While attempting to honor Navajo code talkers, Donald Trump decides to attack Elizabeth Warren, insults all Native Americans instead. Update!

Here's the video: Trump calls Elizabeth Warren 'Pocahontas' while honoring Native American code talkers: "You were here long before any of us were here. Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas." pic.twitter.com/hjZ5MInDDf

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) November 27, 2017

Courtesy of CNN: 

President Donald Trump, during an event at the White House honoring Navajo code talkers Monday, referenced his nickname for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, "Pocahontas," a label he has long used about the Massachusetts Democrat. 

"I just want to thank you because you are very, very special people. You were here long before any of us were here," Trump said. "Although, we have a representative in Congress who has been here a long time ... longer than you -- they call her Pocahontas!" 

He then turned to one of the code talkers behind him, put his left hand on the man's shoulder and said: "But you know what, I like you. You are special people."

I have a feeling that after that idiotic remark the Navajos in the room thought that Donald Trump was a little "special" as well.

Later White House reporters confronted Sarah Huckabee Sanders about this clearly racist remark, and she of course tried to turn it back to another attack on Warren.

Damn, she is just a terrible person.

Elizabeth Warren was also asked about this incident, and here was her response. For the record there is no evidence that Elizabeth Warren's career benefited from her claim that she is part Native American, and in fact there it no real evidence that she is not part Native American.

I think that like a lot of Americans Warren grew up hearing stories of her family's Native American heritage and took it on faith that it was accurate.

I myself have been told my whole life that I am part Apache, my grandfather actually met and married my grandmother on an Indian reservation in Arizona, but I have never done a DNA test nor have I yet utilized the services of Ancestry.com.

For all I know for certain my family could be full of shit, but as of right now I stand convinced that I am part Apache.

In other words this is a ridiculous attack, and Donald Trump's fixation on Warren's heritage just had him make a racially charged comment in a room full of war heroes he was supposed to be honoring.

Update: Apparently Trump has a long history or disrespecting native Americans. 

After Trump visit Chancellor Angela Merkel laments the loss of America as a reliable ally.

Courtesy of the New York Times: 

In the aftermath of a contentious Group of 7 meeting in Taormina, Sicily, where leaders failed to persuade President Trump to back the Paris climate accord, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said on Sunday that tried and tested global alliances were no longer as reliable as they once were, citing her experience “in recent days.” 

Ms. Merkel, who is campaigning for a fourth term in the September elections, did not name the country or leader she had in mind. 

It seemed clear, however, that she was referring mainly to the United States and Mr. Trump, who refused to commit to the goals of the 195-nation climate agreement hammered out in 2015. He has said it would be bad for the United States economy.

“The times in which we could rely fully on others, they are somewhat over,” she said, according to German news media. “This is what I experienced in the last few days.”

And just like that decades of friendship between the United States and Germany come to a close.

I guess this what the White House meant by a "successful" trip.

Here was an observation by former Bush speechwriter David Frum:

Since 1945, the supreme strategic goal in Europe of the USSR and then Russia was the severing of the US-German alliance. Trump delivered.

— David Frum (@davidfrum) May 28, 2017

This presidency is now officially an international crisis.

How much longer can it be before even the Republicans in Washington realize that everything that America has fought and stood for is now hanging in the balance?

Former World War 2 POW speaks out against Donald Trump in new advertisement.

Joel Sollender, WWII veteran and POW, on what it means when he hears Trump insult our vets. pic.twitter.com/3ZIezeRTl9

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 18, 2016

Courtesy of Tablet Mag: 

On Friday, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign released an arresting new ad. In it, Joel Sollender, an American Jewish soldier who was taken prisoner by the Nazis, responds to Donald Trump’s infamous claim that he doesn’t consider John McCain a war hero because “I like people that weren’t captured.” 

Sollender, who will soon turn 92, lives in California and has been speaking out against Trump and his candidacy for over a year, which is how the Clinton campaign found him. “I was very pleased that they contacted me and that I had a chance to voice my opinion,” he told me. Sollender worked for two hours with the film crew to produce the spot. The online ad runs for 90 seconds, while a 30-second version is now airing on TV. It has already gone viral and been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. 

Something that didn’t make it into the short clip, Sollender said, was his fear at the time that the Germans would discover that he was Jewish. “As a prisoner of war, and being Jewish, I had some concerns about my dog tags, which were obviously marked ‘H’ for Hebrew,” he recounted. “But they never looked at them. I had blond hair and blue eyes and spoke a little German, so it helped me along.”

I have to admit that this ad really got to me.

