Monday News: Oliver Rips Trump for Not Disavowing Nazis; “When the President Is Un-American”; “RPV Has An Important Choice For 2018”

by Lowell

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Monday, August 14. Check out John Oliver ripping “f*cking idiot” Trump – “It doesn’t get easier than disavowing Nazis.”

• Krugman: When the President Is Un-American
• Trump’s Business of Corruption (“What secrets will Mueller find when he investigates the President’s foreign deals?”)
• The Hate He Dares Not Speak Of (“White supremacists see President Trump’s failure to condemn them as a sign of implicit support. Which of course it is.”)
• White House confronts backlash over Trump’s original remarks on Charlottesville (To quote Tom Perriello: “Are we open to the possibility that the President is a white supremacist and authoritarian, not that he failed to get the statement right?” Also, “Trump can start to prove he’s not a white supremacist, but it’ll take pink slips, not public statements. Must remove Bannon, Gorka & Miller.”)
• Suspect in Va. death was a Nazi sympathizer, teacher says (“James Alex Fields Jr., the 20-year-old suspect accused of second-degree murder for plowing a car into a crowd of activists in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday, espoused extremist ideals and idolized Adolf Hitler, according to his high school history teacher Derek Weimer.”)
• Trump lit the torches of white supremacy in Charlottesville. We must extinguish them. (“The president gave the racists permission to take off their hoods. Even after the violence Saturday in Virginia, he refused to condemn them by name. But we can.” Trump needs to go, ASAP — 25th amendment or impeachment will do.)
• After Charlottesville: End the denial about Trump (“A president who cannot bring himself to condemn racism, anti-Semitism and white supremacy unequivocally squanders any claim to moral leadership”)
• Why Trump Can’t Say the Obvious (“But then, we have never had a president, of either party, or any political persuasion, so utterly disconnected from any understanding of our national history, of the still-unresolved fights over what it means to be a ‘real’ American. Nor have we ever had a president who combines staggering historical and political ignorance with language skills that rank him somewhere around a indolent 9-year old.” Right, and a good chunk of his base holds bigoted views of various sorts.)
• Take the Statues Down (“A multi-ethnic democracy requires grappling honestly with the past—and recognizing the symbols of the Confederacy for what they are.”)
• Claiming ‘Moral Victory,’ Far Right Surges Into View
• Trump aides predicting ‘brutal’ September (“Aides hope to use meetings in New York this week to figure out their plans for the debt ceiling, 2018 budget, tax reform, infrastructure spending and perhaps another stab at repealing Obamacare.”)
• Border Wall Already Threatening Wildlife Along Rio Grande (“Crews are cutting through private property in South Texas, including refuges for butterflies and birds, in preparation for the construction of a wall that is not yet funded.” Appalling.)
• Fox & Friends Sunday defends white supremacist Charlottesville protesters: “There’s a reason those people were out there” (“Fox hosts praise Trump for calling out ‘many sides’ at neo-Nazi Charlottesville protests, say he ‘nailed it'”)
• There Is Only One Side to the Story of Charlottesville (Tom Perriello: “Five lessons from what could prove a decisive moment.” Nailed it.)
• They Will Not Replace Us (“White supremacists can march on my hometown, but they can’t win.”)
• How Trump Has Cultivated the White Supremacist Alt-Right for Years
• Charlottesville and history: Violence has been endemic to the American far right for generations (“Sadly, the violence we saw in Charlottesville is nothing new in the hateful history of the American far right”)
• John Oliver: ‘It doesn’t get easier than disavowing Nazis’ but ‘f*cking idiot’ Trump screwed it up
• Anti-McMaster campaign is about to get uglier
• Protestors target Trump in rallies after deadly Charlottesville clash
• Trump quietly putting his stamp on the courts (I warned over and over and over in 2016 about this dire threat to the courts. Just saying…)
• The Alt-Right’s Rebranding Effort Has Failed (“Some members attempted to pivot away from overt racism. Charlottesville shows that they were always white nationalists.”)
