Remember our reporting about the “militia” group American Freedom Keepers who waltzed into Little Cambodia last month with a racist motorcycle club, running out FEMA and other workers and declaring themselves in charge?  Remember how we wrote about how gun crazies often try to recast themselves as dewy-eyed do-gooders when their gun-slinging gets them into a world of trouble?

Welp, things are not going well for AFK, as they’ve been named in a lawsuit filed by the City of Charlottesville and others for the riots that they made worse by their gun toting presence in August.  AFK was named among other groups, especially the one that calls themselves the Pennsylvania Light Foot Militia, a bunch of gun nuts from Latrobe Pennsylvania led by “Colonel” Christian Yingling (yeah, sure), whose image was all over the media that weekend declaring himself and his crowd in charge.

The filing is pretty clear and certainly damning of the actions of our friends and the other private militia groups who decided to take over “peacekeeping” (translation: protecting violent racists) at the time.  NOW, instead of begging for money to burnish their image for their “charity” work in Texas, they get to beg for money for lawyers.  They’re calling themselves the Charlotte 32 as if they’re some poor persecuted group of innocents.  They also love themselves some Latin.  Their new motto copied from Wikipedia is Si vis pacem, para bellum, which translates roughly to “If you want peace, prepare for war”.  It seems like a pretty silly motto, being that they started the war in Charlottesville by showing up and trying to take over.

You can bet they’re pretty worried, too.  The lawsuit states:

Oh, and it gets better:

That lawlessness certainly happened in Charlottesville with one death and many injured.  This suit makes for pretty juicy reading for 79 pages.  Among other things, the City of Charlottesville seeks injunctive relief to keep these dangerous screwballs out of Charlottesville in an effort to take their city back from racists and weirdos.

And it’s not a moment too soon.

Thanks to Sam for the heads up.

Healthy Nutrition Today dot com is a website registered to Strasko Arsovski in Macedonia.  They publish rightwing fake news.

They also have a Facebook page.  Where crazy crap happens.

Oaky, so this kinda explains why the nuts are stocking up guns.  Hell, you could scare me with 3000 guillotines so this is real rumor overkill.

Anyway, I to Charles’ suggestion and I did look it up on the internet.  I went to some of my favorite political research tools, Popular Mechanics and McClatchy.

It’s probably not true.

Thanks to Isak for the heads up.

Okay, so last year there was a demonstration in downtown Houston at the Islamic Da’Wah Center.  It was organized on Facebook by a group called Stop Islamization of Texas.

Even though people showed up to demonstrate with “white lives matter” banners, a full year’s supply of confederate flags, and some AK47’s to provide proof of what they lack in the pants department, the counter protestors stayed calm, rented a bubble machine and nobody got hurt.

It was kind of a mess, though, because downtown Houston is already crowded.

Well, come to find out …

As CNN reported last week, the protest was put together by the “Heart of Texas” Facebook page – a page that was revealed last month as one of the fake accounts operated out of Russia.

If anybody has pictures of that demonstration, I’d like to see if we can identify the fascist protestors because I know a guy who knows a guy who can print up “Commie Dupe” tee-shirts. And that would be fun.

Thanks to Brian C and Anne for the heads up.

This is some kind of weird stuff.

The Security Guard at the Mandalay Resort in Las Vegas, who was shot by Stephen Paddock – but we were never quite clear when – can’t be found.

Since the days that Paddock opened fire at people attending a country music festival across from Mandalay Bay, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department has shifted its timeline more than once.

Initially, investigators said that Campos was shot after Paddock opened fire on the Route 91 Harvest festival concert.

Then, Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said Campos was shot at 9:59 p.m., six minutes before the concert began. Finally, at a brief news conference last Friday, he said Campos was shot by the gunman at 10:05 p.m.

I hope he won a jackpot and headed for Cabo San Lucas.

Thanks to Bryan for the heads up.

Okay, so Trump heads out to the Rose Garden yesterday to report that everything is A-Ok and people just don’t appreciate his presidency and what a great job he’s doing and Obama didn’t call the families of soldiers giving the ultimate sacrifice but he’s fixing to do that just any day now because he was very busy last week and didn’t have time to do it and ohmygoodness aren’t these roses the best roses in the world since I became president and Obama hated these roses and the feeling was mutual and I’m great and I am just great.

No, seriously, that’s what followed this cabinet meeting —

Trump told Cabinet members and reporters that there’s plenty wrong in America, and it’s variously the fault of Democrats, insurance companies, NFL players, Republicans in Congress, Hillary Clinton, former presidents and drug-dealing Mexicans. Trump said he understood why former White House strategist Steve Bannon wanted to torch Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans for not getting health care or other legislation through.

If he didn’t mention you by name, I’m sorry but you’ll just have to wait your turn.

And now for a brief message from reality.  Reality, available in newspapers everywhere.

From CNN.

Said [Bob] Corker: “My thoughts were well thought out. Look, I didn’t just blurt them out.”

He added: “I’ve had private dinners, I’ve had private phone calls, I’ve tried to intervene on topics that I thought things were going in a different direction and are not going to be good for our country. This is not a new thing, it’s been building for some time. And it’s a pattern that I think we’ve fought and expressed for some period of time.”

And John McCain.

“To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last best hope of earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.”

It is worse than we thought.