Apr 5, 2018

Here We Go Again

One of the big things about 45*'s regime is that Mike Pence is leading a stealth attack on secular government.

And it continues to show through once in a while.

Kimberlee Kruesi, The Idaho Statesman:
A Republican lieutenant governor candidate on Tuesday softened his stance that women who get an abortion should be punished if it is ever criminalized in Idaho, a day after saying the punishment should include the death penalty.

“Prosecutions have always been focused on the abortionist,” said Bob Nonini in a statement. “There is no way a woman would go to jail let alone face the death penalty. The statute alone, the threat of prosecution, would dramatically reduce abortion. That is my goal.”

Nonini first raised eyebrows on the divisive social issue during a Monday candidate forum in Moscow hosted by the conservative Christian podcast CrossPolitic.

“There should be no abortion and anyone who has an abortion should pay,” Nonini said.

Pressed by moderators on the nature of the punishment, Nonini nodded in agreement when asked if he supported the death penalty as a possible outcome for abortion.

Nonini, a three term state senator from Coeur d'Alene, confirmed that position in a phone interview with The Associated Press.

However, several hours later, Nonini issued a statement seeking to take back his strict stance.

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/politics-government/election/article207845019.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/politics-government/election/article207845019.html#storylink=cpy

So, as is often the case, Nonini makes the crazed wingnut statement that gets his "base" fired up, and then walks it back in exchanges with the part of The Press that he knows his base will never see or hear.

But let's review this hardened "Pro-Life" position:

The guy is so thoroughly intent on preserving life, he's willing to kill the mother to save the fetus in her womb.

Q: what is your policy regarding a woman who attempts to abort her own pregnancy?

If you criminalize abortion - even when you reserve the penalties for the "abortionist - you need to be ready to commit law enforcement resources at the level necessary to investigate every woman every 28 days. 

All of which means you've established the Fertility State.

And sorry not sorry, but it's been tried - Decree 770 - and the whole thing turned out to be really bad for Mr and Mrs Ceaucescu.

Here's the thing - again:

Eggs ain't chickens.

Caterpillars ain't butterflies.

Ain't nuthin' goin' on in my daughter's uterus that's any of your goddamned business.

So fuck the fuck off, you fucking fuck.



Today's Tweet



I don't remember ever seeing this.

Expecting people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps is reasonable only when everybody's got boots.

 

Apr 4, 2018

Today's Tweet



The consensus forming on the intertoobz is that a $32 million settlement only comes with what the lawyers refer to as "some really freaky shit", which is an actual legal phrase - I checked Black's Law Dictionary (No I didn't - I made that part up).

 

Russia Russia Russia


It's always Russia.


I went to see The Death Of Stalin, and maybe it's just me, but I can't stop thinking there's an obvious parallel here. There are efforts to scramble our brains - efforts coming from the White House - that seem to sync up pretty well with the main theme of the movie: "Believe nothing except what I'm saying to you right this instant."

Maybe it's not just me. Maybe we need to proceed with enough of a touch of paranoia to keep us mindful of how this shit goes when it really gets going.

Maybe it's about The Russian Daddy State by mere coincidence. And maybe not.

Art is pretty amazing.

Apr 2, 2018

Today's Tweet



This one has aged pretty well.

May the Cosmic Muffin bless you and keep you, John Fugelsang

 

Apr 1, 2018

There Will Be Propaganda


It's never time for Radical Skepticism - because that's an exercise in self-defeat, which makes it a very useful thing for the Daddy State.

Radical skepticism or radical scepticism is the philosophical position that knowledge is most likely impossible.[1] Radical skeptics hold that doubt exists as to the veracity of every belief and that certainty is therefore never justified. To determine the extent to which it is possible to respond to radical skeptical challenges is the task of epistemology or "the theory of knowledge".
Every year, the big guys spend many many billions of dollars on Marketing and Branding and Advertising and straight-up Propaganda. They don't spend that kinda money on something that doesn't work.

Be Aware.


Dark Forces (ie: "conservatives" in this case) have been pouring very large butt-loads of Money, Time, and Effort into a project that takes us back to the equivalent of mid-18th century Europe.

Today's Today

Today's Today - Also Too

It's not really such a coincidence that Easter falls on April Fools Day, right?













