All the brands that have cut ties with the NRA following gun-control activists' boycotts

By Kate Taylor and Leanna Garfield

• Gun-control activists are organizing boycotts and calling for companies to cut ties with the National Rifle Association.
• The NRA has partnerships with companies that offer members special deals, such as discounts on car rentals or hotel bookings.
• The car-rental giant Enterprise and the First National Bank of Omaha are among the companies that have cut since ties with the NRA.

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Gun-control activists are organizing boycotts of companies with ties to the National Rifle Association — and they're already producing results.

People on social media are calling for boycotts of companies that offer or have offered special deals to NRA members who, as part of their membership, receive discounts on things like car rentals and prescription drugs.

While companies such as FedEx and Hertz still offer such discounts, other companies have cut ties.

Here are all the brands that have cut ties with the gun-rights group after the recent boycotts as well as past efforts by gun-control activists.

Delta Airlines

Delta

On Saturday, the airline tweeted that it is "reaching out to the NRA to let them know we will be ending their contract for discounted rates through our group travel program. We will be requesting that the NRA remove our information from their website."

United Airlines

Scott Olson/Getty Images

The airline announced on Saturday that it is cutting ties to the NRA.
"United is notifying the NRA that we will no longer offer a discounted rate to their annual meeting and we are asking that the NRA remove our information from their website," the company tweeted.

Hertz

Hertz rental cars are seen in a rental lot near Detroit Metropolitan airport in Romulus.

Thomson Reuters

On Friday, Hertz tweeted, "We have notified the NRA that we are ending the NRA's rental car discount program with Hertz."

Allied Van Lines

Allied Van Lines

In a statement to Business Insider, an Allied representative said the moving company is discontinuing its discount program with the NRA immediately. "We have asked them to remove our listing from their benefits site," the representative said.

MetLife

Thomson Reuters

MetLife told Business Insider on Friday that it would discontinue its NRA discounts program. "We value all our customers but have decided to end our discount program with the NRA," a representative said in an emailed statement.

SimpliSafe

SimpliSafe

On Friday, the home-security company SimpliSafe told Business Insider that it would withdraw from the NRA discount program. "We have discontinued our existing relationship with the NRA," SimpliSafe CEO Chad Laurans said in a statement.

First National Bank of Omaha

First National Bank

On Thursday, the bank said it would not renew a contract with the NRA that allowed members to receive an NRA-branded Visa card. "Customer feedback has caused us to review our relationship with the NRA," the bank said on Twitter in response to a call for a boycott. Previously, First National Bank offered members of the gun-rights organization an NRA Visa card, which offered a $40 cash-back bonus.

Paramount Rx

Thomson Reuters

On Friday night, Paramount Rx released the following statement to BI: "The prescription discount program that is made available to NRA members is offered through a third-party vendor. We are working with that vendor to discontinue the program and remove the offering."

Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Alamo Rent a Car, and National Car Rental

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The car-rental giant Enterprise Holdings announced on Thursday that it would end its NRA discount program, effective March 26. The three car-rental brands that Enterprise operates — Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Alamo Rent a Car, and National Car Rental — will stop offering discounts to NRA members.
A representative did not respond to Business Insider's follow-up questions about why Enterprise was ending the program, though the company has been flooded with boycott threats on social media. Avis Budget Group and Hertz, two rivals of Enterprise, still offered NRA discounts as of Friday morning.

Symantec

Symantec

The cybersecurity company announced on social media Friday that it had "stopped its discount program with the National Rifle Association."

Best Western

Best Western Weinebrugge

Best Western has been targeted by boycott efforts because it has offered discounts to NRA members as recently as 2016. In response, the hotel chain has tweeted dozens of times that it "does not have an affiliation with and is not a corporate partner of the National Rifle Association."

"Best Western ended any association with the NRA in 2014," a representative said in a statement to Business Insider.

Best Western has been targeted in past NRA boycott efforts.

In 2012, after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, the activist group Avaaz organized a boycott of Best Western and Wyndham Hotel Group, calling for them to cut ties with the NRA. At the time, both hotel chains were listed on the gun-rights group's website as "friends of the NRA" and offered members discounts at hotels.

Wyndham Hotel Group

Wyndham

While Wyndham Hotel Group previously offered a 10% discount to NRA members, the hotel chain cut ties with the organization late last year. In response to boycott threats this week, the Twitter accounts for Wyndham and its rewards program tweeted dozens of times that the hotel chain was "no longer affiliated with the NRA."

Republic Bank

Republic Bank

"The NRA Prepaid Card program was previously under review. Upon conclusion of this review, we decided to discontinue the offering," a representative said in a statement.

