Today's Burning Question

It can take me a while to catch up with some of this stuff:

If the "fucking moron" thing was fake news, why did 45* feel the need to challenge Tillerson to an IQ duel?

A Conversation

Bob Reich talks a little with a former Congress Critter:

It's heating up. Critical mass is not imminent (I think), but the pressure that gets focused on the Presidency usually has a dramatic effect on people. And 45* is not the kind of guy who gets thru this - not when his instinct is always to bunker-in and take shots at everybody he thinks isn't completely on his side. hat just means he runs out of "friends" in a big hurry, which means he can't be used the way the GOP thought they could, so why keep him around?

Right now, they're still thinking they can get a few things done (ie: Tax Cuts) while our attention is diverted by Russia and Climate Disasters and all the chaff that accompanies the early morning tantrum tweets.

So we wait.

Making A List

..and checking it twice.

Amy Siskind:

Week 47: Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember.

October 7, 2017

1. This was a dark week for our country, with the unfolding humanitarian crises in Puerto Rico and USVI, and the deadliest mass shooting in modern history in Las Vegas. Trump’s tin-ear and lack of empathy to these events were conspicuous in his ominous “calm before the storm” statement Thursday.
2. Amid the chaos, major stories broke on Kushner and Ivanka’s use of personal email accounts, all of which were surreptitiously moved to a Trump Organization server. Mueller’s Russia probe continued full-steam, and news of a meeting with Christopher Steele indicated the dossier is likely being used as a roadmap. As with every weekly list, this week rights and protections were taken away from women and marginalized communities.
3. Despite the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico, for a second weekend since Maria hit, Trump golfed Saturday and Sunday at Trump properties. DoD reported Saturday just 45% have drinking water and 5% have electricity.
4. Late Saturday, the WH sent flattering readouts of Trump’s conversations with a former governor of Puerto Rico, and the governors of Puerto Rico and USVI. Readouts are typically reserved for calls with foreign leaders.
5. Trump sent his most tweets in a day since taking office on Saturday (25): continuing his manufactured battle with the NFL, and his attacks on the fake news and the Mayor of San Juan.
6. On Saturday, after his first tour of Puerto Rico, top general Jeffrey Buchanan, the DoD’s primary military liaison with FEMA, said the damage there is “the worst I’ve ever seen.”
7. Fourteen Democrats on the House Natural Resources Comm called for an oversight hearing on the Trump regime’s handling of the Puerto Rico and USVI relief efforts.
8. On Sunday night, in the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history, one man who owned 47 guns killed 58 and wounded hundreds. Trump said the quick response of law enforcement was “in many ways, a miracle.”
9. In the aftermath of the shooting, top trending stories on Facebook and Google promoted politicized fake news from unreliable sources like 4chanwhich claimed the shooter was a Democrat opposed to Trump.
10. While refusing to the call the white male shooter a terrorist, Trump referred to him as “a very sick man” and “demented.” The first bill Trump signed revoked Obama-era gun check for people with mental illness.

hat tip = Walker Thornton

Keith

Welcome to our nation's capital, and thank you for flying Swamp Thing Airlines. 
Enjoy your perks.

Refresher

A little more on the protests going on during the anthem before football games.

Here's Mike Ditka providing further proof of the latent manifestation of brain injury symptoms a player can display after nearly a lifetime of taking blows to the head.

“All of a sudden, it’s become a big deal now, about oppression,” Ditka told Jim Gray on Westwood One’s pregame show ahead of the Bears’ “Monday Night Football” loss to the Vikings. “There has been no oppression in the last 100 years that I know of. Now maybe I’m not watching it as carefully as other people.”
Or maybe he's showing the inner workings of the average GOP rube's mind, but that requires me to ask: How am I supposed to tell the difference?

So let's hear Tim Wise again as he tries to explain some of these things to us: 

What It's About

The silly stunt that 45* and V45* pulled on Sunday was cynical and manipulative, and as much a waste of tax dollars as guys like Donald Trump and Mike Pence are a waste of otherwise perfectly good ectoplasm.

BTW, Eric Reid is proof that football is no longer a game for the average dolt - which could explain why Pence felt the need to leave in such a hurry.

Today's Tweet

Because he wasn't really running for POTUS.

