Their Political Oracle-ness-es

If you're following The Professional Left Podcast like I've been telling you to do for-fucking-ever, then you already know this.

If you haven't - catch up, dammit.

CNN:

Fewer people say they consider themselves Republicans, according to recent polling. But they're not becoming Democrats instead.

That's the conclusion of an analysis of Gallup data by Marquette Law professor and pollster Charles Franklin. He found that while there is a slight increase in Democratic Party support among Americans, more Americans are just becoming pure independents.

To be fair, this has happened after past presidential elections. In 2005 and 2013, the number of pure independents also increased.

But this year's uptick swing to pure independents is slightly larger. It's enough of a shift that it could indicate some new erosion in the Republican base.
Notice, there's no explanation on how anybody's supposed to know these folks are "Pure Independents", but what's a little factuality between friends, right?

Today's Tweet

Almost time to seize the granaries, kids.

Corporations have $1.9 trillion sitting in bank accounts & investments. Just sitting there. The largest amount of cash on hand in history.

But if we just give them $1 trillion more in tax cuts, THEN they'll start investing in plants & jobs. Yah, right. https://t.co/0V8yly9Jrz

— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) December 14, 2017

 

Today's Today

The calendar has once again turned, and we begin the journey back towards Steak-n-Blowjob Day - beginning with a subtle hint:

GOP Guiding Principles

Another tasty bit unearthed - never tho't I'd see the day when I had to tag C-SPAN as NSFW.

Today's Olympic Video

The single most important aspect of world-class athletic performance is the ability to maintain a razor-sharp focus on the task at hand.  The great ones know this almost instinctively, and a great coach knows how to prepare the athlete to stay in the moment and concentrate. 

It's Pretty Blue

A new one for me via FB pal Doug Rapier

Daily Blues

Randy

Randy Rainbow brings it

For The Record

These assholes came to my home town

Killed one of my neighbors

No incident in itself will change anything, of course. But we have to write it all down so we can piece it together - connect as many dots as possible - and remember it. Because we have to remember. Because once in a while, somebody has to lay it all on the line - and it's our turn now.

SPLC:

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) counted over 100 people killed or injured by alleged perpetrators influenced by the so-called "alt-right" — a movement that continues to access the mainstream and reach young recruits.

On December 7, 2017, a 21-year-old white male posing as a student entered Aztec High School in rural New Mexico and began firing a handgun, killing two students before taking his own life.

At the time, the news of the shooting went largely ignored, but the online activity of the alleged killer, William Edward Atchison, bore all the hallmarks of the “alt-right”—the now infamous subculture and political movement consisting of vicious trolls, racist activists, and bitter misogynists.

But Atchison wasn’t the first to fit the profile of alt-right killer—that morbid milestone belongs to Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old who in 2014 killed seven in Isla Vista, California, after uploading a sprawling manifesto filled with hatred of young women and interracial couples (Atchison went by “Elliot Rodger” in one of his many online personas and lauded the “supreme gentleman,” a title Rodger gave himself and has since become a meme on the alt-right).
I don't know exactly how this next bit from Jeff Sessions factors in, but I get a bad feeling when it looks a whole lot like The Malignant Leprechaun is on his knees again, with his nose way up the ass of nitwits like the Sovereign Citizen gangs - eg: Cliven Bundy et al.



And the Press Poodles kinda went out of their way to make sure they missed the main point, even though they were dutiful in picking up on the racism bit.

It's important to call it out, but we react to the racist shit, and that actually provides some cover for the bigger issue of the Autocracy being built right in front of us.

WaPo:

Organizations such as the NAACP deemed Sessions’s language his latest act of racism. Lawyers, however, have been quick to point to the term’s regular appearance in case law, saying that “Anglo-American law” — also known as common law — is a widely used term in the legal system that refers to the shared legal roots of England and the United States.

Sessions’s use of the term appears to have been impromptu, as it does not appear in his prepared remarks, which imply that he was supposed to say, “The sheriff is a critical part of our legal heritage.”

To those unfamiliar with the term’s legal context, “Anglo-American heritage” sounded offensive, especially considering the accusations of racism that have nearly derailed Sessions’s career. A Senate committee in 1986, for instance, denied Sessions a federal judgeship, as his former colleagues testified that Sessions used the n-word and joked about the Ku Klux Klan, saying he thought they were “okay, until he learned that they smoked marijuana,” according to The Washington Post’s Amber Phillips.
It's not like we haven't known about these assholes for a while.

The Center For Public Integrity - April, 2016:

Sheriff Nick Finch let a pistol-packing local man out of the Liberty County, Florida, jail shortly after taking office, a decision that brought him admiration, donations, and speaking requests from anti-government activists across the country. It put him at odds with state authorities, who charged him with a crime, but also thrust him into the vanguard of a radical and growing movement among sheriffs in rural communities who assert they can ignore state and federal laws they decide are unconstitutional.
- and -

What’s unique about his group is not that it opposes gun controls but that its ambition is to encourage law enforcement officers to defy laws they decide themselves are illegal. On occasion, some of his group’s sheriffs have found themselves in curious agreement with members of the sovereign citizens’ movement, which was also founded on claimed rights of legal defiance and is said by the FBI to pose one of the most serious domestic terrorism threats.
It's not simple coincidence that this idiot has become a shining star in the Daddy State Movement:

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

A federal judge on Friday dismissed most of a civil rights lawsuit against former Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. over an incident at Milwaukee's Mitchell airport last year.

