Wednesday, October 03, 2018

Politics are not a game

MCL Rants:


The origin of my rants started Monday while I was flipping through Facebook on my break and I notice a status from one of Facebook people. Paraphrasing "Because the President endorses you don't make me want to vote for you" before you well, he's has a right to his opinion blah, blah but this is the same kind of mindset that put Trump in office. We allow the far-left to play this game of "well my guy didn't win so I'm going to teach all of you non-believers a lesson by sabotaging the winner". And when evil wins they're always the first to complain about what evil is doing and they got a non-binding online petition that says "let's stop so and so from doing this sign the petition."

Elections are not video games, you can't hit the restart from the last checkpoint button when you fuck up. I've warned people from 2010 to now about dicking around with their vote and the common response from the far-left is don't scare me. Now, these motherfuckers are scared(enough of them)they see the right is on the brink of getting everything they ever dreamed of from a wingnut Supreme Court that will undo every civil progress and even in the case the Republicans lose control of everything for generations they still got the courts that will undercut everything liberals want to do to correct what the right has done. Here in Michigan if Bill Schuette becomes governor people are going to see their insurance via Medicaid expansion gone, voting rights getting attack more and if you're a woman in Michigan shit is going to get real for you real fast.

I don't know if it's privilege or these guys really believe whoever wins an election the outcome isn't going to affect them. Because if Republicans win in a few weeks I agree with Malcolm Nance this country is done and if Republicans here can replace a lame Republican governor with a true believer like Bill Schuette people of color and poor people are going to experience a shit storm we never have seen before.

Black Conservatives and Kayne West

MCL Semi rant:

Normally I wouldn't talk about Kayne West but damn this guy is writing the book on self-hate at first, I thought it was about him gaining attention by holding the most unpopular opinion in the world by standing by Donald Trump. There's a part of me that still believes he's just doing it for the attention and having people tweeting, making YouTube videos and writing post about it gives him that thing he craves so much. But when he makes odd comments about getting rid of the 13th amendment makes me wonder maybe the dude is just dumb and he's just firing off dumb opinions. And Donald Trump does have a talent for attracting people like himself egomaniacs that love themselves way too much and base their worldview on nothing factual.

Watching black conservatives rallying around Kayne West is something to watch and it highlights the fact the only reason they got his back is because he's the only high profile black man that's crazy enough to tell the world he supports Donald Trump and adopts their shitty talking points. The OG of self-hate Larry Elders fired off a tweet whining about Snoop Dogg calling Kayne West an "Uncle Tom ass nigga" and he ends it with a hashtag of "#Blackliberalbigot" whatever the fuck that means.


Black Conservatives are not saving themselves in this era, it's one thing defending a Republican president when he's using code words or behave like a typical Republican president that deals with issues black Americans deal with, pretend our issues doesn't exist. But they're defending a guy that says blatantly racist things and he has said neo-Nazis were very fine people despite the fact one of those very fine people is sitting in jail for killing Heather Heyer. I don't know it's for attention or the cash but they won't look good when this era is over.

Backlash to professor’s anti-Kavanaugh tweet illustrates the content pipeline from 4chan to Tucker Carlson’s show

TALIA LAVIN & CRISTINA LóPEZ G VIA Media Matters

C. Christine Fair, an associate professor at the Georgetown School for Foreign Service, found herself in the midst of a right-wing media uproar Monday over a facetious tweet about Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh. The right-wing outrage over the literal interpretations of her tweet perfectly illustrated how a 4chan targeted harassment campaign traveled through the pipeline to become content for Fox News prime-time programming, where host Tucker Carlson framed the tweet as an example of “white genocide,” a common white supremacist trope.  
On September 29, Fair responded to a news article about Graham by writing on Twitter, “Look at thus (sic) chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist's arrogated entitlement. All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps. Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes.”
The tweet was noticed by users of notorious anonymous message board 4chan -- a site hospitable to white supremacists and planners of targeted harassment campaigns -- and a user declared an intent to “expose this bitch [Fair] and get her ass fired.” The anonymous poster included a link to Fair’s personal website and blog. The user also doxxed Fair, posting her and her family’s phone numbers found via a web search.
The 4chan thread time stamp indicates it was posted a little before 10 a.m. on October 1. Shortly after, at 11:31 a.m., Fox News tweeted out a story by FoxNews.com reporter Caleb Parke about Fair’s September 29 tweet.
 
