Wait - What?

Wired:

President Donald Trump announced Friday that the US government’s coronavirus testing apparatus, which has lagged badly behind other developed nations, would soon get an assist from Google. The search and advertising giant will create a website, Trump said, that would help Americans figure out if they need a test for the virus, and if so where they can find one.

The only problem: There is no nationwide site like the one Trump described. And Google had no idea the president was going to mention one.

A source at Google tells WIRED that company leadership was surprised that Trump announced anything about the initiative at the press conference. What he did say was also almost entirely wrong. There will be a coronavirus testing site, not from Google but from Alphabet sister company Verily. “We are developing a tool to help triage individuals for Covid-19 testing,” Google tweeted in a statement. “Verily is in the early stages of development, and planning to roll testing out in the Bay Area, with the hope of expanding more broadly over time.”

Even that, though, was not the original plan. The Verge reported Friday afternoon that Verily had intended the site for health care workers only. After Trump unexpectedly publicized the effort, Verily decided it will let anyone visit it, but can still only provide people with testing site information in the San Francisco area.

Google did not respond to requests for comment. A Verily spokesperson characterized the intention of the site differently from the Verge report. "We were initially planning to focus on highest risk populations, which includes healthcare workers—but this was not solely intended for them," the company said. "We are collaborating with organizations like Quest Diagnostics and Labcorp as part of this initiative, and local organizations to determine what will work best. At Verily, we are focused on developing a tool to help triage individuals for testing."

Standard shit - he blabs it out in public and expects it to be done.

Today's Hair-On-Fire Moment

It's been going around for a while now. And as always, it's a good idea to take it all with a grain of salt.

That said, one of the main goals of the Daddy State is to get us thinking there's nothing that can be trusted to be truly true and really real.

A little critical thinking is in order at all times.

And remembering the basic techniques is a good place to start - as well as this relatively new shit coming from Cult45.

It's not about persuasion - it's about power.

I tell an obvious lie.

While you're engaging it...

...I'm off to my next lie.

And the power thing - that can explain a lot about why the rubes stay with 45* no matter what. He has the power, and they get to feel powerful by proxy - without having to invest time or effort at gaining or applying any actual knowledge.

Hear What They Say

...but be sure to watch what they do.

Business Insider:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters Friday morning, just hours after the US military killed the top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, that "the world is a much safer place today." Some allies and partners suggested otherwise, however, and Pompeo's own government agency advised Americans to flee Iraq.

"The world is a much safer place today," he said. "And I can assure you that Americans in the region are much safer today after the demise of Qassem Soleimani."

His comments came as the State Department urged American citizens in Iraq to leave immediately.

"Due to heightened tensions in Iraq and the region," the US Embassy in Baghdad said in a security alert Friday, "the US Embassy urges American citizens to heed the January 2020 Travel Advisory and depart Iraq immediately."

"US citizens should depart via airline while possible, and failing that, to other countries via land," the embassy instructed.

Death By Coal

Hillary got slammed hard in 2016 for a selectively edited comment about "...we're going to kill the coal industry..."

Of Course #1: Trump and the GOP seized on the opportunity to make empty promises in order to drag Hillary down and boost their own prospects because...

...Of Course #2: They always deliberately ignored the context. She was talking about how people worked their asses off - for generations - producing that coal and making the coal companies rich as fuck, and we can't just leave them to rot when the market and technology pass them by.

Of Course #3: The Press Poodles never clarified anything - they let the bullshit slide.

Because a good political slap fight sells lots of mouth wash and boner pills.

WaPo:

Murray Energy Corp., the private coal giant whose founder pushed the Trump administration for an overhaul of what it called “anti-coal” environmental policy, filed for Chapter 11 protection on Tuesday.

It’s the fifth coal company to land in bankruptcy court this year, in a rapidly shrinking industry that’s being squeezed out of the U.S. power market by cheaper options such as natural gas, solar and wind power.

The long-anticipated bankruptcy is another sign that President Trump’s efforts to save the sputtering coal industry, a central promise of his 2016 campaign, have largely failed.

It also speaks to the “significant stress on the coal industry today,” said Benjamin Nelson, a coal analyst and Moody’s vice president. Coal once fueled about half of all U.S. electricity; now it powers less than a quarter.

Penny post card - ca 1920
Pollution was a sign of progress and power, and it made us proud.

And the kicker:

That's Bob Murray - founder and CEO of Murray Energy. He has to wear a cannula because he needs the oxygen; because his lungs were damaged; because he worked in the mines.

