Telling

GOP voters are begging the people they voted into office not to fuck 'em over by repealing ACA, and those representatives are high-fiving each other for moving to repeal it anyway.

What does that tell us about the GOP?

What does it tell us about ourselves?

What does it say about how fucked up it has to get before we figure out that it's fucked up?

Trump's The Chump

Donald Trump projects his own shit onto everyone else.  I realize that's not exactly news, but that is actually the point - that he just keeps hammering on it until you throw up your hands and give in.

Blue Gal and driftglass call it a Denial Of Service Attack. 
Bob and Chez call it the Tennis Ball Machine. 
Olbermann calls it Chaff.

And I can tell you, I'm struggling not to blow it all off and walk away.  For the 69 days since the election, this whole thing has felt the way I image it feels to be stuck in a war zone.

Unfortunately, I think it might just get worse after Friday.

There's no indication this guy will feel constrained in any way on anything at any time.

Here's a quick scorecard from Dana Milbank at WaPo - talking about why The Peddler-in-Chief don't get no respect:

To Trump’s many self-assigned superlatives, he can now add another: the sorest winner. With charity for none and with malice toward all but his supporters, he has in the past two months set a new standard for gracelessness in victory.

When a well-heeled practitioner of Both-Siderism like Dana Milbank puts up a column that never once says, "...but the Democrats...", maybe there's been a bit of a shift.  I won't hold my breath, but wouldn't that be nice?

Anyway, Trump likes to throw shit, and the method to this madness is to keep us from seeing the shenanigans he's really up to because we're trying to deal with all the flying shit.

Apply that to Washington, and you've got a US Congress using Trump's shit-flinging as cover for their skullduggery too.

And of course, when they think he's no longer useful, they can impeach Trump, selling that little project to us like they're a bunch of fucking heroes righting a terrible wrong and bringing the country together and blah blah blah.

With a few minor tweaks, it fits too perfectly with the usual GOP formula:

1) Fuck it up.

2) Point at it and say, "Oh look - it's fucked up".

3) Propose your "solution".

And won't that be a kick in the head? We'll be rid of Trump, and it'll only cost us our Healthcare Coverage, Social Security, Medicare and a whole package of rollbacks of basic protections on Civil Rights, Environment, Consumer Finance, etc -  plus we get President Mike Pence in the bargain. Lucky us.

Grease up and bend over, America - nobody goes unfucked.

Today's Tweet

PEOTUS is a seriously-deranged bag of poorly-executed low-end dildos.

Another horrible night porch drinking & grilling in #fifthdistrict Thanks @repjohnlewis @ajc #defendthe5th #Riseup #swatl #atl #atlanta pic.twitter.com/GE0kGRwJMt

— Dantes Rameau (@DantesRameau) January 15, 2017

Jay Smooth

Today's Today

Things were pretty lousy way back then.

So much better now.

no justice - no peace

Know Justice - Know Peace

Today's Pix

Today's Jiggery Pokery

Start Making Sense

They count on us being dumb enough to believe the crap story about a phony conspiracy like PizzaGate, so we won't be smart enough to believe the true story about the real conspiracy of Putin & his partly-trained orangutan.

Yes, It's Really Happening

Today's Tweet

Rubber, meet Road
Road, this is Rubber

My dad starts chemo Monday. Here's just ONE prescription he needs. It's really very simple: without Obamacare, within 8 months he'd be dead. pic.twitter.com/VpW3zgPYli

— Megh Wright (@megh_wright) January 14, 2017

It Won't Be OK

Widewalls - Protest Art 

What is the scope and impact of protest art? As Adorno famously wrote, ‘all art is an uncommitted crime’, meaning that art challenges the status quo by its very nature. Thus it can be argued that all art is political in the sense that it takes place in a public space and engages with an already existing ideology and dominant discourse. Yet, art can often become dangerously and explicitly political and serve as a powerful weapon. Throughout the history of social movements and social revolt, art has always reacted against oppression, violence, injustice and inequalities. Addressing socio-political issues and challenging the traditional boundaries and hierarchies imposed by those in power, art can open up the space for the marginalized to be seen and heard and contribute to the social change by producing knowledge and solidarity or simply raising awareness. In this way, the personal life and work of the artist transcends the individual and speak meaningfully to a larger audience bringing together the political and human functions of art.

NYT:

...Nadya Tolokonnikova of the Russian punk band and activist art collective Pussy Riot. The group’s 2012 guerrilla performance at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, which viciously mocked Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church, resulted in a two-year prison sentence for Ms. Tolokonnikova and another of its members.

--and--

Leading up to Ms. Tolokonnikova’s trial, Russian news reports carried suggestions that she and her bandmates were pawns of Hillary Clinton’s State Department or witches working with a global satanic conspiracy — perhaps linked to the one that was behind the Sept. 11 attacks, as lawyers for one of their offended accusers put it. This is what we now call “fake news.”

Pussy Riot became an international symbol of Mr. Putin’s crackdown on free speech; of how his regime uses falsehood and deflection to sow confusion and undermine critics.

Now that the political-media environment that we smugly thought to be “over there” seems to be arriving over here, Ms. Tolokonnikova has a message: “It’s important not to say to yourself, ‘Oh, it’s O.K.,’” she told me. “It’s important to remember that, for example, in Russia, for the first year of when Vladimir Putin came to power, everybody was thinking that it will be O.K.”

 

resist

Today's Tweet

If you're curious re the pro-Putin motives of the Greenwald alt-left, this summary might help:
1) Tear down system
2) ???
3) Progressivism!

— Bob Cesca (@bobcesca_go) January 14, 2017

I don't like even my own tendency sometimes to do the Both Sides thing, but the reactions coming from folks like Greenwald look a lot like a leftie version of the Tea Party.  

Purity warriors are a big part of the problem.  Whether it's RINOs or DINOs, it doesn't make sense for anybody to get their panties in a bunch over it, because it just turns the whole thing into a race for the logical extreme, and the logical extreme is where everything goes to fail.

Today's Meme

Lewis voiced the opinion that Trump's election to POTUS is illegitimate - an opinion I imagine is shared by about 100 million Americans and a coupla billion people around the world.

Trump hit back with his usual Tu Quoque crap - where, instead of dealing with the criticism and defending against the charges, he tries to deflect by pointing at problems in Mr Lewis's district.

And of course it worked - because of course it always fucking works - as the Press Poodles dutifully ran off to chase the tennis ball to check on how things are in Georgia's 5th District instead of staying with the story and asking Trump about what Lewis actually said, and seeing it as another reason to pursue the slightly more important story:

Whether or not the fucking President Of The Fucking United Fucking States is a FUCKING. RUSSIAN. DUPE.

Stop falling for that shit. Know your Logical Fallacies and watch what the fuck you're doing.

Today's Podcast

@proleftpodcast

The Professional Left

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We Were Warned

"When we were kids, we were all afraid of the dark. And when we grew up we weren't afraid anymore, but it's funny how a big lie can make us all kids again."