Native Lives Matter.

I have mentioned, often, that in uStates, the highest percentage of extrajudicial killings are of Indigenous people. To say this isn’t well known would be quite the understatement. It isn’t known at all, and when people do find out, they don’t much care. The Guardian has kept track, along with all the other groups of people who are consistently killed by cops. Very few of these murders get any press at all. The murder of Loreal Tsingine got a little bit, and so did the murder of John T. Williams. Those people who read Indian publications are aware of most of the others, but they don’t get any write up at all. Indigenous people also have the highest rates of dying in captivity, and cops casually toss off excuses like “hey, she overdosed on meth”, as they did in the case of Sarah Lee Circle Bear, who was only 24 years old. The cops neglected to explain how she could have died from a meth overdose while in custody for two days. Sarah’s case, and that of so many others, has been a cause of deep outrage in Indigenous circles, but once again, if you aren’t reading native publications, you aren’t likely to know about any of them.

Chase Iron Eyes started NLM in 2014, but once again, it’s been a slow take because about the only people who care about native lives are natives. In These Times has a very good article about Native deaths at the hands of law enforcement, and the bigotry Natives face every single day. Please, go read. Please, share. I thank you.

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The Police Killings No One Is Talking About.

Happy Halloween to You, Too.

LSU political science junior Clarke Perkins tweeted Wednesday night that her door decoration was damaged and “go back 2 Africa N— monkeys” was written on its side.

Perkins said she noticed that the decoration was damaged when she was leaving her apartment at University House at 6 p.m.

She shared a photo of the decoration online on Twitter Wednesday night. The tweet gained traction, being retweeted more than 2,200 times by Thursday afternoon, prompting LSU President F. King Alexander to release a statement.

“I am sorry this happened to you,” Alexander tweeted. “If the culprit is not a student, we will contact the district attorney for swift action. Let me be clear: LSU will not tolerate this behavior.”

Perkins said she met with Alexander in person Thursday. She said he plans to put pressure on University House and demand that the apartment complex takes steps to protect students.

University House is an off-campus complex on West Chimes Street just north of LSU’s campus. A spokesperson for University House said that they will release a statement Thursday.

Perkins said that she does not know whether she or her four other roommates were specifically targeted. She said she has lived at the apartment since Fall 2015 and has never had an issue before. She is now considering her other housing options.

For me, it’s early, and I have not had tea yet, so not much to say here. What is there to say? This sort of garbage is happening more and more, with bigots feeling happy and smug, wallowing in their poison troughs.

Via KTBS.

All the Black and Brown People Have to Leave.

A group of high-school boys pose for a picture with a campaign sign for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump outside the Mohegan Sun Arena before a rally, October 10, 2016, in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images.

A group of high-school boys pose for a picture with a campaign sign for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump outside the Mohegan Sun Arena before a rally, October 10, 2016, in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images.

Melissia Hill was eating crepes with her 5-year-old son, Phoenix, at a Brooklyn cafe this summer when he asked her, “Is Donald Trump a bad person? Because I heard that if he becomes president, all the black and brown people have to leave and we’re going to become slaves.”

Next he wanted to know, “What is a slave?” and, “Where are we gonna go?”

Hill was taken aback, and well aware of the wide-eyed interest Phoenix’s questions attracted from neighboring tables. She asked him where he’d heard these things. His answer: from another child at his local YMCA day camp.

[…]

And kids like Phoenix aren’t waiting to see what happens on November 8 before they absorb these views, repeat them, and integrate them into the set of perspectives that combine to make up how they see themselves and others. Many, according to a recent survey of teachers’ perceptions of their students, are using them as fodder for bullying. Others are anxious and scared as a result of the taunts and the real-life threats to their families.

Nobody — not even those who study the development of racial attitudes in kids or the impact of racial trauma — can say with certainty what the long-term effects of this unprecedented dose of high-profile animosity will be on the young people who are steeped in it.

This spring, Teaching Tolerance, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s education arm, took an informal poll of educators to gauge how this campaign had affected schools so far.

Maureen Costello, the director of Teaching Tolerance, said the organization’s interest in the election’s effect on school-age kids was piqued by news reports about high school sporting events where chants of “Trump, Trump, Trump” and “Build a wall” were used against predominantly Latino teams.

“We wondered, is this the tip of an iceberg? Is there something beneath this?” she said.

