Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
The Voice of the GOP Gated Community reverts to his mean…
Note that even at the funeral of someone who devoted his life to civil rights these people think it's divisive to talk about civil rights, and ask yourself why any decent or thinking person should ever care what they think as they slouch towards history's sewer. pic.twitter.com/5JTg3IiVKh
— SuburbanWhitestyleDreamHat (@Popehat) July 30, 2020
This Sunday, 2 AUG 2020, Citizens Against Intolerance and the League of United Latin American Citizens will be telecasting a virtual rally to commemorate the 72nd anniversary of the issuance of Executive Order 9981, which desegregated the US military. The rally is virtual because of Washington, DC’s COVID-19 response precautions and orders and was recorded this past Sunday, 26 JUL 2020.
From our about page for the Rally to Honor Heroes:
The League of United Latin American Citizens and Citizens Against Intolerance
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) has partnered with Citizens Against Intolerance (CAI) to conduct a voter registration drive and rally to celebrate the 72nd Anniversary of Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 2020, and to galvanize voters to turn out, November 3, 2020, to exercise their civic duty. LULAC and CAI will conduct a program to “Honor our Heroes” in Black Lives Matter Plaza, Washington D.C., with a star-studded array of some of the world’s leading experts in their respective fields of public policy and social justice.
You can register for the virtual rally at this link, which includes some further details:
Date:: Sunday, August 2, 2020
Time:: 2:00 pm EDT – 4:30 pm EDT
Place: LivestreamSpeakers:
Troy Mosley, President, Citizens Against Intolerance
Rick Collins, Co-Chair, Richard Colllins III Foundation
Dawn Collins, Co-Chair, Richard Colllins III Foundation
Ty Seidule, Professor of History Emeritus, West Point (invited)
As a teaser, here’s a short clip of LTC (ret) Troy Mosley, the founder and president of Citizens Against Intolerance:
We hope to virtually see you all there! And please share the info far and wide.
Open thread!
Full disclosure: I am the senior advisor for policy at Citizens Against Intolerance.
Support Patio Pizza and its wonderful owner, Guy Caligiuri, in St. James, Long Island (N.Y.). Great Pizza!!! @Varneyco
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2020
Everybody move out sharply!
Break
For those of you unable to watch (and if you are not watching it, what is wrong with you?!?!?!?!), President Obama just leveraged both Presidents Bush to smack Chief Justice Roberts, as well as Senator McConnell and his current Republican majority in the Senate on the former’s gutting the Voting Rights Act and the latter’s failure to fix it. And challenging the latter to now pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act of 2020.
Open thread!
ONCE AGAIN AFRAID OF BEING PUBLICLY BOOED
just as well as his respects account is bankrupted https://t.co/WQ7KBN3QvQ
— kilgore trout, new tone haver (@KT_So_It_Goes) July 27, 2020
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[*Sad trombone coda*]
Trump’s Campaign announces its all-star line-up of speakers for new scaled down Republican Convention. Ted Nugent, Scott Baio, Antonio Sabato Jr, and Diamond and Silk will all appear virtually in Zoom boxes before Trump’s acceptance speech. You can already feel the electricity. pic.twitter.com/AYDMSpRngi
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) July 26, 2020
Monday Evening Open Thread: Definitely For the BestPost + Comments (201)
Nothing ever fucking changes. https://t.co/OhPsEOOZTF pic.twitter.com/kIgC2YOx34
— Galar Regional Medical Director (@weedlewobble) July 25, 2020
(Very) long story short, Andrew Sullivan and the editors of both NYMag and Vox Media recently came to a Parting of Ways, because for some reason the people signing Sullivan’s checks did not agree that his prerogatives included ‘Every other employee who disagrees with me on social media should be disciplined, if not fired.’ This was very much in character with previous Sullivan disengagements, so it was generally speculated on social media that Sullivan had found a new, probably easier, potentially more lucrative source of income…
my former colleagues just went through a round of actual layoffs and are probably too polite/cautious to say it so: fuck outta here with this. they showed sullivan far more courtesy and discretion than he seems willing to afford them pic.twitter.com/UpvMAsfMTB
— brian feldman (@bafeldman) July 17, 2020
… Which turned out to be — if I understand this correctly — The Dish: OnlyFans edition. Now, I was not the only person who found the original Atlantic-based Dish blog useful, back in the early aughts (it led me to Lance Mannion’s blog, where I discovered TBogg, who led me to Sadly, NO! and thence here). But even in those days, to use a classical British reference, the parts that were good were not original (i.e, were written by Sullivan’s uncredited ‘interns’) and the parts that were original (to AS) were not good…
BREAKING: Speaker Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader McConnell announce that the late Rep. John Lewis will lie in state in the U.S. Capitol rotunda. https://t.co/YgW6sZ7DiT
— NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) July 23, 2020
… House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a joint news release that Lewis, the civil rights icon who was known as the “conscience of Congress,” will have an invitation-only arrival ceremony Monday, followed by a public viewing at the top of the east front steps of the U.S. Capitol on Monday and Tuesday.
There will also be a procession through Washington, where members of the public can pay their respects.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, masks will be required to enter the line, and social distancing will be enforced.
