Sunday, August 13, 2017

Bush-Era Ethics Czar Says Trump’s Far-Right Staffers Are To Blame for Charlottesville Riot: 'I Will Not Support Fascism'

“We have never ever seen rhetoric similar to what has come out of this White House."

By Tom Boggioni / Raw Story

A panel discussion on MSNBC’s AM Joy on the violence in the streets in the city of Charlottesville turned to the root causes of the rise of white nationalism under Donald Trump.

“This is the face of fascism, this is Breitbart news,” declared former Bush era ethics czar Richard Painter.

As live video of the clashes showed on the split screen, Painter lashed out at President Donald Trump and called for him to fire White House advisers Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka.

“I don’t always agree with everything the Republican administrations do but we have never ever seen rhetoric similar to what has come out of this White House,” the clearly disgusted Painter said. “We never had anyone like Steve Bannon or Sebastian Gorka in the Bush White House, to that president’s inauguration.”

“That is disgusting. We never would have tolerated that and we can disagree,” he continued. “I disagree with my own party on some issues, but we never would have had any of this in the Bush White House and these people need to be fired immediately. This is Breitbart News, and Breitbart News is a racist organization and it needs to acknowledge as such, they should not be given preferential access to the White House which is what they’re now getting under Steve Bannon.”

“Bannon needs to be fired, Sebastian Gorka and the rest of the fascists or we have to remove this president,” he said while indicating the violence.

Watch the video below via MSNBC:

Saturday, August 12, 2017

Former GOP Senator Gordon Humphrey Says Trump Should Be Removed From Office

America's Racist Past Is Very Much Alive

Charlottesville is an ugly reminder that America's racist past is very much alive

Dressed in khakis and polos, bearing torches, donning Nazi memorabilia, and chanting anti-black, anti-LGBT, anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, and anti-immigrant chants, white supremacist bigots have descended on Charlottesville, Va., in droves.

Friday, August 11, 2017

Trump bowing and scraping...on bended knee...to Vladimir Putin

In this ‘Dollemore Daily’ Jesse Dollemore addresses Donald Trump and his THANKS and APPRECIATION to Vladimir Putin after having retaliated against almost 800 U.S. State Department employees working in Russia.

Why Can't Donald Trump Say a Single Bad Thing About Vladimir Putin?

Nazi Tweet Gets Trump Ally Jeffrey Lord Fired

Trump backer, Jeffrey Lord, has been fired from CNN. Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian, and Brett Erlich, the hosts of The Young Turks, break it down.

"Nazi salutes are indefensible," a CNN spokesperson said in a statement. "Jeffrey Lord is no longer with the network."

Lord said his tweet was misunderstood. He said he was mocking fascists, not acting like one.

"I love CNN, but I feel they are caving to bullies here," he said in a telephone interview shortly after the network's decision was announced.

Lord said his contract was set to expire at the end of the year. He said he greatly respected CNN management despite disagreeing with the decision.

This is not the first time CNN has cut ties with a prominent personality on the network due to an offensive tweet.

Earlier this year CNN cancelled Reza Aslan's documentary series "Believer" after he posted profane anti-Trump tweets.

Read more here: http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/10/media/jeffrey-lord-cnn-ties/index.html

Hosts: Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian, Brett Erlich

Cast: Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian, Brett Erlich

***

The Largest Online News Show in the World. Hosted by Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian. LIVE STREAMING weekdays 6-8pm ET. http://www.tytnetwork.com/live

Subscribe to The Young Turks on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1yBKRuGpC1tSM73A0ZjYjQ

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Download audio and video of the full two hour show on-demand + the members-only post game show by becoming a member at http://www.tytnetwork.com/join/. Your membership supports the day to day operations and is vital for our continued success and growth.

Young Turk (n), 1. Young progressive or insurgent member of an institution, movement, or political party. 2. A young person who rebels against authority or societal expectations.(American Heritage Dictionary)

Fuck Jill Stein. Fuck her voters. Fuck the Green Party. Fuck Republicans. Fuck Republican enablers.

By Drunken Irishman

Fuck anyone who ever said this past election was the lesser of two evils.

No, you troglodytic shit stain.

And fuck the excusers who still justify their vote for Stein or their vote for Trump or their non-vote in protest.

When the nukes fly, ask yourself how true it was this past election was between the lesser of two evils.

Then go fuck yourself in the final seconds you have on this planet.

