Today's Birthday

August 29, 1924 Dinah Washington, hall of fame blues and jazz singer, was born. Three of her recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame as having “qualitative or historical significance.” pic.twitter.com/YbTkCQ7Ww8

— Merrell R. Bennekin (@MerrellBennekin) August 29, 2018

Dinah Washington:

I Choose To Be Encouraged

From Pew Research, on July's primaries:

Still waiting on the numbers from last night.

Today's Bluff-N-Bluster

Because he's a small man, 45* behaves like a small man.

Shane Harris & Josh Dawsey, WaPo:

The White House reaffirmed Tuesday that former CIA director John Brennan has been stripped of his security clearance, after Brennan said earlier he has yet to receive formal notice about the matter.

“The President’s order went into effect immediately, and Mr. Brennan no longer has access to classified information,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said.

Earlier this month, President Trump announced in a statement read by his press secretary that he had revoked Brennan’s clearance, citing Brennan’s criticism of the administration and alleging that he had abused his position.

Paperwork to formally revoke the clearance has been “delayed,” a senior White House official said, without offering any explanation.

- and -

The White House was prompted to clarify the status of Brennan’s clearance after he appeared on television earlier in the day and said he was still unclear about his status. As a former CIA director, Brennan was allowed to keep a clearance in case current agency leaders want to consult him on classified matters or seek his advice.

“The only thing I’ve heard about my security clearance from the government is when [White House press secretary] Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at the podium that my clearance had been stripped,” Brennan said on MSNBC, where he is a national security analyst. “I’ve not been contacted by anybody at all either before or since then. So whether or not my clearance has been stripped, I’m still uncertain about.”

One of the great things about "the deep state" is that there are people who know how to make the thing work the way it should - ie: doing the right thing - even tho' there are more than a few who're willing to do the wrong thing in service to power for the sake of power (ie: The Daddy State).

I've done more than my share of government bashing (sometimes warranted and sometimes not). How are we supposed to know what's going on when a part of the government's job is to make sure nobody knows what's actually going on? (Again - sometimes warranted and sometimes not).

Anyway, it's kinda interesting that a fair percentage of Berkenstock-Americans are adamantly defending the CIA and the FBI these days.

But this little dustup, while potentially very problematic, appears to be more of the same old bullshit TV drama that 45* pimps every fucking day.

And that right there is a big part of the dilemma that the Press Poodles have to contend with. They can't ignore Cult45, even tho' that's prob'ly what needs to happen.

A large and growing majority will be very glad to see these clowns dumped in the woods wearing nothing but their undies and thick layers of tar and feathers.

Let's Review

Examine almost any "argument" from almost any Republican, and there's a better than even chance you're going to find a logical fallacy.

Listen to 45* - notice how often he prefaces the stoopid shit that falls out of his face with "Many people are saying".

Or when practically any given "conservative" tries to make his case by starting with "the American people want / believe / are with me...".

The Bandwagon Fallacy (aka: Appeal To Popularity) is what an awful lot of these clowns think of as a bedrock principle. Their position is the right one because everybody says so.

(Try to remember these 2 things. 1: The Ford Pinto was once the most popular car in America. And 2: Those nice fat sales numbers didn't keep the gas tanks from exploding)

Here's the one our "Christian" friends love to use:

...which ties in nicely with:

...and way too often leads right into:

...or:

A sub-heading under Tu Quoque is False Equivalence (aka: What-About-ism)

One of the big ones is:

The Anecdotal Fallacy is enshrined forever in The Myth Of The Welfare Queen. The new iteration shows up all the time now in the crap about "Illegal Immigrants Are Murdering White Girls".

It goes on and on and on.

Get 'em all: Your Logical Fallacy Is

Or: Information Is Beautiful

Driftglass Reminds

"Everybody in the whole world is fucked up except you and me - and I'm beginning to wonder about you."

Referencing The Power Of Nightmares is always a treat.

Driftglass:

Or, as one low-born, bootless blabbermouth once said about Mr. Greenwald's Purity Cult back when daring to say such things in public would get your Liberal card revoked and your readership cut by 1/3...

...once purity itself becomes all you care about -- once  it becomes a distillery race to see who can get to 100% -- the chicken farmers are never far behind:

The main Islamist group in Algeria, the GIA, ended up being led by a Mr. Zouabri, a chicken farmer, who killed everyone who disagreed with him. He issued a final communiqué, declaring that the whole of Algerian society should be killed, with the exception of his tiny remaining band of Islamists. They were the only ones who understood the truth.

And from my perspective, do you know what the saddest sentence in the entire New Yorker article is?

It's this:

 Leading American progressives -- speaking off the record, and apologizing for what they describe as cowardice -- call Greenwald a bully and a troll.

So everybody knew, but nobody said anything, because all the clever dogs on the inside decided to play it safe and lay back in the cut rather than risk the wrath of Spleenwald Horde.

Welly, well, well, well.

Sure doesn't sound much like "leading", especially to someone like me who was out there taking it in the teeth every day for saying true, important and unpopular things about Mr. Greenwald while my so-called allies chose to hide in the hedges and haystacks.

Here's the rest of the paragraph:

One told me that “he makes everything war.” The spouse of one of Greenwald’s friends visualizes him as the angry emoji. On Twitter, he has little use for agree-to-disagree courtesies, or humor: he presses on. More than one tweet has started with “No, you idiot.” He’ll tweet “Go fuck yourself” to a user with twenty or so followers. A few years ago, Greenwald had a Twitter disagreement with Imani Gandy, a legal journalist, who tweets as @AngryBlackLady; another Twitter user, in support of Greenwald, proposed to Gandy that “Obama could rape a nun live on NBC and you’d say we weren’t seeing what we were seeing.” Greenwald replied, “No -- she’d say it was justified & noble -- that he only did it to teach us about the evils of rape.”

