Today's Tweet

Swamp Thang

After Ben Carson became HUD Secretary, Sean HANNITY got $5 MILLION worth of new HUD guaranteed loans to purchase discounted and foreclosed properties. This is the same POS who rants about too many "government hand-outs"! But some of his supporters say that he earned
this $$😮 pic.twitter.com/HxKOZ3zi98

— NOTPC (@amazinmikey) April 24, 2018

 

Catching Up With Ourselves

One of the main reasons people stay split once they're split is that once trust is broken, it can be damned near impossible to repair.

And it doesn't work quite the way we think.

There's the whole Cheater / Abuser thing, and this is going to sound backwards, but here's the deal: If I believe you've done me a great wrong, it becomes very difficult for you to trust me - because in the back of your mind, you'll always worry that I'm just biding my time waiting for the perfect opportunity to exact my vengeance.

Even if I continually express my forgiveness, and you've shone me a sincere effort to atone, that doubt is always there.

Extrapolate that out and apply it broadly across a society, spanning a generation or two - or 20 - or 500.

Now add in the advantages that certain cynical manipulators can cash in on by pimping that mistrust and we've got "intractable problems" caused by "irreconcilable differences".

So just keep that in mind for a bit.

Niraj Chokshi, NYT:

Ever since Donald J. Trump began his improbable political rise, many pundits have credited his appeal among white, Christian and male voters to “economic anxiety.” Hobbled by unemployment and locked out of the recovery, those voters turned out in force to send Mr. Trump, and a message, to Washington.

Or so that narrative goes.

A study published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences questions that explanation, the latest to suggest that Trump voters weren’t driven by anger over the past, but rather fear of what may come. White, Christian and male voters, the study suggests, turned to Mr. Trump because they felt their status was at risk.

“It’s much more of a symbolic threat that people feel,’’ said Diana C. Mutz, the author of the study and a political science and communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where she directs the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics. “It’s not a threat to their own economic well-being; it’s a threat to their group’s dominance in our country over all.”

The study is not the first to cast doubt on the prevailing economic anxiety theory. Last year, a Public Religion Research Institute survey of more than 3,000 people also found that Mr. Trump’s appeal could better be explained by a fear of cultural displacement.

In her study, Dr. Mutz sought to answer two questions: Is there evidence to support the economic anxiety argument, and did the fear of losing social dominance drive some voters to Mr. Trump? To find answers, she analyzed survey data from a nationally representative group of about 1,200 voters polled in 2012 and 2016.

- and -

“The shift toward an antitrade stance was a particularly effective strategy for capitalizing on a public experiencing status threat due to race as well as globalization,” Dr. Mutz wrote in the study.

Her survey also assessed “social dominance orientation,” a common psychological measure of a person’s belief in hierarchy as necessary and inherent to a society. People who exhibited a growing belief in such group dominance were also more likely to move toward Mr. Trump, Dr. Mutz found, reflecting their hope that the status quo be protected.

“It used to be a pretty good deal to be a white, Christian male in America, but things have changed and I think they do feel threatened,” Dr. Mutz said.

The other surveys supported the cultural anxiety explanation, too.

In a neat little nutshell - White Male Christians are scared shitless that brown people and women are going to treat them the same as White Male Christians have treated everybody since they started this joint.

And Brown Women? Holy fuck, dude - you don't even wanna think about that shit.

This ain't new, BTW. And it helps point up one of uncomfortable truths about 2016 - that the bit about "Hillary was such a shitty candidate blah blah blah" is a convenient excuse for not showing up for her, and allowing the greater of the two evils to be installed as POTUS.

There is no purity in politics.

One last thought - stop thinking that Blue Tsunami is some kinda sure thing.

Get together

Get focused

Get busy

Get shit done

Progress

Maybe - we'll see if anybody picks it up and/or follows it up.

endgadget:

Early this month, Facebook announced it will change how political ads appear on the company's platforms. Anyone advertising about elections or issues would need their identity 'verified' before the messages go online, and the messages themselves would be labeled 'Political Ad' with disclosure of who paid for it. Ideally, this could make advertisements on Facebook much more transparent, though we'll start finding out as the platform began requiring US-based advertisers to get verified today. In the coming months, this will spread to ad buyers across the world.