Thursday, August 10, 2017

Foreign Diplomats Call Trump A Laughing Stock Who Is Obsessed With Obama

According to a new report, foreign diplomats visiting the United States are less than impressed with Donald Trump. In fact, they can’t seem to stop laughing about how pathetic he really is, and about the fact that he won’t shut up about his predecessor, Barack Obama.

When other countries are laughing, we should probably reevaluate our choices.

According to a new report, European diplomats do not have a very flattering image of Donald Trump. In fact, according to these European diplomats, who interviewed with BuzzFeed on the condition of anonymity, they actually view Donald Trump as most Europeans do, as a complete laughingstock. The latest available polls show us that 79% of people living in Europe do not trust Donald Trump. They do not think he is an effective leader, and they think he is an embarrassment for the United States, and as a U.S. citizen, you're absolutely right. We agree with you on this.

But the fact that these diplomats, who do have the job of having to meet with Donald Trump, having to work with him when he goes on these overseas trips, the fact that they see him as a laughingstock is not anything that people in the United States should be laughing at. That is a very dangerous situation when nobody among your ally countries respects your leader, that they do not view him as a very serious person, and more important as the interview states, they don't view him as an intelligent person. One of the diplomats said that they actually play a form of word bingo when the president is around because he always uses the same words, over and over, like it's great, it's very, very good, it's tremendous. They say he has such a limited vocabulary, that is one of the sources of ridicule among the other diplomats.

Furthermore, and one of the most dangerous about him they said was that the man is clearly obsessed with President Obama. During meetings, they said Trump would not want to debate issues. He would ask if it was something Obama had supported. If the answer was yes, Obama supported it, Trump would blindly and blankly say, then I do not support it. No debate, no discussion, no understanding at all of what they were actually talking about. He just wanted to be opposed to anything that Barack Obama was for, and that is one of the biggest problems that they see over in Europe. Donald Trump is too obsessed with Obama to be an effective leader.

According to these diplomats, it appears that Donald Trump's only policy goals for the United States are to undo the accomplishments of Barack Obama. And to be honest, from what we've seen so far coming out of the Oval Office, that does appear to be his only agenda. He doesn't care about creating jobs. He doesn't care about protecting the environment or anything having to do with anything related to Americans. He just wants to roll back every single thing President Obama did so that four, eight years down the road, Obama can't look at this country and say, oh, that was the program I put in place, because Donald Trump wants to destroy it all.

And he's not only destroying things over here in the United States, as we see from this story. He's also destroying our image that Barack Obama had rebuilt amongst our allies in Europe, and maybe that's Trump's plan, since everyone in Europe really seemed to like Barack Obama, especially after eight years of Bush and our image overseas declined tremendously. Barack Obama repaired that. So I guess Donald Trump destroying that is just another part of his let's undo all of Obama's accomplishments policy.

FIRE AND FURY ~ The Randi Rhodes Show

Randi Rhodes Number-one ranked progressive radio talk show host, political commentator, entertainer, and writer. The Randi Rhodes Show was broadcast nationally on Air America Radio, and Premiere Radio Networks from 2004–2014. Rhodes represents aggressively independent media.

The Miami Herald described her as "a chain-smoking bottle blonde, part Joan Rivers, part shock jock Howard Stern, and part Saturday Night Live’s ‘Coffee Talk’ Lady. But mostly, she's her rude, crude, loud, brazen, gleeful self."

Rhodes and her show won numerous awards for journalism and broadcasting, including Radio Ink’s Most Influential Woman, Radio Ink’s Most Influential Women’s list (multiple years), TALKERS magazine’s Woman of the Year, and the Judy Jarvis Memorial Award for Contributions to the Talk Industry by a Woman.

Is Trump Too Mentally Unstable To Solve The North Korea Issue?

