Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

He went to school with my little sister and she said that everyone always thought of him to be a future shooter, and so did I when I met him in high school.
- a former schoolmate of Kyle Rittenhouse

All he needed was a little bit of encouragement and he got it. Teenage White Nationalist Trump supporter Kyle Rittenhouse was already about to be a young man of note in rightwing circles before he allegedly killed two people and wounded another with a hail of rifle fire on a street in Kenosha Wisconsin last week. A reporter from the Daily Caller, a kind of Daily Stormer in disguise co-founded by Tucker Tiki Torch Carlson in 2010, spotted him and interviewed him shortly before the murders. No doubt being chosen for an interview by such a publication filled Rittenhouse with even more confidence, validation, and encouragement to be who he dreamed of being.

But it's a good bet that it was the words of our president and the glorification of people like the front yard gun-waving Patricia and Mark McCloskey and their prime time nationally broadcast Republican Convention appearance on Monday that got him motivated to travel from his Illinois home to Kenosha. Pulling the trigger was only a half step away from what the McCloskeys did. He would be more famous. He undoubtedly longed to be more celebrated. Now, if he's convicted of the six charges he faces, his name can be added to the list that includes those who murdered Emmet Till, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, the students at Kent State, Jackson State, and so many others.

Remember Cesar Sayoc? He's the self-proclaimed Donald Trump superfan with a van covered with Trump and FOX "News" stickers who sent his homemade pipebombs to prominent democrats including Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Maxine Waters, CNN, former president Barack Obama, Eric Holder, John Brennan, and others. Fortunately, none of them exploded. Last week's victims of Trumpism weren't so lucky.

These lunatics feel they have permission to act. They feel they are carrying out the wishes of those like Donald Trump who speak their sicko white supremacy language non-stop. This is not at all unlike Ronald Reagan calling for "a bloodbath" on our nation's campuses and Spiro Agnew calling protesters "bad apples" and worse in order to incite similar violence 50 years ago. It's not a matter of the Reagans, Agnews and Trumps learning from such grisly mistakes and toning it down. No, they don't consider what they say to be a mistake at all. They have a goal so they continue, hoping to bring on still more murderous mayhem. It's who they are and it's why their supporters vote for them. "Law and Order" isn't just a campaign slogan. It's code.

After the murders in Kenosha, Fox's Tucker Tiki Torch doubled down on his support for such actions as the Kenosha killing by attempting to cynically and sarcastically defend Kyle Rittenhouse by justifying the actions he's accused of:

How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain law and order when no one else would?

Other Republican types instantly joined in via social media, proudly collecting 'likes' for their support of Rittenhouse and lest you think that all of the sports world is supportive of the protesters, retired San Francisco Giant Aubry Huff proclaimed Rittenhouse "a national treasure" and Hall of Fame NFL linebacker Brian Urlacher joined in on defending the accused shooter.

This is only going to get worse if Donald Trump and his party have anything to say about it. How long before the McCloskeys get a Medal of Freedom just like another agent of mayhem and chaos named Rush Limbaugh did? Would Trump create a new award named after them? Will Trump pardon Rittenhouse and say he was only acting in the best interests of Republicanism? Would you risk money betting that such conversations haven't already taken place in the White House?

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

The above clip from The Villages, a Flor-i-duh retirement community, could easily run as an advertisement for FOX "News." It has all the elements: Golf carts, Trump 2020 signs, and Republican guys screaming "White Power. White Power!" All it's missing is Tucker Tiki Torch, Laura Ingraham throwing a few nazi salutes, and a Confederate or Nazi flag or two, or five.

I am, in fact, shocked that the clip hasn't been running as an ad on FOX half-hourly since it first surfaced this weekend. And why did it surface? Because President Chimp On Crack was so proud of this parade of lowlife white supremacist supporters that he thought everyone should see it. Just having it be the number one youtube clip in the White House wasn't enough for him. So, he tweeted it to the universe!

It's not the first time Trump has tweeted things with a white nationalist theme and it won't be the last. He knows who votes for him and he aims to please them. This time, he even described his fellow white supremacists in the parade as "Great people." Of course he did. It was a Charlottesville moment all over again. If one of those Nazi loons in their golf carts thought they could have killed one of the counter protesters by running them over with their golf carts, they would have done it in an instant. They would have gone right after the woman who wrote Black Lives Matter on her shirt. After all, what else would you expect from a Trump Cultist?

I bet all of the paraders have already been invited to the Republican Convention slated for Jasksonville in August. There they'll be, up on stage, driving around in circles in their golf carts like monkeys on tricycles, chanting "White Power! White Power! White Power!' You'll see and hear the delegates in the audience joining in as Ms. Ingraham and Mr. Tiki Torch introduce Trump and Pence as they slowly appear walking out of a fog cloud at the rear of the stage. Maybe Kim Jong un will be there, too, walking hand in hand with the president.

Trump's Brown Shirts

There were gays, Hispanics, African-Americans, Jews, union members... even Muslims, who voted for Trump in 2016 and some of them plan to do so again next year. Are they all crazy? Ignorant? Stupid? Some thing like that. I always wanted to know-- but never found anything definitive-- how many Jews voted for Hitler in the 1932 presidential election and for Nazi Party in the Reichstag elections in 1932 and 1933. The elections in July and November of '32 and in March of 1933 led to the deaths of 6 million European Jews. Between 1932 and 1939 about 300,000 German Jews wisely fled the country. Subsequently, 180,000 German Jews were murdered. Wouldn't you like to know how many of them had voted for Hitler and his party?

In 2016, about 24% of Jews who voted, voted for Trump. Blacks were much smarter; only 8% voted for Trump. 29% of Hispanics-- many of them Cuban rightists-- voted for him. 29% of Asian-Americans did. And 14% of LGBTQ voters pulled the levers for Trump. 16.8% of Muslim voters, picked Trump. Are all these people suicidal? Maybe.

