You Can’t Make This Shit Up: Noted Alleged Pedophile to Become Attorney General (and There's More!)

Strap in, boys and girls: The weird are turning pro:

President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday said he will nominate Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida to serve as his attorney general, putting a loyalist in the role of the nation’s top prosecutor.

In selecting the congressman, Trump passed over some of the more established attorneys whose names had been mentioned as being contenders for the job.

“Matt will end Weaponized Government, protect our Borders, dismantle Criminal Organizations and restore Americans’ badly-shattered Faith and Confidence in the Justice Department,” Trump said in a statement.

Right, and if you believe any of that, you are most definitely stupider than you would appear to be. Gaetz's time in Congress, when he wasn't dodging investigations for having relationships with underage girls, was spent trying to investigate and persecute the enemies of Trump, both real and imagined.

Between his alleged penchant for pretty young things, like his orange idol, and his abject loyalty to same, I can see why he was the perfect pick.

Meanwhile, Commandante Bone Spurs is picking a defense secretary whose main qualification is jacking his jaws on Fox. He's picking Russia's girlfriend to be DNI. And, even more worrisome, he is looking to purge military officers who may be viewed as loyal to the Constitution and not him.

Wait for the day when the military will have to swear an oath to Trump. It's coming, folks.

If the Senate lets him appoint these turds, it will be clear to all that they are Trumpers, not Americans.

TOFF-Embolded Racists

Several federal and state agencies are investigating how racist mass texts were sent to Black people across the country in the wake of the presidential election this week.
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It would be so easy for the Toff to denounce these trolls or have Coke Boy or a spokesweasel do it. They could shut this shit down for the next four years years by a strong statement of condemnation and outrage. They could set a positive tone for his administration.

But he won't do it. They won't do it. Because the racists who did this are his peeps. Just like the Tiki Torch racists in Charlottesville. They know it. And we know it.

Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Proof

That's my message to those claiming massive fraud: Show your proof. If there's massive fraud, you should be able to easily produce massive evidence of that.

So far, other than the rage-tweeting of Soon-to-Be-Former President Trump, there's nothing. Oh, there's some fourth-hand rumors of boxes of fake ballots that turned out to be photography equipment and lies about the use of Sharpies, but all of that is smoke, mirrors and bullshit.

If you're claiming fraud, you must show real proof. Not innuendo, not conspiracy theory manure, real proof suitable for admission in a court of law.

Otherwise, quit wasting our time and shut the fuck up.

A Song for Trump

If you're racist and you're fired, it's your fault,

If you're racist and you're fired, it's your fault,

If you're racist and you know it and you use Twitter to show it,

If you're racist and you're fired, it's your fault.

Right-Wing False-Flag Attacks

In the wake of protests following the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a member of the Boogaloo Bois opened fire on the Minneapolis Police Third Precinct with an AK-47-style gun and screamed “Justice for Floyd” as he ran away, according to a federal complaint made public Friday.

A sworn affidavit by the FBI underlying the complaint reveals new details about a far-right anti-government group’s coordinated role in the violence that roiled through civil unrest over Floyd’s death while in police custody.

Ivan Harrison Hunter, a 26-year-old from Boerne, Texas, is charged with one count of interstate travel to incite a riot for his alleged role in ramping up violence during the protests in Minneapolis on May 27 and 28. According to charges, Hunter, wearing a skull mask and tactical gear, shot 13 rounds at the south Minneapolis police headquarters while people were inside. He also looted and helped set the building ablaze, according to the complaint, which was filed Monday under seal.

No doubt that those right-wing terrorists are doing acts that Trump and the Right-Wing Noise Machine then blames on the BLM protesters.

Fear-Based Politics

From an email:

An idle thought....
In '68, I can recall driving rural KY and seeing Wallace bumper stickers: "Don't Live in Fear, Vote Wallace". Then it was the message of a Southern racist crackpot, now that's the message of the whole damned GOP, recited nightly at their convention. -- SD, 8/27/20

Both Wallace and Nixon ran racist campaigns, but they were campaigning as the challengers.

Trump, who is decrying things, is the fucking incumbent. He's the guy who has been in a position to try to do something to address the problems of this country. But all he does is engage in his barf-fests on twitter. Trump is the guy who said that neo-Nazis are fine people. Point out that Black and Latino Americans suffer disproportionately at the hands of the police and Trump makes mockery of those concerns.

