A Good Article By Thomas Friedman (?!)

I'm not a Thomas Friedman fan. However, his article in the October 13 issue of The New York Times made some points I agree with. I chuckled at his opening: "If only our national election had been pay-per-view for the rest of the world, we could have wiped out the national debt." Then he asks if America is going to get effective government as a result of this election; I fear the answer is no.

If we will have indulged in almost two years of electoral entertainment and pathos just to end up back where we were, only worse, with even more venomous gridlock in Washington, it won't just be emotionally depressing, we'll really start to decline as a nation.

I'm sad to say that that may indeed be the outcome.

For starters, this version of the Republican Party has to die.

Well, well -- maybe Friedman gets it! The toxic state of affairs in Washington today is not a both-sides-do-it, 50:50 proposition, where both Republicans and Democrats are to blame: The Republican party is the problem. In the words of political scientists Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, in their 2012 book "It's Even Worse Than it Looks":

The Republican Party has become an insurgent outlier -- ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

Friedman says:

We have known that ever since the G.O.P. speaker of the House John Boehner quit, not because he couldn't work with President Obama but because roughly a quarter of House Republicans, the so-called Freedom Caucus, were simply not interested in governing and had made his job impossible.

That's a true statement; Boehner was forced out by a recalcitrant mob of bomb-throwers in his caucus. His relationship with "the so-called Freedom Caucus" was fraught from the beginning, when the bomb-throwers were elected in the Republican wave election of 2014. The problems came to a boil over the extremists' determination to defund Planned Parenthood on the issue of horrific -- and fraudulent -- anti-abortion videos; the result was likely to be yet another fruitless Republican-engineered shutdown of the government. Paul Ryan became Speaker and was able to mollify the "Freedom Caucus" and get them to drop their demands. However, the phrase "not because he couldn't work with President Obama" air-brushes the fact that Boehner couldn't -- or rather wouldn't -- work with President Obama. From the evening of Obama's inauguration, the Republicans saw obstruction to be their most effective strategy against the new president. They proceeded to attempt to thwart Obama's every move; some members even voted against bills they themselves had introduced, simply because Obama expressed approval for them. Friedman continues (and I must express my approval):

For the sake of the country, this version of the Republican Party has to be fractured with the extreme far right going off with the likes of Donald Trump, the Tea Party, Ted Cruz -- along with all the right-wing TV and radio gasbags who thrive on chaos -- leaving behind a moderate center-right bloc, which, one hopes, one day would become the new G.O.P.

To Friedman's list, I would add David Duke and his buddies in the KKK, the neo-Nazi/white supremacist/white nationalist/Pepe the Frog alt-right -- might one call them a "basket of deplorables"? Friedman goes on to stress that for the good of the country, it is imperative that Clinton win in a landslide, along with majorities in the Senate and the House. Trumpism must be completely and utterly crushed, so that its sad, malicious, anti-American proponents are conclusively shown to be outside the American mainstream. I'd love to see a Clinton presidency with a Democratic majority in the House and a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate; then a lot of good things could be accomplished. As Friedman puts it:

... putting in place common-sense gun laws, like restoring the Assault Weapons Ban, requiring universal background checks [eliminating the gun-show and Internet loopholes] and making it illegal for anyone on the terrorist watch list to buy a gun; borrowing money at near-zero interest rates to rebuild our infrastructure; replacing some income and corporate taxes with a revenue-neutral carbon tax to stimulate more clean-energy production; fixing Obamacare [which can't be done under present circumstances, since Republicans have no interest whatever in improving Obamacare; they do not want to see it succeed]; and implementing sensible immigration reform and responsible tax and entitlement reforms [like lifting the $106,000 Social Security Wage Base limit].

Friedman again:

The nightmare scenario -- ruling out, God forbid, a Trump victory -- is that Clinton wins with a slim majority and the G.O.P. holds the House and the Senate. The Democratic left would have a stranglehold on Clinton [?] while Trump, who would start his own TV network and movement, would keep the Republican base in a state of permanent anger, intimidating every Republican lawmaker who contemplated compromise [in other words, the status quo for the past seven years]. If that happens, America will be adrift.

In his final paragraphs, Friedman covers the strange and unsettling Trump/Putin bromance and the apparent Russian attempts to manipulate the election in Trump's favor. Good work, Tom.

Click here for an article in the Washington Post by Ishaan Tharoor entitled "Trump and Pence's opposition to Syrian refugees is based on a huge lie." Trump and Pence are conflating the situation in Europe, where there is far less opportunity to vet the flood of refugees pouring in, to that in America, where there is a very thorough vetting process.

The Strange And Terrible Saga Of Police Chief Mark Kessler

WARNING: NOT SAFE FOR WORK! (Obscenities)

Watch this video for an introduction to the 2nd Amendment world of Mark Kessler (aka "the shooty shouty sheriff"), police chief of Gilberton, a small town in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, about 100 miles northwest of Philadelphia:


And here's a Youtube video posted by the good sheriff:


And here's a followup he posted some time later:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UubTrNKYf-8

There's a whole bunch more interesting stuff on the Internet about the shooty shouty sheriff; Google it.

But he was actually working undercover to attract and expose militia groups!

Worst Week In Politics - For Anyone, Ever?

 Click here for the article by Think Progress editor-in-chief Judd Legum entitled "Trump's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week."

Just before the first debate, legendary pollster Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight was giving Trump 50:50 odds of winning the election; it had been a steady decline for Clinton, who hit a high of 85:15 after the terrible Republican and tremendous Democratic conventions. Team Trump were downright giddy. Then came this:

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26

4:45 PM: Washington Post releases report raising questions about the Trump Foundation.

9:00 PM: First presidential debate begins.

9:35 PM: Trump effectively admits paying no federal income taxes, brags about it. [Trump pays no federal taxes? "That makes me smart."]

10:21 PM: Trump gets cornered after repeating lie that he opposed the Iraq War, begs media to call Sean Hannity.

10:35 PM: Trump defends calling Alicia Machado, former Miss Universe, “Miss Piggy.” [And "Miss Housekeeping" -- she's Latina.]

11:44 PM: CNN poll shows viewers overwhelmingly thought Clinton won the debate. [62:27]

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27

12:34 AM — 2:23 AM: Trump dismisses CNN poll, promotes unscientific internet polls showing him winning the debate. [They're "fan polls," where you can literally vote ten, a hundred, or a thousand times; or at the very least, you can vote from your iPhone, your iPad, your notebook, your desktop, and the computer at the library -- and really, a poll conducted on the Breitbart site? How many Hillary supporters are ever going to see that poll?]

7:09 AM: Trump renews his attack on beauty queen Alicia Machado, says she “gained a massive amount of weight.” [Phoning it in to his airhead buddies on the curvy couch at "Fox & Friends" -- you can see the consternation on their vapid faces -- why is he doing this?]

11 AM: White Nationalist leader David Duke defends Trump’s debate performance, calls him “our candidate.” [He has Pepe the Frog and the Basket of Deplorables vote wrapped up.]

9:07 PM: The Arizona Republic, which has never endorsed a Democrat since it began publishing in 1890, endorses Hillary Clinton.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28

8:30 AM: Forbes reports that Trump’s net worth has fallen by $800 million in the last year.

8:07 PM: Trump continues his attacks on Machado: “It is a beauty contest. They know what they are getting into.” [He just can't leave it alone: Trump will be Trump.]

9:00 PM: Trump accuses Google of suppressing “bad news” about Hillary Clinton. [Searches at Yahoo.com, for instance, auto-complete "Hillary Clinton cr" to "Hillary Clinton criminal"; Google doesn't. Turns out Google's algorithm is programmed not to auto-complete any search with disparaging terms such as "criminal"; it has nothing to do with Clinton favoritism.]

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29

5:42 AM: Newsweek reports that Trump violated the Cuba embargo. [A Trump company secretly did business in Cuba; illegal, of course.]

8:22 AM: LA Times reports that Trump tried to fire women who worked at his golf club who weren’t pretty enough.

11 AM: Trump’s campaign manager accidentally confirms that Trump did violate the Cuba embargo. [Thank you, Kellyanne Conway, who said it wasn't fair to go back to 1988.]

11:15 AM: Marco Rubio, Republican candidate for Senate in the key state of Florida, says he’s “deeply concerned” about reports Trump violated the Cuba embargo. ["Little Marco" still supports him, though -- while twisting slowly, slowly in the wind.]

4 PM: Trump falsely accuses the FBI of giving “immunity” to Hillary Clinton.

7:34 PM: A member of the Wall Street Journal’s notoriously conservative editorial board endorses Hillary Clinton. [Dorothy Rabinowitz says of Hillary: "She alone stands between America and the reign of the most unstable, unfit president in U.S. history." The Wall Street Journal editorial board? Et tu, Brute?]

7:45 PM: Days after renouncing birtherism, Trump tells New Hampshire reporter he’s “very proud” of it.

9:15 PM: Trump says Angela Merkel is the foreign leader he most admires. He’s spent much of the campaign trashing Merkel and comparing her to Hillary. [He pronounces it "Anjela"; he has said she is "ruining" Germany.]