Tensions are heating up between the U.S. and North Korea, and Donald Trump appears to only want to escalate the situation. After warning North Korea that they would be met with “fire and fury” like the world has never seen, he took to Twitter to brag about the state of our nuclear weaponry. Trump desperately wants to launch a nuclear attack, and the results will have global ramifications for the U.S. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

Link 1 - https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/s...https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/895252459152711680

Link 2 – https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/895254168570605568

Trump’s Nonstop Lies Are Finally Starting To Bother Republican Operatives

GOP strategist Ana Navarro has finally had enough of Donald Trump’s nonstop lying, and during a recent media appearance she compared the president to a used car salesperson who just keeps making things up to make a sale. Trump’s lies are certainly growing out of control, but he doesn’t appear to be pulling back any time soon. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

Link – http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/345698-gop-strategist-trump-thinks-hes-a-tv-host-or-used-car-salesman-not

Married To The Mob: Investigative Journalist Craig Unger On What Trump Owes The Russian Mafia

https://democracynow.org - A new exposé and cover story in the September issue of the New Republic, titled "Married to the Mob: What Trump Owes the Russian Mafia," examines how the Russian mafia has used the president’s properties to launder money and hide assets. We speak with the author, investigative journalist Craig Unger.

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Oh Go Fuck Yourself, Glenn Greenwald

By Evan Hurst

Gather ’round the campfire, everyone, for Glenn Greenwald has a Very Serious Question:

Oh golly. That’s a hard one. Let’s get out our abacus and some scratch paper and weigh the pros and cons.

Greenwald, who likes to remind his readers every now and then (constantly) that he really really really really really doesn’t like America, and who is in theory a liberal who embraces liberal values, but totally isn’t, is just not sure whether Donald Trump’s plans to rip healthcare away from millions, deport the fuck out of every brown-skinned person he sees, and so on, are worse than the generals — Mattis, McMaster and Kelly — SUBVERTING TRUMP’S AGENDA by sneakily getting appointed to sweet-ass cabinet and White House positions by Donald Trump, and then sort of trying to rein in some of President Fuck-Bonkers’s most dangerous tendencies.

Oh and he’s mad about the Deep State, because of course he is. Greenwald spends a lot of his column beating a straw man to death, claiming that all the sane people who HAAAAAATE Trump, many of them conservatives who worked tirelessly to keep him from getting elected, and who have been in “COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY, MOTHERFUCKERS” mode since Greenwald’s pals at WikiLeaks and the Russians he is SO IN LOVE WITH (he would deny that accusation, but ya know, actions speak louder than words, and also fuck him) helped Trump get elected, think Greenwald and his weirdo friends are dumb for believing there is a “Deep State.” This is a false construct. We very much know there is a Deep State, and we know it makes Greenwald and Sean Hannity shit the bed, so we make fun of them about it.

But he’s really really confused about which is worse: that Trump is in office and beating the shit out of American institutions and the Constitution, or that the so-called Deep State (normal people refer to them as “career public servants”) is trying its damnedest to protect the Republic from Trump’s damage. The horrors! It reminds us of that thing Anthony Scaramucci whined during his 120-some-odd-hour tenure as White House Communications Director, about how there are some White House staffers who “think it is their job to save America from this president.” It’s almost as if there is a wide consensus among thinking Americans that the traditions we hold dear are in danger, and that we should do something about it. (Also, to all those people, thank you!)

But Greenwald can’t abide that, because how DARE the Deep State Military-CIA-Industrial Complex act all high and mighty like they for real care about protecting America from the authoritarian dipshit in the White House, when it’s very clear that #BothSidesDoIt anyway? How could Donald Trump possibly be more evil than the United States Of America has always been since forever?

No matter how much of a threat one regards Trump as being, there really are other major threats to U.S. democracy and important political values. It’s hard, for instance, to imagine any group that has done more harm, and ushered in more evil, than the Bush-era neocons with whom Democrats are now openly aligning. And who has brought more death, and suffering, and tyranny to the world over the last six decades than the U.S. national security state?

Is it really hard to imagine any group that’s hurt people more than the Bush era neocons? What kind of pathetic What-About-Ism is this, GLENN? Is it not possible to simultaneously believe that the neocons empowered by George W. Bush did a lot of really bad shit (and that America in general has some blood on its hands), AND ALSO that Russia under Putin, the Rwandan genocide, North Korea, hell, a bunch of Communist governments going way the fuck back, are WORSE? What about ISIS?

The dead exploded babies his beloved Russians killed in Aleppo?

HOW ABOUT FUCKING POL POT, GLENN? IS THAT WORSE?

It’s handy that he only goes back six decades, otherwise he’d have to contend with little things like Hitler and Stalin and oh God what the fuck kind of #SlatePitch would we be reading then?

Don’t get us wrong — we don’t think it’s ideal that generals are in all these positions, or that #DeepState patriots are doing what they’re doing, and during ANY other presidency, we’d probably be appalled. But to use Greenwald’s construction, what president has done more to abuse power and subvert American institutions in his first six months of office than Donald Trump?

