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Sep 1, 2016
Today's Doc Maddow
Listen and learn - she has a doctorate in this shit, so there's something she can teach us.
And now that you've learned a little something about The Know Nothings, it gets really hard not to hear it when it pops up (starting at about 4:35 when Wolf is asking Trump about harassment).
Today's Other Tweet
— Brad Pritchett (@bradpritchett) September 1, 2016
Among Trump's Christian Right followers, I wonder if there's any inkling of "the mark of the beast" that filters through.
Cuz let's not try to fool ourselves - if we're going to be able to tell "the good ones from the bad ones", then everybody has to get a tag.
PS) this is very Slippery Slope-y, but sometimes those slopes are real and sometimes those real slopes are very slippery.
Aug 31, 2016
OMFuckingG
We CANNOT let this lowdown shit-speckled pile of moldy skunk weed become our president.
Can't wait to hear the post-game.
Today's Tweet
— tarik (@LekniziTarik) March 6, 2016
Yo, conservatives - horses know enough to share their stuff. Why don't you? When're you guys gonna stop being dumber 'n a horse?
And This Is Your Brain
...on a podcast
via You Are Not So Smart
Dean Burnett is a neuroscientist who lectures at Cardiff University and writes about brain stuff over at his blog, Brain Flapping hosted by The Guardian.
via You Are Not So Smart
- What's new with motion sickness?
- Why does it feel so bad to break up?
- What about Dunning-Kruger?
- Is it paranoia that drives Anti-Intellectualism?
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.
Aug 30, 2016
On The Wall
For the 1,255 miles of the US-Mexico border that's made up of the Rio Grande, where exactly will Mr Trump's wall stand?
The border more or less runs right down the middle of the river - and you literally can't build the thing in the water.
So do you build it on the Mexico side? Since Mexico doesn't want anything to do with our silly wall, it seems kinda doubtful they'll allow that.
But if we build it on the US side, then don't we kinda lose access to the river itself?
There's an awful lot of that riverfront that's private land. Do you plan to condemn 100 or 500 or 1000 miles of private property thru Eminent Domain and then forcibly take possession of the land if necessary?
Maybe that's why the Trumpkinites have restarted the talk about a "Virtual Wall" or "Technological Wall" or a "Digital Wall". Except that every time surrogates try to ameliorate anything, Trump comes back and either re-doubles down or flipflops and denies he ever said anything like that you must be crazy or you're dishonest and disgusting and I'd really like one of my guys to punch you right in the head no not really but maybe yeah kinda.
And in the meantime, we all just get to wait for whatever Trump has to say so this rolling clusterfuck can keep its death-grip on the news cycle.
He's got us all trained to sit here panting and wagging our furry tails like good little Press Poodles.
PoliticusUSA:
The border more or less runs right down the middle of the river - and you literally can't build the thing in the water.
So do you build it on the Mexico side? Since Mexico doesn't want anything to do with our silly wall, it seems kinda doubtful they'll allow that.
But if we build it on the US side, then don't we kinda lose access to the river itself?
There's an awful lot of that riverfront that's private land. Do you plan to condemn 100 or 500 or 1000 miles of private property thru Eminent Domain and then forcibly take possession of the land if necessary?
Maybe that's why the Trumpkinites have restarted the talk about a "Virtual Wall" or "Technological Wall" or a "Digital Wall". Except that every time surrogates try to ameliorate anything, Trump comes back and either re-doubles down or flipflops and denies he ever said anything like that you must be crazy or you're dishonest and disgusting and I'd really like one of my guys to punch you right in the head no not really but maybe yeah kinda.
And in the meantime, we all just get to wait for whatever Trump has to say so this rolling clusterfuck can keep its death-grip on the news cycle.
He's got us all trained to sit here panting and wagging our furry tails like good little Press Poodles.
PoliticusUSA:
To the surprise of no one outside of those who voted for Trump in the Republican primary, the border wall was a lie. In fact, Republican members of Congress have been suggesting since Trump announced his plan to “build the wall” that they didn’t support it, and would not pass the appropriations needed to construct a wall.Like cousin Trae said - here's hoping he dies in a tragic hairspray accident. And soon.
Ow
Run that burn under a cold tap, Rodney. Then delete your account, quit your TV job, and go back to school.
