StupidINews!

• Donald Trump outlined a US strategy last night in Afghanistan that will "change dramatically" from the last 16 years, but he announced no specifics on troop levels, timelines, or locations.
• More Native American tribes in the US are looking to get into the legal marijuana growing business, but federal laws that govern reservation land could be a major problem for growers.
• US Navy divers continue to search for 10 missing sailors after the collision of a missile destroyer and oil tanker near Singapore over the weekend.
• Angola will hold elections on Wednesday as President Jose Eduardo dos Santos will step down after 38 years, the country faces the worst economic conditions since a 2002 civil war.
• Verizon will start throttling video on all mobile plans, limiting bandwidth on both new and existing unlimited data plans to 720p video starting on Wednesday.

Last Call For Total Eclipse Of The Brain

They told Trump not to look directly into the sun without special glasses during today's eclipse, so naturally...

...he looked right into the goddamn sun without his special glasses.

Because he's Trump.

You can't tell a clinical narcissist not to do something, you know.

Trump And The US Secret Servants

It seems the US Secret Service has reached its yearly manpower budget limit for Trump's detail and there's still months to go, the payroll is exhausted due to all those golfing trips Donny Boy takes, turns out.  And while Donald seems to be convinced that the USSS stands for "United States Security Servants", the people protecting him are pretty much fed up with their "principal".

The Secret Service can no longer pay hundreds of agents it needs to carry out an expanded protective mission – in large part due to the sheer size of President Trump's family and efforts necessary to secure their multiple residences up and down the East Coast. 

Secret Service Director Randolph "Tex'' Alles, in an interview with USA TODAY, said more than 1,000 agents have already hit the federally mandated caps for salary and overtime allowances that were meant to last the entire year.

The agency has faced a crushing workload since the height of the contentious election season, and it has not relented in the first seven months of the administration. Agents must protect Trump – who has traveled almost every weekend to his properties in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia – and his adult children whose business trips and vacations have taken them across the country and overseas. 

"The president has a large family, and our responsibility is required in law,'' Alles said. "I can't change that. I have no flexibility.''

Alles said the service is grappling with an unprecedented number of White House protectees. Under Trump, 42 people have protection, a number that includes 18 members of his family. That's up from 31 during the Obama administration.

Overwork and constant travel have also been driving a recent exodus from the Secret Service ranks, yet without congressional intervention to provide additional funding, Alles will not even be able to pay agents for the work they have already done.

The compensation crunch is so serious that the director has begun discussions with key lawmakers to raise the combined salary and overtime cap for agents, from $160,000 per year to $187,000 for at least the duration of Trump's first term.

But even if such a proposal was approved, about 130 veteran agents would not be fully compensated for hundreds of hours already amassed, according to the agency.
"I don't see this changing in the near term,'' Alles said.

Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers expressed deep concern for the continuing stress on the agency, first thrust into turmoil five years ago with disclosures about sexual misconduct by agents in Colombia and subsequent White House security breaches.
A special investigative panel formed after a particularly egregious 2014 White House breach also found that that agents and uniform officers worked "an unsustainable number of hours,'' which also contributed to troubling attrition rates. 

While about 800 agents and uniformed officers were hired during the past year as part of an ongoing recruiting blitz to bolster the ranks, attrition limited the agency's net staffing gain to 300, according to agency records. And last year, Congress had to approve a one-time fix to ensure that 1,400 agents would be compensated for thousands of hours of overtime earned above compensation limits. Last year's compensation shortfall was first disclosed by USA TODAY.

So yeah, there are agents basically working for free because after several years of USSS screw-ups during the Obama years, we've now got the oversight pendulum so far in the other direction that Trump basically gets to abuse them.

The real issue of course remains the graft this represents.  The reason why the USSS has reached its limits is because Trump is making them pay for his golf clubs, his hotel services, his NYC tower, you name it. This needs to stop, but it won't because the GOP Congress won't lift a finger.

We already know they're cowards, but this is just stupid.

Two Comedy Giants Pass On

Over the weekend the world lost not one but two comedy greats, with over a century of combined work between them.  First, legendary civil rights activist, author, satirist and stand-up comedian Dick Gregory passed at the age of 84.

Comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory, who broke barriers in the 1960s and became one of the first African-Americans to perform at white clubs, died Saturday. 

He was 84. 

Gregory recently rescheduled an event in Atlanta because he was hospitalized. He died in Washington, his son posted on social media without giving details. 

