Today's Tweet(s)

DumFux News does its best to keep the rubes from seeing and hearing their boy get shitty with people.

The rubes still don't care, but the GOP knows that the core support for the Clown Prince is shrinking, so they do everything possible to prop him up.

Watch Fox News' coverage: they cut away quickly before he can get the second dig in while the anchor laughs nervously and calls it "ho, ho a little insult for somebody..." pic.twitter.com/uIJb12JPO1

— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule) August 16, 2019

Dumb Dumber And DumFux news

WaPo:

This is a story about how the lowest common denominator of popular media paved the way for the lowest common denominator of populist politics. And it’s got data.

It begins with the opening of Italy’s airwaves, long the dominion of the highly regarded public broadcaster RAI. In the 1980s, an aggressive and unabashedly unsophisticated channel called Mediaset elbowed its way into the market and spread across the country, buying up small local channels and countering RAI’s educational mission with a heavy dose of cartoons, sports, soap operas, movies and other light entertainment.

By 1990, 49 out of 50 Italians could watch Mediaset — half of the country had gained access in just five years. These unusual events allowed a team of Italian economists to compare towns that initially had Mediaset with otherwise equivalent towns that didn’t get reception until later, and thus calculate how a few extra years of lowbrow TV can shape a society’s politics.

The results are bleak. In the American Economic Review, Ruben Durante of Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Paolo Pinotti of Bocconi University in Milan and Andrea Tesei of Queen Mary University of London analyze detailed broadcast-transmitter data to show that more exposure to Mediaset’s vapid programming was followed by an enduring boost in support for populist candidates peddling simple messages and easy answers.

You may think this relationship has an obvious explanation, presumably because you’re aware that Mediaset’s founder and controlling owner is noted populist politician and former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. But the researchers go to great lengths to prove this isn’t just a Berlusconi effect. For starters, the bump extends to his populist competitors, particularly the Five Star Movement. Founded on a comedian’s blog a decade ago, the anti-establishment movement became the biggest single party in Italy’s Parliament after last year’s election.

And before we just shrug it off as "Gee that's wacky - Life Imitating Art", let's remind ourselves that the "art" here is political artifice, and that we tend to do what we're taught to do.

Propaganda works.

And So It Goes

If "Conservatives" would stop acting like a buncha whiny-butt pussies, I'd stop calling them a buncha whiny-butt pussies.

I've called them Rubes for a while now too - which they are, because they continue to demonstrate they are.

See how that works?

Now, I'm not saying I have some kind of perfect record when it comes to bravely confronting things in life. 

To this day, I can't listen to Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells (The Exorcist) without having nightmares. And I'm a fucking atheist.

There was also the time I believed that my wife of 28 years (now ex-wife) wasn't taking horizontal mambo lessons from an old high school "acquaintance" on a regular basis.

So I can be a chicken - and a dumbass mired in denial too.

But for the most part, when I'm looking at all this political stuff, I can pick my way through the available data and synthesize a reasonable hypothesis that I can test, to see if it holds up.

There are things you just have to know are bullshit. And it's not something where you have to have a knack for it, or an innate ability to see the truth through an unfiltered mind's eye.

You just have to test it. Question it. Sort it out.

And really, it helps to be possessed of that tiny modicum of common sense that "conservatives" are always bitchin' about how nobody else has.

Anyway.

The Washington Examiner:

Russian intelligence agents spread a false report claiming assassins working for Hillary Clinton killed Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich just days after his murder, according to a new investigation.

The SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service, spread a fake intelligence report about Rich on July 13, 2016, three days after he was killed walking home, a federal prosecutor told Yahoo News.

The Russians claimed Rich, a 27-year-old working as a data director for the DNC, was going to alert the FBI to corrupt dealings by Clinton when he was murdered by assassins. Those details then appeared on whatdoesitmean.com, an obscure website that promotes Russian propaganda.

In the next two years, media organizations owned by the Russian government emphasized stories falsely alleging Rich leaked Democratic Party emails to WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange also made false statements about Rich’s death to obscure that the hacked emails came from Russia, special counsel Robert Mueller alleged in his redacted report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll factory that engaged in social media influence operations during the election, aggressively circulated the conspiracy theories, helping to keep the false claims alive.

The conspiracy was also spread by allies of President Trump.


The Examiner isn't what any sentient being would consider "lefty":

And "conservatives" are suckers. They're whiny-butt pussies and rubes and suckers.

Today's Tweet

Nobody goes broke overestimating the gullibility of the average rube.

