Buttercup’s at a rally in West Virginia. I’m sure there will be some unbelievable footage to come out of that one. He must be losing his shit right now. I mean more than usual.
This is the price of voter apathy. This is what happens when good people sit on their hands and think they have no voice — that their vote just doesn’t matter:
Kids are snatched away from their parents and thrown in cages.
If we don’t get out in droves upon droves this November to kneecap this shart-slurping, retrograde prick who minces about like King Fuckwit in the West Wing, listening to nauseating encomiums from his fawning shit brigade while kids languish in concentration camps, we deserve to lose our democracy.
How much quasi-Nazi B.S. do we have to bear witness to in order to make the upcoming midterms a historic repudiation of our dictator-in-waiting?
My fear is that when November comes around, too many of us will forget what’s happening now.
But we can’t. We just can’t. Whatever happens, we need to be just as angry on November 6 as we are today. It’s the most important day of the year, by far. Fuck you, Christmas. Our holiday comes early this year.
We have to remember every outrage of the past two years. Every. One.
Remember family separation
Remember DACA
Remember Puerto Rico
Remember Parkland
Remember Charlottesville
Remember Obamacare sabotage
Remember the Paris Climate Accord
Remember the Iran Nuclear Deal
Remember “shithole countries”
Remember the travel ban
Remember the tax scam
Remember Roy Moore
Remember Joe Arpaio
Remember the baiting — and then praising — of Kim Jong Un
Remember the erosion of our best alliances
Remember Russian collusion
Remember the attacks on the rule of law
Remember Stormy Daniels
Remember the Keystone Pipeline
Remember “clean coal”
Remember Scott Pruitt
Remember Betsy DeVos
Remember our transgender soldiers
Remember the national anthem protests and our shitgibbon-in-chief’s shameful response to the same
Remember every outrage
Remember all of it, put it in a box if you must, and unwrap it in November. But take some time once in a while to let it sear your gut — enough so that you can’t even think about staying home when your one opportunity to send a meaningful fuck-you to this heedless medieval ass-tart comes around.
Get registered, get an ID if it’s required, do whatever the fuck you have to to make this devil pay for his inhumanity. And do it now.
If you’re in a safe Democratic district, vote anyway. We have to send a clear message. We want a tsunami, not a ripple.
If you’re in a safe Republican district, fuck you — there are no safe Republican districts anymore. We’re challenging them everywhere, up and down the ballot.
If someone has an R next to their name, bzzzz, sorry. Thanks for playing. His or her opportunity to stop this slow-motion car wreck has long since gone the way of the Mooch.
If you’re mad as a hornet now because of what’s happening at the border, make sure you’re just as mad in November, and put your anger — finally and fatefully — to good use.
More than 20 former crew members, editors and contestants from the show have told the Associated Press that Trump was repeatedly demeaning and vulgar to women. Bill Pruitt, who said he helped produce the first two seasons of The Apprentice, stoked speculation about the show’s archive when he tweeted on Oct. 8: “I assure you: When it comes to the #trumptapes there are far worse. #justhebeginning.”
Fred Wertheimer, of the Democracy 21 watchdog group, said the committee, as a nonprofit, can’t legally convert any of the funds to personal use… “It’s not a piggybank,” he said.
… But Kerrigan, who is running for Congress from Massachusetts, said it’s “shocking” that Trump’s team is not disclosing more information about how they are spending the record amount they collected for relatively modest celebrations. Trump attended three official balls, for instance, compared to Obama’s 10.“It is alarming that you would potentially have at least $50 million left over and no sense of how it was spent,” he said.
… But the mandatory tax return it filed with the Internal Revenue Service revealed heavy spending on administrative and logistical expenses associated with planning and executing several days’ worth of events for donors and supporters around Mr. Trump’s inaugural ceremonies.
… The 116-page filing indicates that the majority of the funds — more than $57 million — went to four event-planning companies.The company that received the biggest payment — $26 million — was WIS Media Partners of Marina del Rey, Calif. Records show that the firm was created in December 2016, about six weeks before the inauguration, and its founder, according to a person familiar with the firm, was Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a longtime friend of Mrs. Trump’s. Otherwise there is very little information available about the company.
