Dec 7, 2018

It Gets Worse


RawStory:

The Houston Chronicle reports that Tillerson opened up about his working relationship with Trump during a public appearance in Houston on Thursday evening.

In particular, Tillerson said that the president quickly grew tired of hearing that he couldn’t take certain actions because they would be illegal.

“So often, the president would say, ‘Here’s what I want to do and here’s how I want to do it,'” Tillerson explained. “And I would have to say to him, ‘Mr. President I understand what you want to do but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law.'”

Tillerson said that he advised Trump to lobby Congress to change certain laws if they interfered with what he wanted to do, but the president mostly just got angry with him.


Two things here
  1. Tillerson confirms the worst-kept secret ever: This is a Pay-To-Play system, and all you really need is to find a Coin-Operated Politician who can get legislation passed that allows you to do the shitty thing you want to do.
  2. Things are pretty fucking bad when Rex Tillerson is your moral compass.
Fake lord have mercy.

Today's PSA

A few tips on what you'll need to know about joining our little club here in USAmerica Inc.

Today's Pix

click to embiggen






















Dec 6, 2018

Today's Yay, Humans

I do wonder though - is it customary to carry an ax while ice skating in Sweden?

Today's Tweet



What he said.

Dec 5, 2018

Overheard Today

...at Poppy's funeral:

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who wonder if Trump's dog will curl up and lie down next to his casket, and those who say, "No - Pence will still be in prison".

And The Magic Begins

Last nite was Bummernacht, the last day of Frank Zappa's earthly tour.



And today begins the annual celebration of Zappadan, a time of mystery and magic and the vague sense of dread that all the wrong people are watching and listening to be sure all the right people stay in their assigned places. 

And it culminates with the rebirth of the sun - and freedom - on December 21st.


Dec 4, 2018

Today's Tweet



All of a sudden, an awful lot of people seem a bit obsessed with 45* dying. Hmmm

A Random Thought

There's been a whole long string of PolToons like this one - a happy reunion for Poppy and Babs in the afterlife and blah blah blah.


I think I get it, but I have to let Cynical Asshole Mike come out and play for just a minute:

  1. Doesn't the background in this cartoon look a bit like flames?
  2. "Welcome home"? Like "Glad you're dead, George - wanna dance"?



It's Not About The Dying

It's about surviving and remembering what happened - and why it happened.

It's about making sure we always link the outcome to the causes of the outcome. 

WaPo:

The counterprotesters who had gathered in this city’s downtown were cheering, chanting and hugging one another. The white supremacist rally had been stopped before it was supposed to begin. “These are the happy people,” Marissa Blair Martin remembered thinking, as she, her fiance and her friend Heather Heyer walked to join the marching crowd.

Blair Martin live-streamed the scene on her Facebook page. She said she wanted people to see the celebration, and she wanted friends who were concerned for her safety to know there was nothing to worry about.

Then, she heard the sound of tires screeching, and the joy turned to “moments of terror,” Blair Martin testified.

As the murder trial of James A. Fields Jr. entered its second week here Monday, Blair Martin was among the witnesses who continued to describe the chaos of Aug. 12, 2017, when Heyer — whom Blair Martin described as compassionate, “always outspoken but not argumentative” — was killed.

Fields, a self-professed neo-Nazi who had driven from his apartment in Ohio to the “Unite the Right” rally, roared his car into the counterprotesters, killing Heyer and wounding 35 others, some seriously.

The death capped off a violent day of hate that captured worldwide attention and forever tied this quiet college town to the emergence of white supremacists emboldened by the presidency of Donald Trump.

The Daddy State always rouses the rabble. By now, we have to know 45* will always follow the pattern of Stochastic Terrorism.

He'll always stoke the paranoia. He'll always speak vaguely (and not so vaguely) in terms of violence, intending to impel violent action while maintaining a plausible deniability.

It's what an asshole like 45* does. And so, weirdly enough - though it's not weird at all - he can talk the talk of personal responsibility and self-reliance, having provided himself plenty of Smarm Space to blame a simpleton like Fields for doing something along the lines of  what 45* had in mind the whole time. 

For normal people, what Fields did was almost precisely what we all know 45* expected some "lone wolf" to do.

None of this is new - I've said all this before - lots of people have said it all before. And I don't care if it sounds too familiar or it's boring for you or whatever. 

45* sent his fucking goons to my home town, and they killed Heather Heyer. 

This will not be forgotten and it will not be forgiven - go ahead and talk to Jesus for that one if you feel the need, but you're not gettin' it from me.

We make this about the living only if we survive it and remember the dead.