Yesterday Wall Street Journal reporters Georgia Wells and Ian Lovett wrote about The Toxic World Where Mass Shooters Thrive. This is part of Trump world-- no Antifa here, just Trumpists, wall to wall Trumpists. And they would like to kill all these gays and Jews and blacks and Hispanics and Asians, including the ones who voted for their man. Suspects in recent attacks posted to hate-filled forums in this dark, fringey corner of TrumpWorld, such as 8chan, which brim with racist content. They tout "kill scores." Wells and Lovett wrote that "Less than two weeks after a gunman killed more than 50 people at two mosques in New Zealand, law-enforcement officials found a disturbing piece of graffiti outside a San Diego County mosque that had been set on fire. 'For Brenton Tarrant -t./pol/,' it read. The cryptic message, which paid homage to the alleged New Zealand shooter and a dark corner of the internet where such shootings are celebrated, foreshadowed a string of violence."

I'm the least racist... by Nancy Ohanian

In April, one month after the graffiti appeared, John Earnest, the man who police say vandalized the mosque, allegedly attacked a nearby synagogue, leaving one person dead. Then, in August, a shooting in an El Paso Walmart killed 22. One week later, a Norwegian man allegedly opened fire at an Oslo mosque.

The trio of suspects don’t appear ever to have met, but they all idolized Mr. Tarrant and were part of a hate-filled online community that is emerging as an important front in law-enforcement efforts to ward off future attacks.

The online forums, known as /pol/ for “politically incorrect,” offer a platform for hate speech where posts are almost always anonymous, making it difficult for law enforcement to identify who is using the sites. Hateful ideologies, including white supremacy, are promoted across the sites and used to incite violence, forming a chain of influence that appears to have led from one mass shooting to the next. When one site is shut down, users swiftly migrate to another.

Mass shooters are revered on the forums, which brim with racist and antigay content. Posts encourage attacks against mosques, synagogues and immigrants. Large numbers of fatalities are celebrated as “high scores.”

When a gunman in West Texas opened fire on Saturday, the forums lit up, with users demanding to know his “kill count” and saying they hoped he was white and his victims Hispanic. The alleged shooter doesn’t appear to have ties to the forums.

The most popular site among extremists, 8chan, has been largely knocked offline in recent weeks after tech-support providers cut off service. But extremists and violent rhetoric are popping up elsewhere. The alleged attacker at the Oslo mosque posted on another site, Endchan. A letter New Zealand authorities said Mr. Tarrant sent from jail, which warns of bloodshed soon to come, was posted on another site, 4chan. The sites are unconnected.

Lawmakers and law-enforcement officials are trying to better understand how the sites function and what can be done to combat the calls to violence posted there. Democratic and Republican leaders of the House Homeland Security Committee subpoenaed Jim Watkins, 8chan’s owner, to testify Thursday about extremist content. The committee is weighing whether the government should take a more active role in trying to prevent the spread of such content, and how the sites can flag potential violence to law enforcement, according to a person familiar with the committee’s plans. Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS) has vowed to hold hearings to discuss how to better fight what he calls domestic terrorism.

Counterterrorism experts and others who study the forums say they provide inspiration for some participants to act, catalyzing a succession of lone-wolf shooters who try to one-up one another. Shutting them down entirely will be all but impossible, said Robert Evans, who has investigated internet extremism for years with research collective Bellingcat. “I expect we will see shootings that are inspired by these manifestos but posted on places other than 8chan because the site is down,” he said.

Law-enforcement officials say Mr. Earnest, the 20-year-old accused in the San Diego attack, Patrick Crusius, the alleged shooter in El Paso, and Mr. Tarrant all posted racist pronouncements to 8chan’s /pol/ forum ahead of their attacks. In each case, other users responded while the shootings were going on.

“He at least did something, thats respectable,” one 8chan user posted about Mr. Earnest’s alleged synagogue shooting.

“So what’s his kill count?” said another.

Tore Bjørgo, director of the Center for Research on Extremism in Oslo, said: “You have this idea that they should outdo each other.” Sites such as 8chan, he said, are “where they find their inspiration….That’s where they expect to get fame and recognition.”

Messrs. Tarrant and Earnest have pleaded not guilty. Mr. Crusius hasn’t yet been arraigned. Mr. Earnest’s lawyer declined to comment. Lawyers for the other two suspects didn’t respond to requests for comment.

8chan didn’t respond to requests for comment. In postings on Twitter and YouTube after the subpoena, Mr. Watkins, who resides in the Philippines, said he isn’t an extremist, and he defended 8chan as a bastion of free speech.

Mr. Watkins said the site had a million users, and 4chan has said its site has more than 20 million. SimiliarWeb, an internet traffic research firm, estimates 8chan has 10 million to 20 million visits a month.

Founded in 2013, 8chan gained popularity the following year when 4chan, a similar site with less hate speech and more moderation, cracked down on users who were harassing women who developed and reviewed videogames. 8chan embraced those users.

The site calls itself “the darkest reaches of the internet.” Its home page carries a disclaimer saying that some topic sections, or “boards,” might “have content of an adult or offensive nature,” and only content violating U.S. laws is deleted.

Anonymity is protected. Users are given a random ID number for each discussion, and frequently use jargon alien to outsiders-- derisively referred to as “normies.” The stripped-down user interface seems straight out of the 1990s. It contains lists of links to discussion boards on such topics as anime, pornography and videogames.

Unpaid moderators on 8chan’s /pol/ forum promote certain ideologies, according to one researcher of radical online communities who has studied the site for years. One moderator deleted anti-Trump statements, the researcher said, while others argue about whether to support patriotism or white nationalism. Recruiters for the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi terrorist group, lurk on the site, he said.

Often users show up on 8chan airing vague frustrations. The tone often starts as mocking and sarcastic. Then other users encourage them to express anger at groups they identify as the enemy-- often Jews, feminists, black people and other minorities-- giving the newcomers a sense of purpose, according to the researcher.

Anti-Semitic cartoons, diatribes against race mixing and proclamations of a coming “race war” dominate 8chan’s /pol/ board. A popular meme depicts images of murdered white women, a message intended to persuade white women not to associate with nonwhite men and justify promoting race-based violence. Another popular meme asks users: “What have you done today for the white race?”

Anders Breivik, the Norwegian neo-Nazi who killed 77 people in 2011, is lionized, and his 1,500-page screed, which was frequently shared on 8chan, is a touchstone. Mr. Tarrant cited Mr. Breivik as his guiding light.