Murray, who started working in coal mines at 16 to support his family, has long been a Trump ally, donating generously to his campaign and hosting a fundraiser in West Virginia this summer. Murray Energy operates more than a dozen mines throughout Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Illinois and Utah and produces 76 million tons of coal annually.

In 2017, Murray met with White House energy officials to offer an “action plan” calling for deep cuts in the Environmental Protection Agency’s staff, withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, a rollback of safety and pollution regulations, and the repeal of President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan.

Within a year, the administration followed through by pledging to withdraw from the Paris accord, delivering cuts at the EPA and beginning to repeal and replace the Obama-era plan to curb climate-warming emissions from coal-fired power plants.

There's very little that could better exemplify the perverse delusions of today's version of Unfettered Free Market Capitalism.

It's The Lying, Stupid

Last night, Ol' Doc Maddow did some out-loud worrying about 45*'s constant lying, saying she didn't know how to keep reporting on it without contributing to a level of Trump Fatigue that pushes us all towards a state of political catalepsy.

Luckily, we still have a few people who can help us understand these things.

Here's Lee McIntyre, a Research Fellow at The Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University, in Newsweek, explaining the difference between Lies and Post Truth:

When a politician gets caught in a lie, there’s usually a bit of sweat, perhaps some shame and the expectation of consequences.

Not for Trump. After many commentators pointed out to him that the stock exchange was in fact closed for several days after 9/11, he merely shrugged it off, never bothering to acknowledge—let alone correct—his error.

Why would he do this?

The point of a lie is to convince someone that a falsehood is true. But the point of post-truth is domination. In my analysis, post-truth is an assertion of power.

As journalist Masha Gessen and others have argued, when Trump lies he does so not to get someone to accept what he’s saying as true, but to show that he is powerful enough to say it.

He has asserted, “I’m the President and you’re not,” as if such high political office comes with the prerogative of creating his own reality. This would explain why Trump doesn’t seem to care much if there is videotape or other evidence that contradicts him. When you’re the boss, what does that matter?

So, a coupla things:

1. Don't ever stop pointing out Cult45's lies. It must always be news when anybody in a position of power tries to bullshit us.
2. Take McIntyre's thesis to heart. Never forget - it's about power. Identify it, and call it out for what it is.

Turning Of The Worms

The Press Poodles have been feeling their oats lately. There's still plenty of reflexive Both Sides nonsense, but it seems like the editors and producers are showing signs of reading their Driftglass ('bout fuckin' time), and are starting to accelerate their organizations' movement in a much better direction.

(Along those lines, I need to make a sincere plea to the bosses at NPR: Please, guys, fire Mara Liason at your earliest opportunity. She's just fucking awful.)

Anyway, Cult45 put on a little circus the other day, which turned into quite the spectacle.

Vox:

Press secretary Sarah Sanders shared an altered video on Wednesday evening that appears to have originated with far-right conspiracy site Infowars to justify banning CNN reporter Jim Acosta from the White House after a tense exchange with President Donald Trump.

- and -

But Trump’s attacks on Acosta during the news conference weren’t enough for the White House. Later in the day, Sanders posted a string of tweets in which she accused Acosta of “placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern.”

When Trump insulted Acosta at the press conference, a White House intern approached him and tried to physically remove a microphone from his hands. Their arms touched as the woman reached across Acosta’s body to grab the microphone he was holding in his hand.

Looking back at the video, it does not in fact show Acosta “placing his hands” on the woman. But about 90 minutes after she posted her string of tweets, Infowars editor Paul Joseph Watson tweeted out a video of the incident that was doctored to make it look like Acosta chopped the woman’s arm with his hand.

1) Took @PressSec Sarah Sanders' video of briefing
2) Tinted red and made transparent over CSPAN video
3) Red motion is when they doctored video speed
4) Sped up to make Jim Acosta's motion look like a chop
5) I've edited video for 15+ years
6) The White House doctored it pic.twitter.com/q6arkYSx0V

— Rafael Shimunov 🔥 (@rafaelshimunov) November 8, 2018

There's a long tradition of government skullduggery when it comes to the "optics" of their operations.

Here are a few examples from a book called "The Commissar Vanishes":

The Daddy State is always with us. Even in times we consider some kind of "golden age of democracy", there are people who feel the need to dictate instead of compromise - who insist on manipulating our belief instead of showing us what's real.

Everybody Plays The Fool

...sometimes. 

No exception to the rule.
It may factual; may be cruel,
but everybody plays the fool.

From Early 2018 - Renee Elliott

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.

Trump: If only the US-Mexico border could be as good as the barbwire, hyper-militarized DMZ between North and South Korea!!! pic.twitter.com/QPMBDwxJ4e

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) March 30, 2018

hat tip = Bob Cesca on Twitter

Today's Face Palm

45* says Gun-Free Zones are dumb things and only poopy-head libruls think they're OK.

