Businesses are starting to turn on the NRA.

Courtesy of Vice: 

The National Rifle Association is getting burned by businesses after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, last week. 

So far, two business partners have dropped the NRA from their roster. The First National Bank of Omaha said in a tweet on Thursday that because of “customer feedback,” the bank will cease issuing its NRA Visa card after its contract with the pro-gun lobbying group expires. And Enterprise Holdings — which operates the car rental companies Enterprise, Alamo, and National — told reporters on Thursday that it would no longer offer a discount to NRA members. 

For many years, the powerful lobbying group has struck partnerships with companies to offer NRA members discounts on a variety of services. Some of its existing partners include Hertz, FedEx, and the anti-virus software maker Norton.

Bloomberg found some others:

On Friday, LifeLock owner Symantec, Hertz, North American and Allied Van Lines, and insurer MetLife announced they would break off from the NRA. “Symantec has stopped its discount program with the National Rifle Association,” a spokesperson said in an emailed statement. A MetLife spokesman said “we value all our customers but have decided to end our discount program with the NRA.” Security systems maker Simplisafe Inc. also dropped the gun group today.

There are also some businesses that are not quite ready to bail on the NRA, but are putting them on notice.

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

The world’s largest asset manager put U.S. gunmakers on notice on Thursday that it is no longer business as usual in the wake of a shooting that killed 17 at a Florida high school. 

BlackRock Inc said it will speak with weapons manufacturers and distributors “to understand their response” to the second-deadliest shooting at a public school in U.S. history, putting pressure on companies such as Sturm Ruger & Company Inc and American Outdoor Brands Corp. 

BlackRock is the largest shareholder in both gunmakers and has more than $6 trillion in assets under management. It stopped short of saying it would divest its funds of gun companies, however.

Well I think it's time to push for even more boycotts, don't you?

Not only should we refuse to do business with any companies that have advertising deals with the NRA, but we should also refuse to vote for any candidates that accept NRA money.

That would almost strip them of their influence overnight.

Well after the elections this year at least.

And now a word from Alabama.

“Forty years ago in Alabama, there’s a lot of mamas and daddies that’d be thrilled that their 14-year-old was getting hit on by a district attorney.”

Watch @FrankLuntz’s full panel of Alabama voters on VICE News Tonight, 7:30PM EST on @HBO pic.twitter.com/IVrHnRcX0v

— VICE News (@vicenews) December 8, 2017

Well at least now we know why Alabama is not horrified about Roy Moore.

And why I will never visit Alabama.

Vice reporter discounts the idea that the White Nationalist protest in Charlottesville had anything to do with Confederate statues.

Vice reporter Elle Reeve.

Courtesy of the Independent Journal Review: 

In the aftermath of the violence at the “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, footage captured by HBO's “Vice News Tonight” has routinely been cited as showing what happened with the most accuracy and clarity. While usually there is a delay before episodes hit YouTube, Vice posted this one right away. 

Elle Reeve, the Vice reporter who helmed the piece, was a guest on Sunday's edition of “Face the Nation” on CBS to discuss what she witnessed in Charlottesville and the reaction to the episode as part of a panel. In light of President Donald Trump's comments that “good people” were protesting quietly on the first night, she was asked what she saw. 

“This was an unannounced event, but a very well-organized one,” she began. “When we arrived, there were vans dropping off white nationalists at the field. On the field, there were organizers doing crowd control, security, handing out tiki torches. They picked tiki torches as to be menacing, sometimes they call it a torch-lit vigil, because it’s supposed to be an offensive spin on a candlelight vigil.” 

“Once they started marching, they didn't talk about Robert E. Lee being a brilliant military tactician, they chanted about Jews,” she said. “They wanted to be menacing, it's not an accident.”

That whole thing about protesting the taking down of Confederate was just a thin cover for the REAL reason they were protesting and that was to  incite violence and gain national attention.

And if there is any lingering doubt about that then just remember this guy:

This is actually how I see most of these White Supremacists.

Tough talking macho men online, pathetic little bitches in the real world. 