The organization sent queries to the teachers who subscribed to its weekly newsletter. “We weren’t trying to be scientific. We were trying to find out, ‘Is there anything going on?’ I compare it to the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] asking doctors to report if there are measles outbreaks,” Costello said.

The organization’s conclusion from the thousands of comments it received: Yes, something is going on. More than two-thirds of teachers reported that students — mainly immigrants, children of immigrants, and Muslims — had expressed concerns or fears about what might happen to them or their families after the election:

Teachers used words like “hurt” and “dejected” to describe the impact on their charges. The ideas and language coming from the presidential candidates are bad enough, but many students — Muslim, Hispanic and African-American — are far more upset by the number of people, including classmates and even teachers, who seem to agree with Trump. They are struggling with the belief that “everyone hates them.”

There were reports of tears shed in classrooms from second grade to high school. Concerns about being “sent back” transcended immigration status, as in Phoenix’s case, to affect African-American kids:

African-American students aren’t exempt from the fears. Many teachers reported an increase in use of the n-word as a slur, even among very young children. And black children are burdened with a particularly awful fear that has been reported from teachers in many states — that they will “be deported to Africa” or that slavery will be reinstated. As an Oklahoma elementary teacher explains, “My kids are terrified of Trump becoming [p]resident. They believe he can/will deport them — and NONE of them are Hispanic. They are all African American.

According to the report, even children who did not face, or did not believe they faced, direct threats as a result of Trump’s policies, perceived the same pattern as the white supremacists who support Trump: that the candidate’s vision for a return to a “great’ version of America was dismissive of people of color.

I highly recommend reading the whole article at Vox. This is heartbreaking, to say the very least. Institutionalized, systemic racism is bad enough in uStates, what with it being the very core and framework of this country, now there’s the storm of ugly Americanism breaking right over the heads of these children. I remember growing up under the cold war and the constant threat of nuclear war, you heard about it constantly, and it was a very real fear. Even that pales in comparison to the depth of fear facing non-white children now. Do people truly want to claim this legacy? A legacy of hate, fear, and bigotry? A legacy of gleeful traumatization? There is already a deep divide in schools when it comes to white children and non-white children. I was reading an article about Seattle teachers donning BLM t-shirts, and there was mention of children of colour not seeing themselves in curriculum or histories. No kidding. And if people think that’s bad for Black and Hispanic children, think about what it’s like for Indigenous children. I have mentioned, so many times, just how white-washed uStates ‘history’ is – if you aren’t white, you’re definitely going to be the villains in one way or another, if you are represented at all. About the only people who actively campaign to have special history modules taught in school are various Indigenous tribes, who are damn tired of the lack of representation, combined with ugly, racist, inaccurate representation. There’s not been any concerted effort to have accurate history texts, and with Texas in charge of school textbooks, it’s not likely that will ever happen.

Now, with Trump opening up Ugly Americanism, with way too many people diving into that ugly headfirst, we’ll have at least one generation of children who, already standing at the edge of a deep divide, will be traumatized and living in fear of their very lives. Way to go, America.

Full story at Vox. Via Black Lives Matter.

How Cops Get Away With Murder.

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GQ has an in-depth interview with Raeford Davis, a former South Carolina cop (until 2006). It’s good reading, I recommend it. Just a bit here:

When you first became a police officer, what sort of training did you get for de-escalating a potentially violent encounter?

Very little. My academy manual was approximately 1,500 pages long. Of that, maybe 10-20 pages cover effective communication and verbal de-escalation techniques. It wasn’t really until you got out with your field training officer that they would say, “Look you’ve got to talk to people and settle things without getting worked up.” In a lot of ways, when you got on the street you were unlearning a lot of the worst case scenario training that you learned at the academy.

I don’t think the disgrace of so-called police training here in uStates is much of a mystery to most people anymore, but I really wonder if any cops are actually unlearning that garbage anymore.

Were there any mechanisms in place to weed out people who weren’t suited for the job?

Most people wash out based on academic issues and obvious physical issues, like a bad knee, that would prevent them from performing their duties than anything else. As far as spotting over-aggressive or mentally unstable red flags, no, I didn’t see where that would come up and it certainly didn’t with my group. How people washed out from the academy beyond that would be off-campus problems, like getting a DUI or, as happened to one guy, getting into a road rage incident and flashing his badge and gun at people. But it’s the barrel that’s bad, regardless of the apples.

So, what are some of the things you learned about how to behave in those worst case scenarios?

