Is Putin’s Plan for America Working?

found online by Raymond

 
From Bill Formby at MadMikesAmerica:

I don’t know about the rest of you but I am perplexed beyond imagination at how unsophisticated and just plain stupid the supporters of Donald Trump seem to be. I mean it seems that every other presidential swap we get a Republican and most of us disagree with that person’s philosophy. That is just the way game is played, but right now I would love to have either of the Bushes or Reagan back in the White House.

At least, even when G.W. said he could see into Putin’s soul, I did not think that he was going to hand him the keys to the country. With Trump, I am not so sure.

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Stupidest Man On Twitter ‘Links’ Trump To God

found online by Raymond

 
From Frances Langum:

Bill Mitchell pretends he’s a right-wing radio “personality” and is an occasional guest on InfoWars. He also has, in my experience of bot-hunting, the highest percentage of bot responses of anyone on Twitter. From time to time I’ll check out right wing threads using the web-tool at botcheck.me and some of Bill Mitchell’s threads are 80% bot.

Today he tweeted this piece of “only Bill Mitchell” genius:

Actually Bill that’s Socratic Logic, not “math,” and it often fails…

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My Conservative Friend is Taken In by Lies About San Francisco


 
Sean Hannity has shocking news.

We’ve got to turn to a very shocking story. It should make your blood boil.

The story concerns voting rights in San Francisco.

They’re now spitting in the face of every single law-abiding American tonight.

The spitting in our faces, assuming that we are all law-abiding and American, actually does concern a serious issue. It seems San Francisco politicians are about to seriously dilute the votes of legitimate citizens by registering immigrants.

City officials are now permitting illegal immigrants, other non-citizens, to register to vote in November’s election.

That is outrageous.

I’m against voter suppression laws, including laws that make it disproportionately inconvenient for some citizens to vote. And I get kind of mad at efforts by Republicans to make it harder to vote for people without drivers’ licenses, even when they have other forms of identification. People who ride the bus to work should not have to visit multiple agencies to get a picture ID, unless there is a compelling reason. If you have an election official assigned to visit homes with a camera, I’d be for it.

Not all restrictions are bad. Before Georgia State Representative Jimmy Carter became Governor Jimmy Carter, then President Jimmy Carter, he fought to restrict voting in Georgia to people who were still alive.

Seriously? Seriously.

For more than a hundred years before that, the immediate family of a voter who had recently died could certify in writing that they knew how the beloved deceased would have voted. And that vote would count. Yikes.

Later, President Carter worked for national standards against illegal voting. For the first time, anyone deliberately casting an illegal vote anywhere in the country would not only face extreme financial fines, but would also be looking at long prison sentences.

A while back, conservative activists tried to secretly record themselves voting in New Hampshire. They wanted to prove voter fraud was easy to get away with. The extreme fines and potential prison time may have been the reason one ran out of an election office chased by authorities. The conservative video had to be severely edited.

Harsh penalties work. Additional IDs do not. They only make voting harder for citizens who don’t already have them. That seems to be their purpose.
Continue reading “My Conservative Friend is Taken In by Lies About San Francisco”

Trump at Prayer, Trump-Speak, Despising Greenwald, Radio Tales

The Christian Right and the Last Bastion

found online by Raymond

 
From Infidel753:

Since long before Trump, the core of the Republican base has been the Christian Right. Evangelicals are Trump’s most loyal supporters. They’re willing to overlook the obviously non-Christian character of his personal life so long as he does all he can to attack gays, abortion, and separation of church and state. In that sense, they’re pragmatists. They care about winning battles, not about who’s delivering the victories.

But they’re very aware that, over a longer time frame, they’re losing.

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The New CRAP Motto

found online by Raymond

 
From Dave Dubya:

It was reported that Putin’s Puppet got angry at Melania for watching CNN. Like Dick Cheney, he demands his FOX(R) be on at all times.

Her spokeswoman announced Melania will “watch any channel she wants”.

You go, girl!

Jeff Mason of Reuters asked President Putin: “Did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?”

Putin replied, “Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal.” The White House has omitted that part of the transcript and edited it out of their accompanying video.

The Stalinist message is: “You didn’t hear that. You didn’t see that. If you did it’s not happening.”

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Child King: Help Me I’m Falling In Love (With Vlad) All Over Again

found online by Raymond

 
From Shaun Mullen at The Moderate Voice:

Gowdy and Graham staged on-air teevee talk show interventions over the weekend for an audience of one, although we can be certain that the president, who had reversed field twice in the previous week in denying interference, grudgingly admitting Russian interference amidst the post-Helsinki fallout and then doubling back down in tweeting that it is all a “hoax,” wasn’t listening.

He was playing golf.

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Stormy Daniels’ Lawyer Met With Cohen ‑ Thinks He’ll Flip on Trump

found online by Raymond

 
From Tommy Christopher:

Michael Avenatti, the attorney for porn star Stormy Daniels, dropped some major hints about his recent chance meeting with former Trump fixer Michael Cohen — including a bold assertion that Cohen “is going to cooperate” in the “search for the truth” about Trump.

This past Monday, Avenatti ran into Cohen at a restaurant in New York City — a chance encounter that, according to Avenatti, turned into a “productive,” even “critical” exchange, at which Trump “would have blown a gasket” if he’d been present.

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‘Should I report a right wing student in my class?’

found online by Raymond

 
From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:

Should I report a right wing student in my class? Our university has a “Prevent” policy, requiring that we report extremism. This student is vocal in class, speaking of white supremacist views and labeling others ‘communist’.

I submitted this answer:

It would be proper to report the student only if the student’s behavior is disrespectful and disruptive. But really, it is the professor’s job to control his classroom.

That aside, the university’s “Prevent” policy is certainly within the University administration’s right. But that doesn’t make it right. The vague term “extremism,” like the term “hate speech,” is a smear tactic useful only in intimidating and silencing an opposing voice. Racial supremacism may be “extreme”; but so is the view that “all men are created equal” and should be treated as such under the law, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.

It is intellectual cowardice to report the student for his views, thus silencing him in the classroom. It is also impractical.

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Hard Times for Those Who Still Give a Damn

found online by Raymond

 
From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:

Whether you’re an activist or a minister or a parent or a caregiver, or just a citizen of the planet who is moved by other people’s suffering—you likely feel the immeasurable heaviness of these days. Sure, speed and activity can mask it for a while, but if you stop long enough, the reality of the fatigue catches up to you—you can measure the toll it’s all taken on you. I want you to measure it. I want you reckon with how tired you are. I want you to hear yourself exhale with the heavy sigh of someone who feels the weight of it all.

There is a cost to compassion, a personal price tag to cultivating empathy in days when cruelty is trending. There is in your body and head and in your midst, a collateral damage to you giving a damn when others do not, and it manifests itself in many ways: in irritability, impatience, physical illness, eating emotionally, addictive behavior, the inability to be present to the people who love you, an obsession with social media, a fixation on how jacked up everything is.

Notice these things in you today, and give them your attention.
Extend some of that compassion you’re so willing to extend to the world—to yourself.

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