Jan 5, 2017
Jan 4, 2017
It's A Wonderment
It seems like the GOP has grown more and more sour on the CIA ever since they helped the black guy kill Osama bin Laden.
hat tip = @TeaPainUSA
hat tip = @TeaPainUSA
Those Lying Numbers
People voted for either Dems or Other over the Repubs by a margin of nearly 2 million, but somehow the GOP maintained their hold on the majority.
Vote Caging-by-Gerrymandering, plus outright Suppression.
How long do we put up with this shit?
We'll See
Time Magazine Online:
We've become so dis-enamored with politicians that we've gone completely the opposite direction, arriving at a point where we've adopted a straight-up contradiction as our guiding principle:
That weird sound you hear is Ayn Rand doing a series of over-exaggerated zombie face palms.
According to a Gallup poll released Monday, Americans have significantly less faith in Trump than they had in his predecessors. Only 44% said they are confident Trump will avoid major scandals in his Administration, 46% said they are confident in Trump’s ability to handle an international crisis, and 47% said they trust him to use military force wisely. When the same questions were asked at the start of Barack Obama’s, George W. Bush’s and Bill Clinton’s terms, roughly three-quarters of Americans said they had confidence in the newly elected President in these areas.
When compared with Gallup’s averages of confidence polling in his predecessors, Trump comes up short: he has a 32-point confidence deficit in his ability to avoid scandals in his Administration, a 29-point deficit in his ability to use military force well and a 28-point deficit in his ability to manage the Executive Branch. Most Americans (60%) believe Trump will be able to get things done with Congress, but even there he comes up far behind his predecessors — the average number of Americans with confidence in Obama, Bush and Clinton to work with Congress was 82%.The main thing (for me), is that Trump has benefited greatly from Low Expectations. And that's become kind of a standard play with the GOP in the last 25 years or so - The Empty Vessel; the guy with no experience and no practical know-how or training; coming in to do a job that he's woefully unprepared to do.
We've become so dis-enamored with politicians that we've gone completely the opposite direction, arriving at a point where we've adopted a straight-up contradiction as our guiding principle:
Anybody with the right qualifications for the job is obviously unqualified.
That weird sound you hear is Ayn Rand doing a series of over-exaggerated zombie face palms.
Jan 3, 2017
Today's Tweet
grifters gonna grift.— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) January 2, 2017
remember when DC press had collective 6-yr heart attack re: Dems and Lincoln Bedroom? https://t.co/rjxX1X1JMr
It's a short piece with not much new, but that's the point: the corruption doesn't become thoroughly normalized and embedded until we get bored with hearing about it, so the one thing we can't allow ourselves is to get used to it - to accept official corruption as an everyday thing.
A person who travels in Palm Beach society circles said that tickets to the party were being sold for $525 each for members and $575 each for guests.
Trump’s transition team declined to comment on the ticket prices.
Incoming White House Director of Strategic Communications Hope Hicks rejected criticisms that Mar-a-Lago was selling access to the president-elect.
“The transition is not concerned about the appearance of a conflict,” she said.
“This is an annual celebratory event at the private club, like others that have continued to occur since the election. Additionally, the president cannot and does not have a conflict.”
Yes - I know - it's a corrupt system that was pretty fucked up way before this most recent election.
And yes - I know - that's the general theme of the 2016 election, because it seems enough of us got fooled into thinking Donald Trump is somehow the GOP version of FDR, and they actually voted in favor of Kleptocratic Kakistocracy, and now a guy who's possibly the most corrupt asshole in the history of corrupt assholes will be sworn in as POTUS on the 20th of this month.
And yes - of course - let's be sure to throw in some bullshit about "Both Sides"...
- and "The Evil Duopoly"
- and what a lousy candidate Hillary was
- and how stoopidly inept the DNC is (even tho' it's also all-powerful and able to dictate the results for any given candidacy)
- and how the Dems just can't figure out how to blah blah fucking blah (see fucked up corrupt system above)
- and, "we was robbed!"
