That Nice Blond Lady

... is a fucking Nazi.

I don't know specifically that you're a dog-ass Nazi dickhead, ma'am. But I do know there's a whole fuck load of dog-ass Nazi dickheads who're sure you're one their own.

Today's Anniversary

One this day in 2004,

Terry Nichols was sentenced

to 161 consecutive life sentences

without possibility of parole

for being an accomplice

in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Crooks O' The Day

And now we'll hear more about the urgent need for the various levels of governments to harden our energy infrastructure.

Here's a thought: if we push for Distributed Generation - where each house, or each neighborhood, has its own power source - then some asshole can't take down 'the grid' because 'the grid' doesn't fucking exist.

But what's the bet that we'll feel compelled to spend ourselves into oblivion defending private corporations' commercial interests?

TACOMA, Wash. — Two Puyallup men have been charged in attacks at four Pierce County power substations that left thousands in the dark on Christmas.

Matthew Greenwood, 32, and Jeremy Crahan, 40, are charged with conspiracy to damage energy facilities and possession of an unregistered firearm, according to U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington, Nick Brown.

The men were arrested on Saturday following an investigation by the FBI.

The four substations that were vandalized were the Graham and Elk Plain substations, operated by Tacoma Power, and the Kapowsin and Hemlock substations, operated by Puget Sound Energy.

Power was cut to more than 14,000 customers. All of the attacks happened in the middle of the night, according to Pierce County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Sgt. Darren Moss, Jr.

“After watching this stuff happen in other jurisdictions, everybody might think Graham, Pierce County might be the last place something like this would happen, but it did,” said Sgt. Moss.

According to court documents, the attacks on the substations were attempts to cover up a burglary at a local business, where Crahan drilled out a lock, and Greenwood stole from a cash register.

“It’s kind of concerning that people would shut out the power to thousands just to rob a store,” said Sgt. Moss.

The damage to the Tacoma Power substations alone is estimated to be at least $3 million. Repairing a single damaged transformer could take up to 36 months.

“You can’t really put a dollar amount on some of the damage on the individuals who had their power go out,” said U.S. Attorney Nick Brown. “People were waking up to frozen houses and feeling cold and not having electricity and heat in their homes at that time is very serious.”

The men were identified as possible suspects through cellphone records and surveillance video.

At one substation, Tacoma Power recorded images of one man and a pickup truck that appeared to be connected to the attack. A similar truck was found to be connected to the suspects, according to the Justice Department.

In addition, distinctive clothing seen in the surveillance photos was found during a search of the men’s home.

Agents also seized two unregistered short-barreled guns. One of the weapons was equipped with a makeshift silencer.

Both men will appear in U.S. District Court in Tacoma on Tuesday, where prosecutors will ask that the suspects remain detained at the Federal Detention Center in SeaTac pending future hearings.

Conspiracy to attack energy facilities is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Possession of an unregistered firearm is punishable by up to ten years in prison.

Overheard - On The Pelosi Thing

Right Wing Media:

Democrat women want the right to kill their babies right after they're born. Sometimes, Democrats kill babies and drink their blood. Democrats are evil, and Nancy Pelosi is their queen.

Also Right Wing Media:

OMG, it's awful, isn't it? We have absolutely no idea why someone would do this.

(pay wall)

The San Francisco Bay area man arrested in the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband filled a blog a week before the incident with delusional thoughts, including that an invisible fairy attacked an acquaintance and sometimes appeared to him in the form of a bird, according to online writings under his name.

David DePape, 42, also published hundreds of blog posts in recent months sharing memes in support of fringe commentators and far-right personalities. Many of the posts were filled with screeds against Jews, Black people, Democrats, the media and transgender people.

During October, DePape published over 100 posts. While each loads, a reader briefly glimpses an image of a person wearing a giant inflatable unicorn costume, superimposed against a night sky. The photos and videos that followed were often dark and disturbing.

He published a drawing of the Devil kneeling and asking a caricature of a Jewish person to teach him the arts of “lying, deception, cheating and incitement.” Several contain lifelike images of rotting human flesh and blood, including a zombified Bill Gates and Hillary Clinton. Others depict headless bodies against bleak, dystopian landscapes.

Before those writings were removed Saturday, The Washington Post reviewed them, as well as gory photos, illustrations and videos on a website that DePape registered under his name in early August and that his daughter confirmed was his. Notably, the voluminous writings do not mention Pelosi. Police say DePape broke into the home Pelosi shares with her husband early Friday, yelled “Where is Nancy?” and attacked 82-year-old Paul Pelosi with a hammer.

