Monday, August 21, 2017

All Out of Love

Believing for so long..... what are you without me.... too late to say that you were so wrong.... 

After posting yesterday I happened to go over the unread parts of the paper and found more offenses, none more so than the Globe editorial now calling the Confederates treasonous. Talk about incitement and complete hypocrisy! Here it is 2017 and the Globe editorial staff is refighting the Civil War. Hey, Globe, you Yankees won, 'kay?

Then I turned towards history and how Lincoln was prepared to restore the Union and heal the nation. I'm told it was a policy "With Malice Toward None!" 

Was Lincoln a Confederate sympathizer!? If so, his likeness must come off the $5 dollar bill and his monument destroyed, right? Politicians will have to stop citing him in speeches, and the Repuglicans are now discredited as a party. 

As for the Democrats:

"Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia and wrote the Declaration of Independence. Neither of which prevented the Democratic Party from throwing him overboard when leaders in several states decided to re-name their historic Jefferson-Jackson dinners, traditional fund-raising events on the presidential campaign calendar. Like other states and counties, Louisiana just last month renamed the “J-J Dinner” the “True Blue Gala,” a move made “to reflect the progress of the party and the changing times,” according to state party leader Karen Peterson. In New Hampshire, it is now the “JFK-Clinton” dinner; in Missouri, the “Truman Dinner,” and so on. The legacy of George Washington, who also owned slaves, rests on somewhat firmer ground, for now. Still, last year, the head of San Francisco’s school board proposed rechristening George Washington High School as Maya Angelou High School, explaining that “Maya Angelou is a legendary San Franciscan, poet, and author, and her name would replace that of a slaveowner whose name is ubiquitous on schools, streets and buildings.”

As for the dinners, Truman was a notorious racist who used n-word regularly. He was virulently anti-Japanese, even anti-Semitic, too. He gets a pass because he signed on to the creation of Israel, showing you even then who are the ultimate controllers of western governments.

As for the JFK-Clinton dinner up north, how nice for women (who were left out of the Constitution) that a couple of womanizers are being celebrated. I love JFK because he gave his life for peace (why do the waterworks always start when I think about it?), but I'm not blind to those other personal idio-syncrasies and behaviors. Critics have a point there, and the those were different times excuse no longer holds water, right?

"Richmond’s mayor, Levar Stoney, said on the same program that he had changed his mind about the presence of Civil War monuments to Confederate leaders. As mayor of the city that served as the Confederate capital, Stoney, who is black, said that he once thought the monuments could be ‘‘tools to teach and enlighten’’ people but that now he also sees them as ‘‘rallying points.’’ Former representative J.C. Watts, Republican of Oklahoma, urged congressional leaders to speak out against Trump’s comments if they disagreed with them. ‘‘This is not a time for us to suppress our convictions,’’ Watts said on NBC’s ‘‘Meet the Press.’’

No, the escalation in Afghanistan is when you sit down and shut up, and as for the support rising to remove the monuments, they must not have seen the recent poll (unless they only mean elite support). I guess there is no more  “valor or bravery” to serving in war, whatever side you fight on. It's all to serve a slim minority of power-mad psychopaths with empty souls.

Meet my Pre$$:

"EDITORIAL A peaceful rally, but a few disquieting questions linger August 21, 2017

Peaceful? 

They must not read their own reporting.

The tens of thousands of counterprotesters were able to voice their emphatic disapproval. Waving signs, marching, and screaming at the far-right activists, they vastly outnumbered the tiny group at the bandstand. With the nation’s attention focused on Boston, the counterprotesters upheld the city’s reputation and provided living proof of the old adage that the best response to offensive speech is more speech.

No, it was essentially a mass demonstration by a mob of thousands of people protesting against freedom of speech

Most importantly, there was no violence, apart from a few minor scuffles.

Look at them minimize the leftist thuggery.

Saturday put the lie to a common whine of the so-called alt right — the loose movement of anti-Semites, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and freelance bigots emboldened by President Trump’s election — that they are somehow deprived of their free speech rights. Nonsense. If being mocked, booed, and heckled is the alt-right’s idea of censorship, it may be time to rethink who gets labeled a “snowflake” in today’s political environment. 

Well, the Globe and other propaganda pre$$ they pick up like WaPo and the NYT have been whining since he won.

The fears of “antifa” violence directed at conservatives also turned out to be overblown. A few counterprotesters in black outfits showed up, made some noise, and then went home. Sorry, but left-wing cosplay isn’t a security threat comparable to neo-Nazi violence. 

(Blog editor just shakes head at them excusing the "left-wing" blackshirts, their mindset, and their actions)

Still, while Saturday was mostly a success, it left a few disquieting questions.

Oh, yeah, like what?

Why was media restricted from the bandstand? It may be the case, as First Amendment specialists say, that the right to free speech doesn’t create a right to be heard, but it still would have been better had the public known exactly what the rallygoers were doing and saying. And had the event actually become violent, a media presence would have helped ensure a complete accounting. 

OMG! What a bunch of hypocritical, self-serving scum! Worried about their own First Amendment rights and complaining about security -- as if they cared what the deplorables had to say -- while now claiming there was no violence! Talk about rewriting the past!

Beyond that, they JUST ADMITTED YOU CAN NOT BELIEVE the REPORTS from the PREVIOUS DAY! They had NO PRESENCE! It was all literally a NARRATIVE!

And, what happens next? The far-right rally’s attendance may have been small, but if the election and the ensuing tumult have showed anything, it’s that the radicalized racist fringe is getting bigger and bolder. Screaming matches at rallies probably won’t change the minds of extremists; there needs to be a genuine effort to turn angry white people away from radicalism.

