White Rise

The Atlantic:

Across the United States, Jewish communities are struggling to deal with this new wave of threats. While none of the bomb threats have led to violence, Monday’s calls came around the same time as another attack: Roughly 170 Jewish graves in a Missouri cemetery were desecrated over the weekend, according to The Washington Post. The calls may be a novel form of intimidation, but the context around them is not. American Jews are victims of more reported hate crimes than any other group in the United States, and have been subject to the majority of religiously motivated offenses every year since 1995, when the FBI first started reporting these statistics. The phone calls may not result in violence, but they contribute to an atmosphere of anti-Semitism already well-established in the United States.

You can't draw a line between any one thing 45* has said that goes straight to any given incident.

President Bannon knows that, because he knows about Stochastic Probability, so he knows he and his merry band have a nice fat lot of plausible deniability.

But this is some more of that shit that doesn't happen by accident, even though it really does, even though it doesn't because Bannon never told anybody to do anything.

In the presence of English Barons, Henry II—who is now utterly vexed by Becket's actions—cries out: Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest? Believing the King meant for Becket to be murdered, four knights ride to Canterbury Cathedral and kill Becket on December 29, 1170.

CO2 Cycle

From NASA - in 3D - as of Dec 2016.

I can't confirm that this is the kind of thing negatively effected under 45*'s Executive Order that purportedly reduced or eliminated the part of NASA's mission that included research on weather and Climate Change, but with Pruitt at EPA, Sessions at AG and Tillerson at State, am I s'posed to be surprised if that's the case?

Theres a good rendition of this with some decent narration at Vox

It pays to track those pesky Executive Orders

Yeah - It's That Bad

From Right Wing Watch

Wiles asserted that “devil-worshiping, Luciferian, demon-possessed maniacs” have formed a “criminal cabal [that is] running this nation and much of the world” that allows them to engage in “child trafficking, child molestation, child rape, [and] child murder.”

Gotta wonder - why is the Great and Powerful Donald of Oz unable to mount an effective resistance to this evil cabal? 

Why would 45* fire Flynn for knowing the truth, when he (45*) could use it to seal the deal on prosecuting Hillary?  And what's keeping Flynn from speaking this truth now?

What about god's noble warriors of a GOP that's been in control of Congress for 6 years? They're all powerless against these devil-worshipers?

I also wonder about the morality of someone who just takes this crap at face value, and seems not to care whether it's true or not. But I think always testing for truth ends up being a threat to their faith.  They've been trained not to question certain things. They already accept the big absurdity on faith (and they pay handsomely for that), so why not look for other opportunities to trade fairy tales for tribute?

My favorite political fantasy right now is that somebody out of office takes one of these greasy slugs to court. Not to spank 'em or collapse their phony little fiefdoms financially (although that'd be one very enjoyable side effect), but to force them out into the open and expose them as the lying sacks of shit they are by requiring them to present the "evidence" they're basing these crazy-fuck ideas on as they peddle their huge steaming piles of bullshit to the rubes.

Of course, you can't do that because of the whole Free Speech thing and 200 years of precedent allowing anybody to say anything about a public figure with near-absolute impunity.

So what can you say about a system that protects even the lowest and shittiest of the muck divers?

You say, "I give them the benefit of law for my own safety's sake".

And then you say "God bless America"

But still - y'know?

Today's Charlie

Esquire's Charlie Pierce is a fucking god:

I do not feel compelled to respect a president any more or less than I respect somebody I hire to fix my roof or paint my house. Whomever gets elected works for me. As to the office, well, I understand how it is a single unifying figure within the government, and how he—again, theoretically—represents the whole country. But, in my lifetime, the Oval Office has seen coups, burglaries, and illegal arms sales planned. It has been the venue for criminal mischief and illicit canoodling. That it is also the place where the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were signed is the great paradox. But the idea that I have to respect The Presidency qua The Presidency is something that raises the hackles in my democratic conscience.

First of all, there's this commander-in-chief business. By constitutional mandate, the president is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Period. He is not my commander-in-chief. Neither is he yours. Neither is he the commander-in-chief of the civilian government. The Congress can tell him to go whistle. The Supreme Court can slap his agenda back in his face. Nobody outside the military has to salute him. But, in every presidency, there's a temptation to push the commander-in-chief prerogatives a little further into the civilian sphere, and this is powerfully dangerous. To his credit, Garry Wills has been railing against this for years. He points out that, when Richard Nixon decapitated the Watergate Special Counsel's office, Alexander Haig presumed to tell assistant attorney-general William Ruckelshaus that Ruckelshaus' "commander-in-chief" had given him an order. Ruckelshaus told Haig to pound sand and got fired. Nixon wasn't Ruckelshaus' commander-in-chief. He was just his boss.

Always go back and read your Charlie. It's not like vegetables at all - it's good and it's for ya too.

Today I Learned:
18th century Pamphleteer Mercy Otis Warren

Too Typical

The dopes who had to cast the Purity Protest Votes didn't help, but as usual, the main problem is the fact that so many of us can't bring ourselves to vote at all.

America - land of the free and the home of the sit on your ass while everybody else does the work.

