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Remember when Republicans cared about the deficit? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

U.S. Posts Its Largest Budget Deficit Since 2013

GOP Congress Presides Over Highest Spending Since Obama’s Stimulus

Just what is this abomination, "nom nom?" Where has it come from and why is it on my television? "Yum yum," surely?

One doesn't say, "Goody goody nom nom." When was that last time that you declared that meal was, "Nommy?"

Yummy. Food is yummy. When one eats one goes, "Yum yum."

Donald Trump has pledged to defend the Constitution — even an article that doesn’t exist — but he can’t seem to lay off that pesky First Amendment.

Trump has mocked the First Amendment’s right to freedom of religion by calling for a ban on Muslims from entering the country and criticized those who believe in the freedom of speech as “foolish people.” He has also endorsed attacks on protesters and the imprisonment of people who burn the flag.

And he has made it very clear that he doesn’t stand for the freedom of the press. As a presidential candidate, Trump told supporters he would “open up our libel laws” to sue journalists. “We’re going to have people sue you like you’ve never got sued before,” he promised.

Trump the candidate also blacklisted reporters and entire news outlets from campaign events, referred to journalists as “scum” and “slime,” and mocked a reporter for having a disability. He vowed to sue women who reported incidents of sexual harassment and assault, along with the outlets that covered their accounts, and threatened a lawsuit against a Hispanic journalist group for calling out his bigoted remarks.

"I would never kill them but I do hate them,” he said of reporters. “And some of them are such lying, disgusting people.”

This onslaught didn’t stop once Trump assumed the presidency. From the most powerful perch on the planet, he has continued to wage attacks on the free press, further revealing his authoritarian impulses and disdain for the First Amendment.

Below we provide a running list of the attacks that the president has made on the press since assuming office. We’ll keep this list updated since, unfortunately, we don’t expect them to stop.

Trump has:

Said it is “frankly disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write” in a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Threatened to cancel the broadcast licenses of media companies that offer negative coverage of him.

Had the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, call on ESPN to fire Jemele Hill for criticizing him.

Tweeted mocking images of him wrestling a CNN reporter and his campaign hitting a CNN reporter with a train.

Overseen a Justice Department review of policies for subpoenaing media organizations in an effort to crack down on both whistleblowers and journalists.

Pledged to “fight the #FakeNews” with a Polish leader hostile to press freedom.

Attacked reporters while speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has fostered a climate of violence against journalists.

Said that his mission to “drain the swamp” begins “with the Fake News!”

Reportedly asked then-FBI Director James Comey to jail reporters who publish classified information.

Tasked his former chief of staff with looking into changing the country’s libel laws.

Explored the prosecution of WikiLeaks for publishing CIA and State Department materials.

Labeled the “fake news” media “the enemy of the people.”

Accused the media of lying about his “very nice” conversation with the Australian prime minister. Ultimately, a leaked transcript of the call showed it was Trump who was lying.

Urged someone to buy the New York Times to “either run it correctly or let it fold.”

While Trump tries to portray journalists at the “enemies” of Americans, it’s his attacks on the press that amount to an assault on the cornerstone of American democracy: the First Amendment.

Donald Trump Thinks the Freedom of the Press Is ‘Disgusting’

This Republican Lawmaker is already drafting legislation to violate that pesky 1st Amendment.

My little girl is now 9 months old. It's been a tough 9 months. Each day is very, very long, but the months have flown by. It almost seems that she learns something new every day. She has been on the edge of crawling for a couple weeks now. Yesterday I came home from work and she is scooching around on her bum. Now she is able to go forwards and backwards where before she could only go backwards.

She loves the XBOXONE. The power button lights up and makes a do-do-de-do sound when you touch it, and she LOVES playing with it. She will sit there for minutes (hours in her world) powering on and off the xbox. Yesterday I was holding her and looking out the back window and there were some magpies hanging around the yard. I said "Look at the bird." She tried to say bird (pretty good). I show her our dinner "potatoes" - "padada".

I get up in the mornings and take a shower while she sleeps. Normally when I get out she is awake. She goes "dada" when I enter the room. It's pretty nice to be recognized. Every night we read books before bed. I started about 4 months ago to start a routine. Read the books, then go to bed. She really loves reading with me. We started with only one book, but are up to 3 now: Pooh's Honey Trouble, Moo Baa La La La, and Jamberry. (all are great books. I would recommend all of them).

It's not all good though... Last night was pretty tough. My wife got food poisoning or something and so she was basically unable to leave the bathroom for a couple hours. This was just after we put our daughter to bed. She woke up, so it was my job to take care of her. She was crying pretty hard so I picked her up and rocked back and forth while reciting our books from memory. She fell asleep on my shoulder and I was able to put her back to bed. She woke up 1 minute later and started crying crazy hard. There was nothing I could do... MY wife was stuck in the bathroom, and I was stuck with a screaming baby. Nothing I did would calm her down. It's times like that where I really question my decisions...