Oh, now you are TERRORISTS like ISIS and Al-CIA-Duh, fellow citizen

That's the way the Globe sees you, anyway! 

Related: 

"Documents purporting to be made by Antifa explaining their plan for the United States have been leaked to a Facebook post. If these are real plans, we need to be very, very scared. If they turn out to be fake, it is cause for concern that people so insane are working with the Antifa movement. The horror of these words and the lunacy behind them is unfortunately not as rare as we might hope. These people want straight white males DEAD! Nothing else will do for their evil agenda. Antifa members are to use name-calling as a means to create a culture of tolerance. “When all else fails, compare someone to Hitler.” Next, they discuss how to use one’s minority status, and to remember that you are “Black first” and “American second.” or “Gay/Lesbian first” and “American third” and so on. It’s important to gain control of the media through any means necessary. Some major media conglomerates are swinging to our side, but they have not gone far enough. If you are seeking positions of power in the media, be sure to obfuscate and hide your true intentions on the various social media platforms. Use social media as a baton to slap down anyone who hold fascist viewpoints. Call them racist, homophobic, misogynistic. Create an echo chamber around you. The next step is to threaten the livelihood of anyone who dares speak out against our agenda....."

And the Globe is fawning all over them!

The huge response to Saturday’s rally should be seen as an important statement of public disgust toward vile groups and the hateful beliefs they espouse. But unpoisoning a poisonous movement will take longer than an afternoon, and more than just the city’s scorn.

I've been here ten years and the Globe has only gotten worse.

--more--"

Police and protesters are being lauded by the pre$$ and I really don't know what to say. Should have been more concerned with the North End, but.... maybe you could get a different interpreter for this stuff.

I'm surprised DJ didn't have something to say (he didn't fan the flames, good for him), and the other guy is playing to John Henry.

Meanwhile, on the front page, the Globe sent Annie Linskey down to the car races in Tennessee:

(Interesting tell on that front page, too, if you look at the lower-right hand corner. The death of the white comedian gets front page treatment while the death of the black comedian is to be found on page B7. 

A subtle and unconscious racial bias over at the Globe?)

"Among NASCAR fans, there’s a divide over Trump" by Annie Linskey | Photos by Jessica Rinaldi, Globe Staff August 20, 2017

BRISTOL, Tenn. — Walk around the sprawling campsites at the Bristol Motor Speedway here in the green hills of Tennessee, and you know you’re deep in Trump country. 

Reminds me of how much I miss him. His would have been a most perceptive and welcome voice these days.

Cars buzz around this half-mile track, practicing for the night NASCAR races here. National Rifle Association signs are omnipresent, as the track hosts the only race in NASCAR’s top circuit with NRA branding. A pop-up city of RVs sprawls outside the speedway, with many displaying spreads of barbecue and booze. And Confederate flags flap in the wind from the encampments.

 This year there’s finally a president who intuitively understands this NASCAR culture, even if the New York billionaire is hardly of it. So for the most part, if you mention Trump, faces light up with some mixture of joy and aggrievement.

I'm still waiting for all the global-warmers to hit the racetracks in protests, as well as the Globe to call for the dissolution of auto-racing on a climate-change basis.

Oh, right, it is a $port backed by big bu$ine$$.

“Trump is the only one standing up and saying what we think, and it’s getting him in trouble,” said Jerry McVay, 59, after examining a display of gold-plated firearms for sale bearing Trump’s motto: Make America Great Again. “The ones that didn’t vote for him are acting like little brats.”

They are behaving much, much worse.

Donald Trump’s seven months in Washington have netted little in the way of meaningful legislative accomplishments or even enforceable executive edicts. Yet many in this crowd said they feel more permission to be outspoken on issues once viewed as sensitive, like race. And in interviews with more than 50 fans here, nearly all have seen divisions in their lives growing wider, with sharper lines between those who support Trump and those who don’t.

The president’s unapologetic style most recently caused controversy after he insisted that there was blame on both sides for the violence at a rally of white supremacist groups in Charlottesville, Va. A peaceful protester was killed there when a car plowed into a crowd, and a man who had earlier been photographed at the white supremacist protest has been charged with second-degree murder. It’s become the darkest chapter of Trump’s short presidency.

OMG!

In Boston during the weekend, tens of thousands of people marched against bigotry and hate, a counterprotest that completely eclipsed the roughly 50 who heeded the call of the Boston Free Speech Coalition, an organization that civil rights activists claim is linked to hate groups, but here at the speedway, demonstrations like the one in Boston were viewed as anti-Trump statements from a part of the country that doesn’t support the president. This is the deep well of strength Trump has tapped: people who don’t consider themselves extremists but find fault with what they see as liberals who won’t embrace the president.

The notion of the “politically correct” was mocked by many in the crowd. Some took turns riding a blow-up bull at one campsite that race-goers named “Jenner” after Caitlyn Jenner, the most prominent transgender woman in the country. One man explained that he doesn’t talk politics with his wife because she’s “uninformed.”

Breaking apart families, huh? That's what the string-pullers and the media mouthpieces want to destroy right there: the most basic human connection. Then they want to replace it with the state. That's why the ma$$ media programming is so damn perverse.

“The white people are starting to stand up,” said Miller “Bud” Fulton, 56, who sat out near his camper sipping beer one evening last week with his son. “You’ve got a movement going on.”

50 guys showing up on a common, most of them paid provocateurs?

Fulton, who drove to the racetrack from Ohio, wanted to be clear about one thing: “I’m not a Klan member. I’m not a racist.”

When someone says it isn't about the money..... sigh.

He was already looking to the 2018 midterm elections, in which he believed voters would elect candidates to Congress who would be more supportive of Trump’s agenda. He predicted more demonstrations like the ones in Charlottesville.

