Mike Pence is is UNFIT FOR OFFICE. He pulled a walkout stunt to stir racial strife against BLACK NFL PLAYERS when he knows darn well the protests are about police brutality and racism. But Pence is silent about white supremacists marching with Tiki Torches once again in Charlottesville, where a young woman died after a white supremacist ran her over with his car. Black people are not going to accept injustice, racism or police brutality, Mike Pence. We will #TakeAKnee ’til free.
PalmerReport: Mike Pence attended an NFL football game today in Indiana, only to immediately walk out in protest after several black football players took a knee during the national anthem. We can confirm that Pence diverted from his west coast tour just to attend the game, meaning he spent a ton in taxpayer money – and we can also confirm that he and Donald Trump orchestrated this walkout in advance.
Pence is confirmed to have been in Las Vegas last night, according to the Los Angeles Times (link). He’s also scheduled to arrive in California tonight, according to PBS News (link). This means he clocked around four thousand extra air miles just to attend a football game. Considering the cost involved in the vice president’s travels, including his security detail and other factors, it’s a certainty that Pence burnt up at least six figures worth of taxpayer money. This would have been an abuse even if he had been planning to simply enjoy the game. But now we know that he was never planning to stay at the game.
.@E_Reid35 calls @VP Mike Pence’s visit a “PR Stunt”
Listen here ⤵️⤵️ pic.twitter.com/8CbjS8VGiJ
— NBCS 49ers News (@NBCS49ers) October 8, 2017
CNN, y’all can’t pull a fast on Ted Lieu. He #STAYWOKE.
Rep. @tedlieu: VP Mike Pence is “free to leave” an NFL game “but the best way to honor our country is to honor the Constitution.” pic.twitter.com/4EiUwfTuSO
— CNN (@CNN) October 8, 2017
One of Mike Pence’s staffers admitted that Pence had been planning all along to bail on the game, according to NBC News. Donald Trump then tweeted that he had asked Pence to leave the game if anyone took a knee . Considering that the San Francisco 49ers were the road team in this game, and that several of their players always take a knee, it was a certainty that it would happen again today. Pence knew he’d be walking out on the game before he even got there.
In other words, Mike Pence’s walkout stunt today was one hundred percent orchestrated from the start. He wasted a bundle of taxpayer money just so he could attend an NFL game for a couple minutes on the other side of the country, and then post a divisive series of tweets about it. Moreover, Pence tweeted a substantial prepared statement almost immediately after walking out of the game, which had clearly been written in advance.
https://twitter.com/RawStory/status/917913594074984448
Not so sure I’m as impressed with or as grateful as those eager to cast Kelly and Mattis as patriotic martyrs doing God’s work containing and babysitting an impulsive, cruel, insecure, immature, treasonous narcissistic megalomaniac..
I don’t think part of a patriotic martyr mindset involves co-signing some seriously wicked, racist stuff, and being quite at home yucking it up on stage and around the table with the traitor and his Alt-Right cohorts..
OCTOBER 10, 2017
The Tragic Failure of Ken Burns’ “The Vietnam War”
by CHRISTOPHER KOCH
There is so much to love about this series. The uncompromising scenes of combat, the voices of both Americans and Vietnamese, the historical context, the exposure of the utter incompetence of our military leaders, the terrific music that is frequently exactly where it should be, the slowly revealed powerful still images and Peter Coyotes’ wonderful narrative voice. Its tragic failure is its inability to hold anyone responsible for their actions.
Ken Burns and Lynn Novick tell us that the war was begun “in good faith by decent people out of fateful misunderstandings, American overconfidence and …” whatever the current threat…
It’s the lack of accountability, the failure to prosecute those who lied to get us into the war, who encouraged battlefield tactics that resulted in the massacre of women and children, who authorized the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets, who drenched Vietnam in chemical poisons that will cause birth defects and death for generation.
