Today's Tweet

Because there's a shitload to do, and we all have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Whether you're rich or poor, everyone should have the same guarantee of quality health care. Yesterday, we launched the #MedicareforAll Act. Today, we get to work. 💪🏾 pic.twitter.com/oIkPGtFuSB

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) February 28, 2019

What We All Know

Karen Tumulty, WaPo reiterates it for us:

“Donald Trump is a man who ran for office to make his brand great, not to make our country great. He had no desire or intention to lead this nation — only to market himself and to build his wealth and power,” Michael Cohen told the House Oversight Committee. “Mr. Trump would often say, this campaign was going to be the ‘greatest infomercial in political history.’ ”

In other words, what we have been living through for the past two years has been an alternate reality. It is far different from the one Trump envisioned when he came down the Trump Tower escalator in June 2015 and announced what was pretty much universally regarded as a preposterous bid for the presidency.

That was the point, and the plan all along. The networks and their advertisers and the pundits and the whole system of Wingnut Welfare moochers were supposed to make jillions of dollars by having the Press Poodles spend at least 4 years bashing Hillary (go to The Professional Left podcast every Friday evening to learn all about it).

And IMHO, the plan is to make government collapse, so the republic falls, so the Daddy State can prevail.

Overheard

A few different versions, the gist of which:

Republicans are yelling - a lot - about how Michael Cohen is a horrible rotten guy because he lied to Congress.

The lie he told them is, "Donald Trump did nothing illegal."

Let's just take a moment to allow the logic process to percolate a little bit.

Take your time, Repubs, but we're not gonna wait forever.

Yay, Media

The Press Poodles get one right.

From Frances Langham, Crooks & Liars:

This moment on Wednesday's Meet the Press Daily should never be forgotten. Kasie Hunt asks Chuck Todd a bonafide introspective question. After noting that the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee focussed all of their attention on calling Cohen a liar, and that they couldn't defend Trump's actions because those actions are indefensible, Kasie said this:

"The reality is the President of the United States was paying tens of thousands of dollars to someone covering up an alleged affair with a porn star in the run-up to an election. How did we lose sight of this? It's really unclear to me."

Chuck Todd replied, "It's not unclear. Stating that clearly, as you just said, is something that's useful and something that we need to keep doing." 

And then it's on to the next press scrum! 

Because it literally does not matter if Chuck Todd says "both sides" three hundred times in an hour or is too hyped up on whatever Donald Trump tweeted today to cover the demise of our democracy. The suits upstairs are in it to sell pharmaceutical advertising.

Today's GIF

Adapt. Improvise. Overcome.

Today's Pix

click

Today's Tweet

He knows nothing. The guy who does know something speaks up, trying to make it clear to people what's actually going on, but 45* can't stand being contradicted, so he jumps in to "disagree".

He disagrees with the actual meaning of words. (Daddy State Awareness, Rule 4)

Our President is a moron and this video is just more proof. https://t.co/X5095r8X0k

— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) February 26, 2019

Fighting Back

In spite of 45*'s insistence on never getting in Uncle Walt's way, we can log our first real win here in World War IV - which is really just the second OT period of WW2.

Anyway, if we use the tried-n-true method of comparing every-fuckin-thing with WW2 (like what I just did), then this might be something along the lines of Doolittle's raid on Tokyo. It had no real tactical impact, and it's not widely known in spite of getting a nice media splash, but it'll prob'ly be remembered as a Morale Booster, and as such, a nice little turning point in our overall effort.

Or not.

It seems like we're still not exactly catching fire with any of this shit - especially considering that about half of Americans still don't even know who the fuck Bob Mueller is, much less what he's doing.

But hey - progress is progress.

WaPo ran this today, by Ellen Nakashima:

The U.S. military blocked Internet access to an infamous Russian entity seeking to sow discord among Americans during the 2018 midterms, several U.S. officials said, a warning that the group’s operations against the United States are not cost-free.

The strike on the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, a company underwritten by an oligarch close to President Vladi­mir Putin, was part of the first offensive cyber campaign against Russia designed to thwart attempts to interfere with a U.S. election, the officials said.

“They basically took the IRA offline,” according to one individual familiar with the matter who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified information. “They shut ‘em down.”

