Ms Conway

From Policy Mic:

On Tuesday, the Democratic Coalition Against Trump unearthed remarks Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump's new campaign manager, made in January 2013 suggesting that rape is women's fault. If they weren't so weak, Conway suggested, they'd be able to fight off their attackers.

"If we were physiologically — not mentally, emotionally, professionally — equal to men, if we were physiologically as strong as men, rape would not exist," Conway said on the PBS show To the Contrary at the time.

"You would be able to defend yourself and fight him off."

I wonder if all the men who've been raped know it wasn't possible for them to have been raped.

On Paul Le Page

I'm not saying I know for sure, but I don't think I'm willing to take Google Translate's word for it.

I typed in this: "LePage"
And got this: "unashamed and hateful asshole."

Wonderment

Where are the ghostbusters when ya really need 'em?

The Trump campaign is like the Comments Section of an Alt-Right website came to life and decided to run for president.

hat tip = some random Twitter dude

Trae Crowder

Fellow Travelers

I worry a little sometimes about how "the looney lefties" line up with a lot of what I'm lined up with politically - not because they're bad people and I hate making common cause with a buncha hippies, but because I'm not all in; I go out of my way not to be in lockstep with anybody; I just don't believe the "way they believe" - whatever the hell any of that means at any given moment.

Anyhoo

That said, there is something to the bit about how "you will know them by their fellows".  You are not your friends, but there are reasons people gather together and one of the big ones is that they reflect at least some of each other's values.

So when you're talking about a Donald Trump, you can't ignore the simple fact that real live White Nationalist fuckwads are lining up behind him, itching for a nice fat slice of that power pie.  We can know a little something about him by the people he attracts to his cause. 

“We have a wonderful OPPORTUNITY here folks, that may never come again, at the RIGHT time,” he stated. “Donald Trump’s campaign statements, if nothing else, have SHOWN that ‘our views’ are NOT so ‘unpopular’ as the Political Correctness crowd have told everyone they are!”

The dead give-away is when somebody's making a political statement and refers to any other American as "the enemy".  There are limits, guys.  And we've been past those limits before.  And going past those limits has always meant unjustly bad things for righteously decent people. Just sayin' - don't be like those assholes over there.

So they're all the same? It doesn't matter? You're just picking one corporatized automaton over another? Bullshit.

But in the end - seriously - who would you rather hang out with?  Which of these fellows would you rather be known by?

Fake Lord Have Mercy

hat tip = bosom buddy Lollie B

How Wrong?

Real wrong.  I ran a little video on my little blog here not all that long ago, showing Jim Webb's announcement that he was running for POTUS - and I remember saying I'd give the guy a look because he did some decent things in his one term in the US Senate (not the least of which was simply keeping George Allen out of that seat). 

Anyhoo - I've been wrong about a lot of things, but never wronger than thinking Jim Webb  as a candidate for Prez was worth more than a spit shine a dead man's shoes.

Samantha Bee:

The OpEd piece Ms Bee refers to is still up at WaPo, and I was kinda struck by a line Webb uses in the last paragraph:

Mark Twain once commented that “to arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man’s character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.”

OK, but let's look at the behavior of both Jackson and Tubman thru the lens of those standards - which, btw, change over time.  You don't get to suspend the rules to suit your convenience - we play the full nine innings here.

In the early 1800s, Jackson was doing what most people were doing, and it all seems to be in line with the standards of his time. 

Tubman was doing things that were illegal in the mid-1800s; things that were considered by at least half of her contemporaries to be seditious and treacherous and evil.

Looking back on it all, which one was actually doing the good things, and which one was doing the shitty things?  What would you want to be remembered for - The Underground Railroad or The Trail Of Tears? 

So by Webb's metrics, Bull Connor (eg) was an OK guy because we need to think of his complete assholery as something other than complete assholery because he was a man of his time and so we have to judge him by the standards prevailing in Alabama in 1963?  What-the-actual-fucking-fuck?

Webb decries the PC / White Privilege criticism while arguing a position that is totally embedded in it. 