We have this “use of force” continuum. It changes depending on the agency, but there’s a basic format. You can increase your level of response based on the reaction of the individual. You start off with your mere presence, then you have verbal commands, and if that doesn’t work you can put your hands on someone. If they pull back, then you can maybe use a pressure point technique. If they take a swing at you, then you can escalate to a baton. The main takeaway I got from my training concerning individuals armed with a knife or similar weapon was the “21 foot rule.” Basically if you confront anyone with a knife and they get within 21 feet, you can shoot them.

The full interview is at GQ.  Via Black Lives Matter.

Cool Stuff Friday.

It’s Posing for Pixels time again! 

 
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Acclaimed authors Jim C. Hines, Chuck Wendig, and Tee Morris have bravely volunteered to do custom gender-flipped cover poses to encourage the Science Fiction & Fantasy community to help The Pixel Project‘s Read For Pixels 2016 Indiegogo fundraiser reach our $5,000 fundraising goal (and beyond) this October! The Pixel Project is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that combines the power of the internet, social media, and pop culture/the arts to raise awareness, funds, and volunteer power to end violence against women.

READ FOR PIXELS: Operation Cover Pose 2016 To Help End Violence Against Women.

 

READ FOR PIXELS 2016: FALL EDITION.

Do Not Resist.

(AFP Photo/Justin Sullivan).

(AFP Photo/Justin Sullivan).

Officers with assault rifles, backed by a huge armored grenade launcher, square up to a crowd furiously denouncing the killing of a young black neighbor.

It is a scene which could have been taken from archive footage of Mogadishu in 1990s Somalia or countless other battles, but this conflict is closer to home — the streets of small-town America.

The images, captured in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, open “Do Not Resist” — a disturbing documentary charting the transformation of police across the US into forces that look like military units.

The explosive film is set to fuel an already bitter debate raging in America over heavy-handed law enforcement, following a litany of police killings of black men that have sparked protests from Ferguson and Charlotte to Chicago.

Director Craig Atkinson, whose movie is opening across the US having won best documentary feature at the Tribeca Film Festival, says the American law enforcement ethos has changed “from a mentality of peacekeepers to that of an occupying army.”

Another eye-opening scene shows officers in black fatigues firing volley after volley of automatic rounds at cardboard targets, as if they were preparing for war rather than to “protect and serve.”

A khaki-clad instructor explains that security forces must prepare for all kinds of attacks, “including the Islamic State.”

MRAPs, the armored trucks that protect troops from roadside bombs planted along the dusty roads of Iraq and Afghanistan, are now ubiquitous across the US.

[…]

In another shocking scene, a SWAT team arrives in an MRAP at a tree-lined street in Columbia, South Carolina, to execute a search warrant in a drug case.

The officers, whose equipment looks barely distinguishable from that of an infantry division, end up badly damaging a family home in a raid that nets a small amount of loose cannabis.

Atkinson’s father, a retired policeman from Detroit, Michigan, spent over a decade in one such SWAT team, the New York-based filmmaker explains.

“In his time, his team intervened 29 times in 13 years. Now they are taking part in 200 raids a year,” Atkinson tells AFP.

[…]

Campaigners against police militarization accept that SWAT teams and their heavy-duty hardware have a vital role in combatting the rare instances of terrorism in the US.

But they point out that, due to prolonged mission creep, this is no longer how these resources are used.

Peter Kraska, a criminology professor at the University of Eastern Kentucky, says there are now at least 50,000 SWAT raids a year, up from 3,000 in the 1980s.

Most of the activities of these highly specialized units have little to do with the reasons for their inception, such as dealing with hostage situations, terrorist attacks and drug cartels.

According to Atkinson, one of the architects of the “warrior culture” is a hugely successful police trainer named Dave Grossman, head of a consulting firm called the Killology Research Group.

“We are at war and you are the frontline troops in this war. What do you fight violence with? Superior violence,” Grossman hollers at an audience of mesmerized police in one session filmed for the documentary.

The retired army lieutenant colonel has lectured throughout the US, according to his website, and Atkinson believes his influence has spread to every American law enforcement agency.

For those who are woke, none of this will come as a surprise, but I’d say this is necessary viewing for us all, and this ongoing militarization not only must be stopped, it needs to be revoked. It’s time to take all those shiny toys away from all the bully boys out there. If cops want to continue playing military, I suggest they quit being a cop, and join up.

Via Raw Story.

The Only Way Out.

A drawing by a 16-year-old girl from Iran on Nauru. CREDIT: Amnesty International.