In order to maintain this central lie, Burns and Novick must establish a false balance between good and evil on both sides. Every time the United States is shown doing something bad, Burns and Novick show us how the Vietnamese also did bad things. In one absurd example, Coyote intones something like, “we called them ‘Dinks,’ ‘Gooks,’ ‘Mamasans;’ they called us ‘invaders’ and ‘imperialists.’” The GI terms are dehumanizing, but the Vietnamese terms are accurate. People who cross 3,000 miles of ocean to attack a country that has done them no harm, are accurately called ‘invaders.’
…
Vietnamese soldiers killed some 58,000 Americans and wounded a couple of hundred thousand more. Buns and Novick put the number of Vietnamese we killed at 3 million, but most experts say it was more like 4 million and Vietnam says it’s 6 million, with more people continuing to die from unexploded ordinance and Agent Orange. We destroyed 60% of their villages, sprayed 21 million gallons of lethal poisons, imposed free fire zones (a euphemism for genocide) on 75% of South Vietnam. They attacked US military bases in their country and never killed an American on American soil. There are no equivalences here.
…
The moral center of the Vietnam War was held by those who opposed it. Several people I’ve talked to say the series is depressing. I had the same feeling of despair at the end. Burns and Novick suggest Vietnam’s a tragedy. It’s not. In tragedy a powerful human makes a terrible mistake and suffers the consequences. No one suffered any consequences for Vietnam. Burns and Novick assure us that even if people did wrong, they didn’t mean to. America is still the shining city on the hill and we can do no wrong.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/10/the-tragic-failure-of-ken-burnss-the-vietnam-war/
I didn’t make it past part 3 of this series.
It’s extremely difficult to watch. I’ve read a lot about the Vietnam War and understood the politics fairly well before watching this. I mainly wanted to see all the film footage they dug up, and I found that interesting. Ken Burns always does a good job on the “ground up” interviews so those were good too. But he really glossed over how the war impacted the Vietnamese civilians, the horrendous suffering and death they endured for so long.
Burns told the story as though it was America’s story and there was often this apologetic undertone, a terrible war we started but done with good intentions and so forth. The so called leaders have to be judged within the context of their times and cut some slack for the political environment they were in and what they inherited from previous administrations. This seems to be the message. Burns never really calls anyone out except perhaps the South Vietnamese leaders, mostly Diem and Thieu.
Overall, I think it’s a good documentary. But most of the time I was sitting there ready to scream, “Why in the blazing hell did you people do this?” And Ken Burns just doesn’t go there.
For the Allies to have not recognized Vietnam as a sovereign nation after the Japanese were defeated in WWII is one of the greatest mistakes ever made in the history of the world.
Hadn’t yet seen any of it, so thanks for the heads up..
What is never said, what is never even suggested, is that the US would never have done this to a “white” country.
Same for Iraq.
https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/917873879363870720
I didn’t make it past part 3 of this series.
The longer they’re allowed to roam free and for those holding our White House hostage, to settle in…the more emboldened they get..
#DeAndreHarris is nowhere to be seen & a judge has the GALL to issue felony charges against the victim. REMOVE HIM!
https://twitter.com/MeritLaw/status/917861177694199809
https://twitter.com/MeritLaw/status/917861177694199809
https://twitter.com/MeritLaw/status/917848960399757313
https://twitter.com/ColorOfChange/status/917841471084122112
Virginia Is for Haters
Paul Krugman OCT. 10, 2017
Why is America the only wealthy nation that doesn’t guarantee essential health care for all? (We’ve made a lot of progress under Obamacare, but not enough, and the Trump administration is doing its best to kill it.) Why do we have much higher poverty than our economic peers, especially among children, and much higher infant mortality despite the sophistication of our medical system?
The answer, of course, comes down to politics: We are uniquely unwilling to take care of our fellow citizens. And behind that political difference lies one overwhelming fact: the legacy of slavery. All too often, white Americans think of the social safety net not as something for people like themselves fallen on hard times, but as a giveaway to Those People.
