again, that is because no one ever found any 'manifestos' claiming Obama as inspirational of inciteful for any of the shootings. Not one of them.
The racial divide was stoked by the morons who pushed the birther conspiracy and who made it clear that they resented and feared Obama presidentin' while black.
Identify the disaster that the prior administration strangled Trump with.
The four legged ones have taken some casualties outside the WH.
The White House Has Rat Traps Set Up & Twitter Can't Contain Itself
By Caroline Burke
Apr 11 2019
https://www.bustle.com/p/the-white-house-has-rat-traps-set-up-twitter-cant-contain-itself-17032427
you're looking for a slam dunk of a joke opportunity, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has you covered. The White House apparently has rat traps set up, according to a photo tweeted by Bloomberg reporter Jennifer Jacobs. And although rats are an incredibly common rodent issue in D.C., it seems like a large number of Twitter users couldn't resist such a beautifully delivered metaphor.
According to The Week, the problem of rats has been ongoing in D.C. for a while now, and is only getting worse; the city allocated an extra $906,000 toward addressing the infestation this January. Well, that extra money hasn't been enough to keep the White House from having to put out the type of rat traps you usually see in the alleyways near restaurants in cities.
In response to Jacobs' tweet (which you can see below), a number of people couldn't help but take the literal and turn it into the figurative. Journalist Molly Jong-Fast replied, "They can just tell Eric not to visit," while scientist Grady Booch wrote, "Do they come in larger sizes?"
Another Twitter user replied, "Do they have one that can hold 6'3" 239lb. rat? Actually, it needs to be shorter and wider, the rat lies about its weight."
According to The Huffington Post, the book Real Life at the White House: Two Hundred Years of Daily Life at America’s Most Famous Residence, written by Claire and John Whitcomb, reveals how big of a problem infestations were throughout a number of administrations. This includes that of President Grover Cleveland's presidency in the late 19th century. Via the online publication, an excerpt from the book reads:
When the outside of the house was hosed down during a cleaning, a shower of spiders blanketed the ground. That evening, the white columns were black with them as they crawled back from whence they came. And then there were the cockroaches. One staff member said, "I didn’t know there were so many species of cockroaches as I got acquainted with my daily work."
So no, the rat traps at the White House are not exactly "news" in the traditional sense. But hey, there's no reason to ruin everyone's fun by reminding them how common rat infestations are in the White House.
Well the graphic seems to be a cut to the chase study that even the science deniers in the Congress would be hard put to refute.
But watch them try.
Your Fingerprints Are on Those Guns, GOP
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212352686
If you are a Republican member of congress who has done nothing to curb the sale of automatic weapons – whose only purpose is to kill multiple people in a matter of minutes – your fingerprints are on the guns used in El Paso and Dayton, as well as those used in all of the other mass shootings we have endured as a nation on your “pResident’s” watch.
If you didn’t speak up against Trump’s racist rhetoric, which started even before you nominated and elected him, your fingerprints are on the steering wheel of the car that plowed into a crowd of peaceful protestors in Charlottesville, killing Heather Heyer.
It was you who beat-up those anti-racist protestors, and traumatized the country as you marched with your tiki-torches chanting Nazi and white supremacist slogans – and your fingerprints are all over the scenes of the crimes where anyone has been killed or injured by the racists your “pResident” literally encourages every day.
If you remained silent as your “pResident” demonized Mexicans, Muslims, people from ‘shithole countries’, labelled black athletes ‘sons-of-bitches’, told four American citizens of colour to ‘go back where they came from’, and speaks in terms of ‘infestation’ when referring to our non-white fellow citizens, it’s you he’s speaking on behalf of – because your silence can only be understood as agreement and outright complicity.
If you stayed quiet while your “pResident” encouraged violence at his rallies, as he told cops not to ‘go easy’ on arrestees, as he praised Greg Gianforte when he punched a reporter, it is far too late to feign surprise that his hate-filled rhetoric promoting violence and racism would not, with absolute certainty, lead to the carnage we are now forced to witness over and over again.
