Wednesday, November 02, 2016

The Donald Chronicles Extra: Mississippi Burning and More GOP Evil

NBC:
The mayor of a Mississippi town where a black church was torched and vandalized with the words "Vote Trump" said Wednesday that the incident is being "investigated as a hate crime."

Calling the burning of Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Greenville a "hateful and cowardly act," Mayor Errick Simmons said this was "an attack on the black community."  "It appears to be a race crime," Simmons said. "It happened in the '50s. It happened in the '60s. It shouldn't happen in 2016."

Raw Story:
An election worker in Plano, Texas was reportedly injured by box cutter blades that were hidden in a Trump-Pence campaign sign.

The Dallas Morning News reported that the sign was found zip-tied to an official polling site sign at 2800 East Spring Creek Parkway at Collin College.

According to KTVT, the sign was placed where the suspect knew that poll workers would have to remove it. And after a precinct official ordered the sign taken down, a volunteer was sliced open by the hidden box cutter blades. The blades drew blood but luckily the cuts were not serious.

TPM:

A federal judge Tuesday ordered representatives from the Donald Trump campaign and the Nevada Republican Party to appear at a hearing in his courtroom Wednesday afternoon in a lawsuit filed by Nevada Democrats accusing them of the engaging in voter intimidation tactics.

U.S. District Judge Richard Franklin Boulware also ordered the Trump campaign and state party to turn over any training materials they provided to "poll watchers, poll observers, exit pollsters or any other similarly tasked individuals."

Politico:
Neo-Nazi leader Andrew Anglin plans to muster thousands of poll watchers across all 50 states. His partners at the alt-right website “the Right Stuff” are touting plans to set up hidden cameras at polling places in Philadelphia and hand out liquor and marijuana in the city’s “ghetto” on Election Day to induce residents to stay home. The National Socialist Movement, various factions of the Ku Klux Klan and the white nationalist American Freedom Party all are deploying members to watch polls, either “informally” or, they say, through the Trump campaign.

The Oath Keepers, a group of former law enforcement and military members that often shows up in public heavily armed, is advising members to go undercover and conduct “intelligence-gathering” at polling places, and Donald Trump ally Roger Stone is organizing his own exit polling, aiming to monitor thousands of precincts across the country.


Reuters:
As the most divisive presidential election in recent memory nears its conclusion, some armed militia groups are preparing for the possibility of a stolen election on Nov. 8 and civil unrest in the days following a victory by Democrat Hillary Clinton.  They say they won't fire the first shot, but they're not planning to leave their guns at home, either.

Daily Beast:
An Oklahoma elected official appeared to call for Hillary Clinton’s execution in a Facebook post. “2 words … firing squad,” Republican State Rep. John Bennett wrote, captioning a blog post blaming the former secretary of state for the deaths of four American officials in the 2012 Benghazi attack.


Why should extremist crazies be lumped together with the GOP?  Because by and large they are the GOP.  Because GOP lawmakers are just as extreme: threatening endless investigations and attempt at impeachment; endless gridlock and refusing to consent to a Supreme Court appointment should Hillary be elected and they maintain congressional control.

Because Trump is reflected in his extremist crazy supporters, and so-called mainstream Republicans are actually supporting him for the office for which they know he is morally unfit, utterly unqualified and downright dangerous: Ted Cruz, Rubio,  House Speaker Paul Ryan and now Senate leader (and the very definition of a partisan snake) Mitch McConnell.

President Obama today on NC GOPer Senator Burr: "Last week he actually joked about violence against Hillary. That’s not something we do. That’s not something -- I tell you, if I heard a Democrat saying that, I would condemn them in a hot second. You don’t talk about violence against public officials, even in a joke.   And you know, I want to acknowledge he apologized. But the problem is this is becoming normal. This is sort of the red meat they’re throwing their audiences. And it’s not normal."

But if Trump and Burr and other GOPers get enough votes, it will be "normal."  That's the country people are voting for, or against.

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