ABC News:
Donald Trump spoke in favor of gun rights at the National Rifle Association convention today, but security and staff at several of his prized hotels and golf courses told ABC News that guests are not allowed to carry guns there.

The Trump Organization, meanwhile, claims that’s not true.

“We strongly believe in the 2nd Amendmentand are against gun free zones. While laws vary substantially from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, we allow security personnel and other licensed individuals the ability to carry a firearm in an effort to protect themselves, our guests, associates and the general public,” a spokesperson told ABC News by email.

A few Trump properties where guests are not allowed guns:

Trump National Doral = (305) 592-2000
Trump National Jupiter GC = (561) 691-8700
Trump International GC = (561) 682-0700
Trump International hotel - Las Vegas = (702) 982-0000
Trump Mar-a-Lago = 561-832-2600.

Confirming Evidence

45* and the GOP lie. A lot. I keep thinking, eventually that's not going to come as any kind of news to anybody. And as soon as I think that, I remember the rubes will never hear anything but what The Ministry of Dis-Infotainment tells them.

WaPo:

• “The entire purpose of this is to lower middle class taxes.” — House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.)
• “Primarily, and priority number one, is middle-class Americans.” — White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders
• “The theme behind this bill is to get middle-class tax relief for most people in the middle class.” — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Fox News on Tuesday

President Trump was so excited about passing his first major piece of legislation Wednesday that he blurted out that the Republican Party had misrepresented the entire bill, handing Democrats some potentially troublesome talking points for the 2018 midterm elections.

Speaking at the White House just before the House prepared to sign off on the tax-cuts bill one last time, Trump reveled extensively in his win before turning things over to Vice President Pence to heap praise upon him continuously for a few minutes. It was a thoroughly unique spectacle, even as victory dances and Trump Cabinet meetings go.

But along the way, Trump basically admitted that the GOP's talking points on the bill weren't exactly honest in two major ways.

While talking about the corporate tax rate being cut from 35 percent to 21 percent, Trump said, “That's probably the biggest factor in our plan.”

President Trump says GOP tax plan will lower tax on businesses: “That’s probably the biggest factor in this plan.” pic.twitter.com/ntTtnnD55b

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) December 20, 2017

Oops

This one's worth tracking:
"these companies...will start pouring into the country..." (jobs jobs jobs - and raises for everybody - yeehaw)

Trump's second admission was about the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate being repealed in the bill. Apparently eager to argue that this constituted his having cut taxes and slain Obamacare in one fell swoop (after Congress came up short on Obamacare this year), he argued that repealing the individual mandate was basically the same as repealing Obamacare.
So we have enormous corporate powers being given more money to spend on Coin-Operated Politicians, who are increasingly obliged to strip out protections of the law in order to accommodate the avarice of the American Aristocracy - at the expense of everyone else.

(And BTW - wanna talk about what happens with expanded Corporate Power, together with no ACA, together with HR 1313, proposed in March 2017, that says companies can require DNA - and health info on all family members - from all of it's employees? Wait til you see what that one costs ya.)

In the First World of Industrialized Nations:
Every country except the US has some form of Single Payer
Every country except the US has a sizable Labor Faction in government
Every country except the US has Anti-Climate Change policies in place
Every country except the US has sensible Gun Safety laws
And on and on and on

American Exceptionalism just ain't what it used to be.

Deep Thoughts

On the phenomenon of hardcore 45* supporters:

You believe the lies. Or in the context of the current political culture - for whatever reason, it doesn't matter to you that 45* lies a lot.

(80% of people self-identifying as Republicans support him in spite of knowing he lies to them almost every day)

So, I'll go ahead and call you a dumbfuck lyin' sack of shit.

Now, if you care about the truth, and you know you're not a dumbfuck lyin' sack of shit, then you have a case to make that I'm behaving very badly - and I'll back you up on that one all the way.

If you know it's not true but you've established that lies don't matter to you, then anybody can say anything about you - good or ill - and you got nuthin', bubba. 

Zero Zip Zilch Nada.

There's nothing for you to feel proud about if they say nice things about you.

And there's nothing you can bitch about when they spread the shittiest most damaging lies about you. And eventually it will come around to that. It always has, and I can see no reasonable expectation for that to change.

The only thing worse than your failure to stand up to some jagoff like 45*, is realizing there's nobody willing to stand up for you.

Putting Up With It

From Elle:

HARRIS: You referred to a longstanding DOJ policy. Can you tell us what policy it is you're talking about?