Today's Podcast

Marc Maron - What The Fuck

Episode 787 - Lena Dunham & then Trae Crowder

About That "Deeply Divided" Thing

Wanna see the real difference between them and us?

They actually believe this shit (or say they do so what's difference?):

And we know better:

I won't be able to reconcile myself with, or pair up with, or find commonality with anybody who insists on being ignorant - especially at a time when there actually are vast resources  they can use to find out about stuff.

I just can't.

Today's GIF

Are You Ready?

If you're not ready, then you'd best be gettin' ready because I think we'll eventually be told to accept Mike Pence as the guy who rides in and saves us from the clutches of Donald Trump, Evil Super-Genius.

WaPo:

BRUSSELS — Vice President Pence said Monday that he “fully supported” Michael Flynn’s ouster last week as national security adviser, setting himself firmly against the former general, who told untruths about his contacts with Russian officials.

“I was disappointed to learn that the facts that have been conveyed to me by Gen. Flynn were inaccurate,” Pence told reporters during a visit to NATO headquarters in his first public comments about a scandal that has rocked the young Trump administration.

Pence pushed for Flynn’s ouster after learning from The Washington Post that the national security adviser had been captured on tape speaking to Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak on the topic of sanctions. The conversation happened the day the Obama administration announced measures against Russia to retaliate for what U.S. intelligence services say was the Kremlin’s efforts to influence November’s presidential election. Flynn told Pence that he had not spoken about sanctions with Kislyak, an assertion Pence went on to repeat on television.

That performance looked like standard Mike Pence - serenely confident (to the point of condescension) that he'll handle all our troubles if we can just have a little faith in the Jesus-ey goodness of The Lord's America (ie: Mike Pence).

At this point, almost anything beats 45*, and Pence will have to do because the process only requires a few more steps before we're looking at President Rex Tillerson, and then we really are just another oil company with nuclear weapons.

Don't get me wrong, I'm under no illusion that Pence isn't another Daddy State fuck wearing a slightly different uniform. But at least I get the impression the guy has a sense of decency and honor about him where 45* has none.

Also gotta remember there's no provision in the Constitution for a do-over so there's no chance at a President Hillary in store for us. We have rules, and it's usual-and-customary in our little experiment in self-government that we do things by the fucking rules - not just the letter, but the spirit as well.  And the spirit of the law? Aye, there's the rub.

We have a guy in office who figured out how to exploit all the loop holes. Everything that's not spelled out in the words of the documents requires people to behave in an honorable way; to act in good faith in accordance with the spirit of the law; to not take unfair advantage.

45*'s built his whole thing on two simple premises:
1) If it doesn't say I can't do it, then that's my opportunity, and that's what I'll do.
2) And if it says I have to do it, then my opportunity is in not doing it until or unless somebody can force me to do it.

It's not that 45* is immoral - he's amoral. There's no Good and there's no Bad - there's only what works for him.

The guy has no soul and no honor.

A Man Like Putin

John Oliver, Feb 19, 2017

Feelin' Kinda Cynical

In a democracy, you're the customer and the boss. 

As a customer, you pay money in and you get services out.  

As the boss you hire managers to run the joint for you - what we still like to call elections.

In this Oligarchy/Corporatocracy, you're no longer considered the customer. If you're the customer, they'd listen to your input. Now  the only time you get to talk to them is when they give you a chance to agree with decisions they've already made - a lot like those company meetings we all love so much.

And whatever else you may be, you're sure as fuck not the boss anymore.

So if you're not the customer and you're not the boss, I think that makes you the product. 

They're farming you for your tax dollars.  They harvest your money and divvy it up with their buddies and their campaign donors.

Because Contributors get them elected, not voters.

Today's Tweet

I'm on the fence as far as whether or not I even care if it's true. Sometimes you fight fire with fire.

My friend @mfab69 was driving home from work, looked up and saw this pic.twitter.com/zTFL2DG4I6

— Beth,TheNaziSlayer (@BethW_NoTrump) February 18, 2017

Charlie Brings It

Charlie Pierce at Esquire

How many more of these whackadoo performance pieces does he have to present before somebody throws sand in the gears? If four Republican senators—say, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Ben Sasse, and Susan Collins—would agree to caucus with the Democrats under Chuck Schumer, the whole thing would grind to a halt until we could catch our breath and see if we really want to live in the madhouse of this president*'s mind for the next four years. Bold speeches in Munich and chest-thumping on Twitter won't cut it. It's put up or shut up time.

And, please, for the love of god, ye editors and news directors throughout the land, enough with the expeditions into the heartland to talk to people who helped bring this down upon themselves and on us. These folks have nothing new to say. They voted their id and their spleen and they're still on a high from that. Some guy in a café in Dubuque wants to say that he voted for this president* because he "tells it like it is," or because he thinks the steel mills are coming back? Can you watch that rally in Florida and believe that these opinions have any real merit?

hat tip = Karoli, Crooks & Liars

Fake And Alt-Fake News

Beware the double negative - and the triple and the fourple.

Don Lemon gets up and slaps back.

Yay Don. You are earning your way out of Press Poodle status. Ya did us proud right there, son.

Today's Tweet

Donald Trump is so incredibly not racist that all major racist groups endorsed him purely out of ironic spite.

— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) February 18, 2017