Category: White Terrorism

Suicide Bomber in Nashville

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Castle Hill Inn, Newport RI – December 2020 photo by Kat Smith

It was a scary scenario: Nashville damaged by a suicide bomber on Christmas Day. The bomb caused massive destruction to 41 buildings, hitting Nashville’s tourist district hard. Federal authorities named Anthony Quinn Warner as the bomber. He died in the blast, and what motivated him is unknown. Although, if he didn’t want the bombing to be a message, he could have blown up his RV in his driveway.

Warner was an IT specialist who worked from home. He wasn’t married. His neighbors barely knew him. The NYT seems to think he’s a lone wolf. One thing the press isn’t doing is calling Warner a terrorist. From Charlie Pierce:

“I firmly believe that, had Warner been a Black Lives Matter activist or a Muslim cleric, we would not be having these angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin discussions about who is or isn’t a terrorist. If, as all the evidence indicates, Warner set off a huge incendiary device on a downtown street in a major American city, then he committed a terrorist act and is, therefore, a dead terrorist…..Random bits of violence are swirling in the very air around us, and all throughout our politics and our national dialogue. Occasionally, they coalesce…”

It is curious how little of the usual wall-to-wall terror coverage this bombing has received in the US press. Initially, Wrongo had to look to the European press to get anything beyond the headlines. The UK press is still providing most of the coverage.

An interesting aspect is that the bomb went off outside an ATT building. From the NYT:

“The explosion caused disruption that reached across the region, cutting off cellphone and internet service to homes and business across parts of Tennessee and into Kentucky and Alabama. Flights were grounded and 911 operations were knocked offline.”

This points out how fragile our civilian communications systems are. It should make it clear how easy it would be to disrupt our national security. If communications break down, mayhem can occur quickly. Hopefully those in charge of communications security in the telecommunications industry and in Homeland Security have paid attention to what might be a very important message about a system weakness.

It’s fine to contemplate the warnings, or the political motive, or the lack thereof.  But we should be aware of how much animus would exist for a Black or Muslim in a similar event. It clearly doesn’t exist in the case of this White male bomber. Also, Trump has been quiet about this. Is it because the perpetrator wasn’t an immigrant from the Middle East, but an American White man with unknown motives?

The differences in how we portray the acts of White domestic terrorists from how we perceive and portray others is striking.

This is still a developing story, and there’s little that we are certain of. Warner may have been the bomber. We’re not really certain if he acted alone. Some secondary press sources are talking up unproven theories that Warner was “obsessed” with the global 5G conspiracy. Backers of that theory think that 5G technology is being put into place by global elites in order to tighten their grip on society.

Terrorism is about messaging, and when a bomb goes off at 6:30 am in a commercial district on Christmas Day, we wonder why we’re having problems figuring out the bomber’s message. The press says that someone who deliberately terrorizes others (what Warner did), must have a message, or be part of some ideological group. Otherwise, they can’t be considered a terrorist.

If Warner simply wanted to kill himself, there are plenty of ways to do that wouldn’t terrorize others. But Warner deliberately planned an immense blast in a major city’s downtown. The lack of a message or clear motive doesn’t imply that it wasn’t a terroristic act. He had no way of knowing who might be killed by the blast.

Let’s hope that this is the last horrid thing that happens to us in 2020.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – October 11, 2020

For Republicans, life begins at conception, and ends when the government requires you to wear a mask.

Wrongo thinks that this election is really about one thing: COVID-19. You may think differently, but you should watch the video linked below. It’s a timeline of Trump’s response to the pandemic. As things stand now, 215,000 (and growing) Americans have died. The argument that if Trump hadn’t played down the seriousness of a pandemic that he KNEW to be serious, untold thousands would still be alive today. This should be convincing to all but the most fanatic Trumpers.

If you are on the fence, this video makes a pretty damning case. The only defense Trump ever uses is that he stopped flights from China on February 2. But even that is untrue. According to a report in The NYT, at least 430,000 people arrived in the US on direct flights from China after the outbreak was reported on the last day of 2019. This included nearly 40,000 in the two months after the February restrictions were put in place.

Here’s the roughly 10 minute video produced by a UK group, Led by Donkeys:

https://twitter.com/ByDonkeys/status/1313830983007973376

On to cartoons.

