Normalize Nation by Ward Sutton

Schumer: Democrats' position is $1.6 billion for wall funding

What the FUCK?

Sen. Chuck Schumer tells reporters at his on-cam presser that Democrats’ position is $1.6 billion for wall funding - far less than the $5 billion Trump wants - but he won’t say if Democrats are shutting the door on anything more, saying he’s not going to negotiate in public.

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1067507024303452161

Fox News is hawking a racist "Build the wall" Lego knockoff

Someone posted a photo of this on fb or twitter this morning and I thought it was a parody... apparently, it isn't.



Just in time for the holidays, there’s a new racist Lego-knockoff set on the market from a conservative toy company, and Fox News is gleefully promoting it.

“Take a look at this: A conservative company introducing a new line of toys encouraging kids to build a wall with MAGA building blocks,” co-host Jillian Mele said on "Fox & Friends" Wednesday morning. “The set comes with a President Trump figurine and a ‘Make America Great Again’ hard hat.”

Conservative merchandise website Keep and Bear is selling the sets, which are very similar in concept and design to LEGO toys, for $30. One set shows a Trump-like LEGO figure with a hardhat standing in front of a grey brick wall. On the other side of the wall is a man in a sombrero holding maracas, clearly meant to illustrate that he is separating himself from Latin America.

https://twitter.com/natijomartinez/status/1062699725051346949

The company also sells “Hillary in orange” figurines that come with “Trump sends Hillary to prison!” set. Other offerings include pro-Second Amendment merch, bibles, and toy sets for the Crusaders.

“Remember our Christian ancestors of the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries, who embarked on a series of military expeditions to recover the Holy Land from the radical Islam?” reads a description on the website, throwing its support behind a series of historical religious wars that killed an estimated 1.7 million people. “Their mission and bravery saved Western Civilization!”

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/vbad43/fox-news-is-hawking-a-racist-lego-build-the-wall-knockoff

6 Weeks After Senate Testimony, Christine Blasey Ford Still Getting Threats

Unlike Brett Kavanaugh, Ford’s life has been on hold. She has yet to return to her job as a psychology professor.

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Thursday formally took his seat on the nation’s highest judicial body, in what is known as an investiture ceremony that was attended by President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump.

But six weeks after testifying to a Senate committee about her sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh, Christine Blasey Ford continues to receive threats and is still working on “recovering from the experience and returning to her job responsibilities,” Ford’s lawyers told NPR.

“Justice Kavanaugh ascended to the Supreme Court, but the threats to Dr. Ford continue,” they said in a statement.

Unlike Kavanaugh, who was confirmed to the court on Oct. 6 despite Ford’s allegations and began working at the high court the next day, Ford has yet to return to her job as a psychology professor at Palo Alto University in Northern California, according to her lawyers.

A spokeswoman for the school did not immediately return a request for comment from HuffPost.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/christine-blasey-ford-brett-kavanaugh_us_5be47fa0e4b0dbe871a8972f

but Tucker Carlson!!!!

Trump Administrator for the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services tweets scariest costume.

stop in for the ratio

https://twitter.com/SeemaCMS/status/1057725073996595201

https://twitter.com/morrigansarcher/status/1057739492331831297

https://twitter.com/jedshug/status/1057748518352404480

https://twitter.com/KindBravery/status/1057738904604999680

https://twitter.com/pabstimus/status/1057739376891899904

Czechoslovakia ramped up spying on Trump in late 1980s, seeking US intel

The communist intelligence service in Prague stepped up its spying campaign against Donald Trump in the late 1980s, targeting him to gain information about the “upper echelons of the US government”, archive files and testimony from former cold war spies reveal.

Czechoslovakia’s Státní bezpečnost (StB) carried out a long-term spying mission against Trump following his marriage in 1977 to his first wife, Ivana Zelníčková. The operation was run out of Zlín, the provincial town in south-west Czechoslovakia where Zelníčková was born and grew up.

Ivana’s father, Miloš Zelníček, gave regular information to the local StB office about his daughter’s visits from the US and on his celebrity son-in-law’s career in New York. Zelníček was classified as a “conspiratorial” informer. His relationship with the StB lasted until the end of the communist regime.

New archive records obtained by the Guardian and the Czech magazine Respekt show the StB’s growing interest in Trump after the 1988 US presidential election, won by George HW Bush. The StB’s first directorate responsible for foreign espionage sought to “deepen” its Trump-related activity.

<snip>

The comments by former StB officers suggest Moscow and Prague were intensely interested in Trump in the late cold war era. Spy agencies in both socialist capitals noted Trump’s growing political ambitions and sought to exploit his in-laws and family ties, using them as a dynamic intelligence channel.

The scale of Soviet Moscow’s spying operation on Trump is unknown. No documents are public. It is unclear when the KGB began a file on the future president. In Prague about 60,000 StB documents were declassified in the mid-1990s, after the collapse of communism. The StB destroyed most records.

However, secret memos written by the KGB chief, Vladimir Kryuchkov, in the mid-1980s reveal that he berated his officers for their failure to cultivate top-level Americans. Kryuchkov circulated a confidential personality questionnaire to KGB heads of station abroad, setting out the qualities wanted from a potential asset.

According to instructions leaked to British intelligence by the KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky, they included corruption, vanity, narcissism, marital infidelity and poor analytical skills. The KGB should focus on personalities who were upwardly mobile in business and politics, especially Americans, the document said.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/29/trump-czechoslovakia-communism-spying

TIME magazine publishes bad take on the plus side of NATIONALIST

NYT Video: If You're Not Scared About Fascism in the U.S., You Should Be

By JASON STANLEY, ADAM WESTBROOK and JAPHET WEEKS | Oct. 15, 2018 | 5:02
When fascism starts to feel normal, we’re all in trouble.

https://nyti.ms/2AaOVFI

Newt Gingrich says media has "earned" the label "enemy of the people"

The douche most responsible for the toxicity of our current political climate today says....

Speaking at an Axios event in Washington Thursday, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said that Trump's attacks on the media as "the enemy of the people" don't help improve the American political divide, but that he thinks "they've earned it."

The big picture: Gingrich claimed the toxicity of the current political climate is "everyone's fault," pointing to social media and the "tribalization" of cable news — specifically CNN — as some of the main factors. When asked why there was such a quick move on the right to call yesterday's mail bombs a conspiracy, Gingrich answered, "Because it's October."

#MAGABomber