For any of those still telling themselves that the marchers in Charlottesville were not White Supremacists there to incite violence, you should take a moment to watch this amazing footage from the folks at Vice, who were there since the beginning.

(Warning some of the language in this video is NSFW.)

Courtesy of Mother Jones:

A 22-minute documentary released Monday on HBO’s Vice News Tonight offers a chilling look behind the battle lines in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend, with a reporter who embedded with some of the white supremacists who engaged in the violence that ended in the death of one counter-protester and two state troopers. The video has already received nearly 7 million views in the last 17 hours on Facebook. 

“Charlottesville: Race and Terror,” follows Christopher Cantwell, an unabashed white supremacist who spews racist invective while traveling around with a band of neo-Nazis. Cantwell is a prominent “alt-right” shock jock who came to Charlottesville to speak at the “United the Right” rally. In the documentary, Cantwell and a posse of assorted white supremacists speak forcefully about the warped theories underpinning what they consider to be an impending and inevitable race war.
 
Yesterday Donald Trump attempted to excuse the behavior of these people, and to suggest that the media was not being "fair" to them.

And they are now showing their appreciation for that.

Courtesy of TPM:

White supremacist leader Richard Spencer asserted Monday that President Donald Trump wasn’t being “serious” when he denounced hate groups by name, two days after blaming “many sides” for violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. 

“The statement today was more kumbaya nonsense,” Spencer said at a press conference. “You can say racism is evil; we should all love one another; the sun should always shine, seven days a week; everyone should be above average; everyone should be a wonderful athlete; everyone should love each other. It’s just silliness.” 

“It’s not serious, and I don’t think anyone takes it seriously, including the President,” he added.

That attitude has emboldened these groups to plan even more White Supremacist marches.

And while making those plans they are aggressively going after their perceived enemies.

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

Logan Smith, the 30-year-old man behind the @YesYoureRacist Twitter account, has been receiving death threats for his work exposing the identities of people who attended the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville this past weekend.

“I have been receiving death threats for the past 20 hours or so,” Smith, 30, said in a phone interview. “They have been threatening my family, too. The overall response of course has been 99 percent positive, but there’s always that extremely small but extremely loud and extremely angry minority that bites back… There’s a lot of them – and they are mad.”

“These people aren’t afraid anymore,” he said. “They’re not hiding behind their hoods like they did before the civil rights era. They are out and proud. I think if they are so proud of their beliefs and proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with neo-Nazis and KKK members and white supremacists of all stripes, then I think their communities need to know who they are.”

It has been pointed out by a number of commentators that while these folks seem upset that folks like Logan Smith are working to identify them by name, they are the ones who feel emboldened enough to march around without their hoods.

So what did they expect?

And soon they will all get the recognition they deserve, because Illinois just passed a measure identifying the Neo-Nazis as a terrorist organization, and I have a feeling that other states may soon follow suit.

Will things get worse before they get better?

Oh yeah.

But ultimately things WILL get better.

I think.

Update: So remember that guy talking all tough in the interview with Vice?

Yeah, well that guy is now freaked out that he might be arrested.

Too good, Christopher Cantwell, one of the #Charlottesville neo-nazis cries his eyes out at threat of arrest https://t.co/XteAzcofSa

— Henry Langston (@Henry_Langston) August 16, 2017

This is what these guys look like when they are called out on their shit.

Donald Trump has the attention span of a toddler, unless he is being handed his twice daily folder of positive news about himself.

I knew I was doing a good job.

Courtesy of Vice News: 

Twice a day since the beginning of the Trump administration, a special folder is prepared for the president. The first document is prepared around 9:30 a.m. and the follow-up, around 4:30 p.m. Former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and former Press Secretary Sean Spicer both wanted the privilege of delivering the 20-to-25-page packet to President Trump personally, White House sources say. 

These sensitive papers, described to VICE News by three current and former White House officials, don’t contain top-secret intelligence or updates on legislative initiatives. Instead, the folders are filled with screenshots of positive cable news chyrons (those lower-third headlines and crawls), admiring tweets, transcripts of fawning TV interviews, praise-filled news stories, and sometimes just pictures of Trump on TV looking powerful. 

