Countervailing

From Mock Paper Scissors, a list of people banding together on Twitter to form a Shadow Cabinet in order to fact-check and countervail 45*'s bullshit:

• LAURENCE TRIBE, “Attorney General” — Constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School.
• MARIELENA HINCAPIE, “INS/ICE/Immigration” — executive director, National Immigration Law Center
• DERAY MCKESSON, “Justice Issues” – Co-founder, Black Lives Matter, civil rights activist.
• ROBERT REICH, “Labor/Commerce” — Ex-Labor Secretary, best-selling author.
• LAURA TYSON, “Treasury/Trade” — Ex-chair CEA, professor at BerkeleyHass Business School
• DAVID CAY JOHNSTON, “IRS” — Pulitzer prize-winning journo/author. Founder of new DCReport.
• DIANE RAVITCH, “Education” — Professor at NYU, author/editor of 24 books on education.
• JOAN CLAYBROOK, “Transportation” — Ex-head of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
• ROB WEISSMAN, “Consumer Agencies” — President, Public Citizen.
• DAVID FREEMAN, “Energy & EPA” — Ex-head of TVA & NYS Power Authority.
• DAVID HIMMELSTEIN, STEFFIE WOOLFINDLER, “HHS/Health” — Distinguished Professors at Pub. Health School, CUNY/Hunter; co-founders Physicians for National Health.
• COLIN KAHL, “NSA/Terrorism” – V.P. Biden’s National Security Adviser.
• ROSA BROOKS, “State Department” — Ex–DoD counselor, author, columnist Foreign Policy.
• ANDREW BACEVICH, “Defense Department” — Author/historian, BU.Pardee School Global Affairs.

@ShadowingTrump

Today's Tweet

'Good luck Great Britain'
Carnival in Germany. pic.twitter.com/sNRjfHEmNG

— Jelle Simons (@jelle_simons) February 27, 2017

Post-Truth Credibility

Vox:

Back on February 18, CBS News’s Major Garrett reported that Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as secretary of the Navy was likely to withdraw from consideration. 

If the press secretary habitually tells obvious lies (like about Inauguration Day crowd sizes) or says plausible-sounding things that later turn out to be false (like indignantly denying Garrett’s story), then he ends up like the proverbial boy who cried wolf. When there’s a crisis — a natural disaster, a foreign war, a terrorist attack, a bank panic, an epidemic, anything — the Trump administration, like all previous administrations, is going to want to credibly convey accurate information to the public. But it’s not clear it will be able to.

45* and Company lie to us a lot - seems like all the time, actually.  Either they're lying by design, or because they're incompetent so they're doing it just because one guy has no fucking clue what the other guys are doing or saying, or all of the above, or all of the above plus any variety and combination of other reasons.

It's just a constant stream of bullshit.

And some of the things we know now have to make us suspicious of everything that will come out of every department from now on (eg: 45* asked for an Intelligence Report that would fit the criteria for Muslim Ban 2.0).

So what will be the difference between this month's Labor Stats and reality? There's not much standing in 45*'s way as far as reporting an enormously inflated Unemployment number, thinking that'll support his claims from last year during his campaign, and now justify the bullshit he's trying to float about having inherited a mess from Obama.

This shit has to end. And it doesn't just run its course and burn itself out and go away on its own. A little retrospect informs us that power at this level is not ceded lightly. 

It's said that nobility dies by its own hand. That can mean a few different things, but mostly it means people at the top of the pyramid give up their power when someone forces them to do it.

Honorable people will have to step up and make this end.

Featured Artist - Pawel Kucynski

The Un-Coverage

Wondering why this guy isn't a household name.

ITV:

Srinivas Kuchibhotla, aged 32, died following the shooting in a crowded Kansas City bar, while Alok Madasani, also 32, was injured. Ian Grillot, a 24-year-old American who jumped to the defence of the two men, was also shot.

Witnesses told police the shooter shouted "get out of my country" before opening fire in Olathe.

Officers have charged 51-year-old Adam Purinton with murder and attempted murder following the incident on Wednesday.

-and-

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said any attempt to connect the president's rhetoric on immigrants to the tragedy in Kansas "would be absurd."

Just another isolated incident that can't possibly be connected to all the others. 

Yeah, OK - go ahead cuz we're all buyin' that shit, right?

Today's Quote

I found much that was alarming about being a citizen during the tenures of Richard Nixon and George W Bush. But whatever I may have seen as their limitations of character or intellect, neither was anything like as humanly impoverished as Trump is: ignorant of government, of history, of science, of philosophy of art, incapable expressing or recognizing subtlety or nuance, destitute of all decency, and wielding a vocabulary of seventy-seven words that is better called Jerkish than English.

--Philip Roth

Today's GIF

I just don't think I can Monday today. Please don't make me.

Today's Bamboozle

I need to smack myself in the head with this whenever I think I'll watch a game on TV on any given Sunday, because no - I won't.  I'll watch commercials and replays and people standing around not doing jack shit.

I'll spend more time watching video of something the players did a few seconds before than I'll spend watching the players actually doing what I'm watching on video.

Average length of NFL game: 3:12:00

Average time the ball is actually in play: 0:11:00

Number of commercials: 100+

Today's Tweet

How has this not gone viral 😂 pic.twitter.com/wQQHhKa73X

— Mr. Jameson Neat (@MrJamesonNeat) February 26, 2017

Dots

There's nothing solid, of course, but there could be something between this:

and this:

Reuters:

Thousands of Russians marched through the center of Moscow on Sunday to honor opposition leader Boris Nemtsov two years after he was gunned down near the Kremlin walls, and to call for further investigations into his killing.

The 55-year-old Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister and prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, was shot dead on a bridge near the Kremlin late in the evening of Feb. 27, 2015, as he walked home with his girlfriend from a restaurant.

Investigators have charged several Chechen men with the murder, but lawyers for Nemtsov's daughter said the investigation had failed to uncover who ordered the shooting.

Putin has said that he supported the investigation into Nemtsov's murder.

"We gathered here to demand bringing of Boris Nemtsov's killers to justice, not only its performers but also its organizers and those who ordered it," Ilya Yashin, a Russian opposition activist and an organizer of the march, told Reuters.

"We gathered here to demand political reforms and release of political prisoners."