This isn’t idle speculation. If you want to understand why policies toward the poor are so different at the state level, why some states offer so much less support to troubled families with children, one predictor stands out: the African-American share of the population. The more blacks, the less compassion white voters feel.
The story gets even clearer if you look at the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, which allows states to expand Medicaid coverage at federal expense — that is, to provide health insurance to a large fraction of the population at no cost. You might think that this was a no-brainer, and so far 31 states and the District of Columbia have taken advantage of this opportunity. But only two of those states are among the 11 that seceded in 1861 to form the Confederacy.
Which brings me to Virginia, which is holding crucial state elections in just four weeks.
Until recently, Virginia seemed to be emerging from some of the darker shadows of its history. The state is becoming more ethnically diverse, more culturally open; it is, you might say, becoming more like America. For the “real America” is more than small towns and rural areas; it’s a place of vast variety, unified — or so we like to think — by a shared commitment to universal values of democracy and human rights.
Mia Love Blasts Michelle Obama’s ‘Hypocritical’ Identity Politics: Dems Recruited White Male to Take My Seat
Rep. Mia Love (R-UT) lambasted Michelle Obama for her charge that people do not trust politics because the GOP is “all men, all white.”
“I don’t know if she noticed, but I am not white and I am not a male,” the Utah congresswoman said on “Fox & Friends” Saturday.
Obama said she noticed the difference particularly when she attended State of the Union addresses and had a view of both sides of the House of Representatives.
“Physically, there’s a difference in color, in the tone. Because one side: all men, all white. On the other side: some women, some people of color,” the former first lady said Tuesday at the Pennsylvania Conference for Women in Philadelphia.
“I look at that and I go no wonder, no wonder we struggle, no wonder people don’t trust politics.”
Ms. thing needs to take her trapped, but willingly enslaved, Stockholm Syndrome-suffering, colonial mentality-afflicted, puny self and go sit down somewhere …Anywhere Massa will let her..
Someday she will come to understand the meaning of, and be grateful for the presence, fearlessness and magnificence of the historic first black FLOTUS. The powerful greatness that continues to effortlessly be, and truth-tell … just so that the blind, hollow, flimsy, shameless, insecure, beholden, easily controlled, empty, know-nothing, willing to be misled tokens like lil Mia, can one day finally escape the warped mental grip of Massa …and perhaps one day even summon up the courage to finally walk out of captivity -and the Massa slave enclave she willingly walked into, pledged and sold herself to…
https://twitter.com/commondefense/status/917480966951710720
I guess we have to ask ourselves what kind of person would have agreed to run on Trump’s ticket. Therein lies the answer. We’re going to have a full four years of their sh!t because one is as bad as the other.
God willing, it won’t be any where near 4 years..
And this nightmare will end as quickly and as surreally as it began..
Shaun King: Activist DeAndre Harris Arrested For Charlottesville
Yesterday evening I received a text message from my good friend, Attorney Lee Merritt, that the Charlottesville Virginia Police Department had just done something unthinkable – they issued an arrest warrant for DeAndre Harris – the young brother who was brutally assaulted by a mob of white supremacists earlier this summer.
…
I want to be clear on something. I’ve watched every single video, and have seen every single photo, taken that day from Charlottesville. I’ve spent hundreds of hours researching it, moment by moment, block by block, person by person. DeAndre Harris and Heather Heyer were actually from Charlottesville. They showed up that Saturday in their hometown to stand up for their city and to show the hundreds of bigots who traveled there from all over the country to terrorize Charlottesville that it was not OK with them.
Right before a mob of men beat DeAndre, a man used a flagpole that had a sharp tip on the end of it and tried to spear DeAndre’s friend with it. DeAndre, who had never been violent or arrested a day in his life, swung to try back the man away from his friend. That’s it. The Charlottesville Police Department has issued an arrest warrant for DeAndre Harris for that. He will turn himself in later today.