Pelosi remained hospitalized Saturday, recovering from surgery to repair a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hand, according to the speaker’s office. San Francisco’s police chief and district attorney provided no update, but on Friday local, state and federal authorities said they were working together to investigate DePape’s motive.

A woman who identified DePape as her “father” said Friday that she was stunned by his arrest even though he was, she said, abusive to other members of the family. “I love my father,” Inti Gonzalez wrote in a statement posted to her website and later removed. “He did genuinely try to be a good person but the monster in him was always too strong for him to be safe to be around.”

“This attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband came as a shock to me,” wrote Gonzalez, who is 21, according to her website. “I didn’t see this coming and there was no sign of the possibility from his end.” Gonzalez wrote she followed her father’s writing online but was not aware of the website he registered in August.

Hold it just a goddamned fuckin' minute, lady - "the monster in him" made you feel it was unsafe to hang out with him, but you didn't think he might pull some shit like this?

Reached by The Post before she issued the statement, Gonzalez declined to comment about DePape.

DePape grew up in British Columbia, a relative told CNN. He briefly drew public attention nearly a decade ago in San Francisco when he participated in a demonstration against a city ordinance banning public nudity. The protest was led by Gonzalez’s mother, Gypsy Taub, an outspoken nudity activist.

Videos posted on YouTube show that DePape was among a group of protesters marching through San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood for the 2013 demonstration.

On his blog, DePape wrote bitterly in recent months of his relationship with Taub, who also promoted debunked conspiracy theories on her own blog, including that 9/11 was an “inside job.” He accused Taub of manipulating her children to turn them against him.

Taub is serving a sentence for felony stalking and attempted child abduction, after prosecutors said she became fixated with a 14-year-old boy and attempted to kidnap him. She could not be reached for comment. Gonzalez told The Post that she had spoken with Taub and that Taub would be making a statement upon her release. She is eligible for parole in January.

Four days before the Pelosi attack, DePape posted on his website what he presented as a 2021 email to Gonzalez. In it, he told her he struggled with the urge to end his life as his relationship with Taub and her children was falling apart. “I was extremely suicidal, Mentally I would beg you guys daily to let me kill myself,” he wrote in the email. DePape cut off contact with Taub and her children after he was he was kicked out of their home and living in a car, according to his online account. He does not say when those events occurred.

The domain frenlyfrens.com was registered Aug. 8 under DePape’s name and to an address in Richmond, Calif., where a neighbor told a Post reporter he lived. The web address uses the phonetic spelling of “friend,” which has become a slang term adopted by many in the far right — a term that is sometimes written as an acronym for Far Right Ethno-Nationalist.

Reddit banned an openly anti-semitic group by the name /r/FrenWorld in 2019, saying it contained postings that glorified or encouraged violence. One cartoon featured repeatedly by members contained pictures of a frog character that has been appropriated by the far right. “Frens, sound the alarms!” one says. “Arm yourselves! The longnose is coming, the longnose is coming.”

Two weeks after registering the site, DePape’s first post was titled “Mary Poppins.” Amid the ongoing feud between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Disney over the company’s criticism of the state’s law known by critics as the “don’t say gay” bill, the violent video depicted a SWAT team firing at Poppins.

Details of DePape’s everyday life in recent months are included in the postings that followed. He played video games at a nearby library and spent hours meditating, according to the writings. In another post, he shared an image of a fantasy miniature salamander he purchased on Etsy. He wrote that he was looking to purchase a fairy house on Etsy but was frustrated that the doors were painted and so could not be used by a fairy. “They have lots of fairy houses but NONE of them are MADE for fairies,” he wrote.

In late August, DePape became engrossed in the decision by Twitter to ban Jordan Peterson for his posts about transgender people. The Canadian psychologist turned conservative podcaster had once said that being transgender was comparable to “satanic ritual abuse.”

DePape published six posts in support of Peterson and then continued with his own caustic takes on transgender people, saying they should not be a protected group. “They were not BORN a freak. They are not INHERENTLY a freak threw no fault of their own. … They are CHOOSING to be FREAKS,” he wrote in one post.

In the last week of September, as the Justice Department filed a motion seeking to compel former Trump adviser Peter Navarro to return government emails, DePape blogged his take: “No evidence of election fraud. Any journalist saying that should be dragged straight out into the street and shot.”