Trump’s message from the White House on Saturday was “you can beat this”:

How is a virtual debate different from what the rest of us have been doing?

No empathy for you:

Why are we not surprised:

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“Suburban voters’ appetite for excuses is at an all-time low.”

The Daily Escape:

Glacier-fed lake, Tetons, WY – August 2020 iPhone 11 photo by grantplace

The media is saying that Trump has flipped the script from his disastrous response to the COVID pandemic, to more success with chaos in the cities. Even Biden has slowed his roll on COVID, except for Wednesday’s speech:

“If President Trump and his administration had done their jobs early on with this crisis, America’s schools would be open, and they’d be open safely….Mr. President, where are you? Where are you? Why aren’t you working on this?”

Nicely done. Biden also ran an ad, “We’re Listening” about crime and public safety. The ad is running in the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Also nicely done.

This shows that Biden is playing offense and defense simultaneously by keeping the focus on the virus and issues like school re-openings, while also defending against Trump’s law-and-order attacks.

Biden was in Kenosha on Thursday. As Wrongo writes this, he’s holding a town hall after meeting earlier with the Blake family. No new policy announcements, just listening, and showing compassion. That’s so much more than what Trump was able to do in Kenosha just two days ago.

Will Trump’s fear campaign work in the suburbs? The suburbs went for Trump in 2016, but since then, the suburbs have become less Republican. Why would violence in a few cities help Trump in the suburbs? Angry white guys with guns like Kyle Rittenhouse probably scare them more than city violence.

Think about it: Along with the Kenosha police shooting Jacob Blake, the shooter in Kenosha was a 17 year old white kid with an AR-15. When suburban voters see that kid, do you think they associate him with inner city crime or, with school shootings?

The gain by Democrats in the suburbs came with the increased danger from school shootings that all suburban children now face. And the Republicans’ constant defense of gun rights absolutism doesn’t improve their chances. From the Bulwark: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Consider how fast bump stocks went from a thing that existed to being federally banned after the shooting in Las Vegas. That happened because the appetite for excuses from voters in these suburbs is at an all-time low.”

What happens when suburban parents see Trump defending a young white man killing people? Will they say: “This would be worse under Biden”? No, they’re much more worried about kids like Rittenhouse shooting up their neighborhood schools.

And Trump’s egging on of armed, angry white men isn’t going to help him, despite what we’re hearing from the media.

Why is Trump pushing his chaos agenda? A new paper from Larry Bartels of Vanderbilt University suggests that Trump and his Republican supporters’ value “keeping America great” more than they value democracy.

Bartels says that by “keeping America great,” the Republicans’ surveyed meant “keeping America’s power structure white.” In a January 2020 YouGov survey of Republicans, a slim majority of GOP voters agreed with the statement:

“The traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.”

Some other findings from the survey:

  • Nearly 75% agreed with “It is hard to trust the results of elections when so many people will vote for anyone who offers a handout.”
  • More than 40% agreed that “a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands.”
  • More than 47% concurred with the premise that “strong leaders sometimes have to bend the rules in order to get things done.”

Bartels finds these attitudes:

“…are grounded in real political values—specifically, and overwhelmingly, in Republicans’ ethnocentric concerns about the political and social role of immigrants, African-Americans, and Latinos in a context of significant demographic and cultural change.”

Political power in America is shifting. It’s becoming less concentrated in White hands. Obama’s election showed many Whites that they could eventually become just another of the many minorities in America. Demographics says that’s a certainty.

Conservatives have always conceded that some lives matter more than others, and therefore, should have more rights. Predictably, it is the people of color who they have excluded. Since they know how this country treats minorities, they sure don’t want to become a minority.

Suburban voters are not worried about inner city riots spilling over into their homes. But they may be truly worried about the anti-democratic wave being led by Trump along with his most fervent supporters.

The suburbs clearly think democracy matters. They are more fearful of autocratic leaders than they are of scattered violence in cities.

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Are We Getting Close to Civil War?

The Daily Escape:

Murmeration of Starlings, Leeuwarden, Netherlands – photo by Marcel van Kammen/Corbis. The changing shape of the flock comes from each bird copying the motions of others around it with extreme rapidity. Their reaction time is less than a tenth of a second.