If you didn’t stand up to Trump, that means you stand with him. And his sins are your sins, his crimes are your crimes, and the blood on his hands is on your hands.
I can’t imagine what kompramat Trump or his puppet-masters have on you that would lead you to abandon not only your own principles and morals, but those of your party. Given what you have sacrificed to continue supporting your “pResident” – a liar, a thief, an obstructer of justice, and obviously a Russian asset – it is hard to comprehend what potential devastation to yourself and the GOP could possibly be worth doing so.
Today we heard Republicans selling the idea that video games are the issue, or social media, or mental illness. The only mental illness at play here is that of a “pResident” who foments racism and violence at every opportunity, and the party that insanely enables him.
At times like these, we wonder what goes through a gunman’s mind as he takes aim and fires on innocent men, women, children. Perhaps what went through the El Paso shooter’s mind was the hate-filled racist statements of your own “pResident” – or perhaps it was the deadly silence of those who have it in their power to do something about it, but have instead chosen to look the other way.
This is ALL on you, Republicans – from your “pResident” on down. The blood of the innocent is on your hands, and the decent people among us will never let anyone forget your cowardice – because we will be there to remind them.
Are you brain dead, or what? Can Trump be blamed for his inciteful rhetoric triggering some right wing morons but also not be responsible for all shootings?
Are you remotely capable of holding two possibilities in your mind at the same time?
Unless or until we find some left wing rhetoric linked to inciting the Dayton shooter's violence, we're left with his organic mental illness.
And you're left without a valid point, again.
I'm confident that they are. After all when you have your pick of the litter, are winnowing down admissions based upon grades, test scores, activities and alum legacy criteria, 'dumb-ass provocateur' kind of jumps out as a disqualifier.
Where's Walter when you need him?
'Clueless' doesn't make the cut for a # 8 ranking on one list and # 12 on another.
If Obama did nothing more than keep the country from sliding into a Great Depression and redoubling the efforts to find bin laden, it would have been far more than what Trump can credibly take credit for.
And of course taking pre-existing health conditions off the table for any future health care reform has saved countless lives.
And the stock market, employment and new job creation trends that were never good enough for Trump are no different from what Trump now claims credit for.
There's plenty more, but you get the drift.
The one term disgrace will find himself mired in the bottom 10 or bottom 5.
https://www.businessinsider.com/greatest-us-presidents-ranked-by-political-scientists-2018-2#9-ronald-reagan-36
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-top-20-presidents-in-us-history-according-to-historians-2017-2#12-barack-obama-44th-president-ranked-highly-for-his-pursuit-of-equal-justice-for-all-9
We have our replacement.....Huck the credulous fuck.
"In fact, amid all the finger-pointing and blame-laying and repulsive attempts to turn these tragedies to political advantage before the bodies are even cold, I would posit that the lack of thought and prayers is probably the single biggest factor in what is behind them," he continued.
Posit as in 'I will pull this directly from my very fat ass.'
He specifically called out former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Texas), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, for calling the president racist, questioning how "someone who has repeatedly denied being racist can be an 'open, avowed racist.'"
A statement which should earn the Huck serious consideration for the position of U.S. Ambassador to Russia.
Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/456287-mike-huckabee-suggests-lack-of-thought-and-prayers-behind-mass-shootings
All of the polls were within the margin of error for the popular vote.
But why do you cite a Gallup poll to attempt, unsuccessfully, to make a point about Trump's popularity, polls all for shit I mean?
Funny, I had no problem looking at the poll link you posted.
But then I am descendant of Hero of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War, and not to be mistaken for one who fell off back of collective farm turnip truck like you apparently have.
You fucking snowflake.
No polls show Trump ahead in those 3 pivotal States that he 'won' in '16.