But a claim that Clarke retaliated on Facebook for Daniel Black's exercise of his First Amendment right to shake his head at Clarke survives, and is now set for trial Jan. 22.
Black and Clarke were on the same flight from Dallas to Milwaukee on Jan. 15, 2017. Black saw Clarke wearing Dallas Cowboys gear and asked if he was David Clarke. Clarke said he was, and Black shook his head and walked away to his seat in coach.

When the plane landed in Milwaukee, Black was greeted by six sheriff's deputies who had been directed by Clarke to take Black aside and question him. They then escorted him from the airport.

This shit is happening. See it. Remember it.

Decorum My Ass

John Pavlovitz - Stuff That Needs To Be Said

When they start bitching about your tone, you know your arguments are getting pretty close to top dead center.

This is the very height of irony: people who’ve spent eighteen months repeatedly glossing over or excusing or rationalizing away the most toxic, offensive, vulgar behavior and language—now greatly disturbed by a perceived lack of decorum.

It should be obvious, but to make sure we're good and clear on this: "Conservatives" have gotten all pissy because "Libruls" are being so Politically Incorrect.

This is how sideways it’s all gone here: that there are people apparently more concerned about the feelings of the bullies than about the very lives of those being bullied. I refuse to be one of those people.

If you’re waiting for me to apologize for emotionally wounding someone with the suggestion that they may not be all that keen on people of color, or that they’re likely afraid of gay people, or that their nationalism is showing because they defend what’s happening here—it’ll be a long wait.

I think the futures of dreamers and the welfare of sick people and the safety of LGBTQ teenagers and the stability of families of immigrants are worth the raising of my voice, and the forcefulness of my delivery, and the discomfort it causes anyone.

BTW: We all get to be mad all we want, but you're not justified in being mad at me just because I'm mad at you for something you've done; or for something you've failed to do.

Today's Tweet

Because Amy Siskind is a fucking hero and MoDo is a middle-school mean girl wanna-be who constantly sucks up to the popular kids - not recognizing her own Goth pretensions - and can't figure out that her efforts to be cool make her totally (and forever) uncool.

Maureen this might be a good time to remind you that you made a career out of mindlessly bashing Hillary Clinton and are part of the reason Trump got into office. You couldn’t pay me enough to click on anything you write! You owe us all an apology! https://t.co/HNiG8DLFV6

— Amy Siskind (@Amy_Siskind) February 11, 2018

 

Amy Siskind - Week 65

February 10, 2018

This week the chaos in our country infected Trump’s beloved stock market, which suffered its most volatile week since the financial crisis of 2008, as the Republican Party of Trump abandoned yet another of its guiding principles, fiscal responsibility. The regime suffered multiple resignations from its thinly staffed White House, as well as resignation of the third-ranking official at the Department of Justice amid escalating attacks on our institutions by Trump and his allies.

Troubling signs that Russia never left, and plans to meddle in our midterms emerged, although an increasingly autocratic Trump has conveniently yet to acknowledge Russian interference in our 2016 election. The whitewashing of America continues with statements and actions by Trump and his regime which are antithetical to American values. Trump also continues his pattern of siding with men facing allegations of abuse, ignoring victims’ suffering and accusing them of telling lies, despite Steve Bannon’s warnings that the “anti-patriarchy movement” is changing the US power structure.
13. On Tuesday, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump was “clearly joking” when he made the comment about Democrats. Deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley added that the remark was “tongue-in-cheek.”

I think it might be OK at this point to ask Ms Huckleberry how we're supposed to know when 45*'s just kidding and when he's not.

It seems clear now (and mildly important) that we need a little guidance as to when he's being truthful, and when he's straight up lying, and when he's just fuckin' with us.

16. Robert J. O’Neill, a Fox News contributor and former Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden, tweeted that Trump’s parade idea is “third world bullshit,” saying a “First World” country doesn’t do such things.
19. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported released a report, “The Alt-Right is Killing People.” Of 12 incidents which led to death or injuries, nine of those incidents occurred during 2017.
43. On Thursday, the two largest teachers union were blocked from entering the Education Department building to deliver complaints in the form of 80,000 report cards to DeVos, because they did not have an appointment.
44. A three-month study conducted by Oxford, as part of the school’s Computational Propaganda Research Project, found Trump supporters consume and share the most fake news on Twitter and Facebook.

New To Me

NSFW

Chrystyna Hutchinson - with today's lesson (ie: Cautionary Tale) in Relationship Management and Sexual Politics.

An Observation

First - why the fuck do we still have to worry about Catholic Clergy?

"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit." --Thomas Paine
I think if anybody gets around to declaring a Word Of The Year, we'll have to default to "Abuse".

White people abusing their power over Brown people.

Men abusing their power over Women.

45* abusing his power over the government.

"Conservatives" abusing their power in general - even now, when they're clearly in the minority.

"When men imagine a female uprising, they imagine a world in which women rule men as men have ruled women." --Sally Kempton

It boils down to the same old bit that can be expressed a variety of ways:

Men fear Gender Equality because they're afraid women will treat them the same as they've treated women.

White people fear Minority Rights because they're afraid POC will treat them the same as they've always treated POC.

The Christian Majority claims persecution because they're afraid they'll be treated the same as they've always treated everybody.

Same goes with LGBTQ, and Unions, and Immigrants and and and.

It's not about Red vs Blue; it's not about Gay vs Straight; it's not about Men vs Women - it's not about any of that except as a means to serve the interest of someone looking to gain and/or maintain power.

Because it's always about the power first.

Today's Pix

(click a pic)

New Rule - Bill Maher

"The man is an after school special waiting to happen."