A drawing by a 16-year-old girl from Iran on Nauru. CREDIT: Amnesty International.*

Most people will have a passing awareness of what’s been happening to refugees attempting to reach Australia. To say the Australian government has a lot to answer for is one hell of an understatement. This is open, unapologetic torture, and right now, it doesn’t look like anyone much cares that the main effect of this “open air camp” is suicide. When death becomes a preferable option, you get an idea of just how bad things are. These people, already carrying heavy burdens of trauma, are being treated as untouchable, nasty things, and as Esme Weatherwax pointed out, all the ills in the world begin there, with treating people like things. Although reading, it seems to me they are more being treated like inconvenient garbage that someone littered about. This is a terribly ugly story, filled with terribly ugly people, who cannot manage to dredge up the smallest sliver of concern. All around the world, we human beings are failing at being human, in a most spectacular way.

Refugees and asylum seekers who attempt to reach Australia by boat are turned away and detained in refugee processing centers on the Pacific island of Nauru or Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. The Australian government has argued that the policy acts as a good deterrence against human smugglers and people who might choose to undertake the journey to its shores. But those who wind up on these offshore detention sites face indefinite and unlawful detention, an ordeal so disastrous that refugees and asylum seekers are turning to self-harm to cope, according to a new human rights organization report released Monday.

The Amnesty International report found that it was not uncommon for detainees to try and kill themselves, based on field and desk research that happened between July and October 2016. One man failed to kill himself twice in a span of ten weeks. Another Iranian refugee who tried to kill herself multiple times every week was eventually put in a medical ward. And a man found his pregnant wife in the bathroom with rope marks on her neck.

[…]

Some service-providers at the detention center described practices that made refugees and asylum seekers feel less than human. One guard forcibly took away candy from a girl. Some asylum seekers were taken from showers after two minutes, with shampoo in their hair. Others had to wait weeks or months for basic necessities like underwear and shoes.

In a conversation with a seven-year-old boy from Iran, a service-provider told Amnesty International that the child would keep asking him questions. “He’d say ‘I don’t understand this place. Prisons are for bad people, right? Bad people are the men who hurt my father [in Iran]. Why am I in prison? Does that mean I am a bad person?’”

Nauru’s refugee processing center is described as an “open” center meaning that once people are recognized as refugees, they are moved into accommodation outside the refugee processing center on the same island, roughly one-third the size of Manhattan. But much of the island is uninhabitable, now environmentally ravaged by generations of phosphate mining.

Even refugees and asylees living outside detention grounds face Nauru police who fail to adequately investigate their complaints. One father, who told the police about a man who tried to rape his daughter, was told that the judge was “off duty.” An Iranian refugee who tried to report a robbery got the run-around from police who said that “their computer was broken.” When he offered to give handwritten testimony, he was told that they didn’t have paper.

[…]

Many of the abuses that Neistat found are consistent with previous accounts of abuse detailed by other refugees and asylum seekers. In late April, at least two refugees tried setting themselves on fire. One died from the self-immolation, while the other refugee suffered critical injuries. In August, The Guardian reported on 2,000 reports of abuse and neglect, which found that children were “vastly overrepresented in the reports.”

People set themselves on fire. On fire, for fuck’s sake. If this does not break your heart, if this does not make you ask questions, if this does not make you angry, something is very, very wrong.

The Australian government spends $419,425 per person, per year on offshore processing. In comparison, the U.S. government spends about $59,860 per person, per year on detention. Yet as the allegations show, the costs do not reflect the care that refugees and asylum seekers receive.

After clicking all the links, and doing all the reading, I would really like to know just where in the hell all that money is going, because it most certainly is not going into care of and for refugees and asylum seekers. The stench of corruption is wafting about.

* I probably have nothing to worry about here, but if  you’re the type of asshole who thinks it would be pertinent to comment about how your two year old could draw better than that 16 year old, you’ll be banned so fast you’ll end up with whiplash.

The full story is at Think Progress.

American Creativity.

Americans, so gosh darn fun and creative, right? Yes, well, they certainly excel at being nasty, hateful, awful asshole bigots, who often wouldn’t be able to figure their way out of a wet paper bag. Isn’t much room for thought when you have a head full of toxic hate. I have no doubt whatsoever that every person involved would describe themselves as good, patriotic, Christian Americans, who aren’t at all bigoted, oh no. There’s yet another black mark on the blight that is Christianity. How these fucking people can even claim it, I don’t know. It does continue to confirm that their god is every bit as horrible as they are. Let’s see what these gosh darn fun and creative Americans are up to, shall we?