Here's the thing, Jim - when you've got your head up your ass, even if you open your eyes, all you're gonna see is your own shit.  I need you to work on that one for me, OK?

Another 420

Usually, on April 20th, I put up a post to be kinda jokey about The Hemp Rangers, or I'll try to link it back to the struggles of working people against the Corporatists, but every once in a while, I feel the need to hedge my bets against the whole after-life thing.

So just in case Adolph is able to check in with us (this being his birthday and all), and because there's a sizable portion of Americans who seem to think Mr Hitler had some good ideas too - which makes them think it's OK to support the authoritarian crap spilling out of the GOP right now - I think it's important to take just a small moment to mock him (and them) unmercifully, and to make sure they all know how stoopidly childish their behavior is.

(and of course, I do this in a stoopidly childish way to make sure they can understand it)

So Adolph was an extremely bad guy who did extremely bad things.  And he didn't love his country; he actually had a deep sense of shame and loathing for himself and everybody else, and his whole political career was aimed at punishing the German people for being stoopid enough to follow The Kaiser, and then even stoopider for following him, and all he could think of was to burn the whole place down etc etc etc.

But a Nickelback fan? Universal condemnation is in order - so yeah - fuck that guy.

Things We Dare Not Do

Public schools
End slavery
Trust-Busting
Federal income tax
Allow labor to organize
Child labor laws
Voting rights for women
Regulate banks
Federalize the currency
Minimum wage
Social Security
Desegregation
Voting rights for 'blacks'
Medicare
Head Start
Childhood nutrition
Permit interracial marriage
Pollution prevention
A woman's right to choose
AIDS research
Sex Education
Stem cell research
Marriage equality

and on and on and on.

"Conservatives" have always argued against these things, saying they'll cause the collapse of industry, or the ruination of the family, or the end of America.

"Conservatives" have railed against policies that are in keeping with a basic rock-solid American value of doing what we can in order to form a more perfect union.  They've argued against doing the right thing; against doing what's best for the most.  They argue against keeping the promises we've made to ourselves, and to each other, and to generations beyond what we can see from where are now.

Every time.  Every issue.  The argument is always overblown, and it's always wrong.

How does anybody with pubic hair stay with these clods?

Yesterday's News

"Big" story at WaPo yesterday about Jim Webb starting to take a step or two tentatively to see if maybe he should contemplate considering a possible try to investigate whether or not he should maybe run for POTUS as an independent.

“After weeks of study, including consultations with ballot experts and independent activists across the country, we have a handle on what it takes to give voters in every state a real choice,” Webb spokesman Craig Crawford said in a statement. Jones, he said, would help with the next step: “How to pay for it.”

And the "who gives a fuck" silence was deafening.

It's good to have guys out there making some noise about how fucked up the system is right now, so I have no problem with this on its face.  But when you have people running the operation who're basically in the Business Of Politics, trying to position yourself as the guy who wants to take the business out of politics makes you look a little silly.

I dunno how else it gets done or who's supposed to do it, BTW - the only people voting in favor of Women's Suffrage were men (eg) - so maybe it's just that Jim Webb really doesn't strike me as the guy to pull it off.  Or maybe it's because I'm a little suspicious when it comes to ex-military people wanting to make changes to, and asking to be put in charge of a government that's supposed to be civilian-centered.

We have to figure out ways to get together and work the problem, but we also have to keep in mind: 

"Distrust and caution are the parents of security." --Ben Franklin

Ever Mindful Of Poe's Law

I can't wait to hear some knucklehead try to make the argument that we can't allow refugees into USAmerica Inc because it's too easy for them to get guns and start killing us.

Some guys have their heads so far up their asses they can't even see their own shit anymore - and no matter what anybody like me is apt to make up outa nuthin', it'll sound like something one of these mushbrains would say.

Poe's Law (in case ya fergot) is an Internet adage which states that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, parodies of extreme views will be mistaken by some readers for sincere expressions of the parodied views. 

--update

And then up jumped the devil, via Think Progress:

A Texas state legislator wants the U.S. to stop allowing Syrian refugees into the country. His reasoning: They might be able to buy guns in his state.

