John Oliver, Feb 19, 2017
Feb 20, 2017
Feelin' Kinda Cynical
In a democracy, you're the customer and the boss.
As a customer, you pay money in and you get services out.
As the boss you hire managers to run the joint for you - what we still like to call elections.
In this Oligarchy/Corporatocracy, you're no longer considered the customer. If you're the customer, they'd listen to your input. Now the only time you get to talk to them is when they give you a chance to agree with decisions they've already made - a lot like those company meetings we all love so much.
And whatever else you may be, you're sure as fuck not the boss anymore.
So if you're not the customer and you're not the boss, I think that makes you the product.
They're farming you for your tax dollars. They harvest your money and divvy it up with their buddies and their campaign donors.
Because Contributors get them elected, not voters.
As a customer, you pay money in and you get services out.
As the boss you hire managers to run the joint for you - what we still like to call elections.
In this Oligarchy/Corporatocracy, you're no longer considered the customer. If you're the customer, they'd listen to your input. Now the only time you get to talk to them is when they give you a chance to agree with decisions they've already made - a lot like those company meetings we all love so much.
And whatever else you may be, you're sure as fuck not the boss anymore.
So if you're not the customer and you're not the boss, I think that makes you the product.
They're farming you for your tax dollars. They harvest your money and divvy it up with their buddies and their campaign donors.
Because Contributors get them elected, not voters.
Today's Tweet
I'm on the fence as far as whether or not I even care if it's true. Sometimes you fight fire with fire.
My friend @mfab69 was driving home from work, looked up and saw this pic.twitter.com/zTFL2DG4I6— Beth,TheNaziSlayer (@BethW_NoTrump) February 18, 2017
Feb 19, 2017
Charlie Brings It
Charlie Pierce at Esquire
hat tip = Karoli, Crooks & Liars
How many more of these whackadoo performance pieces does he have to present before somebody throws sand in the gears? If four Republican senators—say, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Ben Sasse, and Susan Collins—would agree to caucus with the Democrats under Chuck Schumer, the whole thing would grind to a halt until we could catch our breath and see if we really want to live in the madhouse of this president*'s mind for the next four years. Bold speeches in Munich and chest-thumping on Twitter won't cut it. It's put up or shut up time.
And, please, for the love of god, ye editors and news directors throughout the land, enough with the expeditions into the heartland to talk to people who helped bring this down upon themselves and on us. These folks have nothing new to say. They voted their id and their spleen and they're still on a high from that. Some guy in a café in Dubuque wants to say that he voted for this president* because he "tells it like it is," or because he thinks the steel mills are coming back? Can you watch that rally in Florida and believe that these opinions have any real merit?
hat tip = Karoli, Crooks & Liars
Fake And Alt-Fake News
Beware the double negative - and the triple and the fourple.
Don Lemon gets up and slaps back.
Don Lemon gets up and slaps back.
Yay Don. You are earning your way out of Press Poodle status. Ya did us proud right there, son.
Today's Tweet
Donald Trump is so incredibly not racist that all major racist groups endorsed him purely out of ironic spite.— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) February 18, 2017
Feb 18, 2017
Just In Case
...that Pruitt schmuck actually kills the EPA, I wanted to put up some tiny little tribute to some of the reasons we managed to clean up after ourselves.
Pollution --Tom Lehrer
The story goes that LBJ liked to work with the windows open when the weather was nice, but he couldn't because the prevailing winds brought the stench of the Potomac into the Oval Office and he wanted something done about it.
Two years after Johnson was gone, people had pressured their Congress Critters enough to finally move Nixon to issue an Executive Order in 1970 creating the agency, which was followed by the legislation that would flesh it out and basically create a cop who was supposed to keep the bad guys from poisoning us.
The air got less shitty, the water got better, there was less crap in the soil that ended up on our dinner plates. The Cuyahoga river stopped catching fire. And Lake Erie went back to being something less like a sewer and more like a reason to move to Cleveland (OK, that one's a bit of a stretch - but hey, LeBron likes it there).
Here's the thing: The infrastructure of good government never comes easy, and once it's gone it can be even harder to get it back.
And BTW, a cleaner environment is really good for the economy.
There's no sense in having a job that makes you too sick to work.
And how big does a paycheck have to be to make up for the lousy feeling you get watching your kid gasp for air, and realizing the work you do could be causing that kid's asthma to get worse?
Like they say - the guys who put Scott Pruitt where he is don't like having the EPA around for the same reason muggers and thieves don't like having cops on the beat.