Anyway, this is very stupid, and what we’ve come to expect from Greenwald, who also is PRETTY SURE the Trump-Russia story is a buncha lies. As soon as he finds the time, we’re sure his Intercept website will publish a journalism exclusive claiming to have found the 400 pound New Jersey dude Trump always claims REALLY hacked the 2016 election, and we will have to tell him to go fuck himself all over again.

What tedious fuckery.

The Alt-Right And Glenn Greenwald Versus H.R. McMaster

By Jonathan Chait

Donald Trump and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Donald Trump has scrambled the political spectrum in certain ways, and one of them has been to introduce a new set of players to the national scene. “Nationalists” or “populists” (as they now call themselves), or the “alt-right” (as they used to call themselves), have been vying with traditional Republicans for control of the Trump administration. The nationalists tend to be pro-Russia, virulently anti-immigrant, race-centric, and conspiratorial in their thinking.

Their current project is a political war against National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, a conventional Republican who displaced the nationalist Michael Flynn. The nationalist war against McMaster has included waves of Russian social-media bots, leaks placed in the nationalist organ Breitbart, and undisguised anti-Semitism.

Most observers outside the nationalist wing have treated McMaster as the sympathetic party in the conflict. The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald is a notable exception. Greenwald has depicted the conflict, much like the nationalists themselves have, as the machinations of the deep state to prevent the authentic, democratically legitimate populist representatives of Trumpism from exerting their rightful authority.

Greenwald himself is not a nationalist, and is certainly not a bigot, but the episode has revealed a left-winger’s idiosyncratic sympathy for the most odious characters on the right.

Greenwald lays out his thinking in a deeply, if inadvertently, revealing column denouncing anti-Trump saboteurs in the deep state.

The foundation of Greenwald’s worldview — on this issue and nearly everything else — is that the United States and its national-security apparatus is the greatest force for evil in the world. “Who has brought more death, and suffering, and tyranny to the world over the last six decades,” he writes, “than the U.S. National Security State?” (This six-decade period of time includes Mao’s regime in China, which killed 45 to 75 million people, as well as the Khmer Rouge and several decades of the Soviet Union.)

In Greenwald’s mind, the ultimate expression of American evil is and always will be neoconservatism. “It’s hard, for instance, to imagine any group that has done more harm, and ushered in more evil, than the Bush-era neocons with whom Democrats are now openly aligning,” he argues.

The neoconservatives have lined up against Trump, and many Democrats agree with them on certain issues. Since the neocons represent maximal evil in the world, any opponent of theirs must be, in Greenwald’s calculus, the lesser evil. His construction that “it’s hard … to imagine” any worse faction than the neocons is especially telling. However dangerous or rancid figures like Steve Bannon or Michael Flynn may be, the possibility that they could match the evil of the neocons is literally beyond the capacity of his brain to imagine.

A second source of Greenwald’s sympathy for the nationalists is their populism. The nationalists style themselves as outsiders beset by powerful, self-interested networks of hidden foes. And while their racism is not his cup of tea, Greenwald shares the same broad view of his enemies.

Trump “advocated a slew of policies that attacked the most sacred prongs of long-standing bipartisan Washington consensus,” argues Greenwald. “As a result, he was (and continues to be) viewed as uniquely repellent by the neoliberal and neoconservative guardians of that consensus, along with their sprawling network of agencies, think tanks, financial policy organs, and media outlets used to implement their agenda (CIA, NSA, the Brookings/AEI think tank axis, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, etc.).”

It is certainly true that all manner of elites disdain Trump. What’s striking is Greenwald’s uncharitable reading of their motives, which closely tracks Trump’s own portrayal of the situation.

Many elites consider Trump too ignorant, lazy, impulsive, and bigoted for the job. Instead Greenwald presents their opposition as reflecting a fear that Trump threatens their wealth and power. (This despite the pro-elite tilt of his tax and regulatory policies — which, in particular, make it astonishing that Greenwald would take at face value Trump’s claim to threaten the interests of “Wall Street” and its “financial policy organs.”)

The opposition to Trump naturally shares a wide array of motives, as would any wide-ranging coalition. Greenwald’s column consistently attributes to those opponents only the most repellant beliefs. He doesn’t even consider the possibility that some people genuinely believe McMaster is a safe, responsible figure who might help dissuade the president from doing something terrible.