DePape was also active on the message board 4chan, a site notorious for extremist discussion, posting memes and debating other anonymous users about his beliefs, according to his website. In an Oct. 24 post titled “Disinfo Shill Tactics,” he complained that he was a target of law enforcement he described as ‘paid shills’ trying to manipulate the message board. “I would come in and lay out the facts and so all the paid shills would jump on me. To try and suppress it,” he wrote.

That same day, DePape shared images from a construction site where he worked months ago. One highlighted a jackhammer with the number 33 on it, an apparent reference to a conspiracy theory about Freemasons and world control. A co-worker remarked he sounded like the now deceased right-wing radio personality Rush Limbaugh after referring to feminists as “feminazis” during a discussion on feminism, according to the account.

In another post on Oct. 24, four days before the attack on Pelosi, DePape shared images of a wooden birdhouse he said he had purchased for an invisible fairy he communicated with that had begun interfering with his life. “He appears in a form that makes sense in my reality because I can’t see fairies. He’ll do things to let me know its him and he o[f]ten appears as a bird,” he wrote.

Today's Radicalization

Carlson's commentary is another not-too-veiled threat.

He's saying it's wrong for women to criticize men, and that if they don't stop, young men will feel justified in murdering more people.

He is, in effect, encouraging the nutballs - it's basically a variation on Stochastic Terrorism.

This is far more than a hint. The Press Poodles need to get this shit straight, and start calling it what it is.

Newsweek:

Tucker Carlson Suggests Shootings Are Result of Lectures on Male Privilege

Tucker Carlson suggested on his Tuesday show that women lecturing men about male privilege is a contributing factor to mass shootings in the United States.

His comments came after the mass shooting at a July 4th parade in Highland Park, Illinois, that saw at least seven people killed and more than two dozen people injured. Following the shooting, police arrested 22-year-old Robert E. Crimo III as the main suspect and charged him with seven counts of first-degree murder.

During his show, Carlson also claimed that poor mental health is a significant facet of why mass shootings happened and said that there were many people like Crimo across America.

"Look at Robert 'Bobby' Crimo, would you sell a gun to that guy, does he seem like a nut case? Of course, he does," Carlson said. "So why didn't anyone raise an alarm? Maybe it is because he didn't stand out. Maybe it is because there are a lot of young men in America who suddenly look and act like this guy. That is not an attack, it is just true."

He added: "Like Crimo, they inhabit that solitary fantasy world of social media, porn and video games."

Carlson then went on to claim these same men may be high on drugs and angry because they believe their lives will be worse than their parents'.

"They are high on government-endorsed weed, 'smoke some more, it is good for you.' They are numbed by the endless psychotropic drugs that are handed out in every school in the country by crackpots posing as counselors. Of course, they are angry, they know that their lives will not be better than their parents', they will be worse. That is all but guaranteed, they know that. They are not that stupid." he said.

"And yet the authorities in their lives, mostly women, never stop lecturing them about their so-called privilege. 'You are male, you are privileged.' Imagine that, try and imagine an unhealthier, unhappier life than that. So a lot of young men in America are going nuts," Carlson continued.

"Are you surprised? By the way, a shockingly large number of them have been prescribed psychotropic drugs by their doctors, SSRIs or anti-depressants. That would include quite a few mass shooters."

Carlson also questioned why the authorities did not act more on the red flags they had seen from Crimo, prior to his alleged actions in the July 4 attack.

Carlson then played a snippet from a press conference held Tuesday regarding the shooting. Deputy Chief Christopher Covelli of the Lake County sheriff's office and the Lake County major crimes task force highlighted the instances where police encountered Crimo.

He said in April 2019, police were contacted by someone who had learned a week prior, Crimo had attempted to die by suicide. Police then spoke with Crimo and his parents and the matter was passed over to mental health professionals.

In the second instance, in September 2019, Crimo had a large collection of knives confiscated by the police after saying he "was going to kill everyone."

And also too:

It's not a stretch to see this as a pretty standard conflation of manipulative disinformation - an attempt to skew the issue in a way that gets people riled up and confused, and keeps them stuck in the boiler.

Carlson is taking the standard tropes, ie: "It's the mental health", together with "The doctors and the schools don't know what they're doing", together with "We should be enforcing the Red Flag Laws we have on the books instead of passing all these new laws" in order to get it all back to that comfortable stasis that makes it easy to sell dick pills and panty liners, so the rubes actually finance their own subjugation.

