Today's Tweet

"There is no cannibalism here. Absolutely none. And by none, I mean more than we're prepared to admit." https://t.co/woohihh3lL

— Kragar (@Kragar_LGF) July 22, 2017

Today's GIF

At the end of another fun-filled week with Cult45*.

Yeah - Even Those Assholes

Unite The Right rally is on track - Aug 12, 2017 at Emancipation Park in Charlottesville.

Reminding us of the foundation of the First Amendment, Lloyd Snook put up this post at Snook & Haughey (here in Charllottesville):

Many in the community want the City to withdraw the permit necessary for them to take over Emancipation Park for the day. There are many legal reasons that the City might scrutinize the permit application very closely, but we need to steer clear of the illegalreasons that have been suggested. Let’s look at what the City can or cannot do.

The City can regulate or deny a permit application for reasons of safety, but notbecause of the content of what the alt-right people are going to say. Any regulations must be content-neutral.

The City can impose conditions and restrictions on marches and demonstrations only if the conditions and restrictions are reasonably tailored to specific needs and problems, and only if the conditions and restrictions do not have the effect of being an undue burden on public speech.

The City cannot pass on the costs of security to the permit applicants, at least where the security costs are incurred to protect against the angry responses of others.

Content Neutrality:

There are a few points that need to be made here:

• Hate speech is still protected under the First Amendment.
• Unpopular speech is protected under the First Amendment.
• Government cannot regulate or restrict protected speech.
• There is no such thing as a list of domestic terrorist organizations whose members can be denied the civil rights given to the rest of us.

From The Daily Progress:

Advocating pro-white viewpoints and flanked by members of the Warlocks Motorcycle Club, local right-wing blogger Jason Kessler spoke outside the Charlottesville Police Department on Tuesday night to discuss his upcoming rally and to denounce his opponents.

Kessler’s “Unite the Right” rally, planned for Aug. 12 at Emancipation Park, will take place a little more than a month after about 50 members of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan held a rally in Justice Park that drew more than 1,000 counter-protesters.

-and-

Kessler has distanced himself from the KKK rally, saying that the leader of the Klan chapter that filed for the city permit is an FBI informant and was paid by “left-wing groups to discredit legitimate conservatives.”

hat tip = Walker Thornton

Policy Illustrated

As a child of Radical Privilege, 45* believes he gets to do whatever he wants to do, and if it doesn't quite work out (as it often doesn't), he ducks responsibility by delegating the project to a potential fall guy and pretending the only thing necessary is to find large piles of dollars he can throw at it.

Today's Tweet

The Rude Pundit

Someone needs to explain to Donald Trump that he's not our boss. He's our employee. And we get to know what our employee is up to. https://t.co/VJukQnEly3

— The Rude Pundit (@rudepundit) July 19, 2017

He Knows

Obama knows a lot.  One of the things he knows (that I never really recognized, much less gave him any credit for) is that sometimes not saying what's on your mind is an OK thing.

I'm not trying to rationalize here. I'm trying to get my head around how decent this guy truly is.

He knew what was going on - what "The Left" has been saying forever - but when he was being The President, he mostly kept his mouth shut about how shitty the Repubs had allowed their party to get. He only opened up when he was in full campaign mode.

Maybe he should've let fly. Things would certainly be different now if he had, but different doesn't necessarily mean better. So it's all speculation - Coulda Shoulda Woulda.

What we know for sure is that in the face of all the shit they threw at him, he was still doing everything he could do to be everybody's POTUS.

"When they go low, we go high."

I've always phrased that one a little differently: "Come at my knees and I'll take your fuckin' head off".

But I'm workin on it, Prez. Honest I am.

Keith

"To be neutral between right and wrong is to serve wrong." --T Roosevelt

The View From Inside

I don't know if 45*'s shenanigans add up to an actual conscious attempt at Gaslighting or not, but dang - it's as close to a waking nightmare as anything I've been able to imagine, and some pretty weird shit goes on in my head sometimes.

Samantha Bee - Full Frontal web extra:

Red State Rustler

Gotta love a little satire

Red State Rustler on Facebook:

All Eyes On Mr Mueller

Bloomberg:

The U.S. special counsel investigating possible ties between the Donald Trump campaign and Russia in last year’s election is examining a broad range of transactions involving Trump’s businesses as well as those of his associates, according to a person familiar with the probe.

The president told the New York Times on Wednesday that any digging into matters beyond Russia would be out of bounds. Trump’s businesses have involved Russians for years, making the boundaries fuzzy so Special Counsel Robert Mueller appears to be taking a wide-angle approach to his two-month-old probe.

FBI investigators and others are looking at Russian purchases of apartments in Trump buildings, Trump’s involvement in a controversial SoHo development with Russian associates, the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and Trump’s sale of a Florida mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008, the person said.

As always, when we're talking about power, we're talking about money. The one thing that gets clearer in this whole mess is that it revolves around Money Laundering.

Agents are also interested in dealings with the Bank of Cyprus, where Wilbur Ross served as vice chairman before he became commerce secretary, as well as the efforts of Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law and White House aide, to secure financing for some of his family’s real estate properties. The information was provided by someone familiar with the developing inquiry but not authorized to speak publicly.

The roots of Mueller’s follow-the-money investigation lie in a wide-ranging money laundering probe launched by then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara last year, according to the person.

The noose gets tighter as the net gets wider, and we can prob'ly expect 45* to get even wackier.

Yes - wackier than this (WaPo):

Trump appears worryingly unable to contemplate his own role in bringing about the special counsel. The firing of FBI Director James B. Comey led to reports that Trump allegedly demanded Comey’s loyalty and to Trump’s admission that he fired Comey over the Russia probe. This revealed that the Justice Department’s memo providing Trump his initial rationale for the firing (Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton probe) was bogus. Which led to the special counsel.