Today marks Trump's 71st day at a golf course, 91st day at a Trump property in just 262 days. Lying, lazy, good-for-nothing hypocrite. pic.twitter.com/pPO9csSyif

— Bryan Dawson (@BryanDawsonUSA) October 10, 2017

It was nothing but the theatrical bombast of WWE all along. He could say anything, and not be worried about having to live up to it, because winning the White House wasn't in his script.

This is Donald Trump. He doesn't care what he says. So what if he changes his story every 10 minutes? So what if he's got the memory - and the scruples - of a fucking goldfish? That's what makes him a perfect fit for the Monster Truck Rally rubes.  Even when they recognize he's lying, they interpret it as "he's just givin' 'em a taste of their own medicine" or some shit.

And the fact that "the base" accepts and defends him no matter what, provides perfect cover for the Kleptocrats as they continue to install the Daddy State.

This is just pretty fucked up. McCain had it right - we have to get back to regular order and start doin' business again. Which means we have to find a way to remove that orange human-like substance from our midst.

(please don't take that last part as any kind of incitement to violence - we have a process that works when we make it work)

Keith

I really don't like being constantly amazed that people I went to school with seem to demonstrate the most appalling lack of education. They went to the same schools as I did, dammit - how do they have no recollection of (today's example) "the symbol is not the thing" that we heard over and over again in the Semantics Unit in Language Arts our sophomore year?

Yeah, OK, high school's getting to be a very long time ago, but how do you not know that one?  The average partly-trained orangutan knows that one. At the very bottom of your mid-brain, there's a solid understanding of the concept. And when it's triggered, it should pop right up to the surface.

The anti-intellectual conditioning - the dimming of America - has been pretty effective. 

The Treachery Of Images (video)

Today's Pix

Child Bride

Slavery

I'm gonna shred your drapes and piss in your shoes

Ah, Football

Shit makes ya bold. And stoopid.

Bye, Coach.

This is the video supposedly of Dolphins offensive line coach Chris Foerster snorting coke before a meeting pic.twitter.com/L7ZsdZMH7U

— Ollie Connolly (@OllieConnolly) October 9, 2017

Y'know, the NFL already has a pretty full plate. Substance dependencies, and juicing, and the slow-moving disaster of brain injury, and domestic abuse, and and and.

With all that, it seems like they're going outa their way looking for something to be cranky about. I wonder if that's part of the plan. Distraction and misdirection.

BTW - here's a DB/Special Teamer named Michael Thomas.

Loved this photo of the "unpatriotic" Michael Thomas. pic.twitter.com/I5GVAFHcYH

— Shandel Richardson (@ShandelRich) October 9, 2017

Thomas did the kneel-down thing for the whole season last year, and again in London when the Fins played the Titans a week or so ago(?). The picture in that tweet doesn't look like any of the troopers are taking exception to his actions.

Now Thomas says it's had the desired effect - people have heard the voices they needed to hear, and there's been some progress (in certain areas) towards some kind of solution - at least a start down that road.

“Everybody who sees what’s going to come out of it will see that it was never about actually protesting the flag, that it wasn’t about disrespecting our military, but it was about trying to bring light to the issues that are going on in our communities. … The league heard us, and it’s going to be good.”

Thomas has said he'll prob'ly stand from now on, but yesterday, he and a coupla mates stayed in the locker room during the anthem.

Anyway, the kicker is that 45* seems to think the protests are dying down, and so it's time for him to do The Daddy State Shuffle, where he tries to take credit for it. 

It becomes a variation on "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc" aka "False Cause".

Here's an illustration of the point (paraphrased from a comedy bit by Kearsarge and Landry, about 400 years ago, when I was a teenager):

1: So you're a farmer?
2: Sure 'nuff.
1: What crops do you raise?
2: Buck wheat and radishes.
1: You do pretty well with it?
2: Buck wheat's great, but them radishes - that's a dead loser.
1: So why do you grow radishes?
2: Got to - been plantin' them radishes for generations now.
1: But why?
2: Keep the wolverines away - can't have them wolverines on your land, y'know.
1: So you've got a wolverine problem down here in west Texas?
2: No, dummy - we got radishes. Ain't you listenin'?

So it works pretty well on people who prefer being intellectually lazy enough not to look past that false front.  And anyway, it rankles "the Libruls", so it's gotta be a good thing, right?