And that brings us back around to the point of the exercise, which is - as always - to tear down good government and keep people on edge until a critical mass is achieved, at which point it all explodes into an overwhelming popular demand for Daddy State rule. "We are ungovernable - save us, Daddy - please."

On Shitty Politics

Republicans have been working hard to deny going all-in on Replacement Theory, but then they pimp it just as hard in their attempts to 'win' elections.

This has to be the apex of cynical manipulation. Their "platform" - the effects of their constant dabbling in Stochastic Terrorism - threatens them as well as the rest of us. But somehow they think they can stay in front of it without being trampled themselves.

And it's not just the monster they've created that they have to be wary of - there's this whole angle too:

You can prove yourself to be very effective at stirring up trouble and pointing it at your political targets as a means to disrupt and overturn a government - which makes you quite useful to the ones who will ultimately take power. But once they're in those positions of power - when they become the government - they can no longer afford to have revolutionaries in their midst, and you'll be among the first ones eliminated.

Why do you think the founders of this joint - having won their new nation through violent insurrection - why did they then set about designing and engineering a new form government very specifically intended to avoid the need for revolution?

CNN looks at some of the weird shit going on in the GOP

And I really wish the Press Poodles would dig deeper for the people and the dark money that we know has to be working behind the scenes.

One That Almost Slipped By

WaPo: (pay wall)

Three plead guilty to terrorism charges in white supremacist plot to disrupt U.S. power grid, start race war

Three men have pleaded guilty to terrorism-related charges for plotting to attack the U.S. power grid, hoping that the ensuing electricity outages would stir civil and economic unrest that could lead to a race war, the Justice Department said on Wednesday.

Christopher Brenner Cook, 20, of Columbus, Ohio; Jonathan Allen Frost, 24, of Katy, Tex., and West Lafayette, Ind.; and Jackson Matthew Sawall, 22, of Oshkosh, Wis., sought to assault power grids with “powerful rifles,” federal officials said. The three have pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and face up to 15 years in prison.

“The defendants believed their plan would cost the government millions of dollars and cause unrest for Americans in the region,” the Justice Department said in a news release. “They had conversations about how the possibility of the power being out for many months could cause war, even a race war, and induce the next Great Depression.”

In the fall of 2019, Frost and Cook met in an online chat group, and Frost raised the idea of attacking a power grid, according to the Justice Department. Within weeks, the two started recruiting others. Cook circulated a list of readings that promoted neo-Nazism and white-supremacist ideology as part of the recruitment process, the agency said, and Sawall, already a friend of Cook, quickly joined.

A few months later, in February 2020, the trio gathered in Columbus, Ohio. There, Frost supplied Cook with a rifle, which the two took to a shooting range for training, the Justice Department said in the news release. It said Frost also gave out “suicide necklaces” filled with fentanyl, which depresses the central nervous system and can cause death. The three agreed to take the drug should they be caught by law enforcement, the release said.

At one point during the Columbus gathering, Cook and Sawall were “derailed during a traffic stop” after spray-painting a swastika under a bridge with the caption “Join the Front,” the Justice Department said, adding that Sawall swallowed his suicide pill but survived.

The following month, Cook and Frost drove to Texas, and “Cook stayed in different cities with various juveniles he was attempting to recruit for their plot,” according to the Justice Department.

In August 2020, FBI agents searched the residences of the three men and found “racially motivated violent extremism Nazi material” and weapons, according to court documents. In Frost’s bedroom, the FBI found chemicals and components that were “consistent with someone attempting to test and assemble an explosive device.”

The men held “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist views,” Timothy Langan, assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, said in the news release.

U.S. Attorney Kenneth L. Parker, who oversees the southern district of Ohio, said the three had “conspired to use violence to sow hate, create chaos, and endanger the safety of the American people.”

“As this case shows, federal and state law enforcement agencies are dedicated to working together to protect this country against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” Parker said.

Samuel Shamansky, the attorney for Frost, said in a phone interview that his client had “improved immensely” in the past year with the help of mental counseling and has “completely disavowed” his past racist views. “He understands how hurtful and immoral those positions were and are,” Shamansky said.

Peter Scranton, an attorney for Cook, declined to comment, while the attorney for Sawall didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment late Thursday. The Justice Department prosecutors declined to comment.

Frost graduated from Purdue University in 2020 with a degree in computer information and technology, according to the Purdue Exponent, a student newspaper. Little could be learned about Frost’s alleged co-conspirators, though two 2018 articles in the Florida Today newspaper describe a man similar to Sawall’s profile as having gone missing in Melbourne, Fla., before turning up “alive and well” in Montana several days later.