Today's Pix

A Parody

Radiohead's Creep, ala 45*:

Silent Sam

I looked it up. Julian Carr's dedication speech is a lulu, and all I need (for now - until some better argument comes along) to be sure that the idea behind these Giant Participation Trophies was the desire to reinforce White Supremacy, hiding it behind the lofty-sounding idea of states' rights - which is really just denying the need for balance between the power  of the states and the power of the federal government.

Historian and educator Hilary Green, PhD - Univ of Alabama - put up a complete transcript:

(excerpt)

And I dare to affirm this day, that if every State of the South had done what North Carolina did without a murmer [sic], always faithful to its duty whatever the groans of the victims, there never would have been an Appomatox[sic]; Grant would have followed Meade and Pope; Burnside, Hooker, McDowell and McClellan, and the political geography of America would have been re-written.

It is not for us to question the decrees of Providence. Let us be grateful that our struggle, keeping alive the grand principle of local self-government and State sovereignty has thus far held the American people from that consolidated despotism whose name, whether Republic or Empire, is of but little importance as compared with its rule.

This beautiful memorial is unique in one aspect. I have participated at the unveiling of several Confederate monuments, and have intimate knowledge of a great many more, but this is the first and only one in which the living survivors have been distinctly mentioned and remembered, and in the distinguished presence I desire to thank that Daughters of the Confederacy, in the name of the living Confederate students, for their beautiful and timely thoughtfulness.

The duty due to our dear Southland, and the conspicuous service rendered, did not end at Appomatox[sic]. The four years immediately following the four years of bloody carnage, brought their responsibilities hardly of less consequence than those for which the South laid upon the altar of her country 74,524 of her brave and loyal sons dead from disease, a grand total of 133,821.

It is true that the snows of winter which never melt, crown our temples, and we realize that we are living in the twilight zone; that it requires no unusual strain to hear the sounds of the tides as they roll and break upon the other shore, “The watch-dog’s bark his deep bay mouth welcome as we draw near home”, breaks upon our ears—makes it doubly sweet to know that we have been remembered in the erection of this beautiful memorial. The present generation, I am persuaded, scarcely takes note of what the Confederate soldier meant to the welfare of the Anglo Saxon race during the four years immediately succeeding the war, when the facts are, that their courage and steadfastness saved the very life of the Anglo Saxon race in the South – When “the bottom rail was on top” all over the Southern states, and to-day, as a consequence the purest strain of the Anglo Saxon is to be found in the 13 Southern States – Praise God.

I trust I may be pardoned for one allusion, howbeit it is rather personal. One hundred yards from where we stand, less than ninety days perhaps after my return from Appomattox, I horse-whipped a negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds, because upon the streets of this quiet village she had publicly insulted and maligned a Southern lady, and then rushed for protection to these University buildings where was stationed a garrison of 100 Federal soldiers. I performed the pleasing duty in the immediate presence of the entire garrison, and for thirty nights afterwards slept with a double-barrel shot gun under my head.

With pardonable pride I look upon the grand record of my Alma Mater, near whose confines I first beheld the light; in whose classic halls three of my sons have graduated and a fourth is now a student, and where my brother and three of his sons also matriculated. The glorious record of this seat of learning is embalmed in affections of our family.

A brave soldier, a devoted son of the South, an honor graduate of this grand old University, led the brave phalanxes of the South fartherest [sic] to the front, up the bloody, slippery heights at Gettysburg, along the crest where death in full panoply with exultant glee held high carnival – I bow my head while I mention the name of the chivalrous J. Johnson Pettigrew – the Marshall Ney of Lee’s Army.

Permit me to refer at this point to a pleasing incident in which that distinguished son of the South, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, had the leading part. A year or two ago diplomas were given by our University to all the students who had interrupted their studies to enter the military service of the Confederacy. Mr. Wilson, then President of Princeton University delivered these diplomas. One man only of the Class [handwritten – that Matriculated in 1862] wearing the Confederate uniform, came forward to receive that highly prized token. It was the humble individual who now addresses you. At the dinner, later in the day, Professor Wilson greeted me with the remark that in many years nothing had so much touched and warmed his heart as the sight of that Confederate uniform.

Today's Tweet

There simply is no depth of depravity or petty vindictiveness that 45* can't squat low enough to get under.

Camera shot facing south over the White House - you can see the flag at the WH at full staff while the flags surrounding the Washington Monument are lowered pic.twitter.com/xT2KdPLgpB

— Karen Travers (@karentravers) August 27, 2018

For my own bad self, McCain was not the star-spangled hero he's being made out to be.

The first 30 years of his life were way too typical of how an excessively privileged punk behaves.

And the last 30 weren't great either - The Keating Five, Iraq, Sarah Palin - these are not good indications of consistently sound judgement.

But he went a pretty good distance towards redemption on more than a few occasions too. He reflected on some of his positions, and made public statements about being wrong. And I'll always remember him standing up to a decidedly stoopid woman at a campaign event in 2008, telling her straight out that Obama's a decent guy - an American he happens to disagree with.

So John McCain did some good things, and in the end, we all knew he had feet of clay - just like the rest of us.

He doesn't deserve a sainthood, but he earned a damn sight better than what he's getting from Cult45.

How Stuff Works

Just stir the shit. Get people lathered up and tell them their problems are all because of "those other people".