Avis and Budget

Getty Images/John Moore

A representative for Avis and Budget told Business Insider that the brands would stop the NRA rewards program, effective March 26, 2018.

Corporations start dropping support for the NRA and you too can do your part to help: Tell Amazon, Roku, Apple, and Google to dump the NRA TV channel

Wonder why Wayne LaPierre wasn't in the Army during Vietnam?

Whatever Trump Is Hiding Is Hurting All Of Us Now

Thomas L. Friedman FEB. 18, 2018

resident Trump in Washington on Friday. Credit Tom Brenner/The New York Times

Our democracy is in serious danger.

resident Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.

That is, either Trump’s real estate empire has taken large amounts of money from shady oligarchs linked to the Kremlin — so much that they literally own him; or rumors are true that he engaged in sexual misbehavior while he was in Moscow running the Miss Universe contest, which Russian intelligence has on tape and he doesn’t want released; or Trump actually believes Russian President Vladimir Putin when he says he is innocent of intervening in our elections — over the explicit findings of Trump’s own C.I.A., N.S.A. and F.B.I. chiefs.

In sum, Trump is either hiding something so threatening to himself, or he’s criminally incompetent to be commander in chief. It is impossible yet to say which explanation for his behavior is true, but it seems highly likely that one of these scenarios explains Trump’s refusal to respond to Russia’s direct attack on our system — a quiescence that is simply unprecedented for any U.S. president in history. 

Russia is not our friend. It has acted in a hostile manner. And Trump keeps ignoring it all.

Up to now, Trump has been flouting the norms of the residency. Now Trump’s behavior amounts to a refusal to carry out his oath of office — to protect and defend the Constitution. Here’s an imperfect but close analogy: It’s as if George W. Bush had said after 9/11: “No big deal. I am going golfing over the weekend in Florida and blogging about how it’s all the Democrats’ fault — no need to hold a National Security Council meeting.”

At a time when the special prosecutor Robert Mueller — leveraging several years of intelligence gathering by the F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A. — has brought indictments against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups — all linked in some way to the Kremlin — for interfering with the 2016 U.S. elections, America needs a resident who will lead our nation’s defense against this attack on the integrity of our electoral democracy.

What would that look like? He would educate the public on the scale of the problem; he would bring together all the stakeholders — state and local election authorities, the federal government, both parties and all the owners of social networks that the Russians used to carry out their interference — to mount an effective defense; and he would bring together our intelligence and military experts to mount an effective offense against Putin — the best defense of all.

What we have instead is a resident vulgarly tweeting that the Russians are “laughing their asses off in Moscow” for how we’ve been investigating their interventions — and exploiting the terrible school shooting in Florida — and the failure of the F.B.I. to properly forward to its Miami field office a tip on the killer — to throw the entire F.B.I. under the bus and create a new excuse to shut down the Mueller investigation.

Think for a moment how demented was Trump’s Saturday night tweet: “Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign — there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!”

To the contrary. Our F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A., working with the special counsel, have done us amazingly proud. They’ve uncovered a Russian program to divide Americans and tilt our last election toward Trump — i.e., to undermine the very core of our democracy — and Trump is telling them to get back to important things like tracking would-be school shooters. Yes, the F.B.I. made a mistake in Florida. But it acted heroically on Russia. What is more basic than protecting American democracy?

It is so obvious what Trump is up to: Again, he is either a total sucker for Putin or, more likely, he is hiding something that he knows the Russians have on him, and he knows that the longer Mueller’s investigation goes on, the more likely he will be to find and expose it.

Donald, if you are so innocent, why do you go to such extraordinary lengths to try to shut Mueller down? And if you are really the resident — not still head of the Trump Organization, who moonlights as resident, which is how you so often behave — why don’t you actually lead — lead not only a proper cyberdefense of our elections, but also an offense against Putin.

Putin used cyberwarfare to poison American politics, to spread fake news, to help elect a chaos candidate, all in order to weaken our democracy. We should be using our cyber-capabilities to spread the truth about Putin — just how much money he has stolen, just how many lies he has spread, just how many rivals he has jailed or made disappear — all to weaken his autocracy. That is what a real resident would be doing right now.

My guess is what Trump is hiding has to do with money. It’s something about his financial ties to business elites tied to the Kremlin. They may own a big stake in him. Who can forget that quote from his son Donald Trump Jr. from back in 2008: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets.” They may own our resident.

But whatever it is, Trump is either trying so hard to hide it or is so naïve about Russia that he is ready to not only resist mounting a proper defense of our democracy, he’s actually ready to undermine some of our most important institutions, the F.B.I. and Justice Department, to keep his compromised status hidden.