Jan6 Update

"The Great Replacement" is today's terminology for White Fright - the fear that brown people will treat us as badly as we've treated them, so we can't afford to allow "those people" to gain an equal footing.

Keeping us in conflict with one another is a straight-up divide-n-conquer strategy on the part of a "conservative ruling class" that wants to tear down our traditions of democratic self-government in order to replace it with plutocracy.

When I reach back and help others achieve or approach equity with me, we all gain some power, which strengthens my own position.

Let's stop being stoopid about this rights thing.

More for me doesn't mean less for you -

it's not a fuckin' pizza, mushbrain.

Professor Robert Pape:

It's The Terrorism, Stupid

From CNN:

A former police captain who was part of a private citizens group investigating still unsubstantiated 2020 election fraud claims was charged Tuesday with running a man off the road and pointing a gun to his head two weeks before the election, the Harris County district attorney said in a statement.

Prosecutors say former Houston Police captain Mark Anthony Aguirre said he believed the man was transporting fraudulent ballots.

"I believe it's a political prosecution," Terry Yates, Aguirre's attorney, told CNN affiliate KTRK.

Prosecutors say Aguirre was paid over a quarter million dollars by a private group called "Liberty Center for God and Country" to investigate alleged ballot schemes in the Houston area.

Jared Woodfill, the center's president, told CNN the group and Republican activist Steve Hotze hired a private firm that included "Aguirre, a former FBI investigator and about 20 investigators that investigated reports of voter fraud," reports that were sent to Hotze. The Republican activist was also one of the plaintiffs who filed a petition prior to Election Day seeking to invalidate 127,000 ballots cast in drive-thru early voting. A federal judge rejected that request.

CNN has reached out to Hotze for comment.

According to the district attorney's news release, Aguirre, 63, told authorities he had conducted surveillance for four days on an unidentified man driving a truck that he suspected had 750,000 fraudulent ballots inside. The release said Aguirre believed the man was "the mastermind of a giant (voter) fraud."

Instead, prosecutors say the victim was an "innocent and ordinary" air-conditioner repairman.

"Aguirre ran his SUV into the back of the truck to get the technician to stop and get out," the news release said, describing the October 19 incident. "When the technician got out of the truck, Aguirre, pointed a handgun at the technician, forced him to the ground and put his knee on the man's back -- an image captured on the body-worn camera of a police officer."

Responding authorities found no ballots inside the vehicle, only air conditioner parts and tools, prosecutors said.

After an investigation, Houston police said they found the allegations of election fraud "unfounded" and referred the case to the district attorney's office.

And also too - follow the money.

Aguirre had been paid more than $260,000 by the "Liberty Center" group, prosecutors alleged, and received about $211,400 the day following the incident.

He was arrested Tuesday and is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison, prosecutors said. He is currently at a Harris County jail facility with bond set at $30,000.

We can call this "dirty tricks" or "good ol' boys gone wild" or "vigilante numb-skullery" or whatever else, but it's Terrorism For Hire. and the DOJ needs to be approaching it as such. They took a huge bite out of the KKK by helping The SLPC sue some the Klan chapters into oblivion back in the 80s and 90s. And the Feds take the same kind of action against known terror groups outside the US by freezing their financial assets here, and getting other countries to do the same abroad.

We can't fuck around with this and let it go without real consequences.

It'll continue. It'll get worse. And it's going to get Americans killed.

"He crossed the line from dirty politics to commission of a violent crime and we are lucky no one was killed," Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a statement. "His alleged investigation was backward from the start -- first alleging a crime had occurred and then trying to prove it happened."

Yates, Aguirre's attorney, told CNN affiliate KTRK, "He was working and investigating voter fraud, there was an accident. ... A member of the car got out and rushed toward him and that's where the confrontation took place. It's very different than what you're citing in the affidavit."

The statement from prosecutors about Aguirre's arrest came one day after the Electoral College voted to affirm Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States.

Despite the announcement of election results by media outlets and government officials, outgoing President Donald Trump has continued to claim that widespread voter fraud occurred during the 2020 election, and has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for a purported legal defense fund, despite official certifications that former Vice President Joe Biden won the presidential election.

I can see this as prelude to some pretty awful shit coming our way as Qult45 settles in after the inauguration and Trump continues to pimp his shadow government, We-Was-Robbed bullshit.