Mar 31, 2018

The Mob Abides

This is Arizona state representative Eric Descheenie:


I've heard this one floating around the net, and finally decided to look it up.

Surprise surprise, it does indeed show knuckleheaded "anti-immigration" freaks letting their shit overrule whatever shriveled critical thinking skills they still retain.

Snopes:

The incident occurred during a chaotic, five-hour long demonstration on 25 January 2018 at the Arizona capitol building where roughly a dozen anti-immigration activists turned out to protest the social justice lobbying group Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA) — though the group was there to advocate for pro-labor legislation, not immigration. Protesters alleged that LUCHA was “trying to advance social, racial and economic justice for DACA recipients, illegal aliens and their illegal families.” According to state lawmakers who were at the scene, the protesters were visibly armed.
The protesters were raggin' on Descheenie (who is of Navajo descent), questioning whether or not he was in this country legally.

A Native-American; an American Aboriginal - they needed him to be "alien"; they saw him as "alien"; so they went after him because he looked alien.

But they're not part of a racist mob looking for an excuse to satisfy their blood lust.

Mar 30, 2018

Today's Tweet



It's pretty fucked that guys like 45* - operating on the premise that "International Boundaries Are For Suckers" - find it so easy to sell the rubes on the absolute necessity of "Border Security".

When Capital is free to go wherever its most likely to turn a profit, but Labor is chained to its country of origin, people trying to work for a living are always the losers.



hat tip = Bob Cesca on Twitter

Today's Pix

Isn't every Friday a Good Friday?



















Mar 29, 2018

A Brief Manifesto


A reminder. A short list of items to help us stay grounded:

  • Earth is not flat
  • Vaccines work
  • We've been to the moon
  • Climate change is a thing
  • The universe is expanding
  • Math is the universal language
  • Chemtrails aren't a thing
  • Weather weapons aren't a thing
  • We are made of star stuff
  • Science is like magic, only real

Today's Tweet



There will be stoopid

 

Mar 28, 2018

Today's Juicy Morsel


45* has elevated a lawyer named Andrew Ekonomou(**) to a lead position on his Russia Probe team.

Ekonomou said that since he began working with Sekulow, he has attended meetings with Mueller’s team. He said he brings more criminal experience to the table than Sekulow. Ekonomou is a member of The Lambros Firm LLC, a boutique firm in Atlanta, which mostly handles civil and criminal racketeering cases for D.A.s around the state.

Might that last bit - "criminal racketeering" - be a tiny hint as to what Team45* has been hearing in those meetings with Bobby Three Sticks?

(**) I can't find a bio for this guy.

On Chickens And Roosting


Ari Melber's The Beat on MSNBC, via Crooks & Liars:



Ari Melber covered a topic that would be getting national attention, were it not for the frenetic 24/7 news cycle coming out of the Trump administration.

Just after Mike Pompeo stepped down from CIA, Trump declared that he was promoting Gina Haspel to run the CIA, touting her as a great choice. Well, many Americans have a different opinion. Both Democrats and Republicans have reservations leading back to Haspel's past history as the person who had oversight over a CIA "black site" in Thailand. While an open investigation into torture was underway, evidence was destroyed. Haspel claims to not have given the order for tapes to be destroyed, though.

Ari Melber discussed this in an extensive segment on his nightly show, The Beat, on Tuesday night. It was hard hitting, deep dive into what Haspel's confirmation could mean for our country, as well as how we would be viewed by the world.

Olbermann, Special Comment, 11-05-2007:



(paraphrasing) Torture causes people to plead, and to break, and to provide the most authentic-sounding fiction - it does not cause them to tell us the truth.

Gina Haspel is implicated in the effort to cover up the crimes of the CIA. It's not unreasonable to think she's looking to complete that project, and if she's willing to go that far, there's nothing to keep me from thinking she'd be willing to let 45* use the CIA against American citizens on American soil.

I hope she's just intending to polish up the CIA's image and to protect its standing in the federal power structure. But she's compromised, which can be a very bad thing in itself, and could easily mean she'll be further compromised, feeling the need to do more bad things as she tries to compensate for all those other bad things - and on and on and on.

That's the kind of geometric expansion of shit that happens when we refuse to hold government accountable because we've become comfortably numb and we only really care about "our team" winning.