Are we seeing a kind of political Murmeration in America? You can argue that there is a straight line from what Trump has said and done during the past four years to where we are now:

  • From his endorsement of police brutality to numerous examples of police misconduct.
  • From his calls at rallies for his supporters to assault their opponents, to his supporters picking up guns and killing people on the street.
  • From his cozying up to white supremacists to groups of white supremacists patriots riding in the back of pickup trucks through Portland, OR.

From The Bulwark: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Before 2016, when was the last time you saw pitched battles between armed, opposing political forces in America’s streets? Did you see it under Barack Obama? Or George W. Bush? Or Bill Clinton? Or George H.W. Bush? Or Ronald Reagan? Or Jimmy Carter?

….To find the type of mayhem we now have…with armed civilians clashing, you have to go back to the union-busting wars of the early 20th century—and even that’s probably not apt, since those were workers pitted against companies.

Yet, once Donald Trump arrived on the national stage, street fighting became a common feature of American politics.”

And on Saturday night, convoys of out-of-town trucks and SUVs bearing Trump flags rolled into Portland. They rolled through groups of protesters in their vehicles, shooting projectiles and pepper spray into the crowds. In the ensuing violence, one of the far-right Trump supporters was shot and killed.

After the murder, Trump tweeted that the MAGA “protesters” who caravanned into Portland on Saturday night were “Great Patriots!” and later explained why their behavior was understandable:

 “The big backlash going on in Portland cannot be unexpected after 95 days of watching and incompetent Mayor admit that he has no idea what he is doing. The people of Portland won’t put up with no safety any longer. The Mayor is a FOOL. Bring in the National Guard! https://t.co/bM6ypak94t

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 2020″

When you see photos of armed guys with US flags and Trump/Pence campaign flags on the back of pickup trucks driving around Portland, it reminds Wrongo of ISIS fighters in their trucks in news photographs or the Middle East. These Trumpers look like militia men, not something we’ve seen in America before.

The strategy in play here is “Let’s you and him fight.” Most Americans aren’t going to play that game, but the way FOX and Trump are stoking the fires, enough may be willing to try violence, starting a quasi-civil war in a few of our cities. And it’s pretty clear that it wouldn’t be contained there, since the Trumpers have the larger arsenals of weapons, and are more willing to use them.

Of course, the Portland murderer should be brought to justice, right along with the underage Kenosha killer. There is no excuse for deadly violence. Now that we have dead in Kenosha and in Portland, vengeance may become nearly impossible to tamp down, particularly in our laissez-faire gun owing society.

The only way to stop this is to bar armed protestors, regardless of their politics, from entering the area of demonstrations. All weapons, not only guns, need to be confiscated, to be returned later, or they can be retained by the owner if they agree to leave the area.

The public safety needs must take priority over anyone’s Second Amendment rights.

Also curfews must start earlier, and be strictly enforced. All of these efforts at better crowd control means more policing-type resources, but that’s the price of doing business if we are to prevent a possible war on our streets.

Finally, it’s becoming clear that the police will not intervene in whatever violence the pseudo-militias choose to commit. We shouldn’t be surprised at how quickly the Republican’s focus shifted from defending the right-wing underage killer of two protesters in Kenosha, to being outraged at the death of a righty in Portland.

Let’s remember that America is a big country, and while it might seem like violence is everywhere, it’s not. Even in cities that have reported violence, the conflicts are localized, and are not continuous. There are also protests happening in various places in the US which are totally uneventful.

Never forget that the main reason America is in chaos at this moment is because Trump wants it that way.

Trump isn’t following Richard Nixon’s playbook. He’s cribbing from George Wallace.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – May 3, 2020

Last Sunday, PA Governor Tom Wolf requested:

“…as many people as possible wear a nonmedical or homemade mask when leaving their homes.”

This week in Mercer PA, a protest against the Pennsylvania governor’s stay at home restrictions yielded this sign:

If this woman thinks wearing a mask is slavery, then she has no idea what slavery is. She, (along with the rest of us) aren’t permitted to drive on the wrong side of the road, either. This isn’t the time for people who are asked to stay at home and to wear a mask when outside to sing: “Nobody knows the trouble I see”.

