Slouching Towards Oblivion

Saturday, March 31, 2018

The Mob Abides

This is Arizona state representative Eric Descheenie:


I've heard this one floating around the net, and finally decided to look it up.

Surprise surprise, it does indeed show knuckleheaded "anti-immigration" freaks letting their shit overrule whatever shriveled critical thinking skills they still retain.

Snopes:

The incident occurred during a chaotic, five-hour long demonstration on 25 January 2018 at the Arizona capitol building where roughly a dozen anti-immigration activists turned out to protest the social justice lobbying group Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA) — though the group was there to advocate for pro-labor legislation, not immigration. Protesters alleged that LUCHA was “trying to advance social, racial and economic justice for DACA recipients, illegal aliens and their illegal families.” According to state lawmakers who were at the scene, the protesters were visibly armed.
The protesters were raggin' on Descheenie (who is of Navajo descent), questioning whether or not he was in this country legally.

A Native-American; an American Aboriginal - they needed him to be "alien"; they saw him as "alien"; so they went after him because he looked alien.

But they're not part of a racist mob looking for an excuse to satisfy their blood lust.

Friday, March 30, 2018

Today's Tweet



It's pretty fucked that guys like 45* - operating on the premise that "International Boundaries Are For Suckers" - find it so easy to sell the rubes on the absolute necessity of "Border Security".

When Capital is free to go wherever its most likely to turn a profit, but Labor is chained to its country of origin, people trying to work for a living are always the losers.



hat tip = Bob Cesca on Twitter

Today's Pix

Isn't every Friday a Good Friday?



















Thursday, March 29, 2018

A Brief Manifesto


A reminder. A short list of items to help us stay grounded:

  • Earth is not flat
  • Vaccines work
  • We've been to the moon
  • Climate change is a thing
  • The universe is expanding
  • Math is the universal language
  • Chemtrails aren't a thing
  • Weather weapons aren't a thing
  • We are made of star stuff
  • Science is like magic, only real

Today's Tweet



There will be stoopid

 

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Today's Juicy Morsel


45* has elevated a lawyer named Andrew Ekonomou(**) to a lead position on his Russia Probe team.

Ekonomou said that since he began working with Sekulow, he has attended meetings with Mueller’s team. He said he brings more criminal experience to the table than Sekulow. Ekonomou is a member of The Lambros Firm LLC, a boutique firm in Atlanta, which mostly handles civil and criminal racketeering cases for D.A.s around the state.

Might that last bit - "criminal racketeering" - be a tiny hint as to what Team45* has been hearing in those meetings with Bobby Three Sticks?

(**) I can't find a bio for this guy.

On Chickens And Roosting


Ari Melber's The Beat on MSNBC, via Crooks & Liars:



Ari Melber covered a topic that would be getting national attention, were it not for the frenetic 24/7 news cycle coming out of the Trump administration.

Just after Mike Pompeo stepped down from CIA, Trump declared that he was promoting Gina Haspel to run the CIA, touting her as a great choice. Well, many Americans have a different opinion. Both Democrats and Republicans have reservations leading back to Haspel's past history as the person who had oversight over a CIA "black site" in Thailand. While an open investigation into torture was underway, evidence was destroyed. Haspel claims to not have given the order for tapes to be destroyed, though.

Ari Melber discussed this in an extensive segment on his nightly show, The Beat, on Tuesday night. It was hard hitting, deep dive into what Haspel's confirmation could mean for our country, as well as how we would be viewed by the world.

Olbermann, Special Comment, 11-05-2007:



(paraphrasing) Torture causes people to plead, and to break, and to provide the most authentic-sounding fiction - it does not cause them to tell us the truth.

Gina Haspel is implicated in the effort to cover up the crimes of the CIA. It's not unreasonable to think she's looking to complete that project, and if she's willing to go that far, there's nothing to keep me from thinking she'd be willing to let 45* use the CIA against American citizens on American soil.

I hope she's just intending to polish up the CIA's image and to protect its standing in the federal power structure. But she's compromised, which can be a very bad thing in itself, and could easily mean she'll be further compromised, feeling the need to do more bad things as she tries to compensate for all those other bad things - and on and on and on.

That's the kind of geometric expansion of shit that happens when we refuse to hold government accountable because we've become comfortably numb and we only really care about "our team" winning.

Today's Tweet



Because it always ends up being about the voters - Republican's efforts to the contrary notwithstanding.

 

Today's Pix

Always a big crop when a movement gets up a little steam


















Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Eerie Parallel


From Wonkette:

Sixteen-year-old Jaelyn Rose Willey was taken off life support last night after having been shot in the head by Austin Rollins, a boy described by police as a “lovesick teen.”

Police described Austin Bomber Mark Anthony Conditt as a “very challenged young man” who was dealing with “challenges” in his personal life. “Challenges” that he was unable to find a way to deal with that did not involve killing two people and injuring five others. People he’d never met, who very likely did not have a thing to do with his “challenges.”

Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz was abusive to his girlfriend and was so obsessed with her that he threatened to kill her new boyfriend. He killed 17 people.

Guns are a problem. I’m not saying they’re not. We need gun control.
But what we also need is for men, as a people, TO STOP FUCKING MURDERING PEOPLE BECAUSE THEY CAN’T GET LAID.

Women are also rejected. Women also spend their teen years pining after dreamy boys who will never love them back. You don’t see us going around murdering people over it. You don’t see us setting up internet communities for the purpose of talking about how evil and shallow men are for not taking us to pound town.
It suddenly occurs to me that sometimes, this American shooting shit looks a little too much like the "Honor Killings" that everybody loves Islam for.

Something To Remember

Median Net Worth in USAmerica Inc last year was about $80,000.

Average Net Worth was about $180,000.

There are about 550 billionaires, and something like 10 million millionaires up in this joint.

Some basic arithmetic makes it pretty easy to imagine how fucked up American Wealth Distribution has become.

Bill Gates walks into a soup kitchen, and the average net worth of the people in that room goes up into the hundreds of millions.

But you've still got Bill Gates and about 100 stone broke homeless people.

This is not a particularly rich country when 99% of the people are doing all the work while the other 1% get all the goodies.


Today's Tweet



There'll be some changes made.



Sam Cooke - A Change Gonna Come


Man In The Mirror -(cover) Joyful Noise


What's Goin' On -(cover) Playing For Change





Monday, March 26, 2018

It Gets Weirder


Via the Committee To Investigate Russia:



And a conversation with Clapper and Brennan:




"...precisely because we didn't have a pile of rubble..."

We're in a Cyberspace war, and we're still trying to fight it in Meatspace - at the insistence of Cult45. There's just no practical way to avoid the conclusion that our POTUS is corrupt and/or compromised enough to be working against us.

Amy's List


Amy Siskind

March 24, 2018

This week Cambridge Analytica became a full-blown UK and US scandal, as the company came under scrutiny for harvesting the data of 50 million Facebook users and using it to impact the 2016 US election, possibly in cooperation with Russia. British authorities raided the company late Friday, while back home, Facebook faced a backlash from users and Congress for mishandling the security of personal information and for the company’s flat-footed and weak response to the crisis.

This week Trump is increasingly ruling as a party of one, making decisions and taking actions on his own, without consultation or planning. After losing his national security advisor and lead attorney in the Mueller probe, Trump is leaving positions unfilled or filling them with sycophants and cable-tv personalities. This week, Trump heightened his attacks on Mueller, as he has shifted to a more aggressive stance in all matters, including the Russia probe. Trump is in danger from several looming threats including the Mueller probe, fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and women coming forward to tell their stories.

2. On Saturday and Sunday, Trump sent a series of error-filled tweets blasting the Russia probe and familiar targets like Comey and Hillary Clinton, and for the first time, directly attacking Mueller.

3. As he had hours after the firing, Trump again attacking McCabe with false claims, “How many hundreds of thousands of dollars was given to wife’s campaign by Crooked H friend, Terry M,” adding “Comey knew it all.”

4. Trump also tweeted “The Mueller probe should never have been started,” saying there was “no collusion and there was no crime.” This is false. Four Trump aides and 13 Russians have been charged with crimes.

10. On Tuesday, Trump ally Rep. Louie Gohmert introduced a resolution in the House which would declare March 31st, Cesar Chavez’s birthday, “National Border Control Day.”

16. Retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters quit as a Fox News analyst, saying the cable-tv network had degenerated into a “propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration,” adding, “now I am ashamed.”

27. The story also detailed Wylie’s meetings with Steve Bannon in 2013, who then booked him to meet with Robert and Rebekah Mercer. Wylie, who says he “made Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool,” is now a whistleblower.

28. On Tuesday, WAPO reported Wylie also said Bannon oversaw Cambridge Analytica’s early efforts in 2014 to collect data to build detailed profiles on millions of American voters ahead of the 2016 election.

29. Bannon served as vice president and secretary from June 2014 to August 2016, when he joined the Trump campaign. Bannon okayed the $1 million expenditure to acquire the data, including Facebook profiles, in 2014.

60. On Thursday, WAPO reported Trump is having trouble finding top-notch lawyers to represent him in the Mueller probe. Several prominent white-collar lawyers have, like Olson and Emmet Flood, turned down offers.

61. Some law firms have signaled they don’t want the controversy of representing a unpopular and divisive leader, while others are claiming they have clients with conflicting interest.

154 total this week.

Are We Dead Yet?

I remain hopeful even as optimism is held at bay.

This Is Our World - animation by Steve Cutts

Today's Tweet



Follow the thread. There's a lot we still don't know. A lot that doesn't make enough sense yet.

And, as usual, it has everything to do with the money; and everything to do with the power that always goes with the money.

We ain't seen nuthin' yet.