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30

12:54 AM: USA Today’s editorial board, which has never taken sides in a presidential election, declares Trump “unfit to be president.” [That's the newspaper with by far the biggest circulation in the country, almost double #2, the Wall Street Journal.]

5:30 AM: Trump calls Machado “disgusting,” encourages his supporters to search for her “sex tape.” [There is no Machado "sex tape" -- but check out The Donald's sex tape, referenced below.]

2:39 PM: Trump defends early morning tweets, says they show he’s ready to be president. [Because when that famous 3 a.m. call comes and he's faced with a nuclear emergency, he'll be up and ready with his phone in his hand!]

5:39 PM: BuzzFeed reports that Trump appeared in a softcore porn movie. [He breaks a bottle of champagne on a Playboy-branded limo while several of the Playmates are visiting New York City. "Other scenes from the film feature fully nude women posing in sexual positions, dancing naked, touching themselves while naked, touching each other sensually, rubbing honey on themselves, taking a bath, and dressing in costumes." No actual nudity by The Donald himself, apparently -- which is just as well, considering his small hands.]

6:30 PM: Trump says election could be rigged, tells supporters to monitor polling places for voter fraud.

6:45 PM: Trump releases ad featuring Ivanka Trump to appeal to women. It includes the line: “The most important job a woman can have is being a mother.” [That'll win the working women's votes, for sure.]

7 PM: Trump demands Obama promise not to pardon Clinton, which would be impossible since Clinton has not been charged with or convicted of a crime.

8:30 PM: Washington Post releases another damaging report about the Trump Foundation. [The Trump foundation is ordered to stop soliciting money.]

9 PM: Trump calls New York Times, promises to get “nasty.” [Does the word "Monica" ring a bell? And Donald, have you heard of glass houses?]

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1

9:15 PM: The New York Times reveals Trump’s 1995 tax return, which shows $915 million loss. [Which could allow him to pay no federal income tax for the next 18 years.]

9:45 PM: Trump mocks Hillary Clinton’s bout with pneumonia, pantomimes her stumbling into her car. [Remember him mocking the disabled reporter?]

10:15 PM: Trump says Hillary Clinton “could actually be crazy.” [Do you know the meaning of the word "projection," Donald?]

10:30 PM: Trump accuses Hillary Clinton of cheating on her husband. [Without a shred of evidence, or even rumor; I haven't seen this suggested on the slimiest of wingnut sites -- and I hold my breath and check on them from time to time, then immediately shower.]

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 2

9:06 AM: Trump adviser Chris Christie says the report of him not paying taxes is “a very good story” for Trump. [Great stuff, Chris! Keep it coming!]

9:08 AM: Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani calls Trump a “genius” for not paying taxes. [Great stuff, Rudy! Keep it coming!]

8 PM: LeBron James, a hero in the key state of Ohio, endorses Hillary Clinton. [He's "King James" in Ohio.]

MONDAY, OCTOBER 3

3:26 AM: The AP releases detailed report on Trump’s pattern of sexual harassment while filming The Apprentice.

Thus endeth The Donald's weekus horribilis -- and Nate Silver pegs Hillary's chances at 75:25.

Mike Pence Is Stupid, Says Matthew Yglesias

Click here for an article entitled "Mike Pence" by Matthew Yglesias at Think Progress from September 26, 2008.

And yes, Yglesias -- a respected journalist -- says Pence is stupid:

And I can tell you this about Mike Pence: he has no idea what he’s talking about. The man is a fool, who deserves to be laughed at. He’s almost stupid enough to work in cable television.

And:

He didn’t know anything at all, in short, about investing, financial markets, or, seemingly, the basic terms of public policy. And yet there he was speaking on the topic at Heritage. He’s a total fraud.

The reference to "Heritage" is to the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank -- and when former South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint was appointed president of the Heritage Foundation a few years ago, my hero, Prof. Paul Krugman, said "Well, that takes the 'think' out of 'think tank.'"

Must Read: Trump v Graydon Carter (Vanity Fair)

Click here for the article in Vanity Fair by Graydon Carter entitled "Donald Trump: The Ugly American." Carter has had a 30-year-plus (deteriorating) relationship with Donald Trump, and his story makes very interesting reading.

4.5-minute video: Trump v. Political Correctness

Here are the lyrics to "Old Man Trump" -- Woody Guthrie was a tenant in one of "Old Man Trump's" apartment blocks, Beach Haven, when Donald's father Fred (Old Man Trump) was sued for racially discriminating in his anti-black rental policies:

I suppose that Old Man Trump knows just how much racial hate
He stirred up in that bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed that color line
Here at his Beach Haven family project

Beach Haven ain't my home!
No, I just can't pay this rent!
My money's down the drain,
And my soul is badly bent!
Beach Haven is Trump’s Tower
Where no black folks come to roam,
No, no, Old Man Trump!
Old Beach Haven ain't my home!

I'm calling out my welcome to you and your man both
Welcoming you here to Beach Haven
To love in any way you please and to have some kind of a decent place
To have your kids raised up in.

Beach Haven ain't my home!
No, I just can't pay this rent!
My money's down the drain,
And my soul is badly bent!
Beach Haven is Trump’s Tower
Where no black folks come to roam,
No, no, Old Man Trump!
Old Beach Haven ain't my home!

Donald Trump Jr., White Supremacist

Why on earth has this not been publicized? I wasn't aware until today that Donald Trump Jr., that alt-right little animal murderer, visited the Neshoba County Fair at Philadelphia shortly after the Republican convention where his father was named as the Republican nominee. Click here for an article in Mississippi Today by Adam Ganucheau and R.L. Nave, dated July 26, describing the visit.

That's not Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; it's Philadelphia, Mississippi, population 7,500.

Why would a rich golden boy Manhattanite like Donald Jr. visit the Neshoba County Fair at a tiny town 100 miles from the nearest "big" city -- Jackson, Mississippi, population 125,000 -- and make a political speech? To learn the answer, you have to go back 53 years, to the summer of 1964.

That was when three civil rights workers -- 21-year-old black Mississippian James Chaney and two white New Yorkers, Andrew Goodman, 20, and Michael Schwerner, 24 -- were murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Everyone in Philadelphia knew who had done it, but nobody was talking.

Fast forward 16 years to the summer of 1980, when the memory of the 1964 killings in Philadelphia had not faded. Shining star Ronald Reagan had just been nominated as the Republican candidate for the presidency. Shortly after that convention, he gave a major speech at the Neshoba County Fair at Philadelphia, Mississippi, with all the national media present, which became known in U.S. political history as Reagan's "states' rights" speech.

For those who don't know, the U.S. Constitution sets out in detail the powers of the federal government. All powers which are not expressly granted to the federal government in the Constitution are given to the states. So the concept of "states' rights" would seem to be an innocent and straightforward idea.

Not in the racialized atmosphere of 1980 (or 1964). The phrase "states' rights" was a dog whistle: To those who heard the underlying meaning, it meant that the federal government had no right to impose integration on the South. "States' rights" meant that Mississippi -- like Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, and the rest of the Confederacy -- should be free to make black Americans sit at the back of the bus, drink from separate fountains, and generally submit to white supremacy, without federal interference.

With that history, Donald Trump Jr. -- who has recently made a good half-dozen statements or tweets with connections to white supremacist or alt-right sites -- travels to Philadelphia, Mississippi, to make a political speech.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.

Trump Rally - Conspiracy Theories?

Copy this into your address bar and press "Enter" to see Jordan Klepper of Trevor Noah's Daily Show asking attendees at a Trump rally about conspiracy theories:

https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/778572065146187776?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

For one thing, Hillary may have AIDS due to Bill's hanging around with Magic Johnson. Obama is a Muslim terrorist. "He does the Muslim principles as far as jewelry is concerned." (Apparently Muslims don't wear jewelry during certain months?)

"Barack Obama had big part of 9/11."

"Which part?"

"Not being around. Always on vacation. Never in the office."

"Why do you think Barack Obama wasn't in the Oval Office on 9/11?"

"That, I don't know. I'd like to get to the bottom of that."

There's a lot more. And you know it's true, because they got it off Twitter and Facebook.

Charlie Pierce at Esquire says:

Something spiraled out of control here, an unleashing of the hateful, paranoid id at the expense of logic, reason, and common decency. Obviously some of these people were just dumb, like the guy who wanted to "get to the bottom" of why Obama wasn't in the Oval Office on 9/11. (Hint: It may have been because he was an Illinois state senator at the time.) But there was more at play here. It was a reckless and gleeful disregard for facts, evidence, and truth.

And:

The dark heart of birtherism ran through it all. People threw out wild accusations about the president—which, as they readily admitted, they have no evidence for—some of which were totally incongruous. The only thing uniting the claims was that they made Obama something Other Than Us. Whenever Klepper used their logic against them, their brains short-circuited.

550% Increase In Syrian Refugees? Not Nearly Enough.

Click here for an article at Politifact entitled "Donald Trump again fails to screen out the falsehood in oft-repeated claim on Syrian refugees." The Trump claim Politifact is investigating is as follows:

"We must immediately suspend immigration from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism until such time as proven vetting mechanisms have been put in place," he told the crowd in Cleveland on July 21.

