Today's Quote

For the next time you get stuck in a Nazi-vs-antifa debate, and you you're forced to deal with the False Equivalence bullshit.

"I decline utterly to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire."

--Winston Churchill

New Music

NPR Tiny Desk

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

Tunes:
Chaos and Clothes
Molotov
Last Of My Kind

Players:
Jason Isbell (vocals, guitar)
Sadler Vaden (guitar)
Amanda Shires (fiddle, backing vocals)
Jimbo Hart (bass)
Derry deBorja (keyboards)
Chad Gamble (drums)
Ashwin Wadekar (guitar on "Last of My Kind")

Randy Rainbow

For your dining and dancing pleasure - DACA Shame:

Today's Tonight

My love-hate relationship with football continues.

My Donkeys play the late game Monday night.

Per Five-Thirty-Eight:

Broncos  (-7.5)   74%

Chargers            26%

The End Of The Beginning?

Vanity Fair, Graydon Carter:

Given the nation’s problems, from the unsettling situation along the Korean Peninsula, to the destruction left by Hurricane Harvey, to general income inequality, to terrorism, to climate change, our timing in bringing a man like Donald Trump into the White House really couldn’t be worse. The man is clearly unfit for any kind of public office, let alone the highest office in the land. The majority of the electorate knew this when they went to the voting booths. His “many sides” response to the events in Charlottesville during his horribly eventful, 17-day vacation sparked a run on his remaining popularity. (As Trump’s better, Winston Churchill said, “I decline utterly to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire.”) The members of the president’s vaunted business panels left him. The members of his arts panel left him. The Republican leadership blanches at the mention of his name. His popularity in the swing states he won is on a downward spiral. Even charities that had booked space for their fund-raisers at Mar-a-Lago, his mid-market wedding-and-birthday rental facility, are pulling out. He still has the neo-Nazis and the racists, which must give him some comfort. This is going to sound unkind, but why are supremacists invariably the worst specimens of the race they are claiming to defend?

With normal presidencies, history often takes its time reaching a verdict. But once in a while, the verdict arrives with the speed of a tweet after an imagined slight. Judging from the assessments of six distinguished historians—see “History’s First Draft,” such is Trump’s grim fate. His time in office, like so much of his life, will be deemed a corrupt, messy shambles. The only lingering question is the extent of the damage he will have done by the time he is forced out of office.

Reading the essays by Jon Meacham, Stacy Schiff, Robert Dallek, Edmund Morris, A. Scott Berg, and Garry Wills, you come to the realization that our 45th president resembles none of the others—there is no true parallel. He is a mutant. In terms of temperament and judgment, he is the opposite of a Monroe or an F.D.R. He may be as intellectually hollow as Reagan, but he lacks Reagan’s humor, grace, and core of principle. He may be as psychologically disfigured as Nixon, but he lacks Nixon’s intelligence and stamina.

Today's Tweet

Every day. The weirdness known as USAmerica Inc just gets weirder every day.

In the pantheon of visual metaphors for America today, this is the money shot. pic.twitter.com/09COuDutBC

— David Simon (@AoDespair) September 7, 2017

Today's Pix

About That False Equivalence

The Daily Beast, Dean Obeidallah: 

Let’s put it bluntly: Antifa is not part of the Democratic Party, while white supremacists are part of the GOP. 

But that hasn’t stopped some on the right from peddling the false narrative that antifa is part of the Democratic Party and somehow Democrats have to answer for the movement. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson recently declared that Antifa “is a political militia that is doing the bidding, in effect, of Nancy Pelosi and Governor Jerry Brown and the mayor of Berkeley and all these supposedly mainstream Democratic politicians.”

- snip -

Sean Hannity added his voice to this chorus of false equivalency throwing a temper tantrum about antifa while asking: “When are the Democrats in this country going to condemn this out of control left-wing hate and violence?” And the list goes on with people like Laura Ingraham parroting this talking point.

You get the idea. The right wants people to believe that antifa is a wing of the Democratic Party and that Democrats must answer for its violent actions. This couldn’t be more wrong and the right knows it. 

Let’s be clear about who antifa is and isn’t. It’s a decentralized anti-fascist group. Experts make it clear that antifa members are “self-described revolutionaries” who are “anarchists and communists who are way outside the traditional conservative-liberal spectrum.”

Today's Tweet

Of all the shitty things we remember Tricky Dick for, sometimes he was straight up and dead on.

EPA
Clean Water Act
Clean Air Act

But look where we are now.

What has happened to us? pic.twitter.com/0edEyAZGJh

— banksy (@thereaIbanksy) September 6, 2017

And also too:
Title IX
Cancer Research
26th Amendment
Ended the Draft

Market-Based Solutions

I think we can all say we're fairly well aware of the Natural Disasters that're piling up all around us, even if way too many of us are still resistant to the reality that hurricanes and wild fires are Human-Exacerbated.

But let's not dwell on the past. Let's talk about sensible Vienna School solutions.

You see, it's not a problem of happenstance - it's a simple problem of distribution and logistics.  So all we have to do is transfer some of the western states' fires to the Gulf Coast, and send some of the rain in Texas Louisiana and (soon) Florida to Alaska Oregon and California.

Can you imagine the payoff for some bright young entrepreneur with a good idea and mom's garage to work in?

And of course, we start the ball rolling by providing incentive - like, say...oh I don't know...a tax cut.

So c'mon, libtards - trade in those Birkenstocks for a nice pair of Khakis and a white polo shirt, and let's get to work.