Meanwhile, even though we’ve identified four violent men from Charlottesville, the two men who beat DeAndre the worst are still free and haven’t even been identified yet. Another man, Jacob Goodwin, who started the attack has been identified by us, but is still at home in Arkansas as police drag their feet.
…
https://blackamericaweb.com/2017/10/10/shaun-king-activist-deandre-harris-arrested-for-charlottesville/
Will Republicans Cede Their Party to the Insurgents?
by Nancy LeTourneau
October 10, 2017
Since Trump was elected, conventional wisdom has held that congressional Republicans will stick with him for two reasons: (1) they fear a backlash from his base of supporters, and (2) they need him to enact their agenda. As the 2018 midterms approach and the focus is all on the GOP’s pet issue of tax cuts, that would seem to be the case going forward.
Into that mix comes the recent statements critical of Trump by Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN). Everyone with an ear to the ground in Washington says that he is simply stating out in the open what most congressional Republicans have been whispering behind closed doors.
……………………………………………
All of a sudden congressional Republicans know that Bannon and Mercer are coming after them, regardless of how they’ve voted. They also know that this is no longer simply about putting up with Trump’s insanity for a few years. It is about the insurgents wresting away control of the entire GOP. We’re at that stage in the story where the monster is trying to kill Dr. Frankenstein.
I’m not going to pretend to understand how people like McConnell, Ryan and the rest of the congressional Republicans will process what is going on. But we’re already hearing a response from conservative commentators like Jennifer Rubin. Today, Bill Kristol published what might be his ode to the Republican Party in a piece titled, “A Republican Crackup?”
Oh please..
Even the republicans now acting all shocked and appalled, are to blame for this crazy that now threatens us and the world,…the crazy they willfully started and nurtured years ago, and many helped whip up, and fan the embers of..
They started this fire..
They created this monster and the emboldened monster colony that supports it..
Steve Bannon’s ‘war’ plans for 2018 come into focus
10/10/17 12:52 PM—UPDATED 10/10/17 12:59 PM
By Steve Benen
………………………………………………
As Bloomberg Politics reported the other day, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist is ready to lead the charge.
“We’re going to go after them. There’s a coalition coming together that’s going to challenge every Republican incumbent except for Ted Cruz,” Bannon told Fox News last night night. “We are declaring war on the Republican establishment that does not back the agenda that Donald Trump ran on. We’re going after these guys tooth and nail.”
That, of course, will require considerable resources, and Bloomberg Politics’ report added that Bannon is in the process of holding “a series of meetings with donors, potential candidates and grassroots strategists.” Not surprisingly, hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer, a Bannon benefactor, is reportedly involved in the endeavor.
Steve Bannon so badly wants to be somebody..
But not even Mercer money can turn him into the fantasy starring movie character his sorry failed Hollywood wannabe b*tt dreams of becoming..
The guy is a loser…
A desperate, sorry, attention-seeking, self-promoting painfully mediocre dime store villain – if even that…suffering from some serious rejection trauma perhaps from grade school..
Those propping him up as anything other than, ought to be embarrassed..
NorCal fires, what we know:
Zero or limited containment on all fires
44 people rescued by air
Untold number of historic structures gone
— SFChronicle (@sfchronicle) October 10, 2017
GOP in complet turmoil with that POS #45 and his rogue cabal, and the vp is sporting NFL games on taxpayer $$$$ to grandstand.
We are living in the TWILIGHT ZONE.
In defense of dissent ‘in a time of war’
10/10/17 11:29 AM
By Steve Benen
Donald Trump and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) have been trading criticisms for months, but the intensity of their dispute escalated quite a bit over the last few days. After the president said the Tennessee Republican “didn’t have the guts” to run for re-election, Corker lowered the boom.
“It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center,” the senator wrote. “Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.” In a New York Times interview, Corker went quite a bit further, explaining his “concerns” about Trump’s stability in more detail.