- and don't forget, "Bernie! If only Bernie!".
We all have our pet reasons for voting for a certain candidate, and we all have our pet reasons for voting against the others, and we all have our pet reasons for what went wrong when it it doesn't turn out the way we want.
Remember though that it comes down to having to put together a coalition of 60-70 million voters. When it works, you have a shitload of reasons it worked. And when it doesn't work, you have a shitload of reasons it didn't work.
So nurse your grudges and pick at each other all ya want, but don't bring that shit to me. We have to stop preaching at each other about it now and get back to work. We have dragons to slay and villages to rescue.
Jan 2, 2017
Today's Quote
Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor, and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.
hat tip = FB friend Doug R
Jan 1, 2017
Today's Tweet
The definition of irony, FOX News reporting on fake news! pic.twitter.com/xEbwfJNJZq— philip harris (@pharris830) January 1, 2017
When the main subject of "the news" is "the news", we've gone beyond the reach of even the most sophisticated and sardonic irony.
This has to be a strong indication that we've been running in tighter and tighter circles for so long that we are now ready to complete the process of political evolution by disappearing up our own assholes (Allan Sherman --The Rape Of The A*P*E).
Pick A Side
In today's little fit of nostalgia, I'll say that we used to have movies for grownups where the lines were drawn pretty clearly. I'm not saying there's always a perfect dichotomy, but most of the time, there's a fairly obvious distinction between what's right and what's not, and art should illustrate those values for us - or at least reflect the values we manifest in living our everyday lives.
At some point you have to be able to step back and take a look at your own position. An art-form is supposed to help us with this self-examination thing, but it seems like something's shifted, and we've been pushed off kilter.
When I look back on some of the great movies that helped us figure ourselves out, and I start to wonder about overlaying those lessons onto our ideological alignments today, I can't help but think an awful lotta people would find themselves on the wrong side.
12 Angry Men
At some point you have to be able to step back and take a look at your own position. An art-form is supposed to help us with this self-examination thing, but it seems like something's shifted, and we've been pushed off kilter.
When I look back on some of the great movies that helped us figure ourselves out, and I start to wonder about overlaying those lessons onto our ideological alignments today, I can't help but think an awful lotta people would find themselves on the wrong side.
12 Angry Men
Seven Days In May
It's A Wonderful Life
Executive Suite
I promise this is not just me wanting to go back to some simpler time - there's no such thing in the first place.
But what I'm always going to be harping on is that we have to be committed to believing as many true things as possible and not believing as many false things as possible. And we have to keep learning and relearning the skills we need to know the difference.
Dec 31, 2016
Raising My Hand
An asshole like Trump will always call you an asshole because he's trying desperately to hide the fact that he's the asshole, while knowing with some certainty that you're not.
And now he calls us "enemy".
Glad That One's Over
Like a man who's had a thoroughly unsatisfying breakfast, and sees no great prospects for lunch.
John Oliver:
John Oliver:
To get help making sense of all these upheavals and tragedies, I reached out to Harvard psychology professor and polymath Steven Pinker. A cognitive scientist and linguist, Pinker focused his study of human nature on our propensity for violence — and conversely, cooperation — in his 2011 book, The Better Angels of Our Nature. In the book, Pinker meticulously documented a steady decline in violence over the past several centuries, which, he writes, "may be the most significant and least appreciated development in the history of our species."
In August, he told me the world is still in a more peaceful period than at any other time in history. (You can read the whole conversation here.) A few days ago, I reached out to him again. I wanted to see how Pinker was looking back over the year that was 2016 — if the election of Trump, and all the global violence that followed, had changed anything. The email conversation that follows has been edited for length and clarity.
But then again, these things run in cycles - and we're only just now entering the Trump Era - so there's always a fair chance for the whole thing to go straight into the shitter after all.
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