The operation marked the first muscle-flexing by U.S. Cyber Command, with intelligence from the National Security Agency, under new authorities it was granted by President Trump and Congress last year to bolster offensive capabilities.

Whether the impact of the St. Petersburg action will be long-lasting remains to be seen. Russia’s tactics are evolving, and some analysts were skeptical of the deterrent value on either the Russian troll factory or on Putin, who, according to U.S. intelligence officials, ordered an “influence” campaign in 2016 to undermine faith in U.S. democracy. U.S. officials have also assessed that the Internet Research Agency works on behalf of the Kremlin.

“Such an operation would be more of a pinprick that is more annoying than deterring in the long run,” said Thomas Rid, a strategic studies professor at Johns Hopkins University, who was not briefed on the details.

But some U.S. officials argued that “grand strategic deterrence” is not always the goal. “Part of our objective is to throw a little curve ball, inject a little friction, sow confusion,” said one defense official. “There’s value in that. We showed what’s in the realm of the possible. It’s not the old way of doing business anymore.”

Today's Silly Thing

The Science Post (science, health, satire):

“We regret to announce that all 50 states are now reporting several cases of DKD” said CDC epidemiologist Mark Webber. “DKD is characterized as expressing or believing that one has vast and expert knowledge in a subject which they actually do not. It most often presents in the fields of medicine and science.”

There is currently no known cure for DKD, but scientists are hopeful with more education and isolation, it can be contained.

“We haven’t seen this level of DKD since Jenny McCarthy started spreading her vaccine causes autism bullshit” said Webber. “I fear the DKD level will continue to rise as more and more people with DKD have access to the internet, as well as there being several celebrities with the disease.”

Other headlines from The Science Post:

NSA confirms everything is a conspiracy, conspiracy theorists not convinced

Breaking: Anti-vaccers are actually paid Pharma Shills

Deep Diving

The intertoobz is a really weird place.

One of my favorite YouTubers - Beau Of The Fifth Column (Justin King) posts a lot of really interesting little blurbs, and today, this one really blew my programming.

Just a thought.

And in the comments, somebody copied in the link to this from ContraPoints:

(it's long, but there's great content - stuff I had no idea about)

Le Tweet

On being Republican - they have nothing but the worst of intentions

1/ The benefit of being in a party that doesn't want or need government to work, because it fundamentally doesn't believe in government and benefits enormously when government fails, is that all you need is to jam the machine's gears so it breaks. You don't have to *do* anything.

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) February 25, 2019

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2/ So when the GOP finds a criminal who knows how to win, backing that horse fervently offers the dual benefit of increasing Americans' hopelessness that government can ever be honest or work while also ensuring that those atop government aren't honest and do only nefarious work.

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3/ We may sometimes think of Trump as a sort of exception in the history of the GOP, but how often does a Republican do something awful and quickly wind up a "hero" of the Republican base? When has the party clearly tossed out its scoundrels? That'd be counter to its philosophy.

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4/ Dick Cheney is a hero for orchestrating a ruinous and false conflict that cost thousands of lives. Did the GOP care that Libby was outing agents in our clandestine services? "Owning the libs" has *always* been—my whole life—more important to the GOP than ethics or governance.

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5/ I guess what I'm saying is, what if Trump—despite not believing in any Republican "principles" or being anything but the clear anathema of any "moral majority"—is in fact the natural conclusion of the devolution of GOP politics, as in fact the principles never really mattered?

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6/ The GOP is now the party of "owning the libs." It doesn't care about immigration; it knows a wall won't reduce illegal immigration. As long as it seats judges who set us back 100 years and finds ways to prove that government doesn't work, it's doing *just* what it wants to do.

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7/ 70% of the GOP would lionize Roger Stone in perpetuity if it discovered that he'd secretly worked with Russia to elect Trump, and had thereafter found some sleazy way to get away with it, by pardon or otherwise. And Stone knows it. And Stone is excitedly waiting for sainthood.

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8/ When the only "governing" philosophy of a political party is that it hates the government it wants to control, and wants to reverse the progress of the democratic experiment of which it's a part, why should we be surprised when it makes a malignant narcissist into its godhead?