That must not be tolerated. This is code red. The biggest threat to the integrity of our democracy today is in the Oval Office.

Trump’s staggering dereliction of duty

By Ruth Marcus

National security adviser H.R. McMaster is in the news — and apparently in the presidential doghouse — for stating the obvious: that evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election is “now really incontrovertible.” So it is appropriate to take, as this column’s theme, the title of McMaster’s book on the Vietnam war, “Dereliction of Duty.”

McMaster was writing about military leaders’ failure to stand up to presidents who insisted on pursuing an unwinnable war. Now, in the White House in which McMaster serves, the dereliction of duty starts at the top. And, as the past several days have shown, resident Trump’s failure is dereliction on a grand, unprecedented scale: We find ourselves at war without a commander in chief; in national mourning without a consoler in chief; and in political gridlock without a negotiator in chief.

The first is the most appalling and most terrifying. “Incontrovertible,” McMaster said, and so it is for anyone who bothers to read the indictment of 13 Russians for running a massive operation not only to disrupt the election but to do so to Trump’s benefit. But of course Trump never has and apparently never will be able to accept this. Is it his fragile ego that cannot tolerate the implicit challenge to his legitimacy? Is it something more sinister?

This much is clear: For whatever reason, Trump is unwilling to accept the reality of what happened in 2016 and, more alarming, unwilling to do his duty to seek to prevent it from happening again. We are at war with an enemy plotting to undermine our democracy, and our supposed leader, far from working to halt this, seems determined to ignore it. Where is Trump’s outrage now that the evidence against Russia is public, not that he needed to wait for that? It is invisible.

Instead, Trump’s anger is directed against McMaster, for omitting the untrue party line: “General McMaster forgot to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the Russians and that the only Collusion was between Russia and Crooked H, the DNC and the Dems.

Remember the Dirty Dossier, Uranium, Speeches, Emails and the Podesta Company!”

Trump’s anger is directed against the democratic institutions that have rallied to discover what happened and seek to prevent its recurrence: “If it was the GOAL of Russia to create discord, disruption and chaos within the U.S. then, with all of the Committee Hearings, Investigations and Party hatred, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They are laughing their asses off in Moscow. Get smart America!”

Laughing their asses off in Moscow, indeed. There has been not one word, not one syllable of residential anger directed toward the people who did this.

But there is no depth to which Trump will not sink in defense of the only thing he holds dear: himself. And so, the nation witnessed a tweet in which the resident, a leader to whom the country once looked for healing in times of national tragedy, instead used innocent victims, high school children mowed down in their own school, to make his bogus, self-interested point: “Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign - there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!”

Did he? Did he really use dead children to attack an investigation into his campaign and his conduct in office? Yes, he did. This is a person devoid of empathy. He can experience the world only through the prism of his own ego. He can read the requisite words from a teleprompter — “To every parent, teacher, and child who is hurting so badly, we are here for you — whatever you need, whatever we can do, to ease your pain” — but he is incapable of feeling them. No one who imagines the shattered heart of a grieving parent could have written that despicable tweet.

Finally, a word about the “dreamers,” and the impending, unnecessary tragedy of Trump’s own making. He wanted a “bill of love” to protect the dreamers, Trump told us. “I will be signing it,” he said of any congressional deal to allow these promising innocents to remain. Trump broke the inadequate status quo for dreamers when he rescinded President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals order allowing them to stay. Then he failed to fix it. Then, with an unnecessarily belligerent and premature veto threat, Trump got in the way of lawmakers of good faith attempting a solution.

“Dereliction of duty” is not a strong enough term to describe this man’s abysmal performance.

Read more from Ruth Marcus’s archive, follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her updates on Facebook.
 
Read more here:
 
Karen Tumulty: We’ve just hit a new presidential low

The Post’s View: What Trump still doesn’t get about Russian interference in the election

The Post’s View: Mr. Trump to the ‘dreamers’: Drop dead.

Brian Klaas: Russia is at war with our democracy. When will we finally start defending it?

Quinta Jurecic: Institutions can’t save America from Trump

Another Particle Blaster Incident

Florida Gunman Who Killed 17 Previously Trained With White Nationalist Group

The man charged in this week’s Florida school shooting allegedly trained with a white supremacist group.

A spokesman for the right-wing group Republic of Florida claimed accused gunman Nikolas Cruz had been “brought up” by another member of the organization and took part in at least one training exercise in the Tallahassee area, reported ADL.

Jordan Jereb, who is believed to be the militia group’s leader, confirmed the association after self-described ROF members claimed on the online 4chan forum that Cruz had been a member.

