Tim Wise Redux

A rerun from Tim Wise:

At about 13:30 - "Expectationalism"

Also, listen for things like White Fragility and the weird irony of being called "snowflake" by someone who melts down over casting black people in a movie remake, and the rebuttal for "Reverse Discrimination".

"You don't get on the boat if you're winning."

Lotsa good shit.

Today's Tweet

We spend a lot of time and energy on the "Never Forget" thing.  I'd like to add this one to the repertoire.

Sept 15, 1963

September 15, 1963 - A bomb blast at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, kills four African-American girls. pic.twitter.com/mS8DyPDMj5

— History (@HistoryTime_) September 15, 2017

Cut Snip Hack Tear Shred

Vox, Sarah Kliff:

The Trump administration has informed government-funded Obamacare outreach groups of deep impending budget cuts next year, with some nonprofits having budgets slashed by as much as 98 percent.

“We’re letting 11 navigators go today, which leaves us with five navigators for the entire state,” says Brian Burton, director of the Southwest Louisiana Area Health Education Center. His funding was cut from a $1.07 million grant this year to $297,000 next year.

The Health and Human Services Department announced August 31 that it would cut funding for the health law’s in-person assistance program by 41 percent. Late Wednesday night, the administration sent each group its individual budget. It shows widespread variation in how big those funding cuts will be.

Louisiana and Indiana, for example, will have the outreach funding coming into their states cut by 80 percent. Maine, however, will have its budget held constant — while Kansas will only see a 9 percent funding cut.

Outreach groups are responding to the cuts by laying off staff and scaling back the geographic areas where they provide assistance.

Any time there's a significant decrease in Spending (government or otherwise), there's a downward push on the economy, and that has always cost us more than we've "saved".

As the funding is cut, the negative impact in those geographic areas left under- or un-served will be greater than it will be in the more densely populated and/or richer areas.  So I guess we can expect another hard round of "it may be tough for you Real Americans right now, but it's OK because you're helping us fuck over those big-city moocher-minorities, and we all know that's what you think is the most important thing".

Torpedoing the ACA is bad enough, but providing nothing to replace the economic benefits

of the ACA is a plain ol' straight up shitty thing to do.

So I have to ask the 'why' question.  It's not like they don't understand how an economy works.

I may be feeling paranoid, but that don't mean nobody's out to get me.

Keith

Keith agrees with 45* - so:

Today's Knuckleheadedness

Political Theater of the Absurd

About 26 million Americans addicted to meth and/or opioids are costing us well over $100 billion a year.

There are 800,000 Dreamers pumping $40 billion in.

So, of course, let's be sure we stay good-n-focused on kicking those DACA moochers out.

When there's such an obvious choice, why do we always have to go with Stoopid?

Rerun

One from way back - Jay Smooth explains the difference:

Slightly more recent - Jay offers up the proposition that when we're trying to have the Race Conversation, we need to move away from the Tonsils Paradigm towards the Dental Hygiene Paradigm.

Stop Roy Moore

via Mock Paper Scissors

Sam's Back

Don't be stupid
Be a smarty
Undermine the Nazi Party

samanthabee.com/lifeafterhate.com

Samantha Bee:

Layin' It Out

So, why did Obama's Evil Minion, Susan Rice, "unmask" those subjects of interest in that one intel report?  Cuz she knows how to do her fucking job.

Hat tip = MockPaperScissors

Today's Tweet

The irony deficit evident here is the proverbial yawning chasm.

Now, to prove there's no white supremacy going on, let's get the diverse opinions of blonde women in their 20s, late 20s and early 30s. pic.twitter.com/AsmBhFwkOq

— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) September 14, 2017

Today's Cult 45* Fuckup

I know, I know - I could put up several of these every day.

This gets a special place because Tim Scott is the only black guy in the US Senate, and that makes him kinda important if a schmuck with a reputation as a White Supremacist Asshole happens to occupy the Oval Office.

Now, Sen Scott went to the WH to vent a little bit on 45*'s crappy efforts to handle the Charlottesville thing properly.

NYT:

Tim Scott, the lone black Republican in the Senate, delivered a pointed history lesson on America’s 300-year legacy of racism to President Trump on Wednesday in response to what he called Mr. Trump’s “sterile” response to the riots in Charlottesville, Va., last month.

The president invited Mr. Scott, a conservative from South Carolina who had expressed disgust with Mr. Trump’s equivocal reaction to the white supremacist protests that left one woman dead, to the Oval Office for what Mr. Trump’s staff described as a demonstration of the president’s commitment to “positive race relations.”

When a reporter asked the senator after the meeting if the president had expressed regret, a pained look flashed on Mr. Scott’s face. He paused for a few seconds and replied, “He certainly tried to explain what he was trying to convey.”
It had nothing to do with "positive race relations". This was Cult45 wanting a chance to do a little White-splainin'.