One White House official said the only feedback the White House communications shop, which prepares the folder, has ever gotten in all these months is: “It needs to be more fucking positive.” That’s why some in the White House ruefully refer to the packet as “the propaganda document.”

No wonder this idiot thinks that any negative coverage he hears must be "fake news." He lives in a bubble of positive affirmations.

When Vice reached former spokesperson Sean Spicer he said this story was "not accurate on several levels," but did not clarify which levels those were nor refute the fact that Trump DOES receive these propaganda documents.

Vice also heard from Obama's White House officials who said that the President would have laughed out loud if they had tried to feed him bullshit like this: “His was a reality-based presidency.”

Yeah, remember those?

You know every morning I wake up thinking that I cannot think less of Donald Trump than I did the day before, and every day I am incorrect.

And they call liberals "snowflakes."

Possibly the only positive outcome from the Trump presidency is an unprecedented number of new Democrats running for office.

Courtesy of Vice News:  

The 2018 midterms are still 561 days away, but an unprecedented early surge of Democrats have already declared their candidacies for the House of Representatives, setting up what will likely be one of the longest and most crowded series of House Democratic primary campaigns in memory. 

Already 408 Democrats have thrown their hats into the ring, a 58 percent increase over the 259 who had declared by this point in the run-up to the 2014 midterms. And several hundred more candidates are likely to join races across the country as the Democratic Party and multiple outside progressive groups recruit their own candidates. This tsunami of Democratic challengers will likely make it more difficult for President Donald Trump to pass his legislative agenda as members of Congress — Republicans and Democrats alike — will be wary of casting votes that provide ammo to progressive Democratic challengers. 

Contrary to fears among some liberals that the anti-Trump resistance movement would start and stop with marches and memes, the surge of energy and potential candidates is letting dispirited Democrats dare to believe they could win the 24 seats they need to reclaim the House majority for the first time since 2010. 

A spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC, or “D-trip” as it’s often called in Washington) told VICE News that the committee is in serious talks with more than 300 prospective candidates in about 70 Republican-held and open districts around the country. About 90 percent of those recruits, the DCCC said, have yet to file declarations of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission.

Well as far as I am concerned this is perhaps the best news we could hope for at this point.

The Republicans have a very well funded political machine in place to find, train, and groom new politicians who they then run for everything from school boards, to city assemblies, to congressional seats in Washington.

Lately the Democrats have really struggled to keep up with that machine, and hopefully with Trump in the White House there will finally be the feeling of desperation needed to inspire hesitant Democrats to put their personal concerns aside and get into the game. 

Vice News files lawsuit against FBI for records about their interference in the 2016 election.

Courtesy of Vice: 

VICE News is suing the FBI, demanding the bureau release records related to its curious disclosures, behind-the-scenes actions, and apparent leaks in the days leading up to the U.S. presidential election. 

The wide-ranging Freedom of Information Act lawsuit was filed Tuesday morning in conjunction with Ryan Shapiro, a doctoral candidate at MIT and research affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Earlier this month, VICE News and Shapiro filed more than 50 FOIA requests with the FBI seeking documents about the bureau’s discussions regarding Donald Trump, along with other documents that would shed light on the FBI’s decision a week before the election to tweet newly posted records from a long-dormant Twitter account about Bill Clinton’s 2000 pardon of financier Marc Rich. 

The pardon, a controversial decision by the former president, was investigated at the time by current FBI director James Comey while he was U.S. attorney. 

Our FOIA lawsuit notes that the FBI failed to respond to our requests for expedited processing. We argued that we urgently needed the documents to immediately inform the public. Among the FBI records we seek to compel the FBI to disclose: 

• Allegations of the FBI violating the Hatch Act by allegedly using its authority to influence the course of the 2016 U.S. presidential election • Internal discontent at the FBI regarding the bureau’s Hillary Clinton investigations 

• All leaks of information by the FBI to the media and political operatives about FBI investigations of Clinton 

• All FBI communications with Breitbart News; Breitbart executive chairman Steve Bannon, who Trump named his chief strategist and White House counselor after Bannon served as his campaign CEO; former Trump campaign manager Corey R. Lewandowski, Fox News, and Fox News hosts Bret Baier and Sean Hannity; former New York City mayor and Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani; and Republican strategist and Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone 

• White nationalist Richard Spencer, his National Policy Institute, and the “alt-right.”