The anti-government paramilitary group, which is only a few years old, describes itself as a “white civil rights organization fighting for white identitarian politics” and promotes the creation of a “white ethnostate.”

Jereb told ADL that his group had not directed Cruz to commit the shooting at his former school, and he said the ROF did not support his action.

Source

Nothing Is True

Let's give Dotard Trump the parade he wants...

Note To Trump-Humpers: None Of Your Conspiracy Theories Exonerates Your Man

Posted by Rude One

Whenever some dingleberry of seeming bias against resident Donald Trump is sharted out by his state media on Fox "news," the resident and his supporters will crow that he is "vindicated" of one thing or other, usually that his campaign conspired with the Russian government to steal the 2016 election. Someone on some goddamn website or Twitter account finds some utterly minor thing that, blown up with graphics and set to sinister music, can be made to seem like the Deep State run by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is just setting up poor, innocent, pure, God-chosen Donald Trump in order to frame him for some crime he wouldn't ever even contemplate committing.

They did it with the Uranium One bullshit, declaring that "the real Russia scandal." They did it with the Nunes memo, which just showed that the FBI follows leads. They accuse Republicans Robert Mueller and James Comey of bias, which seems to mean, "If you want to investigate whether Donald Trump and people around him might have committed crimes." And they're doing it with the text messages of a couple of FBI agents now, with the latest supposedly implicating President Obama (spoiler: it doesn't and you're stupid if you think it does).

But here's the deal: Not one of these things clears Trump or his awful family or his merry band of plague rats and rabid dogs that we are forced to call "the White House."

Let's lay it all out as clearly as possible once again (because this is shit I've talked about before).

- Hillary Clinton could have totally given away 20% of the U.S. uranium deposits to the Russians in order to secure donations to her family's charity (honestly, just writing that seems so patently absurd, it hurts my brain a little). Sure, she would have had to have bribed or threatened the dozens of other people involved in any decision about uranium, but, shit, she's Hillary Clinton, allegedly the stone cold murderer of dozens of political enemies, so, sure, yeah, let's say this could totally happen.

- The FBI could have totally lied about the Democratic Party's involvement in the Steele dossier, as the Nunes memo asserts (even though, factually, the FBI didn't lie, but we're saying if horseshit were gold here), in order to continue surveillance of Carter Page, which they had started in 2013, but, obviously, they totally knew that he would be named by Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers and just got a jump on it.

- James Comey could have totally been compromised into not charging Hillary Clinton with a crime on the emails, which somehow translates into something something no collusion Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch in the parlor with a candlestick. (I really don't understand the "fuck evidence and punch reality in the dick" mindset.)

- Agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page could have been totally biased against Trump and their texts about what an asshole he is indicate that they had preconceived notions about whatever part of the investigation they worked on. And there could totally be a secret society of FBI agents meeting in some off-site coven to do some hoodoo to Trump. And today's big revelation, that Page had texted in September 2016, "potus wants to know everything we’re doing," could totally mean Obama wanted to interfere with the Hillary email investigation and not that he wanted to know if the United States was being cyber-attacked by Russia, which is definitely what it was, but, you know, Hillary using a private email server is worse than Watergate times Teapot Dome times Iran-Contra, motherfuckers.

Goddamn, you people are fucking nuts.

And, you know, the only way that any of these conspiracies make sense as being real is if there is a massive uber-conspiracy involving everyone from grunt-level agents to the former president of the United States to discredit Trump and his administration, and, even then, it would have had to start 5 years ago.

Of course, all Trump needs for all this to work is a few craven Republicans, like Devin Nunes and Ron "Secret Sauce" Johnson, to run interference, as well as media outlets permanently attached to his poisonous man-teats. The idiot hordes will gobble it up like Jesus jizz.

Yet, if every single one of those conspiracies were true, it still does nothing to prove that Trump isn't a money-launderer who is in the back pocket of Vladimir Putin and other rich as fuck Russians, it does nothing to prove that Russia didn't use a bunch of different methods to tilt the election to Trump, and it also does nothing to change the outcome of the 2016 presidential race (the excuse that Trump and his spokeslackeys use as the reason why Democrats care about a foreign government fucking with our electoral process or that Trump may be compromised, not that they might actually give a shit that our sovereignty might have been breached).

If Donald Trump were innocent, you wouldn't need a single one of the crazy conspiracies to explain it all away. You'd have the truth. But truth is now just a ragged angel whose wings have been perforated by the birdshot of unending lies.

Several Eagles will skip Donald Trump White House visit after winning Super Bowl

By Matt Lombardo

mdlombardo@njadvancemedia.com,

NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

MINNEAPOLIS -- Several Eagles players plan on skipping the traditional White House celebration after winning Super Bowl LII over the New England Patriots on Sunday night.

