Just Sayin'

Well, here I am, asshole.

Come and get me.

Say What Now?

How do you say absolutely nothing in about 150 words?

I recognize all the words. I know what each of them means. I can see some semblance of order and structure, but there's no meaning to any of it.

He's always trying to get nothing to be something. But even if you could speak something into existence, the first thing you have to do is figure out how to speak coherently.

The Real Inside Job

At his "news conference" yesterday, Trump again claimed Jan6 was a peaceful protest where no one was killed.

Trump to blame for death of woman trampled in Capitol riot, family member says

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The brother-in-law of a woman killed during Wednesday's assault on the U.S. Capitol by a mob seeking to overturn President Donald Trump's election loss said he blames Trump for the riot, and has joined calls for him to be removed from office.
Rosanne Boyland, a 34-year-old resident of Kennesaw, Georgia, was one of four civilians who died in the rioting, according to Washington, DC police. A Capitol Police officer also died from injuries in the melee.

Police did not disclose the cause of Boyland's death.

However, Justin Winchell, a friend who accompanied Boyland to a Trump rally near the White House and marched with her to the Capitol, told Atlanta CBS affiliate WGCL that she was trampled to death in a massive crowd surge when protesters clashed with Capitol Police.

"I got my arm underneath her, that was pulling her out - pulling her out - and then another guy fell on top of her and another guy was just walking" over her, he said. "I mean, there was people crushed."

Boyland's brother-in-law, Justin Cave, told Atlanta media that his wife, Boyland's sister, had tried to persuade her not to attend the Trump rally in Washington.

Boyland was "passionate about her beliefs" and support of Trump, and the family was grieving for others killed and injured in the rioting, he told a local Fox television reporter.

"I've never tried to be a political person, but it's my own personal belief that the president's words incited a riot that killed four of his biggest fans last night and I believe that we should invoke the 25th Amendment at this time," Cave said.

Roseanne Boyland

Are They Waking Up?

This popped up on my Twixter feed this morning:

The rhetoric coming from the MAGA leaders is still pretty vehemently about "voter fraud", and wanting to do nothing but paper ballots, and only one day for voting, and hand counting, and announcing the results that evening. Which, of course, when taken together all but guarantees failure - which, of course again, is probably the point. Kill everybody's confidence in the process, and you can do away with all that inconvenient democracy stuff.

Then this was down the page in the replies:

It may not be so much that the rubes are being fooled, though some certainly are. It seems more like a lot of them have become thoroughly conditioned to accept the contradictions - or they're so caught up in the power game that they've decided to take a full part in it, passing the bullshit on to whoever might buy it, and reinforcing their own commitment to it (?)

Like they know what they're being told is bullshit, but they have to internalize it and rationalize it in order to make it through the day without their heads imploding.

It's a puzzlement, and I have to feel some encouragement that Ayn Rand's rule about contradictions is playing itself out.

Contradictions can and do exist, but they don't prevail, because they can't.

Here We Go

 

ATTENTION

ATTENTION

ATTENTION

ALL HANDS REPORT IMMEDIATELY

TO YOUR

LIFEBOAT INCINERATION STATIONS

THIS IS NOT A DRILL

REPEAT

THIS IS NOT A DRILL

Josh Hawley's running for president (I'm pretty sure), and as much as I'm loath even to appear as if I'm carrying water, or a message, or anything other than a burning dislike for Mr Hawley, I had to post his Op/Ed because this is a Burn The Lifeboats moment if ever there was one.

Also - you're all over the fuckin' map here, Joshie.

eg: you say you wanna boost American wage-earners, and save people money, but then you're against lifting tariffs - which are nothing more than a "value added" tax (ie: pass every penny of the cost along to the consumer), and it falls hardest on middle- working- and lower class Americans. You know - the ones you say you wanna help, and should be listening to, while China feels practically no pain at all.

(pay wall)

Opinion by Josh Hawley

The GOP is dead. A new GOP must listen to working people.

The old Republican Party is dead. It has been wasting away for years now, and this month’s midterm results are the finishing blow. If Republicans learn nothing else from this election, they must learn that much.

As frustrating as the election outcomes are, the death of the old GOP is no reason to mourn. It just means that it’s time for Republicans to forge something new — a party that truly represents the cultural backbone of this nation: America’s working people.

Many Republicans are primed to learn all the wrong lessons from this cycle. Over the past week, we’ve heard this election is about nothing more than “candidate quality” or turnout operations.