Trump's approval rating is underwater in 8 major 2020 battleground states, and it's a troubling sign for his reelection prospects
Grace Panetta
Jun. 5, 2019, 1:01 PM
President Donald Trump's approval rating is underwater in several key battleground states ahead of the 2020 election, Morning Consult said in a new report.
Morning Consult found that Trump had a net-zero or negative approval rating in nine critical swing states, eight of which Trump carried in 2016.
Trump also maintained net positive — but still notably shaky — approval in solidly Republican states he carried by comfortable margins in 2016, Morning Consult found.
Nationwide, Trump had a 40% approval rating in May, down from 46% in April, according to Gallup, which cited growing calls for impeachment and the threat of new tariffs on Mexico as possible causes of the decline.
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-underwater-approval-rating-battleground-states-2019-6
Morning Consult, which conducts daily surveys of more than 5,000 registered voters to track Trump's approval rating, found that Trump had a net-zero or negative approval rating in nine critical swing states that, except for New Hampshire, he carried in 2016:
• Trump had a net approval rating of -19 in New Hampshire, with 39% approving of his job performance and 58% disapproving.
• He had a net approval rating of -13 in Wisconsin, with 42% approval and 55% disapproval.
• In Michigan, Trump had a -12 net approval rating, with 42% approval and 54% disapproval.
• Trump also had a -12 net approval rating in Iowa, with 42% approval and 54% disapproval.
• He had a -7 net approval rating in Pennsylvania, with 45% approval and 52% disapproval.
• In Arizona, Trump had a -6 net approval rating, with 45% approval and 51% disapproval.
• Trump held a -4 net approval rating in Ohio, with 46% approval and 50% disapproval.
• His net approval was also -4 in North Carolina, also with 46% approval and 50% disapproval.
• And Trump had a net approval rating of zero in Florida, with 48% approval and 48% disapproval (the margin of error for the state was plus or minus 1 percentage point).
Trump's net approval rating across the country, according to Morning Consult.Morning Consult
Trump also maintained net positive — but still notably shaky — approval in several solidly Republican states he carried by comfortable margins in 2016, Morning Consult found. He had a net +1 approval rating in Georgia, North Dakota, and Kansas (which had margins of error of plus or minus 1, 3, and 2 percentage points) and +3 net approval in Texas and Indiana (which had margins of error of 1 percentage point).
Nationwide, Trump maintained a 40% approval rating in May, down from 46% in April, Gallup polling found.
Gallup said Trump's dip in approval could be the result of several factors, including growing calls for the House to begin impeachment proceedings and Trump's threat of new tariffs on Mexico — largely unpopular with lawmakers — that has caused markets to plunge and could raise the cost of goods for Americans.
Read more: The Democratic base's support for impeachment has solidified after the release of the Mueller report
https://www.businessinsider.com/voters-agree-trump-committed-impeachable-offenses-poll-2019-6
Despite Trump's poor approval in critical swing states, he still boasts strong support among Republican primary voters. Morning Consult's survey found that Trump had above 70% approval among every key demographic in the subset of potential GOP primary voters.
With 24 candidates running for the 2020 Democratic nomination in what is likely to be one of the most high-stakes and expensive presidential elections in recent history, Republican groups are gearing up to meet the enthusiasm from the Democratic side with outside spending and grassroots organizing.
The Great America PAC and the Committee to Defend the President, the two largest outside political action committees supporting Trump's 2020 reelection bid, told INSIDER in a Wednesday statement that they planned to join forces for a mass voter-registration drive aiming to register 1 million new voters in all the aforementioned battleground states.
No one get reelected with their approval ratings in the low 40's. Never happened.
Let's see the post-shooting polling.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- President Donald Trump's job approval rating continues to hold in the low 40s, with 42% of Americans approving of the job he is doing in Gallup's latest update. The 42% rating exactly matches the average for six separate measurements taken since Trump registered a personal best 46% in late April.
It read in your own link that the solution to the sidewalk problem would involve more funding. Please tell me why a Republican mayor would support that at the local level anymore than GOPERS do at the State or national level.