SESSIONS: Well, I think most cabinet people, as the witnesses, uh, you had before you earlier, those individuals declined to comment. Because we're all about conversations with the President —

HARRIS: Sir, I'm just asking you about the DOJ policy you referred to.

SESSIONS: — a longstanding policy that goes beyond just the Attorney General.

Every American, when listening to (mostly) GOP pus-brains who can't quite figure out how to construct the next several lies in order to maintain the false reality they created with that first fucking lie:

It Didn't Start Well

JAN. 21

“I made a speech. I looked out, the field was — it looked like a million, million and a half people.”

...and it gets worse

What He Meant

It's The Mendacity, Stoopid

Chez Pazienza at Daily Banter:

It's difficult to express both the audacity and the insidiousness of what Conway's doing here (what she's been doing for months, really). Her comment about the nonexistent Bowling Green Massacre is a masterwork of calculated mendacity, the kind of thing that would be admirable if it weren't so dangerous. You can't help but wonder if Conway didn't do the Italian chef finger kiss to herself after she came up with it. Go back and read it one more time. She creates a phony event that she uses specifically to assault the media for its unwillingness to cover, knowing full well that four things will quickly happen: 1) The fake event will immediately become "real" for Trump's people, lodging in their collective consciousness, especially as the lie is repeated again and again as it becomes its own story; 2) they'll assume the reason they had never heard of it was precisely because of a full-on conspiracy by the dishonest media, making it a self-reinforcing delusion; 3) Trump loyalists and media shills will begin reverse-engineering facts to fit the lie, giving it "credibility," or at the very least providing her enough plausible deniability to feign outrage; 4) she'll get double the bang for her buck because once journalists begin calling her out on the lie, she can again slam them for not accepting her apology or asking her to clarify her comment.

It's genius. Evil genius. Which is exactly why it needs to be fought against tooth and nail.

Here's why: not simply because Kellyanne Conway's lie wasn't an accident but because it was a strategy. The goal of Conway is to deliberately muddy the waters between fact and fiction so that the two are indistinguishable. The reason for this? Because doing so debases the truth to the point where it simply doesn't matter anymore. This is important because the truth -- cold, hard fact -- is the Trump administration's worst enemy, as it is the enemy of authoritarian governments in general but of Trump specifically because he lives his life complete unmoored to it. What's more, the truth is what a free press derives its power and authority from, and the Trump administration has already declared the press "the opposition." What better way to destroy that opposition, then, than to take away the importance of that for which it stands.

Bob and Chez podcast - twice a week, the episodes are usually up late-ish in the evening every Tuesday and Thursday.

With Apologies To Mr Truman

Sarah Cooper - on psychological warfare:

“But reporters were clapping and laughing, they loved it.”  — a commenter defending Trump’s first press conference.

“But members of the CIA were clearly laughing at his jokes and clapping, so what he was saying couldn’t have been inappropriate.”  — CNN pundit defending Trump’s CIA speech where he talked about his war with the media, in front of a memorial to men and women who lost their lives in actual wars.

The clapping and laughing you hear in both instances are Trump’s own people. They are sycophants who he brings to cheer him on and make it seem like what he’s saying is being well-received. And it’s working.

The laugh track was invented to cue the audience to the jokes and encourage laughter in response. But it has another effect: if you hear people laughing and you’re not, you start to question if maybe there’s something wrong with you for not getting it. You might even impulsively start laughing just to fit in, not because you think anything is funny. In fact that’s how these fluffers work — one person initiates a clap and suddenly everyone thinks there’s something to clap for. And then everyone is clapping. For no reason.

It's business and it's politics. It's the business of politics, and the merging of politics with business, wrapped in the flag and blessed by the church. The result is the institutionalized hyper-corruption-on-steroids called Fascism. In that system especially, if you wanna friend, buy a dog.

I won't be forgiving of willful ignorance. I won't be tolerant of Alternative Facts. I won't be quiet about it.

And while I'll always try not to be deliberately unkind to you, understand that I'll fail in that regard on occasion, because I won't treat you like a child by tiptoeing around your delicate sensibilities.

I'm really not trying to be an asshole about it - it just seems like too many people are trying to make it impossible for me not to be.

So put all of this under "Sorry-Not-Sorry-But".

If you come in here without a helmet,

you might leave with some brain damage.

Inside Out

I can't keep up. The twists and turns just in this one angle of this one story is enough to overload my circuits - which I think is mostly the point.  And unfortunately, it seems to be working pretty well.

