eVille Times: January 2016

Jan 31, 2016

Today's Tweet

Whoever made this, thank you.
Trump v. Manson. pic.twitter.com/ztUx36aY1c
— Steve Marmel (@Marmel) January 31, 2016

Jan 30, 2016

These guys are often pretty dang good. Not Professional Left kinda good, but good. The best bit for me is their point that Trump is setting up DumFux News to be included in the big bad media megalith, and using Sarah Palin to swing the sledge for him. Pretty interesting.

And it goes along with driftglass (Professional Left) observing that there are politicians and other power-humpers out there trying lotsa little maneuvers to take advantage of our obsessive acceptance of the Both-Sides narrative in order to position themselves as the "sensible middle". Trump is a master at playing the ends against each other while staying safely at the center of it all. (have you watched "The Wheeler Dealers" yet, like I told ya?)

The Mic Drop

Nobody's doing it better right now than Larry Wilmore.

Still hoping Trevor Noah will at least start to catch up soon. Also hoping the suits give him the space and the help he needs to do that.

Jan 29, 2016

Listen Up

This week's podcast from driftglass and Blue Gal - Ep. 312, Trump No Trump

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Left Behind

What strikes me is that these people sound like children. Whether they're 22 years old or 60 - when they speak, they sound like they think they know everything they need to know, and that there's just no way they could be trying to argue their point from a false premise.

The two Goober Squadlings in that report can't believe they won't get their way just because they think they're right and everybody else is wrong and, "Gee, Dad - it's just not fair - all the other kids did it".

And not to give ya too much of a whiplash, but we need to put some real schooling back into schools. We need to teach kids about critical thinking, so they don't grow up to become easy marks for any random jagoff who can fool 'em into believing whatever he tells 'em in order to serve his own lust for power.

I'm not trying to set myself up as a paragon. I've bought into all kinds of shit that ends up looking pretty stoopid in retrospect. I owned a pair of Earth Shoes for fuck's sake - but c'mon, guys - at least I haven't let anybody convince me Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 is the only thing in the US Constitution that matters.

Skepticism is our friend, kids.

Apply the same principles to everything anybody says about their "deeper understanding".

The arrogance that seems always to grow from deliberate ignorance can get your dumb ass killed.

Guerrilla Campaign

If this is real - and I'm hoping it is - it doesn't get much grass-rootsier than this right here.

Who's Foolin' Who?

So Paul Kantner died yesterday, and I went to YouTube to listen to Crown of Creation (which I hadn't heard in quite a while), and holy crap - Star Track comes on and I'm thinking that sounds really familiar, and holy crap again, I start singing Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In - and it fits almost perfectly.

Everything recycles. Everything is derived from something else. So when something comes along that seems really new, try to understand how rare and exceptional it has to be to make us forget where it came from.

Star Track --Jefferson Airplane

Just Dropped In (cover) --Kenny Rogers & The First Edition

I Have Found God

... oh - sorry, it's just Charlie Pierce - and that's close enough for me.

It seems that, over at The Washington Post, a once-great newspaper now doing business as an adjunct to the home delivery industry, Fred Hiatt's Workshop For Ghastly Writing is getting a little run for this editorial in which Bernie Sanders is posed as the Lord Mayor Of Munchkinland. There's nothing like the scorn of the Church Of The Savvy. To borrow a comparison from the late Molly Ivins, it's like being gummed by a newt. Folks, leave the snark to the professionals, OK? Anyway, it seems that Fred and his minions find Sanders' proposals to be unrealistic, an insight now shared by almost every putatively liberal pundit, as well as every gas station attendant between Des Moines and Ottumwa. Let's look at the argument, shall we?

Jan 28, 2016

Winning Debate Tweet

Jeb "Goldilocks" Bush: My dad invaded Iraq too little. My brother invaded Iraq too much. I will invade Iraq just right.
— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) January 29, 2016

"Ammon" Speaks

Jan 27, 2016

Marc Maron's WTF Podcast

You can skip the first 20 or so minutes where Marc gets a little nutty (surprise surprise) trying to get the whole "Amy Schumer controversy" straightened out. Deep inside baseball stuff.

Anyway Maron gets some really good stuff outa the big dude.

Episode 675 - Michael Moore

Go, Barry Bams, Go

I guess we'll see what we see when we see it, but dang.