"The family appreciates the outpouring of support and love, and respectfully asks for their privacy as they grieve during this very difficult time," Christian Gregory said. "More details will be released over the next few days." 

Gregory satirized segregation and racial injustice in his acts, and was arrested several times in the 1960s for joining civil rights rallies.

Dick Gregory paved the way for pretty much every black comedian in America these days, from Cosby to Chappelle, from Pryor to Rock and everyone in between.  He was also a prolific author and activist and spoke out on injustice up until his death.  Comedy, sometimes biting and savage, sometimes subtle and thought-provoking, was his weapon of choice to change American hearts and minds.  If you can make a person laugh, you can make them understand a lot of things.  Dick Gregory will sorely be missed.

The other comedic legend that left us this weekend was none other than the legendary Jerry Lewis, who I had more than a few issues with.

Jerry Lewis, the brash slapstick comic who became a pop culture sensation in his partnership with Dean Martin and then transformed himself into an auteur filmmaker of such comedic classics as “The Nutty Professor” and “The Bellboy,” has died in Las Vegas. He was 91.

Lewis died at his home in Las Vegas at about 9:15 a.m. Sunday morning, his agent confirmed.

For most of his career, Lewis was a complicated and sometimes polarizing figure. An undeniable comedic genius, he pursued a singular vision and commanded a rare amount of creative control over his work with Paramount Pictures and other studios. He legacy also includes more than $2.5 billion raised for the Muscular Dystrophy Association through the annual Labor Day telethon that he made an end-of-summer ritual for decades until he was relieved of the hosting job in 2011.

But Lewis’ brand of humor did not always wear well as times and attitudes changed. Over the last 10 years of his life, his reputation soured slightly as he was forced to apologize for making a gay slur on camera during the 2007 telethon, continued to make racist and misogynistic jokes, and didn’t hesitate to share his right-wing political views.

Lewis too paved the way for a lot of comics, and there's no doubt his work and his charity left a huge mark on the world, but it also left a darker stain because of his problems.  He was definitely a product of his age, and a world with President Obama didn't exactly sit well with him and he made damn sure everyone knew it.

In a way, Gregory and Lewis were opposites.  Sometimes humor can change minds for the better, and sometimes it can be hurtful.  That they both passed on the same day is about as American as coincidences get.

StupidiNews!

• People from across America and around the world will be watching the skies today for the first total solar eclipse in nearly 100 years in the US this afternoon.
• At least 10 sailors are missing and 5 injured as a US Navy missile destroyer, the USS John S. McCain, collided with an oil tanker near Singapore yesterday.
• Donald Trump will make a primetime address this evening to unveil his strategy for Afghanistan, Trump is expected to announce an increase in US troops in America's longest war.
• Federal Reserve Bank chair Janet Yellen and European Central Bank head Mario Draghi will both be on hand for this week's annual Fed retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
• The US Supreme Court will decide whether or not the verb "to google" has become so ubiquitous that Google, the company, should lose its trademark.

Last Call For Running A Marathon, Not A Sprint

Staffers from Obama agencies are getting involved in running for Congress, and given how many Republicans ran unopposed in the House in the last midterm cycle in 2014 (30 House, and Jeff Sessions in the Senate) it's good to see Democrats lining up to take on Trump regime Republicans.

Some House races have even drawn multiple former Obama hands into the arena. In Texas, former Obama chief of staff Denis McDonough and ex-Treasury Secretary Jack Lew have lined up behind Ed Meier, a former State Department official, while ex-Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro is backing his former employee, Colin Allred, who was also an Obama White House intern and professional football player. Meier and Allred are competing in a crowded primary to take on Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), who didn’t attract a single Democratic opponent last year.

Alums of Obama’s State and Veterans Affairs departments are also among nine candidates facing off for the Democratic nomination in a Northern Virginia battleground district. And outside Detroit, the former chief of staff for the Obama administration’s auto bailout raked in donations from a host of former White House officials to get her campaign off the ground.

“What drew them to the Obama world are the same qualities that make them want to run for office,” said Erik Smith, a former Obama presidential campaign consultant. “But their participation is accelerated as the Obama diaspora moved home — more so since some would’ve stayed under a Democratic administration — and with Obama’s call to action in their heads, it drove people to run earlier than they would’ve otherwise.”

They're also getting the money to take the fight to the GOP from fellow Obama folks.

