Slippery Little Buggers

"I believe"

That's about all it takes. The lady repeats the assertions she's heard her authority figures make, and she tries to back up those assertions by repeating the "supporting arguments" she's heard from those same figures, but as each bit of "evidence" is challenged and refuted, she eventually retreats all the way back to "I believe".

Once you have the Authoritarian Frame in place, all you have to do is make assertions and the true believers will fall in line.  It's not as simple as it seems of course, but if I have to boil it down to baseline premises, that's why the God-Knobbers make such good Republicans.

Today's Tweet

Poor Donald Trump hates pics of his double chin, so the Internet decided to help - https://t.co/a8SgrCs5u7 pic.twitter.com/dyWlhQepuX

— Dangerous Minds (@DangerMindsBlog) December 1, 2016

Today's Winner

hat tip = Facebook buddy Linda M-M

We Are All Willard Now

This was a simple exercise in Asserting Dominance. Because Donald Trump is a fucking dog that has to piss on the food so all the other dogs know who it belongs to.

I'll give Romney some props tho' - just for making even this feeble attempt at bringing something a bit more honorable to the shit show.

Know this tho', every one of these "establishmentarians" (who aren't out on the wingnut fringe) is auditioning for the part of Franz von Papen.

I sure as fuck hope this ends better than I think it's gonna end.

Today's Tweet

Conservatives say the problem is Christianity ain't taught in schools. The real problem is Christianity ain't taught in church.

— Tea Pain (@TeaPainUSA) April 18, 2015

On Nationalism

Doug Stanhope

hat tip = Facebookster Doug R

Survival

I guess my main question is - Why are we always talking about 'survival'?  Maybe it's just that we're used to framing everything in terms of some epic struggle or existential threat. Maybe we need to feel better about ourselves in comparison with The Greatest Generation, so we hype everything into a looming apocalypse. Maybe we're addicted to the drama. 

Or maybe we understand that our little experiment in self-government is actually and always being undermined by people who say they love this country and its honorable institutions while doing everything in their considerable power to countervail practically everything they say they love about them.

Kali Holloway at AlterNet

“We will survive Trump,” I keep hearing people say, often followed by a reference to how “we” survived Bush, or Reagan, or Nixon, or so many other historic calamities.

At worst, I’ve seen this sentiment expressed by people whose safety and well-being are all but guaranteed, mostly to dismiss or silence outpourings of fear, anger and grief from the vulnerable and justifiably petrified. At best, I’ve heard it from folks who stand to lose the most in the coming years — whose erasure, exclusion or expulsion were voted for by people eager to make this country exclusively theirs again — in an effort to turn resignation into reassurance, to transform a history of needless suffering into a warped kind of relief that what we’re facing is just more of the awful same.

--and--

That "we" excludes more than 650,000 Americans — overwhelmingly LGBTQ men and poor people of color — who ultimately didn’t survive Reagan’s indifference to the AIDS crisis, an epidemic the president didn’t dedicate a speech to until the American death toll hit 21,000. As many as 200,000 Iraqi and Afghan civilians and thousands of American soldiers didn’t survive Bush and Obama’s wars. The Obama administration's deportation of more than 2.4 million immigrants—a total that nearly rivals the previous two administrations combined—has left countless families broken and barely surviving. The misguided war on drugs launched by President Nixon and exponentially expanded by President Clinton has wasted $1 trillion, led to mass incarceration of black and brown citizens, devastated countless communities and families, and exacerbated police violence and abuse in communities that have long suffered state-sanctioned terror.

Today's Keith

Support this effort.  Like he says - somebody's gotta do it and I think it's pretty obvious we won't be able to count on hearing what we need to hear from the Dems any time soon - especially knowing our "Liberal Media" is more notable for their slavish devotion to the Showmanship that sells the boner pills than they are for sorting thru the bullshit to bring us any real information.

The single-thread narrative is that Americans have repudiated the Dems so nobody cares to hear from them anyway. And so it goes.

Watch this video on The Scene.

December

George Winston

Label: Windham Hill Records - 1982

Track Listings:
1. Thanksgiving
2. Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head
3. Joy
4. Prelude
5. Carol of the Bells
6. Night: Part One: Snow
7. Night: Part Two: Midnight
8. Night: Part Three: Minstrels
9. Variations On The Kanon By Pachelbel
10. The Holly And The Ivy
11. Some Children See Him
12. Peace

Deep Thoughts

They say video gaming is making us more violent. They said the same thing about TV and movies and radio and comic books. But back as late as the 17th century, they were drowning and crushing and hanging people accused of being witches.  So maybe it's just that humans can get really shitty with each other sometimes.

Today's Pix

(click the pic to bigger it)

Today's Godliness

A preacher/teacher guy named Robin Meyers via Oklahoma Gazette:

Oklahoma was the first state west of the Mississippi to be called for Donald Trump, and what prouder moment could there be for followers of Jesus? If Hollywood designed the perfect candidate to represent the anti-Christ for evangelicals, he would be thrice married, twice divorced, a builder of casinos, a sexual predator (unless the women are ugly), a liar and a man so in love with himself that his fondest wish is to die in his own arms.

--and--

Democrats are all secular humanists, they said, and the problem with America is that not enough people go to church. If we had the Ten Commandments in plain sight, they say, morality and virtue would return to America. Really? If you vote for someone who violated all 10 of them, then obviously something else matters a lot more to you than the religion you are wearing on your sleeve. As for the seven deadly sins, see Donald Trump.

And I'll say it again - there's plenty wrong with our Political System, but the short list is gonna have 'Fucked Up Voters' near the top.

Kleptocratic Kakistocracy

Kalamitous?

Kataclysmic?

Katastrophic maybe?

We're only a 'K' away - but even that's just a way to distract us from the on-rushing shit storm.

Playing The Differences

Comey's testimony, explaining why you prosecute one guy and not the next regarding their handling of classified material.

"He" in this discussion is David Patraeus.

Hillary sent an email: Lock her up! Petraeus leaked "highly classified" information: Make him Secretary of State.pic.twitter.com/ygL13Phf15

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) November 28, 2016

Let's review:

• Hillary's private server and 3 document attachments not properly identified by the sender = Lock Her Up
• Patraeus sharing actual classified info with his mistress = Secretary of State

Some Saw It Coming

From The New Yorker, Joe Dator 2012