Epstein's Plan

Miami Herald, Julie K Brown:

For two decades, Jeffrey Epstein built a sex trafficking enterprise that reached across state borders and spanned the globe. Using an almost bottomless quarry of wealth and connections, he not only employed recruiters around the world, but enlisted the help of an array of seemingly legitimate people — from hairdressers to psychiatrists to immigration lawyers and dentists.

Even doctors who prescribed his victims birth control and screened them for sexually transmitted diseases.

While many of his survivors were underage, there were countless others who were 18 to 23, a group of women who have been reluctant to come forward because, despite the ordeal they went through, they are ashamed and believe that the public doesn’t look at them as victims at all.

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article235247637.html#storylink=cpy

Does it surprise anyone - really - that these guys (Epstein, Trump, Deripaska, maybe Clinton, and a metric fuck ton of others) operate almost in perfect synch with the the way the old school mobsters operated?

• Gambling
• Drugs
• Prostitution
• Public corruption
• Money Laundering
• Masked by "legit businesses"

The "captains" have divvied up the territories, but instead of geography, they're each moving to consolidate their power within any given industry - and that shit of course has been crossing international boundaries for decades - while the bosses (ie: POTUS, Premiere, Chairman, etc) are the enforcers sittin' pretty on top of what is fast becoming recognizable as just a handful of empires.

It's known as Oligarchy in Russia of course - I call it Plutocracy here in USAmerica Inc.

Anyway, the pimps and the sharpers and the sharks and the pushers - are all working more or less in concert with the über-riche as they steal from various national treasuries and launder the money thru a small(ish) network of banks so it all looks legit, which allows them to do whatever the fuck they wanna do, right out in the open.

And back we slide to the 1750s.

This is pretty fucked up.

Quotes

WEB DuBois

Never Forget

...who these assholes are.

Steve King (R-IA04) on why we can't make an exception for rape and incest as we contemplate criminalizing abortion.

And Another'n

I don't know what the score card looks like right now, but there has to be a Repub-to-Dem ration of something like 10:1.

This is crazy.

HuffPo:

A Republican state senator in Pennsylvania was arrested late Tuesday on charges of child sexual abuse and child pornography, sparking immediate calls for his resignation, including from the state’s governor.

Police arrested state Sen. Mike Folmer after finding images of child porn on a Tumblr account traced to him and on his iPhone, according to the criminal complaint filed by the office of state Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D).

Early Wednesday, Gov. Tom Wolf (D) called for Folmer’s swift resignation.

“We elect leaders to serve as a voice for those who do not have the ability to advocate for their own needs, demanding that they will protect our children, families, and communities. The charges against Senator Folmer are disgusting and beyond comprehension, and show he has taken advantage of the trust and privilege afforded by the people of Pennsylvania,” Wolf said in a statement. “He should immediately resign.”

And btw, Dems - lose the soft language. "He should immediately resign"? That don't cut it.

When you put it that way, you're bringing "Oh my heavenly days" to a "Fuck you - your grandma sucks Hitler's cock in the 11th ring of hell" fight.

You're always losing the PR war because you never sound like you're ready to stomp on these assholes til there's nothing left but a greasy stain on the rug - which everybody knows they deserve, And everybody wants to watch you do it.

So fuckin' do it already.

Fun With Forced Perspective

Somewhere in Bolivia

Today's GIF

Like a dinosaur with a Go-Pro 65 million years ago...

One tiny fragment of a life so thoroughly immersed in feeling self-important, that the extraordinary becomes secondary.

Daddy State - Stealth Mode

The only thing missing here is the angle that the Daddy State thrives on calamity.

If we lurch forward into Climate Change disaster after Climate Change disaster - with all the accompanying disruption due to mass migrations of people who can't live where they used to be able to live due to drought and sea level rise and monster storms etc, then people will be far more willing to accept draconian "solutions" from governments led by strong-man dictators.

A study:

From National Academy Of Sciences

The New Republic (2018):

National crises make governments vulnerable to autocracy—a rather obvious assessment, perhaps, but one rarely seen in debates about climate change. Take the Maldives, an atoll nation in the Indian Ocean. Rising seawater is projected to consume most, if not all, of the country this century. In 2008, the Maldives chose its first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed. Almost immediately, he made climate change preparations central to his administration. He announced plansto move 360,000 Maldivian citizens to new homelands in Sri Lanka, India, or Australia, and he promised to make the Maldives the world’s first carbon-neutral country. Nasheed also demonstrated a flair for the dramatic, staging an underwater Cabinet meeting that turned him into a viral climate celebrity. “What we need to do is nothing short of decarbonizing the entire global economy,” he said. “If man can walk on the moon, we can unite to defeat our common carbon enemy.”

In 2012, the military deposed Nasheed, forcing him to flee the country at gunpoint after mass protests over economic stagnation and spikes in commodity prices. His eventual successor, Abdulla Yameen, has since suspended parts of the constitution, giving himself sweeping powers to arrest and detain opponents, including two of the country’s five Supreme Court justices and even his own half-brother. Meanwhile, Yameen has tossed out Nasheed’s climate adaptation plans and rejected renewable energy programs, proposing instead to build new islands and economic free zones attractive to a global elite. “We do not need cabinet meetings underwater,” his environment minister told The Guardian. “We do not need to go anywhere. We need development.”

If any lesson can be drawn from the power struggle in the Maldives, it is that people who feel threatened by an outside force, be it foreign invaders or rising tides, often seek reassurance. That reassurance may come in the form of a strongman leader, someone who tells them all will be well, the economy will soar, the sea walls hold. People must only surrender their elections, or their due process, until the crisis is resolved. This is perhaps the most overlooked threat of climate change: Major shifts in the global climate could give rise to a new generation of authoritarian rulers, not just in poorer countries or those with weak democratic institutions, but in wealthy industrialized nations, too.

Refugee crises, famine, drought—these are materials strongmen can use to build power. Already, strife and civil instability are spreading throughout the global South, with droughts and floods stoking conflict and refugee crises in parts of Africa and the Middle East. According to a 2016 paper in Science, climate change will increase the risk of armed conflict across Africa by 50 percent by 2030.

But then - American Univ, a book review:

From wildfires in California to hurricanes in the Carolinas, the recent extreme weather in the United States highlights the threat of climate change. Yet, the Trump administration has been rolling back policies to protect the environment, raising concerns that democratic governments are incapable of responding to the growing danger to the planet.

In his new book, "Can Democracy Handle Climate Change?" published by Polity Books, SPA Distinguished Executive in Residence Dan Fiorino challenges those who are skeptical of democratic countries’ capacity to address climate change.

“There is a school of thought that protecting the environment is so difficult in a consumer-oriented society that capitalism and democracy are not up to the task, so more authoritarian, top-down regimes are needed to make the hard choices,” says Fiorino, director of the AU Center for Environmental Policy.

Critics of democracies maintain the system is cumbersome and voters are too short-sighted in their thinking. Also, pressure from special interest groups makes it nearly impossible to make substantive change to energy, agriculture, transportation, and land use policies.

Fiorino criticizes these arguments in his book, which was released this summer. He cites research showing that, despite their failure to mitigate the causes of climate change, democratic countries have made more progress than authoritarian ones on environmental issues, including climate change.

Always hopeful - seldom optimistic.

Twitter Thread

Kurt Eichwald, WaPo:

Thread by @kurteichenwald: "1. Goddamn. Given how rapidly much of the press have allowed the Ukraine scandal to be "well, what about Biden," here is a quick and dirty p […]"

Today's Tweet

This is an encore performance, because I finally hit on something that I can use to describe the phenomenon:

Intellectual Homeopathy - being convinced that knowing absolutely nothing is the pinnacle of enlightenment.

SHE'S MUST'VE HAD A MISERABLE LIFE: A QAnon follower explains how she responds when somebody asks her "What is Q?"pic.twitter.com/JF062W16yv
via travis_

— Tomthunkit™ (@TomthunkitsMind) September 20, 2019

'Scuse Me But

In all the dust that got kicked up in the Corey Lewandowski testimony, I still haven't found an answer to this one:

If Lewandoski's claim that the White House instructed him not to answer any questions outside the purview of the Mueller Report - and knowing Lewandowski has never been in the employ of the White House - how is that not, in itself, Obstruction Of Justice?