Thursday, August 27, 2020

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Multiple protesters shot in Kenosha, WI during third night of unrest over Jacob Blake's shooting

KENOSHA, Wis. — Gunfire rang out from a crowd of protesters early Wednesday morning in Kenosha, Wis., on the third night of unrest over the police shooting of Jacob Blake Jr. At least three people were injured. It is unclear who fired the shots, and police and hospital officials have not yet confirmed the severity of the injuries.

Shots were first fired after midnight, as a group of protesters on Sheridan Road faced off with police in armored trucks. A young White man carrying an AR-15-style rifle began running north on Sheridan, away from the group. As people chased after the man, another round of rapid-fire shots rang out, and two more people fell to the ground with wounds. Bystanders dragged both the people who had been hit to separate sides of the road.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142569369

Thursday, August 20, 2020

Steve Bannon was arrested on a boat, and the U.S. Postal Service was involved

Donald Trump's former advisor Stephen Bannon was today charged with fraud and other crimes.
Bannon was arrested. On a boat. The USPS was involved.
From NBC New York:
A law enforcement source tells NBC New York that Bannon was arrested this morning without incident while aboard a boat off the coast of Westbrook, Connecticut. Bannon is not the owner of the boat.
NBC News and CBS News have both confirmed that Steve Bannon was arrested by agents of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, which is the criminal investigating arm of the Postal Service.
Yep. Agents of the USPS arrested Bannon.
Bannon is expected to be arraigned today before a US magistrate.
More on the charges against Bannon in our previous post.

Steve Bannon charged with fraud by NY prosecutor

Saturday, August 15, 2020

Kamala Harris Will Hurt Trump And Pence And That's What We Need

Posted by Rude One

Last week, I said on Twitter that I wanted Sen. Kamala Harris to be Joe Biden's pick for a running mate because I wanted her out there for the next couple of months prosecuting Donald Trump's administration in the public space. Several responses were along the lines of "No, fuck you, she should be attorney general, dick, so that my favorite Democrat can be VP!"

There are a few reasons I thought Harris-as-AG was a dumb idea. First, no Attorney General has ever gone on to become president. (Robert Kennedy may have, but, well, we'll never know.) And Harris obviously is eyeing the presidency down the road. More importantly, though, is that, as Biden's vice presidential nominee, she will have an incredibly high profile, and in a media environment that too often ignores Democrats and especially Democratic women, she can go out every day and make Donald Trump and Mike Pence cry and it will have to be covered. That will shake some shit up.

I hear every complaint about Harris, and, in another time, it might be enough for me to get upset about it and question Biden's judgment or get angry at the marginalization of the true left of the Democratic Party or whatever, but, sorry, no, fuck that.

"Kamala is a cop," you say? Well, she's not and never has been, and I've got a stack of bodies that'll be topping 200,000 that makes me just not give a shit about the questionable aspects of Harris's record as Attorney General of California.

Did she ignore a pandemic and cause the economy to crash and refuse to do anything to help while people died, starved, and lost their homes? No? Then who the fuck cares. (And she's been very strong on the environment, violence against women, financial exploitation of the poor, and more, along with being anti-death penalty, so let's just say there's more than enough to mitigate other shit. She's way more progressive than the more-liberal-than-thou gatekeepers say.)

Besides, there are a shit-ton of truly liberal Democratic candidates running at all levels, from school board on up to U.S. Senate. Get behind them and get them elected. That's what will move the whole party to the left. Look at someone like Cameron Webb, running for Congress in Virginia, and who has a chance to pick up a GOP seat. You can use that amazing lefty energy to have a long-term effect on the Democratic Party.

In her speech today at the event where Biden introduced her as his running mate, Harris went right at Trump, laying the failure of this nation to combat the coronavirus right at his wobbly feet. "The case against Mike Pence and Donald Trump is open and shut," she offered before listing the utter failures of this failed group of failures failing us every day, finally coming back to the response to COVID-19. "When other countries are following the science, Trump pushed miracle cures he saw on Fox News." What was doubly awesome about that remark is that the speech was being broadcast on Fox "news," who finally got a small taste of what it's like when Trump screeches, "Fake news!" at CNN.

