Strange -- I've always heard the Confederate flag stood for Southern Heritage, Peace, and Love.

A white supremacist in Olympia, Washington stabbed an interracial couple this week, and then told police that he planned to attack Black Lives Matter protesters at a nearby Trump rally.

Via Mic.com, The Olympian reports that a 32-year-old man named Daniel B. Rowe attacked a black man and a white woman as they were standing outside of a bar kissing one another.

Rowe ended up grazing the woman with his knife, while plunging his knife into the man. The man chased Rowe and then tripped him as he tried to run away. Rowe fell into a car and was knocked unconscious until law enforcement officials arrived on the scene.

Rowe subsequently told police that if they released him from custody, he planned attend a pro-Trump rally and attack Black Lives Matter protesters. He has been charged with two counts of second-degree assault with a deadly weapon and one count of malicious harassment, The Olympian notes.
Rowe — who has a “white power” tattoo and a Confederate flag tattoo — told police that he belonged to a white supremacist group and said that he swore a “blood oath” to fight with minorities in the streets.

His bail has been set at $500,000.

Two more idiots from the Oregon standoff . . . including a Trump campaign official . . . plead guilty

Two more idiots from that Oregon standoff are pleading guilty. 

One of them was a Trump campaign official.

Courtesy of TPM:

Jerry DeLemus, a co-chair of Veterans for Trump in New Hampshire, is expected to plead guilty for his role in the 2014 militia standoff at the Bundy family's Nevada ranch, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported on Tuesday. 

In a court filing, Chief U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro said DeLemus has indicated he would change his plea on August 23 after signing a plea agreement. 

DeLemus, who had been listed as an alternate delegate for Donald Trump to the RNC weeks after his indictment, faces nine federal charges, including conspiracy to commit a crime against the country and threatening a federal law enforcement officer.

I have to say that I am constantly impressed with the character of the people who support Donald Trump.

DeLemus is not alone in striking a plea deal.

Courtesy of KGW:

A former Marine whose appearances in widely shared videos made him one of the most recognizable figures during the armed takeover of an Oregon wildlife refuge pleaded guilty Monday for his role in the weekslong standoff with authorities. 

Jon Ritzheimer, 32, admitted that he conspired with Ammon Bundy and others to prevent U.S. Interior Department employees from doing their jobs at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and they did so by threats of force or intimidation. 

Prosecutors dropped two charges as part of a plea agreement - theft of government property and possessing a firearm on federal property. Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Gabriel said prosecutors will recommend 2½ years in prison when the Arizona man is sentenced in May. Ritzheimer's attorney, Terri Wood, can argue for less.

You may remember Ritzheimer as the guy who made this cringe worthy/hysterical video before going to the Oregon wildlife refuge.

That video only gets funnier now that we know he caved  in order to avoid a long prison sentence.

Which leaves Ryan Bundy, who recently got into a scuffle with the guards, and his brother Ammon Bundy, who is still fighting his incarceration, behind.

Seriously - - -  what did these idiots think was going to happen to them?

Trump's ties made in China, his suits in Turkey. Where are Hillary's pants suits made? IN BEVERLY HILLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In a segment on the Sunday morning news program "Fox and Friends," anchor Anna Kooiman said pantsuits designed by Susanna Beverly Hills that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton often wears were made outside the United States.

The anchors were discussing Clinton's hypocrisy in criticizing GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump for manufacturing clothes bearing his name outside the U.S.

"Susanna Beverly Hills garments are the product of hundreds of hours of American labor, and women, including Hillary Clinton, can be proud to wear a garment that has been crafted with the absolute most care and skill here in the United States," the fashion house said in a release.

http://patch.com/california/beverlyhills/where-are-hillary-clinton-pantsuits-made-right-here-beverly-hills?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialinstantarticle&utm_campaign=social

Glenn Beck is about to learn that his lies will cost him big time

Glenn Beck Is About To Learn The Limits Of The First Amendment


Glenn Beck has floated all sorts of crazy conspiracies on his media channel The Blaze after he was let go from Fox for being too radical. Yes, you know it has to be bad when Fox will overlook decades of sexual harassment, but Glenn Beck is too much.

Anyhow, aside from claiming that vaccines are part of a government martial law plot or  linked to autism, Glenn Beck has also repeatedly stoked the fears of Islamophobic bigots across the country.

His greatest mistake was trying to link a victim of the Boston Marathon bombing to the plot itself, and then repeatedly doubling down on the claim even after Homeland Security said that Abdulrahman Alharbi had nothing to do with the tragedy.

Abdulrahman Alharbi rightly had a case against Glenn Beck and The Blaze, and now the courts have upheld the defamation suit filed against Beck’s media company.