Speaking of masks and rules, how about Mike Pence:

Why didn’t the Mayo Clinic say: “Thank you for visiting us, Mr. Vice President, but I’m afraid you can’t enter the clinic without a mask per our policy.” Mayo may do fantastic work, but they failed utterly by letting Pence go in unmasked.

Will Mitch pass aid to the states?

Where Wrongo lives, the nurses, fire fighters, police, and town workers are preponderantly Republican voters. Have they been screwed enough to realize they’ve been voting AGAINST their own self interests?

Biden can’t run from this, no matter how many Dems hope he can:

Even the cows know opening meat processing plants without PPE is wrong:

We’re entering a different kind of graduation season:

(It’s control P for a PC)

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Is The Cure Worse Than The Disease?

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Alabama Hills, near Lone Pine, CA – photo by kristophershinn

Here are the latest national pandemic numbers from The COVID Tracking Project: (as of 4/5)

  • Number of daily cases: 333,747, up 27,992 or +9.2% vs. April 4
  • Rate of case increase: 9.2% vs. 12.4% on 4/4 and 13% average for the past week
  • Number of deaths: Total 9,558, up 1,244 vs. April 4
  • Rate of deaths increase 4/5 vs 4/4: 14.9% % vs. 19.4% on 4/4
  • Daily number of tests 4/5 vs. 4/4: 1,778,487, up 154,680 over 4/4
  • Rate of increase in tests: +9.5% vs. previous day

The rate of growth in cases and deaths are slowing. Testing is still growing, although slowly.

Two pandemic-related stories today, each purporting to offer a cure. First, from the Guardian:

“Neo-Nazi groups in the US are looking for ways to exploit the coronavirus outbreak and commit acts of violence, according to observers of far-right groups, law enforcement, and propaganda materials…”

The Guardian says that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) raised an alarm about opportunism from far-right so-called “accelerationist” groups who believe sowing chaos and violence will hasten the collapse of society. More from the Guardian:

“Late last month, the FBI warned such extremist groups were encouraging members to deliberately spread the virus to Jewish people and police officers.”

Apparently, the shorthand in a variety of extremist and fringe movements and subcultures is the word “boogaloo”, used as shorthand for a future civil war:

“From militia groups to white supremacists, extremists on a range of online platforms talk about—and sometimes even anticipate—the “boogaloo.” The rise of “boogaloo,” and its casual acceptance of future mass violence, is disturbing.”

Similar sentiments may have motivated a Missouri man who planned a car bomb attack on a hospital which was treating coronavirus patients. He was shot dead by FBI agents who were seeking to arrest him on March 24th. The man was active in chat rooms associated with two neo-Nazi groups: the longstanding National Socialist Movement (NSM) and the accelerationist group Vorherrschaft Division (VSD).

The NSM was involved in the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and is facing a federal lawsuit for its role there. VSD is an organization that urges members to engage in mass shootings or terror attacks to help bring about the collapse of modern civilization. This is disturbing and distracting when we are seeing a few nascent signs that Americans are coming together in the fight against COVID-19.

Second, many saw, or have heard about Trump’s Sunday “briefing” where he doubled down on his pushing chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine as a possible cure for Coronavirus. Trump again said “what do you have to lose?” Remember that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are used to treat malaria and lupus.

It turns out that many of us may indeed have something to lose. In an abstract from researchers at Johns Hopkins entitled: “Fatal toxicity of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine with metformin in mice” they say: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“…we report a cautionary note on the potential fatal toxicity of chloroquine (CQ) or hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) in combination with anti-diabetic drug metformin. We observed that the combination of CQ or HCQ and metformin, which were used in our studies as potential anti-cancer drugs, killed 30-40% of mice.”

Metformin is the fourth most prescribed drug in the US and is used by more than 150,000,000 people worldwide. It is usually the first drug prescribed for Type 2 diabetes. Its side effects are usually mild, and it is even being researched as a possible “longevity” drug.

Now, these mice results aren’t conclusive, so it may or may not be lethal in humans. This is why we test before prescribing an approved drug for another disease.

BTW, Drugs.com says there are 332 HCQ drug interactions (59 of them are major), but it doesn’t list Metformin as one of them. Feeling lucky?