"My opponent has called for a radical 550 percent increase in Syrian, think of this, think of this. ... A 550 percent increase in Syrian refugees on top of existing massive refugee flows coming into our country already under the leadership of President Obama," he said. "She proposes this despite the fact that there’s no way to screen these refugees in order to find out who they are or where they come from. I only want to admit individuals into our country who will support our values and love our people."

They rate the statement half true; the non-vetting part is false, but the 550% figure is correct. Here is Politifact's description of the vetting process in place today:

According to the U.S. refugees admissions program, created in 1980 and retooled after 9/11, a would-be refugee must first get a referral from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, a U.S. embassy or a recognized non-government organization. The U.N. process takes four to 10 months, and only about 1 percent are recommended for resettlement.

And that's before the United States begins its probe, where the names, biographical information and fingerprints are run through federal terrorism and criminal databases. In addition, the refugees are interviewed by Department of Homeland Security officials. If they pass those hurdles, they also have to pass medical screening, have a sponsor agency, pass "cultural orientation" classes and be examined for another security clearance.

However, Politifact fails to put the 550% figure in its proper context. They state the following:

Compared to other countries, the United States has accepted very few – about 2,000 last year, for example. Half are children. Only about 2 percent are single men of combat age, the mostly likely demographic for a would-be terrorist.

President Barack Obama said in 2015 that he would increase the number to 10,000.

Then, during a Sept. 20, 2015, appearance on CBS' Face the Nation, Clinton said that, given the scope of the problem, "I think the United States has to do more, and I would like to see us move from what is a good start with 10,000 to 65,000, and begin immediately to put into place the mechanisms for vetting the people that we would take in."

The 10,000 figure is shockingly low, compared to the number of refugees accepted by other countries, mostly in Europe. Canada, for instance, has accepted and resettled 25,000 Syrian refugees -- 150% more than the U.S. Canada is absorbing that number of refugees into a country with a population of 33 million. If the U.S., with a population of 330 million, were to accept the same proportion of refugees, the number would be 250,000. So the U.S. increase in the number of refugees accepted would be an increase of 2,400% -- just to equal Canada. The 550% figure seems large until you realize that the starting point of 10,000, into a country with a population of 330 million, is extremely ungenerous.

By June of 2016, Germany, with a population of 80 million, had accepted 800,000 Syrian refugees. To equal that rate, the U.S. would have to accept 3.3 million refugees -- an increase of 7,900%.

Another way of looking at it: Canada has accepted a number of Syrian refugees that is ballpark, 1/1,000 of its population, .001%. Germany has accepted a number equal to 1/100th of its population, .01%. The U.S. has accepted a number equal to .0003% of its population.

In that context, does a 550% increase seem unreasonable?

History Of GOP Racism Since 1948

Well, key to the story of GOP racism is Strom Thurmond, who was a Democratic senator from South Carolina (a Dixiecrat) at the time. He led the racist white southern Democrat contingent in their mass exodus from the GOP to the Democrats in 1964, after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act (followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965). This 17-minute video is by Susie Sampson at Newsy News.

Meet The Alt-Right

On the same day Hillary Clinton mentioned the "basket of deplorables," the alt-right gave a news conference. Read about it here.

Click here for an image of "The Deplorables." From left to right, the figures are Roger Stone, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Eric Trump, Mike Pence, The Donald, Pepe the Frog, Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump Jr., Alex Jones, and Milo Yiannopoulos.

What Is RT?

RT is Russia Today, a Kremlin-sponsored television show. It features programs anchored by such American luminaries as Larry King, Ed Schultz, and Jesse Ventura. King recently interviewed Donald Trump, who happily lambasted America, especially the media (he claims he was doing an interview with King, an old friend, and didn't know it was on RT). The Russians are over the moon about this interview, a real coup. Click here to learn about this channel, which claims to be simply a state-sponsored channel which does real journalism, like the CBC and the BBC; others feel it's more an outlet for Russian propaganda.

Krugman On The Trump/Putin Bromance

Click here for an article at The New York Times by Nobel-winning economist and Princeton professor Paul Krugman, entitled "Thugs and Kisses." It's an explanation of Russia's position in the world today as a regional, not a global, power, and of the attraction right-wingers in America feel for an authoritarian state run by a political strongman.

The Achievements Of St. Ronnie

Click here for an article at In These Times by Susan J. Douglas entitled "The Enduring Lies of Ronald Reagan." Here's one paragraph:

Also forgotten is Reagan’s own embarrassing propensity to just make things up. Reagan was a dunce and a fabricator. One of his most famous assertions was, “Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do,” and he maintained, wrongly, that sulfur dioxide emitted from Mount St. Helens was greater than that emitted by cars over a 10-year period. (In one day, cars emit 40 times what Mount St. Helens released in a day even at its peak activity.) In 1985, Reagan praised the P.W. Botha’s apartheid regime of South Africa for eliminating segregation, a blunder then-Press Secretary Larry Speakes had to correct a few days later.

A statement I found telling was that in contrast with the remarkably scandal-free Obama administration, "Eight senior officials in his administration were indicted."

WARNING - DON'T READ THIS.

Or if you do, shower afterward.

Click here (only if you have a strong stomach) for an article at Crooks & Liars by Robyn Pennacchia, posted with permission from Wonkette, entitled "Stormfront Neo-Nazis Want Your Kids To Catch Pokemons, Jews."

A little background. Stormfront is a Neo-Nazi site; Wikipedia describes it as "the Web's first major racial hate site," and says that it "began in 1990 as an online bulletin board for white nationalist David Duke's campaign for United States Senator of Louisiana." (Click here for the Stormfront Wikipedia entry.) Some organization called "The Year in Hate and Extremism, 2015," said:

The total of registered users is just shy of 300,000, a fairly astounding number for a site run by an ex-felon and former Alabama Klan leader. And that doesn't include thousands of visitors who never register as users. At press time, Stormfront ranked as the Internet's 13,648th most popular site, while the NAACP site, by comparison, ranked 32,640th.

Stormfront, unfortunately, is a real thing, to be taken seriously.

From the Wonkette article:

Ever since Donald Trump first announced his intention to run for president of the United States, neo-Nazi sites like Stormfront have seen a massive surge in traffic from people beginning to discover just how much they have in common with white supremacists. In fact, they've even had to change servers in order to accommodate all the new recruits!

Clearly feeling the adrenaline rush from realizing how much they have to offer an unfortunately large segment of the population, Stormfront has set its sights on drawing even more people into their web of hate. Well, not people so much as children! Yes, they have decided that it is time for your American children to join the Hitler Youth.

This past Tuesday, Stormfront writer Andrew Anglin was thrilled to announce that "[a]n enterprising Stormer has been handing out fliers at Pokémon GO gyms for the purpose of converting children and teens to HARDCORE NEO-NAZISM!"

No, really! That is their plan. They are all going to go to whatever the hell Pokémon gyms are and distribute flyers to children about how they need to convince their parents to vote for Donald Trump so that "hooknosed Jews" and black people don't ruin their lives and kill their mothers. Fun!

Readers are urged to wear their MAGA (Make America Great Again) hats while distributing the flyers.

The Stormfront article references, in turn, an article at Daily Stormer; click here for its Wikipedia entry, which starts off:

The Daily Stormer is an American neo-Nazi and white supremacist news and commentary website.[1][2] Its editor is Andrew Anglin, who founded it on July 4, 2013, as a faster-paced replacement for his previous website Total Fascism, which he launched the year before.

The site has been noted for its use of humor and Internet memes, which have been likened to the imageboard 4chan and cited as attractions for a younger and more ideologically diverse audience.[3] The website supports Russia and endorses Donald Trump for president. Guest writers have included black hat hacker weev and 8chan founder Fredrick Brennan. While some white nationalist authors have praised The Daily Stormer's reach, others have taken issue with its content and tone.

The Daily Stormer proclaims itself "The World's Leading Alt-Right Web Site; click here for the article in question. I won't repeat the reprehensible material in the article, entitled "Pokemon GO Nazi Challenge"; read the Crooks & Liars/Wonkette article for yourself (or not; you might be happier if you don't).

Tweety - My Hero!

Wow! 24 hours after bullying and browbeating that desperate opportunistic weasel Giuliani into admitting that President Obama was born in Hawaii, Chris Matthews helps Katy Tur and Joy Reid absolutely crush the miserable ex-congressman Jack Kingston on the issue. Watch this -- it's great! Kingston swallows hard and watches his own destruction with his mouth hanging open. (I wasn't able to embed this video; copy this into your address bar)

http://crooksandliars.com/2016/09/hardball-panel-crushes-jack-kingstons-lame

Katie Tur gets so upset she misspeaks twice, saying "Donald Trump" when she means "Barack Obama," but her intensity shines through.

Is Trump Obsessed With Shooting People?

On January 28, 2016, Trump said:

"I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?"

Today, at a rally in Pensacola, he said of Hillary Clinton:

"Because she's being so protected, she could walk into this arena right now and shoot someone with 20,000 people watching, right smack in the middle of the heart, and she wouldn't be prosecuted,” Trump said. “That's what's happened to our country."

Trump The Tough Guy

Click here for an article in The L.A. Times by Seema Mehta entitled "Trump: Iranian soldiers who harass U.S. Navy 'will be shot out of the water.'" According to the article:

Last weekend, seven boats containing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy approached the U.S. coastal patrol ship Firebolt in the Persian Gulf. One of the boats stopped directly in the ship’s path, forcing it to maneuver to avoid a collision.