Fundraising disclosures for these candidates are littered with familiar Obama-era names: Antony Blinken, Obama’s deputy secretary of state; Tara McGuinness, a senior White House communications adviser; Cheryl Mills, former State Department counselor to Secretary Hillary Clinton; and Bernadette Meehan, spokeswoman for the National Security Council, all gave to various congressional candidates who worked in the Obama administration. Donors hail from all parts of the administration, from agencies to inside the White House.

They’re giving to candidates like Andy Kim, who served on Obama’s NSC and is challenging New Jersey Rep. Tom MacArthur. In Michigan, Elissa Slotkin, a former Defense Department official, is running against Rep. Mike Bishop, and Haley Stevens, who helped administer the bailout of the automotive industry, is taking on GOP Rep. Dave Trott.

Lindsey Davis Stover, who served in the Department of Veterans Affairs under Obama, is in a nine-way primary to take on Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock, which also features former State Department official Alison Kiehl Friedman. This week, another administration official — former Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe ambassador Dan Baer — started a campaign for an open seat outside Denver.

“Being on people’s radar — who either know me or are one degree away from me and who know this campaign world and know that money makes a difference and that you need resources to put up the fight — is a really wonderful resource,” said Kim, whose opponent MacArthur is one of the wealthiest members of Congress. “The reality is that money is important as a first-time candidate.”

And of course the next question is "What about state races?"  Yep. Gotcha covered.

It’s not limited to congressional candidates. Further down the ballot, Buffy Wicks, who helped craft Obama’s grass-roots-centric presidential campaigns and served in the White House, is running for a Berkeley-based state Assembly seat in California.

Her early donors include both of Obama’s presidential campaign managers, David Plouffe and Jim Messina, as well as a host of other colleagues from 2008 and 2012.

Informal listservs started by various Obama officials spread campaign announcements and donation requests. The Obama Alumni Association, which doesn’t endorse candidates, regularly sends emails to “update you on Obama alumni who are running for office," adding that it’s “thrilling to see so many alums willing to run, just as Barack Obama did more than 20 years ago.” In its July email, it flagged 23 new candidates.

“There’s no doubt we’ll see Obama alums run at a much higher rate in 2018 and 2020,” said Brent Colburn, a former Obama campaign and administration official who has hosted candidate meet-and-greets in the San Francisco Bay area.

“Even those of us who aren’t running are looking for ways we can give back and support the legacy of the president, so you’re not only seeing more people likely to run, but there’s also more of us who are more likely to hold fundraisers, host events for candidates and connect people to contacts in our network,” Colburn said.

I can't stress how much of a great idea this is.  I also sense President Obama's hand informally behind this as well.  The Dems need to run folks outside Obama's network too, in places where Obama had trouble, yes.  But Dems also need to go after the places Barack Obama did well in too.

We need both, and I'm glad to see Obama alumni are holding up their end of the deal.   The win the House back, we have to field candidates, period.  No more freebies for the GOP.

The Dog Days Of Trump's Summer

Once again it's important to remember that Trump's constant garbage is just that: constant.  We keep moving on to his next daily outrage on a regular basis, but those outrages individually add up to a man who will easily go down as the worst in history.

ICYMI, let my pal @BrookeBCNN explain... pic.twitter.com/J75PqIHoFd

— Ava DuVernay (@ava) August 19, 2017

Easily the worst. And it's been only seven months.

Sunday Long Read: A New World Record

Forty years ago this month, NASA sent Voyager I into the stars, with Voyager II following the month after, and probably the most famous passengers aboard each probe are a pair of golden record discs that contain sights and sounds of Earth.  Our Sunday Long Read is Timothy Ferris's New Yorker piece on the story of the creation of those records, and how they came to represent an entire planet.

I became friends with Carl Sagan, the astronomer who oversaw the creation of the Golden Record, in 1972. He’d sometimes stop by my place in New York, a high-ceilinged West Side apartment perched up amid Norway maples like a tree house, and we’d listen to records. Lots of great music was being released in those days, and there was something fascinating about LP technology itself. A diamond danced along the undulations of a groove, vibrating an attached crystal, which generated a flow of electricity that was amplified and sent to the speakers. At no point in this process was it possible to say with assurance just how much information the record contained or how accurately a given stereo had translated it. The open-endedness of the medium seemed akin to the process of scientific exploration: there was always more to learn.