Despite this, the NY Post reports that as many as 4,000 patients are currently being treated with hydroxychloroquine:

“A state Health Department official said the DOH has shipped doses of hydroxychloroquine to 56 hospitals across New York…”

And NYU Langone Medical School is conducting a random trial with a $9.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Sooner or later, we’ll have some proof if it helps with COVID-19, and whether it is safe for people who take Metformin.

So, the answer is, at this point, you may have a lot to lose.

Remember the guy pushing this told us that the cure can’t be worse than the disease, so we should all go back to work, before he had to admit that he had spoken too soon. Now, he’s pushing a cure that MIGHT be worse than the disease.

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The Future: Will It Be Just More of The Past?

The Daily Escape:

Wrongo said he wouldn’t look back, but has reconsidered. It’s time to declare war on those who refuse to use facts or science. Think about what these true believers in either faith or ideology have brought us:

Will we continue on this road, or will we make a turn for the better? Will 2020 usher in a better decade than the one we just closed? Doubtful, unless each of us stand up and do what we can to make a difference.

Those who think Trumpism is so new and novel should remember that Norman Lear made a hit TV show about it in the early 1970s. Since then, many American white people have taken a dark turn: They would rather have Trump’s government enforce a whites only voting policy than put in the work required to make our system benefit everyone equally, while decreasing the cut taken by the corporate class.

Building this better society requires hard cognitive work. So far, Americans aren’t up to thinking about solutions beyond “Build that wall!”

Another example: 50% of white people are actively against government bureaucrats making their health care decisions. They insist that something that important should only be decided by employer HR departments and multinational insurance companies.

They’re perfectly fine casting their fates with insurance bureaucrats. Even if those corporate bureaucrats deny their care most of the time. Worse, they’re told by the media that they shouldn’t pay any more damn TAXES for health care when they could be paying twice as much in premiums to insurance corporations.

Remember the song In the year 2525? “If man is still alive…”

That’s 505 years from now. What do you think the odds are that we’re still here?

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Monday Wake Up Call – May 6, 2019

The Daily Escape:

Torres del Paine NP, Chile – 2016 photo by Andrea Pozzi

After our granddaughter’s graduation in PA (summa cum laude), we had a few wines and beers, and talk turned to politics and the mess America is in now. Son-in-law Miles, (dad of next week’s grad) asked a very good question. “Is now really the worst of times? What about when Martin Luther King was assassinated?”

Wrongo immediately flashed back to JFK’s assassination. He was a DC college student when JFK died. But his focus wasn’t on the loss of a president, or what that meant to the country. His focus was on what the loss of JFK meant personally.

That changed in 1968 with the assassinations of MLK and RFK. Wrongo was in the Army, stationed in Germany when Dr. King was killed. There was great tension in the enlisted men’s barracks. For a few days, it took a lot of effort in our small, isolated unit to keep anger from boiling over into outright fighting between the races.

By the time we lost RFK, it was clear that the Vietnam War would drag on, killing many of Wrongo’s friends. But, Wrongo’s job was to defend America from the Russians, with nuclear weapons if necessary.

It was difficult to see how or when Vietnam would end. It was hard to imagine Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, or Robert McNamara doing much to stop young Americans from dying in Asia.

The year 1968 also included the Tet Offensive. Mark Bowen in his book, Hue 1968, says:

“For decades….the mainstream press and, for that matter, most of the American public, believed their leaders, political and military. Tet was the first of many blows to that faith in coming years, Americans would never again be so trusting.” (p. 507)

When Americans finally saw the Pentagon Papers in 1971, they learned that America’s leaders had been systematically lying about the scope and progress of the war for years, in spite of their doubts that the effort could succeed. The assassinations, Vietnam, and Watergate changed us forever.

Our leaders failed us, it was clearly the worst of times. We were in worse shape in 1968 than we are in 2019. Back then, it felt like the country was coming apart at the seams, society’s fabric was pulling apart. Then, May 4th 1970 brought the killings of college kids at Kent State, which was probably the lowest point in our history, at least during Wrongo’s life time.

Last week, we acknowledged the 49th anniversary of America’s military killing American students on US soil. We vaguely remember the Neil Young song “Ohio” with its opening lyrics:

“Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, we’re finally on our own…”

That’s why the decade from 1960-1970 was the worst of times. We got through it, but we have never been the same.