Let's update Dr. King a tad:

“…I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, [police brutality,] equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.”

Fifty-five years ago, the cry was "Black Power!" Today, the cry is "Black Lives Matter!"

The counterpoint to that today tends to be bullshit. "Blue Lives matter" ignores the fact that, in many jurisdictions, crimes committed against police officers draw heftier penalties than crimes against people, in general. Blue lives have always mattered more to the justice system. Hell, the cops are the ones who routinely get away with committing perjury to the point that there is a term of art for that: Testilying.

Still, whatever you think of the growing protests over racial injustice, the hard truth of the matter is that Donald Trump, the man who promises that he along can fix things, has not only sat on his hands for the last three and a half years, he has made things worse. Whenever the issue of racial justice is brought before Trump by a reporter or congressman, Trump crosses his arms and affects the mien of an offended and petulant toddler.

If anything is going to be done, the first thing has to be to remove from power those politicians who are obstructionist Wallace-type racists, beginning with Donald Trump.

One Thing You Can Count On

Because Sen. Kamala Harris isn’t white, some assholes will challenge her citizenship.

Her parents were immigrants (her mother is deceased), some racist fucks will claim she’s not an American by birth. Even though she was born in Oakland, CA.

Trump’s mother was an immigrant, but nobody seriously questioned his citizenship. Because he’s a white guy. Unlike, say, the previous president, who also had one non-American parent, but trolls like Trump questioned his citizenship, because he’s Black.

It’s racism, pure and simple. If you’re questioning Sen. Harris’s right to run for office on the bullshit grounds that being born in Oakland doesn’t make her an American citizen, then you, sir or madam, are a racist fuck.

Don’t let the screen door hit you in the ass on your way out.

Update, 8/13/20, 9AM: Yep. It happened.

Donald Trump Never Misses an Opportunity to Miss an Opportunity

In a solemn display of bipartisan unity, congressional leaders praised Democratic Rep. John Lewis as a moral force for the nation on Monday in a Capitol Rotunda memorial service rich with symbolism and punctuated by the booming, recorded voice of the late civil rights icon.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Lewis the “conscience of the Congress” who was “revered and beloved on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of the Capitol.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell praised the longtime Georgia congressman as a model of courage and a “peacemaker.”

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” McConnell, a Republican, said, quoting the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “But that is never automatic. History only bent toward what’s right because people like John paid the price.”

But because Lewis beefed with Trump in the past, Trump is churlishly and childishly refusing to pay his respects. He's sending "mini-me" Pence, instead.

In a time when a little bit of grace and simple courtesy would go some way in helping to heal the country, Trump is going to stay in his bunker and rage-tweet.

Trump's Veto Threat

Trump Signals He's Open to Taking Children Hostage (Plus Some Tab-Clearing)

Determined to reopen America’s schools despite coronavirus worries, President Donald Trump threatened on Wednesday to hold back federal money if school districts don’t bring their students back in the fall. He complained that his own public health officials’ safety guidelines are impractical and too expensive.

Shortly afterward, Vice President Mike Pence announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be issuing new guidance next week “that will give all new tools to our schools.” The advice will keep students safe, he said, but “the president said today we just don’t want the guidance to be too tough.”

Trump is going to hold school children, teachers and parents hostage to his desire to show that the pandemic is under control-- "Either your kids physically go back to school or your school gets it!" That's about a despicable as it gets. And of course, Trump and his first ass-kisser are going to press the CDC to revise their guidance to line up with Trump's orders.

Along similar lines, Trump and his Minister of Xenophobia are using the threat of deportation to force colleges to have in-person classes. It's all about getting people to pretend that there is no pandemic to worry about.
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Trump's indoor virus spreadathon in Tulsa did just that.
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Meanwhile, the goons in Customs have been using their drones to spy on protesters. Customs denied that their surveillance drones were being used for surveillance, which is about as nonsensical a denial as one can get.

“The worst part for me is when we’re made out to be storm troopers,” said David Fulcher, the deputy director for air operations at the National Air Security Operations Center in Grand Forks. “We believe in peaceful protests.”

That is laughable. CBP has been playing at being the nation's storm troopers for years, and now they're not happy about it? GMAFB.