Politcus.com:

The President is in the midst of a very serious plan to issue an executive order that requires companies doing business with the federal government to disclose their political contributions. Just think; with a stroke of his pen the President will make “dark money” donors receiving billions of taxpayer money reveal who they contribute to or lose out on those highly-profitable federal government contracts.

Now, of course this does not, in any way, shape or form “overturn” Citizens United. But it is a major step in prompting some companies and corporations doing business with the federal government to rein in some of their dark money efforts to buy influence over the government. The directive, a so-called ‘dark money‘ executive order would mandate that “all government contractors publicly report their contributions to groups that spend money to influence campaigns and elections.”

Yeah yeah - it's Politcus. But wow - if this is really the plan, and he pulls it off, there's gonna be some folks workin' overtime trying to figure how to love what he's doin' while still hatin' his ass for doin' it.

And BTW - every governor of every state should be doing exactly the same thing.

How Do You Spell "Entitlement"?

... I spell it a-s-s-h-o-l-e-w-i-t-h-a-g-u-n.

via Raw Story:

A Pennsylvania woman was murdered after she rejected the romantic overtures of a man she encountered at a Pittsburgh bar.

Janese Talton-Jackson, the 29 year-old mother of three children, was at Cliff’s Bar as closing time neared on January 22. A man, identified by police as Charles McKinney, approached Talton-Jackson and asked her out on a date, according to CBS Pittsburgh. She rejected the man’s advances and he then followed her outside and eventually shot her in the chest. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Goober Squad Busted

First - I'm sorry Mr Finicum is dead. I think that's what he wanted - he said as much - but I'm hoping Mrs Finicum and all the little Finicums find good ways to get past it.

Meanwhile, we might have some fun watching as these militia rubes fall to squabbling internally due to the rumors (aka: bullshit) and false reports about how Finicum was killed.

Eyewitnesses knock down conspiracy theories about LaVoy Finicum dying with his hands up https://t.co/Db3dahU4m2 https://t.co/l5Q0dAaEfa
— Raw Story (@RawStory) January 27, 2016

These nuts maintain a diet rich in paranoid conspiracy and an awful lot of 'em are absolutely determined to believe anything they're told as long as it fits the framing of "Gubmint always bad - Camo Goobers always good."

Makes me wonder what happens now that "two of their own", Mark McConnell and Melvin Lee, are saying 'calm down' and 'let's be sensible' and 'what you've heard about the feds murdering Lavoy isn't true', etc.

If their own guys are seen as failing the "purity test" (which of course was never clearly defined, because it can't actually be defined because who the fuck died and made you the fuckin' pope?), factional splits get real big real quick, and they get to runnin' in tighter and tighter circles chasing each other's tails, and before ya know it, they disappear up each other's assholes. (sounds like a certain political party don't it?)

It's nice to think the rest of these Y'all-Qaeda cells will just disintegrate and reabsorb. And some of that should happen - there are some people in this "movement" who can think, and generally, when those people are shown that some of the folks in positions of leadership are very obviously bug-fucking crazy, they tend to split. And if they really can think for themselves, they'll know the fight's over; they lost; and they were on the wrong side anyway.

There's also some probability that the remaining Goober Leaders are trying to figure how best to use Finicum's death.

"See? The Gubmint is big and dangerous. If we're gonna win this thing, we have to fight smart. Lavoy Finicum didn't fight smart. Lavoy Finicum is fuckin' dead now."

Lotsa moves left to play out. This shit ain't over.

Today's Quote

A man's worth is popularly determined by his intellect. And his intellect - unfortunately - is thought to be proportional to the distance between the front and back covers of his autobiography. --me (with a nod to Ambrose Bierce)

Jan 26, 2016

Today's Wingnut

Meet Joe Stetsen

Joe seems like a fun date. I'm sure he'll be the belle o' the ball in the county lockup.

Now, here's Harney County Judge Steve Grasty.

My guess is that Steve is wondering (like a lot of us are wondering) how the fuck we got from the pretty good kinda moderate conservatism of John Lindsay and Nellie Rockefeller in the 60s and 70s to this rabid, slaverin'-dog, kill-'em-all-let-god-sort-'em-out, radical bullshit.