For $45, Lance Wallnau and Jim Bakker will sell you a Trump/Cyrus coin that you can use as a "point of contact" between you and God as you pray for Trump's re-election in 2020. pic.twitter.com/EwKgGL7sNp

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) May 14, 2019

Esquire has the full accounting of it:

More than that, though, his presidency persists despite the eruptions of public insanity and the felonies in office and the obvious corruption and the authoritarian onslaught against the institutions of our democracy because other people are making money. The market has mostly been strong, so Wall Street and Big Business have been happy, and then you throw in his trillion-dollar tax-cut giveaway to rich people and corporations. (What constitutional crisis? I'm on a yacht!) The lobbyists and special interests are thriving in the New Swamp—now headquartered at the Trump International Hotel, a beacon of the most brazen corruption—and must surely be enjoying this more direct model of crony capitalism. 

There's nothing like a televangelist to remind you this is a nation of salesmen.

Grifters from all over have greased into his Cabinet and administration, either to live high on the hog on the taxpayer dime or do some favors for industry so they'll get handed a sack of cash when they head through the Revolving Door. Fox News and conservative media and right-wing youth groups are all feeding The Base of aging Caucasians a steady diet of resentment and fear of a changing world in exchange for advertising revenue and donor cash.

And of course, the Evangelical leaders who backed Trump without regard for any discernible Christian principle are having a grand old time. There's nothing like a televangelist to remind you this is a nation of salesmen, and that more often than not, they're peddling snake oil. The latest example comes to us via the Jim Bakker Show, and an intriguing chap who goes by Dr. Lance Wallnau.

That's right: this man says The Lord—the Almighty God who created the Universe, and who exists in the realm beyond space and time—told him this coin is the "point of contact" between people praying for President Trump's success. And it's only $45! And, as luck would have it, the same guy who spoke to God Himself about this coin is also selling the coin, right now!

We are so fucked.

In The Age Of Poe

Poe's Law: Without a clear indicator of the author's intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the parodied views.

This kinda thing is popping up more often.

The Independent:

An American started a fake news website to see how ridiculous a story had to be before Donald Trump supporters realised it was untrue – and ended up concluding that some of them would believe absolutely anything.

Despite aiming to write stories no-one would believe, James McDaniel found Trump supporters who believed that Barack Obama had been plotting a coup from a secret bunker near the White House, and that the British singer Adele had demanded he be jailed for such treachery.

They believed that Obama had tweeted “Trump must be removed as president by any means necessary”, and when one commenter, ‘Truthseeker’, dared suggest the story ‘Obama ran paedophile ring out of White House’ might possibly be fake, he was told: “Really “Truthseeker” if you had ANY clue of the truth, you’d KNOW that Wikileaks hasn’t published ONE thing that has been false. So please use your own mind. Stop listening to MSM [mainstream media] and realize what the TRUTH really is.”

Another commenter, ‘Mary’, said caustically: “Truthseeker? Really … but the truth is bothering you?”

She then – apparently without irony – posted a link to the now notorious ‘Pizzagate’ fake news story, about an alleged Democratic child sex ring in a Washington pizza parlour, which had prompted one credulous reader to walk into the restaurant with a semi-automatic rifle and open fire.

Mr McDaniel, 28, who is based in Costa Rica and works for an American nutrition company, said that within two weeks of him starting his website undergroundnewsreport.com, it had received more than one million visitors, and hundreds and thousands of likes and shares on Facebook.

He followed ‘Obama ran paedophile ring out of White House’ with a fake story about Wikileakspublishing an email in which Hillary Clintonsupposedly urged the then president to restrict his child abuse to ‘the pizza arrangement’.

Despite the obvious reference to Pizzagate, Trump supporters responded by urging Julian Assange to reveal all his Clinton information immediately - because otherwise Democrats might distract the American people with “fake news”.

Overheard

Being a Trump supporter means you brag about "The Party Of Lincoln" and how great you feel because the Republicans freed the slaves, while at the same time you worship Robert E Lee as some perversely heroic patriot who went to war against the USA to defend the "right" to own slaves.

And that's what passes for reasoning - you half-witted fucking moronic douche nozzles.

@itsJeffTiedrich

On Micro-Aggressions And Safe Spaces

Beau Of The Fifth Column - Justin King

To be clear, I have some sympathy for the rubes - as people. But I have nothing beyond the basic respect for their humanity. 

When ignorance is a choice, and that choice means you've decided that being a contrarian dick is preferable to being a decent guy who cares about something beyond his own animal instincts - then you've made it all but impossible for me to have any regard for you at all.