Mr. Evans, of Bellingcat, analyzed how 75 extremists on the internet said they had become radicalized. In about half of the cases, their paths started with a radical YouTube video, typically anti-Semitic or Holocaust-denying, which pushes conspiracy theories. YouTube has said it has taken steps to reduce extremist content.

“8chan’s /pol/ board is the end of a journey of radicalization,” he said. “It’s to radicalize you into taking the next step.”

8chan played a major role in Mr. Earnest’s transformation, according to his online message and people close to him. He wrote that he had a lot going for him-- a loving family, great friends, a church-- and that he was doing well in nursing school. He said his family never taught him the ideology behind his attack.

The people close to Mr. Earnest said he began diverging politically from his family in 2016, when he began supporting then-candidate Donald Trump for president. He then started watching YouTube videos from right-wing commentators.

By late 2017, Mr. Earnest wrote, he had found his way to 8chan. People close to him said he began talking about Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character appropriated by white supremacists as a sort of mascot, and started tossing around clichés of anti-Semitism: Holocaust denial and the supposed existence of a Jewish conspiracy controlling government, Hollywood, major organizations and trade unions.

“He made it clear that 4chan was like amateur league, and he had risen to 8chan,” one of the people close to him said.

He also started using the N-word, prompting objections from family members, who noted that the pastor’s wife at their Orthodox Presbyterian Church is black. Mr. Earnest would respond that it wasn’t a big deal.

His family grew concerned and warned him that he could be manipulated by the anonymous people he was talking to online, said the person close to him. “That was not enough to overcome the grab that these ideas had on him that he gained from these anonymous sources,” this person said. Mr. Earnest always had a “canned” response defending his ideology.

In the months before the attack, he seemed more sullen and slower to laugh, the people close to him said. Still, those around him didn’t think he was dangerous. They hadn’t visited the site themselves or seen what he may have been posting there.

“I believed this was going to resolve,” one of them said. “We obviously did not understand the trajectory of where this would land.”

In the statement Mr. Earnest allegedly posted to 8chan shortly before the shooting began, he offered gratitude to 8chan and said Mr. Tarrant had inspired him.

“I’ve only been lurking for a year and a half, yet, what I’ve learned here is priceless,” the statement said about 8chan. “Tarrant was a catalyst for me personally….I only wish to inspire others.”

Mr. Tarrant had worn a camera and live-streamed his New Zealand attack, a practice that experts say turns shootings into a twisted form of entertainment. Mr. Earnest allegedly planned to film his attack, too. During the shooting, a link to a Facebook Live stream was widely shared on the 8chan /pol/ board, although people on 8chan said they couldn’t load it. Users joked and offered critiques, some mocking him for failing to kill more people.

“What the f— shooting style is this,” said one. “Garbage.”

“Go over to the synagogue and finish this retard’s work,” said another.

“I don’t think you get the title of ‘mass shooter’ unless you score at least 2,” said a third.

Still another weighed in: “Contrary to popular belief, shooting them in the nose doesn’t kill a jew?”

For law enforcement, 8chan postings and discussions are potential evidence-- and a breeding ground for more violence. After the San Diego area attack, the Federal Bureau of Investigation served a warrant to 8chan, seeking IP addresses and information about all the people who responded to Mr. Earnest’s posting or commented about it. “Some of the individuals may be potential witnesses, co-conspirators and/or individuals who are inspired by the subject posting,” the warrant said.

Mr. Crusius, the El Paso shooting suspect, cited similar motivations to Mr. Earnest’s in the statement he allegedly posted on 8chan. He wrote: “I support the Christchurch shooter and his manifesto,” a reference to Mr. Tarrant. “This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

Commenters on the site celebrated. “The new guy deserves some praise, he reached almost a third of the high score,” one wrote, a reference to the largest death toll in any mass shooting.

Under pressure following the El Paso massacre, internet-infrastructure provider Cloudflare Inc. stopped supporting 8chan, making it difficult to access. Cloudflare called the site “lawless by design.”

Some users circulated a document with instructions for finding 8chan on a hidden server on the dark web, a network of computers that use special software to conceal their true locations. Others migrated to other sites or to encrypted chat apps, where they are finding a thriving community similar to the one they left, according to Megan Squire, a professor of computer science at Elon University in North Carolina, who studies online extremism.

“They are following ISIS. They are under the same pressure to avoid detection,” she said.

Exactly one week after El Paso, Philip Manshaus, a 21-year-old Norwegian, allegedly posted a message on Endchan, another fringe site that has more moderation and less focus on violence than 8chan.

“It’s my time,” said a posting that carried his name. “I was elected by Saint Tarrant,” a reference to the New Zealand suspect. He also posted a meme celebrating Messrs. Earnest and Crusius as “disciples” of Mr. Tarrant.

Mr. Manshaus then allegedly went to the Oslo mosque and opened fire, injuring one person before being subdued by congregants.

The post attributed to him said he tried to set up a live stream of his attack on Facebook but wasn’t able to get it to work.

Endchan moderators quickly deleted the post and briefly took their site offline. They said a “large influx” of 8chan refugees had hit their site and many sites like theirs.

“This shooter is NOT representative of our regular user base,” Endchan said in a post on Twitter. “We have operated since 2015 without any incidents like this.”

Mr. Manshaus’s message was reposted on 4chan, where it spread quickly, generating scores of comments.

“God i hope he got a solid kill count on some actual shitting islamic invaders, not women and children,” one anonymous poster wrote.

When it became clear no one had died, many commenters mocked Mr. Manshaus in posts riddled with racist, anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic slurs.

“what a f—ing disappointment tho. no deads. no livestream,” one commenter wrote. “how many times will this happen? f—ing train at least”

“Some people aren’t made to kill,” wrote another. “He probably freaked out. Anders Breivik was stone cold, he went out like a terminator.”

4chan didn’t respond to a request for comment.

A group on chat app Telegram called The Bowlcast-- a reference to the bowl-style haircut of Dylann Roof, who killed nine black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., in 2015-- posted a series of podcasts about which of these shooters they should canonize, according to Ms. Squire, who has viewed the posts and listened to the podcasts. Mr. Earnest, from San Diego, earned sainthood, they decided, but not Mr. Manshaus, because he was overtaken by worshipers at the mosque.