Rep. Tony Dale (R) made this argument in a television interview on Monday and in letters to Texas’ U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz (R) and U.S. Reps. Michael McCaul and John Carter (R).

“While the Paris attackers used suicide vests and grenades,” Dale wrote, “it is clear that firearms also killed a large number of innocent victims. Can you imagine a scenario were [sic] a refugees [sic] is admitted to the United States, is provided with federal cash payments and other assistance, obtains a drivers license and purchases a weapon and executes an attack?” He urged the lawmakers to “do whatever you can to stop the [Syrian refugee] program.”

Today's Wondering

So to start things off, Donald Trump slags the fuck outa the US Hispanic population.

Then he spends a few stump speeches and TV appearances telling us what unbelievably crappy negotiators America's business and government leaders are because they can't get a trade deal without sending everybody's jobs to Mexico and China.

Next, he straight out stomps on Megyn Kelly on national TV in front of god and everybody, which leads pundits all along the political spectrum to say (essentially) that he's acting like a developmentally arrested adolescent with a raging case of something that looks like a cross between Gynophobia, Little Man Syndrome and Late Stage Syphilitic Dementia.

And now, Mr Trump spins the yarn about how he's always felt he was in the military because he spent a coupla years at a prep school that happened to require the bad boy legacy fucks who get sent there to fix their behavioral problems to wear uniforms that were more or less reminiscent of those worn by members of the actual Military Division of USAmerica Inc.  Put that one together with the John McCain is no hero comment, and you're not gonna be the most popular dog at that particular kennel club.

Brown people
Business guys
Women
Military

He's alienated every major slice of the voter demo that everybody knows the GOP has to score big with if they want any chance at all.

So I guess my question is: How much longer will we wait; what else does the guy hafta do before Alex Jones floats the False Flag hypothesis?  And will it be the plain vanilla version of Trump wanting to destroy the GOP, or will it go higher than that, with Trump being nothing less than a cat's paw for the Bilderbergs and blah blah blah?

Maybe it really is just Trump being Trump - it's nothing but Brand Boosting; and he's spouting all this weird shit looking for the exit line that nobody will give him.

But at the same time, I can't stop thinking about Poe's Law - "...without a clear indicator of the author's intent, parodies of extreme views will, to some readers, be indistinguishable from sincere expressions of the parodied views."

It's a wonderment.

Unintended Truth

Some of those dirty fuckin' hippies have been trying to tell us for a pretty long time about how the "political center" has moved way to the right over the last 30 years, and practically everybody I know either shrugs it off or tells me I'm a fool for believing the left-leaning media which we all know has a wicked librul bias.

But then, along comes Steve King making a bit of a slip as he introduces Moose-alini at the annual meeting of the Kaptain Kornball Klub in Iowa.  

This turns into the Mother of All Word Salads as it appears Palin tries it without the teleprompter, but listen close in the first few seconds:



Yeah, I know - I couldn't stay with it either.  After the first few minutes, it's like you can hear your brain cells screaming as they start to die.

BTW - everybody and his fuckin' uncle is running on the Repub side so far, and I think it might be because the rubes' pockets aren't quite as deep as they used to be - having nuthin' at all to do with stoopid GOP economic policies of course - so you have to show up and do some of the huckstering in person - gotta work 'em a lot harder than just a coupla years ago.

I'll go out on what I consider a very short limb here, and I'll say that everybody not already positioned to get rich by holding an elected office is in this thing to boost their mailing lists, bolster their networks of "supporters", and make it all pay off by hittin' up every yokel for a generous donation...cuz that's what most of these jag-offs are - they're panhandlers; they're fuckin' moochers playin' every sucker for every dime, every chance they get. And boy has it been a good long run.

hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Listening

It's axiomatic that when you wanna figure out something that's complex and weird and difficult to understand, you need to get a buncha smart guys in a room, get 'em talking and then listen to what they say.

