That Guy We Never Hear About

Bob Mercer's ridiculous attitudes* are everywhere you look when you get way out there to  Wingnutopia. Watch out for that guy.

Charlie Pierce points up a few things we need to keep in mind:

If you accept, as Joshua Green argues in his splendid Devil's Bargain, and as events subsequent to the election have more than borne out, without Steve Bannon, it is unlikely that we would have a President* Trump to be embarrassed by in front of the entire 21st Century. And what is also clear is that, without Robert and Rebekah Mercer, the reactionary New York gozillionnaires, Bannon would be back on Giedi Prime with the rest of the Harkonnens. 

At the moment, Robert Mercer is being sued by his former partner in Renaissance Technologies, a guy named David Magerman, who is not quite as enthusiastic about the Trump presidency* as the Mercers are. Documents are becoming public and, as Vanity Fair reports, some of those documents are well off the boy-howdy scale of revelatory.

You don't get Trump without Bannon, and you don't get Bannon without Bob and Rebekah Mercer.

*as lined out in Charlie's piece:

a) The United States began to go in the wrong direction after the passage of the Civl Rights Act in the 1960s

b) African Americans were doing fine in the late-1950s and early-1960s before the Civil Rights Act

c) The Civil Rights Act “infantilized” African Americas by making them dependent on government and removing any incentive to work

d) The only racist people remaining in the United States are black

e) White people have no racial animus toward African Americans anymore, and if there is any, it's not something that the government should be concerned with

Today's Pix

The Fake Renoir

45* believes he's the final arbiter of what's true and what's not.  He's a propagandist.

Inside The Hive (Vanity Fair), Nick Bilton interviews Tim O'Brien



Years ago, while reporting a book about a real-estate developer and reality-TV star named Donald Trump, Tim O’Brien accompanied his subject on a private jet ride to Los Angeles. The plane, as you can imagine, was overly ornate; hanging on one wall, for instance, was a painting of two young girls—one in an orange hat, the other wearing a floral bonnet—in the impressionistic style of Renoir.

Curious, O’Brien asked Trump about the painting: was it an original Renoir? Trump replied in the affirmative. It was, he said. “No, it’s not Donald,” O’Brien responded. But, once again, Trump protested that it was.

Today's lies will be either reinforced by repetition or erased and replaced with new lies. And we'll be talking about him - which is the only thing that matters to him.

Today's GIF

Workin' guy voting GOP

Today's Tweet

Follow the whole thread (7 parts)

Right now, I'm feeling more terrified than at any point since the 2016 election. Why? It's time for some game theory! 1/

— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) October 13, 2017

It's The Math, Stupid

I get it, and I don't get it. Brainlock.

Today's Tweet

There is wisdom in perspective.

Let's just cut out the middleman and force women to give birth to guns

— Kelly BOOce 👻 (@lucekel) October 6, 2017

Today's This Ain't Normal

This doesn't "prove" Climate Change - we're not quite there yet - but when this kind of Extraordinary starts to lean toward Typical, we have to stop the foolishness and understand we've got a fucking problem.

Marshall Shepherd, Forbes

Don't worry. You are not losing it. Ireland is in the "cone" of uncertainty in that map below. Hurricane Ophelia is the 10th consecutive hurricane to form in the Atlantic basin this year. According to University of Miami hurricane expert Brian McNoldy, the last time ten consecutive storms became a hurricane was 1893. While a very interesting factoid, the "elephant in the room" is that Ophelia is headed to Ireland. It is rare, but not unprecedented.

Pro Left Podcast

The Professional Left

Sometimes, all a political junkie needs is a little TLC.

Earn It

I'm not crazy about the goddie stuff at the end, but it's definitely relevant to a reasonable expectation for The Christian Right to start behaving like Christians, and actually doing - you know - what's right.

Today's Tweet

Tillerson calling 45* a fucking moron was a great example of how you can be absolutely right in what you said, and then completely wrong when the boss finds out.

Had a very great meeting with the President of the American Virgin islands. Great guy, very smart! #Trump #presidentofthevirginislands pic.twitter.com/NbGUrMDKah

— Dogald J. Trump (@dogaldtrump) October 14, 2017

We Will Get Fooled Again

Fool you once - shame on them.

Fool you twice - shame on you.

Fool you repeatedly - you end up with President 45*.

Take lessons from Frank Luntz and Newt Gingrich for a few years - tune in to Limbaugh and Savage and Hannity regularly for the Hate Du Jour.

Filter it down to 12 or 15 key triggers - Sharia Law, Illegal Immigrants, Shall Not Be Infringed, Hillary Killed Vince Foster, Socialism, Leftwing Intolerance, Reverse Racism, FemiNazi, Sidney Blumenthal Started Birtherism, Black-On-Black Crime, etc.

Create fake accounts on Google and YouTube, and every social media platform you come across.

Set up your algorithms and your AdBots, and send 'em out with the shittiest memes you can think of.

Such as like for example, per The Guardian:

Police have identified Stephen Paddock as the suspect who opened fire from a high-rise hotel room, killing scores and injuring hundreds more. But before authorities named the 64-year-old Nevada man, some on the far right falsely identified the man behind the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history as Geary Danley. It’s unclear where exactly the hoax originated, but rightwing users aggressively promoted his name, seizing on evidence that he was a liberal.
On 4chan, the anonymous message board and a favorite platform of the “alt-right”, some noted that Danley was a registered Democrat. Soon after, Gateway Pundit, a conspiracy-laden blog that earned White House credentials under Trump, published an evidence-free story headlined, “Las Vegas Shooter Reportedly a Democrat Who Liked Rachel Maddow, MoveOn.org and Associated with Anti-Trump Army”. The piece was based on a review of Facebook “likes”.

Check out their Fake News Archive

Some titilating titles at Snopes:

Is There an ‘Epidemic of Child Abduction’ in Kansas?

Democrat Principal Defecates In Front Of Students During Pledge Of Allegiance?

Was White Supremacist Who Killed Protester a Democrat Who Visited Obama in Oval Office?
And a few more interesting oddities:

I guess I could've shortened this post quite a lot with a simple reminder: Check your bias and your source.

And, especially in light of what we're learning, don't assume anything negative isn't coming from Moscow.

Today's GIF

Could be real - maybe not - don't care - it's awesome.

On Ryan Zinke

Charlie Pierce, Esquire Magazine:

As my grandmother and her sisters used to say, who the hell is this guy when he's at home? From The Washington Post:

A security staffer takes the elevator to the seventh floor, climbs the stairs to the roof and hoists a special secretarial flag whenever Zinke enters the building. When the secretary goes home for the day or travels, the flag — a blue banner emblazoned with the agency’s bison seal flanked by seven white stars representing the Interior bureaus — comes down. In Zinke’s absence, the ritual is repeated to raise an equally obscure flag for Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt. Responding this week to questions from The Washington Post, a spokeswoman for Zinke, a former Navy SEAL commander, defended the Navy flag-flying tradition as “a major sign of transparency.”

Oh, just shut up.

“Ryan Zinke is proud and honored to lead the Department of the Interior, and is restoring honor and tradition to the department, whether it’s flying the flag when he is in garrison or restoring traditional access to public lands,” press secretary Heather Swift said in an email.

Tell your email to shut up, too.

Today's Today

In a Groundhog Day kinda way.