Shortly after the Oslo shooting, Mr. Tarrant surfaced again, this time via photographs posted on 4chan of a letter he allegedly wrote from his New Zealand prison. The letter, which received hundreds of comments on 4chan, concluded with talk of a “great conflict” on the horizon that would involve “a great amount of bloodshed.”

“Enjoy life,” he signed off, “but do not forget your duty to your people.”

Andrew Whitehead teaches sociology at Clemson University and is the Assistant Director of the Association of Religion Data Archives. Samuel Perry teaches sociology at the University of Oklahoma. They have a book coming out in February, Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States. They penned a piece yesterday for NBC.com with Landon Schnabel a sociology teachers at Stanford (whose book, Is Faith Feminine? What Americans Really Think about Gender and Religion, is also due out soon), about mass shootings and evangelical Christian who put their faith in guns instead of Jesus. They noted that "Trump, as he has after other shootings, offered thoughts and prayers but no promises on how he will respond. On Sunday, he said that the Odessa shooting 'really hasn't changed anything' about how lawmakers are approaching gun control legislation. Given Trump’s support and then opposition to gun control legislation in the weeks after the shooting in El Paso (but before Odessa), his most recent comments aren’t surprising."

74% of evangelicals-- about 40% more than normal Americans-- believe that "the absence of God from our public schools and places" contributes "a great deal" to gun violence. This is evangelical dogma, taught as fervently as the word of Jesus. About 44% of evangelicals see a connection between gun violence and the easy availability of guns. Most evangelicals are taught to blame gun violence on the mass media and pop culture "despite the rejection of this causal link by most criminologists who study violence in popular media."

No political appetite... by Nancy Ohanian

[T]he idea that evangelicals don’t want to “politicize” this issue, as the above quotes might suggest, rings untrue. Rather, it is certain political solutions that they oppose.

Evangelicals are far less interested in laws that limit the number of guns or restrict who can buy them. But evangelicals are more in favor of policies that increase the number of “good guys with guns” (security guards, teachers and school officials, all law-abiding citizens).

...In other words, the solution to mass shootings for evangelicals is less about eliminating the possibility of gun violence (which evangelical leaders are often quick to point out cannot be done), but to ensure that evil gun violence can be conquered with “righteous” gun violence.

So why are evangelicals so different from other Americans regarding guns? One explanation is because of how guns make them feel.

Significantly more gun-owning evangelicals than all other gun-owning Americans report that owning a gun makes them feel safe (77 percent), confident (59 percent), patriotic (48 percent), and more valuable to their family (44 percent) and their community (41 percent).

For gun-owning evangelicals, more so than other gun-owning Americans at least, gun ownership and rights go hand-in-hand with being an American and a good citizen.

The pervasiveness of Christian nationalist ideology and rhetoric within the evangelical subculture inclines them to view their Second Amendment rights as sacred, handed down by God for the benefit of the nation (which helps us understand why owning a gun would curiously make them feel more patriotic).

But in addition to their more “spiritual” concerns, social and psychological drivers matter for those in the evangelical subculture as well. Gun ownership is an expression of civic responsibility and helps them feel useful to those they care about. And it makes them feel secure and self-reliant.

When guns evoke such positive (even sacred) feelings of security and national belonging, is it any wonder that so many evangelicals refuse to consider gun control as a possible solution to America’s epidemic of mass shootings?

One of the newest Blue America-endorsed candidates, Jason Butler in northeastern North Carolina, has a very different view of morality. Jason is a very progressive pastor running for the 2nd district seat occupied by Trump rubber-stamp George Holding. Yesterday he wrote that he's running for Congress largely because the country is facing a moral crisis. Like I said, a very progressive pastor. He's worked as a community organizer, has founded two non-profits to help care for the vulnerable, has a history of fighting for racial justice, LGBTQ+ inclusion, and the economic flourishing for North Carolina's under-resourced communities. Please read what Jason has to say about the moral crisis informing his campaign and if it appeals to you, click on the thermometer and contribute what you can. Jason:

We are in the midst of a moral crisis in America and we cannot move forward without recognizing that we have allowed fear to drive us to do things to people we would never want to be done to us. Where is our “golden rule” or our collective moral integrity? We are separating families at the border; allowing record profits for corporations while millions go uninsured; and allowing the environment to die a slow death while we chant, “send her back…” No, these are not just policy issues-- they are issues of life and death and we must face them with a courageous conviction for the common good, or we will never be the same.

A few months ago I had an experience that pushed me to face this choice. I was at a prayer vigil with a group of over 100 Latinx men and women pleading to our legislators to veto a bill that would give ICE unfettered access to our communities. I was standing in the back near a group of their children who were playing nearby. They were playing like there were no problems in the world. They were playing as kids should.

As I watched them, I was struck by the sobering realization that many of these children would go home to their communities and live in the fear of their families being torn apart. That some may grow up with only one parent, because the other was taken.

While I watched them play follow-the-leader, a scripture came to mind and resonated in my heart. In Exodus, Moses has a conversation with God about the enslaved Israelites, and from the burning bush God says, “I have indeed heard the cry of their suffering…”

I believe that God hears the cries of those who suffer. I also believe that God sends us out to fight injustice and relieve suffering, as God did with Moses. Reflecting on that scripture while surrounded by that group of children-- each one of their lives subject to the powers that be, each with uncertain futures and tomorrows-- a conviction rose up in me to run for public office and to work to create a future where these kids, and so many like them, can have a future free of fear and full of liberty.

People sometimes ask, “What qualifies you to run for Congress?” Well, for the last 15 years I’ve worked not only as a pastor but also community organizer and and non-profit leader. In this work I spend my time listening to people, caring for them in their time of need, and organizing communities to develop innovate solutions and push the powerful to do all we can for the common good. Shouldn’t this sort of community service be at the heart of what it means to be a politician?

In this moment of political chaos, we need to see more elected officials consistently offering courageous leadership as a response to the suffering of our communities, and then taking strong action in order to ensure a flourishing future for every single person. Politics, at its best, is not about big money or corporate influence but rather, about the public negotiation of how a society cares for its citizens. I don’t know about you, but I feel like a lot of people are not being cared for right now. Even those who you may disagree with.