Today, addressing a rally in Pensacola:

"With Iran, when they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats and they make gestures at our people that they shouldn't be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water," Trump said.

President Trump would take the nation to war over Iranian "gestures." (Oh, and the people in the audience that appeared onscreen behind him jumped to their feet and applauded wildly.) He went on in the same speech to call Hillary Clinton "unstable" and "trigger-happy."

Matt Lauer Video

Parody interview on the Today show, with Matt Lauer "interviewing" Will Ferrell as Dr. Rick Marshall:

News Flash: Iraq Has Oil!

Donald Trump in the NBC Commander in Chief Forum:

People don't know this about Iraq, but they have among the largest oil reserves in the world-- in the entire world.

Excuse me, Donald? "People don't know this"? Sounds like he just learned it.

Double Standard

There's been a lot of Internet chatter about how Clinton and Trump are held to different standards, and there were a number of instances of that in the NBC Commander in Chief Forum, moderated by Matt Lauer. But there was one instance of it that I haven't read reported, and that I found quite offensive:

LAUER: Secretary Clinton, let’s talk about your vote in favor of the war in Iraq. You’ve since said it was a mistake.

CLINTON: Mm-hmm.

LAUER: Obviously, it was not something you said you would do again. I asked before for people to raise their hand if you served in Iraq. Can you do it again? How do you think these people feel when the person running to be their commander-in-chief says her vote to go to war in Iraq was a mistake?

The camera panned around the roomful of veterans in the audience when Lauer said "Can you do it again?", and as they raised their hands, there's no doubt it was an uncomfortable moment for Clinton. But when Trump said:

"And I happened to hear Hillary Clinton say that I was not against the war in Iraq. I was totally against the war in Iraq. From a — you can look at Esquire magazine from ’04. You can look at before that.

And I was against the war in Iraq because I said it’s going to totally destabilize the Middle East, which it has. It has absolutely been a disastrous war ..."

Lauer's response? Crickets.

Not only that, but Trump has been extremely outspoken in his criticism of the decision to invade Iraq, although not before or at the beginning of the invasion, as he repeatedly claims, but later, when popular opinion had turned against the war; he repeatedly cites an article in August 2004 -- nearly a year and a half after the invasion -- where he said:

My life is seeing everything in terms of "How would I handle that?" Look at the war in Iraq and the mess that we're in. I would never have handled it that way. Does anybody really believe that Iraq is going to be a wonderful democracy where people are going to run down to the voting box and gently put in their ballot and the winner is happily going to step up to lead the county? C'mon. Two minutes after we leave, there's going to be a revolution, and the meanest, toughest, smartest, most vicious guy will take over. And he'll have weapons of mass destruction, which Saddam didn't have.

What was the purpose of this whole thing? Hundreds and hundreds of young people killed. And what about the people coming back with no arms and legs? Not to mention the other side. All those Iraqi kids who've been blown to pieces. And it turns out that all of the reasons for the war were blatantly wrong. All this for nothing!

What if Lauer had read that quote to the audience of veterans? But no -- Lauer didn't even mention it.

Click here for an article in The New York Times the next day entitled "Matt Lauer Loses the War in a Battle Between the Candidates." It contains goodies such as:

Candidates should expect to be challenged. They’re applying for a challenging job. But where Mr. Lauer treated Mrs. Clinton like someone running for president, he treated Mr. Trump like someone running to figure out how to be president, eventually.

That interview was the apotheosis of this presidential campaign’s forced marriage of entertainment and news. The host of NBC’s morning show interviewed the former star of its reality show “The Apprentice,” and the whole thing played out as farce.

And:

In general, though, Mr. Lauer’s questioning of Mr. Trump was like watching one student quiz another to prep for a test neither had done the reading for. The host asked soft open-ended questions that invited the candidate to answer with word clouds.

Mr. Lauer prefaced one question by saying that “nobody would expect you” to have read deeply into foreign policy before running for president. He asked Mr. Trump if he would be “prepared on Day 1,” a yes-or-no question that will elicit only one answer from any candidate not about to drop out.

And here's a foreboding comment:

Mr. Lauer, fortunately, is not going to moderate a presidential debate. But Fox News’s Chris Wallace is, and he recently said that he does not consider it his job to truth-squad candidates as a moderator. Let’s not mistake who this helps most: the fact-checking website PolitiFact has found far more false statements from Mr. Trump than from Mrs. Clinton.

Actually, Politifact checked Trump on 246 statements and found 53% of them to be either "Pants on Fire" or "Mostly False"; they checked Clinton on 248 statements and found 13% of them "PoF" or "MF."

Click here for another devastating critique of Lauer's performance, this one from Jonathan Chait at New York magazine, entitled "Matt Lauer’s Pathetic Interview of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Is the Scariest Thing I’ve Seen in This Campaign."

Click here for a complete transcript of the Commander in Chief Forum.

Trump on Libya

He's saying repeatedly that Hillary's support for Libyan intervention and the overthrow of Khadafi was a horrible blunder. Here's his position at the time (February 28, 2011; the invasion was on March 19.) The clip is 1 minute, 45 seconds:

The Gospel According To The Donald

Trump being interviewed by Christian Broadcasting Network godbotherer David Brody at a Trump hotel and golf course on the Pacific coast:

"David Brody: “Who is God to you? What are some of your thoughts on this? Clearly, you’re a smart man, you’re a smart businessman, you’ve contemplated this before or have you contemplated this?”

Donald Trump: “Well I say God is the ultimate. You know you look at this? Here we are on the Pacific Ocean. How did I ever own this? I bought it 15 years ago. I made one of the great deals they say ever. I have no more mortgage on it as I will certify and represent to you. And I was able to buy this and make a great deal. That’s what I want to do for the country. Make great deals. We have to, we have to bring it back, but God is the ultimate. I mean God created this (points to his golf course and nature surrounding it), and here’s the Pacific Ocean right behind us. So nobody, no thing, no there’s nothing like God.”

How could the charlatans and hypocrites on the religious right not love such a man?

I Recommend This Article - By Glenn Beck!

Quelle surprise. Click here for Glenn Beck's article in The New York Times entitled "Empathy for Black Lives Matter."

Glenn Beck, the sweet voice of reason? What's going on here, anyway?

Trump's New Hire - The Bottom Of The Barrel?

Click here for an article at The Atlantic by Michelle Cottle entitled "Meet the New Bossie, Same as the Old Bossie."

David Bossie is now Trump's deputy campaign manager. He has been described as the Inspector Javert or the Captain Ahab of the anti-Clinton forces; perhaps no one has so single-mindedly dedicated his career, over the last 25 years, to taking down the Clintons:

The 50-year-old crusader is, in many ways, an embodiment of the toxic, obsessive, vendetta-driven political spirit that animates Trumpworld.

One of Bossie's "claims to fame" is his work on the infamous Willie Horton ad, so effective against Michael Dukakis in 1988. Intent on proving that years before, a young woman named Susan Coleman had committed suicide because she had become pregnant by her law professor, Bill Clinton, he and a sidekick burst into the hospital room where Ms. Coleman's father was recovering from a stroke in order to "question the shaken mother about her daughter's suicide." Bossie later expressed regrets, saying that the story had made his (Bossie's) grandmother cry.

He immersed himself in the expensive and pointless dead end known as Whitewater, and had served 18 months in the position of chief investigator for committee chairman Dan Burton when he "... was forced to resign for questionable tactics. (Specifically, he distributed selectively edited transcripts of investigators’ jailhouse conversations with the Clinton crony Webb Hubbell.) The New York Times reported that then-Speaker Newt Gingrich himself had pressed for Bossie’s ouster because the investigator had 'become an embarrassment to the Republicans.'" Too extreme for Newt Gingrich? That's quite an accomplishment.

Bossie produced the anti-Hillary movie Hillary: The Movie, which was the subject of the infamous Citizens United Supreme Court decision which allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts on political donations.

Steve Bannon, Roger Ailes, David Bossie: quite a crew Trump has surrounded himself with.

Clinton, Trump, Held To Different Standards

Click here for an article at the Washington Post by Paul Waldman entitled "Trump's history of corruption is mind-boggling. So why is Clinton supposedly the corrupt one?"

It starts with mention of the Trump pay-for-play scandal involving the Florida attorney general, Pam Bondi. Her department was examining the possibility of joining New York State in a fraud prosecution of Trump University, and Bondi was up for re-election when she solicited a donation from her old friend Donald Trump. She received a $25,000 donation from the Trump Foundation (an illegal donation, because non-profit foundations are not allowed to donate to political committees). Shortly thereafter, a decision was made to drop the Trump University investigation. Then there's the attempt to cover up the donation, which resulted in a $2,500 fine by the IRS, but that's another story.

A section:

The story of something like the Clinton Foundation gets stretched out over months and months with repeated tellings, always with the insistence that questions are being raised and the implication that shady things are going on, even if there isn’t any evidence at a particular moment to support that idea.