In the winter of 1976, Carl was visiting with me and my fiancée at the time, Ann Druyan, and asked whether we’d help him create a plaque or something of the sort for Voyager. We immediately agreed. Soon, he and one of his colleagues at Cornell, Frank Drake, had decided on a record. By the time nasa approved the idea, we had less than six months to put it together, so we had to move fast. Ann began gathering material for a sonic description of Earth’s history. Linda Salzman Sagan, Carl’s wife at the time, went to work recording samples of human voices speaking in many different languages. The space artist Jon Lomberg rounded up photographs, a method having been found to encode them into the record’s grooves. I produced the record, which meant overseeing the technical side of things. We all worked on selecting the music.

I sought to recruit John Lennon, of the Beatles, for the project, but tax considerations obliged him to leave the country. Lennon did help us, though, in two ways. First, he recommended that we use his engineer, Jimmy Iovine, who brought energy and expertise to the studio. (Jimmy later became famous as a rock and hip-hop producer and record-company executive.) Second, Lennon’s trick of etching little messages into the blank spaces between the takeout grooves at the ends of his records inspired me to do the same on Voyager. I wrote a dedication: “To the makers of music—all worlds, all times.”

To our surprise, those nine words created a problem at nasa. An agency compliance officer, charged with making sure each of the probes’ sixty-five thousand parts were up to spec, reported that while everything else checked out—the records’ size, weight, composition, and magnetic properties—there was nothing in the blueprints about an inscription. The records were rejected, and nasa prepared to substitute blank discs in their place. Only after Carl appealed to the nasaadministrator, arguing that the inscription would be the sole example of human handwriting aboard, did we get a waiver permitting the records to fly.

In those days, we had to obtain physical copies of every recording we hoped to listen to or include. This wasn’t such a challenge for, say, mainstream American music, but we aimed to cast a wide net, incorporating selections from places as disparate as Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, China, Congo, Japan, the Navajo Nation, Peru, and the Solomon Islands. Ann found an LP containing the Indian raga “Jaat Kahan Ho” in a carton under a card table in the back of an appliance store. At one point, the folklorist Alan Lomax pulled a Russian recording, said to be the sole copy of “Chakrulo” in North America, from a stack of lacquer demos and sailed it across the room to me like a Frisbee. We’d comb through all this music individually, then meet and go over our nominees in long discussions stretching into the night. It was exhausting, involving, utterly delightful work.

In selecting Western classical music, we sacrificed a measure of diversity to include three compositions by J. S. Bach and two by Ludwig van Beethoven. To understand why we did this, imagine that the record were being studied by extraterrestrials who lacked what we would call hearing, or whose hearing operated in a different frequency range than ours, or who hadn’t any musical tradition at all. Even they could learn from the music by applying mathematics, which really does seem to be the universal language that music is sometimes said to be. They’d look for symmetries—repetitions, inversions, mirror images, and other self-similarities—within or between compositions. We sought to facilitate the process by proffering Bach, whose works are full of symmetry, and Beethoven, who championed Bach’s music and borrowed from it.

I’m often asked whether we quarrelled over the selections. We didn’t, really; it was all quite civil. With a world full of music to choose from, there was little reason to protest if one wonderful track was replaced by another wonderful track. I recall championing Blind Willie Johnson’s “Dark Was the Night,” which, if memory serves, everyone liked from the outset. Ann stumped for Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” a somewhat harder sell, in that Carl, at first listening, called it “awful.” But Carl soon came around on that one, going so far as to politely remind Lomax, who derided Berry’s music as “adolescent,” that Earth is home to many adolescents. Rumors to the contrary, we did not strive to include the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun,” only to be disappointed when we couldn’t clear the rights. It’s not the Beatles’ strongest work, and the witticism of the title, if charming in the short run, seemed unlikely to remain funny for a billion years.

The Golden Anniversary edition of the Voyage Golden Record is out, by the way, to celebrate these songs.   Good listening anywhere in the universe.

Last Call For Beantown Roasters

So Donald Trump's "fine people" from Charlottesville showed up in Boston on Saturday and the result was about 150-200 white supremacists and about 40,000 annoyed Bostonians who decided to heckle them like a guy in a Yankees jersey at Fenway Park.

One week after violent protests rattled Charlottesville, Virginia, a scheduled free speech rally in Boston today was met with thousands of counterprotesters, but the day went off mostly smoothly, police said, with 33 arrests but few injuries.