Especially when him tear up in memory of the war, and his time as a POW.

Very powerful, and as ad that I would think might speak directly to some of those folks who are typically conservative and having a hard time deciding who to vote for in this election.

It's D-Day which means another opportunity to Sarah Palin to pander to the military, a day after she attacked the President for getting one of them released from captivity.

You might be surprised to learn that I am not going to attack Palin for her ghostwritten Facebook post pandering to the military and to the conservatives.

It's actually fairly innocuous and non-controversial, so there is really nothing much to criticize about it.

In fact I would have probably simply given her a pass today.

If it were not for yesterday's post.

Yesterday she went on a vicious tirade against the President of these United States for getting the last POW out of Afghanistan. A soldier who she accused, without benefit of a trial, of being a deserter and a traitor.

One has to wonder how these men that Palin is so hot to be seen honoring on Facebook today, men who know first hand the terrors of war, would respond to her attacks against the President and against a fellow soldier held in captivity for five long years?

It is hard to imagine that they would condone the smearing of a soldier's name even before he had the chance to be heard, or the attacks on a sitting US President in a time of war.

Glenn Beck reviews new movie "Monuments Men" by blaming the Holocaust on progressives. Wait, what?

Courtesy of Right Wing Watch:

Beck said the film made his blood boil because it never discussed the fact that President Franklin Roosevelt cared about saving works of art but made no effort to stop the Nazis from murdering millions of Jews because he, like progressives then and now, "are all anti-Jewish." 

"Forget about the art," Beck bellowed. "What about the people? What happened to be the people? No, we didn't care. We didn't care. Progressives didn't care and so all of those Jews died. We could have stopped them. Instead of Monuments Men, how about Auschwitx Men, how about Dachau Men? Why didn't we do that? Because they didn't care ... They were all anti-Jewish, just as much as they're anti-Jewish now." 

You know I really NEVER  watch or listen to anything that Glenn Beck says anymore, but this one was so crazy that it is being talked about everywhere.

By the way for those who have never seen a World War Two movie, we actually DID rescue the Jews at Auschwitz and Dachau.

And we also had the presence of mind to allow a small contingent of specially trained art historians rescue much of the priceless art that would have been lost without American intervention. NOTHING about this effort negatively impacted the effort to fight the Nazis or rescue the Jewish people.

At some point the Right Wing has to recognize that Beck is a paranoid schizophrenic and yank his pudgy ass off the air and lock him into the mental hospital where it belongs.

Alan Turing, WWII codebreaker and father of the computer, granted rare royal pardon for the crime of being a homosexual.

Courtesy of Reuters: 

Mathematician Alan Turing, who helped Britain win World War Two by cracking Nazi Germany's "unbreakable" Enigma code, was granted a rare royal pardon on Tuesday for a criminal conviction for homosexuality that led to his suicide. 

Turing's electromechanical machine, a forerunner of modern computers, unraveled the code used by German U-boats in the Atlantic. His work at Bletchley Park, Britain's wartime codebreaking centre, was credited with shortening the war. 

However, he was stripped of his job and chemically castrated with injections of female hormones after being convicted of gross indecency in 1952 for having sex with a man. Homosexual sex was illegal in Britain until 1967. 

Turing killed himself in 1954, aged 41, with cyanide. 

Justice Minister Chris Grayling said the pardon from Queen Elizabeth would come into effect immediately and was a fitting tribute to "an exceptional man with a brilliant mind".

Without this great man we may have lost the war.

And without his contribution to modern day computing, I may not have been able to share this long overdue good news with all of you.

Remember when next you hear a conservative go on and on about the "good old days" that those old days were not good for everybody. And the times we are living in today are the ones that progressives have been fighting to drag  us to for decades.

The Sarah Palin video that she NEVER wanted you to see.

Courtesy of Occupy Democrats:

Sarah Palin thought she had struck gold when the opportunity presented itself to shamelessly hijack a Veterans protest at the World War II Memorial in Washington DC this week in order to further her own political aspirations. 

Unfortunately for her, these veterans did not take kindly to having their protest co-opted by a failed presidential candidate and quitter who gave up her post as Governor of Alaska in order to take a multimillion dollar deal with FOXNews. 

Just as she was in the middle of cynically rewriting history by claiming that it is the President Obama and Democratic Party, and not the intransigent Tea Party House Republicans, who are using our veterans and military as “pawns’ and are responsible for the reckless shutdown of The People’s Government which led to the closing up the World War II Veterans Memorial in D.C., one Veteran correctly shouted, “Republicans closed the government!”, followed by another Veteran appropriately scolding her, “You’re an idiot!”

Well gee, I wonder why THIS footage never made it onto Fox News?

Did you see Ted Cruz's face when they yelled out "You're an idiot?"  It was probably right at that point that he realized he had just made a terrible mistake.

Sarah Palin joins Ted Cruz in an attempt to distract the American people from the fact that the government shutdown was the brainchild of THEIR financial backers. Update!

Granny Grifter, Sancho the sidekick, the ghost of Joe McCarthy, and Greta Van "Sucking the integrity out of journalism."

Courtesy of USA Today:  

A crowd converged on the World War II Memorial on the National Mall, pushing through barriers Sunday morning to protest the memorial's closing under the government shutdown. 

Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas were among those who gathered Sunday morning, along with former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, according to WTOP radio. Cruz said President Obama is using veterans as pawns in the shutdown. 

"Tear down these walls," the crowd chanted. Protesters also sang God Bless America and other patriotic songs as they entered the memorial plaza. 

The memorial has become a political symbol in the bitter fight between Democrats and Republicans over who is at fault since the shutdown began. Earlier rallies have focused on allowing access for World War II veterans visiting from across the country with the Honor Flight Network. 

Sunday's rally was more political. A protest by truckers converged with a rally by a group called the Million Vet March at the World War II Memorial. Participants cut the links between metal barriers at the National Park Service site and pushed them aside.

I'm sorry the 30 truckers that were supposed to close down Washington merged with the handful of vet and Tea Party politicians who showed up for this, and it is news worthy?

Let me just remind everybody, though  I am sure the majority of you know this, that this entire debacle is the result of year long work by organizations funded by the Koch brothers, and that it is only after seeing how poorly it was received by the public that they tried to call their dogs off.

However Sarah Palin,  Ted Cruz, Michele Bachmann and the rest of the Teabagger contingent, are rabid, poorly trained mongrels, who do not readily respond to a jerk on their chains once they think they smell blood in the air.

So they find these examples of the hardships caused by THEIR actions, and in a truly disgusting and vulgar manner use them in an attempt to turn the blame back onto the President. However the American people are simply not buying it and none of this grandstanding is going to convince them otherwise.

Here is their shameful attempt to deflect blame as it appeared on Fox News.

(Oh I think Cruz is going to regret allowing himself to be filmed standing next to the Wasilla Wendigo.)

And let's face it, once this whole thing blows over, and everybody starts going back to doing the jobs they were elected to do, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee will be severely marginalized. They will have lost any semblance of leadership and be forced to sit in the back while the grownups run the country.

(Hey isn't that Rick Perry's jacket? Why yes, yes I think it is.)

And as for Palin, well after this disintegrates into nothing, Steve Lonegan gets his ass handed to him, and Obamacare is accepted by all as the law of the land, she will have to go back to pretending that she lives in Alaska while hiding out in Arizona and waiting for the next minor political molehill to come along just begging to be made into a mountain of misrepresentations.

But don't worry as long as there are ignorant people in the world,  there will always be a need for a Sarah Palin around to remind them that they are not alone in their ignorance.

(Photos courtesy of Twitchy.)

Update: Poor Todd:

On Sunday, Palin and her husband, Mark, appeared at the World War II and Lincoln memorials with Sen. Ted Cruz in Washington, D.C., where she continued her rant against the White House.

Damn how did I miss this one? Not only did she apparently divorce old two tone, but according to  Yahoo News she has already married some guy named Mark.

Update 2: Uh oh, somebody's wig is slipping.

Source

World War 2 codebreaker, and "Father of Computer Science," Alan Turing to be pardoned for the sin of being a homosexual.

Courtesy of The Guardian:

 Alan Turing, the Enigma codebreaker who took his own life after being convicted of gross indecency under anti-homosexuality legislation, is to be given a posthumous pardon. 

The government signalled on Friday that it is prepared to support a backbench bill that would pardon Turing, who died from cyanide poisoning at the age of 41 in 1954 after he was subjected to "chemical castration". 

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, a government whip, told peers that the government would table the third reading of the Alan Turing (statutory pardon) bill at the end of October if no amendments are made. "If nobody tables an amendment to this bill, its supporters can be assured that it will have speedy passage to the House of Commons," Ahmad said. 

The announcement marks a change of heart by the government, which declined last year to grant pardons to the 49,000 gay men, now dead, who were convicted under the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act. They include Oscar Wilde. 

Ahmad told peers: "Alan Turing himself believed that homosexual activity would be made legal by a royal commission. In fact, appropriately, it was parliament which decriminalized the activity for which he was convicted.