That said - 

And that's the magic formula for "conservatives". For the most part, in the quest for political power, they've completely abandoned their sense of shame. But as long as they can count on everybody else maintaining a small nugget of honor - a willingness to be introspective - then they believe they can flip the script on us for just about anything.

We've all heard it a thousand times: "Where's that famous Liberal Tolerance?"

Just remember Popper's Paradox. We need to guard against becoming tolerant of intolerance.

Fun With Arithmetic

MAGA rubes are trying to make a big noise about "hate crimes" being perpetrated against them just because they're out and about wearing their Stoopid for all to see.

Newsweek:

In 2017, hate crimes in the U.S. increased 17 percent, rising for the third year in a row. Forty-nine percent of race-based incidents were “motivated by anti-Black or African American bias," while 17.5 targeted white individuals, according to the 2017 FBI Hate Crime report. More than 58 percent of religiously motivated attacks targeted Jewish individuals, the report stated.

The piece lists, as examples, 9 reported attacks on Red Hats in the 47 days since January 18 this year.

So let's just fuck around with it a little.
If those 9 incidents represent the 17.5% of attacks that went against MAGA dopes, let's make a radical assumption and say the other 82.5% were against people not stupid enough to continue supporting a guy who is so obviously ill-suited to be POTUS.

If 9 attacks = 17.5%, then 82.5% = 51 attacks.

9 attacks in 47 days = 0.2 attacks per day.
51 attacks in 47 days =  1.1 attacks per day.

I don't think anyone should be physically attacked because of their political views - that's not the fucking point here.

The fucking point here is that we're still getting a shitload of what sounds a lot like False Equivalence from the Press Poodles.

Safety Tip

Please make an extra effort to control your rage over the next few days, because it's inevitable that you'll hear some typically stoopid jokes about "Global Warming" from some typically stoopid Red Hat Rubes.

Just try to remember: busting your knuckles on that idiot's head hurts a lot more when it's really cold like this.

Stay calm and keep shoveling

Today's Tweet

Wonder how much he thinks they can get for beans and wheat that's mostly slime by now.

Good news, Farmers, he loves you.

He loves you like a billionaire loves a porn star. https://t.co/xvfntdYkDR

— Stonekettle (@Stonekettle) December 3, 2018

And how much suffering are the rubes willing to endure just so they can avoid having to admit they're getting played?

Scam Du Jour

...even though it's been going on for years.

Now that we have a grifter in charge of things, it's getting worse.

RawStory:

Some supporters of President Donald Trump are being manipulated by scammers into investing in the Iraqi dinar based on the false premise that the president predicted its value would soar in the coming years.

As the Daily Beast’s Will Sommer reports, scammers who have been promoting the Iraqi dinar as an investment vehicle have been telling Trump supporters that the president and the Iraqi government are conducting negotiations to “revalue” the currency that each dinar is worth three-to-four times the amount of the United States dollar.

This would be a massive boost in the currencies valuation, which now has a value of less than $0.001 for every US dollar.

North Carolina Trump supporter Hayes Kotseos says she became convinced that Trump would raise the value of the dinar after seeing a video clip of the president in 2017 where he vaguely said that all currencies would soon “be on a level playing field.”

“I love my president, and I was like, ‘Oh my God,'” Kotseos tells the Daily Beast of her reaction to the video.

Afterward, she and her husband invested thousands of dollars in Iraqi dinars on the hopes that Trump’s deal-making prowess would soon make them instant millionaires.

Kotseos isn’t alone either: Sommer has found that “court papers related to dinar scams often mention millions of dollars worth of dinar purchases” and that “dinar holders regularly tweet at Trump and various Iraqi government Twitter accounts, demanding to know when they’ll finally enact the ‘RV’ that will let the money flow in.”

Will Sommer at The Daily Beast

The currency is nearly worthless outside of Iraq, but Kotseos bought millions of dinars in April, after watching a video of President Trump at a 2017 press conference. In the clip, Trump says, with characteristic vagueness, that all currencies will soon “be on a level playing field.”

In reality, Trump was talking about trade imbalances with China. But like other Trump supporters who have fallen into the dinar investment scam, which has existed since at least 2012, Kotseos interpreted Trump’s rambling statement as proof that the Iraqi dinar would soon be worth as much or even more than the dollar, making anyone who had been smart enough to buy in early a millionaire.

Her shirt says it all. She can't be both at the same time.

And that's the key.

Once I've convinced the rubes to accept the oxymoron, and internalize its contradiction, they'll believe anything I say and do whatever I ask.

Andy Borowitz

The New Yorker:

MINNEAPOLIS (The Borowitz Report) -- Many Americans are tired of explaining things to idiots, particularly when the things in question are so painfully obvious, a new poll indicates.

