It Pays To Be Watchful

Timothy Snyder's "On Tyranny"

2. Defend an institution.

Follow the courts or the media, or a court or a newspaper. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you are making them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions don't protect themselves. They go down like dominoes unless each is defended from the beginning.

The Judiciary is holding - for now. Do we need to reiterate how it's important to pay some little bit of attention, and to show up and vote, so we can get fewer of these fuckin' goon-friendly wingnuts appointed to the courts?

Remember: Every shitty thing authoritarians do is legal, because once they come to power, the first thing they do is to set about altering the legal system so they can claim to have the law on their side - usually as a matter of dire necessity due to whatever "emergency" they've ginned up to scare people into supporting them.

“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” he wrote. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

            --Donald Trump, Dec 2022 

Goon-friendly judge
Cormack Carney

A Change Gotta Come

Trump always seems only about half prepared - at best.

And this looks like somebody carrying a lot of heavy baggage - like he got some more bad news not long before he had to go on.

Either that or he's just got too much to do. A guy who's never really worked at anything but polishing his own apple is not likely to respond well to the kind of workload he's probably got now.

And if what I'm hearing is right - that he's got handlers who're pushing him to do some actual politicking, and stick to a schedule (which doesn't include hanging out in his jammies until 10 or 11 every morning) - we could see that jerk stroke out in a relative hurry.

I can't say truthfully that I don't wish him harm, and I can't say truthfully that I do myself proud thinking I want to see him buried.

This whole thing sucks.

Today's Beau, etc

To shut down or not to shut down.

Trump always tells us what's really going on. So when he says, "This is the most united the Republican Party has ever been", you know the GOP is breaking into smaller and smaller pieces.

Because this divide-n-conquer shit always comes back to kick your ass.

Today's Quote

Find the enemy that wants to end this American experiment in democracy and kill every one of them until they're so sick of the killing that they leave us and our freedoms intact.

--Gen Jim Mattis, USMC

On Radicalization

Sometimes, an "influencer" goes a little viral with some off-the-wall commentary, and they can become radicalized by their audience's feedback, as both they and their supporters constantly push each other further towards the extreme.

None of it has to make sense beyond everybody getting a nice little dopamine rush from having their biases regularly confirmed. And since that's how the influencer makes bank, they have a powerful incentive to keep it up, and no incentive to change anything.

Joe Rogan has made multiples of hundreds of millions of dollars this way - and he's the all-time champion because he plays both sides of the fence by entertaining wacky bullshit like ancient aliens one day, and then booking Brian Cox or Neil DeGrasse Tyson a few days later for a rational discussion of why the shit he was pimping last week makes no sense to normal people.

Today's Brando

A quick refresher on the whole rape thing:

ICYMI

Where We're At

Generally, people are kinda tired of Trump's drama queen antics, and some are starting to understand they're not getting much out of it.

We're getting more confirmation it was never really about "economic anxiety". Maybe that anxiety helped fuel the rage, but it was always about the rage itself, and, as is typical of Wingnut Populists, Republicans channeled that rage into the basic fascist ploy of amping up the rubes and telling them who to blame.

The Koch PAC pulling their funding from the Haley campaign is not a sign of her crumbling.

I think it has more to do with the Plutocracy Project's main supporters looking to quiet things back down a bit, while they shift their emphasis back to the state and local levels.

Remember, one of the main objectives is to be in a position to call for a States' Constitutional Convention. They need ⅔ of the states (34) to agree to calling the convention, and in the last few cycles, they've lost some ground - Republicans had full control of the legislatures in 28 states, and now it's down to 23.

So it makes a lot of sense for them to refocus on trying to buy up those 11 states, since they're losing pretty badly at the national level.

An Ad

This kind of thing alternately gives me chills, or triggers my gag reflex.

It's chills this time.

That Trump Stink

 

This one just refuses to die.

Questions

Until Republicans admit they've been hornswoggled, Putin will continue pulling the shit he's always pulled.

So I have to ask - why?

Why are Republicans always lining up with Putin?

And actually, are they really being hornswoggled, or are they willingly participating?

We're pretty deep in some pretty bad shit here, guys.