I am not sure how successful this lawsuit will be, but I am pretty stoked to read about any records they might get from it.

Especially the ones about the Clinton e-mail investigation as well as anything to do with Bretibart or Fox News.

Yeah, I would really like to see those.

Ever wonder why there are all of those erectile dysfunction ads on TV during prime time? Here you go.

While I appreciate Vice attempting to be even handed here, I actually think these advertisement have dome more harm than they are reporting in this piece.

As a matter of fact the AMA wants them banned completely: 

“Today’s vote in support of an advertising ban reflects concerns among physicians about the negative impact of commercially-driven promotions, and the role that marketing costs play in fueling escalating drug prices,” AMA board chair-elect Patrice A. Harris said in a statement Tuesday. “Direct-to-consumer advertising also inflates demand for new and more expensive drugs, even when these drugs may not be appropriate.”

Yeah, no shit.

In my opinion not only are these ads completely distasteful but they also feed into a kind of national hypochondria which otherwise healthy Americans that they need a pill to somehow improve their lives.

What most of them need is a gym membership and a self driving car that refuses to take them to McDonalds or Pizza Hut.

The CIA has just now declassified the report that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq. Guess what? It does not justify the invasion of Iraq.

Courtesy of Vice:  

For the first time, the public can now read the hastily drafted CIA document that led Congress to pass a joint resolution authorizing the use of military force in Iraq, a costly war launched March 20, 2003 that was predicated on "disarming" Iraq of its (non-existent) WMD, overthrowing Saddam Hussein, and "freeing" the Iraqi people. 

A report issued by the government funded think-tank RAND Corporation last December titled "Blinders, Blunders and Wars" said the NIE "contained several qualifiers that were dropped…. As the draft NIE went up the intelligence chain of command, the conclusions were treated increasingly definitively." 

An example of that: According to the newly declassified NIE, the intelligence community concluded that Iraq "probably has renovated a [vaccine] production plant" to manufacture biological weapons "but we are unable to determine whether [biological weapons] agent research has resumed." The NIE also said Hussein did not have "sufficient material" to manufacture any nuclear weapons. But in an October 7, 2002 speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, then-President George W. Bush simply said Iraq, "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons" and "the evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program." 

One of the most significant parts of the NIE revealed for the first time is the section pertaining to Iraq's alleged links to al Qaeda. In September 2002, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld claimed the US had "bulletproof" evidence linking Hussein's regime to the terrorist group. 

"We do have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad," Rumsfeld said. "We have what we consider to be very reliable reporting of senior-level contacts going back a decade, and of possible chemical- and biological-agent training." 

But the NIE said its information about a working relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq was based on "sources of varying reliability" — like Iraqi defectors — and it was not at all clear that Hussein had even been aware of a relationship, if in fact there were one. 

"As with much of the information on the overall relationship, details on training and support are second-hand," the NIE said. "The presence of al-Qa'ida militants in Iraq poses many questions. We do not know to what extent Baghdad may be actively complicit in this use of its territory for safehaven and transit."

That is just a portion of a much longer article, virtually all of it refuting what we were all told during the build up to the invasion, and Vice also has the actual report embedded for those who want to read it for themselves. 

Here is what really sticks in my craw.

This report was supposedly readily available to both the Senate and Congress to help its members make perhaps the MOST important decision of their careers, and yet still they voted to support Bush and his unnecessary war.

To my mind that makes those who voted in favor partly culpable for the damage that resulted from the decision to move forward even in the face of such unconvincing evidence.

Which also means, and yes I know I'm on thin ice with some of you, Hillary Clinton.

More from the article:

According to the latest figures compiled by Iraq Body Count, to date more than 200,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, although other sources say the casualties are twice as high. More than 4,000 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq, and tens of thousands more have been injured and maimed. The war has cost US taxpayers more than $800 billion. 