According to the poll, conducted by the University of Minnesota’s Opinion Research Institute, while millions have been vexed for some time by their failure to explain incredibly basic information to dolts, that frustration has now reached a breaking point.

Of the many obvious things that people are sick and tired of trying to get through the skulls of stupid people, the fact that climate change will cause catastrophic habitat destruction and devastating extinctions tops the list, with a majority saying that they will no longer bother trying to explain this to cretins.

Coming in a close second, statistical proof that gun control has reduced gun deaths in countries around the world is something that a significant number of those polled have given up attempting to break down for morons.

Finally, a majority said that trying to make idiots understand why a flag that symbolizes bigotry and hatred has no business flying over a state capitol only makes the person attempting to explain this want to put his or her fist through a wall.

In a result that suggests a dismal future for the practice of explaining things to idiots, an overwhelming number of those polled said that they were considering abandoning such attempts altogether, with a broad majority agreeing with the statement, “This country is exhausting.”

It Occurs To Me

John Oliver - Last Week Tonight, HBO:

Cult45 keeps fucking things up. And not just the stuff they intend to fuck up - ACA, Medicaid, SNAP, National Parks, Water, Air, Food, et cetera, et cetera, et-fucking-cetera.

But every time these bug brains try to do something - when they actually make an attempt to implement policy - they Stooge the fuck out of it.

How long have we heard the Anti-Gubmint Rubes sneering at even the thought of getting decent functionality out of any level of government? 

How long have they been harping about how it just takes is a little common sense, and the whole thing will be purring along like a brand new Mix Master?

Well, there they are, kids - the geniuses who think a simple 10-word answer solves everything - fucking up everything they touch.

So, if "all it takes is a little common sense", then how little of it they must have.

One Small Bit

...of good news (a guy can hope anyway).

The Pluralist:

Breitbart's online traffic declined in May for a seventh consecutive month, marking a rapid fall from grace for the one-time right-wing darling.

Politico reported the traffic numbers Saturday, citing comScore. Over the past year, Breitbart's readership has nearly halved, from 12.1 million unique users in May 2017 to just 6.4 million last month.

Conservative commentator Matt Lewis told Politico that Bannon's departure is indeed part of the reason for Breitbart's decline.

And the big take-away:

“Nationalism and populism always requires a charismatic leader,” he said. “The ideas are not persuasive enough to work without a cult of personality.”

(Sweeping Generalization Alert)

Rubes follow. That's what they do - they're joiners and they're followers. As adamant as they can sound when denouncing everything they construe as political, eg: "the stoopid gubmint"; and as much as they insist on being perceived as fiercely independent-minded, they vote for leaders who do their thinking for them - who can provide them bumper-stickers and t-shirts and simple 10-word answers for every gnarly complicated problem.

Because thinking can be very difficult. And a political discussion can spoil the groove, and ruin your whole picnic.

So they're really not all that dumb, but they can be intellectually lazy in the extreme.

They just want to spend their free time playing with their toys &/or hangin' with their buds &/or just straight-up loafing.

And none of that is necessarily a bad thing. The problem is that you can get real good at not thinking.

About That Voter Anxiety

WaPo ran an "exposé" on how the voters got 'disenchanted' during the Obama years:

Eight days before Trump took the oath of office, Kurt Glazier, now 50, was in the dining room of his home in Sterling, Ill. Wearing a John Deere hoodie, he offered a measured view of the road ahead. ***Glazier is a state worker, a union member and serves as chairman of the Republican Party in Whiteside County. He also sits on the county board. He is a thoughtful person who speaks deliberately and chooses his words carefully.

(*** in a state where the GOP governor has steadfastly refused to pass a budget, which is widely understood to be Gov Rauner's way of using the "budget problem" to kill Public Employees' Unions, cut Medicaid, and generally drive down wages in order to make Illinois more "Business-Friendly")

1. Fuck something up
2. Wait a bit
3. Point at it and say, "Oh look - it's fucked up"
4. Run on a platform of, "It's All Fucked Up So You Better Vote For Me Cuz Only I Can Fix It"

Sorry not sorry, kids. You fell for it. You got snookered.

- and -

Although he had not seen Trump’s victory coming, he said that it hadn’t been difficult to interest people in Trump’s candidacy. “I think Trump brought out the fact that — I mean, as crude and callous as he was at times — so many people had been almost discriminated against because they were Republicans and not Democrats that we felt inferior.”

