Dots

Pema Levy at Mother Jones:

By day, Joe Tien is a math professor at Ohio State University, where he studies the spread of infectious diseases. His research maps how a disease like Ebola jumps from village to village and plots the best way to stop its spread. On his own time, Tien has begun putting his skills in network science toward other subjects, including the connection between white nationalists and American politicians.

After the election, Tien and two other mathematicians set out to map the relationship between white nationalists and US senators on social media. The results produced one clear outlier: Based on an analysis of senators' Twitter followers, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), President Donald Trump's nominee to be attorney general, had the most overlap with white nationalist groups and individuals.

"He's the closest of all senators to the white nationalist groups," says Tien.

Sessions has a controversial track record on matters of race, including allegations of racist comments toward black colleagues and the targeted prosecution of civil rights activists. But Tien was still surprised by the outcome of his research. He and his colleagues wrote a short paper on their findings and titled it "The Curious Case of Jefferson Sessions."

I don't know if it's ironic or karmic or what, but there's something spiritually delicious when a douchenozzle like Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III gets connected to White Supremacists by a guy who tracks Infectious Diseases.

That's some elegant shit right there.

About That EO

First - whenever I get all huffy and preachy about Press Poodles, I'll try harder to remind myself that Brianna Kielar is among the few exceptions.

Second - here she basically stomps the sawdust outa that schmuck, and points to a few things that I was totally unaware of.

Third - these things never state in clear language just how shitty the intent really is.  And the intent is always clearly shitty.

Anyway, I hadn't realized how insidious this is.  Kielar points out the veil - they needed to hide their shitty Muslim ban behind the upside-down bullshit that they're all about religious freedom, and we don't want good Christians to get fucked over as we go about fucking over the evil Muslims - just trying to make it OK for persecuted religious minorities to escape and blah blah blah.

"We'll need to engage in religious bigotry in order to combat all this religious bigotry."

The reason I call these assholes assholes is because they're assholes and they should be called assholes.

One For The Books

From Benjamin Wittes at LAWFARE:

The malevolence of President Trump’s Executive Order on visas and refugees is mitigated chiefly—and perhaps only—by the astonishing incompetence of its drafting and construction.

NBC is reporting that the document was not reviewed by DHS, the Justice Department, the State Department, or the Department of Defense, and that National Security Council lawyers were prevented from evaluating it. Moreover, the New York Times writes that Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, the agencies tasked with carrying out the policy, were only given a briefing call while Trump was actually signing the order itself. Yesterday, the Department of Justice gave a “no comment” when asked whether the Office of Legal Counsel had reviewed Trump’s executive orders—including the order at hand. (OLC normally reviews every executive order.)

This order reads to me, frankly, as though it was not reviewed by competent counsel at all.

Mr Wittes is a Senior Fellow at Brookings, and so he's not exactly Mr Conservative, but he's also not a Leftie Looney and while this is from the guy's blog, I was linked to it from The Brookings Institution's website, where it seems like the use of terms like "malevolence" and "horrific" in reference to a POTUS is a bit unusual.

Something could be up. There's an awful lotta smoke for no fire.

Weaving

I've been trying to get a consistency across my media platforms (and I already don't even like that I just said that, but oh well), and I haven't always posted the same stuff at every site.

So if you really need ya some more Mike (and of course you do - why would you not?), just hit me up some time.

Facebook

Twitter

Today's Tweet

HE
THREW
DIRT
ON
US

&

WE BLOOMED LIKE FLOWERS. #WomensMarch pic.twitter.com/H2PlJL8Bzw

— E✌i z a b e t h (@Lizbian21) January 22, 2017

Keith

Watch this video on The Scene.

The Bill Hicks reference:

Bill Hicks on Marketing

45*'s Cherry

I'm not using his name any more than is absolutely necessary. 

From here on, I'll being calling him 45*.

Reuters:

A U.S. commando died and three others were wounded a deadly dawn raid on the al Qaeda militant group in southern Yemen on Sunday, which was the first military operation authorized by U.S. President Donald Trump.

The U.S. military said 14 militants died in the attack on a powerful al Qaeda branch that has been a frequent target of U.S. drone strikes. Medics at the scene, however, said around 30 people, including 10 women and children, were killed.

The gunbattle in the rural Yakla district of al-Bayda province killed a senior leader in Yemen's al Qaeda branch, Abdulraoof al-Dhahab, along with other militants, al Qaeda said.

Eight-year-old Anwar al-Awlaki, the daughter of U.S.-born Yemeni preacher and al Qaeda ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki, was among the children who died in the raid, according to her grandfather. Her father was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011.

"She was hit with a bullet in her neck and suffered for two hours," Nasser al-Awlaki told Reuters. "Why kill children? This is the new (U.S.) administration - it's very sad, a big crime."

This is day 9 and we've got a dead trooper.  I wonder where 45* plans to be when that kid's body lands at Dover? And all the others that're sure to follow.

Today's Pix

The Daily Show

I'd been hoping they'd give Trevor Noah a good long shot to get his feet under him and make the thing his own; and thanks to a tip from The Professional Left, I went over to take a look, and wow - it seems like he's bringing it back in good shape, cuz he stuck the landing Thursday.

Here's the first bit:

And go see the full episode - you don't wanna miss the cake.

And the 3rd block will hip you to Trevor's new slang term, "Four-Five".

Full Episode - Comedy Central

Friday's Podcast

Episode 373 - All This Must End

The Professional Left

be sure to click on the Amazon link

5calls.org

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Silly Crap

At best, that's a bumper sticker, not a policy.  It has no substance behind it when spoken by a man who tries mightily to substitute small-time charity for nation-wide justice. 

A nation built on sound bites and slogans is not a nation at all - it's barely even a marketing strategy anymore, as it begins to fail as a political platform.

@retail_recruit

Just Cuz

It seems Mr Hewitt assumes the GOP Congress Critters are as lacking in honor and morality as he is.

Anybody Tired Of Winning Yet?

Trump's Conflicts

Bloomberg

President Trump is poised to sign an executive order that would suspend all entry to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East, according to a draft proposal obtained by Bloomberg News. His proposed list doesn’t include Muslim-majority countries where his Trump Organization has done business or pursued potential deals. Properties include golf courses in the United Arab Emirates and two luxury towers operating in Turkey.

 

It almost looks reasonable (and remember, it always looks kinda reasonable at first). But what happens if there's an attack on a Trump-branded property? Or something happens in one of the countries that effects one of those properties - for good or ill? 

Will Trump change the immigration status of that country?  And how do we know the change will be driven by a diligent assessment of US National Interests, and not by Trump's own pocketbook?

None of this is new, of course - Rachel had a segment on it a while back - but it's important to see it as it materializes.

Bloomberg also has a decent snapshot of Trump's Conflicts that gets updated pretty regularly.

It Gets Worse

Independent