They’re not kidding; that’s Keith Broni’s actual job.
Month: August 2017
Noting the President’s vague response to the awfulness in Charlottesville — a rambling off-the-cuff speech in which he failed to denounce white nationalists and neo-Nazis, threw in a non sequitur mention of Barack Obama, threw in his own name because he can’t stand it when he isn’t mentioned, and condemned hate on “many sides” — John Oliver opened last night’s episode of Last Week Tonight with this:
He has some very good lines:
- On the tiki torches: “Nothing says ‘white nationalist’ like faux Polynesian kitsch.”
- “A protester being killed in the wake of neo-Nazis marching in the streets of an American city is the kind of tragedy that calls for true leadership from whoever is in the Oval Office. Unfortunately, the current occupant is this guy [Donald Trump].”
- “There honestly aren’t many instances in modern American politics where you can honestly think that guy really should’ve mentioned the Nazis, but this is emphatically one of them!”
- “It’s like a reverse Godwin’s Law: if you fail to mention Nazism, you lost the argument.”
- “David Duke and the Nazis really seem to like Donald Trump, which is weird, because Nazis are a lot like cats. If they like you, it’s probably because you’re feeding them.”
- On Trump’s refusal to disavow the white nationalists:
- “He had one last shot before the buzzer on the racism clock hit zero, and he threw an air ball so far away that it landed in the Third Reich.”
- “Here is the problem with that: a non-answer in a moment like this is an answer. If you had asked me ‘Have you ever been aroused by the fairies in Zelda: The Ocarina of Time?’ and I responded by slowly and silently walking away from you, you would know exactly what I was saying.”
Also worth reading
I had to disavow the Nazis. Why can’t the President? Part of the Green Card process is answering a question where the right answer is to clearly and unequivocally disavow the Nazis, which I did easily, gladly, and proudly. You’d think the President would be able do the same, but…
Thanks to Mark Relph for the find!
That’s me on the right, on Thursday, January 26, 2017, celebrating the acquisition of my permanent resident status in the United States. It means that I am in possession of what’s colloquially known as a “green card”.
Of the many things you have to do to qualify for a green card, one of the is filling out the I-485 form, which is more formally known as the Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status:
Part 8 of the I-485 is called General Eligibility and Inadmissibility Grounds, and is made up of 67 questions, one of which asks you if you somehow were involved with the Nazis:
Here’s the text of the question:
During the period from March 23, 1933 to May 8, 1945, did you ever order, incite, assist, or otherwise participate in the persecution of any person because of race, religion, national origin, or political opinion, in association with either the Nazi government of Germany or any organization or government associated or allied with the Nazi government of Germany?
That’s right: In the process that determined whether I was allowed to call this place home, I had to disavow any connection with the Nazis. And I did so easily, gladly and proudly.
So why can’t the President?
He was uncharacteristically silent for the first part of Saturday, when stories about the torch gathering the night before and neo-Nazis on the street that morning were already circulating:
Hell of a day for the President to forget how to tweet. pic.twitter.com/ABffmwwH8D
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) August 12, 2017
When he finally made a statement that afternoon, it was this weak sauce…
We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets come together as one!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 12, 2017
…and his televised speech was equally mitigated:
It’s uncharacteristic of him — he’s usually pretty quick to “name names”:
The president has been more directly critical of TV hosts, cable news, actresses, comedy shows, & the intelligence community than of nazis.
— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) August 12, 2017
The slow, faint response wasn’t lost on former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard and high-profile white nationalist David Duke, who took it as implicit support…
…as did his sleazebag buddies at the Daily Stormer:
Here’s the text from that screenshot (because there’s no way in Hell that I’m linking to the Daily Stormer):
3:46 p.m.: Trump comments were good. He didn’t attack us. He just said the nation should come together. Nothing specific against us.
He said that we need to study why people are so angry, and implied that there was hate…on both sides!
So he implied the antifa were haters.
There was virtually no counter-signaling of us at all.
He said he loves us all.