Pro tip: If you don't want people to call you storm troopers, don't act like storm troopers.

And it's also funny that, after all these years of them bragging how good the optics are on those drones, that they're now claiming that they aren't really that good.
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China is quietly carrying out a campaign of genocide against the Uighurs:

A new report in Foreign Policy says that China's suppression of Uighurs, Kazakhs and other chiefly Muslim ethnic minorities in northwest China now meets the United Nations definition of genocide, mass sterilization, forced abortions and mandatory birth control part of a campaign that has swept up more than 1.5 million people and what researcher Adrian Zenz calls probably the largest incarceration of an ethnoreligious minority since the Holocaust.

The very same people who get so outraged over Israel's treatment of Palestinians have not uttered a peep about China's genocidal campaign against its Muslim minorities. Because Chinese gold buys a lot of closed moths and averted eyes.

And yes, Trump approves. He always has when the Chinese Communists use force against their own people.

Isn't It Clear, Now, Why Trump Has Been Ignoring the Pandemic?

Early numbers had shown that Black and Latino people were being harmed by the virus at higher rates. But the new federal data — made available after The New York Times sued the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — reveals a clearer and more complete picture: Black and Latino people have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus in a widespread manner that spans the country, throughout hundreds of counties in urban, suburban and rural areas, and across all age groups.

Latino and African-American residents of the United States have been three times as likely to become infected as their white neighbors, according to the new data, which provides detailed characteristics of 640,000 infections detected in nearly 1,000 U.S. counties. And Black and Latino people have been nearly twice as likely to die from the virus as white people, the data shows.
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The data also showed several pockets of disparity involving Native American people. In much of Arizona and in several other counties, they were far more likely to become infected than white people. For people who are Asian, the disparities were generally not as large, though they were 1.3 times as likely as their white neighbors to become infected.

The article goes into some of the possible reasons for the disparity.

What is pretty evident, by now, as more and more data comes out that shows that people of color are being sickened and killed by the coronavirus than whites, the less and less Trump is interested in doing anything to slow the rate of the pandemic. You can bet the farm that if the coronavirus was more severely impacting white people, that Trump would have nothing else on his mind. But ever since the first data came out about the racial disparities of the victims of the coronavirus, Trump turned away.

Instead of concerning himself with matters associated with the pandemic, Trump is laser-focused on preserving the statues of dead traitors and of ensuring that the Flag of Treason continues to be displayed. Trump is running the most overtly race-baiting campaign for the presidency since George Wallace, if not Strom Thurmond. When he addresses the pandemic at all, he lies about the number of cases, he claims that there would be no pandemic if there was no testing and he lies that 99% of the people who get the virus don't even get sick.

Trump's turned his back on Texas, Florida (his new home state), and Arizona. If cases are rising in your state, don't look to either Trump or Jared the Prince of Merde for help. Trump's decided that he can write off a few hundred thousand dead Americans as the cost of his getting reelected. Trump's betting that his batshit-crazed supporters will go along with him and will turnout in numbers that will drown out his historically low approval ratings for a president running for reelection.

The best evidence that Trump is wrong in his bet comes from America's Greatest Political Weathervane, Lindsey Graham.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Monday defended NASCAR and Bubba Wallace, one of the sport's top Black stars, as both come under criticism from President Trump.

During an interview with Fox News Radio, Graham said it "made perfect sense" that Wallace was concerned about a noose found in his garage stall. He also argued that by banning the Confederate flag at its events, NASCAR was trying to "grow" its fan base.

For Graham to disagree with Trump on, well, anything, signifies that Graham is sensing a change in the political winds.

But Trump will do what he thinks will work: He'll double down on his race-baiting and white-supremacist steam-whistling. Because he thinks it'll work for him one more time.

And one more time is all that he and Vladimir Putin need.

Trump Blasts the Steam-Whistle of Hate, Again

President Donald Trump on Sunday tweeted approvingly of a video showing one of his supporters chanting “white power,” a racist slogan associated with white supremacists. He later deleted the tweet and the White House said the president had not heard “the one statement” on the video.

The video appeared to have been taken at The Villages, a Florida retirement community, and showed dueling demonstrations between Trump supporters and opponents.

“Thank you to the great people of The Villages,” Trump tweeted. Moments into the video clip he shared, a man driving a golf cart displaying pro-Trump signs and flags shouts ’white power.”

