Dot, meet Dot - Dot, this is Dot.
Jul 11, 2017
Today's Good News / Bad News
It gets clearer and muddier at the same time.
Clearer that there was an Olympian amount of fuckery going on.
Muddier because the Circle of Fuckery gets wider with each new bit revealed.
Four reporters and 3 different sources - Boston Globe: (beware the pay wall)
Clearer that there was an Olympian amount of fuckery going on.
Muddier because the Circle of Fuckery gets wider with each new bit revealed.
Four reporters and 3 different sources - Boston Globe: (beware the pay wall)
WASHINGTON — Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an e-mail that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the e-mail.
The e-mail to the younger Trump was sent by Rob Goldstone, a publicist and former British tabloid reporter who helped broker the June 2016 meeting. In a statement Sunday, Trump acknowledged that he was interested in receiving damaging information about Clinton, but he gave no indication that he thought the lawyer might have been a Kremlin proxy.
E-mail. An e-mail cracks it open and takes 'em all down?
But then:
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump’s eldest son during the presidential campaign said she was summoned to Trump Tower and asked if she had damaging information on Hillary Clinton, painting a very different picture of the encounter from the one that Donald Trump Jr. has described.
Trump Jr. has said his June 2016 meeting with attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya was arranged through an acquaintance so that he could hear information helpful to the Trump campaign. Distancing himself from the source of the information, he has said he didn’t even know the name of the person he was to meet with in advance.
The dueling depictions of the meeting, arranged just after Trump had clinched the Republican nomination, come as congressional committees and Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigate whether Trump campaign associates and Russia coordinated to tip the election in Trump’s favor. Though neither Veselnitskaya nor Trump Jr. has described the meeting as fruitful, it'll likely be dissected by investigators trying to determine whether collusion took place.
Jul 10, 2017
Goin' Back
Recently, 43 disabled protesters were arrested outside of Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell's office, and the clips went viral on social media. Since then, activists have kept up the pressure on the Republican health bill with similar actions across the country. For this short documentary, The Atlantic traveled to the heart of the disability rights movement in the San Francisco Bay Area to learn why some people with disabilities fear the Republican health plan. Mary Lou Breslin of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund says cuts to Medicaid could ultimately cost 3 million people with disabilities their freedom, and erode "40 years of hard won gains by the disability rights movement."
This documentary was produced as a project for the USC Center for Health Journalism's California Fellowship.
Taking an axe to Medicaid will prob'ly not leave all of these folks without some kind of coverage - it will just make sure that the Rent-Seekers and Profit-Takers will collect even more tax dollars than they're getting now.
The GOP is using that reliable scare-word, "Socialism", so they can change Medicaid to something that's more lucrative for their buddies and their in-laws. Which equates to an effort to morph the thing into "Socializing Cost in order to generate Private Profit".
It's weird because the guys who're always bitching about the incompetence and inefficiency of Da Gubmint are the ones who're taking one of the very few federal programs that is actually cost-effective, and making it grossly inefficient by trying to shoehorn it into a business model based almost solely on an ideological belief - which obviously doesn't work for such things - which is why we hit on the idea of Medicaid in the first fuckin' place.
We've tried this All-Things-Privatized before. The whole world has tried this before - it was called Monarchy (aka: Daddy State - in one form or another).
240 years ago, some smart guys figured out that that was a pretty fucked up way to do things if the point of the exercise is to live your life without having to pay rent on the air you breathe, and the water you drink, and the dirt you grow your own food in.
And yet, for reasons passing understanding, the rubes who're always yelling "American Exceptionalism" are the ones enthusiastically buying into the plan to take us back to Government-By-Class-Based-Economic-System, to which the US was founded to be the fucking exception.
Tweet Memes
"I thought you were German, not Dutch?"— James Martin (@Pundamentalism) July 7, 2017
"I am."
"So why are they saying you're from Dutchland?"
"It's Deutschland."
"Exactly, not Germany." pic.twitter.com/izUBO7cPkm
"You know Hitler was from Germany."— James Martin (@Pundamentalism) July 8, 2017
"He was from Austria."
"Then how come you never saw him with kangaroos?"
"That's-"
"Or a boomerang?" pic.twitter.com/R1XlEFiNRC
Today's Tweet
Just talk into the pretty flower, Mr. President. In fact, why not take it back to the Oval Office? Wouldn't that be nice? pic.twitter.com/aokqN9objr— Schooley (@Rschooley) July 9, 2017
Jul 9, 2017
On That Klan Thing Yesterday
C'Ville Weekly:
Charlottesville police officers, Daily Progress reporters and ACLU observers were gassed, as well as bystanders near those blocking High Street, leading some to question the show of force at a demonstration that was breaking up.
John Whitehead, founder of the Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties organization, had advised local police before the event to avoid heavy-handed tactics and militarized equipment, and says people react differently when the riot shields come out. “What we had was an army,” he says. “What they were saying to the crowd was, this is a riot.”
Whitehead says he’s gotten calls from all over the country. “What I saw yesterday was not a community policing event. It was an armed police state. It’s not a good image to portray around the nation.”
“The city abdicated its duty to state police,” says civil rights attorney Jeff Fogel, who was present at Justice Park. “You can’t treat cops like human beings when they’re dressed like Ninja turtles.”