I think the machines have been rigged the opposite way for several reasons. One is to sell another "change" election, another is a Democratic House will draw up articles of impeachment. That assumes Trump makes it that far. I think he will be gone before Christmas (unless he's surrendered and sold out after all this. Cutting Bannon loose was the tell).

To underline his point, Fulton gestured to the campground dotted with Confederate banners and said: “Look at all the flags flying.”

I had intended to stop reading there; however, I decided to post the whole damn thing so you can judge for yourself.

ONE CAMPER FLYING A Confederate flag was owned by Paul and Cathy Peary, a couple from Addison, Pa., who drove out for the races and met up with a boisterous group of friends.

The flag is brand new. Paul Peary, 52, bought it after the Charlottesville demonstrations to support keeping Confederate monuments in place.

“With what’s going on with the statues, that is a part of American history that is being snuffed out,” said Paul Peary, echoing an argument made by Trump.

Though NASCAR tried to discourage flying the Confederate flag in 2015, fans rebelled, and this week T-shirts with the flag were for sale along with the banner on the racetrack grounds.

The Pearys also flew a flag with Trump’s name on it — a display that hardly stood out on the campgrounds. They said nobody asked them about it, but in the world beyond Bristol’s NASCAR gathering, the Pearys’ display had caused outcry — and opened one more microdivision in a country where social groups are increasingly splitting along political lines.

Cathy Peary, 55, posted a photo of the flags on a Facebook group called “RV Pajama Party” — it’s mostly filled with recreational vehicle enthusiasts posting funny photos of themselves.

The picture drew immediate ire from the group, as more than 200 comments poured in, many of them negative. The group’s organizer asked Cathy Peary to delete the picture.

Antifa at work!

“It’s called freedom of speech. If these people don’t want to support our president of the United States, forget it,” she added. “It’s just amazing. It’s just totally amazing.” 

I agree, it is mind-boggling unless you recognize the tyrannical intent underneath it.

She decided then and there to withdraw from the group of more than 10,000 members, even though she was one of the earliest members.

THE DIVISIONS AREN’T JUST among those who like Trump and those who don’t. Or those who see the Confederate flag as a symbol of heritage and those who see it as a symbol of hate. Even those who agree that Trump was the right choice for America have spent the past seven months disagreeing about him.

Angie Powell, 53, said she’s largely glad that the “P.C. culture” is being chipped away and that people are more willing to speak their minds without fear of offending various groups. But she’s noticed a downside.

“It feels like once the politically incorrect thing started dropping, the crazies were off their leash,” Powell added. “They just felt like they can do anything.”

One example is gay rights: She said she liked seeing progress made in that area. “They were making such headway,” she said. “I feel like they are getting pushed back a little bit, and that bothers me.”

She voted for Trump, but the world hasn’t quite changed the way she expected. For one thing, her husband promised he’d stop yelling at the television after the campaign ended. Instead, it’s gotten worse, and she’s floored by it.

“I thought the anger would end,” she said.

Not until Trump is gone.

She turned to her husband, Roger Powell, 56, who was standing with her.

“Do you not feel like conversations now are so much more divided?” she asked him. “We even have trouble talking sometimes on issues.”

Roger acknowledged the tension and his tendency to get hyped up watching Fox News or listening to talk radio.

“She just tells me . . .” he said, trailing off. “She just walks away.”

The most recent flashpoint came last week.

“I freaked out about the stuff that went on in Charlottesville,” Roger Powell said. “I’m not against the people that have problems with the Confederacy. That’s fine. But tearing down these statues . . .”

THERE WAS UNIVERSAL condemnation among those interviewed by the Globe for the white supremacists and neo-Nazis marching at Charlottesville, even as Trump supporters were willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt for appearing to draw a moral equivalency between hate groups and peaceful protesters.

There they go again, excusing leftist violence and twisting the president's words.

“It’s sad and frustrating to see what happened, and you feel sort of somewhat responsible to speak on it,” said Dale Earnhardt Jr., the NASCAR legend, during a news conference in Bristol last week. The driver has denounced the Confederate flag in the past, writing in his book that “the rebel flag represents closed-minded, racist views that have no place in today’s society.”

But asked about Charlottesville, Earnhardt avoided specifically criticizing anyone. “It’s really frustrating because we ought to be better than that,” he said. “We ought to be smarter than that, than to be trying to tear each other apart.”

No offense, but one of the first things I was told in writing class was never begin a sentence with BUT, and yet the Globe reporters do it all the time. 

I guess that is what happens when some well-connected relative gets you a job you for which you are not qualified.

During the 2016 campaign, NASCAR CEO Brian France cemented a tie between the sport and Trump, the then-controversial Republican front-runner. France appeared at a Trump rally in February 2016, held in Valdosta, Ga., just before Super Tuesday, when 11 states voted in the Republican primaries and caucuses.

“He wins with his family,” France said, according to media accounts. “Any of his children, you’d be proud to have them as part of your family. That’s how I judge a winner, how somebody manages their family and raises their family.”

France declined to comment for this story. But NASCAR officialdom has offered generalized remarks about Charlottesville, appearing to conflate the violence there with the terror attack in Barcelona on Thursday that killed 14 and injured 80 people. “We are saddened by recent tragic events around the world and feel strongly there is no place for bigotry, racism, hatred, or violence in our society,” said Brent Dewar, the president of NASCAR, in a statement to the Globe. 

So did Wolf Blitzer and I saw no criticism of him? 

Related:

Finland honors stabbing victims; wounded suspect questioned 

Investigators are exploring possible links to last week’s extremist attacks in Spain.

As Spain mourns, hunt intensifies for van driver in Barcelona attack

NYT skite not worth the time! 

You up to speed now?