As Americans, we are a people who have the morality of liberty and justice for all etched into our collective imaginations. But when we are consumed with uncertainty and economic struggle, personal survival takes precedent. In this, we fight to hold on to what we have instead of fighting for liberty. Here, we find ourselves looking backwards instead of looking forward and allow the fear of what may be paralyze us from the hope filled future we can create. But it is precisely in these moments of uncertainty and struggle that seeking liberty and justice for all rallies us together, pushes against this paralyzing fear, gives us a collective purpose, and re-ignites hope in the future. Seeking the flourishing of my neighbor is the antidote to fear.

The issues we as a country are facing today are not just political issues but rather issues of morality that will define the nation we leave to the next generation. The separation of Latinx families and the detention of immigration children is immoral. The massive economic inequality that leaves many without healthcare while corporations record historical profits is immoral. The predatory behavior of pharmaceutical companies to push opioids on rural communities is immoral. The disregard for our environment’s health is immoral. The discrimination against our black, brown, and LGBTQ+ communities is immoral.

These are pressing issues, and while some politicians might give us complicated excuses to justify their inaction, I think the real problem is that many of our leaders lack the moral courage to do the right, and usually obvious, thing-- to stand up to big money, to ensure affordable healthcare, to refuse to legislate suffering, to inspire us to care for our most vulnerable, and to help us face our historical truths that we would like to pretend do not exist. Although we face challenges as a nation, we have within us the capacity to rise above our differences, push back the forces of fear, and reach towards the American dream of liberty and justice for all. But in order to realize this new future we must build it upon a foundation of equality. A foundation fortified by doing good for one another. We have to learn from our history and stop treating people different from us as less than us.

Fear is a poison that will slowly destroy our hopes and dreams and corrode our faith in each other-- and we must root it out. We don’t need to be afraid of the future-- we can enter it with courage and conviction, together. We need political leaders who can inspire us to these ideals, and who will boldly lead the way in creating a tomorrow that can be better than today.

I’m running for Congress because I know so many in our communities are suffering and need their voices to be heard. I’m running because I believe every child should be free to play without the threat of violence. I’m running because I believe we have the capacity to create a more perfect union if we all summon our deepest courage, work together, and embrace the strength of our diversity.

I’m running for Congress because I believe in equitable and flourishing future for us all and my conviction to fight for this future compels me to action-- even such an action as this. Yes, it may be unconventional, but we may just need some unconventional right now. Sure, I’m an outsider and a deep underdog. I don’t have big money or corporate influence. But maybe that’s exactly the way it should be: Everyday Americans running to create an America for everybody. Yes, it’ll be hard, but I’ve learned that most things that are worth doing are hard to do.

What I do have is a moral conviction for justice and a commitment to grassroots leadership…and well…I’ll take those over big money any day.

Scratch The Surface Of Half The Republican Legislators In The Country And You'll Find... Matt Shea (R-WA)

Rep. Matt Shea (R, of course)

Between Spokane and the Idaho border you'll find Washington's 4th legislative district. It's very rural. There's got to be a town there but I can't find one on the map, although... there was a post office of sorts in a town called Drygoon and in 1902 they changed the name from Drygoon to Colbert in honor of a postmaster named Harry Colbert. But I'm not certain if it's inside the district or not. Like I said, it's very rural. The state Rep from the 4th, Matthew Shea, is 45. He's beyond conservative. When his wife Lisa divorced him, she applied for an application of protection because he considered her a possession, not a possession like a lamp but a possession like the way it was in the Old Testament. Her court papers say he was very abusive, physically and emotionally and that he "insisted she walk on his left side because his sword, if he had one, would be on his right side." Refusing to get a job, he hosted a hate talk radio show on Patriot Radio twice a week. In 2008 he was elected to the state legislature, where he defines the far outer fringes of a Republican Party whose uneducated and drugged-up base is consumed by insane conspiracy theories.

Why should Matt Shea matter to anyone outside of eastern Washington? Well... last year, Rep. Shea admitted he had distributed a 4 page manifesto that strongly smacks of right-wing domestic terrorism, The Biblical Basis for War, and certainly makes it clear that he and his pals have been promoting violence against people who don't adhere to his extremist-- many would say psychotic-- ideology or religious beliefs. This past April, the House Republicans finally removed Shea as their Caucus Chair-- for advocating murdering non-Christians.

Shea was in the news again over the weekend. The Spokane Spokesman-Review. Chad Sokol reported that "Shea and some of his closest supporters have made physical preparations for a holy war, one that would help them establish their long-envisioned 51st state, their Redoubt, their Christian homeland," which he's named Liberty. "Leaked emails published this week reveal that Shea has had close ties with a group that conducted 'patriotic and biblical training on war for young men.'

In addition to running “background checks” on liberal activists and supporting military-style training for boys and young men, Shea has in recent years sought to purchase GPS tracking devices, compiled dossiers on local progressive leaders and kept a blacklist of suspected informants in his network. He also plotted to establish a “provisional government” in the event of a collapse and boasted about his efforts to “turn back the tide” of those who practice Islam in the United States.

Shea also distributed a list that purported to include the names and phone numbers of every law enforcement officer working in Washington state, saying it would help to “confirm or deny legitimacy” of investigators who made contact. He and his associates used email servers and messaging apps designed with extra layers of encryption in an attempt to shield their identities. He signed messages “V” or “V/B”-- short for his code name, Verum Bellator, which is Latin for “truth warrior.”

Shea, who rarely speaks to the news media, did not respond to messages seeking comment for this story.

“He was a paranoid dude,” recalled Jay Pounder, a whistleblower who once worked on Shea’s informal security detail. “He was always scared that the government was listening. He was always scared that if a black van pulled up, the doors would fly open and they’d scoop him away. And he always said that he would not go down without a fight.”

In a statement Saturday, the Spokane chapter of the NAACP responded to the revelations of the past week, saying Shea “uses his platform to promote hate and violence” and calling for his removal from office.

“Every moment he occupies a seat in our state Legislature emboldens extremists and erodes the legitimacy of our sacred institutions,” the NAACP said. “Anything short of the expulsion of Matt Shea from the Washington state House of Representatives is a threat to our community, a threat to our collective safety and an implicit endorsement of white supremacy.”