Starting today, anyone based in the US running an electoral or issue ad will have to run through the authorization process to provide a government-issued ID and mailing address. Then Facebook confirms identity by mailing a letter with a unique access code that only the advertiser's Page admin account can use, like an old-school version of email verification. And then, of course, they'll have to disclose who paid for the ads before Facebook will put them up.

While the changes went into effect, Facebook posted a Q&A about what advertisers know about you. While the company maintains that they don't know as much about us as we feared, by default, advertisers are still targeting users based on their interests and browsing habits. At least after these changes, we know a bit more about them.

Today's WTF

Trump brushes dandruff off Macron, calls him "perfect." 😳 pic.twitter.com/27CqbhbMKt

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 24, 2018

 

Yes - he just did that.

Today's Birthday

Lefty Cooper

Andrew Lewis Cooper (April 24, 1898 – June 3, 1941), nicknamed "Lefty", was an American left-handed pitcher in baseball's Negro Leagues. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006. An alumnus of Paul Quinn College in Waco, Cooper played nine seasons for the Detroit Stars and ten seasons for the Kansas City Monarchs. The Texan was 6 feet 2 inches (188 cm) tall and weighed 220 pounds (100 kg; 16 st).

In defiance of a threatened five-year Negro league ban for contract jumping, Cooper joined a 1927 barnstorming team that toured Hawaii and Japan. He spent most of his later career with the Monarchs. Cooper is the Negro league record holder for career saves. In a 1937 playoff game, he pitched 17 innings. Cooper served as manager or player-manager for the Monarchs from 1937 to 1940, leading the team to the pennant three times during those four seasons.

Oy

A near-perfect example of how hard they're trying to convince us Cult45 is legit.

The effort to get us to think in terms of "the leader of the country is the country" is some seriously creepy Daddy State bullshit.

Notice also, they're trying to make it look like the Dems are being hypocritical, since they complained about Mitch McYertle's policy of blocking everything Obama wanted to do. The difference being that Obama intended (eg) to make Healthcare affordable and more accessible, while Repubs want to do just the opposite.

Both sides my ass

.@PressSec: “At some points Democrats have to decide whether they love this country more than they hate this president.” pic.twitter.com/gVQPfDSZ0B

— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 23, 2018

 

It never ceases to amaze me how they tell us they're doing things so very differently, while at the same time they insist they're just doing things according to the way things are always done around here.

A reply overheard on Twitter:

Hey Sarah, I'm a Democrat.

I served in Saudi Arabia '02, Iraq '05, Afghanistan '10 and Afghanistan '12.

At no time did I ever see you over there.

I never saw a Trump either.

Trump worked with Russia to undermine our democracy.

You're cool with it. We aren't. Fuck you.

Today's Tweet

It seems The Apocalypse is closer now - and if this is any indication of its entertainment value, a fucking welcome it will be.

The opposite of jazz. pic.twitter.com/FfXuSg4XeW

— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) April 24, 2018

 

Today's Tweet

Knowledgebase Update

I can rest easy now that I've learned camels can swim.

Camels Crossing the Sea 🌊 pic.twitter.com/LMuKRnd7FG

— Nature is Scary (@TheScaryNature) April 21, 2018

hat tip = Charlie Pierce @CharlesPPierce

A Quick Reminder

1. Get together
2. Get busy
3. Get shit done

AKA: Canadian Hippo

But just as we might expect, cuz it's Canada - and everything's nicer in Canada - this hippo isn't known to attack people in the water. 

They wait for a chance encounter out in the woods - then they stomp your ass.

Today's Tweet

As long as guys like Malcolm Nance are on our side, we've got a chance.

#Sucker. https://t.co/Z098vVzdMc

— Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) April 22, 2018

 

Today's Pix

Click a pic to start the show

They're Not All Assholes

Good to remind myself once in a while that there are people in positions of power who get it - people who understand that this month's numbers mean diddly-shit if there's nothing left to work with in order to get next month's numbers. And that if you just leave it to the next guy to worry about that, then you're setting us all up for the kind of disaster we're starting to experience now.