Shirts with a rifle scope trained on Colin Kaepernick selling for $10 outside of Ralph Wilson stadium. [One shirt has Wanted Notorious Disgrace to America on it, with a photo of Kaepernick and a rifle scope superimposed; the other shirt pictured has a stylized Kaepernick kneeling, with the text Shut Up and Stand Up! Kaeperdick.]

Isn’t that just wacky and adorable? Those are such wonderful American ideals to show off to your family, friends, and all the children everywhere, especially those little brown children, because they had best know to grow up and keep their damn proper place, right? Might as well be sure you let them know they have absolutely no business whatsoever going around thinking they are full human beings, with full human rights or anything. Without making sure they won’t be uppity, why one of them might grow up to think the constant and continual extrajudicial killings of people of colour are something to protest and fight against. Those damn uppity…well, you know.

We have not yet plumbed the depths of said American creativity. Let’s have a look at what else is available:

For $5, you can get a white T-shirt, with an image of Kaepernick kneeling, with the text “Hey Colin… While You’re Down There, in red. What’s more American than comparing a man to the absolute worst possible creature, a woman? Because it really wouldn’t be that exceptional American evil without tossing in some misogyny, and making sure there’s at least a slight diss towards all those women, y’know, the gay dudes. Also, in case you can’t make it out, one of the sellers of this garbage is wearing a Chick-fil-a T-shirt, so Christian LGBTIAQ hater confirmed.

This is not in the least unexpected. That does not lessen the absolute sickness of it, the evil of it, which so many Americans have happily embraced in these particularly troubled times. To say this is deplorable is not enough. To say this is disgusting is not enough. This is evil, in all its banality, proffered and taken by Americans who are more than ready to proclaim their goodness. I’d spit on them, but it would be a waste of spit. These people are worth less than shit on a shoe, and they are doing absolutely nothing except spreading shit everywhere they go, and with that shit, the disease of hatred.

If you read this, and bristle over being tarred with a broad brush, examine how complicit you are in the current wave of toxicity. Do you see such things and speak out? Do you hear friends, family, co-workers, acquaintances spilling this poison, and start to examine the floor? Do you turn away? Are you outraged because you are one of the good Christians? Once again, I ask, where are you? Why are you not speaking out? Where is the outcry of Not Acceptable?

Via Think Progress.

Pitchforks and Torches Time.

Yesterday, we took a look at the frightening views of Trump fanatics, who believe absolutely that every single journalism source is lying, that voter fraud is not just for real, but happening before any voting, and these believers are happily talking about assassination and bloodshed. This is a continuation of that story. Now that singular ass Sheriff Dave Clarke is on board, hollering for a mob. I am feeling physically stunned at this point, as if someone whacked me with a bat, attempting to recover my wits and make sense of the scene in front of me. How in the hell can most of us just be sitting here, an audience to this absolute insanity happening in front of our faces? No, I don’t know what to do either, but I am frightened. I grew up in the counter-culture, in a tumultuous time of great change, but for the most part, it was change for the better. The better of all people. The same cannot be said now. We have people who want to go backwards, and indulge in full scale colonial assault, again.

Most of the grumblings and musings of rebellion have come from everyday Trump voters, but on Saturday, Trump surrogate and Milwaukee Sheriff David A. Clarke, an elected law official, tweeted that it’s “pitchforks and torches time” with a (stock) photo of an angry mob.

I guess Clarke figures he’ll be one of the “good negroes” who will be happily accepted by Trump and the mob he’s trying to incite. A Sheriff calling for riots. Are we sure this isn’t 1984?

Via ThinkProgress.

Amy Goodman Charged with Engaging in a Riot.

Amy Goodman.

Amy Goodman.

Just a few posts ago, I mentioned how embarrassing Ndakota has been lately. Apparently, the state I live in isn’t finished in the quest to scrape the bottom of the barrel, when it comes to stupid, ignorant, embarrassing, cringe-worthy, asshole antics. I do not take any pride in being surrounded by ignorant assholes who proudly wallow in bigotry and willful ignorance.

Bismarck, North Dakota–October 15, 2016 — A North Dakota state prosecutor has sought to charge award-winning journalist Amy Goodman with participating in a “riot” for filming an attack on Native American-led anti-pipeline protesters. The new charge comes after the prosecutor dropped criminal trespassing charges.