There were lots of different stripes of people in and around the park. But as usual, only one faction showed up dressed like they were looking to start some shit.
Gotta be a better way.
Charlottesville police officers, Daily Progress reporters and ACLU observers were gassed, as well as bystanders near those blocking High Street, leading some to question the show of force at a demonstration that was breaking up.
John Whitehead, founder of the Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties organization, had advised local police before the event to avoid heavy-handed tactics and militarized equipment, and says people react differently when the riot shields come out. “What we had was an army,” he says. “What they were saying to the crowd was, this is a riot.”
Whitehead says he’s gotten calls from all over the country. “What I saw yesterday was not a community policing event. It was an armed police state. It’s not a good image to portray around the nation.”
“The city abdicated its duty to state police,” says civil rights attorney Jeff Fogel, who was present at Justice Park. “You can’t treat cops like human beings when they’re dressed like Ninja turtles.”
There were lots of different stripes of people in and around the park. But as usual, only one faction showed up dressed like they were looking to start some shit.
Gotta be a better way.
Friday's Podcast
Talking about how The Overton Window has shifted - the dialogue regarding Healthcare is now focused on how we go about delivering on everybody's right to have affordable access to quality healthcare. Adjust your rhetoric accordingly.
Episode 396 - Trusting in the process, but not the Republicans.
The Professional Left
We'll Miss It When It's Gone
Via Crooks & Liars
"But it's the unscripted Trump that's real. A man who barks out bile at 140 characters, who wastes his precious days as president at war with the west's institutions..."
"But it's the unscripted Trump that's real. A man who barks out bile at 140 characters, who wastes his precious days as president at war with the west's institutions..."
Today's Tweet
A perfect metaphor of the United States right now. pic.twitter.com/hyotCHn4Zu— shauna (@goldengateblond) July 7, 2017
But lemme guess - they'll tell the rubes it's a sure sign of 45*'s awesomely awesome awesomeness; that's he's forging ahead, being the one true leader; and if only the whole world would shove their heads up his manly ass, he'd show us all the blah blah fucking blah.
Jul 8, 2017
Today's Lesson
Michael Shermer - Morality: absolute and otherwise
Without god, there can be no "Objective Morality"?
How do you claim anything is objective if it's based on something as subjective as a belief in god?
If you start with a premise that's false, it's almost impossible to reach a conclusion that's true.
Jul 7, 2017
Today's Tweet
Both the fence and the burglar agreed there was no need to relitigate who the TV belonged to.— David Frum (@davidfrum) July 7, 2017
It Gets Worse
Institutional Memory is an important thing, but keep a coupla points in mind:
Sometimes it's something that ties us in with tradition so tightly it's hard to make changes that become more and more desperately needed.
Sometimes it can keep us from repeating certain mistakes that can easily prove fatal.
Sweet dreams, kids.
It'll Never Fly
The Guardian:
If money amplifies the voices of wealthy Americans in politics, Seattle is trying something that aims to give low-income and middle-class voters a signal boost.
The city’s new ‘Democracy Voucher’ program, the first of its kind in the US, provides every eligible Seattle resident with $100 in taxpayer-funded vouchers to donate to the candidates of their choice. The goal is to incentivize candidates to take heed of a broad range of residents – homeless people, minimum-wage workers, seniors on fixed incomes – as well as the big-dollar donors who often dictate the political conversation.
This August’s primary is the trial run for the program. But before Seattle can crow about having re-enfranchised long-overlooked voters, it must contend with conservative opposition.
On May 11, 2017, President Donald Trump signed an executive order creating the “Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.” The Commission is charged with studying “the registration and voting processes used in Federal elections” and identifying “vulnerabilities in voting systems” that could lead to voter fraud. Vice President Mike Pence is the chair, and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach—a known promoter of voting restrictions and the myth of voter fraud—is the vice chair.
The executive order comes on the heels of President Trump’s repeated assertions that millions voted illegally in the 2016 election. For years, claims of fraud have been used to justify unwarranted voting restrictions. There is strong reason to suspect this Commission is not a legitimate attempt to study elections, but rather a tool for enabling voter suppression.
If money amplifies the voices of wealthy Americans in politics, Seattle is trying something that aims to give low-income and middle-class voters a signal boost.
The city’s new ‘Democracy Voucher’ program, the first of its kind in the US, provides every eligible Seattle resident with $100 in taxpayer-funded vouchers to donate to the candidates of their choice. The goal is to incentivize candidates to take heed of a broad range of residents – homeless people, minimum-wage workers, seniors on fixed incomes – as well as the big-dollar donors who often dictate the political conversation.
This August’s primary is the trial run for the program. But before Seattle can crow about having re-enfranchised long-overlooked voters, it must contend with conservative opposition.
It makes too much sense in an era of "Things aren't fair? Nobody gives a fuck about fair, Snowflake".
And it provides some pretty obvious opportunity for abuse and/or manipulation. But we gotta start somewhere with something.
Especially considering the fight we're in now.
The executive order comes on the heels of President Trump’s repeated assertions that millions voted illegally in the 2016 election. For years, claims of fraud have been used to justify unwarranted voting restrictions. There is strong reason to suspect this Commission is not a legitimate attempt to study elections, but rather a tool for enabling voter suppression.
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