Wide receiver Torrey Smith, defensive end Chris Long, and safety Malcolm Jenkins are among the players planing to boycott visiting President Donald J. Trump.



Here is the exact moment the Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl, finishing off the New England Patriots, 41-33, in Super Bowl LII (52) at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minn. on Sunday, February 4, 2018 (2/4/18). (Video by Eliot Shorr-Parks | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Trump has repeatedly attacked NFL players for silent acts of dissent whether it is kneeling or raising fists during the national anthem in advocating for criminal justice reform and eradicating social injustice.

"They call it the anthem protest," Smith said this week. "We're not protesting the anthem. It's a protest during the anthem. I understand why people are mad, or may be offended when someone takes a knee.

"My father when he dies, is going to be buried with an American flag draped around his casket, being that he served in the army. I understand why some people are offended by it. Also, there are soldiers that have issues going on right now, and they are things that effect them. They're things that effect my father. He understands both sides of the issue."

Meanwhile, Long -- who also skipped the post Super Bowl White House trip last year as a member of the New England Patriots -- says that he does not want his children to grow up having been influenced by Trump's actions or policies.

"No," Long said during the Pardon My Take Podcast. "I'm not going to the White House. Are you kidding me?"

Officer Friendly

Trump authorizes release of controversial Republican memo

Donald Trump has authorized the release of a controversial Republican memo, and has sent word to the House Intelligence Committee the document may be made public, a White House official said.

www.cnn.com/2018/02/02/politics/republican-intelligence-memo/index.html

Trump vs. The Deep State

Why $1,000 One Time Bonuses Are Part Of The Tax Scam

By louis c

Let me give you a little background of what I've done for the past 22 years as work. I represent a union in the Greater Boston area and part of my responsibilities is to negotiate contracts with the employer on behalf of the union employees. The people I represent are mostly in the maintenance departments of schools, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, museums and sports' facilities.

The pay ranges from a low of about $26 per hour for unlicensed employees, to a high of $40 an hour for licensed personnel (electricians, plumbers, HVAC). So. let's just put the average at about $33 an hour for the sake of this argument.

A $1,000 bonus is not a pay raise. It represents less than fifty cents ($.50) an hour for the year. 40 hours a week x 52 weeks = 2080 x 50 cents is $1,040.

The one time bonus, instead of a 50 cent raise means the bonus is only for one year. A fifty cent raise is every year, as your salary has increased. On top of that, overtime is now calculated at the higher rate of pay, compounding the increase when you work the overtime.

I have generally been getting 2 and a half to 3 percent raises, per year, for 3 year contracts. This means we are getting 75 cents to a dollar increase each year, for each hour worked.

If I had to go into a ratification meeting on a three year contract with a $1,000 bonus and no raises for 3 years, they'd kill me, let alone not ratify the Tentative Agreement (TA).

When we enter the negotiations, we are often offered a bonus from the other side, for opener. A bonus doesn't increase the salary and dies after it is paid, as a salary increase lives on to the employee (and all the employees to follow) forever.

These well publicized one time bonuses should be seen for exactly what they are, part of the overall scam being perpetrated on the middle class workers of this country.

New York Attorney General To Investigate Firm That Sells Fake Followers

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE JAN. 27, 2018

The New York attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, on Saturday opened an investigation into a company that sold millions of fake followers on social media platforms, some of them copying real users’ personal information.

The company, Devumi, and its sale of automated followers to a swath of celebrities, sports stars, journalists and politicians, was detailed in a New York Times article published earlier on Saturday. 

While based in Florida, Devumi claims on its website to be based in New York City.

At least 55,000 of its “bot” accounts used names, pictures, hometowns and other details taken from people on Twitter. The real users hailed from every U.S. state, including New York, and dozens of countries, a Times analysis found.

“Impersonation and deception are illegal under New York law,” Mr. Schneiderman wrote on Twitter. “We’re opening an investigation into Devumi and its apparent sale of bots using stolen identities.”

Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York. Credit Sasha Maslov for The New York Times

The investigation is the latest in a series of federal and state inquiries into the commercial and political abuse of fake accounts on social media. Tens of millions of fake accounts have been deployed to defraud businesses, influence political debates online and attract customers.

Social media companies, including Twitter and Facebook, have drawn intense scrutiny for not taking greater steps to weed them out. Many of the accounts identified by The Times appear to violate Twitter’s own policies, but remained active on the social media platform for years, each retweeting and promoting Devumi customers.

“The tactics used by Devumi on our platform and others as described by today’s NYT article violate our policies and are unacceptable to us,” Twitter said in a message posted on its media relations account on Saturday.