State’s Attorney Ladd R Erickson filed the new charges on Friday before District Judge John Grinsteiner who will decide on Monday (October 17) whether probable cause exists for the riot charge.

Goodman has travelled to North Dakota to face the charges and will appear at Morton County court on Monday at 1:30 pm local time (CDT) if the charges are approved.

“I came back to North Dakota to fight a trespass charge. They saw that they could never make that charge stick, so now they want to charge me with rioting, ” said Goodman. “I wasn’t trespassing, I wasn’t engaging in a riot, I was doing my job as a journalist by covering a violent attack on Native American protesters.”

In an e-mail to Goodman’s attorney Tom Dickson on October 12, State’s Attorney Erickson admitted that there were “legal issues with proving the notice of trespassing requirements in the statute.” In an earlier email on October 12, Erickson wrote that Goodman “was not acting as a journalist,” despite that fact that the state’s criminal complaint recognized that, “Amy Goodman can be seen on the video …interviewing protesters.” In that email Erikson justified his quote in the Bismarck Tribune in which he had said that “She’s [Amy Goodman] a protester, basically. Everything she reported on was from the position of justifying the protest actions.” The First Amendment, of course, applies irrespective of the content of a reporter’s story.

The charge in State of North Dakota v. Amy Goodman, stems from Democracy Now!’s coverage of the protests against the Dakota Access pipeline. On Saturday, September 3, Democracy Now! filmed security guards working for the pipeline company attacking protesters. The report showed guards unleashing dogs and using pepper spray and featured people with bite injuries and a dog with blood dripping from its mouth and nose.

Well, Mr. Erickson, thanks ever for helping to paint a picture of my state as one full of shit-for-brains bigots. Christ, I feel like I should just find a cave to hide in.

Via Democracy Now.

There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed…I would do whatever I can for my country.

Vendors sold shirts backing Trump outside the Portsmouth rally.

Vendors sold shirts backing Trump outside the Portsmouth rally. Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff.

As most people will be aware, Trump has been whipping his fans into a furor over voter fraud and a rigged election. He has been openly encouraging his fans to hang out at voting stations to look for “illegals” attempting to vote. Certainly a bunch of fanatical white bigots won’t cause any trouble at all, right? That small bit of sarcasm aside, too many of Trump’s fanatics are most eager to dive into duty on this score, believing every word he says, and these people are fucking scary. Seriously scary.

[…] At a time when trust in government is at a low point, Trump is actively stoking fears that a core tenet of American democracy is also in peril: that you can trust what happens at the ballot box.

His supporters here said they plan to go to their local precincts to look for illegal immigrants who may attempt to vote. They are worried that Democrats will load up buses of minorities and take them to vote several times in different areas of the city. They’ve heard rumors that boxes of Clinton votes are already waiting somewhere.

And if Trump doesn’t win, some are even openly talking about violent rebellion and assassination, as fantastical and unhinged as that may seem.

“If she’s in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That’s how I feel about it,” Dan Bowman, a 50-year-old contractor, said of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. “We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that’s what it takes. There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that’s what it’s going to take. . . . I would do whatever I can for my country.”

He then placed a Trump mask on his face and posed for pictures.

This isn’t the first time people have spoken about assassination. Does this no longer matter? Or is it that people simply don’t take any of the Trump fans seriously? From what I’ve seen, too many of these people are dedicated fanatics, and I am worried about what they will do.

Cullen expects Trump’s warnings about a rigged election to get even uglier in coming weeks, and he fears they will incite violence if Trump loses.

“That’s really scary,” Cullen said, recounting the violence at Trump rallies around the country leading up to the Republican National Convention. “In this country, we’ve always had recriminations after one side loses. But we haven’t had riots. We haven’t had mobs that act out with violence against supporters of the other side.’’

“There’s no telling what his supporters would be willing to do at the slightest encouragement from their candidate,” he said.

It will be interesting to see how the cops react if this happens. Will they be as zealous in “handling” and arresting fanatical white bigots as they are when it’s peaceful protesters who happen to be Black or Indigenous? Perhaps such an event would help all those cops to understand just how dangerous white people are.

Trump has recently started encouraging his mostly white supporters to sign up online to be “election observers” to stop “Crooked Hillary from rigging this election.” He’s urging them to act as posses of poll watchers in “other” communities to ensure that things are “on the up and up.”

“Watch your polling booths,” he warned.