Ms. Winston Wolkoff’s firm also paid the team used by Mark Burnett, the creator of “The Apprentice,” whose involvement in the inaugural festivities was requested by Mr. Trump.
No can do, Burnett says. “Despite reports to the contrary, Mark Burnett does not have the ability nor the right to release footage or other material from The Apprentice,” he said in a statement emailed to USA TODAY.
That’s because MGM Television and Digital Group owns Burnett’s production company, he said in the statement, although he left out that he is president of MGM.
The 2017 Republican tax legislation dramatically slashed tax rates on income from such entities, generating a firestorm of criticism that it was a giveaway to real estate moguls like Trump, U.S. Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) and other Republican backers of the legislation who have such entities in their personal portfolios. (The criticism became known as the “Corker Kickback” scandal.)
To reduce some of the cost of the overall tax cut bill — and to mute some of the specific criticism of the pass-through sections — GOP lawmakers included provisions prohibiting certain kinds of businesses from qualifying for the pass-through tax cut. One such business was “financial services,” and its removal countered assertions that the bill could enrich big banks.
However, less than a year after passage of the tax legislation, the Treasury Department, headed by former banker Steve Mnuchin, issued the proposed rule whose fine print asserts that “financial services” actually do not include banking. If that interpretation of the tax bill stands, hundreds of banks operating as S corporations — as well as their owners — could claim the tax cut.
So how can we hold onto our own mental health in the face of the danger Trump poses? First, don’t use logic or rationality to try to understand or counter Trump’s statements and behaviors. He is driven not by reason but by negative emotions that are infectious. Trump thrives on creating fear and sowing confusion. He lies without guilt. Don’t match his emotion with your own.
Second, be clearer than ever about your core values, beliefs and principles, and rely on them for guidance and comfort, especially when you are feeling most triggered and fearful. Challenge every day the natural inclination to feel overwhelmed, fatigued or numb in the face of Trump’s behavior. This is what people with his psychological inclinations count on. Trump is aware that whatever he says repeatedly—no matter how outrageous—many people are more likely to believe, or at least to stop resisting.
Lastly, recognize that fear is your enemy. Holding onto the opposites of realism and optimism is the best antidote. James Stockdale, a Navy vice admiral, was imprisoned for eight years in North Vietnam and tortured repeatedly. What he said afterward about how he survived is relevant for anyone dealing with feelings of helplessness and hopelessness: “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.“
Bandy X. Lee is assistant clinical professor in law and psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and a project leader for the World Health Organization.
Tony Schwartz is the chief executive of The Energy Project and the co-author of The Art of the Deal.
The White House, who work for us, the citizens of the United States, is posting lies.
They have deliberately removed the reporter asking Putin if he wanted Trump to win, which he answered with “Yes.” (BTW the Russian transcript did the same thing.)
Trump tweeted that the Russians might interfere in the election to help Democrats, because he’s been tougher than anyone else on them (lol).
Trump literally said yesterday “what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what is happening.”
This has happened in the last few days. THEY ARE SETTING A TRAP FOR US ALL.
If the Democratic blue wave happens, the entire GOP will insist it’s not legitimate because of election hacking and illegal voting, much like the lie that 3 million “illegals” voted for Clinton in 2016 so her popular vote win is not legitimate. Trump is setting up the groundwork for that exactly the same way his bullshit about the 2016 election being rigged started in mid-summer of that year.
If the Democrats don’t take majorities, they’ll claim that the GOP voter purges and racist ID requirements protected the integrity of the election. “Well the evil Democrats tried all sorts of illegal tricks but we stopped them!”
This is a set up for the Trump base to ensure they will only accept Republican victories in elections no matter what happens in reality.
Don’t ignore this. Push back on it as hard as you can.