I'm also interested in that secret formula, being hidden at Area 51, that would eradicate the vermin problem in the cities.
Surely the Administration can get that released?
Moscow Mitch, certified rotten on rottenassholes.com
Truly a tone deaf moral imbecile.
Amy McGrath Verified account
Follow Follow @AmyMcGrathKY
Hours after the El Paso shooting, Mitch McConnell proudly tweeted this photo. I find it so troubling that our politics have become so nasty and personal that the Senate Majority Leader thinks it's appropriate to use imagery of the death of a political opponent (me) as messaging.
THE salient difference in your examples? Not a single person engaged in the kind of inciteful, hateful, bigoted rhetoric in any venue, from any podium, that Trump has engaged in.
Perhaps you can find a quote from any of the people on your list that contradicts my statement?
David Jolly, Ex GOP Rep "Beat Every Single One Of Them" re: GOP
Spot on!
“I find myself today offering the same insight I did at the night of the Parkland shooting a few hours from our home in Florida, which is this: Republicans will never do anything on gun control, nothing, ever,” he said. “They won’t.”
“Think about Las Vegas. They did nothing when 500 people were injured. The Pulse nightclub, 50 killed. The question for the nation was, do we allow suspected terrorists — suspected terrorists — to buy firearms? Republicans did nothing. Parkland, they did nothing. Emanuel AME in South Carolina, nothing. Go to Sandy Hook in Connecticut, nothing. Jewish temple in Pittsburgh, nothing. The Jewish temple in San Diego, nothing. Southerland Springs, Evangelical church in Texas, nothing. Now we have Texas, now we have Ohio in the same weekend and all we get is silence,” he explained.
“I say that because if this is the issue that informs your ideology as a voter, the strength to draw in this moment is to beat Republicans, beat them. Beat every single one of them,” Jolly urged. “Even the safe ones in the House, beat them. Beat them in the Senate. Take back the Senate.”
...
“The last thing I will say, Nicolle, to my former Republican colleagues and Republican voters, if you actually think the Second Amendment was envisioned to protect gun rights of this moment of national tragedy to allow carnage with weapons of war, if you actually think that’s what the Second Amendment protected, you’re fundamentally, constitutionally ignorant,” he argued. “And if you know that’s not what it protects and you continue to do nothing, you’re worse than constitutionally ignorant, you’re a scoundrel.”
More and video at link
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/08/beat-every-single-one-of-them-ex-gop-congressmans-message-to-republicans-is-your-time-is-coming/
Trump doesn’t just pollute the social environment with hate. He is the environment.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-doesnt-just-pollute-the-social-environment-he-is-the-environment/2019/08/05/65cb525a-b7b6-11e9-b3b4-2bb69e8c4e39_story.html
By George F. Will
Columnist
August 5 at 4:36 PM
“It is remarkable by how much a pinch of malice enhances the penetrating power of an idea or an opinion. Our ears, it seems, are wonderfully attuned to sneers and evil reports about our fellow men.”
— Eric Hoffer
It is 1,218 miles from the Aaron Bessant Park Amphitheater in Panama City Beach, Fla. , to the Walmart at 7101 Gateway Blvd. W in El Paso. It was in that park that President Trump, on May 8 , was amused by the answer someone in his audience shouted in response to his shouted question about would-be immigrants at the southern border.
His question was, “How do you stop these people?” The shouted answer was, “Shoot them.” Trump, with a grade schooler’s delight in naughtiness, smiled and replied, “Only in the Panhandle you can get away with that statement.” But does what happens in the Panhandle stay there?
When mass shootings occur, the nation quickly returns to worthy debates about three questions. One is whether gun-control measures can be both constitutional and effective in making mass shootings less likely. A second debate concerns the ability and propriety of law enforcement (in which private citizens properly have a collaborative role) attempts to identify individuals, usually young males, who might violently act out their inner turmoil.