Mr. Schneiderman, who was first elected in 2010, has brought a series of cases focused on the emerging world of online fraud, impersonation and abuse. In December, he began an investigation into how the Federal Communications Commission was flooded with millions of fake comments on a proposal to scrap so-called net neutrality rules. Many of the comments used names and addresses borrowed from real people, almost always without their knowledge.

“The internet should be one of the greatest tools for democracy — but it’s increasingly being turned into an opaque, pay-to-play playground,” Mr. Schneiderman said.

A version of this article appears in print on January 28, 2018, on Page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: New York Opens Inquiry on Firm That Sells Fake Followers. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

The Mueller Bombshell Proves Republicans Are Running Out Of Time

History will not be kind to Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and others who stand by idly.

 

By Charles P. Pierce

Jan 26, 2018

6.5k

Getty Images

It came with the wind through the silence of the night, a long, deep mutter, then a rising howl, and then the sad moan in which it died away. Again and again it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident, wild and menacing.

—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1902.

So, if I read the state of play correctly, special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating the president* and the president*’s administration* for obstruction of justice, and Mueller has been running this investigation for seven months knowing that the president* came within an ace of firing him last June for the purposes of, ah, obstructing justice. He’s had this information in his back pocket every time a member of the administration* came before him under oath. I’ve never been a criminal defendant charged with obstruction of justice, but this seems to me to be a bad situation for an obstructor of justice to be in.

The major scoop in The New York Times that has shaken up the world can be read in a number of different ways that all lead to the same conclusion. Right from jump, the president* has been scared right down to his silk boxers of what Mueller would discover regarding his campaign’s connections to Russian ratfcking and regarding his business connections to freshly laundered Russian cash. This conclusion does not change even if you think that White House counsel Don McGahn leaked this story to make himself the hero or to cover his own ass. This conclusion does not change even if you think the ratlines off the listing hulk of this administration are thick with fleeing rodents. This whole thing remains a product of the president*’s guilty mind.

(And the story did shake up the world. The president* went before a gathering in Davos on Friday and began raving about “fake news” and the perfidy of the American media. He got booed. Many cats were called. No shoes were thrown, but George W. Bush set a pretty high bar there.)

The story does explain the curious frenzy over the last week: the president*’s saying that he’s “looking forward” to a chat with Mueller, and that he might even deign to have the chat under oath; the apparent rush to present the Congress with a half-baked “compromise plan” on immigration that has no chance of passing the House of Representatives; and the fact that the president* took every member of his inner circle except his wife to Switzerland. I suspect those folks heard the baying of the hound even before Michael Schmidt and Maggie Haberman did. More ominous is the possibility that McGahn—or whomever—leaked this story because the president* is thinking about firing Mueller now, or in the near future, and whoever the leaker was understands very well what a monumental calamity that would be for all concerned.

Related Story

Which Fox News Host Had the Best Mueller Meltdown?

You would think that we would see the wheels turning now. You would think that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell would find some slivers of patriotism between the cushions of their sofas and step up to fulfill the constitutional obligations of their respective offices. There is a genuine crisis on their doorsteps right now, and, next week, the president* is supposed to give his State of the Union address, and god alone knows what he’s going to say. They have not moved. They have given no indication that they will move. History will brand them as cowards and as traitors to the country’s best ideals. History’s not going to be kind to a lot of people who are living through these insane times.

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Hackers putting malware in pirated copies of 'Fire and Fury'

By wagatwe  

Tuesday Jan 23, 2018 · 2:59 PM EST

Michael Woff’s book Fire and Fury has attracted tons of attention for anyone even vaguely curious about life inside the Trump White House and copies have been flying off the shelves. Wikileaks posted a PDF copy of the book and pirated copies quickly began making the rounds. Unsurprisingly, hackers jumped on the opportunity to do some misdeeds. Cybersecurity firm employee Michael Molsner tweeted the discovery.

Sometimes we come across strange malware 😂 8667949f8fd4ce4da0424af4208104e3 pic.twitter.com/D9l4xu62A6
— micham (@micham) January 19, 2018

The Daily Beast did a little digging into malware, which is in a PDF file with almost 100 pages cut from the full 328 page version.

The Daily Beast obtained a sample of the malware, and processed it through an online analysis service, which marked the files as a so-called backdoor. A backdoor may give hackers remote access to a victim’s computer.

It’s not the most exciting or underground malware in the world: A slew of antivirus programs detect the malicious program, according to results from malware analysis site Virus Total.

So it isn’t the most devastating cyber attack, but it’s important to get your materials from authorized sources. Hackers aren’t above capitalizing on nonfiction political bestsellers to gain access to your computer.

The Trump news cycle continues

McConnell is so full of shit that he should be declared a hazardous waste site

Posted by Rude One

Not for one single second should anyone trust Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on his vaguely-worded fake promise to bring up a bill for the undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. You know, the Dreamers. McConnell is so full of shit that he should be declared a hazardous waste site, but people keep wanting to build houses on that toxic bit of Senate real estate.

Democrats caved after making multiple offers for ways to reopen the federal government that would either force action on the DREAM Act or contain protection for those recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. They even offered to fund the stupid fucking wall. It went nowhere.

To be fair, the bill to reopen the government until February 8 does contain six years of funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program, which takes that off the table on the upcoming negotiations.

And, to be fair, the shutdown has brought even more attention to the plight of the Dreamers, whose path to citizenship is supported by a huge majority of Americans, and the fact that their fate is in the hands of the callous GOP and their mad leader, Donald Trump. When the Republicans fail to do shit, and they will fail to do shit, it will (hopefully) be as clear as can be who broke their word when the government shuts down again. But we have reached the limit of trust in the political process.

At this year's Women's March, I saw many more signs about immigrants compared to last year. Hell, we even chanted pro-immigration slogans in New York City. But I've started wondering at what point is marching not enough of a statement, that the argument is not being made strongly and forcefully.

Anyone with a fucking ounce of heart was sickened by the sight of Jorge Garcia, saying goodbye to his wife and children in Michigan before being deported to Mexico, a country that he left 30 years ago, when he was ten. Garcia is, for all intents and purposes, American. He is married to an American woman. He has American children. Jesus fuck, can't we have some kind of squatters' rights to at least be left the fuck alone?

And maybe you were outraged at the idea of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers being able to walk onto a Greyhound bus in Florida and ask people for proof of citizenship. It's a "show me your papers" scenario right out of every anti-Nazi or anti-Soviet Union movie or book. They removed a woman from the bus and her family hasn't heard from her since. Sure, there may be some legitimate reason for the CBP's actions towards the woman. But if they really are routinely asking for your i.d., that's some 4th Amendment-violating shit right there.

And then maybe you can stomach watching this BBC report on Pacific County, Washington, which went for Trump by 7 points. The area has seen kids pulled out of schools to be with their deported parents, industries running low on workers, and general shock that, holy shit, "deportation" isn't just for undocumented murderers (of which there are precious few, despite the GOP's best efforts to scare you into thinking otherwise).

I keep wondering when is there going to be a breaking point. When is there going to be a point where the citizens of a town or city simply form a human wall against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who have been showing up in hospitals and courthouses and other previously "safe" places? When will real resistance, peaceful, nonviolent, but decidedly not just about your tweets or your government-sanctioned march, come to be? When will people say that enough is enough, get themselves arrested, and all flood the judicial system so that it grinds to a halt (from the dying snail's pace it's on)?

In New Fairfield, Connecticut, another man with an American wife and two American children, Joel Colindrés, who escaped violence in Guatemala 14 years ago to come to the United States, was ordered to leave the country. He is currently appealing this decision, and several dozen people came out in this town north of Danbury to protest his possible deportation. What if agents come to take him away and some of those protesters decide that they will not allow it to happen? That is the wall that's needed, the humane, caring, righteous wall to halt the excesses of a government gone as crazy as its leader in tearing apart families, that is harming our citizens, especially the children of the deported.

This will be part  of the next phase of resistance. It will happen. Perhaps with Colindrés, perhaps with Lukasz Niec. Niec is the doctor in Michigan (the fuck is up with ICE agents in Michigan?) who was brought to the United States from Poland in 1979, when he was 5 years old. He received permanent resident status in 1989. But because he had a couple of low-level misdemeanor convictions from when he was a teenager, he is subject to deportation. He's a fucking doctor. He can't speak Polish. He's not even undocumented. Hell, I left Queens when I was 4, and I wouldn't know what the fuck to do if I were sent back there, let alone a completely foreign country.

It's fucking gut check time. We are into "First they came for" territory. We've gone from the undocumented immigrants to the Dreamers to legal residents. When will we speak out? When will we act? Or will we once again wait until it is us?

The government is operating against what a majority of the nation believes, and it is harming communities, as well as families, hurting the nation in the pursuit of a blatantly nationalistic and, frankly, anti-American goal. It is long, long past the time for a new non-violent resistance movement to protect the soul of the country. And if you believe that soul is white, you can fuck off to some fantasy place and wallow in hate and ignorance.