Greenwald emphasizes, “Hank Paulson, former Goldman Sachs CEO and George W. Bush’s Treasury Secretary, went to the pages of the Washington Post in mid-2016 to shower Clinton with praise and Trump with unbridled scorn, saying what he hated most about Trump was his refusal to consider cuts in entitlement spending (in contrast, presumably, to the Democrat he was endorsing).” It is true that Trump promised not to cut entitlement spending. Greenwald’s notion that this promise placed him “presumably in contrast” with Hillary Clinton ignores that fact that Clinton also promised to protect these programs.

The passage about entitlements appears deep in Paulson’s op-ed, which Paulson began by lambasting Trump for encouraging “ignorance, prejudice, fear and isolationism,” among other flaws. Greenwald asserts that Paulson identifies Trump’s hostility to cutting entitlements as “what he hated most” about the Republican nominee, but nothing in the op-ed indicates this is what Paulson hated most.

Greenwald just made that part up.

The same concoction of motives is at work in Greenwald’s contempt for McMaster and John Kelly, the new chief of staff. The pair of former generals “have long been hailed by anti-Trump factions as the Serious, Responsible Adults in the Trump administration, primarily because they support militaristic policies — such as the war in Afghanistan and intervention in Syria — that are far more in line with official Washington’s bipartisan posture,” he writes.

Note that “primarily.” Greenwald is arguing that news coverage treating them as competent managers, as opposed to the amateurish nationalists, is propaganda by the elite plumping for greater war in Afghanistan and Syria. He is implying that if Kelly and McMaster took more dovish positions on Afghanistan and Syria, their public image would be altogether different. Greenwald supplies no evidence for this premise. In fact, McMaster’s most acute policy struggle has been his efforts to maintain the Iran nuclear agreement, one which has placed him on the dovish side, against an established neoconservative position. Greenwald does not mention this issue, which fatally undermines his entire analysis.

The final point of overlap between Greenwald and the nationalists is their relatively sympathetic view of Russia. The nationalists admire Putin as a champion of white Christian culture against Islam, a predisposition Greenwald does not share at all. Greenwald has, however, defended Russia’s menacing of its neighbors, and repeatedly questioned its ties to WikiLeaks.

From the outset, he has reflexively discounted evidence of Russian intervention in the election.

“Democrats completely resurrect that Cold War McCarthyite kind of rhetoric not only to accuse Paul Manafort, who does have direct financial ties to certainly the pro — the former pro-Russian leader of the Ukraine,” he asserted last year. (Manafort did have financial ties to that leader, a fact that was obvious at the time and which Manafort no longer denies.) Democratic accusations that Trump had hidden ties with Russia were a “smear tactic,” “unhinged,” “wild, elaborate conspiracy theories,” a “desperate” excuse for their election defeat, and so on.

As evidence of Russian intervention piled up, Greenwald’s line of defense has continued to retreat. When emails revealed a campaign meeting by Russians on the explicit promise of helping Trump’s campaign, Greenwald brushed it off as politics as usual: “I, personally, although it’s dirty, think all of these events are sort of the way politics works. Of course if you’re in an important campaign and someone offers you incriminating information about your opponent, you’re going to want it no matter where it comes from.”

This closely tracks the Trump legal team’s own defense of the Russia scandal, a fact that is probably coincidental. (There are only so many arguments to make.) Greenwald is not a racist, and is the opposite of a nationalist, and yet his worldview has brought him into close alignment with that of the alt-right. A Greenwaldian paranoid would see this quasi-alliance as a conspiracy. The reality of his warped defenses of Trump is merely that of a monomaniac unable to relinquish his obsessions.

Trump Just Helped Prove How Fake His Twitter Following Is

This is what happens when your biggest fans are bots.

Like pretty much everything else about his presidency, Donald Trump’s Twitter following is a lie. His social media fan base is mostly made of fake accounts; his legion of followers overwhelmingly comprised of automated bots.

This weekend, Trump inadvertently reminded us how phony his social media popularity is when he shined a light on what he erroneously believed was an adoring supporter. That Trump booster turned out be a Twitter bot—just one of the millions of fake accounts that exist solely to bolster the popularity of the most unpopular president in American history.