A few hours later, the hostile backlash to Fair’s tweet had migrated from 4chan to Twitter, where users recommended calling Georgetown’s campus police and reporting Fair for threatening to castrate white men.
 
Right-wing outlets The Daily Caller and TownHall also jumped on the story (The Daily Caller inexplicably wrote up Fair’s tweet in two different stories, published within 30 minutes of each other). Finally, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson picked up the story on his prime-time show, using the tweet to warn his audience about the white supremacist conspiracy theory of white “genocide.” This is also not the first time Carlson has used a 4chan narrative to fearmonger on his show about the persecution of white people. Carlson often echoes white supremacist talking points on his show, earning accolades online among racists.
 
In another outrage thread about Fair’s tweet, on the anonymous message board 8chan (which is similar to 4chan, but with laxer standards), a user reacted to Carlson’s segment by suggesting its focus should have been more anti-Semitic. The user said Carlson should focus on three sets of parentheses surrounding Fair’s name on Twitter.
The three parentheses, or “echo,” are a white supremacist hate symbol used to identify Jewish people and organizations that anti-Semites deem Jewish-controlled. In response, some Jews and allies have reappropriated the symbol.
This isn’t the first time the outspoken professor has been targeted by right-wing media and far-right trolls.
On September 20, FoxNews.com reporter Parke wrote an article describing Fair as an “anti-Trump Georgetown professor” and characterizing a tweet she had written as a “profanity-laced Twitter rant.”
And last year, white supremacists on 4chan responded in outrage when Fair confronted “alt-right” figurehead Richard Spencer and posted her personal phone number and email address on the message board, declaring an intent to “wreck her shit.”
Fair appeared to be undaunted by the criticism -- and the harassment -- engendered by her controversial tweets. On Monday afternoon, she wrote, “Fox serves only one purpose: mobilize mobs of deplorables to harass people who are woke and sane enough to call the Fuckery the Fuckery.”

Florida company facing furious backlash after posting pro-Kavanaugh sign that taunts sex assault victims

Via Raw Story
A Florida roofing company jumped into the national conversation about the confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh and the #MeToo movement with a sign that seemed to make light of sexual assault.
Crowther Roofing & Sheet Metal’s Metro Parkway sign said, “A boy tried to kiss me/I’m going to wait 40 years/To tell on him,” reports Fort Myers News Press.
The owners of the company, who often post controversial signs, apparently didn’t expect such an uproar and defended the decision.
“We in no way advocate or condone sexual assault,” said Lee Crowther Sr., the company’s founder, said. “Anyone who thinks that is goofy.”
Yet it’s hard to deny that the message referenced the accusations of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who came forward publicly 35 years after her alleged sexual assault.
One woman critical of the sign said that it’s that kind of attitude that might prevent a woman from sharing her story.
“People don’t understand why women don’t come forward,” she said.
According to the News Press, the store’s employees were subjected to death and rape threats.
They’ve previously posted other controversial signs, such as the suggestion that it was un-American to not speak in English. “One Flag. One Language. God Bless America.” The roofer has also weighed in on the debate surrounding confederate statutes.
“So why wasn’t anyone offended over statues when Obama was President?” they asked in 2017.