The hell he didn't hear it.

Trump was blowing on his hate-whistle. The Nazis in his base herd it loud and clear.

That's Going to Leave a Mark

Saturday's rally in Tulsa was, on the campaign's own terms, a debacle — a meticulously organized and well-protected event that left thousands of seats unfilled in an arena once sold out by Nickelback.

In case you didn't get the reference:

Bunker Boy Draws Less Than a Full House

The AP story said that the house was 2/3rds full. The city fire marshal said there were less than 6,200 attendees, or under 1/3rds full in a 19,000 seat area.

Dumpy's campaign, remember, claimed that a million people requested tickets.

So, in a state that Bunker Boy won by 2 to 1, or over 500,000 votes, he couldn't persuade 19,000 people to come take in his freak show of racism, conspiracy theories and pandemic denialism?

Trump and pence planned to speak before the indoor rally at an outdoor overflow rally outside of the area. That was canceled for lack of interest. He wasn't happy.

Mr. Trump was furious about the unused outdoor stage and the comparatively thin crowd in the stadium, according to two people familiar with his reaction. News broadcasts carried video of the partially empty stadium, and even the Drudge Report, a reliably conservative website, carried an all-caps headline that said “MAGA LESS MEGA” with a picture of rows and rows of empty blue seats.

Only losers blame the public for not buying a product. And Trump, make no mistake about it, is a a product: Finely refined political snake oil.

By the way, this is desecration of the Flag:

Racist Trump is On Drugs

President Donald Trump is seeking to take credit for making Juneteenth -- a day commemorating the end of slavery in the United States -- "very famous," after rescheduling his first rally since the start of the pandemic to avoid further criticism for seeming to co-opt it.

Trump told The Wall Street Journal that "nobody had ever heard of" the holiday before he brought it up.

"I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous," Trump said in reference to the rally date in an interview published Thursday. "It's actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it."

"Nobody heard of it" means that Trump never heard of it. Remember that Trump is the clown who thinks that most people didn't know that President Lincoln was a Republican.

President Trump believes that most Americans don’t know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.

“Great president. Most people don’t even know he was a Republican,” Trump said while addressing attendees at the National Republican Congressional Committee Dinner. “Does anyone know? Lot of people don’t know that.”

"Party of Lincoln" was evidently a phrase that Trump had never heard.

He also forgot that his own administration has issued Juneteenth statements for the last three years.

Trump Keeps Blowing the Steam-Whistle of Hate

He's not subtle.

Facebook has removed a campaign ad by President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence that featured an upside-down red triangle, a symbol once used by Nazis to designate political prisoners, communists and others in concentration camps.

The company said in a statement Thursday that the ads violated “our policy against organized hate.” A Facebook executive who testified at a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Thursday said the company does not permit symbols of hateful ideology “unless they’re put up with context or condemnation.”

“In a situation where we don’t see either of those, we don’t allow it on the platform and we remove it. That’s what we saw in this case with this ad, and anywhere that that symbol is used, we would take the same action,” said Nathaniel Gleicher, the company’s head of security policy.

Trump Lies About Obama and Whines That People Should Accept Police Brutality If They Have Jobs

We achieved the lowest black, Hispanic, and Asian unemployment rates in American history. And we will do it again. We’ll do it again. We’re fighting for school choice, which really is the civil rights of all time in this country. Frankly, school choice is the civil rights statement of the year, of the decade, and probably beyond — because all children have to have access to quality education. A child’s zip code in America should never determine their future, and that’s what was happening. So we’re very, very strong on school choice, and I hope everybody remembers that. And it’s happening. It’s already happened, but it’s happening. We have tremendous opposition from people that know they shouldn’t be opposing it. School choice.
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And I just want to say we’ve done incredibly well. We’re doing well. Things are happening that nobody can even believe. Our country is opening up. And it’s opening up rapidly. We had the best unemployment and employment. We had best unemployment and employment numbers — think of that — in the history of our country. We’re up to almost 160 million people working. There was never anything even close. And that’s for almost every group including black, Hispanic, Asian, women, young people, old people, young people without a high school diploma. Every group. Everybody was thrilled. Everybody had — just about –high-paying jobs.