In perhaps the most cutting moment, Harris said that Trump "inherited the longest economic expansion in history from Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and then, like everything else he inherited, he ran it straight into the ground." That is some hardcore, go-for-the-jugular shit right there. It attacks the entire mythos of Donald Trump as a Successful Businessman when he is a rank loser who couldn't have done a goddamn thing without his daddy's money and still fucked it all up. And she did it with a calm, rational voice, not like the ranting hysterics of the man she's slicing and dicing.

You can tell that Trump is shitting himself over Harris because she is everything that he has feared his entire life: a strong Black woman straight from Central Casting who won't take shit and who will get high ratings every time she kicks him in his voluminous ass.

He's gotta desperately play all the tropes, from the racist "angry" Black person to the woman who is "nasty" and "mean," which means not subservient to men like Trump. Shit, they're even rebooting the Willie Horton ads from 1988. What the hell else is he gonna do but break out the hits like this is still the 1980's and the suburbs are still a generic white paradise and aren't filled with middle-class people of all races who support things like Black Lives Matter and think Trump is an obscenity?

The Trump campaign is caught on Harris between trying to rile up the left with the aforementioned issues and calling her a "radical" who "has abandoned her own morals in an attempt to appease the socialist mob seeking to destroy America. Biden and Harris' disastrous proposals of de-funding the police, increased taxes, job-killing policies, and opening our borders are just a few of the many ways they would destroy America." All you can say to Trump is "Motherfucker, you already destroyed America. You burned this shit down. Why would we re-elect you so you can piss on the ashes?"

Today, Biden and Harris offered more sympathy for families and loved ones of the Americans who have died of coronavirus than Trump has offered since the pandemic hit this country. They offered more hope in the form of realistically looking at the crises that Trump has created than in all the bullshit, pointless, delusional happy talk from the resident and his administration. And Harris and Biden and their staffs look more like America than the KKK meeting that shows up at every Trump event.

Harris can prosecute the case against Trump and Pence starting now, and that's perfect. She can hurt them over and over.  She can do it with confidence and charisma and cold, hard facts. We need that.

We need them wounded again and again. We need Americans to feel ashamed to vote for these GOP dick-scabs. That's why we need Harris now, not later as attorney general. When she's elected, Harris can lead a commission that exposes all their crimes. In fact, having her as vice president would help assure that Biden doesn't let it all slide just to move forward, as he and Obama did with the Bush administration's crimes. Harris the prosecutor knows that you can't let that shit go unpunished.

Yeah, the choice of Harris was entirely expected and not remotely surprising, and, goddamn, it felt good to have something go the way it's supposed to go. That can be really fucking energizing and get you ready for what's next. It makes you feel like "Yeah, maybe we can do this."

Friday, August 14, 2020

Trump Accuses Biden Of Playing Politics On Coronavirus

As coronavirus cases continue surging across the country, the U.S. is cutting back on testing for the virus. Also, Joe Biden is calling for a mandate that all Americans wear masks. The Morning Joe panel discusses. Aired on 08/14/2020.

Trump Speechless After Reporter Asks If He Regrets Lying To Americans

Donald Trump was stunned when a reporter asked him if he regrets the thousands of lies he has told the American people since taking office.



Thursday, August 13, 2020

Speaker Nancy Pelosi +174 House Democrats tell Trump's Postmaster General to reverse changes that threaten mail-in voting


House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and 174 other House Democrats are demanding that Donald Trump's new Postmaster General reverse all of the operational changes they say could harm mail-in voting for the November election.

Read the entire document here.

Wednesday, August 5, 2020

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.

Tuesday, August 4, 2020

The Self-Destruction Of Donald J. Trump

Thousands of Americans are dying because Trump can’t even help himself.

Ways To Reassure Americans


Saturday, July 25, 2020

AOC Fucks The Patriarchy's Shit Up

Posted by Rude One

The line from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's calm evisceration of Rep. Ted Yoho yesterday on the floor of the House of Representatives that will likely be the one that is remembered is something that shouldn't need to be said: "Having a daughter does not make a man decent. Having a wife does not make a decent man. Treating people with dignity and respect makes a decent man." Too many terrible men have tried to use the fact that they're related to women as a defense for their shit behavior.

