Call It Progress - I Guess(?)

Miami Herald

The good news is: the kid wasn't shot.

The bad news is: that's what passes for good news now - that some asshole white cop didn't murder some knucklehead brown kid.

It's unbelievable, but that qualifies as a positive outcome.

Keith

The Doomsday Defense

Nobody Does It Better

Bill Moyers, on the NYT piece about all of 45*'s lies in one graphic:

This weekend, The New York Times performed a noble public service by publishing nearly every lie Donald Trump has told since taking the oath of office (just four months and a few days ago, but it seems like an eternity, no?). The op-ed chart of tiny but readable font fills the entire page, until at one point, in the mind’s eye, they appear to morph into termites burrowing deep into the foundation of democracy, leaving sawdust in their wake.

“We are using the word ‘lie’ deliberately. Not every falsehood is deliberate on Trump’s part. But it would be the height of naivete to imagine he is merely making honest mistakes. He is lying.”

And it all ties in with White Fright and the resurgence of race-based political coercion.

(paraphrasing): "A black man in the White House shattered all the little lies we'd been telling ourselves, and the way you set things right again is to put the Big Lie back in place."

I go to this one a lot. Because there's a basic truth about the history of USAmerica Inc that we can't change no matter how we insist on trying.

Mr Trudeau

Here's a picture of PM Justin Trudeau at a Pride Day event, wearing rainbow socks and a pink shirt, high-fiving a young girl dressed as a Wonder Woman ballerina.

Anyone else starting to get the feeling Canada's just kinda fuckin' with us now?

It Can't Be

And yet it is.

But now, at what we hope is the end of a long slouch into The Daddy State - where we can catch ourselves and start to put things right just before we get to the big Car Chase / Running Gunfight / Thrilling Rescue Sequence with Exploding Galaxies - this is where we get Charlie Pierce having to write this:

So this Mangushev character starts a motorcycle gang among his fellow Russian expats that he names after the Russian equivalent of the special forces. This gang, named after the Russian special forces, seeks the imprimatur of an actual Russian biker gang that, unlike their American brethren, doesn't settle for tearing up small towns along the California coast. This bunch helps overthrow governments. This is not a guy I'd do business with but, then again, I'm not Igor Zorin, with his millions buried in coffee cans in his backyard.

Keith

What if 45* actually fires Mueller?

Walking Into The Propeller

How Republicans are born...
Daughter, 8, has been savings up to buy her first Guitar.
Found it for $35. She had 35 exact.
Then...sales tax

— Grover Norquist (@GroverNorquist) June 25, 2017

driftglass

...reminding us (just in case you're still a little unclear on the concept) that if we don't learn our History, then we don't learn from our History.  Particularly, how to keep from making the same fucking mistakes over and over and over again.

Take it away driftglass (@Mr_Electrico)

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan killed something called The Fairness Doctrine:

The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was — in the Commission's view — honest, equitable, and balanced. The FCC, which was believed to have been under pressure from then President Ronald Reagan, eliminated the Doctrine in 1987.

For the record, the two federal judges who helped Reagan kill the Fairness Doctrine were future-Supreme Court incubus Antonin Scalia, and disgraced Nixon henchman Robert Bork.  After helping to hold down the Fairness Doctrine while Reagan smothered it, both men went on to enjoy long and fruitful careers as wingnut icons and ruiners of American democracy.

driftglass almost always runs a little long, but that's cuz he drinks good Scotch and he knows things. And there's a shitload to know, so it can take a while for him to recount it all for us.

Learn a little sumpthin'.

Today's Tweet

I made this handy chart for people who don't seem to understand why we're focusing on Trump when "other people have done bad things too". pic.twitter.com/gVjQLZY7bB

— OhNoSheTwitnt 🏳️‍🌈 (@OhNoSheTwitnt) June 25, 2017

Minimizing

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Manufactured Illiteracy

We hear it everywhere - "HyperPartisanship" and "The polarizing effect of everything having become over-politicized".

But the piece cited below points out how we're not "over-politicized" at all - just the opposite.

This is all about freezing as many of us in the middle as possible by doing whatever it takes to get a majority of us to react with, "Politics is fucked up - leave me out of it - I don't want anything to do with it cuz both sides are just as bad" and blah blah blah.

Billions of dollars are spent every year on advertising - commercial or political or the 24/7 GOP Pimpworks known as DumFux News. The people making the decisions to spend those billions are not stoopid people, and they don't spend that kinda money on something that doesn't work.

