Color Me Unsurprised

The Daily Beast:

Green Party Presidential Nominee Jill Stein has largely based her campaign on her uncompromising positions on the environment, opposition to big banks and Wall Street, defense contractors, and the pharmaceutical industry. But an analysis of her financial disclosures, which she was required to file as a presidential candidate, show that she is heavily invested in the very industries that she maligns the most and as a result of her investments, she has built significant wealth.

--and--

...Stein has invested $995,011 to $2.2 million in funds such as the Vanguard 500 fund that maintain significant stakes in Exxon and other energy companies like Chevron, Duke Energy, Conoco Phillips, and Toho Gas, a Japanese company that engages in the sale of natural gas, tar, and coke, a fuel made from coal.

--and--

Stein has invested roughly $1.2 to $2.65 million in funds like the TIAA-CREF Equity Index that have big stakes in the financial services industry. Holdings in these funds include big banks like JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank as major parts of their investment portfolios. Five of the funds that Stein invests in maintain large positions in Wells Fargo Bank, which has come under fire recently amid charges that its employees being pressured to force clients to open up fraudulent new accounts.

--and--

In one of the handful of direct stock investments Stein holds, she listed between $50,001 and $100,000 in the pharmaceutical giant Merck, which paid a record fine for over-billing Medicaid. She has also invested $1,130,010 to $2,400,000 in funds that maintain significant stakes in Pfizer, Novartis, Johnson and Johnson, and Allergan.

And it just kinda goes on from there, including Big Tobacco and Defense Giants like Raytheon.

It's hard to keep your money out of the hands of the bad guys, but when you're basically making your living slagging the bad guys, you need to make a better effort not to help fund them with your investment dollars.

Cuz, y'know - uh - Green Party(?) 

IT'S THE FUCKING GREEN PARTY, Jill.

I Love Y'all Like Chicken

Keith

Watch this video on The Scene.

Don't get happy

Get busy

Get out the vote

Myth Busting

The point to remember is that you help people by helping them, which sounds like the big "Duh", but it can be really hard to figure that one out.

What should be the easy part is understanding that you're not helping anybody if you kick 'em when they're down. (aka: First, do no harm)

VICE:

Chances are, if you have been affected by drug addiction or just watched enough reality TV, you've heard something about the concept of "codependency." It's the idea that partners and relatives of addicted people basically have a disease just like their loved ones—leading them to "enable" the problem by preventing addicts from "hitting bottom." After gaining currency in the 1980s, the concept is now infiltrating America's latest national conversation about heroin addiction.

The only problem is that it is inaccurate, unscientific, and harmful.

Even so, the classic text on the subject—the 1986 self-help book Codependent No More—remains on the Amazon best seller list for addictions. A new reality show focused on intervening in so-called codependent relationships premiered this year. And this crazy election season has seen seemingly endless talk of how Hillary Clinton "enabled" her husband Bill's alleged sexual addiction. (Trump's wives somehow get a pass.)

The good news is that the addictions field is slowly coming around to the idea that treatment should be based on evidence, not anecdote. Even so, care for families and the rhetoric around it remains stubbornly trapped in the past.

Evidence, not Anecdote. 

Catchy.

Maybe somebody could propose it as a replacement for the national motto.

A Very Short Play

Women: No Transgender has ever attacked anyone in a public bathroom. It's just not something we're worried about.

GOP: That makes no difference! We must keep women and girls safe from the sexual predators no matter what!

Women: We do need to do something about the disturbingly high incidence of rape on college campuses.

GOP: Have you tried not dressing like a slut?

FADE OUT

hat tip = Vicki W-E on Facebook

Meanwhile, Back In The World

Charlie Pierce:

As the presidential campaign staggers to its conclusion, I think we can fairly sum up the positions of the respective political parties on the climate crisis in the following way.

Republican: It might be real. It might not be. It might be the Chinese. Middle Ages. Grant-sucking lab rats. But, if it is real, it isn't worth doing anything about because sooooo much money.

Democratic: It's real. It's happening. You hate science. Here are some solution-like proposals that prove that we know it's real and that it's happening and that we love science with a love undying. And you hate science.

Repubs may have hit on the one big thing about everything that'll count over the next 25 years - immigration.

More accurately, migration. The herds follow the food, and the food follows the water.  As more places become less human-friendly, those humans have to go someplace else.

Unfortunately, we're showing ourselves to be unwilling to do much to prevent the circumstances that drive people away from their traditional homelands, which seems to be leading us to believe the only thing we can do is to react to a shitty situation by turning USAmerica Inc into a giant Gun Club where the object is simply to keep everybody else out.

Eventually though - what's the fuckin' point? We won't be defending anything worth saving.

Today's Tweet

No one at the rally realized my shirt said AGAINST tr*mp... congrats, y'all played yourselves ✌🏽️✌🏽️✌🏽️ pic.twitter.com/qZ3x1ER8j0

— Annie (@AnnieCardelle) October 21, 2016

Don't Blow It

The video to share with a Johnson or Stein voter. Recognize Trump's threat: Save the Democracy now, reform it later https://t.co/JS70RJfbEc

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) October 25, 2016

Today's Brain Blower

100-year-old Gertrude Gottschalk of Carson City was born before women had the right to vote. She's voting 4 Hillary. pic.twitter.com/7gmN5GGQgi

— Lauren Werner (@LaurenWern) October 25, 2016

And for the nutty-buddies who just can't quite get past "Resist The Corrupt Duopoly!", try to remember this one weird thing - especially in light of the strong probability of electing a woman POTUS for the first time:

Saying you won't vote because you think nothing changes if we just go on supporting the same buncha politicians who got us into this mess, is not really different from somebody saying there's no use pushing for the 19th amendment because men are the only ones being elected because men are the only ones voting, and men will never pass an amendment that potentially dilutes their power by half.

Things change.  We can take part in that change and try to guide it towards an outcome that's more to our liking, or we can sit on our asses while somebody else does all the work, and watch as they make it happen the way they want it to happen.

Pussy Grabs Back

From the comments section at Crooks and Liars:

Today's Tweet

The country's number one "not-a-politician politician" in 2008:

Donald Trump basically cutting a campaign ad after the 2008 election for his lifelong friends, the Clintons. Wow. pic.twitter.com/9Q71NaTFOR

— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) October 25, 2016

Same ol' same ol'.  It's too easy to hit him with "was he lying then or is he lying now?".  Maybe he just changed his mind - of course, you could make the point that he couldn't very well change something he doesn't have, but that's a little too easy as well.

Anyway, he describes Hillary in glowing terms, revealing that he understands it's "just politics", and for me, he makes known two things. First is that he's a politician and he knows he's a politician. Second, he's a politician who makes loud and frequent declarations that he's not a politician - which makes him a phony - which further confirms he's a politician.

The Mnemonic

Proper Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance

Part 1

Part 2

"Beat this dick-waving Berlusconi knock-off like a little bitch"

That should be a t-shirt.

Bummer, Don

Andy Borowitz:

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—The billionaire Donald J. Trump’s bid to become a born-again Christian failed over the weekend after Jesus Christ turned down his friend request, campaign officials have acknowledged.

 

Confirming What We've Known

I got your Equal Opportunity right here, motherfucker.

This is not news to any of us who've been watching things like this - and it's certainly not news to anybody who's been on the short end their whole lives.

What continues to be news is that so many of us are still hot to swallow the malarkey that "we" have to lose everything in order to make it possible for "them" just to get one lousy shot at winning any-fucking-thing at all.

The more money the "unwashed of the low-born" have in their pockets, the more money they're likely to spend on whatever weird shit you carry in your little hobby-career boutique solidly entrepreneurial job-creating noble-rich legacy-schmuck powerhouse bidness.  

So grow the fuck up, Dilbert.

Bullshit Redux

Repeal ObamaCare...

Trump: "We will repeal and replace Obamacare." https://t.co/02FZSPs1J3 https://t.co/8McfJ9OmCn

— CNN (@CNN) October 22, 2016

...and replace it with Healthcare Saving Accounts - because poor people can just take all the money they don't have right now and save it up so that some day in a bright and golden future, they can spend it on an insurance policy that helps pay for the remodeling on the beach house of a Mid-Level Manager whose bonus incentives are driven by the special language of the policies, which makes sure the "coverage" calls for paying out only as much as any given client's lawyer can force the company to pay.

As a recovering Republican myself, here's the basic rebuttal for anyone trying to make the case for repeal by repeating the (mostly) bogus junk about Obamacare being a disaster:

I got to keep my doctor; my premiums haven't gone up at all in 3 years; it covers all but about $10 per prescription on my meds - the point is that it's working for me, so what the fuck do I care? Go bitch about it to somebody else.

If you wanna make noise, you could beat up on the state legislatures that decided not to take the Medicaid Expansion in order to make the thing as shitty as possible for their constituents, knowing a lotta those constituents are actually dumb enough to keep voting for the assholes who're making the thing shitty while blaming all the problems on the voters themselves.

Trouble is, that shit continues to work on way too many people.