Wrong. The problem isn’t principally the tactics; the problem is the substance. For the past two years, the Republican establishment in Washington has capitulated on issue after issue, caving to Democrats on the Second Amendment and on the left’s radical climate agenda (“infrastructure”). These Republican politicians sided with Big Pharma on insulin and advocated lowering tariffs on our competitors overseas.

Then they wonder why working-class independents have little enthusiasm about voting Republican.

For decades, Republican politicians have sung a familiar tune. On economics, they have cut taxes on the big corporations and talked about changing Social Security and Medicare — George W. Bush even tried to partially privatize Social Security back in 2005. In the name of “growth,” these same Republicans have supported ruinous trade policies — such as admitting China to the World Trade Organization — that have collapsed American industry and driven down American wages.

This tax-and-trade agenda has hollowed out too many American towns by shipping jobs overseas. It has made it almost impossible to raise a family on one income and to find a good-paying job that doesn’t require a college degree. Our trade deficit with China has cost this country 3.7 million good jobs, while a crisis of drug overdose deaths — particularly among working Americans — has ravaged many of the same communities that have suffered most from deindustrialization. It has all made it harder to stay rooted in your hometown or region. That’s not a record of success.

Republican politicians have frequently advocated higher immigration levels and four years ago went all in for soft-on-crime “sentencing reform.” They have done nothing on Big Tech. This record doesn’t appeal to working people. Just the opposite: It repels them. If Republicans want to be a majority party, now is the time to change course.

Republicans will only secure the generational victories they crave when they come to terms with this reality: They must persuade a critical mass of working class voters that the GOP truly represents their interests and protects their culture. The red wave didn’t land in part because voters who cast a ballot for Barack Obama and later supported Donald Trump — voters who likely disapprove of Joe Biden and the Democrats’ agenda — chose to stay home.

Republicans must win these voters. We will not be a majority without them. That means waking up to what they care about. Work, family and culture are the touchstones of meaning for working people across the country. They must form the bedrock of a new party agenda.

We can start by stopping the bleeding. No more talk of grand bargains that turbocharge illegal immigration. No more liberalizing the United States’ trade agenda, making us more dependent on foreign adversaries. No more fiddling with Social Security in the guise of “entitlement reform.” All that should be clear enough.

But beyond this, it’s time for proactive policymaking. No nation ever got strong by consuming stuff other people make. We need an economy that produces critical goods here, in this country, and creates good-paying jobs for working people. That means tariffs to foster American industry, local content requirements to reshore manufacturing, and taking the shackles off U.S. energy producers. That means new antitrust laws for Big Tech that will bust up monopolies such as Google and restore competition to the marketplace. And while we’re at it, we should start relocating federal agencies such as the Departments of Energy, Interior and Agriculture to middle America. It’s long past time for cosseted policymakers to confront the real-world consequences of their decisions, economic or otherwise.

We need explicit support in our tax code for marriage and family, such as a parent tax credit for working families. We should adopt new protections for parents to ensure they control their children’s education and medical care, such as a Parents’ Bill of Rights. And families can’t thrive unless they are safe. That’s why we need 100,000 new police officers on the streets, spread across every state in America.

Right now, the Republican Party stands at a crossroads. Its leaders can, of course, attempt to resurrect the dead consensus of offshoring, amnesties and “free trade.” That’s the path to further losses.

A reborn Republican Party must look very different. It must offer good jobs and good lives, not just higher stock prices for Wall Street. And it must place working Americans at its heart and take them as they are, rather than treating them as resources to be exploited or engineered away.

That’s the way to victory. That’s the way to national renewal.

This is warmed-over Fortress America Isolationist bullshit dressed up in flowery rhetoric that still means mostly nothing.

And don't ever forget who - or what - this little prick is.

http://ProLeftPod.com

A Quick Review

45* knows more about everything than anybody ever.

Words

St George of Carlin, in a prophetic address to The Press Club.

hat tip = FB Friend D Rapier

Gaslighting Refresher

The whole banana from Psychology Today:

Gaslighting is a tactic of behavior in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality. It works a lot better than you may think. Anyone is susceptible to gaslighting. It is a common technique of abusers, dictators, narcissists, and cult leaders. It is done slowly, so the victim doesn't realize how much they've been brainwashed. In the movie Gaslight (1944), a man manipulates his wife to the point where she thinks she is losing her mind.

People that gaslight use the following techniques:

1. They tell you blatant lies.

You know it's an outright lie. Yet they are telling you this lie with a straight face. Why are they so blatant? Because they're setting up a precedent. Once they tell you a huge lie, you're not sure if anything they say is true. Keeping you unsteady and off-kilter is the goal.