This thing is chock full of juicy nuggets.

Henry Giroux via Salon:

The reality of Trump’s election may be the most momentous development of the age because of its enormity and the shock it has produced. The whole world is watching, pondering how such a dreadful event could have happened. How have we arrived here? What forces have allowed education, if not reason itself, to be undermined as crucial public and political resources, capable of producing the formative culture and critical citizens that could have prevented such a catastrophe from happening in an alleged democracy? We get a glimpse of this failure of education, public values and civic literacy in the willingness and success of the Trump administration to empty language of any meaning, a practice that constitutes a flight from historical memory, ethics, justice and social responsibility.

--and--

Truth is now viewed as a liability and ignorance a virtue. Under the reign of this normalized architecture of alleged common sense, literacy is regarded with disdain, words are reduced to data and science is confused with pseudo-science. All traces of critical thought appear only at the margins of the culture as ignorance becomes the primary organizing principle of American society. For instance, two-thirds of the American public believe that creationism should be taught in schools and a majority of Republicans in Congress do not believe that climate change is caused by human activity, making the U.S. the laughing stock of the world. Politicians endlessly lie, knowing that the public can be easily seduced by exhortations, emotional outbursts and sensationalism, all of which mimic the fatuous spectacle of celebrity culture and reality TV. Image-selling now entails lying on principle, making it easier for politics to dissolve into entertainment, pathology and a unique brand of criminality.

--and--

The corruption of both the truth and politics is abetted by the fact that much of the American public has become habituated to overstimulation and lives in an ever-accelerating overflow of information and images. Experience no longer has the time to crystallize into mature and informed thought. Opinion now trumps reason and evidence-based arguments. News has become entertainment and echoes reality rather than interrogating it. Popular culture revels in the spectacles of shock and violence. Defunded and corporatized, many institutions of public and higher education have been all too willing to make the culture of business the business of education, and this transformation has corrupted their mission.

--and--

I am pointing to a more lethal form of manufactured illiteracy that has become a scourge and a political tool designed primarily to make war on language, meaning, thinking and the capacity for critical thought. Chris Hedges captures this demagogic attack on thoughtfulness in stating that “the emptiness of language is a gift to demagogues and the corporations that saturate the landscape with manipulated images and the idioms of mass culture.” Freedom now means removing one’s self from any sense of social responsibility so one can retreat into privatized orbits of self-indulgence, unbridled self-interest and the never-ending whirlwind of consumption.

--and--

This updated form of illiteracy does not simply constitute an absence of learning, ideas or knowledge. Nor can it be solely attributed to what has been called the “smartphone society.” On the contrary, it is a willful practice and goal used to actively depoliticize people and make them complicit with the political and economic forces that impose misery and suffering upon their lives. At the same time, illiteracy bonds people: It offers the pretense of a community bound by a willful denial of facts and its celebration of ignorance.

Senator Franken

Today's Quote

“If every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again.”

― Penn Jillette, God, No! Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales

Today's Tweet

Quite possibly the best pair of T-Shirts i have ever seen pic.twitter.com/40R3K6DmjA

— Brad (@MovesLikeZagger) June 22, 2017

Well Well

Vox:

A majority of Americans, 51 percent, have a favorable view of the Affordable Care Act, the law’s highest mark ever in the seven-year tracking poll; 41 percent said they had an unfavorable view.
--and--

Half of Americans also said they thought they would be better off if Obamacare remained the law of the land, versus 36 percent who thought they would be better off under the Republican bill.

I'll make one radical assumption by saying: Maybe a bunch of the Leftie Purists managed to get their heads outa their asses long enough to stop insisting that "fucked over completely" is somehow better than "fucked over a little (or even a lot)".

The main thing here, Lefties, is that you don't get to prescribe punishment for me in order to pressure me into serving your political goals.

There is nothing good about losing what we gained with Obamacare because it just doesn't go far enough to satisfy your pixie-dusted dreams of unicorns and universality.

There is no silver lining in having 45* as POTUS. Damage is being done to our institutions that will take decades (if not generations) to repair.

So if you think the shit we're going thru now, and the shit yet to come, is all good in the end because it's sure to transform the voting public into good little Liberals, then y'all can go fuck yourself with a horny toad.

Like Mother Blue Gal always tells us:

When you win, you chop wood and carry water.

When you lose, you chop wood and carry water.

(I'll add my bit to the end of that):

When you get some of what you want, but not everything,

You chop the fucking wood and you carry the fucking water.