When it comes to Trump, on the other hand, we’ve seen a very different pattern. Here’s what happens: A story about some kind of corrupt dealing emerges, usually from the dogged efforts of one or a few journalists; it gets discussed for a couple of days; and then it disappears. Someone might mention it now and again, but the news organizations don’t assign a squad of reporters to look into every aspect of it, so no new facts are brought to light and no new stories get written.

But the truth is that you’d have to work incredibly hard to find a politician who has the kind of history of corruption, double-dealing, and fraud that Donald Trump has. The number of stories which could potentially deserve hundreds and hundreds of articles is absolutely staggering. Here’s a partial list:

Trump’s casino bankruptcies, which left investors holding the bag while he skedaddled with their money Trump’s habit of refusing to pay contractors who had done work for him, many of whom are struggling small businesses.

Trump University, which includes not only the people who got scammed and the Florida investigation, but also a similar story from Texas where the investigation into Trump U was quashed.

The Trump Institute, another get-rich-quick scheme in which Trump allowed a couple of grifters to use his name to bilk people out of their money.

The Trump Network, a multi-level marketing venture (a.k.a. pyramid scheme) that involved customers mailing in a urine sample which would be analyzed to produce for them a specially formulated package of multivitamins.

Trump Model Management, which reportedly had foreign models lie to customs officials and work in the U.S. illegally, and kept them in squalid conditions while they earned almost nothing for the work they did.

Trump’s employment of foreign guest workers at his resorts, which involves a claim that he can’t find Americans to do the work.

Trump’s use of hundreds of undocumented workers from Poland in the 1980s, who were paid a pittance for their illegal work.

Trump’s history of being charged with housing discrimination.

Trump’s connections to mafia figures involved in New York construction.

The time Trump paid the Federal Trade Commission $750,000 over charges that he violated anti-trust laws when trying to take over a rival casino company.

The fact that Trump is now being advised by Roger Ailes, who was forced out as Fox News chief when dozens of women came forward to charge him with sexual harassment. According to the allegations, Ailes’s behavior was positively monstrous; as just one indicator, his abusive and predatory actions toward women were so well-known and so loathsome that in 1968 the morally upstanding folks in the Nixon administration refused to allow him to work there despite his key role in getting Nixon elected.

Donald Trump's Hate Speech

Click here for an article entitled "Trump's Blood Libel & Press Failure" at Talking Points Memo (TPM) by Josh Marshall. He says:

Even now, after all that's happened, most political reporters find themselves either unwilling or unable to identify Donald Trump's tirades as hate speech. But they fit the textbook definition, inasmuch as it's even a useful concept.

Some relevant quotes:

There's no question that what Trump's Wednesday night speech was was hate speech, a tirade filled with yelling, a snarling voice, air chopped to bits with slashing hands and through it all a story of American victims helpless before a looming threat from dangerous, predatory outsiders.

These families have suffered horribly but no more than the families of victims of American murderers and Americans who committed DUI fatalities. If we went out and found victims who'd suffered grievously at the hands of Jews or blacks and paraded them around the country before angry crowds the wrongness and danger of doing so would be obvious.

There's no evidence that undocumented immigrants commit more crimes than documented or naturalized immigrants. Indeed, there is solid evidence that immigrants commit fewer crimes than the native born. Simple logic tells us that undocumented immigrants face greater consequences for being apprehended by police and thus likely are more careful to avoid it. They're likely more apt to avoid contact with authorities than the rest of us.

Indeed, my hypothetical about Jews and African-Americans is no hypothetical. Anyone who is familiar with the history of the Jim Crow South or 1930s Germany and the centuries of anti-Semitism that preceded it will tell you that the celebration and valorization of victims was always a central part of sustaining bigotry, fear and oppression.

Watch Trump's speeches, with the yelling, the reddened face, the demand for vengeance and you see there's little to distinguish them from what we see at Aryan Nations or other white hate rallies that we all immediately recognize as reprehensible, wrong and frankly terrifying. This isn't 'rough' language or 'hard edged' rhetoric. It's hate speech.

Disgusting Tweet By A Trump Surrogate

This little gem was tweeted by Trump surrogate "Pastor" Mark Burns:
He deleted it shortly after a firestorm of outraged tweets, but not before he started screaming during an interview on MSNBC, in an article at RaW Story entitled "Black Trump surrogate Mark Burns goes ballistic defending Clinton blackface cartoon on MSNBC." Click here for the article, by Arturo Garcia.

Trump On Torture

"Would I approve waterboarding? You bet your ass I would. In a heartbeat. I would approve more than that. It works. And if it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway for what they do to us."

Evolution Of The Politics Of Climate Change

This video clip, 10:58 in length, traces U.S. political thinking on climate change (it used to be a matter of some bipartisan consensus!). It's from Vox, called "Ten years since an Inconvenient Truth" (Al Gore's film), by Joss Fong and Joe Posner:

Cringe-Inducing Alt-Right Video

This little beauty was concocted by a group called American Renaissance, headed by Jared Taylor (that's him playing the sax in the video). The alt-right "might just save our nation"?

Trump's Links To White Supremacists

Click here for a powerful Clinton ad showing clips of KKK and other white supremacist figures expressing support for Trump. It's 1 minute, 11 seconds. (I think you have to un-mute it to get the sound.) It's followed by a bunch of anti-Clinton comments.

Wisconsin Politics, Scott Walker's Career, Race In Milwaukee

Click here for an article in the New Republic by Alec MacGillis entitled "The Unelectable Whiteness of Scott Walker." It's a long read, but a good one.

Republican Support For Obama

I've lifted this in its entirety from Quora by James McInness in answer to the question: "Why do people seem to think Republicans are out to make Obama's presidency difficult?"

“I think we are called to pray, I think we are called to pray for our country, our leaders and, yes, even Barack Obama. But I think we should be very specific about how we pray, we should pray like Psalms 109:8 says. [May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership.]” - Sen David Perdue (R) (the rest of the verse calls for the death of the leader, making of his children barren and beggars, blotting out his family line, etc.)

“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” - Sen. Mitch McConnell (R)

“We’ve gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign.” - Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R)

“For the next two years, we can’t let you [Obama] succeed in anything. That’s our ticket to coming back.” - Sen. Mitch McConnell (R)

“If he [Obama] was for it, we had to be against it.” - Sen. George Voinovich (R)

“We're going to do everything — and I mean everything we can do — to kill it [President Obama’s policy agenda], stop it, slow it down, whatever we can.” - Rep. John Boehner (R)

"The strategy of being obstructionist can work or fail. So far it's working for us." - Sen. Trent Lott (R)

[T]he Senate confirmed fewer of [Obama's] district and circuit nominees than every president back to Jimmy Carter, and the lowest percentage of nominees - 58% - than any president in American history at this point in a President's first term. By comparison, Presidents George W. Bush, Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Reagan and Carter had 77%, 90%, 96%, 98%, and 97% of their nominees confirmed after two years, respectively.

Senate Republicans' mass obstruction of Obama's judges stands in stark contrast to the treatment afforded to past presidents. Indeed, the Senate confirmed fewer judges during Obama's first two years in office than it did during the same period in the Carter Administration, even though the judiciary was 40 percent smaller while Carter was in office. - From a report by the Alliance on Justice

Historical Ranking Of U.S. Presidents

Click here for the article in Wikipedia entitled "Historical rankings of Presidents of the United States."

The surveys I like are those of historians and scholars, not general opinion polls like Gallup. The latest, taken in 2015, ranks Obama at 18th out of 43; W. at 35; Clinton at 8; Poppy Bush at 17; Reagan at 11; Carter at 26; Ford at 24; Nixon at 34; Johnson at 12; Kennedy at 14; Eisenhower at 7; Truman at 6; Roosevelt at 3; Hoover at 38; Coolidge at 27; Harding at 42.

Lincoln is 1; Washington is 2; Roosevelt is 3; Wilson is 4; Truman is 5.

Buchanan is 43; Harding is 42; Andrew Johnson is 41; Franklin Pierce is 40; William Henry Harrison is 39.

Trump Youth - Frightening

Need a good scare? Watch this clip; it's 1 minute, 15 seconds. The guy's name is Jayme Liardi.



From an article at Raw Story by David Edwards entitled "‘Trump Youth’ group run by Hitler apologist will teach millennials to root out ‘parasites’":

A website for the group encourages young voters to “[e]mbrace your destiny and become a part of the greatest battle the world has ever seen.”

“We Millennials are destined for greatness; no longer will we sit idle and watch everything our forefathers built be turned to dust,” the website says. “Our world is hurting, and it is up to us, the Youth, to become the Hero Generation and to save the world.”

The article goes on:

Writing on his personal website earlier this year, Liardi said that he did not understand the “truth” about Adolf Hitler until he read Mein Kampf.

“I began to seek out the history without the propaganda– I wanted to understand the mind of the supposed most evil man in history,” he wrote. “So I studied the events leading up to the war, the german Weimar Republic, WWI and the climate of Europe in the early 20th century. And yes, I read Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’.”

“I quickly realized that I was not being given all of the facts–that what passes for history is merely rehashed propaganda from the war,” Liardi opined. “So [I] began to follow the trail of other patriots and freedom fighters before me, on a quest for truth, justice and an end to exploitation and enslavement.”