• Trump adviser says there are ‘good people’ on the pro-Confederate side in Charlottesville
• Even Scaramucci thinks Trump’s failure to condemn white supremacists is wrong (“When you’ve lost The Mooch…”)
• How the GOP Can Prove It Isn’t a Party for White Supremacists (“For half-a-century, the GOP has deliberately exploited — and inflamed — white racial animus, as a means of obtaining political power. That isn’t partisan hyperbole; it’s historical fact. In 1964, the Democratic Party’s embrace of civil rights left most of the white South (and hefty portions of the white North) without a political home. This development provided Republicans with a great opportunity, so long as they were sufficiently cynical — or reactionary — to exploit it.”)
• Trump Joins the Neo-Confederates (“There is a sinister congruence between the president’s reaction to the white-supremacist riot in Charlottesville yesterday and the object the rioters assembled to defend: the city’s doomed Robert E. Lee statue. Both are manifestations of Neo-Confederacy, the fierce, century-long effort of the Southern ruling class to normalize white racism so long as it did not degenerate into extralegal violence.”)
• RPV Has An Important Choice For 2018 (“And now as of this writing Corey Stewart is the leading candidate to be the party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate in 2018. This is an enormous problem.”)
• Editorial: What’s next for energy in Virginia? (This gets a lot right, but solar’s already providing baseload power in a lot of places, and battery costs are already plummeting.)
• Va. ACLU board member Jaquith resigns over group’s stance on rally (I mean, the ACLU has been like this for decades — see the Skokie case — regarding the 1st amendment, even when it comes to heinous people.)
• McAuliffe, others offer words of hope at local church services
• Editorial: Malevolence and Mayhem in Charlottesville (“The blackhearted spirit of the alt-right movement mars whatever it touches — and in Charlottesville it did much worse than that.”)
• Charlottesville Reels After a White Supremacist Rally Turns Deadly (“On Sunday, tensions were still raw as neo-Nazis and their apologists sought to cast blame elsewhere.”)
• Charlottesville victim: ‘She was there standing up for what was right’
• Virginia politicians of all stripes condemn white nationalists — except one (“Apologetic Republicans ‘played right into the hands of the left wing,’ Senate candidate Corey A. Stewart said.” What disturbs me is that anyone voted for this guy.)
• ‘Look at the campaign he ran’: Charlottesville mayor is becoming one of Trump’s strongest critics (“Michael Signer slammed Trump’s path to the presidency, which the Democrat said emboldened extremist views.”)
• Peninsula residents join in solidarity for Charlottesville
• Hundreds gather in Virginia Beach for vigil in wake of Charlottesville violence
• State troopers killed in helicopter crash were well known to Virginia governor(“Berke Bates had been part of Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s personal security detail, and H. Jay Cullen had flown him to destinations for 3½ years.”)
• Watch: Charlottesville counterprotesters shut down a white nationalist’s news conference
• ‘Heather died because of white supremacy’: Vigil held at spot of Saturday’s killing
• Charlottesville police face critics as a tense city tries to regroup from deadly weekend
• Charlottesville hopes to wash away the stains of hate (“Residents say the ugliness of the white nationalist rally should not define their city.”)
• Hundreds gather at vigil for Charlottesville victims at crash site
• Confederate group seeks September rally at the Robert E. Lee monument in Richmond
• At least 1 person arrested in Sunday night demonstration in Richmond near VCU and Monument Avenue
• Richmonders gather at Slavery Reconciliation Statue try to heal from Charlottesville violence
• Kessler blames city officials as news conference dissolves into chaos
• Roanoke Democrat to challenge Bob Goodlatte (“Democrat Peter Volosin plans to run against Goodlatte, R-Roanoke County, who is serving his 13th term in the House of Representatives.” Go after BADlatte hard!)
• Clouds and some showers to start the workweek, then turning hotter again with time