Not surprisingly, Trump’s boosters are not pleased. Kellyanne Conway called the senator’s criticisms “incredibly irresponsible,” adding in reference to Corker’s rebukes, “World leaders see that.”
It’s that last part of Conway’s reaction that came to mind while reading about Breitbart’s Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, calling on the GOP senator to resign.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the quickest way to kill this cancer is to simply deny this treasonous zero, the title and reverence of an office he should never have been let near…
As long as folks keep addressing him reverentially with a title he has not earned, he not only continues to believe it’s his to do with what he chooses …but more importantly, it helps dim serious infractions, and weakens reports of treasonous collusion with a hostile foreign entity, and countless other acts of his and his kkklan, that continues to demean the office and House he and they illegally occupy..
Stop using that sacred title to address the fraud…Stop indulging him and his illegally acquired perks of office..
Trump administration questions birth control’s health benefits
10/10/17 10:43 AM
By Steve Benen
The Trump administration rolled back the clock last week on contraception access, declaring that any health provider can refuse to cover birth control if they have “sincerely held” religious or moral objections. But what went largely overlooked is how officials made the case in support of their new policy.
As we discussed after the policy’s unveiling, the practical effects of the change are obvious: some American women who receive contraception at no cost will, as a result of the Trump administration’s new policy, have to pay higher out-of-pocket costs for birth control – because their employer says so.
It was largely assumed that Donald Trump and his team would make the argument about principle: the White House would say this change is about protecting “religious liberty” and the moral choices of conservative employers. But as it turns out, they also went after birth control on the merits.
Indeed, as Bloomberg Politics reported the other day, administration officials actually questioned “the links between contraception and preventing unplanned pregnancies.”
When Your Only Political Strategy Is Division
by Nancy LeTourneau
October 10, 2017
…………………………………….
It is important to note that all of this came on the heels of Trump cutting a deal with the Democrats about the budget and the debt ceiling as well as a promise that he would work with them to protect the Dreamers. There was a lot of talk about the president finally doing that longed-for “pivot” towards the center of the political spectrum. As that talk was reverberating through the political world, this attack on players protesting against police violence was in the works.
Since then, Trump has issued an executive order that removes the insurance mandate for birth control coverage and AG Jeff Sessions released guidelines on protections for religious liberty—which many have described as giving license to discriminate. He followed those up with a list of hostage demands that must be met in order for him to protect the Dreamers.
Whether it is inherent to his personality or a planned political tactic (or some of both), it is clear that the president is betting on a strategy of division. This certainly isn’t the first time Republicans have done that. For example, in 2004, Karl Rove was credited with developing a “base strategy” in which he calculated that 50 plus 1 percent was good enough for the win. One of the tools he used in his efforts to get Bush re-elected was to place the question of gay marriage on as many state ballots as possible in order to inflame the base.
Trump and his strategists have taken that kind of thing to a whole new level. The so-called “culture wars” not only include the agenda of the “court evangelicals,” but also Trump’s intention to exploit Islamophobia and the age-old issue of racial fear-mongering for political gain.
This is why I’ve been saying for a while now that those who claim that Democrats are hurting themselves by embracing “identity politics” are, at best, naive. The Trump administration is doing everything humanly possible to attack women, people of color, immigrants, Muslims and LGBT Americans. That is their strategy right now. It is one that is based on nothing but fear, hate and division. To stay quiet or ignore those attacks is to be complicit.
https://twitter.com/JRubinBlogger/status/917396801929523200
Never imagined in my wildest dreams that Jennifer Rubin would one day be not only a voice of sanity in the wilderness, but a bold, courageous, unyielding, consistent and unabashed one too..
Never would’ve thunk it..
https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/917775150099156992
https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/917775409487507456
https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/917774863485546496
Jerks and Twerps: How Popular Culture Normalized Hatred for an Entire Generation
What happened?