The Guardian

Forcing The End

Frank Figliuzzi - Deadline White House MSNBC

Forcing the end: 

When the apocalypse doesn't arrive according to your facilitating machinations, so you take direct action to achieve the desired outcome.

Calling (out) All Republicans

Maybe Gabe Sterling has ambitions beyond his current post, but maybe he's just a guy who's sick to death of the kinda shit we've had to put up with from a "president" and his asshole enablers in positions of power across the country.

And yes, maybe the Gabe Sterlings of the rank-n-file GOP should've been standing up to these jerks all along. Cuz this looks like a great example of the valid criticism of a party that seems content with looking the other way - on anything - as long as the shit doesn't splatter too much on them.

ie: "I wasn't all that worried - none of the shitty policies really mattered because nobody I know personally was being hurt - but then Trump turned on me and now I'm forced to say something, and I can only hope the rubes will help me rationalize my refusal to act before this."

The well of Republican depravity has no bottom.

Call It What It Is

(I've copied the whole thing because of NYT's pay wall - this one's important enough for me to rationalize breaking the rules)

Michelle Goldberg, NYT:

A decade ago, Daryl Johnson, then a senior terrorism analyst at the Department of Homeland Security, wrote a report about the growing danger of right-wing extremism in America. Citing economic dislocation, the election of the first African-American president and fury about immigration, he concluded that “the threat posed by lone wolves and small terrorist cells is more pronounced than in past years.”

When the report leaked, conservative political figures sputtered with outrage, indignant that their ideology was being linked to terrorism. The report warned, correctly, that right-wing radicals would try to recruit disgruntled military veterans, which conservatives saw as a slur on the troops. Homeland Security, cowed, withdrew the document. In May 2009, Johnson’s unit, the domestic terrorism team, was disbanded, and he left government the following year.

Johnson was prescient, though only up to a point. He expected right-wing militancy to escalate throughout Barack Obama’s administration, but to subside if a Republican followed him. Ordinarily, the far-right turns to terrorism when it feels powerless; the Oklahoma City bombing happened during Bill Clinton’s presidency, and all assassinations of abortion providers in the United States have taken place during Democratic administrations. During Republican presidencies, paranoid right-wing demagogy tends to recede, and with it, right-wing violence.

But that pattern doesn’t hold when the president himself is a paranoid right-wing demagogue.

“The fact that they’re still operating at a high level during a Republican administration goes against all the trending I’ve seen in 40 years,” Johnson told me. Donald Trump has kept the far right excited and agitated. “He is basically the fuel that’s been poured onto a fire,” said Johnson.

This past weekend, that fire appeared to rage out of control, when a young man slaughtered shoppers at a Walmart in El Paso. A manifesto he reportedly wrote echoed Trump’s language about an immigrant “invasion” and Democratic support for “open borders.” It even included the words “send them back.” He told investigators he wanted to kill as many Mexicans as he could.

Surrendering to political necessity, Trump gave a brief speech on Monday decrying white supremacist terror: “In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy.” He read these words robotically from a teleprompter, much as he did after the racist riot in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, when, under pressure, he said, “Racism is evil — and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs.”

Back then, it took about a day for the awkward mask of minimal decency to drop; soon, he was ranting about the “very fine people” among the neo-Nazis. Nevertheless, on Monday some insisted on pretending that Trump’s words marked a turning point. “He really did set a different tone than he did in the past when it comes to condemning this hate,” said Weijia Jiang, White House correspondent for CBS News.

If history is any guide, it won’t be long before the president returns to tweeting racist invective and encouraging jingoist hatreds at his rallies. In the meantime, everyone should be clear that what Trump said on Monday wasn’t nearly enough. He has stoked right-wing violence and his administration has actively opposed efforts to fight it. Further, he’s escalating his incitement of racial grievance as he runs for re-election, as shown by his attacks on the four congresswomen of color known as the squad, as well as the African-American congressman Elijah Cummings. One desultory speech does not erase Trump’s politics of arson, or the complicity of the Republicans who continue to enable it.

It’s true that the Obama White House, giving in to Republican intimidation, didn’t do enough to combat violent white supremacy. But Trump rolled back even his predecessor’s modest efforts, while bringing the language of white nationalism into mainstream politics. His administration canceled Obama-era grants to groups working to counter racist extremism. Dave Gomez, a former F.B.I. supervisor who oversaw terrorism cases, told The Washington Post that the agency hasn’t been as aggressive as it might be against the racist right because of political concerns. “There’s some reluctance among agents to bring forth an investigation that targets what the president perceives as his base,” he said. “It’s a no-win situation for the F.B.I. agent or supervisor.”