HuffPo:

Two brief quotes from Breitbart’s interview with Prince should suffice:

Prince claimed he had insider knowledge of the investigation that could help explain why FBI Director James Comey had to announce he was reopening the investigation into Clinton’s email server last week....”[NYPD] found a lot of other really damning criminal information [on Weiner’s computer], including money laundering, including the fact that Hillary went to this sex island with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Bill Clinton went there more than twenty times. Hillary Clinton went there at least six times,” he said. “The amount of garbage that they found in these emails, of criminal activity by Hillary, by her immediate circle, and even by other Democratic members of Congress, was so disgusting they gave it to the FBI, and they said, ‘We’re going to go public with this if you don’t reopen the investigation and you don’t do the right thing with timely indictments,’” Prince explained. “I believe—I know, and this is from a very well-placed source of mine at One Police Plaza in New York—the NYPD wanted to do a press conference announcing the warrants and the additional arrests they were making in this investigation, and they’ve gotten huge pushback, to the point of coercion, from the Justice Department.”

Virtually all of this is untrue. Prince continued:

“So NYPD first gets that computer. They see how disgusting it is. They keep a copy of everything, and they pass a copy on to the FBI, which finally pushes the FBI off their chairs, making Comey reopen that investigation, which was indicated in the letter last week. The point being, NYPD has all the information, and they will pursue justice within their rights if the FBI doesn’t. There is all kinds of criminal culpability through all the emails they’ve seen of that 650,000, including money laundering, underage sex, pay-for-play, and, of course, plenty of proof of inappropriate handling, sending/receiving of classified information, up to Special Access Programs....The point being, fortunately, it’s not just the FBI; five different offices are in the hunt for justice, but the NYPD has it as well....From what I understand, up to the commissioner or at least the chief level in NYPD, they wanted to have a press conference, and DOJ, Washington people, political appointees have been exerting all kinds of undue pressure on them to back down....This kind of evil, this kind of true dirt on Hillary Clinton—look, you don’t have to make any judgments. Just release the emails. Just dump them. Let them out there. Let people see the light of truth.”

Prince’s statements of November 4th—whether given with the knowledge that they were untrue or without any knowledge of their accuracy whatsoever—underscore the sort of disinformation Comey feared would be given to voters, and, more importantly, believed by voters, if he did not complete his investigation into the duplicate emails and announce his findings before Election Day. This alone explains his deviation from FBI protocol prohibiting discussion of open cases (and announcements regarding major investigations within two months of a general election).

While I guess you could make the point that this has happened more than once before, if you're making that argument as a way to shrug it off and rationalize your indifference to it - well, to be as polite and as diplomatic and as non-threatening as I think the situation requires - go fuck yourself with a dry pinecone.

If His Lips Are Moving

AlterNet:

Donald Trump is a prolific liar. That’s neither an opinion nor a criticism, but a statement of scientific fact. In the midst of the presidential campaign, Politico analyzed a few hours of Trump’s speeches and found he lied once every five minutes on average.

PolitiFact gave Trump its Lie of the Year Award for 2015, and has since determined that only 15 percent of Trump’s words are true or even mostly true. Toronto Star journalist Daniel Dale, who fact-checked Trump for 33 days and found he told as many as 25 lies in a 24-hour period (excluding debates, when he crammed up to 34 lies into 90 minutes), wrote that Trump “lies strategically. He lies pointlessly. He lies about important things and meaningless things. Above all, he lies frequently.” Trump lies so effortlessly and consistently that the Washington Post created a plug-in that, lacking the human tendency to grow fatigued, fact-checks Trump’s lie-filled tweets in real time.

Strategic lying. Trump's lies are in fact habitual at this point, but that's only because he's had lotsa practice at lying by design. Because it works.

Coupla things:

I can say one thing to you and another thing to the next guy and then I can play those two positions against each other from the middle.  I stand to get something from you and/or something from him, and I can "come clean" or double down or go a completely different way - none of which matters because I'm hedging my positions to the point where I've off-loaded almost all of my risk onto somebody else so I'll "win" something regardless of how anything turns out - I am far less concerned with how it turns out than I am with positioning myself to benefit no matter the outcome.

And politically, by the time (eg) The Libtards fact-check it, the bullshit is already "out there" and we're all on to something else, and that's all yesterday's news and on and on and on.

Once you've surrendered your silly girly-man concerns over doing what's right, you'll never have to be wrong again.

...a Moral Flexibility that goes beyond most people.

Trae Crowder

Just Make Shit Up

Now that Trump is playing the other side of his Unpredictability Game, the apologists have been widely deployed to explain that everything Mr Un-PC-I-Tell-It-Like-It-Is said during the Scampaign® was really just election-year rhetoric and metaphorical language - he didn't really mean any of it to be taken literally. C'mon.