Coming home from work is still hard. I get home and I'm mentally tired. I just want to hide in my computer room for a while and unwind, but I can't. Dinner needs to be made. The baby needs to be fed. I need to eat. Dinner needs to be cleaned. Baby needs to be bathed. Baby needs to go to bed. Every night. I feel drained when I come home from work, but I still need to perform. It's tough.

My wife is amazing. We are lucky enough to live in Canada and our socialist policies give us a year of government handouts so one of the parents can stay home with the baby. It's really nice. I honestly don't know how you Americans have babies. Anyway, she has to go back to work in December. She'll only go back 3 short days per week, but it's still going to be tough. My wife has been a great stay at home mom. She has infinite patience. I couldn't do it.

Having a baby is hard. It changes everything in your life. The first few months were the worst. Fucking miserable. It's slowly getting better though. Those first few months I would have "I hate this baby" thoughts every day. Now those thoughts are rare and out numbered by "I love this baby" thoughts. She's growing on me.

Now, I just have to figure out how to get her to sleep in her own bed. I want my bedtime cuddles from my wife back.

Original submission on "Undercover in the Alt-right", from the TMB-can't-stand-free-speech dept. Accepted, and them suppressed by the Nazi sympathizing opinion of a non-editor. Is this how SoylentNews is going to roll?

aristarchus [soylentnews.org] writes:

In an interesting look inside the world of white supremacism, the New York Times [nytimes.com] reports on the findings of a Swedish graduate student who went undercover into the belly of the beast.

Posing as a student writing a thesis about the suppression of right-wing speech, he traveled from London to New York to Charlottesville, Va. — and into the heart of a dangerous movement that is experiencing a profound rejuvenation.

While this may sound vaguely familiar, Hermansson discovered some not so surprising facts about Nazis: they love Hitler!

Mr. Hermansson and Mr. Jorjani met at an Irish pub near the Empire State Building, where the baby-faced Mr. Jorjani imagined a near future in which, thanks to liberal complacency over the migration crisis, Europe re-embraces fascism: “We will have a Europe, in 2050, where the bank notes have Adolf Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great. And Hitler will be seen like that: like Napoleon, like Alexander, not like some weird monster who is unique in his own category — no, he is just going to be seen as a great European leader.”

Yes, an interesting read for everyone interested in free speech, and its ability out political extremism and vanquish unreason with the bright lights of publicity. And a scary read for anyone worried about Millennial Nazis.

Fluent in the language of online irony and absurdism, and adept at producing successful memes, alt-lighters have pulled off something remarkable: They’ve made far-right ideas hip to a subset of young people, and framed themselves as society’s forgotten underdogs. The alt-light provides its audience easy scapegoats for their social, economic and sexual frustrations: liberals and feminists and migrants and, of course, globalists.

original submission

Postscriptum: a link to the actual report by Hermansson at Hope, not Hate. Very interesting, as a certain German on Rowan and Martin's LaughIn used to say.

The fake story really was fake.... As in, the story he was denouncing never actually existed in the first place.

Trump denounces as ‘fake news’ a news report that didn’t happen

Here we are, two days after The Morgatory Blizzander took exception to one of my submissions that was approved by another ed. Strange, because TMB is not even an ed, he is only a coder, from what I understand, so how could his objection overrule the decision of an editor? The result, as documented in my last journal, is that my submission has been deep sixed, marked as hidden, so that it is not in the queue, not in the pre-queue, not anywhere! I request, respectfully, that the eds cease this act of censorship. TMB's objections are no more valid than mine, and since I thought this particular article important enough to be a submission to SoylentNews, TMB's objections are noted, but now I think he may actually be a Nazi. Which, as a Native American, seems strange. But I do remember a scene in the movie "Under the Volcano", starring Albert Finney, where a Metis riding on a bus, and wearing a National Socialist Party Pin, harasses a full-blood Native American Mexican. And then it hit me! Not about racial purity at all, since the half-breeds could feel superior to the full bloods, as long as they were not of the "right" blood. TMB is a mongrel. Not that there is anything wrong with that, I am one, too! But to object to an investigative piece looking into the alt-right, because he is afraid, and I repeat, AFRAID, that I am calling him a Nazi? Methinks the Buzzard protests too much. Let my submission go, eds! Let it go.