In 1968, we saw that change can arrive suddenly, fundamentally, and violently, even in America. Bob Woodward spoke at Kent State last week, on Saturday, May 4th. He offered some brand-new information about Nixon’s reaction to the student shootings: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“In a conversation with his chief of staff H.R. Haldeman in September 1971, Nixon suggested shooting prisoners at New York’s Attica Prison riot in a reference to the Kent State tragedy. “You know what stops them? Kill a few,” Nixon says on a tape of the conversation.”

Woodward continued:

“We now know what really was on Nixon’s mind as he reflected…on Kent State after 17 months….Kent State and the protest movement was an incubator for Richard Nixon and his illegal wars.”

Woodward meant that what was coming was a war on the news media, creation of the “Plumbers” unit to track down leaks, and attempts to obstruct justice with the Watergate cover-up.

Many of us see 2020 shaping up as another 1968. Some see Nixon reincarnated in Trump.

We haven’t faced this particular set of circumstances before, so we can’t know just how it will go. Will it be worse than the 1960s, or just another terrible American decade? Is it the best of times, or the worst of times?

Are we willing to fight to preserve what we have anymore?

Wake up America, you have to fight for what America means to us. Constitutional liberties are under attack. The right to vote is being undermined. Extreme Nationalism has been emboldened.

To help you wake up, listen once again to “Ohio” by Neil Young in a new solo performance from October, 2018. He’s added some documentary footage and a strong anti-gun message:

You may not know that Chrissie Hynde, the future lead singer of The Pretenders was a Kent State student, and was on the scene at the time.

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

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DHS Disbanded Its Domestic Terrorism Group

The Daily Escape:

Detail of the Dome at Qasr Al Watan Palace, Abu Dhabi – 2019 photo by Ottho Heldring

(Wrongo apologizes for the lack of articles, as other priorities have intervened. He has responsibilities on his town’s Municipal Road Committee. We are preparing to spend about $10 Million on improving our roads. There are very tight deadlines for finishing our analysis, getting approval of the town council, holding a referendum, and then going to the bond market for the funds. This is a huge time sink. So, for the next 10 days, posting may be intermittent.)

From The Daily Beast: (parenthesis by Wrongo)

“The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has disbanded a group of intelligence analysts who focused on domestic terrorism, The Daily Beast has learned. Numerous current and former DHS officials say they find the development concerning, as the threat of homegrown terrorism—including white supremacist terrorism—is growing.”

The group in question was a branch of DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A). They focused on the threat from homegrown extremists and domestic terrorists. Their analysts shared information with state and local law enforcement to help them protect communities from these threats. According to the Daily Beast, the reorganization happened last year, and had not been previously reported.

DHS defended the reorganization. Pressed by The Daily Beast, a senior DHS official pushed back:

 “The same people are working on the issues….We just restructured things to be more responsive to the…customers within DHS and in local communities while reducing overlap with what the FBI does. We actually believe we are far more effective now.”

Ok. But one local community “client” is Los Angeles, and Sgt. Mike Abdeen with the LA County Sheriff’s Department told The Daily Beast:

“It’s been very quiet lately….It’s changed with the new administration. It doesn’t seem to be as robust, as active, as important…it’s not a priority. It doesn’t seem like engagement, outreach, and prevention are seen as a priority as we used to see in the past. There were roundtable meetings in the past…more training, more seminars. Now it seems like it’s gone away.”

Nobody would say that domestic terrorism has been declining, so you have to decide whether this is an unintended consequence of another Trump appointee trying to streamline a government process, or whether it is an intentional effort to bury bad news about elements within Trump’s base of support.

Is Trump’s ability to appoint people who will undermine the efforts of our civil service better, or worse than his use of the judges’ roster provided by the Federalist Society to pack the courts?

Wrongo votes that it’s a tie.

Trump has said repeatedly that he doesn’t consider white nationalist groups to be an actual threat. So out goes the white nationalist task force.

Is this merely DHS accepting the viewpoint that when a disgruntled white male takes an assault rifle and kills people in a school or Synagogue, he isn’t committing an act of terror, he’s merely a troubled person expressing concern about the fragility of the few remaining white people in America?