Charity
From Vox:
I think this shit happens too much, and I think it's harder and harder to rationalize away disturbing thoughts of how corrupt it seems to be.
Like the author says, the tendency to believe the worst about most politicians, and Hillary in particular, has been in place for a long time. But that just makes me wonder if The Clinton Foundation thing is a good example of the famous Too-Cute-By-Half that seems to characterize the Clinton gang.
Some Brain Puking:
People want something from Hillary's State Dept.
They call and ask.
They either get what they want or they don't (it looks sketchy, but nobody's made any direct Quid Pro Quo connections).
Anyway, the call goes thru to somebody on Hillary's staff, and after an appropriate length of time, the caller is contacted by The Foundation, there's a low-key soft-sell pitch, and before they know it, they're writing out a nice fat check.
So the Lithuanian Labor Minister gets a little help from the US Dept of State for his niece's visa problem, and 7 or 8 months later, Uganda gets some water filters with the money the grateful Minister donated to The Clinton Foundation.
Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more.
So instead of Pay To Play (which is illegal), they've reversed it to Play Then Pay (which isn't; not really anyway) - and if anybody makes a big squawk, well, "just look at all the great things we've done with the money" - which they have, and which makes it harder to flat-out reject the "How Things Work In The Real World" narrative.
In 1997, after a distinguished career in military service that culminated with stints as national security adviser under Ronald Reagan and chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Colin Powell launched a charity. Named America’s Promise, it’s built around the theme of Five Promises to America’s children. And while I’ve never heard it praised as a particularly cost-effective way to help humanity by effective altruists, it was surely a reasonably good cause for a famous and politically popular man to dedicate himself to.
Needless to say, however, Powell continued to be involved in American political life. His sky-high poll numbers ensured he’d be buzzed about as a possible presidential or vice presidential nominee, either as a moderate Republican or as an independent. Realistically, that wasn’t in the cards, and Powell was smart enough to know it. But his support for George W. Bush during the 2000 campaign lent him valuable credibility, and his recruitment to serve as Bush’s first secretary of state was considered an important political and substantive coup by Bush.
So what about the charity? Well, Powell’s wife, Alma Powell, took it over. And it kept raking in donations from corporate America. Ken Lay, the chair of Enron, was a big donor. He also backed a literacy-related charity that was founded by the then-president’s mother. The US Department of State, at the time Powell was secretary, went to bat for Enron in a dispute the company was having with the Indian government.
Did Lay or any other Enron official attempt to use their connections with Alma Powell (or Barbara Bush, for that matter) to help secure access to State Department personnel in order to voice these concerns? Did any other donors to America’s Promise? I have no idea, because to the best of my knowledge nobody in the media ever launched an extensive investigation into these matters. That’s the value of the presumption of innocence, something Hillary Clinton has never been able to enjoy during her time in the national spotlight.I think this is a pretty fair viewpoint, even though the guy is straining pretty hard to take it right up to the edge of Tu Quoque without tipping over into it completely.
I think this shit happens too much, and I think it's harder and harder to rationalize away disturbing thoughts of how corrupt it seems to be.
Like the author says, the tendency to believe the worst about most politicians, and Hillary in particular, has been in place for a long time. But that just makes me wonder if The Clinton Foundation thing is a good example of the famous Too-Cute-By-Half that seems to characterize the Clinton gang.
Some Brain Puking:
People want something from Hillary's State Dept.
They call and ask.
They either get what they want or they don't (it looks sketchy, but nobody's made any direct Quid Pro Quo connections).
Anyway, the call goes thru to somebody on Hillary's staff, and after an appropriate length of time, the caller is contacted by The Foundation, there's a low-key soft-sell pitch, and before they know it, they're writing out a nice fat check.
So the Lithuanian Labor Minister gets a little help from the US Dept of State for his niece's visa problem, and 7 or 8 months later, Uganda gets some water filters with the money the grateful Minister donated to The Clinton Foundation.
Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more.
So instead of Pay To Play (which is illegal), they've reversed it to Play Then Pay (which isn't; not really anyway) - and if anybody makes a big squawk, well, "just look at all the great things we've done with the money" - which they have, and which makes it harder to flat-out reject the "How Things Work In The Real World" narrative.
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