So, as someone who cooks, I have been taking an interest in the story of Penzey’s Spices. They’re a small business based in Wisconsin and they sell specialty spices to people who are into cooking enough that they get into that sort of thing. Right after the election, Penzey’s apparently sent out an email opposing the “open embrace of racism by the Repubulican Party in this election” and deploring the probable consequences. When this provoked quite the response, they followed up with Cooking Trumps Racism, in which the owners clarified that they did not hold ALL Republicans responsible for this, just those who had voted for Trump. For those who did, they had this to say:
“For the rest of you, you just voted for an openly racist candidate for the presidency of the United States of America. In your defense, most of you did so without thinking of the consequences of your candidate’s racism because, for most of you the heartbreaking destruction racism causes has never been anything you or your loved ones have had to experience. But the thing is elections have their consequences. This is no longer sixty years ago. Whether any of us like it or not, for the next four years the 80% of this country who did not just vote for an openly racist candidate are going to treat you like you are the kind of person who would vote for an openly racist candidate.”
This of course provoked backlash, hate mail, calls to boycott Penzey’s, etc. from Trump Nation. The other day, Penzey’s published an open letter to other CEOs about their ordeal. The summary: Since taking a public stance against the normalization of racism during the 2016 election, “online sales are up 59.9%, gift box sales up 135%.”
Below the cut tag I’m going to talk about some other examples of this, some smaller scale and some larger, all of which go to make the point that although Trump Nation may have Twitter, its citizens evidently do not like to put their money where their anonymous trolling is.
“The closure comes as a surprise even within the company, which has 18 employees. As recently as last week, officials had been discussing the implementation of long-delayed oversight of its foreign factory partners.”
Ivanka Daughter of Buttercup claims she did this so she can “focus on her work in Washington.” As nobody can figure out what the hell it is that she actually does in Washington, I’m going to attribute this decision to other factors liiiiiike…
“The announcement comes less than two weeks after Canadian department store chain Hudson’s Bay Co. said it would remove all Ivanka Trump products from its website and 90 stores because of the brand’s “performance.”’
Yes, that’s right. I’m going to blame Canada. And by “blame” I mean “thank.”
BUT…this is the ultimate result of a boycotting of the Trump brand(s) that was undertaken right after the election and is apparently FINALLY starting to bite:
“The company’s name has come down off of hotels in Toronto, Panama and New York’s Soho neighborhood, as well as from some residential buildings in New York.
While the Trump Hotel in D.C. charges some of the highest rates in the city and has become a popular meeting place for Republican political groups, religious organizations and businesses, data on other Trump properties including the Mar-a-Lago resort show signs of price drops as sports teams and charities move their business elsewhere.
Sales data on Trump-branded condominiums in New York City show them attracting lower prices than competing properties since Trump entered office. Meanwhile, the Trump Organization’s plans to dramatically expand its hotel portfolio in the U.S. have failed to progress, having opened no hotels under its announced ‘Scion’ and ‘American Idea’ brands.”
Do I care that much about Ivanka Trump’s clothing line? No. But this is an example of how sustained pressure can work. Boycotting Ivanka’s clothing line isn’t something a whole lot of people were passionate about; and yet, ‘declining sales’ has killed it off anyway.
I had to go all the way back to December 2016 to find this post; and looking over the archive was interesting. Indivisible did not exist then. Other wallet-wielding activity at that time included: donating buckets of money to the ACLU which has since been in the trenches on the travel ban as well as family separation; subscribing to newspapers which have since done major investigative reporting; donating to Democratic candidates that have since won special elections. This shit does not provide *immediate* gratification but it does eventually work. RAICES, which is working to fight Buttercup immigration ‘policy’ and reunite families, took in a huge amount of money in the first couple weeks of the crisis, and I mean HUGE. Buttercup is not the only one remaking the landscape. We’ve been doing it too. And right now, the results are modest; but if we keep it up, they will grow.
What’s sad about this is the government isn’t taking into account what these families go through!It might’ve only been 2 months but he is physically disengaged with his dad,does not know what is happening,why it’s happening, and he’ll be stuck with those feelings/memories forever!
Shits so fucked man. That poor baby. I’m literally sick.
Hearseeno 