IT WAS RARE to find a Democrat in this crowd, so Mike and LaDonna Frecker were among the minority. The couple sat out by a camper and talked about how Trump’s rise has affected them, too.

“More hate,” said LaDonna Frecker. “We have some friends that used to be friends, but because of all this we aren’t.”

Looks like your fault to me.

One friendship ripped apart in November 2015, when then-candidate Trump mocked a disabled reporter at a rally. A story about it was posted on Facebook, triggering a fight between Mike Frecker and his wife’s cousin, named Jimmy, who supported Trump and has a disabled daughter.

“I said, ‘Of all people it should bother you,’ ” Frecker said.

He recalled the online conversation, noting that he’d said: “You of all people. What if somebody made a comment about your daughter?”

The cousin “got real belligerent,” Frecker recalled.

Then, as he was thinking about the frayed relationship, Frecker paused. He closed his eyes. He punched the air a few times. He wiped his eye.

The poor deers, huh?

He’s seen cousin Jimmy a few times in the past two years. Sometimes they say “hey.” But they don’t hang out with him at the baseball games Jimmy coaches any more. Or at birthday parties.

That’s it. They don’t talk any more.

I'm reaching that point regarding a certain newspaper I no longer want to listen to.

--more--"

Meanwhile, next door in Kentucky (ooh, icky place full of cigarette-smoking Confederates. Going to have to move that horse race and rename Rupp Arena!)..... it's going to be an Eclipsemageddon

I won't be watching,  and isn't that sort of a reverse discrimination when it comes to the moon?

Makes you want to have a drink, and I gue$$ Walsh has lost some of his sobriety (former alcoholic, you know). Better read the fine print, though.

"Four people were hurt, two critically, in two incidents early Sunday in the center of Boston, according to Boston EMS. Around 2 a.m., emergency crews responded to reports of a stabbing at Causeway and Canal streets, across from the TD Garden, according to EMS Lieutenant William Clapp said. Two people were taken to area hospitals with stab wounds. At 2:19 a.m., emergency crews responded to reports of a shooting at 274 Tremont St., Clapp said. Two victims with gunshot wounds were in critical condition when they left the scene, he said. They were transported to area hospitals. The Tremont Street shooting is close to the site of a September 2016 incident where seven people were stabbed. Like Sunday’s incident, it happened shortly after area bars closed."

Expect more of that with the increased liquor licenses. 

Maybe booze should be banned because it increases violence.

Here is another defender of Trump:

"Steven Mnuchin defends Trump’s reaction to Charlottesville violence" by Maggie Haberman New York Times   August 20, 2017 

In bed with the Washington Post?

NEW YORK — Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, under fire from Yale classmates and Jewish critics of President Trump, has defended the president’s equivocating response to the racially charged violence in Charlottesville, Va.

The Skull-and-Bones crowd, huh?

“I strongly condemn the actions of those filled with hate and with the intent to harm others,” Mnuchin said.  “I find it hard to believe I should have to defend myself on this,” Mnuchin said in a statement issued Saturday.

We all do, Steve.

His words marked perhaps the most vociferous defense of the president from anyone in the administration.

Mnuchin, one of the most prominent Jews in the administration, issued the statement on Twitter in response to a letter signed by more than 300 of his 1985 classmates from Yale, urging him to step down immediately.

“Rarely, if ever, have any of us made such a request of a classmate, whatever our differences in political opinion have been,” the group wrote in the letter.

“We do so today because President Trump has declared himself a sympathizer with groups whose values are antithetical to those values we consider fundamental to our sacred honor as Americans, as men and women of Yale, and as decent human beings,” it said.

The moral voice of CEOs and mass-murdering war criminals like the Bushes!

Mnuchin stood uncomfortably next to Trump in the lobby of Trump Tower last week as the president said there were “very fine people on both sides” of the Charlottesville protests. The marchers in the initial rally on Friday night carried tiki torches and chanted, “Jews will not replace us.”

Related:

“You hope that people are rational enough not to blame the innocent with the association that others are taking for it,” said Andrew D. Gilman, who has consulted with companies like Johnson & Johnson and Pepsi during crises. “But you cannot sit back passively and let this happen.” This is not the first time white nationalists and other members of the so-called alt-right have chosen particular products to co-opt or endorse. For years, the British clothing line Fred Perry has been dogged by its affiliation with skinheads, for example. When an advertising campaign by the skin care brand Nivea used the tagline “White is purity” to promote streak-proof deodorants, it became widely circulated on social media accounts for white supremacists. The company pulled the ad. Tiki torches were probably just a matter of convenience, said Joan Donovan, a researcher at the Data & Society institute who studies hate groups and white supremacists. Torches have long been associated with the Ku Klux Klan, but those used in the past were far more likely to be homemade. In many cases, though, extremists will latch onto brands that are already stirring controversy as a way to ride the wave of publicity....."  

Pot, kettle, black, and we have really moved from the inane to the absurd. 

Ban all Tiki torches!

“We call upon you, as our friend, our classmate and as a fellow American, to resign in protest of President Trump’s support of Nazism and white supremacy,” Mnuchin’s classmates wrote. “We know you are better than this, and we are counting on you to do the right thing.”

Mnuchin responded that he was focused on a tax overhaul and stoking economic growth.

“I don’t believe the allegations against the president are accurate,” Mnuchin said of the denunciations, “and I believe that having highly talented men and women in our country surrounding the president in his administration should be reassuring to you and all the American people.”

Mnuchin and Gary D. Cohn, the president’s top economic adviser, who is also Jewish and who was also at the news conference in Trump Tower, have come under public pressure to resign in the past few days.

Then the Wall Street crowd got to him and said we need you in there so he stayed.