George Lakoff is one of those guys:

Liberals tend not to understand conservatives, and their confusion is showing. On the one hand liberals see conservatives in disarray and react with glee at the fragmentation: the Tea Party vs. Libertarians vs. Neocons vs. Wall Street. Eric Cantor, the Republican Majority Leader, brought down by a Tea Party unknown. John Boehner unable to control his majority in the House. Republican primary challenges everywhere.

On the other hand, liberals are scared stiff of the Koch brothers and other wealthy Republicans bankrolling Republican candidates at every level all over the country. They are scared of a Republican takeover. And they should be.

--and-- 

At the heart of conservatism is strict father morality, as we have seen. But strict father morality has complexities and natural variations. What liberals don’t see is that the diversity can give conservatism as a whole considerable strength.

Different versions of conservatisms are defined by particular domains of interest. Strict father morality applies to all the domains—individual liberty and self-interest, world power, business, and society. These domains of interest characterize libertarian, neocon, financial, and Tea Party conservatives.

A better understanding of the Proto-Fascist crap we're up against is the first step in staying ready to fight back.

One of the main problems "with the liberals" is the tendency to think that there can actually be an end to a political fight; that once the election is over, the question's been settled and they can go about their business and stop worrying about it.  

All the great "liberal stuff" - Civil Rights, anti-trust law, labor law, Social Security, banking regulations, Medicare, EPA, OSHA, etc etc etc - all the stuff that actually makes us great because it makes us try a little harder to live up to the promises we made to ourselves in The Declaration and the Preamble - all the amazing LIBRUL/PROGRESSIVE accomplishments over the last 40 or 60 or 80+ years is being pared back because "the conservatives" never stop fighting to get their The Daddy State cemented into place.  

It's never over.  There is no such thing as "Once And For All".  Get used to it and understand that either we get busy winning or we get busy losing.

Thoughts On The Side

“It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering.” --Judith Herman, MD - Trauma and Recovery

Mike Brown gets buried in more ways than one.

We jump up and down on it for a while, but then somebody blows up a building or there's a bus crash or another jack-wad celebrity gets caught nanny-humping, and suddenly we're heading back for the group rate on self-lobotomy at the National Center For Social Amnesia.

Maybe we can get some things done that need to get done in places like Ferguson once some of the glare fades away, but don't count on it.  

If it turns out that Holder and his merry band of FBI careerists find anything that substantively exonerates Darren Wilson, we're right back in some very deep shit.

But if they scorch Wilson, & / or if they confirm what looks to be a pretty obvious pattern of abuse and corruption in Ferguson, we're likely to hear a very loud chorus of Obama The Race Hustler on an endless loop.

Mainly tho', why does it seem like somebody's always pushing us pretty hard to get back to an "equilibrium" that ends up sounding like "Both Sides", and feeling like Paralysis?

Feed A Child

Reaction to this ad has become what I have to consider an almost perfect snapshot of what's wrong with our "conversations" whenever we try to talk about any of the increasing number of Elephants In The Room.





The point is that way too many pets get way better treatment than way too many kids, and maybe we could do some tiny little thing to change that just a tiny bit(?)  Maybe we could just think about it?  Seems pretty simple.  But to hear some of the reaction, you'd think the ad was actually advocating in favor of keeping children as pets - or that black kids are dogs - or that - what exactly!?!

Seriously, when did everybody get so fuckin' stoopid?

Check out the Feed A Child website, or make a contribution of 20 Rand (SA only) by texting "child" to 40014.

You can make a contribution from elsewhere using PayPal.

It's All For Show

I'm with Tommy Jeff on this one.  Mr Jefferson disliked the notion of the Prez delivering a speech to Congress so much that he decided to send it in a letter instead. 112 years later, politicians started to realize the PR value of it all, and of course over the last 100 years, it's been allowed to degenerate into the usual and customary exercise in advertising and media manipulation.

From DecodeDC:

Today's Best Blog Line - #2

"Ignorance Arbitrage"

Here's the whole post from No More Mister Nice Blog:

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

EVEN THE TRIVIAL TALKING POINTS FROM THE RIGHT ARE DISHONEST

I saw that Newsmax was pushing this ridiculous story and wasn't sure it was worth a post, but now I see it's a front-page story at Fox Nation, so here's the ridiculousness:

'Butler' Box Office Sales Plummet by One-Third

The movie "Lee Daniels' The Butler" saw its weekend box office receipts plummet by nearly a third, from $24.6 million in its opening week to $17 million last week, after a storm of protests from Republican and veterans groups.