In the 11 months since Election Day, Hillary Clinton, 65.8 million Americans, and billions of people around the globe have been asking that exact question. How did the most powerful nation in the world elect a human tire fire with as much eloquence and grace as a steaming pile of manure? Since that infamous November day, a picture has emerged of how and why this happened. It was a perfect storm of a rogue FBI director, a failed media, a plethora of complicit third party and independent candidates, an apathetic electorate, and an open and hostile collusion with a foreign adversary. Yet, despite all this, the first woman candidate for a major political party still managed to get more popular votes than any White man in history.
But what about the nearly 63 million people who voted for Donald Trump?
The ones who supported a man who called Latinos rapists and thieves? The ones who supported a man who wanted to ban all Muslims? The ones who supported a man who mocked a disabled reporter? The ones who supported a man who openly ripped off students at his very own fraudulent university? The ones who supported a man who criticized a prisoner of war and a Gold Star military family? The ones who supported a man who bragged about sexually assaulting women after having previously committed adultery? The ones who supported a man who denigrated, degraded, and debased his opponents with childish nicknames and wild conspiracy theories? The ones who supported a man who (rightly) claimed he could commit murder and not lose any support? And the ones who supported a man who had a history of lying, cheating, and stealing and who was openly running the most dishonest campaign in American political history?
What is it about these voters that made none of those things a deal-breaker in voting for Donald Trump?
a comment from TPV about Corker’s comments:
5 years ago, I was shot in an attempt to stop me from speaking out for girls’ education. Today, I attend my first lectures at Oxford. pic.twitter.com/sXGnpU1KWQ
— Malala (@Malala) October 9, 2017
https://twitter.com/trplback/status/917755952266383360
Perhaps he can help America save face …After the bungling buffoon got himself and the country way in over with his stupid, childish bluff and war games…
Last time we went to war and were told it’d just take a minute, because we were the greatest ever with the greatest tricked out war gadgets ever, we not only didn’t pull it off, we permanently destabilized an entire region, and the world by extension, lost more lives than we care to remember, destroyed families, communities and countless human beings…
And we are still at that war..
And that was with a crew that actually had some semblance of a vision, if not a clue as to how it’d unfold in the end..
Now we have a daft, easily triggered, incurious, insecure toddler with seriously warped and psychologically paralyzing daddy issues he never dealt with, a fraud who’s always played pretend and bravado, and relied on schmoozing crooks and marginally bamboozling idiots to get ahead…a megalomaniac dolt who’s never read a book, or a binder of policies in his life…
That’s who’s calling the shots…and we let him …we indulge idiocy because we’re told not to worry, that he has some generals babysitting him…
https://twitter.com/splinter_news/status/917740259248443393
Trump struggles to overcome his economic illiteracy
10/10/17 09:21 AM
By Steve Benen
Donald Trump has a talking point that he believes overshadows his embarrassing failures: economic growth, as measured by the Gross Domestic Product, is still pretty good.
Two weeks ago, for example, after GDP for the second quarter was revised up to 3.1%, the president boasted via Twitter, “Many people thought it would be years before that happened.” No one actually thought that – because 3.1% quarterly growth has been quite common since the end of the Great Recession.
But Trump keeps pretending otherwise, either because he’s economically illiterate or because he enjoys pretending to be economically illiterate. During his interview with Mike Huckabee over the weekend, for example, the president added in reference to the latest GDP data, “Everybody was shocked. They said it wouldn’t happen for years.”
Again, nobody was shocked, just as nobody said it’d take years to see quarterly growth that’s been routine for quite a while.
In a new interview with Forbes, Trump went just a little further.
……………………
According to Trump, under Barack Obama’s presidency, the economy never reached quarterly growth of 3.1%. And that’s true, just so long as we overlook what happened in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, and 2015. To the extent that reality has any meaning in the debate, in the Obama era, quarterly growth reached or exceeded 3.1% eight times in eight years.
So when Trump says Obama “never hit the number,” it’s the exact opposite of the truth.