Pounder, who worked for Shea for several years, said that Shea outfitted him with various electronic tools designed to detect hidden recording devices and disrupt transmitters.

“He gave me a bug sniffer,” Pounder said. “He gave me a cellphone jammer that plugs into a cigarette lighter.”

Emails show that in July 2016, Pounder, using the code name Fox, presented Shea with a short list of Ebay links-- a selection of GPS devices that might come in handy for tracking perceived adversaries.

“He was thinking that, at some point in the future, there would be concerning people that need to be tracked,” Pounder recalled.

...Idaho state Rep. Heather Scott, R-Blanchard, emailed Shea in May 2017, including an attachment of more than 60 pages of scanned newsletters and other documents related to water use and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

“This packet is from a private meeting I went to and is full of valuable information on key federal operatives that are working collectively in the Northwest out of multiple locations,” Scott wrote. “Please take the time to review and learn some of the names and connections as I believe the information will be very valuable. This information is somewhat sensitive so please be careful who you choose to share it with.”

The packet included a biography of Elaine Willman, who has called for abolishing the sovereignty of Native American tribes and appeared with Shea at a “New Code of the West” conference in Whitefish, Montana, in October 2018.

Shea forwarded Scott’s message to Pounder, writing, “Ms. Willman is one of us. The rest need to be put on our list. We need to talk at your earliest convenience.”

Crazy or dangerous? Or both? Shea, an ally of Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), prophesizes he will be elected president (of the U.S.) and that his assassination will lead to a civil war. You tell me, does this crackpot manifesto of his look like a call to prepare for violence and civil war? I don't think you can put someone in prison for this stuff-- or even in a mental institution. It's up to his constituents to remove him from office, though. I have a feeling many of them are very much like him though.

BIBLICAL BASIS FOR WAR

1. God is a Warrior.

2. When is the time for war? When God says its time...Prayer Council.
3. Fight to win so you don’t have to fight again.

4. 4 Things to stay within God’s will:

a. Holy Cause;

b. HolyLeader;

c. Holy Army; and

d. HolyCamp.

5. 4 Ways To Know It's Time To Fight

a. God reveals His will to the leader;

b. LeaderinquiresofGod...PrayerCouncil;

c. God puts it on the hearts of the people; or

d. Godstartsthefight.

6. Things For A Holy Army

a. Sacrifice/Worship/Prayer;

b. Circumcision/Saved;

c. Vow (consecration to the Lord);

d. Trumpets/Ark;

e. Atonement/Money; and

f. Praise to God Before/During/After.

7. 5 Facts of War:

a. War is a fact of life.

b. GodiswithusandthebattleisHis.
c. Numbers are inconsequential.

d. Armamentsareinconsequential.

e. Isaiah 57:1 – Why Righteous Men are Killed...

8. 4 Qualifications

a. 18 years old or older;

b. AblebodiedMan;

c. Single Minded in Battle; and

d. StableHome.

9. 5 Exemptions from Service:

a. Training Family-- New Home;

b. Newlyweds-- NewWife;

c. Farmer-- New Crops;

d. Scared-- FearMeansaLackofFaith(OffertoLeave);or

e. Priests-- Duty to Ministry in Temple.

This fucking nut case goes on and on and on and I'm getting drowsy inputting it all, so I'll just include a few more highlights. Libery won't declare war on the rest of Washington or the rest of the U.S. if they agree to 5 demands:

• Stop all abortions
• No same sex marriage
• No idolatry or occultism
• No communism
• Must obey Biblical law

"If they do not yield-- kill all males.

There's this crazy section of the manifesto about how to divide up all the booty and loot they take from Jews and other non-believers and another part about how to biblically deal with tyranny, some of it overtly anti-democratic like, "God doesn’t use majorities. The majority is usually wrong." He also asserts that assassination is not murder and that you must "Prepare your horse for battle, but the battle is the Lord’s." And something about "Abad and Shamar," who I thought were whales at the San Diego Aquarium.

Matt Shea-- a member of the state legislature... and a Republican Party leader.

Maybe Fox Should Extend Tucker Carlson's Exile To... Forever

Fox News sent Tucker Carlson away on a little unannounced vacation until the heat dies down on his white nationalist TV show. Most normal people didn't know Fox was running a nightly KKK rally in prime time until the media exploded in a frenzy about Carlson's claim that White Supremacy is nothing but a hoax, immediately after the white supremacist mass murders in Gilroy, El Paso and Dayton. At the end of his Wednesday show, Carlson announced: By the way, I am taking several days off-- headed to the wilderness to fish with my son. Politics is important, fishing with your son, sometimes more important. So I’m doing it, saying he'd be off on Thursday, back on Friday for something he called "a special investigation," and then off for all of next week. New York Daily News columnist Leonard Greene noted around the same time that Carlson had earned the backlash he's getting. in response to Carlson's flawed "reasoning"-- that "the combined membership of every white supremacist organization in this country would be able to fit inside a college football stadium"-- he pointed out that "not every white supremacist is a member of a white supremacist organization. Only a fraction probably are, so we can quickly dispense with Carlson’s college football stadium theory. And to be in denial about the very philosophy that our country was founded and built on is not only racist-- it’s delusional... Never mind that Hispanics were in Texas long before there was a Texas... The real hoax is when people like Trump and Carlson pretend that what they say doesn’t have bigoted and violent consequences. So, if I’m out of line for suggesting Carlson might be a racist, then I’m sorry. I also apologize for saying that sugar is sweet."




Yesterday, writing for the Washington Post, Margaret Sullivan took issue with Carlson's premise, as though he were a normal pundit rather than a neo-Nazi propaganda agent. "In his ongoing and remarkably successful quest to be the worst of the Fox News nighttime hosts," she noted, "Tucker Carlson hit a new low on his Tuesday show. White supremacy, he claimed, isn’t a real problem in America: 'This is a hoax, just like the Russia hoax. It’s a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power.' (Let’s set aside, for a moment, the truth that the Russian attacks on America’s voting integrity, to help Donald Trump become president, are anything but a hoax, as the Mueller report made abundantly clear.) And, Carlson insisted, he has empirical evidence: 'I’ve lived here 50 years and I’ve never met anybody, not one person who ascribes to white supremacy,' he said, adding, 'I don’t know a single person who thinks that’s a good idea.' Hmm. Maybe his sample size is a bit flawed." Or maybe he gave up looking in the mirror decades ago.