On the heels of the president basically catfishing himself, Twitter has since suspended the fake account and a slew of others just like it.

http://www.alternet.org/media/trump-just-helped-prove-how-fake-his-twitter-following

Airbnb Has Blocked The Accounts Of Attendees Of A Far-Right Rally

By Shannon Ho

Airbnb has deleted accounts and canceled bookings of users who appear to be connected to "Unite the Right," a far-right political rally set for Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Neo-Nazi and white supremacist website The Daily Stormer had organized a series of large rally-weekend gatherings through the home-sharing site, Airbnb told NBC News. Concerned Airbnb users flagged the thread, leading the company to investigate potential violations of its user contract, which calls for unbiased hospitality.

Airbnb said they decided to remove the far-right lodgers because they were "pursuing behavior on the platform that would be antithetical to the Airbnb Community Commitment."

Jason Kessler, organizer of the "Unite the Right" rally and self-described "pro-white" activist, said Airbnb's blocking of certain users is "outrageous and should be grounds for a lawsuit."

Clay Hansen, the executive director of the nonpartisan Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression in Charlottesville, said Airbnb's choice to terminate accounts does not violate the First Amendment.

"I would say that while Airbnb's actions wouldn't necessarily comport with general free speech principles, they are a private company and are entitled to enact and enforce their terms of service as they see fit," Hansen told NBC News.

The rally, scheduled to take place Saturday in Charlottesville, is shaping up to be the "the largest hate-gathering of its kind in decades," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

As of Tuesday, Aug. 8, almost 700 people said they would be attending, and another 1,200 showed interest in the event on its Facebook link. The rally aims to "to affirm the right of Southerners and white people to organize for their interests."

"It's the racial targeting of white people for their ethnic advocacy," Kessler wrote in an email to NBC. "Would Airbnb cancel the service of black nationalists or Black Lives Matter activists for their social media activity? Of course not!"

White supremacists gathered in Charlottesville in May to protest the removal of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's statue. They chanted "All White Lives Matter" while carrying torches. Klu Klux Klan members also protested there in July for the same cause.

The statue has not yet been taken down, but Charlottesville has gained the reputation for hosting white nationalism rallies.

Paypal is canceling white supremacists' accounts and the alt-right is pissed

By wagatwe

Tuesday Aug 08, 2017 · 10:31 PM EST

Thanks to the advancement of white nationalism to the White House, the racist “alt-right” is having quite the heyday. BuzzFeed News reports, however, that many prominent figures from the movement have been getting shut out of numerous platforms for using them to make money off of spreading hate.

Prominent members of the so-called alt-right and other right-wing movements often rely on crowdfunding platforms and online payment processors to fund their causes (and sometimes even their bail), but lately they’ve been having trouble accessing the money donated by their supporters. Over the past five months, PayPal has banned or hobbled the accounts of several prominent people and groups that promote far-right politics. Crowdfunding platforms like GoFundMe, Patreon, and YouCaring have also cut fundraisers for alt-right–associated causes and people.

Considering that the tech world doesn’t exactly have the best track record with diversity and tolerance, this is a pleasant surprise. It may also be a hopeful sign that finally we’re seeing folks recognizing that members of the alt-right support hateful and backward ideologies.
In response to the slow shut-out, Richard Spencer launched a new site where the racists can raise money—all in the name of their twisted concept of “free speech”—in peace.

And a new, invite-only crowdfunding site called "Hatreon" that launched in June has garnered attention from Richard Spencer, the white nationalist credited with coining the term "alt-right." Hatreon told BuzzFeed News that it currently hosts 50 campaigns supported by about 130 donors who send roughly $3,000 per month in total. The company said these numbers represent a soft launch and that its site will be available to the public soon. Cody Wilson, a cofounder, said he and others started the site after Patreon kicked right-wing content creator TV KWA off its platform at the end of May.

Paypal’s crackdown isn't limited to American alt-right “activists.” Accounts for a French anti-immigrant group called Generation Identity and the violent anti-Muslim site Bare Naked Islam have been blocked and/or limited, too.

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

This Is What You Voted For

Reflections on Trump's latest comments about North Korea.

How Racist Can The White House Get? (Answer: Very)

Posted by Rude One

The last couple of days have been banner ones for racists of just about every stripe, from backwoods yahoo country fucks to ostensibly educated white nationalist shit crumbs, from pandering politicians to true believers. Let's just run it down:

1. The Department of Justice is exploring whether the federal government should be "suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants." It's as if they believe that diversity on college campuses is a bad thing, probably because it makes people more sympathetic to people of other races. And how can you have a race war if that happens?