Every Soylentil should, on occasion, pull back the curtain and see how sausage is made. Being the site this is, all the discussions by the editors are logged on IRC, and often it is very interesting what is said there:

[12:16:20] cmn32480: Could you please take a look at this story? TMB has some strong views we should not run it (see scroolback): https://soylentnews.org
[12:16:21] ^ �03Error�
[12:16:24] afk
[12:19:02] came from aris5tarcfhus..; wee probably shouldn't run it
[12:19:26] Bytram, that a couple white supremacists exist in the US is not news. running a story about it is not dissimenating news, it is furthering the nazi boogeyman myth and painting tens of millions on the alt-right as literal nazis when there are less than a hundred thousand white supremacists of any variety in the US.
[12:20:20] it serves no purpose but that of propaganda
[12:20:42] am puitting in my standing desk... will tak e apeek at it when I get a moment
[12:23:20] and it's not a speech issue. dingleberry is free to post it verbatim in his journal. it does not meet any criteria as a news story though.
[12:43:35] -!- TheMightyBuzzard has quit [Ping timeout: 276 seconds]
[12:46:01] Beware.... There are CLI programs (if somewhat arcane, can maintain many hundreds of systems) and also in GUI (easy to use, somewhat harder to leverage against hundreds of systems). Some of these have malware. Here's an example of one area where we found some.
[12:46:09] replace CLI/GUI with right/left
[12:46:25] I stand by my decisoion.
[12:46:39] NCommander: ^^ would you please take a look at this and weigh in if you would.
[12:46:46] -!- TheMightyBuzzard [TheMightyBuzzard!~TheMighty@Soylent/Staff/Developer/TMB] has joined #editorial
[12:46:51] I would love to stay and chat but I need to be AT work in about 10 minutes.
[12:46:59] blerg. my local nameserver took a shit.
[12:50:26] fuckin hell. it's my damned internet connection not my nameserver.
[12:53:15] Bytram, that MIGHT be valid if framed that way. leaving dingleberry's commentary makes certain it is framed otherwise.
[12:56:15] Looking
[12:56:55] Ugh
[12:56:59] * NCommander is on the fence
[12:59:11] TheMightyBuzzard, I get where you're coming on the boogeyman argument. The summary as it stands kinda sucks but the actual NYT article has a couple of interesting insights on it about the size and measure of the alt-right and relationship to hate groups.
[12:59:48] Possibly scrap the current summary, make it clear it's an op-ed piece, and that it's by definition opinion with a look inside these groups, and stick a disclaimer on it for good measure.
[13:00:52] the summary as it sits is complete crap and propaganda
[13:02:00] NCommander, have you ever hung with alt-right folks? the only relationship happening there is the extremely small hate groups agree on some issues while the vast majority are happy to denounce them if given half a chance.
[13:03:02] the biggest issue I see is the use of Alt-Right being easily transposed with Nazi
[13:03:10] that is in the NYT piece as well.
[13:03:19] ya, that's by design.
[13:03:53] i think the piece both the NYT Opinion piece and the story sub are hard left leaning propaganda and should get dumped.
[13:04:41] it isn't worth trying to make it an even reasonably even handed rewrite as the source is so far one way that theere is no center
[13:06:56] it's not even really the story that bugs me. the site could and has survive a bad story.
[13:07:51] it's that some of the folks in charge of picking what's worth reading genuinely thought this was. that disturbs me greatly.
[13:08:57] I've set the story for no display pending continued arguement
[13:12:26] emphasizing what cmn32480 said, in the first two paragraphs "extreme right" "alt-right" and "neo-Nazis" are used interchangeably. that is pretty solidly propagandizing.
[13:15:52] Hrm
[13:18:27] FYI: the internal definition of alt-right is something along the lines of "conservative, likely but not necessarily nationalist who sees the Republican party as not representing him/her anymore"

As I said, interesting. I have learned that TMB probably has actually hung out with alt-right types, and the we probably should not be running submissions by aristarchus. Moar Free Speech, Y'all!

Summer is winding down. The trees are turning yellow and are starting to release their leaves. The mornings have a distinct crispness that that foreshadow the coming winter. It's a great time of year -- possibly my favourite time of year.

The smell of fallen leaves always brings back memories. Memories of raking leaves and jumping in the pile. Memories of fall hikes in the mountains. From my desk at work, I have an amazing view of the Rocky Mountains. For most of the summer they have been hidden by smoke from forest fires, but today they are out in all their glory. It's a crystal clear day, and the peaks are glistening with the brilliant white of freshly fallen snow.

Soon the snow will be able to extend its reach to the lower elevations, where it will remain for the next 5 months or so. Cold winter nights mean warm, hearty meals. Stews and soups that warm the inside help keep the cold at bay. Blankets that have been packed away for the summer will be brought out and piled on the bed to make a heavy cocoon.

Winter is about being cozy. Without cold it's impossible to appreciate being warm, and that's what I think about when I think about winter. Not the cold, but the warmth.

-- Snow

I think I may have figured out at last what is making the Human Race so unhappy, and it's not just to do with chasing after little green pieces of paper. It occurred to me recently, but I'm getting rather forgetful these days. Let me see if I can remember.