Today's Other Tweet

Sheriff tells Trump that state senator is doing something he doesn't like

Trump: "Do you want to give his name? We'll destroy his career." pic.twitter.com/75y3t9zc54

— Steve Kopack (@SteveKopack) February 7, 2017

It's not particularly unreasonable to be afraid.

Outwardly Cranky

Gary, who graduated high school with a smokin' 2.0 GPA, is complaining loudly about how Majeed (a Neurologist) wants to steal his job.

Ever notice how a lotta these job-stealing immigrants are coming from countries where they help kids with the cost of college and shit?

I wonder if that might work here.

hat tip = Vicki W-E

The So Called President

WaPo has a bit today about 45* saying he'll blame the Press Poodles and The Judiciary if there's a terrorist attack in USAmerica Inc.

President Trump appears to be laying the groundwork to preemptively shift blame for any future terrorist attack on U.S. soil from his administration to the federal judiciary, as well as to the media.

In recent tweets, Trump personally attacked James L. Robart, a U.S. district judge in Washington state, for putting “our country in such peril” with his ruling that temporarily blocked enforcement of the administration’s ban on all refugees as well as citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States.

“If something happens blame him and the court system. People pouring in. Bad!” Trump wrote in a tweet Sunday.

Then on Monday, Trump seemed to spread that blame to include news organizations. In a speech to the U.S. Central Command, the president accused the media of failing to report on some terrorist attacks for what he implied were nefarious reasons.

First of all, the piece makes it clear that we should all know by now that this is a guy who'll do anything to duck his responsibilities.

Second, anybody in any position to know something about such things is fully aware that an attack on US soil is the proverbial "when-not-if" proposition. 

But also too, since every attack in the US in the last 15 years or so can be attributed either to homegrown assholes or other assholes who're here legally, we have to conclude the system is working well enough to have been 100% effective in keeping Bad-Apple Refugees outa this joint.  So this is a very obvious and very standard play for power.

45* knows people fall for Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc assertions all the time. He's already taken credit for the Santa Claus Rally in December, and more recently, the good jobs report from Obama's last month in office.  So he can take credit for "preventing terror attacks" if his Muslim Ban sticks, and he's setting the stage for blaming Refugees for the attack he knows is coming eventually, as well as shifting his own responsibility onto his designated enemies when it does happen.

The only question is - are there enough rubes out there willing to Etch-A-Sketch their way into accepting this bullshit? Well, if November 8, 2017 was any indication - yeah, plenty of rubes. Still plenty of rubes.

And there're plenty of Republican (and other "conservative") office-holders willing to stay quiet while Trump plays the rubes for suckers because they reap nice fat bennies too.

And they're getting plenty of inadvertent assistance from "Progressives" willing to be kept  out of the game by going along with guys like Thom Hartman as he slags the US with the generous and freedom-loving assistance of Putin's version of DumFux News, aka Russia Today.  Paralysis By Analysis works wonders on reasonable people who feel a little reluctant to jump in and offer a full-throated defense of (eg) politicians they feel are less-than-fully-honorable.

And and and

So the question is - will there be enough people willing to stand up and defend against these assholes in six or eight months when the Outrage Fatigue really starts to kick in?

Today's Tweet

The hilarious part is, dude, they’re a major company, focus grouped this, got metrics, and concluded your demo was too small to worry about. pic.twitter.com/SnUG6MlEGF

— Eric Garland (@ericgarland) February 6, 2017

Ka-boom

Black History Month 7 of 7

From Atlanta Black Star - 7 Lies Taught In American Schools

Slavery Should Be Separated From the Rest of American Capitalism

This popularly taught myth says that as an economic system — a way of producing and trading commodities — American slavery was fundamentally different from the rest of the modern economy and separate from it, notes historian Edward Baptist. He claims the widely disseminated stories about industrialization emphasize white immigrants and clever inventors, but they leave out cotton fields and slave labor, implying that slavery and enslaved African-Americans had little long-term influence on the rise of the United States during the 19th century, a period in which the nation went from being a minor European trading partner to becoming the world’s largest economy — one of the central stories of American history. Baptist explains why this thinking became popular: “If slavery was outside of US history, for instance — if indeed it was a drag and not a rocket booster to American economic growth — then slavery was not implicated in US growth, success, power, and wealth,” he wrote on Salon.com last September. “Therefore none of the massive quantities of wealth and treasure piled by that economic growth is owed to African Americans.”