Pollution --Tom Lehrer
Garbage --Biff Rose
Two years after Johnson was gone, people had pressured their Congress Critters enough to finally move Nixon to issue an Executive Order in 1970 creating the agency, which was followed by the legislation that would flesh it out and basically create a cop who was supposed to keep the bad guys from poisoning us.
The air got less shitty, the water got better, there was less crap in the soil that ended up on our dinner plates. The Cuyahoga river stopped catching fire. And Lake Erie went back to being something less like a sewer and more like a reason to move to Cleveland (OK, that one's a bit of a stretch - but hey, LeBron likes it there).
Here's the thing: The infrastructure of good government never comes easy, and once it's gone it can be even harder to get it back.
And BTW, a cleaner environment is really good for the economy.
There's no sense in having a job that makes you too sick to work.
And how big does a paycheck have to be to make up for the lousy feeling you get watching your kid gasp for air, and realizing the work you do could be causing that kid's asthma to get worse?
Like they say - the guys who put Scott Pruitt where he is don't like having the EPA around for the same reason muggers and thieves don't like having cops on the beat.
Here It Comes
The Daddy State is rolling along in spite of what we can see on the surface.
Vox:
Isolate your devotees from outside influence. Give them a comforting substitute for reality.
I'm not going to indulge the ridiculous notion that 45* is playing some amazing 8-Dimensional Chess - that's not something Obama could do, and it sure as fuck ain't something 45* could handle.
That's not to say this shit happens by accident, or that he's not capable of subtlety - just that 45* does what he does with a purpose in mind and it all ends up pretty much out in the open because he can't help bragging about it. And that's the key.
The Authoritarian has to keep score. He has to be able to point to what he's done and count something (rally attendance, Electoral Votes, dead Jews) because he has to show you how great he is as a boss, or to show the boss what a good little follower he is.
And when he runs up against the contradictions he creates (which always in turn create massive fuckups), he just makes shit up so the "facts" will fit around the required outcome.
Keep watching. Keep pushing back.
Vox:
Report: Trump transition ordered government economists to cook up rosy growth forecasts
The Trump University economics department strikes again.
Updated by Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias matt@vox.com
Feb 17, 2017, 2:19pm EST
As the White House staff tries to put together a budget for President Donald Trump, they face a fundamental problem. Trump has promised to cut taxes, increase spending on the military and infrastructure, and avoid cuts to Social Security and Medicare. The only way to do that without producing an exploding budget deficit is to assume a big increase in economic growth.
And Nick Timiraos at the Wall Street Journal reports that Trump is planning to do just that — by making things up.
Deep into his story about Trump budget hijinks, Timiraos reveals that “what’s unusual about the administration’s forecasts isn’t just their relative optimism but also the process by which they were derived.” Specifically, what’s unusual about them is that they weren’t derived by any process at all. Instead of letting economists build a forecast, Trump’s budget was put together with “transition officials telling the CEA staff the growth targets that their budget would produce and asking them to backfill other estimates off those figures.”And all that crapola falling out of 45*'s Putin Receptacle about Fake News?
Isolate your devotees from outside influence. Give them a comforting substitute for reality.
I'm not going to indulge the ridiculous notion that 45* is playing some amazing 8-Dimensional Chess - that's not something Obama could do, and it sure as fuck ain't something 45* could handle.
That's not to say this shit happens by accident, or that he's not capable of subtlety - just that 45* does what he does with a purpose in mind and it all ends up pretty much out in the open because he can't help bragging about it. And that's the key.
The Authoritarian has to keep score. He has to be able to point to what he's done and count something (rally attendance, Electoral Votes, dead Jews) because he has to show you how great he is as a boss, or to show the boss what a good little follower he is.
And when he runs up against the contradictions he creates (which always in turn create massive fuckups), he just makes shit up so the "facts" will fit around the required outcome.
Keep watching. Keep pushing back.
Today's Tweet
I have no clue why Trump voters imagine I'd care about their opinions of me. They're clearly horrendous judges of character.— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) February 16, 2017
And this goes along with a tweet thread from a guy (Georgetown Law Adjunct, and Fellow at a DC Think Tank) observing the FUBAR attempts to fill 45*'s NSA spot, to wit:
"Harward just gave cover for every NatSec Pro who wants to pass on it."
"Offers and refusals for spots at NSC at every level, including DAS & Sched C" (Dept of Administrative Services - Sched C = Policy and Support Staff)
"The feeling is that wanting the job proves you're unsuitable for it."Fine-tuned machine my fat wobbly ass.
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