2. They deny they ever said something, even though you have proof.

You know they said they would do something...you know you heard it. But they out and out deny it. It makes you start questioning your reality - maybe they never said that thing. And the more they do this, the more you question your reality and start accepting theirs.

3. They use what is near and dear to you as ammunition.

They know how important your kids are to you, they know how important your identity is to you. So that is one of the first things they attack. If you have kids, they tell you that you did a disservice by having those children. They will tell you that if only you weren't _____________, you'd be a worthy person. They attack the foundation of your being.

4. They wear you down over time.

This is one of the insidious things about gaslighting - it is done gradually, over time. A lie here, a lie there, a snide comment every so often...and then it starts ramping up. Even the brightest, most self-aware people can be sucked into gaslighting - it is that effective. It's the "frog in the frying pan" analogy - the heat is turned up slowly, so the frog never realizes what hit it.

5. Their actions do not match their words.

When dealing with a person or entity that gaslights, look at what they are doing rather than what they are saying. What they are saying means nothing. It is just talk. What they are doing is the issue.

6. They throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you.

This person or entity that is cutting you down, telling you that you don't have value - is now praising you for something you did. This adds an additional sense of uneasiness. You think, "Well maybe they aren't so bad." Yes, they are. This is a calculated attempt to keep you off-kilter - and again, question your reality. Also look at what you were praised for - it is probably something that served the gaslighter.

7. They know confusion weakens people.

Gaslighters know that all people like having a sense of stability and normalcy. Their goal is to uproot this and make you constantly question everything. And humans' natural tendency is to look to the person or entity that will help you feel more stable - and that happens to be the gaslighter.

8. They project.

They are a drug user or a cheater - yet they are constantly accusing you of that. This is done so repetitively that you start trying to defend yourself - and are distracted from the gaslighter's own behavior.

9. They try to align people against you.

Gaslighters are masters at manipulating and finding the people they know will stand by them no matter what - and they use these people against you. They will make comments such as "____________ knows that you're not right", or "___________ knows you're useless too". Keep in mind it does not mean that these people actually said these things. The gaslighter is a constant liar. When the gaslighter uses this tactic it makes you feel like you don't know who to trust or turn to - and that leads you right back to the gaslighter. And that's exactly what the want. Isolation gives them more control.

10. They tell you or others that you are crazy.

This is one of the most effective tools of the gaslighter - because it's dismissive. The gaslighter knows if they question your sanity, people will not believe you when you tell them the gaslighter is abusive or out-of-control. It's a master technique.

11. They tell you everyone else is a liar.

By telling you that everyone else (your family, the media) is a liar, it again makes you question your reality. You've never known someone with the audacity to do this, so they must be right, right? No. It's a manipulation technique. It makes people turn more to the gaslighter for the "correct" information - which isn't correct information at all.

The more you are aware of these techniques, the quicker you can identify them before you fall into the gaslighter's trap.

Copyright 2017 Sarkis Media

www.stephaniesarkis.com

 

Today's Quote

Carl Paladino's 2017 Wish List (partial)

1. Obama catches mad cow disease after being caught having relations with a Herford. He dies before his trial and is buried in a cow pasture next to Valerie Jarret, who died weeks prior, after being convicted of sedition and treason, when a jihady cell mate mistook her for being a nice person and decapitated her.

2. Michelle Obama. I’d like her to return to being a male and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.

So, I guess that's another shining example of Middle Class Economic Angst that Hillary failed so miserably to address(?)

Triggering

The abuser's technique of "Gaslighting" explained - Suzanna Weiss.

1. ‘I Never Said I’m a Perfect Person’

If anybody ever responds to your concerns about them by saying that they never claimed to be perfect or that nobody’s perfect, be very, very skeptical.

If “I’m not perfect” were a real defense against criticism, nobody would ever be justified in criticizing anyone’s behavior. But obviously, things don’t work that way. If they did, people could just avert jail time by pleading imperfection.

2. ‘This Is Nothing More Than a Distraction From the Important Issues We’re Facing Today’
These comments aim to convey to Trump’s critics that they’re blowing something out of proportion.

This type of gaslighting comes up a lot in conversations about social justice: “How could you talk about eating disorders when some people can’t even afford food?” “Who cares if queer people can get married when in some places, they’re killed?”

3. ‘This Was Locker Room Banter’
Dismissing something that hurt another person as a joke or otherwise not serious is textbook gaslighting.

4. ‘She’s Playing That Woman’s Card’

Accusing someone of playing a card, like the “woman card” or the “race card,” is also an example of gaslighting because it implies that someone’s trying to find a problem because the problem they’re seeing isn’t real.