Kavanaugh drinking buddy Mark Judge’s college girlfriend gives sworn affidavit after FBI refuses to contact her

SARAH K. BURRIS via Raw Story
The FBI is continuing its work into the allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as the Friday deadline approaches. One person that has information is Mark Judge’s ex-girlfriend, Elizabeth Rasor.
According to Rasor, the FBI still has yet to reach out to her, so she gave a sworn affidavit and released it publicly so that the information could be available to anyone on the Senate Judicial Committee.
The affidavit makes 14 major points to outline her story.
“I first met Mark Judge in or around the fall of 1986 while we were both students at Catholic University,” it read. “We engaged in a serious romantic relationship for approximately two years beginning in 1986 through 1988. We dated exclusively during much of that time period and attempted to reunite several times in the months afterward until I moved to New York from Washington, D.C.”
She continued, saying that while at the university she spent a lot of time “with Mark’s friends from Georgetown Prep and attended a couple of social gatherings at which they were present.”
She said that she did meet Brett Kavanaugh at a few social gatherings in and around 1987.
“At the parties, Brett and Mark attended during this period there was frequent and widespread alcohol consumption,” she said. “In or around 1988 in the context of the conversation we had about how we lost our virginities. Mark told me in a voice that seemed to convey a degree of shame about an incident that had occurred a few years prior where he and several other boys from Georgetown Prep took turns having sex with a woman who was drunk.”
She said in the affidavit that it was Judge’s “perception that the sexual activity was consensual.”
To her recollection, she believes Mark was sober while telling her this.
“After this initial conversation, Mark and I never discussed this again,” she continued. “Mark did not share with me any names of other individuals involved in this incident and I do not have any information to suggest one way or another that Brett was one of them. Mark and I broke up toward the end of 1988. I last spoke with Mark in or around 2013. We met for lunch at Georgetown University to catch up, and I brought my son.”
She swore under oath that her affidavit was true to the best of her knowledge.
Rasor is one of very few who has knowledge about these incidents.
Watch MSNBC host Rachel Maddow describe it below:

Putin and Xi Outrank Trump in Global Confidence Poll

ROBBIE GRAMER via FOREIGN POLICY

Global opinion of U.S. President Donald Trump has sunk so low that the world now appears to have more confidence in the leadership of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of some 26,000 people across 25 countries.  
The survey showcases the sharp decline in America’s image and standing abroad since Trump took office nearly two years ago and began a series of unilateral trade wars and a campaign of harsh criticism of global institutions, including the United Nations.
When asked about their confidence in specific world leaders to “do the right thing regarding world affairs,” a median of 30 percent of respondents across the surveyed countries expressed confidence in Putin, compared to only 27 percent who had confidence in Trump.
Both Trump and Putin lagged behind Xi, who came in at 34 percent. And other prominent world leaders ranked far ahead of those three, among them French President Emmanuel Macron, who was rated favorably by a median of 46 percent of respondents, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in whom 52 percent expressed confidence.
A median of 70 percent of respondents across the 25 countries surveyed said they have no confidence in Trump. Strikingly, however, that has not translated directly into a lack of support for the United States. A median of 63 percent among all countries preferred the United States as the world leader, while only 19 percent preferred China.
The poll comes as Trump nears his two-year mark in the Oval Office, an era defined by a U.S. retreat from multilateralism abroad and dramatic chaos within, from top advisors being indicted on criminal charges to Cabinet members being sacked on Twitter. As he grows more comfortable in the role of president, Trump also appears to be doubling down on controversial stances on trade and defense that have alienated some allies, as well as leaning more heavily on foreign-policy aides who reinforce his own instincts—such as National Security Advisor John Bolton and policy advisor Stephen Miller—rather than ones who put a check on them, namely former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
Trump’s performance last week at the U.N. General Assembly, an annual meeting of the world’s top leaders and diplomats, exemplified many of the results of the survey. Macron, Merkel, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, and other Western leaders panned Trump’s fiery speech before the U.N. in which he outlined his world vision, bashing multilateral institutions, a rigged global trade system, and “globalism.” At one point during the speech, when Trump bragged he accomplished more in his first two years than any other U.S. president in history, the audience of foreign diplomats erupted into laughter.
All the while, the world was watching.
According to the Pew poll, U.S. standing has taken hits across the world. But the decline is most stark in Canada and Europe, which have borne the brunt of Trump’s brash public tirades and fierce diplomatic fights including trade policies and the Iran nuclear deal. In Germany, for example, 80 percent of respondents said bilateral relations with the United States have gotten worse over the past year, and only 4 percent believed they have improved. Among the 10 European Union countries surveyed, a median of 82 percent said they have no confidence in Trump to “do the right thing regarding world affairs.”
Plummeting U.S. popularity in Europe is music to Putin’s ears, said Andrea Kendall-Taylor of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank. She noted that some countries in Central Europe, such as the Czech Republic and Hungary, have begun cozying up to Russia as U.S. influence and stature in Europe wanes. “This is exactly what the Russians and President Putin would hope for,” she said.
One distinct outlier in the poll is Israel, where confidence in the U.S. president’s leadership has shot up from 49 percent in 2015 under then-President Barack Obama to 69 percent in 2018 under Trump. Over half of Israelis said the United States is doing more to address global challenges, even while much of the rest of the world, particularly Canada and Western Europe, believe the United States is doing less.