The free speech rally was deemed "officially over" by police ahead of its official end time, but thousands of counterprotesters continued to spread out in the city throughout the afternoon, with some protesting peacefully but others confronting officers and people.

A total of 33 arrests were made today, mostly from disorderly conduct and a few assaults on police officers, the Boston Police Department announced. Police Commissioner William Evans said at a news conference this afternoon that some urine-filled bottles were thrown at officers, and police indicated on Twitter that some demonstrators were throwing rocks at police.

But for the most part, Evans said, the day of direct action went off smoothly as police planned, with very little injury and property damage.

"Overall I thought we got the First Amendment people in, we got them out, no one got hurt, no one got killed," he said.

Police did stop three people with ballistic vests and a gun, Evans said, "but we were lucky to get those three out of here and confiscate the vests."

Evans said roughly 40,000 people descended on Boston today, "standing tall against hatred and bigotry in our city, and that's a good feeling." He added that he wished the "trouble makers stayed away," who he said weren't there for either the free speech side or the counterprotesters' side, but "were here just to cause problems."

Evans said that "99.9 percent of the people here were for the right reasons -- that's to fight bigotry and hate."

Well done, Beantown.  Well done.

The Never Trump Illusion

Here's my problem with "Never Trump" conservative Republicans like the Daily Beast's Matt Lewis, who rips into his fellow GOP voters for supporting Trump:

Whether Trump is obfuscating about Russia, failing to specifically condemn racism and white nationalism in Charlottesville, Virginia, opining about the beauty of Confederate memorials, or attacking fellow Republicans (the list is long and includes Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Sen. Jeff Flake), his administration is an utter disaster for the GOP and the cause of conservatism.

This is especially amazing when you consider the GOP controls all levers of power (talk about missed opportunities!), the economy seems to be humming along, and (knock on wood) Trump’s foreign policy of peace through saber-rattling is, for now, working.

Now look, I realize that a lot of good Republicans voted for someone other than Trump in the GOP primary. Further, I realize that Trump lost the popular vote in the general election. So I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush when I say that you were warned about this man—and you ignored our warnings. We were right; you were wrong.

The masses, it turns out, sometimes are asses. Sometimes the people who actually pay close attention to politics know more than the disgruntled populists and nationalists who are willing to gamble on the future of this great republic—and on the reputation of a conservative philosophy that goes from Aristotle to Burke to Buckley—in order to boost a reality show host. You elected your guy, and look where it got us.

Congratulations, or something.

Somebody has told Lewis that 1) there is no way that any Republican will ever be able to divorce themselves from being the party of Trump right now and that 2) they're the side that's winning, right?

He has the same problem Ben Sasse has, as Steve M points out.  There's no "disengagement" from this monster.

What Sasse doesn't understand is that we're not going to have "an orderly debate." Defenders of these monuments aren't going to limit themselves to peaceful discussion of the question. If it's agreed that the monuments have to come down, they're not going to accept the outcome. And I'm not just referring to white nationalists -- in many cases, state law prevents cities from removing Confederate monuments or changing street names. What's the point of "orderly debate" if localities can't make their own decisions?

Sasse proceeds to defend Trump against liberals and members of the media who are presumed to hold extreme positions, although Sasse offers no evidence that they do.

This is what America is now in 2017.

Sasse is savvy and ambitious. He's going to run for president eventually, and he's very determined to make a name for himself now. I appreciate the fact that he expresses anti-racist sentiments, but over the years a lot of national Republicans have been overtly anti-racist while supporting vote suppression, brutal law enforcement policies, and scapegoating and stereotyping of non-whites as criminals and "takers" of public assistance. Moreover, the party has allowed its messaging to be disseminated primarily on Fox News and talk radio, which vacillate between racist dog whistles and more overt appeals to racial fear and anger. And, of course, the party -- with Sasse admittedly one of the few exceptions -- rallied behind a birther who's now president.

If Republicans reject all that -- or if Sasse and others reject the Republican Party because it won't -- then we can have a civilized discussion of race. But we can't have one before then. 

The bad guys are in charge.  Sasse, Lewis, and countless other "Never Trumpers" built this creation and it is currently destroying America.  I don't blame Trump for being Trump any more than I blame the nature of the scorpion to sting.  I blame the Republicans like Lewis and Sasse who take zero responsibility for their part in putting Trump in the White House by shifting the GOP fully to being the party of not just white resentment, but white power.