Didn't just happen last night; not gonna un-happen by tomorrow.

For me, the lights came on in 1992, listening to Pat Buchanan at the GOP convention in Houston. I'd been feeling a little antsy about my preferences for Repubs for a few years, but that speech made a very loud, very uncomfortable noise in my head, and I just kinda knew I'd been wrong for too long, and it was time for a rethink.

Minds can be changed. Sometimes for the better.

Today's Pix

Jan 25, 2016

Today's Eternal Sadness

hat tip = Nick (that's my Mookie) Nacho

From NBC News:

A gun-store owner and his son were killed in a shootout with two customers after an argument over a $25 firearm repair fee, police told NBC station WDSU.

The patrons were also taken to hospital with serious injuries following Saturday's incident at the store near Picayune, Mississippi, which is 130 miles south of Jackson.

The only thing that stops a law-abiding citizen with a gun - I can't make the joke work, even for me.

And I can't get cute with, "Well, as long as they're killing each other, I'll call that an improvement".

Fuck that, and fuck me for thinking it.

We've been trying hard to tell you for a long time. It's up to you now, ammosexuals. Those were your guys. Get off your ass and do something about it. Step up or step aside.

Trouble At The Top

Keeper of the flame

Defender of the faith

Guardian of standing athwart and yelling STOP

John Fowler, National Review Publisher, telling us basically that the GOP "establishment" has become the new Surrender Monkeys.

But BTW - "GOP Establishment"? Is that even still a thing? And yes, of course it is, even though they've been striving all these many long years to trick people into thinking there isn't really an "establishment" because that goes against all of that rugged individualism bullshit they've been peddling for those same many long years.

"The Big-Daddy Conservatives" have inveighed against Central Planning forever (working feverishly to make sure the rubes ignore the fact that the strategy comes from a committee at GOP HQ), but now that their party has broken up into a thousand little independent franchising operations, they're all clutching their pearls tight enough to choke a RINO (buh-dum-chssh - sorry).

Anyway, if any of these jokers had ever really bothered to read Ayn Rand, they'd know that the main tenet of Objectivsm is that while a contradiction can exist, it can't prevail. Which means they'd understand that what's happening to the GOP now is what they've actually been saying should happen.

They've wanted everybody standing alone. If we're all separated from each other, we can't very well act in concert with each other, and that way, the people who're already in power get to stay in power, and the rest of us get to pay rent to them.

But then, here comes Trump-o-mania. I can't think of a clearer example of the almost instinctual inclination of people to get together and push back once they realize they're being fucked over. Why, it's almost like they're - dare I say it? - Unionizing.

What I think is going on now is that the old GOP bosses are finding it a lot more difficult to co-opt the Trumpkins like they co-opted the TeaBaggers. The more the GOP tries to play nice and get the rubes to come home, the harder Trump pushes them towards the extreme. Whatever else he is or appears to be, the guy's no dummy. He knows how to hijack a proxy fight at a stockholders' meeting.

And yes, there are some very close parallels with The Bernie Mensches. But don't be stoopid enough to think I'm joining the Both-Siders. If you can't tell the difference between Bernie and Trump, you need to put down the spray paint and go outside for a while.

So - common cause, anyone? Bernie makes a lot of sense for the Trumpkins - all the good stuff about truth-telling and fair deals and solid American values, but without the brown shirts and protester beatings.

Today's Quote

I don't know if god exists, but it would be better for his reputation if he didn't. --Jules Renard

hat tip = Twitter feed from Pascals' Bookie

Jan 24, 2016

How To Protest

Jan 22, 2016

Today's Tweet

Who's your best friend? https://t.co/mX6jWihM3J
— Kevin Pang (@pang) January 18, 2016

Today's Meme

hat tip = twitter pal perfectly frank

Today's Tweet

UPDATE: DeKalb officer, indicted in shooting death of unarmed, naked vet, booked into jail. https://t.co/5X1IeozbqG pic.twitter.com/XgdsnJ7YV2
— AJC (@ajc) January 22, 2016

So which way do we go on this one?

Blue Lives Matter?
Khaki Lives Matter?
Support The Troops?
Save Our Vets?

One faction of Uber-Patriots fighting against other factions of Uber-Patriots, and all of a sudden, it's like we don't even have a fucking country anymore.