“WWII was a turning point in human history. A battle of opposite ideologies. Nationalism vs Globalism, International Communism vs ‘Nazism’,” he said. “We too are at a [turning] point in human history; it is five minutes to midnight and we are quickly running out of time. Will it be Globalism or will it be Nationalism.”

Vancouver Real Estate Crash Imminent?

Or already happening? Click here for an article at HuffPo entitled "Vancouver Housing Crash Could Be Bad. It Could Be Good Too" by Jesse Ferraras.

Goldwater's Warning About The Religious Right

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.” - Barry Goldwater

But Reagan welcomed them anyway.

This is the opinion of Mike Bowerbank on Quora:

The GOP went wrong when they became the party of God. (Thus becoming the American Hezbollah.) No compromise. Stand on principle. Claim to have God's blessings. Attack your opponents as doing evil. It started when the evangelicals took over and it's only gotten worse.

Add in a 24-hour-a-day outrage-generating machine like FOX News, and you have the recipe for the rise of Trump. FOX News was created to keep the base angry - and they're good at that. Angry people get out to vote. However, FOX created a voting bloc monster that they can no longer control. This bloc put Trump on the national ballot.

In the days of Eisenhower, the GOP was a party of sanity and balance, aside from a few very bad ideas (Wetback, intervening in Iran). Every president makes bad decisions, but lately, the entire GOP is like a laundry list of everything that is wrong with the United States.

Look, Ma: No Parachute

Click here for an article at digitaltrends.com by Kelly Hodgins entitled "Here's all the tech that Luke Aikens used for that insane 25,000 foot skydive without a parachute." (I take exception to the word "insane.")

Luke Aikins jumps from 25,000 feet without a wingsuit or parachute:

Skydivers "Human Meteors" During Perseid Meteor Shower

Click here for an article at notey.com entitled Human ‘meteors’: Skydivers shoot across night sky in Perseids plunge:

Stargazers watching the spectacular Perseid meteor shower over Spain’s Canary Islands got more than they bargained for when four LED-suited skydivers joined the shooting stars for an unforgettable show of lights.

The skydivers performed the stunt in La Palma to coincide with the annual Perseid meteor shower and honor the cosmic fireworks.

Synchronized Wind Tunnel Dancing

The next Olympic sport?

Dick Cheney Quotation, 1994

"Once you got to Iraq and took it over---took down Saddam Hussein's government---then what are you going to put in its place?

That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west. Part of it---eastern Iraq---the Iranians would like to claim; they fought over it for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.

It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq."

This Can't Be For Real - Can It?

Triumph the Comic Insult Dog Conducts a Trump Focus Group:

Anti-Hillary Protests -- In 1994

This is a post by Digby on her blog, Hullabaloo:

In his biography of Hillary Clinton, A Woman in Charge, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Carl Bernstein writes about the 1994 Reform Riders campaign, a nationwide bus tour designed to build support for President Clinton’s health-care reform agenda. The idea was to emulate the famous 1960's Freedom Rides but the campaign was plagued with protesters. In Portland, Ore., the route was blocked by an “angry anti-Clinton mob” who had their own bus, which was covered in red tape and dragged by a tow truck with a sign reading THIS IS CLINTON CARE. A plane bearing protest signs flew overhead. Hillary Clinton met the Reform Rider activists in Seattle where she delivered a speech on health care. The result was a mob scene. Here’s Bernstein:

"By the time the caravan had reached Seattle the threat of violence was constant. All week, talk radio hosts, both in the Northwest and on national broadcasts, implored their listeners to confront the Reform Riders to “show Hillary” their feelings about her. This "call to arms," as she described it, attracted menacing hordes, many of whom identified themselves as militia members, tax resisters and anti-abortion militants. She estimated that at least half of the 4,500 people in the audience of her Seattle speech were protesters. She agreed for the first time to wear a bulletproof vest. Rarely had she felt endangered, but this was different. During her speech, the catcalls, screaming, and heckling drowned out much of her remarks. When she left the stage and got into a limousine, hundreds of protesters surrounded the car. They were rabid with hatred. Several arrests were made by the Secret Service, which impounded two guns and a knife."

She had to wear a bulletproof vest because people were trying to kill her --- over her health care plan.

Clinton Will Put Miners And Coal Companies Out Of Business?

I've repeatedly heard on TV or read on the Internet that Hillary Clinton told a West Virginia audience "We're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business." That sounds like an enormous insensitive blunder, but here is her statement in its full context:

So for example, I'm the only candidate who has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right?

And we're going to make it clear that we don't want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories.

Now we've got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don't want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on.

So whether it's coal country or Indian country or poor urban areas, there is a lot of poverty in America. We have gone backwards. We were moving in the right direction. In the '90s, more people were lifted out of poverty than any time in recent history.

Because of the terrible economic policies of the Bush administration, President Obama was left with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and people fell back into poverty because they lost jobs, they lost homes, they lost opportunities, and hope.

So I am passionate about this, which is why I have put forward specific plans about how we incentivize more jobs, more investment in poor communities, and put people to work.

Trump Exposes Trump - YouTube

YouTube: 5 minutes, 43 seconds.

Compilation Of Trump Self-contradictions

Democrats' Advantage In The Electoral College

The electoral college consists of 538 members, called electors. Each state has a number of electors equal to the number of its congressional representatives plus two for its senators. (D.C. is given a number equal to the least populous state -- currently three.) Seven states, along with D.C., have three electors; California is the largest, with 55. Texas has 38; Florida and New York have 29 each; Illinois and Pennsylvania have 20 each. 270 votes are required to win the presidency.

Respected nonpartisan political handicapper Nathan Gonzales has recently rated the states as solidly Republican or Democrat, leaning R or D, and tossups. He believes there are 217 safe votes for Democrats, with 32 leaning D, for a total of 249, only 21 short of the magic number of 270. Republicans, though, have only 191 safe votes, and according to Gonzales, none of the states lean R; they are 79 votes short. 88 votes are rated as a tossup.

Belmont and Fishtown

Social scientist Charles Murray writes here in the Wall Street Journal of two imaginary composite communities, a well-off, educated Belmont and a working-class Fishtown:

To illustrate just how wide the gap has grown between the new upper class and the new lower class, let me start with the broader upper-middle and working classes from which they are drawn, using two fictional neighborhoods that I hereby label Belmont (after an archetypal upper-middle-class suburb near Boston) and Fishtown (after a neighborhood in Philadelphia that has been home to the white working class since the Revolution).

To be assigned to Belmont, the people in the statistical nationwide databases on which I am drawing must have at least a bachelor's degree and work as a manager, physician, attorney, engineer, architect, scientist, college professor or content producer in the media. To be assigned to Fishtown, they must have no academic degree higher than a high-school diploma. If they work, it must be in a blue-collar job, a low-skill service job such as cashier, or a low-skill white-collar job such as mail clerk or receptionist.

People who qualify for my Belmont constitute about 20% of the white population of the U.S., ages 30 to 49. People who qualify for my Fishtown constitute about 30% of the white population of the U.S., ages 30 to 49.

I specify white, meaning non-Latino white, as a way of clarifying how broad and deep the cultural divisions in the U.S. have become. Cultural inequality is not grounded in race or ethnicity. I specify ages 30 to 49—what I call prime-age adults—to make it clear that these trends are not explained by changes in the ages of marriage or retirement.

He goes on to illustrate changes that have occurred in Belmont and Fishtown since 1960, using the categories of marriage, single parenthood, industriousness (unemployment), crime, and religiosity.

He comments on the enormous cultural differences between the two communities that have grown since 1960, when society was much more egalitarian, and on the growth of the "power elite":

It gets worse. A subset of Belmont consists of those who have risen to the top of American society. They run the country, meaning that they are responsible for the films and television shows you watch, the news you see and read, the fortunes of the nation's corporations and financial institutions, and the jurisprudence, legislation and regulations produced by government. They are the new upper class, even more detached from the lives of the great majority of Americans than the people of Belmont—not just socially but spatially as well. The members of this elite have increasingly sorted themselves into hyper-wealthy and hyper-elite ZIP Codes that I call the SuperZIPs.

... the nation's power elite does in fact live in a world that is far more culturally rarefied and isolated than the world of the power elite in 1960.

And the isolation is only going to get worse. Increasingly, the people who run the country were born into that world. Unlike the typical member of the elite in 1960, they have never known anything but the new upper-class culture. We are now seeing more and more third-generation members of the elite. Not even their grandparents have been able to give them a window into life in the rest of America.

It's a problem. What can be done about it?

... the most successful Americans will continue to trend toward consolidation and isolation as a class. Changes in marginal tax rates on the wealthy won't make a difference. Increasing scholarships for working-class children won't make a difference.

The only thing that can make a difference is the recognition among Americans of all classes that a problem of cultural inequality exists and that something has to be done about it. That "something" has nothing to do with new government programs or regulations. Public policy has certainly affected the culture, unfortunately, but unintended consequences have been as grimly inevitable for conservative social engineering as for liberal social engineering.

The "something" that I have in mind has to be defined in terms of individual American families acting in their own interests and the interests of their children.

Murray is a right-wing guy with the American Enterprise Institute, but this article is worth reading.