Knowing what we know about 45*'s delicate sensibilities - and his burning need for retribution at any cost - I'm thinking the payback for the Senator daring to lecture POTUS (notice I deliberately avoided reference to "bein' all uppity and shit") it prob'ly seemed like a good idea to fuck up the caption on Scott's big Photo Op. 

Remember - this thing comes out of a Communications Shop brimming with people who aren't on the short list for the NAACP awards.

Just sayin'.

Irreducibly Subjective

That's what Sam's main point is regarding "Consciousness". Everything after that main point usually makes my brain hurt - about the same as There's No Such Thing As Free Will, so yeah - ow, dammit.

Keith

The latest POTUS Pivot that wasn't - gotta stop falling for that shit, guys.

Dumbass Charlie Rose

You may have discerned by now that I'm not a Charlie Rose fan.  My list of candidates for Worst Fucking Interviewer Ever is relatively short to begin with, but there's a long-running tie for the top spot between Chris Matthews and Charlie Rose.

Anyway, Mr Pierce at Esquire takes a look at that 2-man circle jerk on 60 Minutes:

How in the world could Rose have this guy on and not even mention the Mercers, the wingnut billionaire power couple without whose bankroll Bannon would be just another Alex Jones hawking brain pills and chemtrail remover? How could he let Bannon, who made his pile at Goldman Sachs and then made another pile in Hollywood, use the phrase “limousine liberals” without picking up a banana from the fruit bowl and throwing it at him? And how in the name of god could he hear Bannon say this without then picking up the phone and calling his bosses at 60 Minutes and telling them they by god better not send him out to interview anymore of these basket cases without a HazMat suit.

STEVE BANNON: --don't-- don't give me-- this is the thing of the leftists. Charlie, that's beneath you. America's built on our sys-- on our citizens. Look at the 19th century. What built America's called the American system, from Hamilton to Polk to Henry Clay to Lincoln to the Roosevelts. A system of protection of our manufacturing, financial system that lends to manufacturers, OK, and the control of our borders. Economic nationalism is what this country was built on. The American system. Right?

If there’s one thing the 19th century is known for, boy, it’s how we controlled our borders. That’s why all those Irish fleeing the Famine ended up in Madagascar. Yeesh.

Today's Fuckery

Charlie Pierce, Esquire:

Manchester NH -- The entire Charlatans Cotillion that took place on the campus of St. Anselm’s College on Tuesday ended with a barefaced obvious lie from a barefaced obvious liar, which is entirely in keeping with the hearing held here by the Presidential Advisory Committee on Election Integrity, a body that is nearly as nauseating as it is ridiculous.

While the hearing was going on, the Campaign Legal Center released a copy of an internal Heritage Foundation email that it had obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. It was addressed to Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. The name of the sender was blacked out, but the content of the email took the committee’s entire threadbare claim to any legitimacy at all and fed bloody gobbets of that claim to the wolverines.
- snip -

This, of course, is the commission led by vice chairman Kris Kobach, the Secretary of State of Kansas, a guy who’s based his entire political career on knuckling immigrants and inventing tales of voter fraud, even as he keeps getting swatted upside his head in various courts. The commission is larded with people like Hans von Spakovsky and J. Christian Adams and Ken Blackwell, all of whom have been enthusiastic pitchmen for the voter-fraud mythology ever since they slimed into the public eye. What we got on Tuesday was a visit to a fantastical world so detached from actual reality that the Hubble couldn’t pick it up, a universe of non-fact and ideological incest so round and complete that it was like wandering into something from Gulliver's Travels.

It's obvious to anybody carrying around a living thinking brain in his skull that the Voter Fraud thing is an attempt to suppress Dem votes by dog-whistling the message to the rubes that POC have to be pushed back into the shadows, so the noble white man can retain his rightful place defending the honor of the womenfolk and - goddamit I get tired of this shit.

Also obvious: the play right now is for the Repubs in congress to stall as long as they possibly can, in the hope that enough Dem voters can be fucked outa their franchise by Kris Kobach, while the state-level Repubs continue wiring the districts under the protection of a SCOTUS that seems to be going along with it all.

Think Progress:

In a victory for Republicans, all the Republican members of the Supreme Court joined a pair of orders handed down Tuesday, staying a lower court decision which struck down two Republican-drawn districts. All four of the Court’s Democrats would have denied the stay.

Tuesday evening’s orders are the latest development in a long, winding challenge to Texas’ gerrymandered maps. You can read a summary of the many twists and turns in this case, as well as the legal issues before the Supreme Court, here.

The crux of the case is that, last month, a three-judge panel of federal judges held that two Texas congressional districts were illegally drawn — the first because it was intentionally drawn to dilute Hispanic votes, the second because it was drawn with too much reliance on race.

And the theft of Garland's seat on the court comes into sharper focus.