Since he has taken office, Trump has elicited Israeli support by moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and cutting aid to the Palestinians, among other moves.
Despite a plunge in confidence for the United States, other countries are still pushing through major foreign-policy measures with Trump. Canada and Mexico are case in point: On Monday, Trump announced the three countries reached a deal to revamp NAFTA in a breakthrough after over a year of grinding negotiations. But the deal came after Trump spent the 2016 campaign and much of his presidency criticizing both Mexico and Canada; in Canada, favorability of the U.S. president has plummeted from 83 percent under Obama in 2016 to 25 percent under Trump in 2018, and in Mexico it dropped from 49 percent to 6 percent.
The 25 countries surveyed were: Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Russia, Australia, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Israel, Tunisia, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico.
Richard Wike, the director of global attitudes research at Pew, said in a phone interview that the polling process took roughly a year and the questions were fielded to participants over the summer, from May through August.
Besides the low favorability ratings for Trump, another clear trend line emerged from the poll: As favorability of the United States under Trump dwindles, China’s power and prominence is on the rise. A median of 70 percent of the survey respondents said Beijing plays a more important role in the world than 10 years ago, while only 8 percent believed the United States does.
China’s rising power “is something that registering with average citizens around the world pretty clearly,” Wike said. “It isn’t only registering with elites and those who follow on foreign policy anymore.”

Tuesday, October 02, 2018

Trump makes fun of Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford at unhinged rally

FRANK DALE Via Think Progress
During a campaign rally in Mississippi on Tuesday evening, President Donald Trump mocked Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who testified to Congress last week that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh attempted to rape her in high school.
The audience — attending the event in support of Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), the first woman to represent Mississippi in Congress  — loudly cheered as the president mimicked Dr. Ford’s testimony. “How did you get home? I don’t remember. How’d you get there? I don’t remember. Where is the place? I don’t remember. How many years ago was it? I don’t know.”
The video of Trump mocking Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony at his rally. Remember, aides were initially surprised at his restraint on the matter.

Trump then warned his supporters that men are the real victims, reminding them that the men in their lives could also be accused of sexual misconduct. He claimed he himself has faced “many false allegations” against him. Over a dozen womenhave credibly accused Trump of sexual assault and harassment; the president has never been able to reliably refute their allegations, other than to call them all liars.
Trump tonight seemed to tell the crowd that their husbands and sons and could be falsely accused of sexual misconduct. "Think of your son. Think of your husband." (via CBS)

Michael R. Bromwich, an attorney for Dr. Ford, responded to Trump’s remarks on Twitter, asking “Is it any wonder that she was terrified to come forward, and that other sexual assault survivors are as well?”
A vicious, vile and soulless attack on Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Is it any wonder that she was terrified to come forward, and that other sexual assault survivors are as well? She is a remarkable profile in courage. He is a profile in cowardice.

Earlier on Tuesday, Trump claimed it’s a “very scary time for young men.”
Trump continues to support his Supreme Court nominee despite numerousallegations of sexual assault or misconduct.
The president reiterated his complaints about the perceived lack of “due process” for Kavanaugh — who is not on trial, but auditioning for a high-profile job with a lifetime appointment.
Several moments after Trump describes Kavanaugh’s treatment as “abuse” and decries guilty until proven innocent, the crowd goes into “Lock her up!”

The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman noted the crowd at the “Make America Great Again” rally revived its “lock her up” chant for Dr. Ford.