The third question, which is braided with the second, acquires special urgency because of the nature of today’s most prominent American: Can we locate causes of violence in promptings from the social atmosphere?
To the first question, part of the answer is that a reasonable reading of the Supreme Court’s 2008 Heller decision, which affirmed that the Second Amendment guarantees the individual a right to bear arms, permits many measures regulating certain kinds of weapons and ammunition magazines. The second question must be informed by the third — and by science.
James Q. Wilson (1931-2012), the most accomplished social scientist of his time, noted that genetics and neuroscience suggest that self-control is more attenuated in men, and especially in young men, than in women.
The part of the brain that stimulates anger and aggression is larger in men, and the part that restrains anger is smaller in men. Wilson emphasized that this does not mean that violent men are absolved of blame. It does mean that as biology and the social environment interact, this environment must be treated with care by prominent people.
It is not implausible to believe that Trump’s years of sulfurous rhetoric — never mind his Monday-morning reading, seemingly for the first time, of words the teleprompter told him to recite — can provoke behaviors from susceptible individuals, such as the alleged El Paso shooter.
If so, those who marked ballots for Trump — we have had quite enough exculpatory sociology about the material deprivations and status anxieties of the white working class — should have second or perhaps first thoughts. His Republican groupies, meanwhile, are complicit.
The grotesquely swollen place of the presidency in governance (now that governance has become, for Congress, merely a spectator sport) and society has been made possible by journalism that is mesmerized by, and easily manipulated by, presidents — especially the current one, whose every bleat becomes an obsession.
This president is not just one prompting from the social environment; he, in his ubiquity, thoroughly colors this environment, which becomes simultaneously more coarse and less shocking by the day.
Eric Hoffer (circa 1898-1983), the longshoreman philosopher, said that “rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”
This anticipated the essential fact about the 45th president — Trump’s fascination with what he utterly lacks and unconvincingly emulates: strength. Hence his admiration for foreign despots and his infantile delight in his own bad manners.
It is one thing to have a president who, drawing upon his repertoire of playground insults, calls his alleged porn-star mistress “Horseface .” Polls indicate that approximately a third of Americans, disproportionately including religiously devout worriers about the coarsening of America’s culture, are more than merely content with this.
It is quite another thing to have a president who does not merely pollute the social atmosphere with invectives directed at various disfavored minorities; he uses his inflated office not just to shape this atmosphere but to be this atmosphere.
When Gerald Ford became president after Richard M. Nixon’s resignation, he told the nation: “Our long national nightmare is over.” Today’s long — and perhaps occasionally lethal — national embarrassment will continue at least until Jan. 20, 2021. If it continues longer, this will be more than an embarrassment to the nation, this will be an indictment of it.
I’ll Tell You What I Want, What I Really, Really, Want: FUCKING GUN CONTROL
Monday, August 5th, 2019
by Shower Cap | American Madness Journal |
http://showercapblog.com/ill-tell-you-what-i-want-what-i-really-really-want-fucking-gun-control/
A white supremacist terrorist, incited by the incessant hate of President Donald Trump, committed mass murder on Saturday, so there aren’t going to be any jokes tonight.
A white supremacist terrorist, incited by the incessant hate of President Donald Trump, killed 22 human beings and wounded two dozen more. And what happens now is that the President and his party will fight like hell to make sure the next white supremacist terrorist has as few obstacles in his path as possible.
And yes, another mass shooting took place just a few hours later, in Dayton, Ohio. Not a white supremacist this time, but another angry white boy, who apparently kept a “hit list” and a “rape list” in high school, just like every other average all-American boy who should definitely be allowed to purchase firearms.
But to tomorrow’s would-be mass shooters I say: fear not, the Republican Party is as devoted as ever to preserving YOUR right to slaughter as many people as you can before the cops show up.
The GOP playbook is the same as it’s always been, after decades of these completely preventable, utterly unnecessary, tragedies; dissemble, whine, and hide until the rage subsides. Once it does, go right back to the very same fear-mongering that inspires this shit in the first place. For the Republican Party, the problem today isn’t about the tragic loss of human lives, it’s about adjusting the volume knob on the propaganda machine for a few days.
Let’s cut through the crap, shall we?
They try to blame video games. The data here is clear, and it screams BULLSHIT.
They try to blame mental illness. The data here is clear, and it screams BULLSHIT.
And yeah, listening to horseshit deflections about mental illness from the very rectal boil who signed a bill reversing an Obama-era regulation designed to make it harder for people with mental illnesses to get ahold of guns is right at the top of the list of Shit I’m Not Having Today.
Meanwhile, it was House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy who trotted out that tired old video games routine, like a flea circus in an outhouse. Kevin, bro, you’re like the human appendix, you have two settings; completely useless or life-threatening.
Anyway, these devious little shitstains aren’t as dumb as they want us to think they are; they know full goddamn well this isn’t about Call of Fucking Duty, they just need an almost-plausible excuse to help them navigate an awkward television interview or two in between the latest massacre and the next NRA fundraiser. That’s the nasty truth here; they don’t want to solve the problem.
Let me say that again.
They don’t want to solve the problem.
All available data, from all over the world, tells us gun control works. But the Republican Party wants to sell more guns, not less. And they want to so much that they’ll swim through an ocean of American blood before asking the gun lobby to concede a single inch.
And so they offer the customary thoughts and prayers, as though we’re not onto hollowness of that particular scam. Kids, you make a mockery of the very concept of rational thought, and that you have the audacity to invoke prayer is blasphemy that makes Lucifer blush.
Take your thoughts and your prayers and shove them up your ass; in fact, propel them backwards through your entire digestive system till they rocket back out of your mewling coward’s mouths.
Of course, I’m always amazed at the way Hairplug Himmler responds to the violence he causes. The bar is so low; we know he’s a sociopath, we know he’s a white supremacist, we expect atrocity from his every word, but like the Thomas Edison of hate, he keeps discovering innovative new ways to tear this country apart.
Like, imagine if George W. Bush had reacted to 9/11 by telling America “Maybe this bin Laden fellah went a smidge too far, but we really oughta listen to some of what he’s sayin’!” Because that’s exactly what this stool sample of a man did, regurgitating his old attacks on the media, using the very same rhetoric about “fake news” found in the terrorist’s manifesto, even as some of his hospitalized victims struggled through the last hours of their lives.
Even after this rhetoric previously incited another American terrorist to mail 16 bombs to those he perceived as his Turd Emperor’s enemies. Even after the Capitol Gazette shooting.
He knows his words inspire terrorists to kill, and he
Still
Won’t
Stop.
And folks, I don’t know if there’s been a more perfect encapsulation of our sociopath president’s attitude towards gun violence than his inability to even retain the name of the grieving community long enough to muddle through a brief, painfully insincere, TelePrompTer speech. “Toledo, Dayton, alive, slaughtered-like-cattle-in-a-hail-of-gunfire, who gives a shit, I’d rather be watching TV, and in fact fuck you for making me give this speech.”
P.S., the usual suspects in the pundit class giddily praised this “change in tone,” (from the terrifying environment of the regularly-held Klan rallies that are now a fact of life in our country, I guess) delighted at the opportunity to be seen publicly taking Trump’s side, a welcome offering to the God of Bothsidesism*, all because he managed to read a few words off a screen without giving in to the urge to thank the terrorist for his help, live on national television.
The senile old jackass couldn’t even fake somber self-reflection for an hour or two over the weekend. He went golfing. Promoted a UFC fight. Trotted out his emptiest shit-eating grin to pose for photos at a wedding at his tacky New Jersey golf resort. If he has any emotional response at all to these tragedies, it’s irritation and self-pity that he has to tone down the hate speech for a week or two.
Plus, ever on the lookout for new opportunities to Make American White Again, the Shart of the Deal shrewdly offered to swap mild gun control measures for the chance to check a few items off the Bannon/Miller white nationalist “immigration reform” Xmas list.
“Look, me and the terrorist want the exact same thing; placate us and we’ll let you have your precious background checks” may seem like an absolutely psychotic position to take, but you have to expect this sort of thing when you elect the worst person in the world.
You may have heard a little rumor, that President Ostomy Bag removed a bunch of tweets using the dehumanizing “ migrant invasion” rhetoric from his timeline. Nope, even that minuscule gesture towards basic decency is too much to ask of him.
Look at the re-election ads these monstrous bastards run on Facebook; invasion, invasion, invasion…like, I understand that after two and half years of non-stop failure, running on your record is not a viable option. But maybe you should just take the L, rather than trying to start a motherfucking race war, huh?
Is it really too much to ask for a little shame from the White House staff? Can’t we get one grudging acknowledgement that “hey, we’ve taken this too far,” or are all y’all too busy doing Jell-O shots in Stephen Miller’s office to celebrate a job well done?
Will there be not one single principled resignation? One Undersecretary in Charge of Spell-Checking Highway Signs? The intern who has to pick the onions out of Steve Mnuchin’s lunch salad?
Of course not. It’s no longer reasonable to expect the slightest bit of courage or morality from Republicans. Because if they have to stand on a few new gravestones to pull those last few hard-to-reach judicial appointments off the top shelf, understand they will do so without a moment’s hesitation.
There is such thunderous silence from the institutional GOP that a six-tweet thread from a Nebraska state Senator named John McCollister, condemning his party’s shameful complicity, made national news. Now John, I appreciate it, but the truth is you’re way late, this assignment was due immediately after the Charlottesville “very fine people on both sides” speech.
For the rest of your misbegotten party, I know y’all have long since covered every mirror in your homes with duct tape because you can’t stand the sight of yourselves, but please understand that we, the American people, have noticed your cowardice and your complicity, and we are sick to fucking death of it.
On the other hand, you have Ohio state rep Candice Keller, who blamed the shootings on basically the entire demented list of personal grievances dictated to her by the maggots gnawing on her misfiring, indoctrinated, little brain.
How convenient. Y’know, maybe I should get in on this game. “Mass shootings occur because Target always runs out of those strawberry-flavored marshmallows I like, and because of the bar at the end of my street that blasts Love Shack at unacceptable volumes after midnight,” that’s just what I think and you can’t tell me any different.
All you fake-ass evangelicals better hope with all your black, bought-and-paid-for hearts that you’re wrong about this “God” thing, because when you show up at the pearly gates, caked from head to toe in the blood of children, begging to be judged by your words rather than your actions, the angels are gonna rupture their guts laughing at you.
Mitch McConnell, you walking, talking, structural flaw in the Constitution, you sneering troll, stumbling drunk on power for its own sake, we will see your legacy written in bloody liquid shit, which you so richly deserve. PASS THE MOTHERFUCKING HOUSE GUN CONTROL BILLS, YOU SHIT. Just this once, acknowledge that maybe our lives matter more than your partisan scorekeeping.
While we’re talking about him, Moscow Mitch, perhaps worried that somebody somewhere might mistake him for a human being in possession of a thimbleful of decency, thought this was an appropriate moment in time to tweet out an image depicting the tombstone of his likely Democratic opponent in 2020, Amy McGrath. Oh and the young men of “Team Mitch” are already absorbing his lessons on just how fucking amusing violence against your female political opponents can be.
Now, I don’t expect anything as silly as “observable real-world evidence” to interfere with the macho cowboy fantasies of the gun-humper crowd, but the Dayton shooter was killed by police, who happened to be patrolling nearby, within 30 seconds of his first shot. In those 30 seconds, he fired off 41 rounds, shooting 14 people, killing 9 of them. That is, again, in probably the best-possible-case scenario, Good Guy With a Gun-wise. Nine deaths.