Anyway, Carlson’s wrong. Here’s the dictionary definition of white supremacy: the belief that white people are superior to people of other races and therefore should be dominant over them.

It’s undeniably one of the core tenets of the opinion-mongers at Fox News-- and of some portion of its supposedly straight news coverage, too. (Remember the network’s feverish attention to “the caravan” of migrants moving northward toward the United States-- and how abruptly that coverage faded after it was no longer useful as a Republican talking point in the 2018 midterms?)

Understand: I’m not suggesting that Carlson or his Fox colleagues are stashing their Klan robes in the newsroom closet. They may not display the most obvious and virulent strain of white supremacy or belong to organizations dedicated to the cause or pick up assault weapons and destroy innocent lives, as the El Paso gunman did on Saturday. (Remember, the 2,300-word screed-- let’s not dignify it with the term “manifesto”-- that authorities linked to the suspect stated: “This attack is a response to Hispanic invasion of Texas.”)

Nevertheless, Carlson’s nightly show does a great deal to portray nonwhites as the dangerous “other,” a force to be beaten back to save America.

His denials and rhetoric must be called out for the lies that they are.

Consider his and his Fox colleagues’ insistence on using the word “invasion” to describe migrants coming to America-- generally people of color from countries south of the border.

Here’s what a recent Media Matters study found about the use of that term so far this year on Fox News: There have been more than 70 on-air references to an invasion of migrants; there have been at least 55 clips of President Trump calling migrants an invasion. And Carlson himself spoke of the United States being invaded nine times, including “This is an invasion, and it’s terrifying.”

Carlson’s colleague Brian Kilmeade argued: “If you use the term ‘an invasion,’ that’s not anti-Hispanic. It’s a fact.”

No, it’s racist propaganda.

As Ben Zimmer wrote recently in The Atlantic, exploring the ugly history of the term: “The American brand of nativism has long relied on menacing images of immigrant invaders. The ‘invasion’ trope has gone hand in hand with similar metaphors of contamination and infestation.”

Or, as Rolling Stone’s Jamil Smith put it: “By likening people to insects or vermin, even if he considers them criminals, [Trump] provides himself license to be an exterminator. We know that story.”

Recognizing the white supremacy at work here does not deny that there is a real need for sensible, humanitarian immigration reform, including aid to the countries from which immigrants are fleeing as they try desperately to find a better life. Nor does it translate to support for open borders.

I really don’t know what drives Carlson to be so hate-filled and divisive. Is it all about ginning up ratings by playing to audience prejudices, rage and fear of “replacement” by immigrants?

Does he really believe what he says? Is he an egalitarian, tolerant fellow in his heart of hearts?

The cause of this damaging rhetoric doesn’t matter. But the results certainly do.

The Fox-Trump feedback loop constantly reinforces the notion that black and brown people are to be feared and despised-- whether they are in “rat-infested” cities like Baltimore, as Trump would have it, or at the Mexico-Texas border.

Tucker Carlson has become one of the most high-profile perpetrators of this appalling and divisive message, one constantly amplified by the president.

So if Carlson thinks he hasn’t met a single white supremacist, he might want to take a searching look in the mirror.

One of Carlson's Fox colleagues-- the one Señor Trumpanzee was having a conniption over this week-- also took Carlson to task for claiming white supremacy isn't real and just a hoax. I don't think Fox anchors are allowed to attack each other so Shepard Smith said "White nationalism is without question a serious problem in America," without mentioning Carlson by name. Commenting on the speech one of Biden's aides wrote for him, Smith noted that Biden was "calling us to our better souls, to recognize that white nationalism is real, that white nationalism is on the rise, that white nationalism is without question a very serious problem in America and beating down those who would help facilitate it and encourage it."

Trump's White Nationalism Is A Threat To The Safety Of Every American

When Nan Whaley, the mayor of Dayton heard-- through the grapevine-- that Trump was thinking of going to Dayton to comfort the victims of the white nationalist mayhem he had caused, she joked that if Dayton was lucky Trump would direct AirForce One to fly to Toledo instead. That would be a long shot-- he'll be there, and in El Paso, today. The Washington Post's John Wagner reported that his "appearances that will not be universally welcome as the two cities grieve from weekend mass shootings that left 31 dead and many others injured and rattled. After hiding out in his rat-infested Bedminster golf resort all weekend while his white nationalist supporters ran amuck, Kellyanne Conway lied to the media, claiming he's wanted to go there since he heard of the massacres and suggested his "itinerary would be similar to other visits in the wake of mass shootings or natural disasters. 'He’s goes, trying to help heal communities, meeting with those who are injured, those loved ones who have survived the innocents who have lost their lives so senselessly and tragically,' she said. 'He meets with local law enforcement, federal law enforcement. He meets with medical professionals. He thanks first responders.'" That's today's script.

Several past and present Democratic officials urged Trump not to visit El Paso, a city of about 683,000 with a largely Latino population, in the aftermath of Saturday’s anti-immigrant attack at a Walmart Supercenter that left 22 dead.

Officials are still investigating but believe the alleged gunman posted a manifesto that echoed Trump’s harsh rhetoric on immigrants, notably describing his attack as “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

“This president, who helped create the hatred that made Saturday’s tragedy possible, should not come to El Paso,” former congressman Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) tweeted late Monday afternoon. “We do not need more division. We need to heal. He has no place here.”

The words of O’Rourke, a presidential candidate, echoed those earlier in the day of Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX), whose district includes the El Paso Walmart targeted in the massacre.

During a television appearance Monday, she urged the president and his team “to consider the fact that his words and his actions have played a role in this.”

“From my perspective, he is not welcome here,” Escobar said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “He should not come here while we are in mourning.”

El Paso Mayor Dee Margo (R) said at a Monday news conference that Trump will visit his city on Wednesday. He said he would welcome Trump in an official capacity and ask him “to support our efforts with any and all federal resources that are available.”

But Margo also cautioned Trump against invoking his previous rhetoric to talk about the border city.