You have that right. When the topic du jour is cops killing people of color, Trump whines about the economy and school choice. Trump also bleated about equal opportunity, blithely forgetting his own racist past when he was actively discriminating against Black people looking for housing.

He also just keeps lying about Obama.

President Obama and Vice President Biden never even tried to fix this during their eight-year period. The reason they didn’t try is because they had no idea how to do it. And it is a complex situation.

That is a massive and honking lie. As I've explained in my previous post, Trump not only stopped ongoing efforts to deal with police misconduct, he actually encouraged more misconduct. President Obama stopped transferring military gear to civilian cops, Trump resumed it. Trump abandoned investigations into police misconduct. Obama opened civil rights investigations into brutal police misconduct, Trump abandoned the ones that were going on and sharply reduced new ones (if not canceling them outright).

The truth of the matter is that Trump has been agreeable with police using excessive force and killing people of color. Trump figured that as long as the economy was peachy, nobody would notice that the cops have been murdering folks.

To shift gears a little:

Trump's little trip to Walter Reed turned out to be, as I suggested at the time, a pack of lies. And so is this.

Police Violence: Trump Owns Part of This

Trump has not been shy in encouraging cops to treat people harshly:

In President Donald Trump’s speech Friday afternoon [7/28/17 detailing his plan to fight back against MS-13 gang violence, he implored law enforcement, “Please, don’t be too nice,” to the people they are arresting.

Trump outlined a scenario in which a police officer would be careful not to harm a person they are arresting and instructed officers not to worry about that, saying:

“When you guys put somebody in the car and you're protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over, like, don't hit their head and they've just killed somebody. Don't hit their head. I said, you can take the hand away, okay?”

There was a pause after Trump’s delivery, and then the officers behind him began to clap and cheer.

More substantively, the Trump administration backed away from holding police departments accountable for violating civil rights. Three years ago, Trump backed away from using consent decrees to police the police. Smirky the Fascist Elf, on his way out of the DoJ, issued orders further restricting the use of consent decrees.

Bunker Boy's message to the cops was loud and clear: Go ahead, use unjustifiable levels of force, for we won't be watching and even if you get caught, we won't hold you accountable.

Meanwhile, in Albuquerque, white supremacists with guns showed up at a protest against police violence and, sure enough, somebody got shot. Trump probably was grinning to see that.

The Supremes Give a Giant "Fuck You" to the Christian Taliban (and to Bunker Boy)

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a landmark civil rights law protects LGBT people from discrimination in employment, a resounding victory for LGBT rights from a conservative court.

The court decided by a 6-3 vote that a key provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 known as Title VII that bars job discrimination because of sex, among other reasons, encompasses bias against LGBT workers.

“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court. “Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.”

Trump, of course, sees it differently because those in his base who are Talibanistas want him to:

The Trump administration will scrap ObamaCare's nondiscrimination protections for sex and gender identity under a final rule released Friday.

In a statement, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said the government's interpretation of sex discrimination will be based on "the plain meaning of the word 'sex' as male or female and as determined by biology."

According to HHS, the new policy makes clear that "the substantive protections prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, disability, age, and sex remain in effect."

Trump's move was motivated solely by his need to placate the bigots in his base (read to the end of this post). Based on the ruling today by the Supreme Court, a challenge to his rule would likely succeed.

Go Back to Your Bunker, Donnie Boy

The mayor of Seattle on Wednesday told President Donald Trump to "go back to your bunker," after Trump appeared to suggest he would intervene in the city's growing protests and called for law and order.

Bunker Boy's greatest ambition, now, is to have soldiers fire on protesters with live ammunition. That fat old coward is basically a psychopath who is too fearful to do anything himself other than maybe rape and hit pre-roofied women.

You may recall that Trump kept saying that it was up to the states, up to the governors, to take measures to fend off the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 100,000 dead Americans is not enough to get Trump to do anyting substantive, he hardly mentions the pandemic anymore. But a handful of protesters in the streets rouses his blood lust.

It's pretty clear, by now that Trump has given up trying to unify the country, if indeed he ever had a thought of doing so. he is the president of his base; the course he has chosen is to write off everyone else and turn out his supporters by blowing his racist steam-whistle of "The Darkies Are Coming For Your Women"-- you know, the GOP's Southern Strategy.

But this time, it may not be working for him. The impression one gets is that the rest of the Party of Trump knows that they are being set up for a shellacking.