Many of Trump’s advisers have privately said they are wrestling with whether to remain working for the president. But most say they believe they are fulfilling a duty by serving.

In a separate development, John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, urged Trump to stop the staff chaos at the White House and ‘‘settle it down.’’

Strategist Steve Bannon last week became the latest top White House official to follow Trump’s national security adviser, a chief of staff, two communications directors, and a press secretary, and others, out the door.

‘‘You can’t keep putting new people in the lineup and think you’re going to win a world championship,’’ Kasich said on CNN’s ‘‘State of the Union.’’ He is among those who have said they think the staff changes are preventing a major legislative victory.

After leaving office Friday Bannon immediately resumed his role as executive chairman of the conservative Breitbart News website, which he led before joining Trump campaign.

He was a sacrificial lamb, and it still hasn't sated them.

Appearing on CNN, Representative Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, urged ‘‘more cleaning house’’ at the White House. He echoed some fellow Democrats in naming policy adviser Stephen Miller and national security aide Sebastian Gorka as two who should be fired.

All the more reason not to do it. Shows weakness to the opponent.

Beyond that, those two guys are pricks, I've seen them on TV, but the must be part of the Bannon clique.

Trump returned to the White House on Sunday after more than two weeks away. He spent most of what he said was a working vacation at his private golf club in central New Jersey.

Oh, right, this also ruined his vacation.

Before Trump departed New Jersey, the White House announced that he plans to address the nation Monday night from Fort Myer in Arlington, Va., on US policy toward Afghanistan and South Asia.

Also Sunday, a Florida-based zoo and conservation society announced that it would not to hold its annual gala at Trump’s Florida resort. The decision by the Palm Beach Zoo & Conservation Society is the latest by a charity to move eventsfrom the Mar-a-Lago resort since Trump made comments about white nationalists.....

--more--"

Related:

"A day after thousands of counterprotesters chanted ant-Nazi slogans and upstaged a “free speech rally” in Boston, demonstrators are have gathered in Portland to oppose white supremacy. The rally took place Sunday. Mary Halsted, of the Maine People’s Alliance, said “we have to oppose white supremacy and make it clear that Maine is for all of us.” The Maine Democratic Party is a co-sponsor of the event. Chairman Phil Bartlett said diversity is the country’s greatest strength, and “any words or actions that suggest otherwise are un-American.” About 500 people also marched against racism in Kittery on Saturday, following a deadly white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va."

There was a rabbi in the crowd, too, and never mind that the South was Democratic for decades and decades until the 1960s.

"Longtime Republican operative Beth Lindstrom will launch her US Senate campaign on Monday, promising not to hew to the party line and using the occasion to criticize President Trump for his comments in the wake of recent violence in Charlottesville, Va. Lindstrom joins a growing field of Republicans intent on challenging Democratic US Senator Elizabeth Warren, and her break with Trump comes as increasing numbers of national Republicans are becoming more outspokenly critical of the GOP leader....."

I'm told the witch has some kitsch, and as we say during the campaign Republican leaders do not reflect the base!

Last weekend there were 9 dead in Chicago as the lone Charlottesville death was flogged, and this weekend:

"6 killed, 33 wounded in weekend shootings in Chicago" by the Associated Press   August 20, 2017

CHICAGO — At least 33 people were wounded, six fatally, in weekend shootings in Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, police said.

The shootings happened in a 13-hour period ending early Sunday.

Chicago’s gun violence has drawn national scrutiny, including from President Trump. The city had more than 760 homicides in 2016. That was more than New York and Los Angeles combined.

And Chicago has the toughest gun control laws on the books. 

Of course, with the Mexican drug gangs using it as a base for U.S. operations what would you expect?

In the largest mass shooting over the weekend, police said someone in an SUV fired at a crowd outside a South Side nightclub about 2:30 a.m. Sunday, killing one person and injuring seven. The gunman drove off after the attack.

About 5:10 a.m. Sunday, a 30-year-old man was gunned down on the Southwest Side.

His car was stopped at a traffic light when another vehicle approached and someone inside fired multiple shots, police said. The man suffered gunshot wounds to the head, neck, and an arm and crashed his vehicle. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

A 32-year-old man was killed and two other people were wounded in a shooting about 4:30 a.m. on the North Side.

The group was standing on a sidewalk when someone in an SUV fired shots in their direction. The man was shot in the neck and taken to a hospital in Evanston, where he was pronounced dead, police said.

At this point I'm wondering who was driving around Chicago overnight shooting people, and where are the security cameras? 

It's more stand-downs and government provocations, isn't it?

About 2 a.m., a 22-year-old man was shot to death in the University Village neighborhood on the Near West Side.

Police said he was standing outside when a vehicle drove up and two people jumped out and opened fire. The man suffered multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene.

Less than an hour earlier, one man was killed and another was critically wounded in a West Englewood neighborhood shooting on the South Side.

About 4:20 p.m. Saturday, 24-year-old man was gunned down on the South Side. He was sitting in the driver’s seat of a vehicle when someone walked up and fired shots.

--more--"

Related:

26 taken to hospitals after Pa. bus crash

Also see:

"As the day dawned, at least one official accused the railways of negligence, saying cracks in the track had been seen a day before and no train should have been allowed on the damaged line....."

First span of new N.Y. bridge opening

That give you a lift?

Time to bail:

"Former US health secretaries of both parties are urging President Trump and the GOP-led Congress to stabilize the health care system now that ‘‘Obamacare’’ seems here for the foreseeable future. At minimum: Dispel the political and legal uncertainty — fueled by presidential tweets — around billions in subsidies for consumers’ insurance copays and deductibles. They agree that Republicans still have an opportunity to put their stamp on the Affordable Care Act, even if the drive to ‘‘repeal and replace’’ former president Barack Obama’s legacy program appears to have hit a dead end.....