Eagles Dominate Vikings To Reach Super Bowl LII

Source: New York Times

It was 2013 all over again for Nick Foles and the Philadelphia Eagles, as the quarterback channeled his younger self to light up Minnesota’s vaunted secondary in a 38-7 victory in the N.F.C. Championship game.

Foles’s huge performance ended the Vikings’ season and catapulted the Eagles to Super Bowl LII, where they will face the daunting task of taking on Tom Brady and the New England Patriots.

Foles, who had looked like a potential franchise quarterback in a stint as Philadelphia’s starter in 2013, was thrust back into a starting role following Carson Wentz’s devastating knee injury in Week 13. He had struggled to move the ball, with his play taking the team from Super Bowl favorite to consistent underdog.

But against the Vikings the 28 year old Foles was back to looking like the star some thought he would become. He completed 26 of 33 passes for 352 yards and 3 touchdowns. He was 10 of 11 on third-down passes, completed four passes of 35 or more yards, and turned what had been Philadelphia’s greatest weakness — its ability to generate big plays — into its biggest strength.

In an on-field interview with Fox after the game, Foles struggled to sum up his emotions, describing himself as “speechless.” “In this moment it’s unbelievable, he said. “It’s humbling.”

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/21/sports/nfc-championship-vikings-eagles.html

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=E=A=G=L=E=S= Eagles!

Dear Mr. Trump...In truth the only shithole nation is the one that tolerates a racist resident.

HYPOCRITES!!! Family Values Republicans Silent As Donald Trump Pays Porn Stars Hush Money

In this ‘Dollemore Daily’, Jesse addresses the reporting surrounding the $130,000 payment that was allegedly paid to porn actress Stephanie Clifford (Stormy Daniels), by Donald Trump, in an effort to keep her silent about their 2006 affair.

Have You Heard...

Stupidity

Martin Luther King Would Fuck Trump's Shit Up (Africa Edition)

Posted by Rude One

While conservatives continue their annual desperate attempt to colonize the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., King stubbornly remains a revolutionary figure, one who was blatantly socialist and vehemently anti-capitalist. In fact, King drew a direct line between Western capitalism and the exploitation of African countries. He knew what had turned those countries into "shitholes." A trip to Ghana in 1957 to celebrate that nation's independence from England and the election of a new prime minister solidified King's view that the treatment of African Americans by whites in the United States was strikingly similar to the effects of colonialism in western and southern Africa.

In a sermon after his Ghana trip called "Birth of a New Nation" (goddamn, you know King knew exactly what he was doing with that title), King connected Ghana to the slaves in biblical Egypt ridding themselves of their chains, and he explained what had just happened:

"Prior to March the sixth, 1957, there existed a country known as the Gold Coast. This country was a colony of the British Empire. This country was situated in that vast continent known as Africa. I’m sure you know a great deal about Africa, that continent with some two hundred million people, and it extends and covers a great deal of territory...

"For years the Gold Coast was exploited and dominated and trampled over. The first European settlers came in there about 1444, the Portuguese, and they started legitimate trade with the people in the Gold Coast. They started dealing with them with their gold, and in turn they gave them guns and ammunition and gunpowder and that type of thing. Well, pretty soon America was discovered a few years later in the fourteen hundreds, and then the British West Indies. And all of these growing discoveries brought about the slave trade."

King continued to tell the story of the Gold Coast, bringing it to the then-present: "Finally, in 1850, Britain won out, and she gained possession of the total territorial expansion of the Gold Coast. From 1850 to 1957, March sixth, the Gold Coast was a colony of the British Empire. And as a colony she suffered all of the injustices, all of the exploitation, all of the humiliation that comes as a result of colonialism. But like all slavery, like all domination, like all exploitation, it came to the point that the people got tired of it."

After talking about how the Gold Coast became Ghana, King brought it back to his opening images, "Ghana reminds us that freedom never comes on a silver platter. It’s never easy. Ghana reminds us that whenever you break out of Egypt, you better get ready for stiff backs. You better get ready for some homes to be bombed. You better get ready for some churches to be bombed. You better get ready for a lot of nasty things to be said about you, because you getting out of Egypt. And whenever you break aloose from Egypt, the initial response of the Egyptian is bitterness."

Martin Luther King would fuck up the shit of Donald Trump and his coterie of Republican motherfuckers because that is what he did, and he would specifically fuck up Trump's shit now over the ersatz president's inability to see beyond his own racism when it comes to African nations and their people. King would call out the oppressors for their oppression because that, too, is what he did.

When we remember King, it should always be as a balls-to-the-wall fighter for people of color and, eventually, for all disempowered people. He would be in the streets, marching now, and he would be confronted by white people with tiki torches and uncontrollable cops, and Donald Trump would blame King for any violence that took place because that is what he does.