On Monday, by coincidence, Cesar Sayoc Jr., the man who sent package bombs to Democrats and journalists he viewed as hostile to Trump, was sentenced to 20 years in prison. In a court filing, his defense lawyers describe how he was radicalized. “He truly believed wild conspiracy theories he read on the internet, many of which vilified Democrats and spread rumors that Trump supporters were in danger because of them,” they wrote. “He heard it from the president of the United States, a man with whom he felt he had a deep personal connection.” He became a terrorist as a result of taking the president both seriously and literally.

Trump probably couldn’t bottle up the hideous forces he’s helped unleash even if he wanted to, and there’s little sign he wants to. If the president never did or said another racist thing, said Johnson, “it’s still going to take years for the momentum of these movements to slow and to die down.” As it is, Trump’s grudging anti-racism is unlikely to last the week. The memory of the mayhem he’s inspired should last longer.

RELATED 

More from Opinion on Trump and white nationalism:

Opinion | Ali H. Soufan: I Spent 25 Years Fighting Jihadis. White Supremacists Aren’t So Different.

Aug. 5, 2019

Opinion | The Editorial Board: We Have a White Nationalist Terrorist Problem

Aug. 4, 2019

Opinion | James Comey: James Comey: The President Has Exploited the Power of Racism

Aug. 4, 2019

Opinion | Charles M. Blow: This Is a Warning About the 2 Sides of White Nationalism

Aug. 4, 2019

How Stuff Works

WaPo:

President Trump on Friday made light of new reports that the Baltimore home of Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) had been recently burglarized, drawing a chiding response from his former U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, among others.

“Really bad news! The Baltimore house of Elijah E. Cummings was robbed. Too bad!” Trump tweeted to his more than 62 million followers.

The one thing you have to do is make sure there's no way to link you back to the fuckery of the Cult45 devotees, but of course, that's exactly what 45* did - partly because, "You just don't do that."

He hinted at it, perhaps trying to give himself a little "plausible deniability", but he can't stop himself; he has to gloat and invite the inference that he gets the credit - just like he does with practically everything.
And of course, it doesn't matter if most of us cringe and recoil because he doesn't care about that. 

And he doesn't care about making any specific thing happen.

And he doesn't care about the morality of taking a hand in making something happen.

He only cares about stirring the shit, getting something to happen, and looking for a way to benefit from whatever grows out of the chaos.

Stochastic Probability may well be 45*'s animating principle (and I use the term "principle" in the loosest context possible).

Almost as an aside:

Daddy State Awareness Rules

2a. Sometimes, what sounds like boasting ("I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose any votes") is intended to soft-peddle some horrific thing they've done, or intend to do.

How Stuff Works

Trump rallies are pretty much exclusively held in Trump-friendly places. 

That's not to say he avoids the blue states. It's just that he goes where he's welcome - he stays in the red parts, no matter what.

And that little detail is kind of important.

NAACP reminds us of an interesting little tidbit, via Business Insider, as reported back in March of this year:

US counties where President Donald Trump held a campaign rally saw a 226% increase in reported hate crimes over similar counties that did not hold a rally, political scientists at the University of North Texas said in an analysis published in The Washington Post.

According to a study done by University of North Texas professors Regina Branton and Valerie Martinez-Ebers, and PhD candidate Ayal Feinberg, the scientists found that Trump's statements during the 2016 campaign "may encourage hate crimes" in the respective counties.

The study measured the correlation between counties that hosted a 2016 campaign rally and the crime rates in the months that followed. The scientists used the Anti-Defamation League's map that measures acts of violence and compared the counties that hosted a rally with others that had similar characteristics, including minority population, location, and active hate groups.

- and -

Branton, Martinez-Ebers, and Feinberg noted that their study "cannot be certain" that the marked increase was solely attributed to Trump's rhetoric. But they also shut down the suggestion that the reported hate crimes were fake.

"In fact, this charge is frequently used as a political tool to dismiss concerns about hate crimes," the analysis said. "Research shows it is far more likely that hate crime statistics are considerably lower because of underreporting."

New Zealand

WaPo:

The alleged shooter seems to have wanted the world to see what he’d done: He apparently posted links on Facebook that connected to live video of the massacre from a camera mounted on his body. The video showed unspeakable slaughter as a gunman moved through the house of worship, saying nothing, shooting as many people as he could.