So have I.

--more--"

What lobbies do they work for again?

CNN to explore Trump and Twitter

They want a specimen, and I'll bet they will conclude with some psychologist saying they show insanity.

I'm planning nothing of the sort, and there is now a big blank space at the BBC.

I thought I would end today with a little love:

"What a Bunch of Mental Gymnastics from WSWS – Are They Looking for Some Antifa/Soros Money?
by Scott Creighton

This is a fascinating one.

Over at the WSWS, a source I routinely check on a weekly basis, they have been drinking the Kool-Aid of the Charlottesville attack since Day One. According to them, now watch the mental gymnastics here, President Trump “exposed himself” for trying to create a fascist brigade that was the measly 200 or so for-hire pretend racists who showed up in Charelottesville last weekend.

According to at least three writers for the WSWS, the whole plan, created by Trump himself, was to create a new Brownshirts brigade. But that didn’t work and the exposure of his fascist effort to create a fascist brigade by the fascist media threatened the interests of fascist Wall Street and the fascist generals who serve them so they came up with a plan to rebrand the image of the White House… by going all in… on fascism.

After months of deliberate planning and coordination with the police, the Nazi “Unite the Right” rampage in Charlottesville, Virginia reached its deadly apogee Saturday afternoon when a 20-year-old Hitler admirer from Ohio drove his car through a crowd of counter-demonstrators… 
The corporate press has focused on Trump’s failure to verbally condemn the violence of the far right. But the American media’s handwringing over Trump’s statements is not only naive. It deliberately covers up the extent to which the White House was involved in encouraging and inciting and even planning the Nazi mobilization in Charlottesville… 
This Nazi riot is not an aberrational event in American politics. It is the product of Donald Trump’s strategy to build an extra-constitutional fascist movement outside the framework of the two parties…” WSWS Aug 14, 2017 
— 
Trump’s self-exposure of his efforts to build an extra-parliamentary fascistic base increased the nervousness in financial circles over the danger of a collapse of the speculative bubble that has been built up since the 2008 Wall Street crash.
The response, laid out most clearly by the Times, has been to increase the grip of the military and corporate America over the government to an extent unprecedented in US history.” WSWS Aug. 21, 2017
Don’t bother looking in the article for any evidence that Trump’s White House had a hand in planning the event or the “mobilization” of all 200 or so former military sheep-dipped assets. Because there is none other than the writer saying “(t)his weekend’s Nazi violence is stamped with the political trademark of Bannon”

That of course was written before the establishment got Bannon’s head on a stick leaving only the ultra-Zionists, the fascist generals and the globalist Goldman Sachs crowd around the president.

The writer also seems to forget the police chief, the mayor and the governor of the state are Clinton-backers and the mayor had declared Charlottesville the capitol of the resistance a few months ago.

And they never once mention the chief “witness” to the event, perfectly positioned with camera recording BEFORE the car drove by, is a former Obama State Department employee with experience in destabilization campaigns in Africa and ties to the CIA and the mayor who ordered the police stand-down in the first place.

Lost in their narrative as well is the fact that the police chief himself, Al Thomas, said there HAD BEEN an order to have that street blocked off from traffic during the march and he DIDN’T KNOW WHY IT WASN’T.

But apparently none of that matters to the writers at the WSWS. Only Trump. I guess inexhaustible hate for the Cheeto president trumps common sense and reason over at the WSWS.

Hell, they even go so far as to post this without question:
Virginia’s Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, responded to criticism by stating on Sunday that the police did “great work” over the weekend. McAuliffe, former head of the Democratic National Committee and prominent fundraiser for Bill and Hillary Clinton, said the murder of counter-protestor Heather Heyer could not have been prevented. WSWS Aug 14, 2017
That sounds almost as if it were written by the DNC’s own publicist, doesn’t it? Of course it could have been prevented as the chief of police seemed to suggest with more than a little remorse.

What’s fascinating here is how the WSWS does all sorts of mental gymnastics in their effort to blame the master plan on Trump regardless of the prevailing evidence they themselves provide. Their working theory I guess is that since Trump planned the KKK/Nazi rally to “mobilize” a handful of his new Brownshirts and then exposed himself by calling out the violence on BOTH sides, rather than just his I guess, then that somehow threatened the fascists in the White House so they doubled down with still more fascism before the threat of fascism in the White House hurt their Big Business interests.

Yes, I know, it’s extremely convoluted:
The New York Times has led the way, with an editorial Sunday declaring that “Americans accustomed constitutionally and politically to civilian leadership now find themselves relying on three current and former generals—John Kelly, the new White House chief of staff; H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser; and Jim Mattis, the secretary of defense—to stop Mr. Trump from going completely off the rails… 
In the same edition of the Times, a news analysis celebrates what its headline calls “The Moral Voice of Corporate America.” In this account, “a chorus of business leaders rose up this past week to condemn hate groups and espouse tolerance and inclusion.” 
Among those named as part of this “chorus” of “moral” leaders are such corporate criminals as Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, one of those responsible for the 2008 financial collapse; Mary Barra of General Motors, who oversaw the cover-up of an ignition-switch defect that killed hundreds of people; and WalMart CEO Doug McMillon, whose company is a synonym for low-wage exploitation. 
The ruling elite saw Trump’s incautious remarks defending the neo-Nazis who rioted in Charlottesville as a serious threat… WSWS Aug. 21, 2017
So let me see if I got this right.