Ocasio-Cortez was done with that, as we all should be. Ted Bundy had a mom. Bill Cosby has a wife and daughters. Donald Trump has had three wives and two daughters. Their proximity to women did nothing to ameliorate their hideous acts towards women.

Ocasio-Cortez said that she wasn't speaking so much because Yoho had called her a "fucking bitch" on the steps of the Capitol but because, the day before, Yoho had offered the fake apology of a fucking bitch. Yoho has long been a fucking bitch. He rode into DC on one of the racist Tea Party waves in 2012, representing a district in Florida that's 75% white. He's been a loyal gobbler of Koch money, the kind of piece of shit Republican who votes to defund Planned Parenthood, won't say if the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is constitutional, and refuses to vote for a federal anti-lynching bill because that would be "overreach." What had so upset Yoho that he felt he had to confront Ocasio-Cortez? The Democrat from NYC had said a month ago that poverty leads to crime, something that we've fucking known since at least Les Miserables. But that set off Yoho because if there's one thing a Republican doesn't want to hear, it's that you might need to actually help people.

Then, proving that he's one of the littlest fucking bitches in the bitch-filled GOP caucus, Yoho went to the mic in the House on Wednesday to say, in essence, "Sorry if what I said upset you. Oh, and I didn't say it. Oh, and I might have said it but I didn't intend for her to hear it. Oh, and I only said the thing I didn't say because I love my country and God and my wife and daughters and I'm gonna hide behind all that because I'm a fucking bitch." More or less, that was it. 

Sure, one way to read and watch Ocasio-Cortez's response is that she ripped off Yoho's little nutsack and showed it to him, laughing as he looked at his torn scrotum in her clutched hand while he bled to death. It is more than gratifying to see it that way. "I want to be clear that Representative Yoho’s comments were not deeply hurtful or piercing to me, because I have worked a working class job," she said, adding, "I have tossed men out of bars that have used language like Mr. Yoho’s." And you totally know she could. It was cathartic, but it was so much more.

More importantly and more incisively on her part, Ocasio-Cortez universalized the insult to show how it's simply part and parcel of the patriarchal world that women have been forced to negotiate and, really, fuck that shit. Fuck this male-dominated institution and fuck all the men who fuck up women's lives and fuck them that they do it without consequences. Or, in her words, "I want to thank him for showing the world that you can be a powerful man and accost women. You can have daughters and accost women without remorse. You can be married and accost women. You can take photos and project an image to the world of being a family man and accost women without remorse and with a sense of impunity. It happens every day in this country. It happened here on the steps of our nation’s Capitol. It happens when individuals who hold the highest office in this land admit, admit to hurting women and using this language against all of us."

Yoho's pathetic little slap at Ocasio-Cortez is just another of the last gasps of a white patriarchy that has been on oxygen for at least a decade, kept alive by unholy medical procedures and the force of pure racist and sexist fear, like Sheldon Adelson or the thankfully dead Strom Thurmond, that their day may finally, at long last, after so much delay, be over. And it's going to be women like Ocasio-Cortez and the dozen-plus women in Congress who stood with her, as well as the daughters and granddaughters of soon-to-be extinct creatures like Yoho. 

Goddamn, it can't come soon enough. Please take the keys away from men, whether in Congress or in other positions of power and hopefully the presidency one day soon. God knows people like Ted Yoho have fucked this nation he supposedly loves for everyone, including wives and daughters. No, the people who really love the United States know it must change or it will die. Ocasio-Cortez and Pramila Jayapal and Ayanna Pressley and Mikie Sherrill and Rashida Tlaib and so many more will keep giving the patriarchy a beat down in the Congress and elsewhere until it's finally yielded to the hope of progress.

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

Joey, a 30 year Navy vet, comes to grips with his 2016 Trump vote and gets emotional talking about his fellow vets being assaulted in the streets. "We gotta help him pack up."

"Do not let all those who have gone and died on battlefields for our democracy go in vain."

Are you a Republican, ex-Republican, or Trump-voter who won’t support the resident this November?

Share your story here: https://rvat.org/tell-your-story