The manifesto indicates that he moved to New Zealand to stage his alleged attack, which he had been planning for two years. His aim, he said, was to defend “our lands” from “invaders,” to “reduce immigration rates” and to deepen division and start a civil war in the United States.

Tarrant, who described himself as “a regular white man, from a regular family,” said he did not hate foreigners or Muslims who lived in their “homelands.”

“I spent many years travelling through many, many nations,” he wrote. “I was treated wonderfully. . . . The varied cultures of the world greeted me with warmth and compassion.” But he said immigrants were “invaders . . . who colonize other peoples lands.”

And there it is, in that highlighted last line. We're talkin' Self-Loathing, which I think is always at the core of the kind of toxic Uber-Nationalistic chauvinism that inevitably leads to self-destruction.

He needs to rid his homeland of "the invaders", even if he has to scourge the place, burning the whole thing down to get it done.

The problem though, is that his adamant condemnation of "the invaders" - the colonizers - has to include himself. 

There are no white guys native to Australia or New Zealand.

And while he does mention it (“What is an Australian but a drunk European?”), if he fully acknowledges that he's part of the problem, then his whole project falls apart, and he's left with nothing but the feeling that he's failed to live up to his own expectations.

So he fights - making the noble stand - but what he's really trying to do is get himself killed so he no longer has to feel the pain of his disillusionment.

Or maybe he's just another asshole with a gun, caught in a twisted variation of Hero Syndrome.

Horribly Horribly Wrong

WaPo ran a story yesterday about a USCG officer being arrested for planning to launch violent attacks on the people he thought needed to die - politicians journalists judges etc.

“The defendant intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country”

"Rarely seen". 

The world in general (and this country in particular) is a pretty fucked up place when a guy who -

...called for “focused violence” to “establish a white homeland” and said, “I am dreaming of a way to kill almost every last person on the earth.”

- has to be characterized as "rare" and not "completely un-fucking-heard of".

And of course we can lay this shit at the feet of Cult45, and of course they'll deny it with their screaming silence.

The Time Line

45* lives in SmarmSpace - the tiny little void between your promise to do something and your actions to fulfill that promise.

I can put my signature on a contract, but if I don't feel obligated by my own ethical standards, then when it comes time for me to deliver, I can choose any other option I care to think about.

Donald Trump has made his whole life about living in SmarmSpace.

The Wall is the perfect example.

Philip Bump, WaPo:

Back in April 2015 — an era so distant in American history that it barely shimmers in and out of view, cloaked in the haze of everything that’s happened since — Donald John Trump promised the United States that he would build a wall on the border with Mexico and that Mexico would cover the cost.

It was at an event in New Hampshire covered by Paul Steinhauser of NH1 News, targeting the state which, as it turns out, would provide Trump with his first victory in electoral politics. But at the time — despite Steinhauser’s accurate assessment that it wasn’t — it seemed like a joke. The TV guy was going to build a wall for free, huh? Okay. Good luck.

The point, though, is that Trump's insistence that Mexico would pay for the wall is, in fact, older than his campaign itself. At that New Hampshire event, he even said how it would happen, in broad strokes.

Follow the string of events thru the WaPo piece and watch how the thing "evolves". Because of course it does. It goes from a straight up statement that this thing is definitely going to happen no matter what - to a vague suggestion of something that he might think about mulling over sometime down the road or whatever, we'll see, maybe.

That's typical 45* - finding the SmarmSpace, or manufacturing some as needed.

But now he's in more of a panic than usual because even Limbaugh and Coulter and Ingraham and Hannity have been making noises about how he's a big loser and a total liar if he doesn't come thru on it. He won't survive without his Wranglers to keep the Rubes in line, and he's making all the noise he needs to make it look like this shitty impotent response is really a brilliant move on his part, because it's exactly the way he planned it all along.

BTW - the shutdown may in fact be part of the plan. He's been pimping the bullshit about a crisis, and an invasion, and bad guy Muslims streaming across the border blah blah blah.

Meanwhile, there are stories coming out about TSA (and other security folk) not bothering to do their work because they don't get paid even though they're required to show up on the job. TSA. FDA. Coast Guard and and and. That's a lot of people looking the other way.

Don't think for a minute 45* won't welcome something horrible happening because of his shutdown. It gives him his Reichstag Fire by way of a tidy little variation on Stochastic Terrorism.

And then we're off to the races.