According to the WSWS, Trump’s last vestige of his populist campaign has been run out of town on a rail with the townsfolk screaming Nazi at him as he left… the complicit neoliberal media cheered as that happened… now that same centrist, neoliberal, complicit media tells us the heads of these mega-corps are the “moral leaders” of the nation… while weak-willed non-interventionist Donald Trump is left in the Oval Office with nothing but a bunch of war-mongering globalist generals to advise him?

And this is all because Trump mobilized 200 Brownshirts “less than 2 hours from D.C.”? What are they suggesting by pointing that out? They might invade or something?

As ridiculous and irresponsible as their implications are in these pieces, which represent the whole of their coverage by the way, it gets even worse when they appear to grasp the real motive and culprit behind this destabilization event without actually making the obvious connection:
The overriding threat to democratic rights comes not from a handful of fascist thugs, but from the very alliance of Wall Street and the Pentagon that is being touted as the antidote to the racists in the streets. 
As for the Times and the various affiliates of the Democratic Party, they see the real threat coming not from neo-Nazis, but from a socialist movement of the working class. 
The promotion of racialist politics and the tightening of military-corporate control over the government go hand-in-hand with the suppression of oppositional views, above all the World Socialist Web Site. Thus the decision taken by Google, in close coordination with the state, to censor and blacklist the WSWS through the manipulation of search results. This is the prelude to more aggressive actions to target socialist opposition to the policies of the corporate and financial elite.” WSWS Aug. 21, 2017
So the Times are an affiliate of the Democratic Party who are in bed with Wall Street and the Pentagon and they all see the real problem being REAL LEFTISTS (like I wrote yesterday) and they will use this event to tighten down control of those folks while still demonizing the anti-establishment right by calling them all Klansmen and Nazis… and it never occurs to anyone at the WSWS to wonder about all those Democratic Party supporters in positions of authority last weekend as this whole thing unfolded?

They have neutered Trump’s populist/anti-interventionist agenda and all he said was there was violence committed by BOTH sides… which is the same thing the chief of police said. The same thing everyone says today, now that all those Youtube videos are out there. But that’s all he said and that’s all they needed. Something, anything to implicate Trump that the complicit media, the Clintonista/centrist/neoliberal media could latch onto.

Something the WSWS seems to have latched onto as well.

Oddly enough, they do seem to get it.
The racialist narrative is being used to demonize large sections of the population, buttress the identity politics of privileged layers of the middle class, provide political cover for a massive transfer of wealth to the rich, rally support for a virtual palace coup by the generals and corporate billionaires, and, above all, divert and suppress an independent movement of the working class. WSWS Aug. 21, 2017
That’s exactly what happened and it happened by design. All of it. From Soros backing Antifa AND probably the “Unite the Right” rally itself, to the military connections to Vanguard America, to the police stand-down order, to the police letting the car drive away from the scene to later be pulled over without incident, to the perfectly placed former Obama State Department ‘witness’, to the constant badgering of the president over a statement that turned out to be completely accurate. All of it leading like a trail of breadcrumbs directly to “a virtual palace coup by the generals and corporate billionaires”

Yet still, remarkably, it’s Trump’s fault… Trump’s plan.

Well, who knows. Trump’s a neoliberal billionaire himself isn’t he? And few in politics over the years have been closer to the king and queen of American globalization: Bill and Hillary Clinton.

So, maybe there is something to all of that. Maybe Donald thinks he is still performing for the WWE or on his own scripted reality TV show.

Or… it simply could have been the fascist elements of the unDemocratic Party looking to further destabilize Trump’s White House while simultaneously boxing him in even further, forcing him to give-in to their demands for more aggressive military action in places like Syria, North Korea, Iran and Afghanistan. (Bannon said recently there was no military solution to North Korea and Trump gives a conciliatory speech tonight on his plan to step up military involvement in Afghanistan (probably by sending in terrorist mercenaries like Blackwater or whatever they call themselves these days))

However you look at it (and we will probably never know the full extent or lack thereof of Trump himself in this event) you can’t ignore the definitively Podesta feel to this whole thing. And you certainly can’t ignore the unDemocratic Party’s contribution to it nor that of their owner, George “Destabilization” Soros. Yet remarkably, that is exactly what the WSWS has done consistently throughout their coverage of this event.

Guess I wont be checking them on a weekly basis anymore.

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"Charlottesville and Its Aftermath: What if It Was a Setup?

by Patricia McCarthy
August 18, 2017

The ridiculous campaign by virtually every media outlet, every Democrat and far too many squishy Republicans to label Trump some kind of  racist and Nazi sympathizer is beginning to have the stink of an orchestrated smear.   The conflagration in Charlottesville is beginning to feel like a set-up, perhaps weeks or months in the planning.  Planned by whom?  Time may tell.  We know that Michael Signer, the mayor of Charlottesville, declared his city to be the "capital of the resistance" just after Trump's inauguration.  We know that Gov. Terry McAuliffe is a corruptocrat, joined at the hip to the Clintons.  He pardoned sixty-thousand felons in order to ensure he delivered his state to the presidential election of Hillary Clinton.  We know he would like to run for president himself.

We know that Obama and his inner circle have set up a war room in his D.C. home to plan and execute resistance to the Trump administration and his legislative agenda.  None of these people care about the American people, or the fact that Trump won the election because millions of people voted for him. They suggest those deranged persons who gathered in Charlottesville as members of one of several fringe groups, Unite The Right, neo-Nazi or KKK, are Trump's base -- as if there are more than a few hundred or thousand of them throughout the country.  There are not enough of them to affect anything or elect anyone. Those who are actual members of these small groups are most likely mentally ill to one degree or another. Trump has disavowed them all, over and over and over again.  Liz Crokin, an entertainment reporter and no fan of Trump, wrote in 2016 that she had covered Trump for over a decade and  in all that time, no one had ever suggested he was racist, homophobic, or sympathetic to white supremacists. That all began after he announced his campaign.  It is as fake a narrative as the "Russia collusion" meme.  The left set out to defame Trump from moment one.  When he won the election, their shock, dismay and intolerance for every opinion that differs from their own shifted into hysterical overdrive. They mounted their crusade to destroy his presidency on Nov. 9, 2016. 