5. ‘I Think It’s Pure Political Correctness’

When equality and justice become mere “political correctness” and political correctness is portrayed as a threat to free speech, every social movement becomes subject to attack.

Rhetorical Cues

When somebody starts by saying, "I'm not racist, but...", you know what follows will make you wish they'd die in a tragically embarrassing bathroom accident.

A close second is when (usually) a "conservative" starts a comment with, "The fact of the matter is...". You can then expect a pile of spun-up bullshit and anything-but-facts intended to deflect and obscure.

Here endeth today's lesson.

Always A Little Perspective Please

Vox, addressing the panic pushers at the GOP "debate":

Again, this by no means obviates the real threat from terrorism generally or ISIS specifically, but it makes the rhetoric on the GOP stage seem a bit hysterical.

For even more perspective: The number of Americans killed per year by terrorism is the same as the number crushed to death by their own furniture.

Obviously one key difference here is that terrorist groups would like to kill many more Americans, and are surely trying to accomplish just that, whereas presumably your sofa is not plotting any major attacks. But the point is that the risk terrorism poses to everyday American lives is not where you might have thought it was from this debate.

America just doesn't have much of a domestic terrorism problem. Incidents like the shootings in San Bernardino are vanishingly rare, as violent extremist groups have very few adherents here. US intelligence operations make it very difficult for foreign terrorist groups to bring operatives into the US and plan an attack.

He Doesn't Actually Say Anything

Trump: "I have to do what's right.  And what's right is this: We have a problem. It's a serious problem. It's gotta be solved.  And people that are Muslim; that are friends of mine are so happy that I brought it up."

I have to do what's right.  And what's right is this: We have a problem. 

Why is anybody pretending that's some kind of policy statement?

Go Baphamet

The Christianistas continue to trip over their own dicks.  They seem to have become completely isolated inside their little bubble.  They've sold themselves on the rhetorical non-sense of "America is a Christian nation and the federal government was founded on Judeo-Christian values etc etc etc".  They believe it, and they're convinced everybody else believes it too, and so they're just charging ahead (like Greaves says) without stopping to think that the all-important First Amendment thing that gives them the right to preach their version of "the truth" cuts the same for everybody else too.

From Raw Story:

This week, the state of Missouri’s draconian 72-hour waiting period for an abortion was in the spotlight again when a conservative state legislator made it clear he would try and stop a graduate student from studying the wait period’s impact on women.

But conservative Christians who have been pushing these ideologically-driven policies may have created their own demise without realizing it. The Satanic Temple sprung up to challenge the attempts to turn the United States into a Christian theocracy. And as the constitutional activists point out, they fight theocracy using the same laws and legal arguments pushed by conservative Christians.

“We’re fighting an enemy now that hasn’t had to think things through, and that’s what gives us such an advantage,” said Temple co-founder Lucien Greaves in an interview with The Raw Story. “They’re used to being the only beneficiaries of the privileges that they have fought for, and that kind of monopoly has made them complacent, stupid and weak, and it’s just made it that much easier for us to come in and assert ourselves the way we have.”

As for me, on the whole Abortion Issue, I think I know maybe 4 things:

1. A caterpillar is not a butterfly.
2. A tadpole is not a frog.
3. A fertilized chicken egg is not a chicken.
4. Nothing that's going on in my daughter's uterus is any of your god-dammed business, so fuck the fuck off, motherfucker.

The Ol' Double Switch Two-Step

..with a half twist and an inverted flipflop in the pike position.

Repub candidate for Virginia's Lt Gov (EW Jackson) had a debate with the Dem (Ralph Northam).  It was really just a polite chat for the most part because the temperature of our political discourse has been pretty high lately and for people who don't wanna think too hard - well, apparently they feel uncomfortable when it comes to doing any of the actual work required of citizens living in a system of self-government.  So this was more yawn-fest than debate, but whatever.

Although the differences felt muted for much of the debate, the ending more than made up for it.

When Fox brought up Jackson’s record of inflammatory rhetoric, the Republican was ready. Saying he’d expected the question, Jackson surprised everyone in the George Mason University auditorium in Arlington by grabbing a tablet computer he had close at hand.

He then read a passage from the Virginia state constitution. It protects citizens’ rights to express any opinion whatsoever in matters of religion.
To fault him for speaking out on religious issues, Jackson said, was to create a religious test for holding public office. It wasn’t fair when critics did it to Roman Catholic John Kennedy or to Mormon Mitt Romney, and it wasn’t fair to do it to him now. He knew the difference between what he professed in church and what he said as a politician.