Via The Guardian:

“In her decision on Tuesday, Chief Judge Patti Saris of the US district court in Boston also rejected Beck’s latest effort to dismiss Abdulrahman Alharbi’s defamation case against him and TheBlaze radio network, which broadcasts Beck’s radio show.
Beck repeatedly linked Alharbi to the 15 April 2013 bombing on his radio show and continued doing so after the Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano cleared the student in Congressional testimony.
Saris said Alharbi, 23, of Revere, Massachusetts, may learn the names of two Department of Homeland Security officials who allegedly provided information to officials at The Blaze, to help rebut Beck’s claims and show his reporting was inadequate."

It is highly unlikely that Glenn Beck had any sources at the Department of Homeland Security, although it is very troubling if he did.

The probability is that Glenn Beck made this story up, and then doubled down on the lie when he was called out for it. It didn’t matter to him that the facts were wrong and he was destroying the life of an innocent person, so long as he was collecting web traffic and revenue from his assertions that Abdulrahman Alharbi was responsible for the terrorist attack.

Personally, I hope that Abdulrahman Alharbi bankrupts Glenn Beck and The Blaze. It would be a reminder to the rightwing propaganda machine that with their power comes great responsibility to report the facts, instead of spreading baseless rumors that harm private citizens.

Can you believe this??? Oliver North who sold guns to Contras and the Ayatollahs, is attacking Obama over the phony $400 million ransom" that was not ransom

Someone should tell Fox News it's not nice to make fun of seniors with memory loss.

Because clearly that is the Fox motive in hauling out the master dealer of the Iran-Contra Scandal, Oliver North, to talk about anything to do with Iran.

The final report of the Independent Counsel on the Iran Contra matter referred to North as "a Marine lieutenant colonel assigned to the National Security Council staff beginning in 1981 until he was fired on November 25, 1986, was the White House official most directly involved in secretly aiding the contras, selling arms to Iran, and diverting Iran arms sales proceeds to the contras."

He also played Congress and the special prosecutor against each other, getting immunity from Congress for his testimony in the affair and then claiming both immunity and classified info when it came to cooperating with the further investigations. And right wing media made him a hero for it.
And now they bring this fired military embarrassment, a man with obviously no security clearance and nothing but tough talk and right wing ideology on more than once to shovel lies about the return of frozen assets to Iran. Because Obama.

See if you can count the number of right wing lies and talking points in just a clip of the full transcript via Fox News:

NORTH: Lookit, the $400 million transfer to Tehran is just the latest in a seven- year history of Obama regime lies, deceits and dissembling! Think about it, Fast and Furious, the IRS enemies list, the "Obama care," keep your health care, Benghazi, before, during and after, the e-mail cover-up by State and Clinton about what happened in Benghazi, and of course, the ISIS is now on the ropes again.

Lookit, the responsibility to protect people in Libya by killing Gadhafi has left a terrible caricature of American's foreign policy. And the whopper of all, and he touched on it in his press conference, the existential threat of Iran's nuke deal and the nuclear ICBM research and development with North Korea really isn't what it is.

HANNITY: OK, but...

NORTH: It's loony!

HANNITY: You know, and of course, by the way, we need jobs for jihadis and John Kerry equates global warming as as big a danger to the world and the United States as ISIS.

I guess the thing that stands out to me is, imagine a Republican president -- imagine that on the same day that hostages are released, they have an unmarked cargo plane, that they went to Switzerland and other countries to pour in euros and francs, and I assume dollars and other currencies, $400 million, and in the dark of night, fly this unmarked cargo plane into Tehran!

Now, Josh Earnest said today that they've been completely transparent about the whole issue. Well, they never mentioned the $400 million that was transferred at the time they were getting the hostages released! So did they pay a ransom here, is the big question?

NORTH: Yes, this was a ransom. Lookit, the very first demand by the Iranians when I met with them in 1985 was a refund of the $400 million from the shah, a down payment on weapons he'd wanted to buy. That's what they wanted from Jimmy Carter. That's what they wanted from me.

You know, it turns out I was actually a better negotiator than John Kerry. We didn't send money to the Iranians! They paid us! I know. I was the one who had to sit down on the other side of the table with the likes of Ahmadinejad and Rouhani. What they wanted first of all was that $400 million. They got it from this administration. The Israelis shipped Tows, and we got hostages and Iranian money. Tows weren't -- Tows were doctored so they wouldn't work, and we had an interpreter, thank God, who was there and can confirm that.

We used the money from the ayatollahs to support a pro-democracy movement in Central America. Is that the right thing to do? Apparently, a lot of people decided otherwise. But we didn't have to do things like they did it.