Until they start with that admission, nothing will change.  Republicans can't do anything about impeaching and removing Trump from office until they admit they are the guilty ones.

Trading Blows With The Dragon

Don't look now, but it looks like on top of everything else, the Trump regime just started a trade fight with China over intellectual property.

The US has initiated an investigationn into China's theft of US intellectual property (IP) using Section 301 US Trade Act of 1974. 

That may sound like a bunch of jargon, but what it boils down to is that the US just fired the first shot in a trade war with China. 

"On Monday, President Trump instructed me to look into Chinese laws, policies, and practices which may be harming American intellectual property rights, innovation, or technology development," said Ambassador Robert Lighthizer in a statement on the US Trade Representative website. 

"After consulting with stakeholders and other government agencies, I have determined that these critical issues merit a thorough investigation. I notified the President that today I am beginning an investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974."

China sees the use of Section 301 as an act of aggression because it allows the president of the United States to act against the Chinese economy without consulting the World Trade Organization. China has been a member of the WTO since 2001. The use of Section 301 fell out of fashion around the same time. US leaders didn't see the point of using it anymore because the WTO's framework had more legitimacy, and even allies were complaining about its use.

China has been warning the Trump administration against bypassing the WTO since January. Earlier this week Chinese state media was alive with condemnation for even the thought of the US activating Section 301.

"We urge the US side to respect the facts and act prudently. If US ignores the facts and disrespects multilateral trade rules, thus jeopardizing the two nations’ trading ties, China will not sit on its hands and will take all appropriate measures to protect its own legitimate rights," said a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Commerce on Tuesday.

So that'll be fun.  I don't know if it will result in a full-blown trade war, but it definitely looks like China will retaliate.  How hard and how costly it will be, we'll see.  In the Obama and even the Bush era, both sides went to the World Trade Organization, and both sides have won and lost over the years.

But dragging up Section 301 from the swamp seems like a bad idea, and it's going to cause a lot of problems, and I wouldn't bet on Trump to show retraint in this arena.  The GOP base has long wanted a trade fight with Beijing CAUSE THEY TOOK OUR JORBS and it looks like they will get it.

Oh, by the way, you know who's the happiest to see a China/US trade war that could potentially cause billions in damage to both countries?

You got it.  Our old friend Vlad.

Last Call For Grief Versus Cynicism

As Greg Sargent points out, the mother of Heather Hayer, who was killed last weekend in Charlottesville, absolutely destroyed Donald Trump in an inerview with Good Morning America's Robin Roberts today.

Speaking on “Good Morning America,” Susan Bro, the mother of Heather Heyer, said the White House had tried to reach her with “frantic” messages, presumably to set up a call with Trump, but added that she would refuse any communications, now that Trump has suggested a moral equivalence between the racists, Nazis, and white supremacists in Charlottesville and those protesting them.

QUESTION: Have you talked to him directly yet? 

SUSAN BRO: I have not. And now I will not. At first, I just missed his calls. The first call looked like it actually came during the funeral. I didn’t even see that message. There were three more frantic messages from press secretaries throughout the day. And I didn’t know why. That had been on Wednesday. And I was home recovering from the exhaustion of the funeral. So I thought, ‘well, I’ll get to him later.’ And then I had more meetings to establish her foundation. So I hadn’t really watched the news until last night. 

And I’m not talking to the president now. I’m sorry. After what he said about my child. It’s not that I saw somebody else’s tweets about him. I saw an actual clip of him at a press conference equating the protesters, like Ms. Heyer, with the KKK and the white supremacists. …You can’t wash this one away by shaking my hand and saying, ‘I’m sorry.’

White supremacists like Steve Bannon believe that Republicans will continue to dominate out politics as long as Democrats talk about race and that more and more white voters, especially Millennials, will abandon the Dems because they think the Democrats see all white people as the problem in this country.

That's not true, as Heather Hayer proves.

But the perception of that continues to be our political reality heading into the 2018 midterms.

No Longer A Bannon Ship, But A-Bannon Ship!

It was nice to get our Friday News Trump Dump early this week, and it's a doozy: Steve Bannon is history.

Stephen K. Bannon, the embattled chief strategist who helped President Trump win the 2016 election but clashed for months with other senior West Wing advisers, is leaving his post, a White House spokeswoman announced Friday. 

“White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve’s last day,” the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said in a statement. “We are grateful for his service and wish him the best.” 