This is a GOP problem. There’s been a consistent drumbeat to sweep right-wing terrorism under the rug, and it predates Trump. Consider that in 2009, the Obama administration’s DHS released a report warning about Rightwing Extremism. The report warned that “rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits by playing on their fears about several emergent issues.” It also predicted that the possibility of new gun restrictions and the return of “military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities” might mean “emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.”

That report called this convergence of factors the “most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States”. Republicans went ballistic:

“Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) said the administration was “awfully willing to paint law-abiding Americans, including war veterans, as ‘extremists.’” Then-Rep. Steve Buyer (R-IN) — the top Republican on the House Veterans’ Affairs committee at the time — called it “inconceivable” that some veterans could pose a threat.”

John Boehner (Former GOP Speaker of the House) said:

“The Secretary of Homeland Security owes the American people an explanation for why…her own Department is using [“terrorist”] to describe American citizens who disagree with the direction Washington Democrats are taking our nation…”

Then-DHS head Janet Napolitano was forced to apologize, and she soon buried the report.

FWIW, Christopher Hasson, the Coast Guard officer who was a “domestic terrorist” and self-described white nationalist was arrested in February. But he’s not Muslim, so no worries, nothing more to see here.

Wrongo is old-school enough to believe that Republicans used to care about all of America. That they had different (and usually wrong-headed) approaches to our priorities and the solutions to problems, but they wanted what’s good for the country in general.

It’s gone. Trump-Republicans only want good things for people in their in-crowd. That excludes the majority of Americans.

Trump doesn’t want to stop domestic terrorism by white nationalists. He wants to harness it.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – March 24, 2019

What you missed in Friday’s news about Robert Mueller wrapping up the Russia investigation was that Trump announced the appointment of Stephen Moore, a conservative economic pundit as a member of the Board of the Federal Reserve.

Moore is a doofus. There’s no bigger example of a so-called “economist” failing his way upwards than Stephen Moore as Jon Chait points out: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Stephen Moore’s career as an economic analyst has been a decades-long continuous procession of error and hackery….Moore’s primary area of pseudo-expertise — he is not an economist — is fiscal policy. He is a dedicated advocate of supply-side economics, relentlessly promoting his fanatical hatred of redistribution and belief that lower taxes for the rich can and will unleash wondrous prosperity. Like nearly all supply-siders, he has clung to this dogma in the face of repeated, spectacular failures.”

Wrongo hastens to remind everyone that the Fed is in charge of MONETARY POLICY, not Fiscal policy. Moore only holds a Master’s degree in Economics. There are many, many examples of Moore’s hacktastic pseudo-expertise in economics. Slate reports that Moore: (brackets by Wrongo)

“Predicted that Bill Clinton’s tax hikes would bring disaster (they didn’t), that George W. Bush’s tax cuts would bring prosperity (they didn’t), and that Barack Obama’s policies were setting us up for ’70s-style stagflation (they didn’t)….He and supply-side guru Art Laffer were also key advisers behind Kansas’ fiscally and politically disastrous tax cuts. In spite of his own track record of [consistently] failed predictions, he has disparaged Keynesian macroeconomics as ‘witchcraft.'”

He’s recently called for Trump to fire the entire Fed board. Moore has blamed the Fed’s rate increases over the past year for slowing economic growth, and recently called on the Fed to begin cutting rates. He helped draft Trump’s tax proposals while working as an economist at the Heritage Foundation.

Stephen Moore is a joke in the economics profession. This should go well. On to cartoons.

Barr holds the key to what we learn about the Mueller investigation:

Stop calling them White Nationalists, alt-Right or Populists. These people are White Supremacists:

Funny how most Christians in the US don’t obey the Ten Commandments, but consider the Second Amendment a must follow:

What is evident from attacks on Black Christian churches, Synagogues, and Mosques in the US, and now in NZ, is that RW extremists are increasing their attacks. They are citing Trump as their “guiding light”, while Trump continues to play down their involvement:

Biden looks like a candidate, but some wonder about his age:

George and Kellyanne Conway see Trump differently. Will their relationship survive?

Trump says free speech for conservatives is great, missing the point about our free press:

Rep. Devin Nunes sues Twitter because of a satirical account called “Devin Nunes’s Cow”. As of today, more people follow the fake cow that mocks Devin Nunes, than follow Devin Nunes:

 

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