Today's Beau

"...swearing to false allegations in a federal court filing..." That's a new one for me. Interesting indeed. The net is tightening.

We need to keep in mind that even though most of us are already convinced of Trump's gross criminality, proving it in court is a whole different thing, especially knowing there are 20 million very noisy rubes defending him, many of whom are willing to break things in order to help him smarm his way out of trouble.

Let us proceed - with a cautious alacrity.

Today's Beau

Q: Who won the debate last night?

A: Joe Biden won the debate last night.

Climate Change has been a factor driving hundreds of thousands of humans to migrate for a couple of decades already, and that migratory trend will grow into the hundreds of millions of people as sea levels rise and temperatures climb into the "biologically inhospitable" range.

If you're not down with Climate Change, you can STFU about immigration problems.

Today's Beau

Today I Learned

• Information Warfare 101: Take something mundane, make it sound suspicious, and use it to rile up the rubes

And

• Make your state inhospitable (eg: no abortions, no gay or trans rights, etc)
• Wonder why the US military doesn't want to move a base to your state, or assign any of their people to a base in your state
• Try to make the military knuckle under by holding confirmable officers hostage

 Beau Of The Fifth Column

Today's Beau

Republicans are trying to turn themselves back to the appearance of a more "friendly" monster - the smiling hyena.

They won't stop being anti-choice, anti-democracy, and anti-people - they'll continue tearing away at all of the institutions of democratic self-government - it's just that they know they have to ease back on the overt expressions of hatred.

"Plutocracy is definitely what we still want - we've just had the wrong plutocrats leading the party."

I think we can expect to see a lot more smiling hyenas like Rick Scott and Glenn Youngkin and John Kasich.

Beau Of The Fifth Column

Today's Beau

Trump can rant and rave, and stomp and stumble around the jungle. And don't think some of those robotic meatbags won't come runnin' when he says go.

Fuck 'em. Let 'em bring it. There's more than enough honorable people here, waiting for the chance to kick his ass and his little minion gang's ass too.

Today's Beau

Trump's target letter

1. Conspiracy to commit offense, or defraud the United States (up to 10 years)
2. Deprivation of rights under color of law (up to Life in Prison, or the Death Penalty)
3. Witness tampering (up to 20 years)

All federal felonies.

The Worst Of Them

If you're making your state more Business Friendly, but more People Hostile - you might be a Republican.

The bottom 10

Beau Of The Fifth Column

Some Beau On A Sunday

Bad guys telling us good guys are doing bad things, and good guys telling us bad guys are doing good things.

... or any combination of good guys, bad guys, good things, bad things.

When it's this difficult to figure out who's who or what's what, then you know there's some big-time fuckery going on, and it's going to be a while before we can settle on any reliable conclusions about anything.

Beau Of The Fifth Column

Today's Beau

Republicans are unwilling to ease off their strangle hold on the Daddy State fantasy that all you have to do is say something to make it real.

So it's really not weird to hear them say, "the FBI is corrupt and nobody should put any stock in anything they say", and then turn around and tell us, "The FBI has a tape that can't possibly be anything but true" - because - you know - it's the FBI.

Daddy State Awareness

THE BASICS:

• The Daddy State lies as a means of demonstrating power.
• The lies have practically nothing to do with the subject of the lies.
• Lying about everything is a way to condition us - to make us accept the premise that they can do anything they want.

The goal is to dictate reality to us.

Stop wondering why the Republicans go on taking Rudy Giuliani's word for anything. It's not Rudy they're relying on - it's the simple concept that all you have to do is repeat the lie until it becomes a cultural constant.

"When legend becomes truth, print the legend."

Trump tried to pull that shit at least three times.

1. The Zelenskyy call: "I need you to do us a favor though." He wasn't looking for the Ukrainians to start an actual investigation. All he wanted was the headline. ie: "Ukraine To Investigate Biden"
2. The call to DOJ: "Just say you're investigating, and let my Republicans in congress do the rest."
3. The Georgia call: "...find me 11,780 votes." Again, he wasn't asking them to dig up the actual ballots. He just wanted to create the suspicion that the Georgia results were in question.

Every time, he just wants the appearance of impropriety. He pumps up the institutions' public image of rock-solid trustworthiness when he wants to cast shadows on his opponents &/or when he needs them to whitewash whatever shitty thing he's done. And when those institutions don't cooperate, suddenly they're corrupt and deep state and the worst thing ever. 

Daddy State Awareness Guide

7.   The law is my sword, but not your shield.

7a. The law is my shield, but not your sword.

Beau Of The Fifth Column

Today's Beau

It's not 'woke' - it's Capitalism.

Today's Beau

There's a very strong link between Domestic Violence and Gun Homicide.

Domestic Violence can manifest in practically any family, any setting, any time.

Each year, approximately 2 out of every 13 Americans will commit some kind of abuse against someone in their homes or families, with 95% of the abuse being perpetrated by men.

Every minute of every day, there are 20 incidents of domestic abuse between intimate partners.

Some of those intimate partners are teachers.

Beau Of The Fifth Column

Just Makin' Shit Up

"Our whistleblower has an informant on the inside, and they're telling us about all kinds of bad things the Biden Crime Family is doing!!!!"

"We're not sure where our informant is right now - we're hoping to find them soon."

These clowns would have to improve by several orders of magnitude to match up with The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight.

My guess has to be that Republicans will next try to hint that Biden has done something horrible to their "informant".

àla Seth Rich, Vince Foster, et al. Brace for impact.

Beau Of The Fifth Column

"If you're actually concerned about this type of stuff, create some oversight. You're the Legislative Branch of government - legislate."

Today's Beau

The independent run may well be Trump's thing. He has no loyalty for the GOP (or anyone else - duh), and since he's really only in it for the Power Coupon$, he can continue to fleece the rubes to pay his legal fees and support his habits, as he gets what he thinks is a little payback by screwing things up completely (mostly for the Republicans, but the rest of us too) for having "treated him so unfairly".

He seems to be going with the Sun Tzu thing. ie: present your adversary with a dilemma that leads him to a lose/lose conclusion, instead of posing a problem that he'll eventually solve.

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

Todays Beau

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

There are no coincidences

Truth is, it's not a particularly good song (IMO). But it makes the MAGA gang get all ooky down in their feels so it can't be allowed.

Miley and Dolly - Rainbowland

Today's Beau

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

On balloons and UFOs

"The Chinese government is made up of people - not monsters."

ie: rational actors. They don't get up every morning and go looking for ways to get themselves vaporized by American nukes.

That said, it's a very dangerous game we've been fucking around with for a very long time. And at various times, we've had to dodge some very serious bullets.

Eventually though, somebody's going to screw up in a way that makes it impossible to keep some really bad things from happening.

The Bedford Incident:

Today's Beau

Nothing better than watching the opposition run around shooting themselves - and each other - in the foot.

But I do wonder about the Over/Under on how long we have to wait before the Press Poodles swing Republican Feuding back around with some good old-fashioned "Yeah, but the Democrats..."

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

Today's Beau

An awful lot of rubes are totally up in arms about this big bucket of nothin'.

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

Today's Beau

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column, on AI and being ready to work harder on your powers of discernment.

Today's Beau

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

This is how they manipulate you.

Today's Beau

And the first thing these Republican clowns did was to pass The Tax Cheats Protection Act.

But it's not going anywhere, it'll never become law, and none of that matters.

Justin King - Beau Of the Fifth Column

Explaining why "conservatives" love the under-educated.