“I will continue to challenge any harmful and inaccurate statements made about El Paso,” Margo said. “We will not allow anyone to portray El Paso in a way that is not consistent with our history and values.”

Adolpho Telles, chairman of the El Paso County Republican Party, said during a television interview Wednesday that he welcomes Trump’s visit.

“Clearly it is going to help with people healing, and this is a time of healing,” Telles said on CNN.

He accused Democrats of “making this a political event for their benefit.”

White House officials say Trump is also planning to visit Dayton, where another gunman killed nine people early Sunday.

Asked during a CNN interview Tuesday morning if he wants Trump to visit his home state, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) noted that he represents a different area but said that Trump “would not be welcome in my hometown.”

Ryan, another Democratic hopeful whose congressional district includes a large swath of northeastern Ohio, called Trump “a polarizing figure.”

“He finds a million ways to divide us,” Ryan said. “He’s got to get beyond that.”

Trump, meanwhile, took to Twitter on Tuesday to push back against a tacit rebuke from former president Barack Obama.

In social media posts on Monday, Obama called on the country to reject words “coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders” that feed fear and hatred and normalize racist sentiments.

In his tweet, Trump quoted co-host Brian Kilmeade on Fox News’s Fox & Friends as pointing out that it was unusual for past president to speak out about the current occupant of the Oval Office in the wake of mass shootings.

“Did George Bush ever condemn President Obama after Sandy Hook,” Trump quoted Kilmeade as saying. “President Obama had 32 mass shootings during his reign. Not many people said Obama is out of Control. Mass shootings were happening before the President even thought about running for Pres.”

That's probably not the way Greg Miller was looking at it when he wrote, also for the Post, Far-right Violence Spurs Calls To Revise Security Priorities. He noted that the country "continues to employ a staggering arsenal of armed forces, unmanned drones, intelligence agencies and sweeping domestic authorities to contain a threat-- Islamist terrorism-- that has claimed about 100 lives on American soil since the nation mobilized after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. No remotely comparable array of national power has been directed against the threat now emerging from the far right, a loose but lethal collection of ideologies whose adherents have killed roughly the same number of people in the United States, post-9/11, as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State combined. The disparity is a source of growing alarm for officials and experts, some of whom now say the United States is overdue for a realignment of national security priorities as violence on the far right escalates."

The 22 murdered in El Paso Saturday were part of a spate of massacres incited by Trump's white nationalism "directed at targets selected for racial or religious reasons, including shootings at synagogues in San Diego and Pittsburgh... The prospects for a change in course, however, appear limited-- complicated by legal constraints, toxic American political currents and the amorphous nature of an adversary that has no dis­cern­ible structure or Osama bin Laden-like leader and has burrowed into corners of the Internet the way al-Qaeda once hid in the mountain redoubts of Afghanistan. The grim statistics associated with these two strains of extremism have begun to converge. The numbers of people killed in attacks linked to Islamist radicals or the far right in the United States since 2002 are virtually equivalent-- 104 versus 109, respectively, according to data compiled by the think tank New America .

Protecting the public from the most pressing terrorist threat “has been our governing principle for many years now,” said Lisa Monaco, who served as the top counterterrorism adviser to President Barack Obama. Given the surge in attacks linked to the far right, she said, “we need to prioritize our resources and focus on this threat.”

In some ways, the opposite has occurred under President Trump.

Last year, the administration downgraded the position that Monaco previously held, meaning that the top counterterrorism adviser in the White House no longer reports directly to the president.

The administration has also curtailed or disbanded a Department of Homeland Security program that had been created to counter violent extremism by working with regional authorities and organizations to identify those vulnerable to radicalization, whether by Islamist groups or the far right.

The main obstacle to mobilizing against the white supremacist threat, officials said, may be political. Trump on Monday denounced the alleged white nationalist sentiments of the suspected killer in El Paso. But his presidency has come to be defined by policies that are aligned with aspects of the white nationalist agenda and his penchant for fanning racial animus.

“This both makes the mobilization more necessary and interferes with that mobilization,” said Dan Byman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University and a former staff member of the 9/11 Commission. Trump’s words and actions, he said, amplify the danger by emboldening those with radical, racist views, while his signals of tolerance toward such groups-- including his comments after violence in Charlottesville-- undermine his subordinates’ ability to agree upon and organize around the threat.

Trump’s refusal to acknowledge Russian interference in U.S. politics has also contributed to the far right’s rise, experts said. Since at least 2015, Moscow’s destabilization efforts have included sweeping online operations aimed at sowing racial division in the United States by promoting the positions of white nationalists.

A social media study by researcher J.M. Berger concluded that far-right networks online are dominated by intersecting themes: “support for U.S. President Donald Trump, support for white nationalism, opposition to immigration (often framed in ­anti-Muslim terms).”

The latter is an area in which the response to 9/11-- with its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and multibillion-dollar investments in border security aimed at blocking entry to radicalized Muslims-- may have fostered xenophobic attitudes that contributed to the rise of the far right.

There are indications that U.S. national security agencies are beginning to shift toward the far-right threat. FBI Director Christopher A. Wray recently testified that the bureau had made about 100 domestic terrorism arrests in the past nine months and that “a majority of the domestic terrorism cases we’ve investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call white supremacist violence.”

But others said the almost singular reliance on the bureau to disrupt far-right networks-- with little or no involvement of other agencies-- underscores the extent to which the government has failed to adapt.

Nicholas Rasmussen, who served three years as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said that attacks linked to al-Qaeda or the Islamic State-- including the Boston bombings and the night club shooting in Orlando-- were invariably followed by “all-hands” meetings at the White House. Among those assembled were often the heads of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the Treasury and State departments.

“But I suspect that didn’t happen this weekend at the White House,” Rasmussen said. “If it had happened in the Obama or Bush White Houses, I’m not sure it would have either. Because as soon as you hear ‘domestic,’ everybody reverts to ‘Well, the FBI has the ball.’ ” He added: “The FBI is hands down the best investigative law enforcement agency in the world, but asking them to take on this problem on their own makes no sense.”

A National Security Council spokesman declined to say whether any Cabinet-level meetings had taken place at the White House in the wake of the latest shootings, citing policy against such disclosures.