2. President Donald Trump announced his support for the RAISE Act, which is an anodyne acronym masking a shitty policy. It looks to cut in half the number of legal immigrants coming into the country, and it emphasizes skilled workers who can speak English. Oh, and only spouses and children can come over with immigrants.

When nutzoid hate-filled jizz goblin Stephen Miller, a senior policy advisor and winner of "Man Who Most Looks Like a Star Trek Alien" was asked about the racist implications of the proposal, he went into an outrage froth that coated the gathered reporters in a glistening film of saliva. It reached a spittle-flecked climax when Miller attacked CNN's Jim Acosta for daring to suggest that one purpose of the bill might be to bring in more white people, saying that "it reveals your cosmopolitan bias to a shocking degree." Fuck's sake, "cosmopolitan" means you give a shit about the world. The opposite of "cosmopolitan" is, more or less, "xenophobic." Or it's just an anti-Semitic dog whistle (which is extra weird since Miller is Jewish). Either way, between that and a bizarro attack on the meaning of the Statue of Liberty, it was a fucking train wreck of an appearance.

3. The Washington Post printed transcripts of Trump's late January phone calls with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. While they are masterpieces of fuckery, dickishness, and doltishness, it's also worth pointing out how fucking openly racist Trump is willing to go when talking about refugees.

When Turnbull presses Trump on honoring a deal on at least vetting refugees to possibly take them into the United States, Trump goes twitchy with paranoia. He knocks Cubans: "You remember the Mariel boat lift, where Castro let everyone out of prison and Jimmy Carter accepted them with open arms. These were brutal people." Yeah, see only 2% of the 125,000 Cubans who came here in 1980 were deemed criminals who needed to be deported. The rest fucking made Miami what it is today. (Oddly, Miller brought up the Mariel boat lift in his remarks yesterday. These Trumpers are consistent in their assholery.)

Then, after Turnbull insists that the U.S. live up to its obligations, something Trump is well-known not to give a flying rat fuck about, the president says of the refugees who have been living in horrific conditions on islands off Australia, "I hate taking these people. I guarantee you they are bad. That is why they are in prison right now. They are not going to be wonderful people who go on to work for the local milk people...maybe you should let them out of prison." Who knows where all these milk jobs are, but Trump equates "refugee camp" with "prison," which would probably shock a lot of the little children who are there.

This shit is so blatant it'd make a robed KKK member say, "Whoa, a little obvious there, fella."

Look, we know Trump is racist. We knew it for years, from the Central Park Five to birtherism to the Muslim travel ban. It has been one of his most consistent traits. And we know that Trump has surrounded himself with racists, with people who are directly connected to white nationalist groups. And we know that Trump's supporters are racist (yeah, you are, fuck off).

And now we're seeing the policy implications of that. Trump used to ask various non-white groups, "What the hell do you have to lose?" in electing him.

It's pretty clear that the answer is "a future."

Monday, August 7, 2017

Fake Calls

Saturday, August 5, 2017

The Making Of Donald Trump - Interview With David Cay Johnston

Randi Rhodes interviews David Cay Johnston, investigative journalist and author, a specialist in economics and tax issues, and winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting about his book - The Making of Donald Trump - Get the book here - every purchase supports the show: http://amzn.to/2cnN0z9

For the full show, get a commercial-free audio podcast at RandiRhodes.com and please subscribe to Randi's YouTube channel!

Randi Rhodes Number-one ranked progressive radio talk show host, political commentator, entertainer and writer. The Randi Rhodes Show, was broadcast nationally on Air America Radio, and Premiere Radio Networks from 2004–2014. Rhodes, represents aggressively independent media.

The Miami Herald described her as "a chain-smoking bottle blonde, part Joan Rivers, part shock jock Howard Stern, and part Saturday Night Live’s ‘Coffee Talk’ Lady. But mostly, she's her rude, crude, loud, brazen, gleeful self."

Rhodes and her show won numerous awards for journalism and broadcasting, including Radio Ink’s Most Influential Woman, Radio Ink’s Most Influential Women’s list (multiple years), TALKERS magazine’s Woman of the Year, and the Judy Jarvis Memorial Award for Contributions to the Talk Industry by a Woman.

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