His supporters are heeding the call. “Trump said to watch your precincts. I’m going to go, for sure,” said Steve Webb, a 61-year-old carpenter from Fairfield, Ohio.

“I’ll look for . . . well, it’s called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who can’t speak American,” he said. “I’m going to go right up behind them. I’ll do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. I’m not going to do anything illegal. I’m going to make them a little bit nervous.”

Right. Nothing creepy, unethical or legally dodgy about that, no sir! White people are already making me nervous as hell, and I’m camouflaged.

Some Trump supporters say that if he doesn’t win, they figure the United States government will be no better than dictatorships where elections cannot be trusted.

“We’re heading toward North Korea, without a doubt,” said Grant Reed, a Trump supporter wearing a shirt that said, “If you’re offended, I’ll help you pack.”

Joe Cecil, a 39-year-old restaurant manager, said he has never voted before but is newly inspired by Trump.

“If people are offended by the sexual stuff, what do they think is going to happen when Muslims come here, implement Sharia law, and start raping our women?” he asks.

And there we have a splendid example of white willful ignorance, hanging onto idiocy as if it were a treasure. Hey, Joe! Have you noticed Sharia law implemented lately? You haven’t? Wow, weird that, because of all the Muslims living in uStates, and somehow, your life has not been impacted in the least. Golly. What a dumbfuck, and proud of it, too. Also, Joe, “our” women? No. It must have escaped your notice that women are actual people who do not belong to you or anyone else. It must have also escaped your notice that recent cases of rape in headlines have been young white men, who were barely smacked on the wrist to spare them an awful time in the future. The victims? People such as yourself didn’t have much to say about them, you were too busy defending those young white rapists.

It’s a common strand among the Trump crowd. They say they have seen videos of Clinton supporters ripping up Republican registrations. They believe Obama is rushing to allow illegal immigrants to become citizens in order to vote.

“We’re going to have a lot of election fraud,” said Jeannine Bell Smith, 65-year-old longtime teacher in a red Trump shirt with a bucket of popcorn under her arm. “They are having illegals vote. In some states, you don’t need voter registration to vote.”

:Raises hand: I’m in a no registration state. I’m not in any way illegal.

After a prayer is said and the national anthem sung, she leans in.

“We can’t have that lying bitch in the White House,” she said.

Yeah, a delusional maniac who lies every 5 seconds is so much better. What. The. Fuck.

“If Hillary wins, it’s rigged,” said Judy Wright, who is from Illinois but took off work recently to come volunteer for Trump in Ohio.

Wright sighs at what seems to her an unfathomable outcome.

“All I know is our country is not going to be a country anymore,” she added. “I’ve heard people talk about a revolution. I’ve heard people talk about separation of states. I don’t even like to think about it. But I don’t think this movement is going away. We don’t have a voice anymore, and Donald Trump is giving us a voice.”

That old Chinese curse is working overtime here in uStates. Interesting times indeed.

The full story is at the Boston Globe.

Standing His Ground for Closeted Trump Fans.

Pro-Trump protester Daniel Parks and a friend (NEWSPLEX).

Pro-Trump protester Daniel Parks and a friend (NEWSPLEX).

A Trump supporter, worried that there were other “closet” Trump supporters who felt unheard in Virginia, stood outside a Congressional candidate’s campaign office for twelve hours while displaying a loaded firearm. Daniel Parks said that his protest was peaceful, but that he intended to “stand his ground” on behalf of other Trump supporters.

“I’m just trying to  provide a voice for someone who might be a closet supporter of Trump. Other people who are a little worried to speak out because of possible persecution,” Daniel Parks told reporter Taylor Cairns. Cairns reported that the Parks, who was later joined by a friend, wanted people to know that they were not giving up the campaign “quietly.”

Y’know, I don’t think that’s what you’re trying to do at all, Daniel. You claim to be making a peaceful protest (with a loaded gun), which is fine, but generally, a protest is against something. That’s built into the definition of the word. Since you’re busy being intimidating in front of a democrat’s office, one would assume you’re against democrats. As for closet Trump fans being persecuted, oh please. It’s those who are supporting Trump who are more than willing to be screaming bullies, and all too happy to be violent in their “support” for Trump. If someone just can’t cope with hearing different opinions, perhaps they need to stay in their closet.

Parks insisted that he wasn’t a threat, despite the fact that he was carrying a gun to a peaceful protest. Those who think so are ignorant: “We’re not a threat to anybody, the only threat is ignorance, and ignorance breeds fear,” he said.