Allan Turing was also instrumental in developing the notion of a 'Universal Machine,' the harbinger of the modern day computer. Which means that every homophobic redneck that calls somebody a "faggot" on Twitter is doing so on a device that owes its very existence to a homosexual.

How's that for irony?

While there are some applauding this action by the British government there are others who find even this to be an insult to the memory of this great man.

It is an insult to the memory of Alan Turing to talk about "pardoning" him, when he never did anything wrong in the first place.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 21, 2013

If there is any "pardoning" to be sought, it should be of the English judicial system, which hounded Alan Turing to his death.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 21, 2013

The man has a point.

Most awesome 92 year old EVER has a poem about Mitt Romney he'd like to share. Trust me, it's worth your time to hear it.

Here is the printed version courtesy of the Daily Kos:

WHEREFORE ART THOU, MITT ROMNEY? 
By Ralph Maxwell 

O, Romney-O, Romney-O, Wherefore art thou, Mitt Romney? 
You flip-flop here, you flip-flop there, 
You flip-flop almost ev'rywhere. 
You ballyhoo what you're gonna do 
And then you pull a switcheroo; 
You now malign what you found fine; 
Seems like you've got a jellyfish spine. 
Obamacare, by you begun, 
Now you'd trash it on day one. 
Gun control you did extol, 
But now you're preaching decontrol. 

O, Romney-O, Romney-O, Wherefore art thou, Mitt Romney? 
We've got no clue what you will do 
Or what new view you'll pander to. 
Time was you championed women's choice, 
But you no longer heed their voice; 
On gay rights, too, guess you withdrew 
Support they once enjoyed from you. 
Global warming, EPA, 
Immigration, minimum pay, 
Roe V. Wade, also fair trade, 
All joined your flip-flop cavalcade. 

O, Romney-O, Romney-O Wherefore art thou, Mitt Romney? 
So many things that you were for 
You've turned against and slammed the door. 
Stimulus and cap and trade, 
Education, foreign aid, 
Campaign reform, tarp rescues, too, 
All victims of your switcheroo. 
You take your stand on shifting sand, 
We never know where you will land; 
You vacillate, you fabricate, 
A wishy-washy candidate. 

O, Romney-O, Romney-O, Wherefore art thou Mitt Romney? 
As gov'nor you let taxes rise, 
Now ev'ry tax you demonize. 
You say regardless of the facts 
You'd take an axe to the millionaire's tax; 
You'd feed the greed of the richest few 
The poor and middle class you'd screw. 
Your tax returns you hide from view 
What evil lurks there we've no clue; 
If they're not bad why hesitate? 
Is it that they incriminate? 

O, Romney-O, Romney-O, Wherefore art thou Mitt Romney? 
At Bain you plundered with a flair 
And walked away a zillionaire. 
You shipped off-shore, good jobs galore 
To China, India, Singapore; 
A job creator you are not. 
And to boast you are is tommyrot. 
As a total fraud, Mitt's got no peer; 
What we must do is crystal clear: 
Let's give Obama four more years! 
Yes, it's Obama – four more years! 
FOUR MORE YEARS! 
FOUR MORE YEARS! 
FOUR MORE YEARS!

I LOVE how he prefaces it by saying that the poem is "Somewhat derogatory of the Republican candidate for president," right before he reads from his wonderful, and very accurate, creation. Since it's accurate how could it NOT be derogatory toward Mitt Romney?

Damn, I just love seeing that there are great Americans like this guy supporting Obama, despite the fact that he comes from an era when the idea of an African American in the White House was completely out of the question.

It is certainly comforting to know that not ALL of our elderly voters get their cues from Fox News.

Sometime today, this will happen.

From the YouTube page:

Once a year on august 1st, the people of Warsaw pay homage to the fallen heroes that fought for freedom in 1944 during the Warsaw Uprising. The biggest rebellion against German Nazi occupation during WWII cost over 200 000 lives and destruction of the capital. 

I found this very moving.

The most touching video you will see today. I promise.

Nicholas Winton single-handedly established an organization to aid children from Jewish families in Czechoslovakia at risk from the Nazis. He set up an office at a dining room table in his hotel in Wenceslas Square.

In November 1938, shortly after Kristallnacht, the House of Commons had approved a measure that would permit the entry of refugees younger than 17 years old into Britain if they had a place to stay and a warranty of £50 was deposited for a return ticket for their eventual return to their country of origin. Winton found homes for 669 children, many of whose parents perished in Auschwitz.

50 years later, in 1988, Winton was given a very touching surprise courtesy of the a BBC program "That's Life."