And as President Obama recently pointed out the fallout from the war is far from over since it was instrumental in the creation of ISIS.

Of course it will not make any difference in the general, especially since it is likely she will run against the brother of the man who started the war in the first place, but it is just one more reason that voting for Hillary in 2016 will feel more like an obligation rather than a privilege.

Damn good interview with President Obama.

I really like the use of video segments to provide examples to the audience of some of the things that the President is talking about.

The President addresses climate change, ISIS, Republican gridlock, and marijuana legalization.

I especially liked how he claimed the rise of ISIS directly on the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq.  That is a point that needs to be made over and over.

(Source.)

Michael Moore responds to Sarah Palin's "Fuc_ You Michael Moore" sign.

Moore posted this a link to an interview with VICE on his Facebook page Friday but I totally missed it.

Much of it is talking about the kerfuffle over the "American Sniper" film, but then VICE asks him about the above photo:

VICE: Obviously you saw the poster that Sarah Palin held up—Michael Moore with the crosshairs in the two O's. 

MM: The one that ended her political career on Saturday? 

VICE: Yeah. 

MM: Yeah, I tweeted those two Tweets on Sunday, and on Monday I figured I better do a Facebook post because I live in a nation where a lot of people can't comprehend, and plus 140 characters isn't a lot. So I did the Facebook [post] and then I decided I'm going to be silent now until Friday. And I didn't tweet anything about this, didn't talk about it, didn't do anything, just decided to play rope-a-dope with these crazies and let them scream all week and they won't see me fighting back, which will elevate their screaming and nuttiness and essentially let them punch themselves in the face. This is what I hoped would happen. Think about this—the vast majority of her base is made up of born-again Christians. Good Christian people. They were stunned to see her holding a sign that said "fuck you." 

VICE: This is someone who portrays herself as a real proper American mother. 

MM: Yeah, family values and apple pie, and she says things like golly gee wiz. She got so mad at me that she let her guard down to reveal who she is, and the Christian right saw that and were all kind of horrified. She got a lot of immediate blowback on social media, and then again on Saturday before she stood up to give her speech. My theory is she thought her own people turned against her in that time and it rattled her, and then I guess the prompter went out, right? She wasn't able to recover, and she was right in the middle. I should go back and have a look at this, I can't remember. I saw it on C-Span. But at the start she was on me, she's just come off this posting, she's getting a lot of blowback from her people so she starts off on me again, and then the prompter blows, so whatever. I'd like to think that a good union man or woman... 

VICE: Pulled the plug? 

MM: [Laughs] Pulled the plug. But be that as it may, she got discombobulated, and if you follow any of the news on her now, in the last four days, it's all saying that she's over. They're attacking her on Fox—Bill Kristol, who was her big supporter... all these people have abandoned her because of those two things that she said, holding a sign that used the word fuck and her discombobulatedness when she was going off on me and then lost the plot and couldn't speak. 

VICE: With the crosshairs and the O's, didn't she get into some trouble—didn't her website a few years ago have districts with crosshairs over them across America? 

MM: Yes, and she had to pull that off. And in the "fuck-you" sign she put crosshairs in the two O's of my name. And that also was part of the blowback—thanks for reminding me about that. So using the F-word and going back to putting crosshairs on a human being. 

VICE: For what it's worth, I'm looking at the picture now, and she's making this real kind of white-trashy hand sign—you know when you put your pinky out and your thumb is out... I don't even know what they call that. There's a word for it. 

MM: Yeah, I know what you mean. 

VICE: It's like a party-time kind of hand symbol. It's pretty funny. 

MM: [Laughs] This is more like, Let's kill this motherfucker and PARTY!

I have to disagree with Moore that this ended her political career as I think that ended on the day that she resigned as Governor. However I will agree that this photo, along with that Iowa speech ended even any serious talk about her ever running for office again.

And good for VICE to point out the crosshairs in the "O's." I think THAT really illustrates Palin's hateful nature and how slow she is to learn from past mistakes.

You might be interested in reading the entire article as it is pretty interesting, and covers much more than just Sarah Palin.