Lewis’ family is also asking members of the public not to travel from across the country to Washington. Instead, virtual tributes may be posted online using the hashtags #BelovedCommunity or #HumanDignity, the release said…
Lewis’ family Thursday night announced Celebration of Life ceremonies over six days, starting Saturday. Not all are open to the public because of concerns about the pandemic, and precautions like masks and social distancing will be required.
The events include a procession across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where Lewis was beaten in a march on March 7, 1965, known as Bloody Sunday. Sunday’s event is called “The Final Crossing.”
Lewis will lie in state at the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery before going to Washington. He will then lie in state at the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta.
A celebration of life will be held at Ebenezer Baptist Church Horizon Sanctuary in Atlanta on Thursday…
Full schedule at the link.
INBOX: Fairfax County, Va. School Board Renames Robert E. Lee High School for Late Congressman John Lewis
— Ed O'Keefe (@edokeefe) July 23, 2020
Last night a picture started circulating on social media with the claim that ZTI, which is a defense contractor, has its tactical personnel deployed to support the Federal Protective Service (FPS) in Portland alongside Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) BORTAC and Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Investigation personnel.
What the actual f*ck?! Private security contractors are Donnie’s Gestapo here in #Portland?? #PortlandProtest #BlackLivesMatter #WallOfMoms pic.twitter.com/GLEnbCpzs7
— Kim Brater (@KimBrater) July 24, 2020
Here’s a better look at the original post embedded in the tweet above:
You’ll notice that the Z and the T are close together, there’s no space between the Z and the T, and then there’s a full space and then the I. If you embiggen the picture you can see that it doesn’t look quite right. And the visual disparity that implies that the patch is photoshopped becomes even clearer based on this picture that was tweeted out by Molly Jong-Fast with attribution to Nathan Howard, the original photographer:
This photo from @SmileItsNathan pic.twitter.com/V6f7oZxMPh
— Molly Jong-Fast🏡 (@MollyJongFast) July 24, 2020
Here’s just the picture, which Howard posted as part of a four image montage in a tweet last night:
If you embiggen this picture you can clearly see the Z, then the equivalent of two full spaces, then two numbers. The first of those numbers is clearly a 2. The second appears to be a 6. We know the provenance of the photograph taken by Nathan Howard and we know he hasn’t photoshopped the patch. While it is clear that Howard’s photo is of a different Federal officer from the photoshopped one, we can clearly see what the patch is supposed to be: a Z, two spaces, then two numbers. Not a Z and T right next to each other, then a space, an I.
Since the original post last night, ZTI’s corporate website has been down because it has been flooded with traffic that appears to have overwhelmed its servers. The company’s official name is ZTI Solutions LLC and specializes in modifying computer software and packaging. Their description at their profile page at ClearanceJobs states:
About ZTI Solutions, LLC
ZTI Solutions, LLC specializes in providing cleared consulting and staffing solutions for Government agencies, along with highly skilled network engineering and architecture resources for all markets and industry verticals. Our highly trained and experienced professionals help customers take their IT visions from dreams to reality, in a secure manner, because our architects have both networking and security backgrounds.
They currently have seven job announcements posted at clearances jobs: 3 Secret, 2 Top Secret, 1 Unspecified, and 1 Top Secret/Sensitive Compartment Information (SCI). All seven involve computing, IT, network security, and/or network development. This is not the second coming of using Blackwater, or other private security contractors, to provide tactical operational personnel in Portland. I know everyone is concerned about this. And it is a legitimate concern given the semi-sterile to sterile combat uniforms being used by the Federal personnel in Portland. However, while having a sufficient level of paranoia is always good, knee jerk responses based on social media posts that when tracked backed don’t actually provide the real, original photograph with a reference to the photographer are not actually helping, In fact they just serve to provide fodder to those who want to discredit those condemning this clear Federal overreach, which is unconstitutional.
Update at 10:28 PM EDT
I just heard back from a friend who after he got out of the military was in Federal and then state law enforcement. He has informed me that he remembers that the C&BP BORTAC units use Z followed by numbers as their call signs. So the patches are most likely to identify the BORTAC officers to each other and to Federal Protective Services personnel.
Update at 11:2o PM EDT
Thanks to Cheryl posting this tweet from Wesley Morgan, you can clearly see that the patch from the first picture posted above, and which appeared to be photoshopped, may not be photoshopped. Morgan tweeted out a much better resolution picture, with a much better angle and you can clearly see the ZT is followed not by an I, but by a 1. And that it is stitch on the patch as if it was done by a stencil so that the little leftward facing hook of the 1 is separate from the body of the one. So it appears like a small dash.
General Honoré is wrong about this. As other photos show, these are US Marshals wearing personal “cell tags” for identification to one another: ZT1, ML8, AP1 (and one pic is a CBP guy with Z-26). Thanks @JakeGodin and @mikenelson586 for flagging. https://t.co/Shdk4aeHeF pic.twitter.com/6VJSvCyVez
— Wesley Morgan (@wesleysmorgan) July 24, 2020
Here’s the photo by itself:
You can also make out the unit patch as United States Marshal.
Thanks Cheryl!
If it seems too good to be true, it probably is!
Open thread!
It’s Photoshopped: Contractors From ZTI Are Not Deployed In PortlandPost + Comments (81)