Fortune Magazine's list of 50 great leaders for 2018:

16. Isabelle Kocher, CEO, Engie

In just two years, Kocher has pulled Engie, the energy giant formerly known as GDF Suez, into the future. The legacy oil and gas company now focuses on renewables and decarbonization; it has sold $15 billion worth of “dirty” assets and reinvested in cleaner ones. Kocher, the only woman CEO among France’s CAC 40 companies, recently boosted Engie’s dividend and reported its return to profitability after a two-year absence.


Eating your seed crop and fouling the nest are really bad ideas - even when you do it inadvertently, or for reasons you think are currently justifiable.

24. Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries

In less than two years, India’s richest man has brought mobile data to the masses—and completely upended the country’s telecom market. Since Ambani, chief of the $47 billion conglomerate Reliance Industries, launched Jio—the first mobile network in the world to be entirely IP-based—in September 2016, the company has signed up a staggering 168 million subscribers. The secret? Offering dirt-cheap data and free calls (and plowing billions of dollars into the infrastructure that transmits them). The effect, dubbed “Jio-fication,” has driven India’s higher-price carriers to drop costs (if not run them out of business), and it fueled a 1,100% rise in India’s monthly data

Combining a disrupting innovation with a socially conscientious plan for implementation is what we used to do here in USAmerica Inc - before we put the bean-counters in charge and started insisting we could smash-fit everything into a 12-column ledger.

25. Mick CornettFormer mayor, Oklahoma City

If you’re a fiscally conservative mayor in a fiscally conservative city, how do you persuade voters to pay more for public works? Cornett proposed tying new spending to small sales taxes—and requiring that the taxes expire once the projects were paid for. During his 14-year tenure, his so-called MAPS plans helped Oklahoma City pay for school revitalization, public transit, and downtown improvements. Cornett left office in April on a high note and is seeking the GOP nod for governor.

Pay-as-you-go without the punishing Calvinist bullshit, which is always just the thinly-disguised Kick-'Em-When-They're-Down approach that the GOP normally takes.

BTW - it has escaped no one's notice that Donald Trump is not on this list.

Up Your Ante

Investigating Russia:

Michael Cohen has dropped his libel lawsuits against BuzzFeed News and Fusion GPS which he filed in January claiming the Christopher Steele dossier defamed him. The move comes less than a week after McClatchy DC revealed Special Counsel Robert Mueller has proof Cohen did travel to Prague as described in Steele's memos.

Politico:
"The decision to voluntarily discontinue these cases was a difficult one," Cohen's attorney David Schwartz said. "We believe the defendants defamed my client, and vindicating Mr. Cohen’s rights was — and still remains — important. But given the events that have unfolded, and the time, attention, and resources needed to prosecute these matters, we have dismissed the matters, despite their merits."

Cohen is in court fighting to exclude potential evidence FBI agents seized in a raid on his office, home, and hotel room on April 9th.

Bloomberg Politics:
The case against Fusion GPS, which compiled the dossier, and its co-founder Glenn Simpson was filed in federal court in New York. Cohen had sued BuzzFeed, which published the dossier in its entirety, in state court in New York.

Politico:
In statements, both BuzzFeed and Fusion GPS said the suit was without merit.

"If there's one thing Democrats and Republicans agree on today, it's that the dossier was an important part of the government's investigation into potential collusion between the Trump Campaign and Russia," BuzzFeed News said in a statement.

In a separate statement, Fusion GPS said: "With his decision, it appears that Mr. Cohen can now focus on his many other legal travails.”

Dropping the suits could help Cohen avoid being questioned by lawyers from Fusion GPS or having to turn over evidence related to the case — both steps that could undercut his defense in the criminal probe.
It also means one or both of at least these two things:

1. they're getting great mileage out of bashing the dossier itself - and that ties in with their story of how the Dems (ie: Hillary) "financed it as just another bit of Oppo Research" which continues to get traction, so they need to keep what they think is a great issue
2. they can't afford to be shown up as having lied about the whole thing all along - especially the bit about Cohen and the meeting(s) in Prague. 

If they press the thing, then the Steele Dossier will be more or less argued in open court, which is the one thing they know must never be allowed to happen - essentially it calls their bluff and exposes the defamation suit as a dodge.

They can't afford to have anybody look too closely at anything.

Incentive

The big question regarding the women who hook up with 45* - how the fuck does that guy get those women into bed? 

Yeah - that guy.

The Author Of The Universe explains: