Another Week, Another Batshit Trump Interview

Posted by Rude One

Everyone's got their line that pushed them over the edge from resident Donald Trump's interview with Jonathan Swan of Axios (motto: "When USA Today is too complex, you've got Axios"). Mine occurred when Swan asked Trump about why he didn't bother to ask Russian dictator Vladimir Putin about the reports that Putin had put a bounty on the heads of American soldiers in Afghanistan. Trump could have shimmied his hands around as he answered, "Well, he's my dom and when master tells me not to ask questions, I can't ask questions or he spanks my ass with the splintery switch." That would have made sense. I could have thought, "Well, I guess he's gotta do what a sub's gotta do. No one wants splinters in their ass. I assume. Better google that later." (Note: Of course there are people who want splinters in their ass.)

Instead, Trump harrumphed around the idea that the intelligence was real and then said that his recent call with Putin was about "nuclear proliferation." Trump said, "If we can do something with Russia in terms of nuclear proliferation, which is a very big problem...A much bigger problem than global warming in terms of the real world, that would be a great thing."

Putting aside that it's Trump who is allowing the New START treaty to expire and could extend it for five years with no difficulty at all, only someone whose brain, such as it is, is stuck around 1980 could actually say that nuclear weapons, in 2020, are anything approaching the shit-inducing threat that the growing fuck storm of climate change poses. It's like Trump just saw The Day After, and he's thinking about how he might get stuck in a bunker with Melania and that kid she always has with her. In terms of the real real world, not the fake real world that Trump has forced us all to live in like that demented telepathic little shit on that Twilight Zone episode, climate change is the massive problem that Trump and the GOP insist on denying, like, you know, they did with the coronavirus pandemic, and that's worked out so fucking well.

This was how the whole thing went. There was Trump bumble fucking through every lie and delusion. There was the sociopathic denial of any hint of human empathy despite, as Greg Mitchell points out, the many chances that Swan gave Trump to show that he gives a jolly pig fuck about anyone other than himself. Swan's face multiple times looked like he was seriously worried if he was going to get out of the interview unharmed. He confronted Trump again and again with facts, but Trump would wave them off like someone was offering him a plate of broccoli with his well-done steak, either not acknowledging them or questioning whether it was a fact, like when Trump accused South Korea of lying about its coronavirus cases. 

The most appalling moment wasn't Trump's blithe dismissal of the over 150,000 dead from his seemingly proud refusal to act on COVID-19, given the now forever carved on his political tombstone "It is what it is." No, for me, it was that he obviously has no idea about anything to do with American history. I mean, we knew that, but it's always just pathetic when we see him flunk basic shit again and again. First, Trump had no idea who John Lewis was beyond the transactional, "the fuck he ever do for me" basis by which he measures everyone. Seriously, check out this exchange: 

Swan:  John Lewis is lying in state in the U.S. Capitol. How do you think history will remember John Lewis?

Trump: I don’t know. I really don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know John Lewis. He chose not to come to my inauguration. He chose… I never met John Lewis, actually, I don’t believe.

Swan: Do you find him impressive?

Trump: I can’t say one or the other. I find a lot of people impressive. I find many people not impressive. But no, but I didn’t go-

Swan: Do you find his story impressive?

Trump: He didn’t come to my inauguration. He didn’t come to my State of the Union speeches, and that’s okay. That’s his right. 

That's the shit you say when you don't know something. While everyone is praising Swan for simply doing real interviewing (which, admittedly, is tough to do with an Adderall-snorting, syphilitic hog beast), he should have asked Trump, "Do you know anything else at all about John Lewis? Do you even know what the Edmund Pettus Bridge is?"

But prior to that was just Trump's blatantly racist, insidious fucking attempt to ass fuck American history until it is contorted around his deformed goddamned image. Trump was once again lying about how "I did more for the Black community than anybody with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln, whether you like it or not," and Swan asked him: 

Swan: You really believe you did more than Lyndon Johnson who passed the Civil Rights Act?

Trump: I think I did, yeah.

Swan: How? How possibly did you-

Trump: Because I got criminal justice reform done, I got prison reform-

Swan: Lyndon Johnson-

Trump: I’ve done things. Well-

Swan: He passed the Civil Rights Act.

Trump: Ask. Ask. How has it worked out? If you take a look at what Lyndon Johnson did?

Swan: You think the Civil Rights Act was a mistake?

Trump: How has it worked out? 

There's so much to say here that it's almost impossible to articulate it. First, Trump has no fucking clue what's in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, let alone the Voting Rights Act or the 1968 Civil Rights Act, all signed by LBJ (although he might know the last one since it prohibited the very race discrimination in housing that he and his shitbird father engaged in). More importantly, Trump looks at his minor adjustments in laws as huge triumphs, not giving a damn that whatever African Americans have accomplished during his residency comes from a long fuckin' line of struggles and triumphs involving more presidents than just him. But as far as Trump is concerned, African American history goes from Lincoln freeing the slaves, which he allows is possibly more important than Opportunity Zones, to him.

In a rational nation, this kind of embarrassing stupidity in a leader would cause an upheaval that would force them to run for freedom before the pitchforks and torches caught up with them. And while those of us who already despise Trump more than the dictionary has words to express are justifiably nauseated by the interview, in MAGA world, this was Trump just givin' it to the fake news who were trying to set him up to fail. 

You have to choose your reality in this America. And there are still tens of millions of people who want to live in the one filtered through Donald Trump's anus-mouth. Fuck them.

Can Congress Impeach Trump Again For His Worst Offense In Office?

Donald Trump has gone too far this time, violating the first amendment and condoning racism all because of his ego? You won't believe it... 

Trump is trying to play out Richard Nixon’s “law and order“ theme from the 1968 election. In 1968, the media was still largely segregated, as was most of the nation. 

“Law and order“ were Nixon’s code words for white supremacy, but nobody in the mainstream media identified that or called it out at the time; that commentary was largely limited to the black press. 

America today is a very different place, a multiracial and far more pluralistic society. Trump thinks he can pull off Nixon’s white supremacist routine and get himself reelected. He is wrong.

 

OUR NIGHTMARE CONTINUES! Trump's Stunning Idiocy is Rising To New Highs With Each New Press Briefing!

Jesse Dollemore talks about a little discussed moment from a recent press briefing when Donald Trump opened his mouth and revealed how criminally inept he is at the task of crisis management!

Trump Says He Can Override Governors And Reopen States Whenever He Wants

Donald Trump claimed on Monday that he, and he alone, has the authority to reopen states, even if the governors of those states don't want him to. 

This is not only a lie, it would also be illegal, as states alone are responsible for the health, safety, and welfare directives within their own borders, per the 10th Amendment. 

Trump is proving that Republicans never really cared about "states' rights." Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this. 



https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-13/trump-declares-he-has-power-to-open-up-states-not-governors 

Trump's "Total Authority" Is A Complete Sham

Biden SPEECHLESS After Bernie Attack

Cenk Uygur, John Iadarola, and Adrienne Lawrence discuss Biden's record on Social Security on The Young Turks coverage of the Democratic presidential debate between Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden. 

 http://tyt.com/go 

Hosts: Cenk Uygur, Adrienne Lawrence, John Iadarola 

Cast: Cenk Uygur, Adrienne Lawrence, John Iadarola

Can We Fix America Together? | Marianne Williamson | Politics | Tim Black

Author, activist and Presidential candidate Marianne Williamson joins us to talk about the issues: "Plan for US Dept. of Peace", "The Reparations Plan" and "U.S. Department of Children and Youth "The Whole Child Plan".



https://www.marianne2020.com/

Trump Rebuked For 'Lynching' Comment: He's 'A Violent White Nationalist'

Rutgers Professor Brittany Cooper says she’s ‘deeply offended’ by Trump’s comparison of being ‘held accountable’ by the impeachment inquiry, to the ‘spectacular violence of lynching.’

As Trump faces new damning Ukraine evidence, he claims impeachment is like a ‘lynching.’

The comparison drawing wide rebuke from democrats, civil rights leaders and the rare condemnation from many GOP leaders.

Remembering How Trump And The Right Tried To Convince Everyone Obama Was A Traitor

Posted by Rude One

Every fucking day they went after President Obama. Every fucking day they looked for the merest hint, some seemingly insignificant spark that they could fan into a full conflagration, some misstep that would give his evil game away. Every fucking day the syphilitic cocks of the right tried to prove that Barack Obama, who was clearly guilty of being president while black, was a Muslim, anti-American traitor out to destroy the good (white) American way of life.

Goddamn, the things they came up with. It's almost laughable. They thought a photo of him holding Fareed Zakaria's book The Post-American World proved that he was some kind of crazy radical. Vile sack of rotting flesh with a bloated fish head on top Dick Cheney more or less called Obama a traitor for daring to have an exit strategy for the endless (and still going) war in Afghanistan (Cheney really said, "I think it’s likely to give encouragement — aid and comfort — to the enemy"). Hell, one human-shaped fart, former Rep. Trent Franks, called Obama "an overt traitor to the state of Israel," to which any American ought to say, "The fuck?" Fun fact: Franks was forced to resign from Congress over sexual harassment allegations for offering women on his staff money to bear his child.

This isn't even to get into all the treachery that was implied by birtherism. Or all the shit said by the racist fuck nuts in stupid hats that made up the goddamned Tea Party. Or every conservative twatmite trying to get some ratings or publicity by insulting Obama or accusing him of high crimes.

Donald Trump, of course, was into this degradation of President Obama long before he ran for president in 2016 and went into overdrive while running. In June 2016, after the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Trump said of Obama that "we're led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he's got something else in mind." And, because Trump is a cowardly bitch, he hinted rather than stated, "And the something else in mind — you know, people can't believe it. People cannot, they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and can't even mention the words 'radical Islamic terrorism.' There's something going on. It's inconceivable. There's something going on."

You gotta think about those last lines - "It's inconceivable. There's something going on" - in light of the whistle-blower allegations that Trump did something so alarming that an intelligence official felt compelled to report it to the inspector general of the intelligence community, who found it "urgent" enough that he wanted to tell Congress but was stopped by Trump's Acting Director of National Intelligence. Think about all those attacks on Obama, all those digging into the minute details of his words, his dress, his friends, Michelle, all in a vain attempt to show he was a traitor.

And compare that to Donald Trump, who it now seems was holding up funding to Ukraine, perhaps to try to force the country to find or create dirt on Joe Biden and/or Biden's son. That funding was passed by Congress, so, yeah, maybe they have an interest in this.

Or compare it to Trump's ongoing coddling and support of savage dictators and monarchs, like Kim Jong-un or MBS, or that prick Putin. Compare it to Trump saying he was awaiting word from Saudi Arabia on whether we should go to war for "the Kingdom." Trump always accuses others of being guilty of the very crimes he has committed. And you don't even have to try very hard to find them.

The right, especially the GOP in Congress, won't say a fucking word about the traitor whose traitorous acts are staring them right in their dumb faces. And that makes them accessories to Trump's crimes. But they'll go right ahead calling for investigations of Obama and Clinton and whoever else they can throw up as a smoke screen to their genuine destruction of our democracy.

Trump's Vicious Obama Hate Twists Russia's Invasion Of Crimea Into Obama's Fault

At a sick G-7 presser, Trump outrageously blamed the former president for Russia's international war crimes.

By Aliza Worthington

Perhaps it's a good thing that we still have the capacity to be baffled and outraged by the utter horseshit that comes out of the Tangerine Douchetwizzle's mouth. 

We shouldn't get used to it, and yet it still would be nice not to feel kicked in the stomach every time we're confronted with his racist, ahistorical, and unpatriotic takes on our own previous presidents. On foreign soil, no less. 

I am old enough to remember when American politicians observed the diplomatic protocol of not criticizing other Americans when they were overseas. Those days are gone thanks to the Republican embrace of Trump. 

Not only that, the criticism takes the form of lies, and reeks of racism, not only for the former president he insults, but the esteemed reporter (Yamiche Alcindor, of PBS) asking him the questions.

ALCINDOR: Thanks, Mr. President. Why do you think it's appropriate to invite Russia to the G7 given that they've meddled in the 2016 election? And are you worried that if Russia does come to the G7 that it might hurt you politically because it's only going to be a couple of months before the 2020 election? 

DJT: I don't care politically. A lot of people don't understand this. I ran one election and I won. It happened to be for president. I don't care politically....
[...blah blah blah argle bargle horsesh*t...]

...Really it was President -- I'm not blaming him, but a lot of bad things happened with President Putin and President Obama. One of the things that happened was, as you know, what happened with a very big area, a very, very big and important area in the Middle East where the red line was drawn and then President Obama decided that he was not going to do anything about it. You can't draw red lines in the sand. You just can't do it. And the other was in Ukraine having to do with a certain section of Ukraine that you know very well, where it was sort of taken away from President Obama. Not taken away from President Trump, taken away from President Obama. President Obama was not happy that this happened because it was embarrassing to him, right? It was very embarrassing to him. And he wanted Russia to be out of the what was called the G8. That was his determination. He was outsmarted by Putin. He was outsmarted. President Putin outsmarted President Obama. And I can understand how President Obama would feel. He wasn't happy. And they're not in for that reason....
[...blah yada bloop-de-doo horsedinky...]

I do nothing for politics. I do what's right. And people like what I do. But I just do what's right...

Wait, let me get this straight. You can't name the "very big area" where President Obama drew the red line in the sand (it was Syria, sweetie,) and Putin took Crimea away from President OBAMA?

Crimea was OURS, and Putin tricked Obama into giving it to him? Oh, that wily Putin. He's so dang SMART. He and his army and TANKS outwitted Obama into losing Crimea to him in a game of checkers because he's brill, man. So much smarter than Obama!

Lies and racism. Yamiche Alcindor called him on it.

ALCINDOR: Why do you keep using the misleading statement that Russia outsmarted President Obama... 

TRUMP: Well, he did.

ALCINDOR: ...when other countries have said the reason why Russia was kicked out was very clearly because they annexed Crimea? Why would you keep repeating what some people would see as a clear lie?

TRUMP: Well, it was annexed during President, I know you like President Obama, but it was annexed during President Obama's term. If it was annexed during my term, I would say, "Sorry, folks, I made a mistake." President Obama was helping Ukraine. Crimea was annexed during his term. It's a very big area and important area. [...something something submarines...] and President Obama was pure and simply outsmarted. They took Crimea during his term. That was not a good thing. It could have been stopped. It could have been stopped with the right whatever. It could have been stopped.

But President Obama was unable to stop it and it's too bad.

Yeah. It could have been stopped with the right "whatever." President Obama was outsmarted. "I know you like President Obama..." You know, because Yamiche Alcindor is Black?

Racism and lies. The BIGGEST lie was when Trump said that if Crimea was annexed during his term, he would have said, "Sorry. I made a mistake." That's the biggest pile of horseshit of all

New Tapes Reveal That Ronald Reagan Was Racist, Too

Recently-unearthed tapes reveal that Ronald Reagan didn’t exactly have a high opinion of people from African countries, and he referred to them as “monkeys” during a 1971 phone call to Richard Nixon.

This confirms what we’ve been saying for a long time, and that is that Trump isn’t an outlier in terms of hating on non-white people – this is who the Republican Party has been for decades.

Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

Trump Embarrasses Himself During Mount Vernon Tour

Trump went to Mt. Vernon and embarrassed himself and the entire country while he was there. Ana Kasparian, Brett Erlich, and Nando Vila, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down.

Did '50s TV show feature a con artist named Trump promising to build a wall?

By Mike Moffitt, SFGATE

It certainly sounds like an urban legend — an episode of a 1950's western TV series featured a snake oil salesman named Trump who claimed that only he could save a community from destruction by building a wall.

But the debunking site Snopes says the show, part of the "Trackdown" series starring Oakland native Robert Culp, did in fact air on CBS in 1958.

A clip from the episode was uploaded to YouTube, captioned "Predicted Donald Trump," in November 2016.

The "End of the World" show features actor Lawrence Dobkin as Walter Trump, a con man who predicts a firestorm would rain down on the Texas town of Talpa unless he intervenes to save it. Culp, playing Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman, calls Trump's bluff and eventually arrests him for "stealing."

Trump sold the townspeople force-field umbrellas to deflect meteors.

Interestingly, the character's speech is so similar to the resident, it almost seems as if Donald Trump borrowed some catchphrases from Walter Trump. A portion of the dialog follows:

Narrator: Hoby had checked the town. The people were ready to believe. Like sheep they ran to the slaughterhouse. And waiting for them was the high priest of fraud.

Trump: I am the only one. Trust me. I can build a wall around your homes that nothing can penetrate.

Townperson: What do we do? How can we save ourselves?

Trump: You ask how do you build that wall. You ask, and I'm here to tell you.

During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump declared, "Politicians have used you and stolen your votes. They have given you nothing. I will give you everything. I will give you what you've been looking for for 50 years. I'm the only one."

On June 16, 2015, Trump said, "I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I'll build them very inexpensively,"


https://www.sfgate.com/tv/article/Did-50s-TV-show-feature-a-con-artist-named-Trump-10848356.php

The People VS Donald J. Trump

He is demonstrably unfit for office. What are we waiting for?

By David Leonhardt

Opinion Columnist

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/opinion/sunday/trump-impeachment.html

Fraud Of Donald Trump's Self-Made Persona Exposed In Father's Financials

Trump Engaged In Suspect Tax Schemes As He Reaped Riches From His Father

On this day — September 11

The September 11, 2001 attacks were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda against the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. 

The attacks killed 2,996 people, injured over 6,000 others, and caused at least $10 billion in infrastructure and property damage. Additional people died of 9/11-related cancer and respiratory diseases in the months and years following the attacks.More at Wikipedia

Location:New York City, New York, U.S, Arlington County, Virginia, U.S, Stonycreek Township near, Shanksville, Pennsylvania, U.S.

Date:11, 2001, 8:46 a.m. – 10:28 a.m. (EDT)

Target:World Trade Center, (AA 11 and UA 175), The Pentagon (AA 77), White House or U.S. Capitol, (UA 93, failed)

The Cold Political Calculus Of Taking Away The Children Of Migrants

Posted by Rude One

We are at a moment in our history that demands action. It demands that people fuck shit up. We hope they do it by protesting, by voting, or with legislation. But what the GOP hopes is that it leads to crazy shit, and Trump is going to keep pushing and pushing, with the ICE round-ups and the family separations, because they want congressional Democrats arrested, they want violence to occur at one of the concentration camps, they want protesters to riot, and they want it all filmed.  Trump is going to keep upping the intensity of his immigration crackdown until the left cracks.

This is the cold political calculus of Trump advisor and man most likely to own a suit made of human skin, Stephen Miller. It's beyond "annoy the libtards and make the snowflakes cry." We're now into "let's get good footage for campaign ads" territory. You can imagine it now: Evil music, low-pitch voice saying, "Nancy Pelosi and the crooked Democrat Party want to let MS-13 animals into the country" over footage of, say, a fight at a detention center or maybe Rep. Juan Vargas or other members of Congress getting led away by cops as the voice continues, "Tell Nancy Pelosi that you stand with Americans, not illegal animals." Or some such shit. That's probably too subtle. More likely it'll just be Trump braying something incoherent like a particularly brain-damaged jackass.

Trump's GOP (and it is Trump's GOP now) doesn't give a fat rat fuck about reaching out beyond his base. The election strategy is simple: get his idiot horde all fired up with a stream of Reddit-provided conspiracies and blatant lies; suppress the vote wherever and however it can be suppressed; and, possibly, look for an assist from hackers. In order for the first part to work, you've gotta be as confrontational as possible to draw Democrats and liberals into an act that can be portrayed as extremism. Sure, an action like blocking the roads to and from detention locations, like, fer the love of fuck, tent cities for children is a relatively mild form of civil disobedience, but as far as the whiners on the right are concerned, it'll be "terrorism the likes of which the nation hasn't seen" or whatever the fuck Fox "news" contorts it to be.

Unsurprisingly, Fox has gone all-in on supporting Trump on the savage child detention policy, so Tucker "Bitch Face" Carlson and Laura "My Kids Went to the Shittiest Summer Camps" Ingraham would orgasm constantly if they got to report on violence involving migrants or defenders of migrants. Sean Hannity's studio would be sticky for weeks.

Let's be clear that the family detention policy didn't start with Trump, but the "zero tolerance" part of it, which includes asylum seekers and the separation of children from parents, is totally Trump's.

They planned this shit specifically to deter people on the run from awful violence, including rape and murder, including forcing kids into gangs, to stop seeking asylum in the United States. And lying ogre of blonde doom, DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, can repeatedly insist, as she did at her belly flop of a press appearance yesterday, "DHS is not separating families legitimately seeking asylum at ports of entry. If an adult enters at a port of entry and claims asylum, they will not face prosecution for illegal entry. They have not committed a crime by coming to the port of entry." And Trump can assert in that goddamned moron voice of his that "We’re stuck with these horrible laws. They’re horrible laws" that are forcing the country to treat migrants this way, even going so far as to blame Democrats for the laws themselves.

But the motherfucking truth is that those "laws" have been in place since the 1950's, agreed to and signed off on by Congress members and presidents of both parties, including, most recently, in 2008, George W. Bush. And the mother fucking truth is that story after story is coming in about asylum seekers who have their children taken away from them. And the mother fucking truth is that none of what the Trump administration is doing, the written policy they have, is going to deter a mother trying to escape from a man who is beating her and her kids and threatening their lives. They don't have fucking Twitter on the path from El Salvador to the American border.

Today, in a tweet, Trump made clear the racist intent of his immigration policies, which is a refreshing change from the coded racism that Republicans usually use. Saying that "illegal immigrants...infest our Country" (incorrect capitalization courtesy of Trump), he is blurring the line between violent criminals and economic refugees and asylum seekers, which is exactly what a racist would want to do.

So what do we do? The left is obviously being baited into a fight. Yet that doesn't mean we shouldn't fight. Fucking hell, if traumatized kids doesn't get you fighting, nothing will. So fuck it. Let the ads fall where they may. They'll say we're shitty criminal lovers no matter what. Sometimes a big enough fish can grab the bait, yank the fisherman right into the water, and devour him.

When Did You Figure It Out?

By RfrancisR

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In a tweet, ABC News called Trump’s child concentration camps “shelters.”

 

When did you first realize that the Republican Party jumped the shark and began falling into a deep dark abyss of hostility to facts, reason, and empathy?

Was it when Nixon sent the National Guard to Kent State which resulted in that horrific massacre of anti-war protesters?  Maybe for some it was Nixon and Watergate?  Well, I get it. It would be fairly understandable to believe those were  just aberrations.

But why wasn’t it enough to come to that understanding when  Reagan decided to launch his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi the city where some of the most brutal civil rights killings took place, but not to memorialize the dead and and send a warning to the future, but to embrace concepts like “reverse racism,” which was clearly a dog whistle to the “I will tell you who the REAL racists are”?

OK, maybe coincidence? What about his nomination of a deeply racist man in Jeff Sessions to a federal judgeship? Or the nomination of an equally racist man in Judge Bork to the Supreme Court who also called the Ninth amendment to the constitution an “irrelevant inkblot.”

No?

What about Reagan’s press secretary cracking jokes about gay men dying of AIDS during an official White House press conference?

What about Reagan’s cynical invention of the racist “welfare queen” stereotype of poor black women?

What about what remains one of the most hateful political conventions in history in the 1992 Republican Convention?

No? Just a few bad apples?

What about Bob Dole’s return of donations to the Log Cabin Republicans as to avoid offending his right wing base because he did not want to be seen as affiliating himself with LGBT who agreed with the Republican Party’s platform on all but one measure?

What about the subliminal confession of an absence of compassion for the suffering of others among the Republican faithful when George W Bush felt a need to coin the term “compassionate conservatism.”

No? What about when the Republican majority on Supreme Court decided to take the unprecedented step of reviewing state election law to shutdown attempts to have a proper recount in Florida?

No? Not then either?

What about when the Bush administration fabricated an excuse to go into a preemptive war in Iraq? What about Colin Powell’s fake vial of anthrax at the UN? What about Condi Rice’s mushroom cloud scare tactics to grow support for that illegal war? And it was an illegal war.

What about Abu Ghraib? Guantanamo? Water boarding? “Enhanced interrogation? No?

What about the cult of personality surrounding Sarah Palin who ran a smear campaign against Obama so awful that her own running mate had to refute her claims?

What about the threat of martial law in the USA if Congress did not give $800 billion to the big banks?

What about lies about “death panels?” What about “do not ask what good you could do?”

What about tea party activists waving guns at protests outside of events featuring Obama?

When did you figure it out? Was it when Republicans booed Rick Perry from uttering that very politically incorrect term “compassion” at a Republican debate? Did you figure it out then? Did you figure it out when mass shooting after mass shooting Republicans refused to act to protect the citizenry for the sake of the gun industry that lined their pockets?

What about the enthusiasm for Trump’s overt racism, xenophobia, islamaphobia?

If you just figured out the Republican Party is deep into an abyss of darkness, lies, mendacity, racism, and bigotry when they got to ripping babies from their mother’s arms, and refusing to give those children back to the mothers after immigration proceedings were over, you figured it out too late.

Monticello Officially Recognizes The Rest Of Thomas Jefferson’s Children

Our founding father, my 6th great-grandfather, had 6 children with his slave Sally Hemings

By Lucian K. Truscott IV / Salon

June 16, 2018, 4:37 AM GMT

When my brother Frank and I visited our great aunts Mary Walker and Agnes Randolph at their home in Charlottesville in the early 1950s, they used to load us into the back seat of the family Buick and drive up the mountain to Monticello and drop us off for the day. My aunts had been born at Edgehill, the Randolph family plantation, just a few miles down the mountain. My aunts treated Monticello as the family home, and we were given the run of the place.

We played on our sixth great-grandfather's bed, we ran around upstairs in the unfinished bedrooms and played marbles in the Dome Room. We explored the cave-like work and storage rooms beneath the house, and we crawled out one of the upstairs windows onto the roof and playfully dropped pebbles on tourists as they passed by on the walks below.

If you took a tour of the place back then, you were unlikely to hear the word “slave.” Tours made it sound like Jefferson built the place and was the only person living there. The truth was far different. Jefferson owned as many as 600 slaves during his lifetime, and in the years after he retired to Monticello from the presidency, there were some 100 to 125 slaves living and working at his plantation every day.

Thomas Jefferson’s slaves built Monticello. They cleared the land and felled every tree, they sawed and finished every board, they made and laid every brick, they forged and pounded every nail in that house. They planted and harvested his vegetable garden and crops. They made his life at Monticello possible. Without slaves, Thomas Jefferson would not have had the time in the day to write the Declaration of Independence. Without slaves, the White House wouldn’t have been built. Neither would the Capitol building. In this and so many other ways, slaves are truly among the Founding Fathers and Founding Mothers of this country, and yet up there at Mr. Jefferson’s house, it was as if they never existed.

Tours of the house and grounds at Monticello over the last couple of decades have recognized the lives and work of the enslaved community. I took a tour there a few years ago in mid-winter, with nearly a foot of snow on the ground outside. Our tour guide, William Bergen, had gone into the archives and came up with the number of slaves it had taken to cut and carry the firewood necessary to heat Monticello for a single day. He also pointed out the woodwork that had been done by John Hemings, the brother of Sally Hemings, in Jefferson’s bedroom and library, and the furniture he had built that Jefferson designed.

Today at Monticello, the descendants of Jefferson’s slaves will have their history formally recognized when a space where slaves lived will be opened to the public. The quarters that were occupied by Sally Hemings will be accessible, much as Jefferson’s bedroom has been open to the public all of these years. The space was used for many years as a public restroom until archaeologists and historians at Monticello discovered that it had been the place where Sally Hemings had raised the children she had with Thomas Jefferson.

In conjunction with the opening of the Hemings quarters, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns and operates Monticello, has issued a definitive affirmation that Thomas Jefferson fathered all six of Sally Hemings’ children. They are removing qualifiers such as “most likely” from the foundation’s previous position on Jefferson’s paternity in favor of evidence including Hemings’ family oral history, a DNA study carried out in 1998, a written history of Hemings’ and Jefferson’s son Madison published in an Ohio newspaper in 1873, and evidence taken from Jefferson’s own writings in his “Farm Book” confirming that he was present at Monticello each time Sally conceived.

The Foundation also took what I consider to be the extraordinary step of specifically refuting claims made in letters written by my fourth great-grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, and my great aunt, Ellen Randolph Coolidge, that Samuel or Peter Carr had fathered Sally’s children. The Carr brothers were the sons of Jefferson’s best friend Dabney Carr and Jefferson’s sister Martha. They were raised at Monticello after their father’s untimely death at age 30 and were present on the mountaintop for much of their boyhood.

The Monticello Association, comprised of the white descendants of Jefferson, took the position for more than 100 years that the Carr brothers fathered Sally's children, based on these letters, which were apparently written to cover up Jefferson’s paternity. The 1998 DNA study took samples from Carr descendants. No Carr DNA was found in Hemings descendants, conclusively ruling out Peter and Samuel Carr as the fathers of Sally's children.

Thomas Jefferson Randolph lived at Monticello in the last years of Jefferson’s life, was close to his grandfather and clearly knew the truth about Sally’s children. The letters between him and Ellen Coolidge were lies written in order to cover up Jefferson’s paternity, knowing they would become part of the historical record. The white Jefferson descendants in the Monticello Association were only too happy to use them to spread the lie perpetrated by the family. Most historians accepted this version of the story for the next hundred years.

In 1998, during an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show with my Hemings cousins, I invited them to be my guests at the family reunion at Monticello. In May of 1999, about 50 of them joined me and attended all of the family events, including a service at Jefferson’s grave. Many white Jefferson descendants are buried there, including my brother and my parents, great grandparents, and great aunts and uncles. One day, I will be buried there alongside the rest of my family.

One of the things my Hemings cousins and I were seeking in attending the family reunions in 1999 and over the next several years was the right to be buried at Monticello in the graveyard, should any of the Hemings family express that desire. This became a key issue for the Monticello Association, and finally, in 2002, they took a vote on formally admitting our Hemings cousins into the family.

They voted 95 to 6 against the Hemings. Five of the six members voting “yes” to admit the Hemings were Truscotts.

My Hemings cousins and I no longer attend the Monticello Association family reunion each year in May, choosing instead to attend Hemings family events, which have been held there several times over the years. My Hemings cousins and I were invited to Monticello for the unveiling of Sally’s quarters this weekend. I will be unable to attend, but many of my cousins and the descendants of other slave families will be honored guests at the unveiling.

Monticello has laid to rest once and for all who fathered Sally’s children. The rest of my white Jefferson cousins can say what they want, but the place where Jefferson lived has recognized what our Hemings cousins have known for more than two centuries. Thomas Jefferson is their great grandfather, just as he is mine.

You can judge him morally as a slave owner and as a man, but the controversy is over. Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings’ children, and Monticello, where they lived and worked, is now as much the family home of my Hemings cousins and all the other slave descendants as it was mine when my Randolph great aunts used to drop off my brother Frank and me there for the day years ago.

Today Monticello is telling the world an uncomfortable truth about our history. It is a glorious day for Monticello, for our family, and for the greater family of all Americans.

A retrospective of Unreal, from the people who made it

Unreal turned 20 years old this month. The extraterrestrial first-person shooter spawned (and showcased) a game engine whose descendants still motor on today.

To commemorate all those screaming prisoners and innocent alien creatures killed at the hands of jumpy players, Brendan Caldwell got in touch with a handful of the original team and asked them to share their memories of making the first Skaarj conflict.

This is how Unreal was made, from the perspective of the programmers, designers, artists and musicians who were there.