Trump’s White House formalizes its praise for itself
10/10/17 08:40 AM
By Steve Benen
For many years, reporters have received press releases from the White House touting various initiatives with “what they are saying” collections. As we discussed several months ago, it’s a straightforward exercise: the White House will collect praise from various corners, package it together, and send it out as proof of a proposal’s merit.
The point is to generate positive “buzz” about an administration priority by presenting the media with evidence that an idea has been well received – by other news organizations, members of Congress, pundits, advocacy organizations, etc.
As The Week noted yesterday, Donald Trump’s White House has an entirely different approach to this public-relations strategy.
Even by Trump World standards, this kind of propaganda is cringe-worthy. The White House went to the trouble of issuing a press release to highlight praise from Trump’s cabinet about Trump’s agenda.
In other words, Trump administration officials alerted the media to the fact that Trump administration officials like the Trump administration’s policies.
THE EVER LOVING PHUCK!!!!!
Something else Black people can’t do – defend themselves against an attack by Nazis. He shoulda known better..just let them beat the shyt out of him. But, people don’t understand why players are taking the knee.
PHUCK.OUTTA.HERE.
Black man attacked at white nationalist rally in Charlottesville faces felony charge
By Derek Hawkins October 10 at 5:13 AM
A black man brutally beaten at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville is now facing a felony charge related to the August attack.
A local magistrate on Monday issued an arrest warrant for DeAndre Harris on an unlawful wounding charge after an accuser, whom police did not identify, claimed to have been injured by the 20-year-old during the brawl, authorities told local media.
S. Lee Merritt, a civil attorney for Harris, told The Washington Post the charge was “clearly retaliatory” and described the accuser as a member of a white supremacist group. He maintained that Harris did not instigate the fight.
“We find it highly offensive and upsetting, but what’s more jarring is that he’s been charged with the same crime as the men who attacked him,” he said.
Merritt added that it was “highly unusual” for the warrant to come from a magistrate rather than police, and suggested that the accuser had previously tried to implicate Harris in the violence without success. He said his client would turn himself into police in the coming days.
In a statement provided to WVIR, the Charlottesville Police Department said the alleged victim went to the magistrate’s office in person to explain what happened. After discussing the accuser’s story with a detective, the magistrate issued the warrant.
Trump’s Rural Base is Drifting Away
by Martin Longman
October 9, 2017
There is evidence in the Reuters/Ipsos daily tracking poll that the bloom is off Trump’s rose with a lot of rural voters. On a host of issues, folks are expressing much less confidence in the president. In some areas, like his handling of health care, the environment, and corruption, he’s actually in negative territory now among voters in small towns and rural communities. On some subjects where he is still getting modestly positive numbers, the fall from the winter and spring has nonetheless been precipitous.
For example, his net approval is down seventeen points on immigration, sixteen points on his dealings with Congress, thirteen points on uniting the country, and twelve points on employment and jobs. He’s seen a ten percent drop on his handling of the economy and foreign policy. He’s seen the least slippage on international trade, but he’s still lost a net of eight points on that issue.
It can be tricky to interpret these numbers. In some cases, people are unhappy that he hasn’t delivered on his promises, but in others they seem dismayed by what they perceive as broken promises or reversals of policy. Health care is a good example. Some are dismayed that he hasn’t repealed the Affordable Care Act while others are upset about the proposals Congress put forth that the president supported. On immigration, some feel like he hasn’t gone far enough or are angry that he hasn’t produced, while others think he sold out to the Democrats to get a deal on hurricane relief and the debt ceiling.
They’re only ‘drifting away’ because he hasn’t completely destroyed minorities as promised, and reaffirmed and reasserted their supposed entitled birthright supremacy…as quickly as as they’d hoped..
The ramped-up culture wars, low-hanging fruit to appease the useful idiots, as the oligarchs get to work plundering and securing power, while reveling in their supremacy and the admiration of their useful idiots..