The film depicts a White House butler who served eight presidents, and has come under fire for its portrayal of former President Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy as being racially insensitive and for casting Jane Fonda as the first lady.

Supporters of President Reagan and veterans groups especially have criticized the film, with some calling for boycotts....

Oh, its box office plummeted? By nearly a third? And it's all because of boycotts by Reagan lovers and Jane Fonda haters? (Or, as the Fox Nation headline implies, because America has suddenly become tired of Oprah Winfrey?)

Nonsense. Every movie that reaches #1 at the weekend box office "plummets" the next week. Boycotts aren't necessary -- moviegoers just move on.

Yes, The Butler's box office dropped 33.0% in its second weekend, according to Box Office Mojo. But the previous #1, Elysium, suffered a54.1% drop in its second week. Before that was 2 Guns: a 58.4% drop.Before that was The Wolverine: a 59.9% drop. Before that was The Conjuring: a 46.9% drop.

Do I need to go on? In fact, The Butler had the smallest second-week drop for a #1 movie since Identity Thief back in March.

This story is up at Fox Nation even though Rupert Murdoch runs a movie studio. It's not as if the moviegoing habits of Americans are unknowable to the Fox media empire.

But this is what I call the right-wing media's "ignorance arbitrage." The conservative purveyors of this nonsense know it's nonsense. But they know they can sell it to people who don't. And that's what they do.

A Blind Hog

Even a blind hog roots up an acorn once in a while.

With that in mind, let's check in with the late great WaPo, where it doesn't matter what's true or what's good or what's right (this is the age of "New Media" y'know - all that matters is delivering readers to advertisers).  But I'll pat 'em on the back on that rarest of occasions when they manage to break through the deafening clutter (that they're helping to create) with something that isn't just their usual Red Team / Blue Team bullshit:

For prosecutors, the key question is whether there was a clearly articulated “quid pro quo.” If so, the gifts were bribes. If not, they were gifts. To me, as an anthropologist, this largely misses the point.

Across the massive cornucopia of human culture, anthropologists have found relatively few universals. One of the strongest of these, however, concerns gift-giving. Gifts are given in all cultures, and to remarkably similar effect. As every graduate student in anthropology learns, gifts by their nature create social ties and a sense of reciprocal obligation. To give a gift is to expect something in return, though it undermines the power and mystique of the gift to spell out too clearly what that something is. It would be uncouth to give a friend a birthday present and say “now when it’s my birthday I expect you to give me this model of this product,” but the expectation of a well-chosen gift in return is no less powerful for that. The failure to give something in response can end a friendship.

 --and--

When politicians accept gifts such as Rolex watches and Oscar de la Renta gowns from multimillionaires, they often lack the means to reciprocate as equals. Surely, Williams has wealthy friends — his equals — with whom he exchanges gifts, but the McDonnells are not wealthy. From an anthropological perspective, Williams gave McDonnell gifts that the governor lacked the means to repay in order to subordinate him. Unable to afford, say, a $10,000 purse for Williams’s wife in return for what was given to his own wife, the governor can only return Williams’s generosity by lending him the power of his office in some way. Whether the expectation of a return was ever crisply articulated as a “quid pro quo” is really beside the point — even if it is the whole point to lawyers.

My guess is that Vaginal Bob will dodge the indictment, and maybe get slapped around a bit by an "ethics committee" stacked with politicians who will give us a great look at Irony In Action by deciding not to be so "hypocritical" as to condemn McDonnell for something most of them have been doing for as long as they've been in politics - all in the name of good government and bipartisanship and fairness.

But, of course in the end, it all fits neatly into the "Both Sides Do It" narrative.

If everybody does it, then there's nobody to hold anybody accountable for anything - and we're right back to status quo.  Never mind.

Fugelsang

On the death of Irony: