What It's About

The silly stunt that 45* and V45* pulled on Sunday was cynical and manipulative, and as much a waste of tax dollars as guys like Donald Trump and Mike Pence are a waste of otherwise perfectly good ectoplasm.

BTW, Eric Reid is proof that football is no longer a game for the average dolt - which could explain why Pence felt the need to leave in such a hurry.

Today's Tweet

Because he wasn't really running for POTUS.

Today marks Trump's 71st day at a golf course, 91st day at a Trump property in just 262 days. Lying, lazy, good-for-nothing hypocrite. pic.twitter.com/pPO9csSyif

— Bryan Dawson (@BryanDawsonUSA) October 10, 2017

It was nothing but the theatrical bombast of WWE all along. He could say anything, and not be worried about having to live up to it, because winning the White House wasn't in his script.

This is Donald Trump. He doesn't care what he says. So what if he changes his story every 10 minutes? So what if he's got the memory - and the scruples - of a fucking goldfish? That's what makes him a perfect fit for the Monster Truck Rally rubes.  Even when they recognize he's lying, they interpret it as "he's just givin' 'em a taste of their own medicine" or some shit.

And the fact that "the base" accepts and defends him no matter what, provides perfect cover for the Kleptocrats as they continue to install the Daddy State.

This is just pretty fucked up. McCain had it right - we have to get back to regular order and start doin' business again. Which means we have to find a way to remove that orange human-like substance from our midst.

(please don't take that last part as any kind of incitement to violence - we have a process that works when we make it work)

Keith

I really don't like being constantly amazed that people I went to school with seem to demonstrate the most appalling lack of education. They went to the same schools as I did, dammit - how do they have no recollection of (today's example) "the symbol is not the thing" that we heard over and over again in the Semantics Unit in Language Arts our sophomore year?

Yeah, OK, high school's getting to be a very long time ago, but how do you not know that one?  The average partly-trained orangutan knows that one. At the very bottom of your mid-brain, there's a solid understanding of the concept. And when it's triggered, it should pop right up to the surface.

The anti-intellectual conditioning - the dimming of America - has been pretty effective. 

The Treachery Of Images (video)

Today's Pix

Child Bride

Slavery

I'm gonna shred your drapes and piss in your shoes

Ah, Football

Shit makes ya bold. And stoopid.

Bye, Coach.

This is the video supposedly of Dolphins offensive line coach Chris Foerster snorting coke before a meeting pic.twitter.com/L7ZsdZMH7U

— Ollie Connolly (@OllieConnolly) October 9, 2017

Y'know, the NFL already has a pretty full plate. Substance dependencies, and juicing, and the slow-moving disaster of brain injury, and domestic abuse, and and and.

With all that, it seems like they're going outa their way looking for something to be cranky about. I wonder if that's part of the plan. Distraction and misdirection.

BTW - here's a DB/Special Teamer named Michael Thomas.

Loved this photo of the "unpatriotic" Michael Thomas. pic.twitter.com/I5GVAFHcYH

— Shandel Richardson (@ShandelRich) October 9, 2017

Thomas did the kneel-down thing for the whole season last year, and again in London when the Fins played the Titans a week or so ago(?). The picture in that tweet doesn't look like any of the troopers are taking exception to his actions.

Now Thomas says it's had the desired effect - people have heard the voices they needed to hear, and there's been some progress (in certain areas) towards some kind of solution - at least a start down that road.

“Everybody who sees what’s going to come out of it will see that it was never about actually protesting the flag, that it wasn’t about disrespecting our military, but it was about trying to bring light to the issues that are going on in our communities. … The league heard us, and it’s going to be good.”

Thomas has said he'll prob'ly stand from now on, but yesterday, he and a coupla mates stayed in the locker room during the anthem.

Anyway, the kicker is that 45* seems to think the protests are dying down, and so it's time for him to do The Daddy State Shuffle, where he tries to take credit for it. 

It becomes a variation on "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc" aka "False Cause".

Here's an illustration of the point (paraphrased from a comedy bit by Kearsarge and Landry, about 400 years ago, when I was a teenager):

1: So you're a farmer?
2: Sure 'nuff.
1: What crops do you raise?
2: Buck wheat and radishes.
1: You do pretty well with it?
2: Buck wheat's great, but them radishes - that's a dead loser.
1: So why do you grow radishes?
2: Got to - been plantin' them radishes for generations now.
1: But why?
2: Keep the wolverines away - can't have them wolverines on your land, y'know.
1: So you've got a wolverine problem down here in west Texas?
2: No, dummy - we got radishes. Ain't you listenin'?

So it works pretty well on people who prefer being intellectually lazy enough not to look past that false front.  And anyway, it rankles "the Libruls", so it's gotta be a good thing, right?

Today's PSA

From a Dutch TV show - Sunday With Lubach (Arjen Lubach)

N onsensical
R ifle
A ddiction

Today's Tweet

That shit we keep hearing from the "conservatives" about how everybody's on their side?

Yeah - looks more like bullshit practically every day.

Veterans "take a knee" during the Pledge of Allegiance at today's city council meeting to support athlete's protests against injustice. pic.twitter.com/qg1v7Quj4B

— Joe Michaels KFBK (@RadioJoe1530) October 4, 2017

A Tweet Thread

There's no good reason to feel at all sorry for GOP politicians who have "suddenly" discovered they represent a political party that panders to the darkest instincts of American Populism.

It's been going on for 30+ years, and we got here because this is where Radical Right Republicans have always wanted us to be. (see driftglass)

This is something of a reckoning, and while it seems kinda fun to watch, this shit puts us in grave danger.

Senator Bob Corker "begged" me to endorse him for re-election in Tennessee. I said "NO" and he dropped out (said he could not win without...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 8, 2017

It's a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.

— Senator Bob Corker (@SenBobCorker) October 8, 2017

Today's Tweet

Politicians keep telling us we don't trust the press - some politicians lie.

And I don't wanna name names or anything, but the name of the biggest lying-est sack of shit of 'em all kinda rhymes with Fondled Rump.

Is there any trust left in journalism?

Read more in #TheInsider: https://t.co/MANqAhfxmw pic.twitter.com/vOqq79bnzB

— PressReader (@PressReader) July 13, 2017

The ProLeft Podcast

The Professional Left

...Roger Ailes set up an entire apparatus so he could slander people like me. He set up his own little sexual predator petting zoo ... so his sexual predator viewers could get a half-mast over blonde cooch sitting on the crotch couch.

Today's Pix

click to embiggen

Today's Tweet

What made you think this would end up any other way?

"Religious Freedom" means you can't be forced to deliver a wedding cake -- just a rapist's baby. #HandsOffMyBC pic.twitter.com/eiVCwh7bbg

— Mrs. Betty Bowers (@BettyBowers) October 6, 2017

Blame The Brown People

History does not repeat itself - but it sure as fuck rhymes.

Jana Winter, Sharon Weinberger, Foreign Policy:

The report, dated Aug. 3 — just nine days before the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville turned deadly — appears to be the first known reference to “black identity extremists” as a movement. But former government officials and legal experts said no such movement exists, and some expressed concern that the term is part of a politically motivated effort to find an equivalent threat to white supremacists.

A former senior counterterrorism and intelligence official from the Department of Homeland Security who reviewed the document at FP’s request expressed shock at the language.
“This is a new umbrella designation that has no basis,” the former official said. “There are civil rights and privacy issues all over this.”

The concept of “black identity extremists” appears to be entirely new. FPfound only five references to the term in a Google search; all were to law enforcement documents about domestic terrorism from the last two months. One of those online references is to law enforcement training on identifying “domestic terror groups and criminally subversive subcultures which are encountered by law enforcement professionals on a daily basis.”

"Criminally subversive" - that language is unmistakably Daddy State.

La Musica

Joan Shelley w/ Nathan Salsburg

"Easy Now" 

"Stay On My Shore" 

"Not Over by Half"

Nathan Salsburg

"Affirmed"

"Eight Belles Dreamt the Devil Was Dead"

Keith

'Twas ever thus, and ever thus 'twill be.