What if Signer and McAuliffe, in conjunction with Antifa and other Soros-funded groups like Black Lives Matter, planned and orchestrated what happened in Charlottesville and meant for events to unfold roughly as they did?  If they did,  it was icing on their sick, immoral cake.  If this was all part of a plan, one would hope those behind it suffer for their part in and responsibility for the tragic death of a young woman, Heather Heyer.  The "founder" of Unite The Right, Jason Kessler,  was an activist with Occupy Wall Street and Obama supporter. 

He sees himself as a professional provocateur. What if he was a ringer, a phony who revels in riling up some crazy people for some political purpose?  We know the left is skilled in all manner of dirty tricks.  That sort of thing was Robert Creamer's job for the Hillary campaign, hiring thugs to incite violence that could then be blamed on Trump supporters.  Think of Ferguson, Baltimore, Berkeley, etc.  Antifa and BLM are every bit as fascist as any of the supremacist groups; they are more violent and there are more of them.  Why is the left so afraid to admit this fact?  Even Peter Beinart did in the Atlantic, written before last Saturday.

Since that day, the call to remove the statues on display that honor any members of the Confederacy has become shrill and  frenzied.  Erasing American history benefits no one and only condemns us to repeat past mistakes.  The supremacist groups had a permit; they had applied months earlier.  The Antifa and Black Lives Matter groups did not have a permit.  The local police at some point, on whose order we do not know, turned the pro-statue groups toward the Antifa and BLM groups, many of whom were armed with lethal weapons - soda cans filled with cement, bottles filled with urine, baseball bats and boards with screws protruding to do maximum harm, and improvised flamethrowers.  These are the people who initiated the violence.  How was this not a planned melee?  Pit groups of demented racists  -- all of them on both sides are certainly that -- against each other and violence is sure to occur.  (Certainly, there were decent people among the protestors and counter-protesters who had no affiliation with the supremacist groups or Antifa or BLM. Heather Heyer was among them.)

Trump spoke out on Saturday and his statement was perfectly fine given the known facts at the time.  But the media reacted as though he had defended the supremacist groups.  He did not; not even close.  It was as though no matter what Trump said, they were going to attack his remarks as being insufficient.  When he reiterated his horror of the brawl the next day and named the groups present,  they again reacted as if he had defended the supremacist groups because he said there was mayhem committed by both sides.  He correctly stated that there was violence perpetrated by members of all the groups present.  The media was apoplectic even though they surely knew what he said was true.  Reporters on the scene saw the police stand down.  Only one of them reported that truth.  One has to wonder if talking points were distributed before the event took place and before Trump said a word about it.

The Democratic Party is no longer liberal, it is leftist.  It is not progressive, it is regressive and repressive.  It seeks to overturn the First Amendment.  It means to indoctrinate, and has, successive generations via public and private education.  It is becoming ever more fascist by the day.  Along with groups like Antifa, BLM, and the host of anti-democratic groups George Soros funds to protest all around the nation, the media and the Democrats in Congress seek to overthrow an elected president in order to impose their vision of some sort of socialist utopia which of course will never exist.  What will result if they get their way is a Venezuela-style two-tiered class system, the ultra rich and the very poor who are kept in their place by economic and social control.  The millions of people who see the left for what it has become see this.  It is why they voted for Trump. 

It is disheartening to see so many American elites, privileged in wealth and position within the media and/or government be so completely of one, unthinking mind.  They all have braces on their brains (Auntie Mame).  So afraid to buck the rigid mindset of their peers, they have become mouthpieces for their own group identity.  Do they believe the nonsense they spew?  Who knows?  Those in Congress, all the Democrats and the anti-Trump Republicans essentially care about one thing and one thing only: getting re-elected.  They cannot afford to offend their donors or the lobbyists whose largesse fills their coffers.  So they trip over each other getting to the nearest camera to align themselves with whatever opinion they think will put them on the right side of the money people.  They are wrong so often.

Finally, Trump's press conference on Tuesday made the left's heads explode.  Why?  Because everything he said was absolutely true.  He does not play by their tyrannical PC rules.  He said what was true and that room full of puerile reporters shouting insults at him could not handle the truth.  They want what they want to be true but it just is not.   This entire episode, the behavior of all those protesters in Charlottesville and the bizarre behavior of the media will likely drive future voters to Trump, not away from him.  Millions more than those who voted for him are as likely to be sick to death of the self-righteous preening of the talking heads:  Chuck Todd, Jake Tapper, Don Lemon, Shep Smith, etc.  There must be a contest to see who can appear to be the most egregiously triggered by what Trump did or did not say. 

So were the events of Saturday the result of a despicable plan to further undermine Trump? There was plenty of time and Charlottesville is the "capital of resistance." If it was, it was evil and deadly and the people involved need to be prosecuted.  Or is this a wild conspiracy theory?  Perhaps. But the pieces fit.  Will the DOJ and the FBI actually investigate the many mysteries that surround the events of that day?  Not likely.  The left in this country has long been and seems to remain above the law.  But someday, maybe someone will come forward and tell the truth.  What is certain is that the violence could easily have been prevented with the common sense strategies civilized cities put in place.  America deserves much better from its media and its elected officials. The only person remembering why he is there is Donald Trump. 

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And when Pat Buchanan becomes the voice of reason.... what will happen to the statue of Margaret Sanger?

And just like that..... a total eclipse of the heart!