Ohan, there went yet another irony meter. Yes, that gun is just the accessory to set off your outfit, right? I’m far from ignorant, Daniel, and I don’t like people walking about with guns. You can’t trust someone so attached to a gun to not use it at some point.

Parks also told Cairns that Trump may leave the race, but he will continue to “speak out.” “He [Trump] may be pulling out, but we’re not pulling out, and I’m going to stand my ground. And I’m going to speak out for what I believe in, and I guess I would encourage everyone else to do the same.”

Cairns noted that Parks intends to take his armed, peaceful protest to more campaign headquarters later this month.

You encourage others to speak out. I’d guess you aren’t all that willing for people who are against Trump to speak out though. Just all those terribly timid Trumpians in the closet. Oddly enough, I have not noticed the slightest reticence on the part of Trump supporters. So far, they have all been loudmouths who blithely assume everyone thinks the way they do. I’ve had Trump supporters say the most obnoxious isht to me at the bloody market, ffs! Complete strangers to me, and I live in a state noted for polite niceness on the part of the inhabitants.

Via Raw Story. There’s video at the link.

“Make America rape again.”

Nick Bata - Libertarian candidate for Insurance Commissioner in North Dakota (Photo: Facebook).

Nick Bata – Libertarian candidate for Insurance Commissioner in North Dakota (Photo: Facebook).

Right, as if Ndakota and Ndakotans have not been embarrassing enough lately. Now we have a flaming doucheweasel of an asshole, one Nick Bata. He’s a libertarian. And like most libertarians, shines a bright light on the sheer idiocy most of them happily embrace. At least he’s in West Fargo, not Bismarck, but I sure as hell wish he wasn’t anywhere on Turtle Island. Mr. Bata is a creep of the first water, and oh yes, most certainly a rape apologist.

WEST FARGO, N.D.—A Libertarian candidate for North Dakota Insurance Commissioner has been in a battle of words on the Internet over his comments on rape and women stripping.

In one comment, Nick Bata of West Fargo wrote “Make America Rape” again.

In started off with his post about sexual consent on Sept. 30 and quickly spiraled into an all-out battle of the keyboards with rape and stripping getting thrown into the conversation.

“If people don’t agree with them, they will attack you like a bunch of rabid, wild hyenas,” said Bata. “I tried to have to have a very civil engagements,” said Bata.

His comments ranged from saying rape culture doesn’t exist in this country to saying stripping is some women’s best way to make a living.

But it was the “Make America Rape Again” comment that caused several people to write about how disturbing it was.

“Yes, I wrote Make America Rape again. And in the context because of course they deleted some of the comments because that’s how they operate. They lurk in the dark and edit things, and by me not complying with their world view, I was labeled a rape apologist, I was labeled disgusting, all sorts of pejorative words, and they labeled me a Trump supporter because hey, if you’re not with us, you’re a Trump supporter, and in sarcasm, which leftist supporters can’t understand sarcasm, they misinterpreted this,” said Bata.

“It’s a free society, nobody makes these decisions. If you can’t handle someone’s free speech, that’s your problem not mine,” said Bata.

Goodness, what a charmer. Thanks ever, Mr. Bata, for condoning rape and sexual assault as no big deal. As for your free speech, I think someone needs to take your keyboard away, and put some duct tape to creative use.

Jess Roscoe posted the original article that started the firestorm–and can’t believe what it turned into.

“Even if it’s a play on Donald Trump and his campaign slogan, it doesn’t make that remark acceptable or constructive to any conversation,” said Roscoe.

“As a woman those comments are troubling, and I think that it’s a snapshot at the sorts of comments and beliefs that are said on a daily basis that a lot of people don’t think they’re contributing to something so negative,” said Roscoe.

It’s troubling to me also, as a woman, but I really think this should be troubling to everyone. This is not a lightweight matter, and as Ms. Roscoe notes, these types of remarks and commentary are not only common, but there is always someone who is listening, and hears the implicit consent to commit sexual assault or rape.

Bata said he has no regrets about his comments. “None of it,” he said. “I stand by everything. Why should i apologize and to who?”

Bata said he doesn’t plan on dropping out of the race.

The Libertarian party of North Dakota didn’t immediately respond.

Off the cuff, Mr. Bata, I’d say you should apologize to all people everywhere for pretending to be a human being. You’re doing one shitty job at it.

Via Jamestown Sun.