Welp… Guess I’m a Terrorist, Now…

Okay… I should probably qualify that title a bit… thanks to my anxiety, I haven’t actually participated in many protests (though I’m working up the courage to actually start participating in more… and I have participated in dialogues and such). Plus, despite realizing that I’m not a pacifist, I’m actually a coward who’s usual reaction to face-to-face conflict is to curl up into the fetal position and cry for Mommy. So… you know…

However, I do support Antifa and consider myself Antifa, and I’m friends and comrades with Antifa. Despite the qualifications above, I am part of it… or at least I try to be…

So… that title? It’s not clickbait.

The DHS has officially classified Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization.

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Jared Kushner Actually Thought this Would Work?

From Salon…

This hasn’t been a good week for Jared Kushner.

After it was revealed yesterday that the presidential son-in-law was being targeted by the FBI as a “person of interest” in the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, the Washington Post dropped another shocking revelation today in a report stating that Kushner asked Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak if they might set up a “secure communications channel” in a “Russian diplomatic facility,” which would allow the Trump team to have an open and private channel to the Kremlin.

Um… that’s not… you can’t…

What?!?

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Agent Orange Asked Comey to Stop Investigating Flynn

This is looking worse and worse…

From the New York Times…

President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.

“I hope you can let this go,” the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.

The documentation of Mr. Trump’s request is the clearest evidence that the president has tried to directly influence the Justice Department and F.B.I. investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia. Late Tuesday, Representative Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, demanded that the F.B.I. turn over all “memoranda, notes, summaries and recordings” of discussions between Mr. Trump and Mr. Comey.

Such documents, Mr. Chaffetz wrote, would “raise questions as to whether the president attempted to influence or impede” the F.B.I.

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He Actually Leaked Classified Info to the Russians. Seriously.

I don’t even know what to do with this…

From the New York Times…

President Trump boasted about highly classified intelligence in a meeting with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador last week, providing details that could expose the source of the information and the manner in which it was collected, a current and a former American government official said Monday.

The intelligence disclosed by Mr. Trump in a meeting with Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, and Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States, was about an Islamic State plot, according to the officials. A Middle Eastern ally that closely guards its own secrets provided the information, which was considered so sensitive that American officials did not share it widely within the United States government or pass it on to other allies.

So… he just wants us to know that he was hand-picked by Putin, doesn’t he?

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Jeff Sessions is Racist

Of course we all knew that, but this is just more evidence…

In a recent op-ed in USA Today, Attorney General Jeff Sessions reiterated that his Department of Justice will move away from federal oversight of local police departments plagued by abuses and officer-involved killings. In doing so, Sessions will undermine a key policy stemming from the beating of black motorist Rodney King in March 1991 by Los Angeles police officers. The subsequent LA riots, sparked by acquittals of the officers accused in King’s beating, began 25 years ago this Saturday.

After those riots ripped through LA, Congress went on to pass legislation granting federal oversight authority for police departments. Since then, the Justice Department has launched 70 investigations into state and local law enforcement agencies and has negotiated 40 reform agreements, half of which are court-enforced consent decrees. The Obama administration was particularly active with this policy, enforcing 14 consent decrees for troubled police agencies, from Ferguson, Missouri, to Baltimore. Sessions now threatens to undo that work, downplaying any systematic problems with American policing.

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Orange Pope-Wannabe Chips Away at Separation of Church and State

HEY ATHEISTS! SKEPTICS! ARE YOU OUT THERE? IS THIS AN ISSUE YOU’RE WILLING TO CARE ABOUT?

Fucking Asshole-in-Chief fucker has now given churches the freedom to be openly political without losing their tax-exempt status.

Declaring he was giving churches their “voices back,” President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday aimed at easing an IRS rule limiting political activity for religious organizations — a move that fell far short of a more sweeping order some supporters had expected.

As he marked the National Day of Prayer at the White House on Thursday, Trump signed the order on religious freedom, which directs the Treasury Department to not take “adverse action” over churches or religious organizations for political speech. The rule has rarely been enforced. Still, opponents said the restrictions have a chilling effect on free speech.

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I. Hate. Republicans. With Every. Fiber. Of. My. Being. (Health Care)

(Content warning: rape, rape survivors… and also a lot of strong, angry, ranting language)

So the fucking Rethuglicans in the fucking House voted to replace sections of the ACA, including doing away with the stipulation that health insurance companies can’t deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions… and one of those fucking conditions was fucking rape.

When House Republicans passed the American Health Care Act on Thursday, many Americans likely thought of their family and friends living with cancer, diabetes, or heart disease. These diseases are commonly referred to as “pre-existing conditions” – conditions which, under the Republican health care bill, could result in them being denied health insurance.

But another, less publicised group of people were also concerned by the bill’s passage: rape survivors.

Before Obamacare, some insurance companies considered rape and domestic abuse pre-existing conditions. One woman, Jody Neal-Post, says she was turned away after telling a potential insurance that she was a domestic violence victim – despite otherwise being perfectly healthy.

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Not-My-President Directly Involved in Hunt for Tweeter

Remember that tweeted photo comparison of the crowd at President Obama’s inauguration and the crowd at Agent Orange’s inauguration?

Left: An aerial view of President Barack Obama's inauguration on Jan. 20, 2009 in Washington, D.C. Right: An aerial view of President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017 in Washington, D.C. National Park Service

Left: An aerial view of President Barack Obama’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2009 in Washington, D.C. Right: An aerial view of President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017 in Washington, D.C. National Park Service

From Time…

President Donald Trump was “directly involved” in the quest to find the staffer from the National Park Service who retweeted a comparative photo of his inauguration crowd with that of his predecessor, former President Barack Obama.

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Sir Tiny Hands *Wants* the Government to Shut Down

From the New York Times…

President Trump said Tuesday that the United States needed “a good ‘shutdown’” this fall to force a partisan confrontation over federal spending and suggested that he might move to reverse longstanding Senate rules that effectively require a supermajority to approve most major pieces of legislation.

The declarations, in two posts on Twitter, appeared aimed at defending a compromise spending package that Congress is likely to clear this week, but that fails to accomplish many of Mr. Trump’s stated goals — including allocating any money to build a wall on the southern border, a project that was his most talked-about campaign promise. Conservative activists have criticized the agreement as one that does not address their priorities and swells the deficit, but the White House has signaled that the president would accept it rather than set off a government shutdown.

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