Earlier on Friday, the president had told senior aides that he had decided to remove Mr. Bannon, according to two administration officials briefed on the discussion. But a person close to Mr. Bannon insisted that the parting of ways was his idea, and that he had submitted his resignation to the president on Aug. 7, to be announced at the start of this week. But the move was delayed after the racial unrest in Charlottesville, Va.

Not everyone is happy to see him go, of course.

The loss of Mr. Bannon, the right-wing nationalist who helped propel some of Mr. Trump’s campaign promises into policy reality, raises the potential for the president to face criticism from the conservative news media base that supported him over the past year. 

Mr. Bannon’s many critics bore down after the violence in Charlottesville. Outraged over Mr. Trump’s insistence that “both sides” were to blame for the violence that erupted at a white nationalist rally, leaving one woman dead, human rights activists demanded that the president fire so-called nationalists working in the West Wing. That group of hard-right populists in the White House is led by Mr. Bannon.

So as I said yesterday, Bannon either dared Trump to fire him (and lost!) or he wanted to get back to Breitbart to help Trump from the outside (which I think it is.)  Don't expect Bannon to go gently into that white supremacist night.

And he may not go alone, either.

Some White House officials also said Friday they expect some of Bannon’s allies inside the administration to exit with him. Bannon works closely with a number of White House officials, including national security aide Sebastian Gorka and assistant Julia Hahn. 

Regardless, he's going to be causing trouble for years.  We'll see who's left standing in this game of musical racists when the tune stops playing.
Continue reading the main story

The Battle Of Lexington, Con't

While Gov. Matt Bevin is doubling down on refusing to remove Jefferson Davis's statue from the State Capitol in Frankfort, the rest of the Bluegrass State is moving on without him.  Lexington's City Council has unanimously voted to follow through with Mayor Jim Gray's request to move two Confederate statues.

Government leaders in Kentucky's second-largest city took a decisive stand Thursday night in favor of moving two Confederate statues from their prominent places outside a former courthouse being converted into a visitors center.

The proposal to relocate statues honoring Confederate officers John Hunt Morgan and John C. Breckinridge won unanimous approval from the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council after nearly three hours of public testimony that overwhelmingly supported the resolution.

The statues will not be moved immediately, CBS affiliate WKYT reports. Lexington Mayor Jim Gray has 30 days to pick a new location. 

The action showed the city is "taking responsibility to do the right thing," Gray said.
"Confronting our history is often difficult ... and uncomfortable," Gray said. "We all know, in many ways, this war is unfinished. It did not put an end to the vicious and violent reach of unrepentant racism. An important step we can take toward finishing it means facing up to our history."

People in the packed council room stood and applauded after the vote. 

The council's action isn't the final word on the issue. The city still has to ask a state military heritage commission for permission.

The problem is 4 of the 5 members of the Kentucky Military Heritage Commission are state officials appointed by Gov. Matt Bevin, and serve at the pleasure of the Governor.

In 2002 the Kentucky Military Heritage Commission was created by an act of the General Assembly as an independent agency of the Commonwealth of Kentucky but attached to the Kentucky Heritage Council for administrative and support purposes. The commission consists of the Adjutant General, the State Historic Preservation Officer, the Director of the Kentucky Historical Society, the Director of the Commission on Military Affairs and the Commissioner of the Department of Veteran's Affairs. 

As a means of protection, the commission is charged with maintaining a registry of Kentucky military heritage sites and objects significant to the military history of the Commonwealth. The commission accepts requests from the public for designation of military heritage sites and objects – including buildings, monuments and community resources – that represent all eras of Kentucky’s military history. Most sites registered by the commission are military monuments and memorials, but the legislation gives the commission some latitude as to what may be considered for recognition.

Once accepted to the registry, these sites and objects by law cannot be damaged or destroyed, removed or significantly altered, other than for repair or renovation, without the written consent of the commission. Failure to do so is a Class A misdemeanor for the first offense and a Class D felony for each subsequent offense.

All but the Director of the Kentucky Historical Society are appointed by Bevin and moving the statues will require at least three members, if not all five.

This same commission stopped the removal of the Jefferson Davis statue years ago, so who knows what will happen now.  The point is the commission was created to prevent cities in Kentucky from doing this in the first place.

We'll see, but I'm betting Bevin's office has already been on the phone to most of these members telling them what he expects.

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