Oliver North is such a liar. And the biggest lie he tells here is that somehow his completely illegal covert operations against the will of the Congress is just "a matter of opinion" that "people" decided. No, Oliver North, you were fired from the National Security Administration for what you did. The only reason you didn't go to prison is, the judge in your case decided to be lenient:

Mr. North, the former Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and National Security Council aide, was convicted of destroying documents, accepting the gift of a $13,800 home security system and abetting the obstruction of Congress. Judge Gesell could have imposed a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and fines of $750,000. Instead, he imposed a $150,000 fine, two years of probation, a three-year suspended sentence and an order to perform 1,200 hours of community service.

Crooks and Liars and many other outlets, including the White House, have already debunked the "money as ransom" lie. But Fox News viewers clearly have no memory of the past, either distant or recent.  It's a dirty shame that Fox takes advantage of their disability.

Marco Rubio makes me want to puke

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R) said on Saturday that pregnant women who are infected with the Zika virus — which is believed to cause severe and debilitating birth defects like microcephaly — should not be allowed to terminate their pregnancies.

In an interview with Politico‘s Mike Caputo, Rubio said, “I understand a lot of people disagree with my view — but I believe that all human life is worthy of protection of our laws. And when you present it in the context of Zika or any prenatal condition, it’s a difficult question and a hard one. But if I’m going to err, I’m going to err on the side of life.”

Microcephaly involves severe deformities of the brain and skull and babies born with the condition begin their lives critically ill. Their care can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars or more in the first year of life alone.

“Obviously, microcephaly is a terrible prenatal condition that kids are born with. And when they are, it’s a lifetime of difficulties,” Rubio told Politico. “So I get it. I’m not pretending to you that that’s an easy question you asked me. But I’m pro-life. And I’m strongly pro-life. I believe all human life should be protected by our law, irrespective of the circumstances or condition of that life.”

Rubio said last year that he also opposes abortion access for women who have been the victims of rape or incest.

CBS said in June that while some individuals born with microcephaly can live somewhat normal lives, most are severely disabled. Many pass away at a very young age, but those who do not can require constant care for the rest of their lives.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC)’s Director Dr. Thomas Frieden estimated that the total lifetime medical costs for each microcephalic individual ranges from $1 million to $10 million or more.

The first reports of Zika associated microcephaly came from Brazil and scientists quickly raised the alarm that it could spread throughout the tropics and to the United States. In June the CDC and the Obama administration attempted to pass a bill allocating funding to fight and research the disease, but Republicans blocked it.

Currently, Florida has recorded 15 cases of locally transmitted Zika infections. On Thursday, Pres. Barack Obama scalded legislators who blocked funding, saying, “As our public health experts have been warning for some time, we are now seeing the first locally transmitted cases of the Zika virus by mosquitoes in the continental United States. This was predicted and predictable.”

“Not only did the Republican-led Congress not pass our request, they worked to cut it. Then they left for summer recess without passing any new funds for Zika,” Obama said.

“The situation is getting critical,” he warned. “So this is not the time for politics.”

So -- is Little Marco prepared to pay the life-long medical expenses likely to be required by an children born with birth defects as a result of zika?  I didn't think so  . . . Republicans are not pro-life . . . they are PRO-BIRTH.  Once the kid is born, screw 'em.

How many husbands has Melania Trump REALLY had?

Courtesy of Univision:

In an interview with Larry King Live in 2005 Melania Trump said that she had never been married before meeting Donald Trump. 

But, Michael Wildes, an immigration attorney who worked for the Trump Organization, told Univision's investigative unit that she obtained a green card four years earlier in 2001, “based on marriage.” 

Melania and Donald Trump were not married until Jan. 22, 2005 at Bethesda-by-the Sea Episcopal Church in Palm Beach, Florida. 

When asked to explain the marriage discrepancy, Wildes said he would seek clarification, presumably from the Trump Organization. He later sent an email saying “I didn’t hear back, sorry.” 

Wildes said he acted “on behalf of Trump models” and handled legal work to obtian visas and green cards for Miss Universe when Trump owned the pageant. He told Univision that he had been authorized by the Trump Organization “to speak on the matters concerning Melania.” 

He said he could not comment on how the Melania Trump became a U.S. permanent resident. 

“Ms. Trump received citizenship in 2006 and prior to that she had a green card based on marriage,” he said in a recorded interview by phone. “Before that, she had a work visa and was in full compliance on her visas and never disrespected any of them. That has been made clear to me.” 

Wildes later clarified that legal privacy issues meant he could not discuss her status. “There are certain parts of the process that remain private. The immigration authorities don’t discuss this nor should we,” he said.

How convenient.

Looks as though when Trump married Melania, he bought a used Yugo that had experienced a lot of rear-end collisions.