Memorial Day is Coming; Here Are a Few Things to Remember

• Lance Mannion on the haters:

  They hate the poor, that's obvious. They hate and despise and fear the poor, especially if they're brown. But they hate the sick too. And the old, at least everyone irresponsible enough to get old without having put together a $500,000 portfolio. They hate children. Other people's children, of course. They dote on and spoil their own. But other people's children are coddled and raised to think life owes them so those kids need to be taught a lesson. They hate mothers. They hate women! They hate veterans. They hate anybody---anybody who isn't rich---who has ever looked to the government for help. They hate everybody who isn't rich because we should be rich. That's what life is for. To make money. Lots of it. And if you didn't do that you've wasted your life. If you didn't do it it's a sign you didn't try, you didn't work or work hard enough. It's a sign of your bad character and moral failure. And that's what we all are in their eyes, moral failures who expect them to bail us out when our bad character gets us in trouble. Even if we aren't constantly coming to them with our hand out in one way, we're doing it in another, demanding we be paid more than we're worth, demanding benefits we haven't earned or deserved.
  
  [...]
  
  And out in Montana, Greg Gianforte, the Republican candidate for Congress, who last night auditioned for the WWE using a reporter for his sparring partner, wants to end Social Security because he’s against the whole idea that people should ever retire. Noah was still working when he was 600, you know. Noah lived to be 950, going 300 years without, as far as I know, building another ark, but never mind. The bible doesn’t specifically mention retirement, so Gianforte thinks God’s against it. The bible doesn’t mention the United States, the state of Montana, or millionaire ignoramuses with anger management issues getting elected to Congress either, so I hope that means God is against at least the last one, but it’s not looking that way, according to the polls.

• ThinkProgress:

  Fox News journalists were key witnesses to the violent incident that occurred on Wednesday in Montana involving Greg Gianforte, Republican House candidate in Thursday’s special election, and Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs. But you wouldn’t know it from watching Fox and Friends.
  
  Jacobs accused Gianforte of assaulting him after the reporter asked him for the candidate’s reaction to the Congressional Budget Office’s score for the American Health Care Act. Audio of the incident supports Jacobs’ account, but Gianforte’s campaign released a statement telling a very different story — one that actually painted Jacobs as the aggressor.
  
  [...]
  
  Gianforte’s story was demolished by eyewitness accounts from Fox News reporter Alicia Acuna, field producer Faith Mangan, and photographer Keith Railey. They actually make the incident sound even more violent than what Jacobs initially described. Acuna authored a story on Fox News’ website that details how Gianforte, without any physical provocation, “grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground behind him.”

  Have I mentioned that the masks are off? The masks are off.
  
• See also Welcome Back to Gotham City, who quotes Mark Twain about Congress being the criminal class.  ETA:  More on the story.  The Guardian on Gianforte's apology and win.
• Indomitable:

  Because [name redacted] is a white man, certain questions will not be asked. Who radicalized him? What types of news media did he watch, read and listen to? Is there a moral leadership crisis in White America? What is going on in the homes and communities of the white people who join right-wing hate groups or who find themselves attracted to the white supremacist and white nationalist “alt-right” movement?

  A terrorist by any other name ... still stinks.
  
• The Rude Pundit:

  And, again, it can't be said enough, this was a ceremony dedicated to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the way that nations came together under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, the T in NATO, to help the U.S. after 9/11, nations that lost soldiers in the war they joined under Article 5.

  Read at home, or wait until the boss and/or the office tattletale is out for lunch. The Rude One has a very low opinion of Buttercup.
• "Did Comey Knowingly Act On A Bogus Piece Of Russian Intelligence?"  Apparently, yes.  (Crooks and Liars and Shakesville, respectively)
  
• Driftglass:

  No, Mr. Gerson. No and no and no.
  
  Donald Trump is not destroying your conservative movement. He is just throwing a very inconvenient, million-candle-power spotlight on the rotting, squirmy, midden pile of racists, con men, imbeciles and demagogues that your conservative movement has always been.
  
  Donald Trump is not "changing the party’s most basic moral and political orientations". He is simply putting your party's longstanding-but-carefully-camouflaged obscene "moral and political orientations" front-and-center in a way that is visible from the orbit of Jupiter.
  
  And "eventual exile"? Oh please, Michael, we've been through all of this before. Remember Operation Endless Clusterfuck? Ring any bells? It was big news for awhile. In fact, as I recall, it was men like you who put so many clever words into Dubya's mouth explaining how imperative Bush's Iraqi Debacle was, and how quick and ouchless it would all be, and how swimmingly it was all going...
  
  ...right up until it all went tits-up.
  
  Then do you remember what happened? Because we here on the Left sure as shit do.

  Read the whole thing; it is a righteous jeremiad. A J'Accuse. An indictment of liars and grifters in high office.
  
• From AlterNet:
  • Jacob Sugarman summarizes Paul Krugman.
  • Robert Reich on the Scylla and Charybdis that is Trumpcare.