The Mercers: Taking the GOP Beyond ‘Peak Extremism’
by Nancy LeTourneau
October 9, 2017
In the Buzzfeed article on the connections between Breitbart and white supremacists, we learned that this happened after Milo Yiannopoulos was fired for making comments the appeared to endorse pedophilia:
Why would Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah reach out to provide financial support to the guy Bannon hand-picked to be the bridge between Breitbart and white supremacists? Perhaps it is because, as Christopher Ruddy of Newsmax once said, “[Rebekah Mercer] is the First Lady of the alt-right.” Perhaps it also has something to do with what Robert Mercer’s co-workers told Jane Mayer about some of his political beliefs.
……………………………
It’s remarkable how much populist fervor is driven by people born into extremely wealthy families. https://t.co/Ftp8XqJBVn
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 9, 2017
Welcome to Hamilton 68 Dashboard Tracking Russian Propaganda – Here’s what #Putin wants Americans talking about https://t.co/Fm4uROuBrf pic.twitter.com/sU5yFPEXyw
— Clint Watts (@selectedwisdom) August 2, 2017
@JillWineBanks @11thHour Can we please stop pretending Trump didn’t CONFESS to Obstruction on LIVE TV with @LesterHoltNBC?
— bardgal (@bardgal) October 10, 2017
BOMBSHELL: US voting infrastructure vulnerable to hacking by Russia, other foreign powers, now and in the future: https://t.co/Ys5J3yy7Ob
— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) October 9, 2017
Trump approval numbers fall in every one of the 50 states. https://t.co/4MQU5dqH54 pic.twitter.com/nAAFNxHuoV
— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) October 10, 2017
PHUCK EVERY DOLT45 VOTER AND THE THIRD PARTY PURITY PONIES.
PHUCK.ALL.OF.THEM.
To ‘contain’ Trump, White House try treating him like a toddler
10/10/17 08:00 AM
By Steve Benen
As the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency has unfolded, we periodically hear from people within the White House who suggest conditions, behind the scenes, are worse than Americans probably realize. In April, one presidential adviser said his job was to “talk him out of doing crazy things.” In August, another added, “You have no idea how much crazy stuff we kill.”
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said this week, “I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him.”
And while that’s obviously unsettling given that we’re talking about the most powerful office on the planet, there’s a question that’s always lurking in the background: how, exactly, does the White House “contain” a confused, amateur president who’s ill-suited for the job?
Six months ago, Politico reported that officials in the West Wing learned that Trump made better decisions when they narrowed his choices down to one. Today, Politico reports that the president can also be managed through a series of delays and distractions.
At the Washington Post, Dan Drezner recently helped document each of the times White House officials have characterized the president in ways that make him sound like a small child. The fact that his list is in constant need of updates is terrifying.
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 10/9/17
Sen. Corker interrupts Trump ‘silent movie’ with uncommon candor
Rachel Maddow explains that while the things Donald Trump says are often best ignored, sometimes even his petty Twitter fights merrit attention.
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 10/9/17
US tech giants oddly unhelpful on Russia
Elizabeth Dwoskin, Silicon Valley correspondent for the Washington Post, talks with Rachel Maddow about the slow pace of discovery of Russian ad buying and other online manipulations as U.S. tech giants like Twitter, Facebook, and Google have seemed reluctant to give up information.
update
Maddow heard from FEMA about that rural Puerto Rican town.
FEMA said that it wasn’t their responsibility to deliver goods. That it was the Mayor ‘s responsibility.
They are trying to kill these American citizens.
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 10/9/17
FEMA: Not our job to distribute food and water in Puerto Rico
Rachel Maddow reports on the situation in Aibonito, Puerto Rico, which has not received any FEMA aid despite multiple visits from FEMA representatives who helped victims with paperwork. FEMA says its the mayor’s job to distribute food and water.
Nothing but a stunt😡😡😡
Good Morning,Everyone 😐😐😐
Good Morning, Rikyrah & Everyone.
NFL IS FULL OF ISH
https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/status/917614877228912642