Ad

This one dropped this morning.

.@realDonaldTrump, we’re debuting this ad on @Morning_Joe, and taking it to other morning shows you watch, too! pic.twitter.com/LVINhUenaV

— VoteVets (@votevets) February 6, 2017

@VoteVets

votevets.org

The Coming Purge

And we thought the Tea Party was bad?  We ain't seen nothin' yet, bubba.

McKay Coppins, in The Atlantic:

“The question is not whether he’s vengeful,” conservative columnist Ben Shapiro told me. “The question is how willing he is to use the levers of government to exact that revenge.”

He goes on to talk about Glen Beck, and his paranoia, and his worry that people have taken what he said too seriously.

This isn't a fucking game.  "The Left" has been trying to warn those idiots for a good long time that they're playing with a loaded gun.

These assholes spent almost 30 years taking a giant shit in their audiences' brains and now they fret because people have done exactly what people do - they came to believe what they were told every day by somebody speaking in a confident authoritative tone.

You can see it every day in the comments sections and on Facebook etc. The arrogance of deliberate ignorance is tough and fibrous and persistent and malignant.

Today's Tweet

Openly bananas

Ah I see we've shifted swiftly into the "openly bananas dictator" phase. Happy Monday, America! pic.twitter.com/FxCudtoGdO

— Hadley Freeman (@HadleyFreeman) February 6, 2017

Today's Quote

So now we have in power a man who represents the very worst of the plutocrats - one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. I shudder to think where this nightmare will end. Even if you voted for Donald Trump for a reason that truly is from your heart, I cannot believe you voted for this. Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me whose side are you really on? The people of America or the cynics and predators at the very top who would climb atop the ruins of the republic for a better view of the sunset?

-- Bill Moyers

It Was A Metaphor After All

So OK, congrats to the Patriots for a pretty amazing comeback win last night.  

Tom Brady is probably the best ever at quarterback.  And maybe it's because he cheats. Or maybe not.

And you can argue that Bill Belichick is the best coach ever. And maybe it's because he cheats. Or maybe not.

And maybe New England is the best franchise ever. And maybe it's because they cheat. Or maybe not.

I say, "Teach the controversy".

Anyway, the top trending hashtag on Twitter this morning is #NotMySuperBowlChamps, and it's all about setting the game as a metaphor for the election and gloating about it.

Breaking: Jill Stein announces demand for a re-match because Russia hacked the football. Send her lots of money. #NotMySuperBowlChamps

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) February 6, 2017

#NotMySuperBowlChamps https://t.co/69yNWU2WNs

— Yashar (@yashar) February 6, 2017

We're all so clever.

It's the spectacle that's important - especially to The Daddy State.  Bread and Circuses. It gets the blood up and inspires us ever forward.

And yes, I know - the whole bit about drawing the parallels with Rome and the Gladiators is old and tired. But y'know what? If it wasn't so fucking obvious all the fucking time, maybe we could stop doing it. Or maybe not.

I'm just glad I can put it down and walk away again -  for a while.

Black History Month 6 of 7

From Atlanta Black Star - 7 Lies Taught In American Schools

Slavery Was Mostly About the Denial of Human Rights

A line of thinking that has gained popularity is that the institution’s worst crime was that it denied enslaved African-Americans the liberal rights and liberal subjectivity of modern citizens, according to historian Edward Baptist. Baptist pointed out that it did those things, of course, but it also killed people in large numbers, stole everything from those who did survive and made them live in terror and hunger as they continually built and rebuilt a commodity-generating empire. Baptist claims that once the violence of slavery was minimized, another voice could emerge, whispering that African-Americans, both before and after emancipation, were denied the rights of citizens because they would not fight for them.