The Republican Dilemma, 2016

“Do we run the risk of depressing our base by repudiating the guy, or do we run the risk of being tarred and feathered by independents for not repudiating him?” asked Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster working on many of this year’s races. “We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”

VPNs (Virtual Private Networks)

Click here for an article at How-to Geek entitled "How to Choose the Best VPN Service for Your Needs." It gives a fairly thorough explanation of VPNs, and gives three recommendations -- StrongVPN, SurfEasy, and Tunnel Bear.

Ezra Klein On Trump

Click here for an article by Ezra Klein at Vox entitled "Donald Trump’s nomination is the first time American politics has left me truly afraid." This is the best, most comprehensive takedown of Trump I've read recently (no doubt there'll be lots more as the election approaches).

Longtime Republican Activist Quits The Party

I've cut-and-pasted this directly from a Digby article at Hullabaloo. She links an article she's written for Salon entitled "The beginning of the end: Trump's nomination signals the collapse of an ideological movement and a political party": click here. (The subheading of the article: "Trump's disturbing speech showed exactly why American conservatism is in its death knell.")

Yesterday I resigned my position in the York Township Republican Committeemen’s Organization. Below is the letter I sent to the chairman explaining my decision.

***********

Chairman Cuzzone:

We come together in political parties to magnify our influence. An organized representative institution can give weight to our will in ways we could not accomplish on our own. Working with others gives us power, but at the cost of constant, calculated compromise. No two people will agree on everything. There is no moral purity in politics.

If compromise is the key to healthy politics, how does one respond when compromise descends into complicity? To preserve a sense of our personal moral accountability we must each define boundaries. For those boundaries to have meaning we must have the courage to protect them, even when the cost is high.

Almost thirty years ago as a teenager in Texas, I attended my first county Republican convention. As a college student I met a young Rick Perry, fresh from his conversion to the GOP, as he was launching his first campaign for statewide office. Through Associated Republicans of Texas I contributed and volunteered for business-friendly Republican state and local candidates.

Here in DuPage County I’ve been a precinct committeeman since 2006. Door to door I’ve canvased my precinct in support of our candidates. Trudging through snow, using a drill to break the frozen ground, I posted signs for candidates on whom I pinned my hopes for better government. Among Illinois Republicans I found an organization that seemed to embody my hopes for the party nationally. Pragmatic, sensible, and focused on solid government, it seemed like a GOP Jurassic Park, where the sensible, reliable Republicans of old still roamed the landscape.

At the national level, the delusions necessary to sustain our Cold War coalition were becoming dangerous long before Donald Trump arrived. From tax policy to climate change, we have found ourselves less at odds with philosophical rivals than with the fundamentals of math, science and objective reality.

The Iraq War, the financial meltdown, the utter failure of supply-side theory, climate denial, and our strange pursuit of theocratic legislation have all been troubling. Yet it seemed that America’s party of commerce, trade, and pragmatism might still have time to sober up. Remaining engaged in the party implied a contribution to that renaissance, an investment in hope. Donald Trump has put an end to that hope.

From his fairy-tale wall to his schoolyard bullying and his flirtation with violent racists, Donald Trump offers America a singular narrative – a tale of cowards. Fearful people, convinced of our inadequacy, trembling before a world alight with imaginary threats, crave a demagogue. Neither party has ever elevated to this level a more toxic figure, one that calls forth the darkest elements of our national character.

With three decades invested in the Republican Party, there is a powerful temptation to shrug and soldier on. Despite the bold rhetoric, we all know Trump will lose. Why throw away a great personal investment over one bad nominee? Trump is not merely a poor candidate, but an indictment of our character. Preserving a party is not a morally defensible goal if that party has lost its legitimacy.

Watching Ronald Reagan as a boy, I recall how bold it was for him to declare ‘morning again’ in America. In a country menaced by Communism and burdened by a struggling economy, the audacity of Reagan’s optimism inspired a generation.

Fast-forward to our present leadership and the nature of our dilemma is clear. I watched Paul Ryan speak at Donald Trump’s convention the way a young child watches his father march off to prison. Thousands of Republican figures that loathe Donald Trump, understand the danger he represents, and privately hope he loses, are publicly declaring their support for him. In Illinois our local and state GOP organizations, faced with a choice, have decided on complicity.

Our leaders’ compromise preserves their personal capital at our collective cost. Their refusal to dissent robs all Republicans of moral cover. Evasion and cowardice has prevailed over conscience. We are now, and shall indefinitely remain, the Party of Donald Trump.

I will not contribute my name, my work, or my character to an utterly indefensible cause. No sensible adult demands moral purity from a political party, but conscience is meaningless without constraints. A party willing to lend its collective capital to Donald Trump has entered a compromise beyond any credible threshold of legitimacy. There is no redemption in being one of the “good Nazis.”

I hereby resign my position as a York Township Republican committeeman. My thirty-year tenure as a Republican is over.

Sincerely,

Chris Ladd

Gary Kasparov On Trump's Convention Speech

Gary Kasparov, who has been a prominent Russian dissident for many years, now self-exiled because he fears if he returned to Russia he would never be allowed to leave, tweeted the following:

I’ve heard this sort of speech a lot in the last 15 years and trust me, it doesn’t sound any better in Russian.

Bill Clinton Feels Your Pain

Watch this clip of the Big Dog making an effective emotional connection with a questioner at one of the Bush/Clinton debates in 1992.

Fareed Zakaria At CNN Rebuts Trump's Convention Tirade

This video clip is 4.5 minutes long.
  Ann Coulter (racist? Heaven forfend!) tweeted in response:

I like hearing CNN's Fareed Zakaria ask in a thick Indian accent, "What kind of America do we want to return to?"

Zakaria is a native of India. He became a naturalized American citizen in 2001. He has a bachelor's degree from Yale and a Ph.D. from Harvard.

Coulter later followed up with this gem:

Now, Australian Danielle Pletka says Trump sounds like a national leader "OF RUSSIA." Pro Tip: Try to get Americans tell us what's American.

Pletka too is a naturalized American citizen (since 1992).

Jon Stewart On Colbert, Post Republican Convention

this is a 13.5-minute clip of Jon Stewart on Colbert's show just after Trump's windup of the Republican convention. On his radio show, Sean Hannity (or Lumpy, as Stewart calls him) retorted with what Eric Sullivan at Crooks & Liars called "potty mouth":

He first said, grossly, that "that idiot Jon Stewart" had his "head so far up Obama's ass" and now has his head up Clinton's too. He continued:

"I know you're a rich liberal. Are you donating money to those families, the 46 million American families on food stamps, Jon? Hey, Jon, are you helping out the 50 million Americans in poverty? Hey, Jon, are you going to help use your wealth from all your comedy writers that lay out the material for you, are you going to help pay down the debt that Obama's accumulated?"

Sullivan adds:

Mind you, this is a show Hannity generally tapes from the confines of his mansion in Centre Island, one of the most exclusive and expensive towns in New York. And who knows, maybe he spends moments off-air helping those on food stamps, tackling the issue of poverty in a solutions-focused way, and assisting with national-debt reduction. But the mountains of misinformation he's spread throughout his career has done far more damage than he'd ever be able to make up for.

Thirst For Blood At The Republican Convention

A video clip of Trump supporters who believe Hillary Clinton should be executed for treason.

A video clip of Trump voters who believe Hillary Clinton should be executed for treason.

Chris Christie's Lies Attacking Clinton

Click here for an article in Slate by Fred Kaplan entitled "Let's Count the Lies in Christie's Attack on Clinton." You'll have to scroll down; I couldn't isolate that particular article.

The Chilcot Inquiry And Tony Blair

Click here for an article entitled "The war in Iraq was not a blunder or a mistake. It was a crime." by Owen Jones in The Guardian.

Who's The World-Class Liar, Donald?

Click here for a short video from PoltiFact entitled "Fact-checking Donald Trump's speech calling Hillary Clinton 'a world-class liar.'" In his speech, Trump said:

1. "I was among the earliest to criticize the rush to war (in Iraq), even before the war ever started." Rating: "FALSE. There is no record to support this claim."

2. "For the amount of money Hillary Clinton would like to spend on refugees, we could rebuild every inner city in America." Rating: "PANTS ON FIRE. Trump's numbers are off by a huge margin. It would cost much more to rebuild inner cities than admit refugees."

3. "... or her phony landing in Bosnia, where she said she was under attack, and the attack turned out to be young girls handing her flowers." Rating: "TRUE. Trump is correct. Hillary Clinton was welcomed without incident and has since retracted her statement."

4. "(Ambassador Chris Stevens) was left helpless to die as Hillary slept soundly in her bed." Rating: "FALSE. Clinton was not asleep when the attacks unfolded. [It was 3 p.m. Washington time.] Email records show she worked until 11 p.m."

So the Donald accused Hillary of four lies; only one of them could be even remotely considered to be a "lie," or she could have been misremembering the event, or confusing it with another.