Also refused to answer a question about White Nationalists supporting him.
No condemnation at all.
When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room.
Really, really good.
God bless him.
I’ll say it again:
I easily, gladly, and proudly disavowed the Nazis in front of witnesses, including my wife, my lawyer, and a U.S. government official.
Why can’t the President do the same in front of the American people?
Also…
It’s a shame that the I-485’s “Nazi question” is limited to the time period from March 1933 through May 1945. Even a kid who turned the minimum qualifying age — 10 — for the junior division of the Hitler Youth on V-E day would be 82 years old at the time of this writing. I think that it should be phrased more like question 56, the “Communist question”, which asks if you’ve ever, during any point in time, in any country, been part of or tied to the Communist Party or any other totalitarian party:
Categories
Pick a torch, America.
Click the image to see it at full size.
I took Manu “Trekonomics” Saadia’s tweet (shown below) and turned it into a single graphic that’s easy to share. Spread it far and wide, folks.
Pick a torch, America pic.twitter.com/K1UQKNufal
— manu saadia 🖖 (@trekonomics) August 12, 2017
Need some context?
Unite the Right, the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, explained
Photo by Robert King. Click to see the source.
Charlottesville: far-right crowd with torches encircles counter-protest group
Photo by Andy Campbell. Click to see the source.
Photo by Andy Campbell. Click to see the source.
When Taylor Teepell applied for the job of Director of the Division of Community Development, a position within the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO), he did so despite not having had any experience with the two things that department oversees: economic development or land planning.
He didn’t even fill out most of the application form, including these key parts:
Click the education and certification section of Teepell’s application form to see its emptiness at full size.
Click the work experience section of Teepell’s application form to see its emptiness at full size.
Want to see his full application? It’s a public record, and the Miami Herald posted it online.
If you’ve ever had to deal with the DEO (I have, for what they call “re-employment benefits”), you know how particular they are about their forms, and how they insist on getting as much information out of you as possible. It’s very unlike them to accept a form this empty, even if Teepell did attach his resume at the end.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, and in a story that at least some of you will find depressingly familiar, he landed the job over Julie Dennis, who’d already been working at the DEO for five years and was considerably more qualified for the job:
When Teepell got the job, he was elevated over Julie Dennis, who was then named “executive staff director” and served as his top deputy. In contrast to Teepell, Dennis had a decade of community planning experience and a master’s degree in urban and regional planning.
In comparison, Teepell has a B.A. in Marketing. He could probably get a Ph.D. in self-marketing.
How much does the job pay? When he started in February 2016, the starting salary was $110,000, and when he left in May, he’d been given a raise, bringing it up to nearly $117,000.
An excerpt from the Chick tract It’s Who You Know.
As you can see from Teepell’s LinkedIn profile, he’s since moved on to become finance director of the New Republican Super PAC, which is chaired by Florida governor, rabid Republican and apparent human/python hybrid Rick Scott, and is hitching itself unashamedly to Donald Trump.
If you’d like to find out how he got the DEO job, the Miami Herald explains, and as you might suspect, it’s because of the people he knows: Rick Scott and Bobby Jindal.
By way of comparison…
…here’s a summary of the effort I put into landing my new job.
Categories
Typo of the day
This headline appeared in the Kennebec Journal (which serves Kennebec County, Maine).
I seriously doubt that Il Donalduce has any ties to the furry community, never mind the ability to rally them to take on North Korea.
Read more here: Maine Newspaper Typos Trump’s North Korea Threat
That’s Eileen on the left, and Toronto Board of Health Chair Joe Mihevc on the right.
Next to my sister Eileen, I’m a bit of a slacker. Case in point: her work as Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health in addressing the opioid crisis. Her approach is a sensible one: treat drug addiction and use as a health issue rather than a criminal one.
If you’s like to know more about what she’s doing to address the crisis, this interview on CBC Radio is a great start (it’s 8 minutes, 37 seconds long). She’s doing a fantastic job of what I consider to be the family tradition of taking complex subjects and explaining them well to a lay audience.