The first point is that when you say one thing in church and then you say something very different out in public - yeah, that matters.  Guys like Jackson have been screaming for years about how we need to get back to our Jesus-y roots and if only we cleaved a little more closely to our Sunday School lessons then government would be a walk in the park. But guess what - the handlers and image consultants have figured out that most of us just wanna puke whenever we hear our "public servants" yammering on about what their imaginary friends are going to do to us unless blah blah blah.  So we've already seen a guy like Cuccinelli trying to distance himself from guys like Jackson; now we get the extra special spectacle of a guy like Jackson trying to distance himself from himself.  Pretty neat trick.

And the kicker is the very standard rap that we need to recognize and be ready to stomp into the pavement whenever some slickster pulls it out: pretending that his right to express his opinion is under attack.  It isn't - he's just making that shit up to deflect criticism.  It's about the opinion itself, not the right to express the opinion.

Don't be a rube.

Today's Quote

The best line I've seen today is this one from Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs, translating into English a comment Marsha Blackburn made in her native ShitSpeak:

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) says women don’t want laws guaranteeing them equal pay, because they want to have the “power and the control” to let men make those decisions for them: Marsha Blackburn: Women ‘Don’t Want’ Equal Pay Laws.

Pulling Back The Veil

Maybe Sandy will provide a small glimmer of hope that more of us will see the GOP's rhetoric for the bullshit it is.

From a post on Matt Taibbi's blog at Rolling Stone yesterday.

But everyone lives off the government teat to some degree – even (one might even say especially) the very rich who have been the core supporters of both the Bush presidency and Romney's campaign. Many are industrial leaders who would revolt tomorrow if their giant free R&D program known as the federal military budget were to be scaled back even a few percentage points. Mitt's buddies on Wall Street would cry without their bailouts and dozens of lucrative little-known subsidies (like the preposterous ability of certain banks to act as middlemen in transactions when the government lends money to itself).

On Boiling Frogs

Learn something new every day.

As Wikipedia puts it, German physiologist Friedrich Goltz “demonstrated that a frog that has had its brain removed will remain in slowly heated water, but his intact frogs attempted to escape the water.” Other 19th Century studies appeared to have different results, but modern experiments (!) show that frogs with brains are in fact smart enough to leap out of water as it is heated up.

I'd heard the Slowly-Boiled Frog thing was bunk, but I'd never looked it up.  So there it is.

Double Speak

In the 40 years I've been voting, every time anybody runs for President, he ends up talking about what he'll do - or what we need to do - "to restore America to greatness".

When you say something like that, doesn't it have to mean you think America is a pretty crappy place right now?  I know it's just a rhetorical gimmick, but it seems like whoever says that kind of thing will always also say that he's 'plain-spoken'; that he says what he means and means what he says, and blah blah blah.  And then he'll turn around and say that the US is - not was, and not will be - but is the greatest.

So when do we get a guy who does actually give it to us straight?  We don't.  Well, we did let that guy in a coupla times.  Bobby Kennedy grabbed us by the collar in 1968 and made us look directly at our own shittiness in places like Appalachia and Viet Nam - we felt so bad about it, we had to shoot him in the head, and then vote for Nixon so we could get us a little law and order up in here.  We went back to the well in 1976 but that guy turned out to be Jimmy Carter, who also told us way too much truth about way too many things that really bummed us out.  Carter managed to avoid being shot in the head by being extraordinarily adept at shooting himself in the foot - but anyway, we went back to voting for guys who knew how to wave the Big American Dick; guys who could help a bunch of petting zoo ponies pretend to be racing studs.

They lie to us because we insist on it.

My Dear Mr Boehner

For 2 years, and now especially during the big debate about whether or not to raise the Debt Ceiling, and what the US budget should look like, I've heard John Boehner say that his party just couldn't possibly abide imposing any kind of tax increase on the "job creators" in this country.  (I ranted in some detail yesterday on the "tax-cuts-equals-jobs" malarkey)

Question:  Exactly who are these job creators?  They've gotten practically nothing but tax breaks for the last ten fucking years, and we've seen a net job increase of a little over 17,000 per month for that whole period.  Seems to me they've gotten about everything they've wanted - so where's the payoff?  What the fuck are they waiting for?

No wait; I keep forgetting that Boehner doesn't say that crap thinking he'll persuade me and change my mind.  He says that because when the Rubes hear anything that hints at contradicting what they're being spoon fed by DumFux News, they tend to get a little nervous; so guys like Boehner need to rush around puttin' that big Republican cock back in their mouths to calm 'em down.