My Super Bowl Prediction

I've been thinking about this for a while. Something that keeps popping into my mind is the fact that I've watched every Super Bowl. I've been in front of a TV on Super Bowl Sunday every year for 50 years. 

50. Fucking. Years.

And I'll be there again today. Not because I feel a weird need to blindly continue a personal tradition, but because this is being hyped now as something much bigger than just a game. And that in itself seems pretty bizarre - the thought that an event that couldn't possibly get more over-hyped is now being overly over-hyped into America's Mutual Orgasm Of Battle-Porn.

The team representing the blackest city in USAmerica Inc - and the political home of The American Civil Rights Tradition - is up against the team from a city that is known for (and in some ways, proud of) being the most racist city anywhere; the team with a quarterback, a coach and an owner who're publicly good buddies with 45*.

So while there is nothing at all to the bullshit of God Will Decide This By Taking Sides In Mortal Combat, I'm pretty sure that's how it'll be characterized by the side making the claim that their cause is represented by the winner of the game.

A fucking game.

BTW - here's hoping the so-called president Donald (The Pissant) Trump gets his ass stomped by Genuine Home-Grown Hero John Lewis.

What's Goin' On

Watching "And Still I Rise" on PBS, thinking about "how far we've come".

Looking at how we've all lost a lot of ground in general the last 20 years, but knowing if I've lost a lot, then there's a shitload of black folks who're losing everything.

Some are being pushed into depressed neighborhoods with fewer jobs and shittier schools, and stuck in the whirlpool of ignorance poverty and crime that sucks an awful of the people into what's become a Coin-Operated Prison System.

And it occurs to me - intentionally or not, we're in the process of enslaving black people for the 3rd time.

Gotta be something better.

It's The Mendacity, Stoopid

Chez Pazienza at Daily Banter:

It's difficult to express both the audacity and the insidiousness of what Conway's doing here (what she's been doing for months, really). Her comment about the nonexistent Bowling Green Massacre is a masterwork of calculated mendacity, the kind of thing that would be admirable if it weren't so dangerous. You can't help but wonder if Conway didn't do the Italian chef finger kiss to herself after she came up with it. Go back and read it one more time. She creates a phony event that she uses specifically to assault the media for its unwillingness to cover, knowing full well that four things will quickly happen: 1) The fake event will immediately become "real" for Trump's people, lodging in their collective consciousness, especially as the lie is repeated again and again as it becomes its own story; 2) they'll assume the reason they had never heard of it was precisely because of a full-on conspiracy by the dishonest media, making it a self-reinforcing delusion; 3) Trump loyalists and media shills will begin reverse-engineering facts to fit the lie, giving it "credibility," or at the very least providing her enough plausible deniability to feign outrage; 4) she'll get double the bang for her buck because once journalists begin calling her out on the lie, she can again slam them for not accepting her apology or asking her to clarify her comment.

It's genius. Evil genius. Which is exactly why it needs to be fought against tooth and nail.

Here's why: not simply because Kellyanne Conway's lie wasn't an accident but because it was a strategy. The goal of Conway is to deliberately muddy the waters between fact and fiction so that the two are indistinguishable. The reason for this? Because doing so debases the truth to the point where it simply doesn't matter anymore. This is important because the truth -- cold, hard fact -- is the Trump administration's worst enemy, as it is the enemy of authoritarian governments in general but of Trump specifically because he lives his life complete unmoored to it. What's more, the truth is what a free press derives its power and authority from, and the Trump administration has already declared the press "the opposition." What better way to destroy that opposition, then, than to take away the importance of that for which it stands.

Bob and Chez podcast - twice a week, the episodes are usually up late-ish in the evening every Tuesday and Thursday.

Robert Reich

Resistance Report 02-03-17

Tax returns, conflicts of interest and the blind trust
Russia
Cronyism and Ultra-Nationalists
Attacks on democratic institutions
Steve Bannon