If you continue to watch the clip, it starts a new video from PolitiFact entitled "The top 10 biggest falsehoods from the year of Trump (in no particular order)." These are:

1. The Mexican government forces many bad people into our country. (PANTS ON FIRE) 2. The number of immigrants in the United States is 30 million, or maybe 34 million. (PANTS ON FIRE) 3. Mexico can afford to build a wall because of their billion-dollar trade deficit with the U.S. (FALSE) 4. Ted Cruz's father was with Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination of JFK. (PANTS ON FIRE) 5. Crime is rising. (PANTS ON FIRE) 6. We're the highest taxed nation in the world. (FALSE) 7. Thousands of people in New Jersey cheered as the twin towers fell. (PANTS ON FIRE) 8. He was totally against the war in Iraq for many years. (FALSE) 9. There is no system to vet refugees from the Middle East. (FALSE) 10. The unemployment rate is actually 42 percent. (PANTS ON FIRE)

And Hillary Clinton is a "world-class liar"?

This Is Racism, Folks. Plain And Simple.

This is quoted from an open thread by Frances Langum on Crooks & Liars:

When a faithfully married black president who's the son of a single mother, the first black editor of Harvard Law Review and a professor of constitutional law is considered unintelligent, immoral, and anti-American by the Right while a xenophobic, misogynistic, serially philandering trust fund kid who quotes from the National Enquirer, peddles conspiracy theories, routinely calls women ugly and fat, calls John McCain a loser for having been a prisoner of war, and who has advocated torture and the bombing of women and children has captured the hearts of a majority of Republicans, this is racism, folks. Plain and simple.

Comprehensive Takedown Of Trump

Click here for an article at Daily Kos by Jon Perr entitled "Donald Trump and the 53-inch penis." The article name is a bit nonsensical, but the article itself is long -- and devastating. It's the best takedown of Trump I've read yet.

Charlie Pierce Responds to a Trump Speech (Sad.)

Click here for Charlie's response to an extended Trump attack on Hillary Clinton.

The article is titled "Let's Parse All the Bullsh*t in Trump's Speech About Hillary," with the subheading "Anyone in the mood for some barefaced non-facts?​"

Some takeaways:

There were some lines of attack that, were they not being delivered by a self-evident public charlatan, might have proven effective. Like most politicians of the past 30 years, and like most people operating within the current financial elite, HRC really has been cozy with some unsavory people and regimes around the world. In fact, one of them was Donald Trump.

HRC did not "singlehandedly destabilize the entire Middle East." She had a lot of help in the years between 2001 and 2009, when somebody nobody mentions anymore was running things.

He concludes, concerning Trump's statement that "Americans are the people that tamed the West, that dug out the Panama Canal, that sent satellites across the solar system, that built the great dams, and so much more. Then we started thinking small. We stopped believing in what America could do, and became reliant on other countries, other people, and other institutions. We lost our sense of purpose and daring":

How did we abandon our dreams of greatness that we demanded of our self-governing Republic? We didn't dig the Panama Canal; our government did, after it stole the land from Colombia. We, as individuals, didn't tame the West; our government did, with railroads and homesteading and the U.S. Cavalry. We didn't ourselves build the Hoover Dam; our government did. We didn't create our own private space exploration; our government did.

How could the country have come to such a sorry pass? Perhaps a clue can be found in a speech given from the U.S. Capitol by a newly elected president on a cold, clear January morning in 1981.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.

Sad.

Indeed.

Filmmaker Ken Burns' Commencement Address at Stanford

Click here for a transcript of the speech. Burns speaks in the usual generalities for a while, but then he drops the hammer:

"For 216 years, our elections, though bitterly contested, have featured the philosophies and character of candidates who were clearly qualified. That is not the case this year. One is glaringly not qualified."

Speaking of that (unnamed) candidate, he warns about

"... the dictatorial tendencies of the candidate with zero experience in the much maligned but subtle art of governance; who is against lots of things, but doesn’t seem to be for anything, offering only bombastic and contradictory promises, and terrifying Orwellian statements; a person who easily lies, creating an environment where the truth doesn’t seem to matter; who has never demonstrated any interest in anyone or anything but himself and his own enrichment; who insults veterans, threatens a free press, mocks the handicapped, denigrates women, immigrants and all Muslims; a man who took more than a day to remember to disavow a supporter who advocates white supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan; an infantile, bullying man who, depending on his mood, is willing to discard old and established alliances, treaties and long-standing relationships."

He further warns: "We see nurtured in his campaign an incipient proto-fascism, a nativist anti-immigrant Know Nothing-ism, a disrespect for the judiciary, the prospect of women losing authority over their own bodies, African Americans again asked to go to the back of the line, voter suppression gleefully promoted, jingoistic saber rattling, a total lack of historical awareness, a political paranoia that, predictably, points fingers, always making the other wrong. These are all virulent strains that have at times infected us in the past. But they now loom in front of us again – all happening at once."

I think he may not be a Trump supporter.

Donald Trump - Business Genius? Not So Much

Click here for an article in The New York Times Magazine by Adam Davidson entitled "Behind the Gold Curtain of Donald Trump's Résumé." Quite a takedown.

No One Can Stand Ted Cruz

Samantha Bee's takedown of Ted Cruz (NSFW, of course; it's Samantha Bee).

Governance, Republican Style

This is a portion of a post from Daily Kos, "Spotlight on Green News," on June 8, 2016, by Meteor Blades:

Raúl Grijalva writes - Anti-Government Extremism and Protecting the Grand Canyon:

“This week marks the 110th anniversary of the Antiquities Act, a landmark law allowing presidents to designate national monuments on land owned by the federal government. Its signing by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 began the modern era of conservation, allowing Roosevelt to designate nearly twenty national monuments and protect natural and cultural resources that have come to define our country.

Many of the monuments he established, including the Grand Canyon in 1908, are now among our most popular national parks. The Antiquities Act, by any measure, has been a tremendous and popular success.

Despite that, the law is under constant attack by Congressional Republicans who mischaracterize the authority granted by the Act as a ‘land grab.’ House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) was recently recorded at a public event saying that anyone who likes the Antiquities Act should ‘die’ so as to get ‘stupidity out of the gene pool.’ The Chairman went on to describe the law as “the most evil Act ever invented.’”

Words of wisdom from the Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee.

This is what Republicans do. On January 20, 1981, Ronald Reagan made his inaugural speech, which included the following words:

Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.

Along the same lines, Grover Norquist:

I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.

Republicans seek to cripple the federal government. When they've defunded and otherwise hamstrung a government department, they point their finger and shout: "See? It doesn't work!"

A key aspect of this is to appoint committee chairmen and agency heads who are committed to disabling the body to which they're appointed. They appoint staunch anti-environmentalists to the EPA; they place coal and oil executives at the head of agencies intended to curb pollution and act as watchdogs on the fossil fuel industry.

How do these bomb-throwers get elected?

Don't Forget The 2016 GOP Clown Car!

Samantha Bee recaps the runup to the selection of Trump as the Republican nominee. (NSFW; it's Samantha Bee.)

Prognostication By The Donald

"I’ve always won and I’m going to continue to win. And that’s the way it is."

That's the Trumpian worldview.

Sorry to burst your bubble, Donald, but in November 2016, that is going to come to a crashing end, and you will be known forever more as the biggest loser in the history of U.S. politics.

Tehran Tom Cotton Wants To "Inflict Pain" On Obama

Click here for an article by Karoli Kuns at Crooks & Liars entitled "'Tehran' Tom Cotton Held up Nation to 'Inflict Pain' on Obama."

There's statesmanship for you. Cotton, Junior Senator from Arkansas, held up the nomination of Cassandra Butts, a personal friend of Obama's from his law school days, for no reason other than the fact that denying her appointment as Ambassador to The Bahamas would "inflict pain" on Obama. (While her appointment was being delayed, Butts died of natural causes last week at the age of 50.)

Cotton had held up a number of Obama's nominations for ambassador trying to make a political point, but when that situation was resolved, he dropped his opposition to all of the others but Butts.

When she met with him to ask why the hold remained on her nomination, Cotton told her "that he knew that she was a close friend of Obama’s — the two first encountered each other on a line for financial-aid forms at Harvard Law School, where they were classmates — and that blocking her was a way to inflict special pain on the president."

Well Done, Buzzfeed

[Update: The RNC ad buy in question was for $1.3 million.]

Click here for a full explanation at Crooks & Liars, in an article by Sarah P. entitled 'Buzzeed Tells RNC To Take Their Ad Money And Shove It."

In April, when there were still several Republican candidates in the primary race, Buzzfeed arranged to take a significant amount of money from the RNC (Republican National Committee, run by "obvious anagram Rience Priebus," (h/t Charlie Pierce at Esquire), to run ads for the Republican candidate in the fall. Buzzfeed takes ad money from both sides, as most major media organizations do.

That was then, this is now. Now that Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee, Buzzfeed has cancelled the arrangement. Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti sent an email to employees explaining the decision. He finished with the following words:

We certainly don’t like to turn away revenue that funds all the important work we do across the company. However, in some cases we must make business exceptions: we don’t run cigarette ads because they are hazardous to our health, and we won’t accept Trump ads for the exact same reason.

Whoa -- Mika? Pro Hillary?

I detest "Morning Joe" Scarborough, and I've never had a high opinion of his sidekick, Mika. But here she is (for some reason Joe's not there to treat her condescendingly, as he usually does), speaking plainly and powerfully about her agreement with Hillary Clinton in rejecting the craziness of Donald Trump. Play it; it's about a minute and a half.