- and -

Bruening, 41, understood Trump’s success in Clayton County despite the earlier string of Democratic victories. “I think one [reason] is that it is exhausting to have to edit yourself all the time, and Trump was completely the opposite of that,” he said. “I think Trump allowed . . . people to not have to feel bad about holding, say, anti-immigrant views or something. That’s one of the things I really noticed. People are way less afraid to say what they really think about a host of different things.”

Trump, he said, also was like a mirror that reflected on people what they wanted to see and hear. “What people are talking about is what he gives back to them, and I think because of that, that’s a good way to really reach people on a visceral level,” he said. “. . . So there’s this feedback loop, which I think he’s, like, a genius at, legitimately. And so people got the impression that he was hearing them on a personal level.”

Call it the Archie Bunker Effect. Archie starts out as the penultimate bad example - the guy who embarrasses everybody almost every time he speaks, but ends up being some hero of the Culture Wars because "really, Archie just says what we're all thinking".

And speaking your mind is generally cool, of course, but when what you're thinking is a buncha racist shit that's been manufactured for you to the point where it feels like a custom fit, then we've got a problem. 

Because y'know what, Sparky? It's not unreasonable for me to expect you to sit politely at the dinner table and resist any and all temptation to call your grandmother a worthless stupid cunt just to see her get mad enough to cry.

And, as usual, the Press Poodles continue to ignore the GOP's hand in creating these problems. McConnell & Co spent 8 years fucking it all up, but that little tidbit never factors in to any of the questions when the Poodles go out there and mingle with the simple folk.

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

That Right There

I've not seen a better example of someone being hermetically sealed in a bubble of deliberate ignorance.

It's the Post-Truth-Only-My-Opinion-Matters-Please-Jesus-Bring-The-Apocalypse-So-I-Don't-Hafta-Admit-To-Myself-I'm-Full-Of-Shit Blues

Fish gotta swim
Birds gotta fly
Rubes gotta rube
And we all know why

Today's GIF

Workin' guy voting GOP

Deep In The Heart Of Texas

Dale Hansen - the sports guy at WFAA in Dallas.

And oh yeah - if you buy this shit:

@Seahawks @NFL

THE PROTESTS ARENT ABOUT OUR FLAG???

RETWEET THE HELL OUT OF THIS#NFLBoycott#TakeAKnee#LockThemUp#MAGA pic.twitter.com/ba2iidqljW

— ᎿᖇᏌᏣᏦᏋᖇᎦᏊᎲᎰᏋ (@cjlongoria07) September 29, 2017

...I've got a border wall you might be interested in.

Especially when it's just too easy to find the real thing.

What do you do in the victory locker room? You victory dance.#SEAvsAZ pic.twitter.com/qJoVyG6ZM8

— Seattle Seahawks (@Seahawks) January 4, 2016

Please stop wondering why I call you guys Rubes, OK?

What It Is

Call it the Rube-ification of America. And to borrow from Bill Maher: "Why do we always have to be the stoopid country?"

Paul Waldman, WaPo:

What’s truly remarkable isn’t that a bunch of cynical politicians thought they could ride their base voters’ anger into control of Congress by lying to them about what they could actually accomplish; it’s that their voters actually believed it. And then those voters got even angrier when it turned out that the president had the ability to veto bills passed by a Congress controlled by the other party. Who knew! So instead of looking for a presidential candidate who would treat them like adults, they elected Donald Trump, a man who would pander to their gullibility even more. 

Which brings us to where we are today. Republicans couldn’t be bothered for seven years to actually think about what repealing and replacing the ACA might involve, or whether there would be trade-offs and choices to make, or whether setting up a system that accorded with their conservative philosophy might not actually solve the problems of the health-care system. They thought it would be enough to tell their voters to get mad, and worry later about what it would take to keep the promises they made.
-and-

That’s not to say that there isn’t plenty of outright malice in what Republicans are doing, because there is. Their contempt for people who struggle economically is boundless. They’ve wanted to destroy Medicaid for decades, and they just might be able to do it. But their strongest motivation right now is fear, fear of the voters they regard as too dim-witted to be able to make a rational judgment about the most consequential policy question one can imagine.
We dodged one big-ass bullet at about 2:00 this morning, thanks partly to Collins, Murkowski and McCain - but thanks mostly to the simple fact that an awful lot of us have been up on our hind legs pushing back. Makes me proud.

BTW, it ain't over. Both McConnell and 45* issued the standard Daddy State threat - warning us we'd be sorry. 

When they say "Obamacare is failing" and "let Obamacare implode", they mean "we'll continue to sabotage Obamacare to punish you for not going along with us".

So don't get happy.