Jan 20, 2019

Overheard On The InterToobz

Ann Coulter: We voted for Trump and got Jeb.

America: We're feelin' ya - we voted for Hillary and got Putin.

Products

Twitter pal Eve The Potter recently walked away from a pretty solid tech gig to follow her dreams.


Stonecrop Pottery

I ordered a tankard last week, and it's become a permanent fixture in the daily routine (ie: semi-OCD nut-ball morning ritual) that supports and reinforces my rather sever coffee jones.



Every piece is handmade and unique - built to last.


Jan 19, 2019

Bless You, Charlie


Charles P Pierce, Esquire Mag online:

There simply is no more loathsome creature walking the political landscape than the Majority Leader of the United States Senate. You have to go back to McCarthy or McCarran to find a Senate leader who did so much damage to democratic norms and principles than this yokel from Kentucky. Trump is bad enough, but he's just a jumped-up real-estate crook who's in over his head. McConnell is a career politician who knows full well what he's doing to democratic government and is doing it anyway because it gives him power, and it gives the rest of us a wingnut federal judiciary for the next 30 years. There is nothing that this president* can do that threatens McConnell's power as much as it threatens the survival of the republic, and that's where we are

All of McConnell's fuckery is in service to the effort to displace American democracy and establish a new regime - the Daddy State - using 45* as a beard.




Today's Tweet (NSFW)



Someday maybe.

Jan 18, 2019

Beau Tells Us

Beau Of The Fifth Column - on arming teachers in the classroom.

Today's Tweet



Sometimes, though, a little applied capitalism is the solution.

About That Wall Thingie


45* insists on getting money for his wall, and has taken 800,000 hostages, trying to force us into going along with it, saying he made a promise to his Red Hats and he needs to come through for them.

First, keeping a promise is a totally foreign concept to that clown, so we all know this is about something else.

I think the "something else" has everything to do with putting the US into a chaotic state so he and his minions can further loot the treasury, and consolidate their power.

Repubs in congress are standing by letting him do all this because he's furthering their intentions of moving us away from the model of democratic self-governance towards the Daddy State.

We're fixated on 45*'s antics, while the GOP believes they're using him as a cat's paw, planning to dump him once they're done with him.

There are of course, a jillion other threads tangled up in this ridiculous knotted snarl, but I think it always comes back down to a fight between people who just want a fair shake for as many as possible, versus people looking for an unfair advantage for themselves.

Which brings me back to the wall.

The wall is not the point - he didn't promise to build a wall. He promised to get Mexico to pay us to build the wall.

He promised the rubes they'd get something for nothing. They voted for free stuff.

And the kicker: the wall as metaphor means they've completely bought into the notion that the policies they support have no cost attached, and that their personal bigotry - their animus towards anyone "different" from them - will never exact payment from them.

The depth of depravity to which the rubes have fallen can be gauged in simple terms:

They sit passively, watching their family and neighbors - and sometimes they themselves - being ordered back on the job where they're forced to work for nothing.

Mandatory labor without compensation - seems like we've tried that before, and it didn't pan out so good.

Jan 16, 2019

Today's Tweet



From an interview in 1999.

In Our Faces


Were you continuing to wonder what Cult45's corruption actually looks like?

I knew you were, so here ya go.

John LeGere, CEO T-Mobile

Jonathan O'Connell and David Fahrenthold, WaPo:

Last April, telecom giant T-Mobile announced a megadeal: a $26 billion merger with rival Sprint, which would more than double T-Mobile’s value and give it a huge new chunk of the cellphone market.

But for T-Mobile, one hurdle remained: Its deal needed approval from the Trump administration.

The next day, in Washington, staffers at the Trump International Hotel were handed a list of incoming “VIP Arrivals.” That day’s list included nine of T-Mobile’s top executives — including its chief operating officer, chief technology officer, chief strategy officer, chief financial officer and its outspoken celebrity chief executive, John Legere.

They were scheduled to stay between one and three days. But it was not their last visit.

Instead, T-Mobile executives have returned to President Trump’s hotel repeatedly since then, according to eyewitnesses and hotel documents obtained by The Washington Post.

By mid-June, seven weeks after the announcement of the merger, hotel records indicated that one T-Mobile executive was making his 10th visit to the hotel. Legere appears to have made at least four visits to the Trump hotel, walking the lobby in his T-Mobile gear.

These visits highlight a stark reality in Washington, unprecedented in modern American history. Trump the president works at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Trump the businessman owns a hotel at 1100 Pennsylvania.

Countries, interest groups and companies like T-Mobile — whose future will be shaped by the administration’s choices — are free to stop at both and pay the president’s company while also meeting with officials in his government. Such visits raise questions about whether patronizing Trump’s private business is viewed as a way to influence public policy, critics said.