Must we continue to allow gun policy to be set by fuckwits who don’t understand that the reason John Wayne never missed and never got shot was because he was working off a goddamn script?
Because that’s how we end up with an angry incel, armed with a .223-caliber high-capacity rifle with 100-round drum magazines, killing everyone in sight just because he fucking felt like it.
100 rounds, have you seen this beast? There is no earthly purpose for that product beyond the mass slaughter of human beings. And if you think there’s some sort of “right” to own such obscenities, kindly slap my Constitution out of your filthy mouth.
You probably get the impression after all this ranting and raving that I’m angry about this, and I suppose I am. But one thing I am not is hopeless; we have the NRA crowd on the run. Last fall, we chased those craven sycophants out of office all over this country, in districts where they’ve long felt untouchable. And we will build on that progress next year. The tide has turned on this shit; it’s time for the bloodthirsty death merchants to fear US for a change.
To all the shitty little white supremacist dorks, cheering on the bloodshed from your mom’s basement, take a quick look around your life; you’re all still losers, yeah? Thought so. You chant “you will not replace us?” What the fuck do you imagine you have to offer that’s worth replacing?
And to the Republican Party that has worked so diligently to nurture this epidemic of racist violence, I say: this blood is on your hands and we will move heaven and hell to hold you accountable.
Yes, I know you come to this blog expecting poop jokes a news roundup, and God knows, there’s plenty of the usual day-to-day insanity, including the latest episode of Donnie Dotard’s Dumbfuck Trade War Blows Up the Economy, but we’ll get caught up later this week. My apologies.
In the meantime, plenty of great organizations could use your help tonight. Everytown/Moms Demand Action and SPLC are two of my favorites.
Stay safe out there, Resisters.
PS, as I was working up tonight’s piece, additional information broke about the absolute scumfuck who carried out the shooting in Dayton. It’s…pretty fucking disturbing, and honestly, don’t click on the article unless you can’t live without knowing about the “Pornogrind” scene. I was certainly a lot happier before I did.
https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/j5yekp/exclusive-dayton-shooter-was-in-a-pornogrind-band-that-released-songs-about-raping-and-killing-women
*Basically Chuck Todd with ram’s horns
Mike Huckabee suggests 'lack of thought and prayers' behind mass shootings
Yeah I thought the same thing at first, it's from The Onion;
or maybe The Hill fell for a story from The Onion.
Nope, sadly, this is 100% certified pure evangelical bat-shit.
Now we see why Sarah Slanders H., hereafter referred to as 'very large apple', didn't fall far from the tree, AKA Mike H.
It also almost certainly explains the source of a lot of the pathetic attempts as gaslighting we've read from the morally imbecilic false equivalency peddling nitwits posting here today.
Source: The Hill
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) on Monday suggested that a lack of thoughts and prayers is "the single biggest factor" behind mass shootings like the ones that took place in Texas and Ohio last weekend.
"Despite all those who are denouncing the idea of prayers for the victims ... I will continue to pray for the victims and their families and for an end to this mindless violence, and I hope you will, too," Huckabee, who ran for the Republican presidential nominee in 2008 and 2016, wrote in a blog post on his website.
"In fact, amid all the finger-pointing and blame-laying and repulsive attempts to turn these tragedies to political advantage before the bodies are even cold, I would posit that the lack of thought and prayers is probably the single biggest factor in what is behind them," he continued.
Posit as in 'I will pull this directly from my very fat ass.'
He specifically called out former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Texas), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, for calling the president racist, questioning how "someone who has repeatedly denied being racist can be an 'open, avowed racist.'"
A statement which should earn the Huck serious consideration for the position of U.S. Ambassador to Russia.
Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/456287-mike-huckabee-suggests-lack-of-thought-and-prayers-behind-mass-shootings
Maybe Ihub should start a 'thoughts and prayers hour'. That way we could count on an extra free posting day or two/month, on average.