Dang, America

Out of 45 possible medals, US shooters have managed only 3.

We have more guns per capita than anybody.

We spend lotsa time and money on it - we shoot a lot.

Three lousy medals, and the only gold is BB guns?  Seriously - what's the fucking point??

Of course, ya gotta figure the US team's at a particular disadvantage, since the competitors aren't allowed to shoot at each other. 

Today's Quote

"Be ashamed to die before you have won some victory for humanity." -- Horace Mann

And BTW, Horace Mann was a Republican (Whig actually - but a Repub nonetheless); back when Republicans stood for some pretty cool things - like Secular Public Schools, and Fairness, and making sure Government Power was a force to protect the little guy from the excesses of an unaccountable Oligarchy, and a lot of other Progressive Values.  

I wonder what happened.

Today's Cheap Shot

Down And Dirty

It seems a little too much, but I haven't found anything to dispute its veracity.

Maybe it's just that politics - plus the opportunity to give the power elite the benefit of our super-genius-level intellect - really does make some people stoopid.

hat tip = Twitter pal @therealzanetta

Trae Crowder

Careful With That 'Rithmetic

Truth + God = Life

--and so--

Life - God = Truth

hat tip = Twitter pal @athyvaya

Today's Tweet

pic.twitter.com/gQbjxkJnqT

— miles reed (@milesjreed) August 13, 2016

What He Said

(Ripped entirely from Mock Paper Scissors - because it's fucking brilliant)

Q: What do you think about Hillary Clinton and the Democrats?
“I fucking love them. I have always loved them. And let me just say this: If you’re a politician — not just in Washington but in business and industry, you have to be a politician — there are a lot of things that you have to do that you’re not proud of. There are a lot of compromises you have to make because it means that you can get this other thing over here. And if you think that you can go to fucking Washington and be rainbows and butterflies the whole time, you’re living in a fucking fantasy world. So now, having said that, think about what a female has to do with that: All of those compromises, all of that shit, double it by ten. And you get to understand who this woman is and how powerful, persuasive, brilliant, and resilient she is. Any female executive, anybody who has been put to the side — women, blacks, gays — for them to succeed in a white-male-dominated culture is an act of brilliance. Of resilience, of grit, of everything you can imagine. So, what do I think of Hillary? I think she’s fucking awesome. Is she in bed with Wall Street? Goddammit, I should hope so! You’ve got to dance with the devil. So which of the horrible people do you want? That’s more of the question. Do you want a pompous braggart who doesn’t know anything about diplomacy? Or do you want a badass bitch who knows how to get shit done? That’s really the question.”

The take-away here is that we have a lot of institutional sexism in our country—I think Scissorheads know that, we certainly laugh at it enough—The Skirts—and what RuPaul points out is that it puts an enormous burden-of-proof on women candidates. The late Ann Richards once said, “After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.
Ru-Paul is in many ways the epitome of badassery (a black gay man who has made a celebrity career of being a drag queen?! His drag show has been nominated for a freakin’ Emmy Award!), and if he sees a hero in Hillary Clinton then I can check my white male privilege at the door. His statement is remarkable.

Women politicians have to do everything male politicians do, but they get judged for doing it. From the clothes, to their voices, to just existing (the woman-card), they get scrutinized where men get a pass. Backwards and in high heels, indeed.

So as uncomfortable as I am (and I am very uncomfortable with political dynasties, and especially this dynasty because of the Clintons’ love of triangulation), I think it is absolutely remarkable that Hillary Clinton has not only won the nomination, but that she is winning the day-to-day battles.
She’s a badass bitch who knows how to get shit done. I can work with that.

Today's Tweet

It's too bad @realDonaldTrump wasn't the founder of ISIS because it would be bankrupt by now.

— Jim Earl (@jimearl666) August 11, 2016

About The Facts

And BTW, the next time somebody wants to talk about "...the anemic economic growth under this weak POTUS because it's a lousy 1.2%..." 

- let's try to remember that 1.2% growth in a $17 TRILLION GDP = $204,000,000,000 (two hundred-four billion & no/100 dollars).

The growth in the US economy was greater than the total GDP of 26 states.

The growth in the US economy was greater than the total GDP of all but 46 countries around the world.

The fucking GROWTH.

It's called "The Tyranny Of Large Numbers".

And while it also applies to large numbers like Debt and Deficit (and that gets a little scary), ya gotta ease up a little on the Dumfuckery Quotient, Skeezix.

And The Question Is

It seems the cyber hack of DNC is a lot bigger, and pointing very much more precisely at Russia.

Chuck Todd wants to know "where's the National Security outrage?"

I'm thinkin' maybe that explains why Trump's reverted to his usual big and asshole-ish form.  He needs to distract for right now, making sure we gloss over the Ruskies' fuckery and hoping for the other shoe to fall on Hillary.

Let's see those tax returns, Donald.

Bernie-esque

"He wants America to work for him and his friends, at the expense of everyone else. He's offered no credible plans to address what working families are up against today. Nothing on student loans or the cost of prescription drugs. Nothing for farmers and struggling rural communities. ...nothing for communities of color in our cities to overcome barriers of systemic racism. Nothing to create new opportunities for young people. Just a more extreme version of the failed theory of trickle-down economics, with the addition of his own unique Trumpian ideas that even Republicans reject."

Not crazy about the F35 thing, and I'm still waiting for good answers on the flipflop on TPP and KeystoneXL.  And I'd like her to acknowledge / deal with the shit that NAFTA turned out to be - she kinda tries (companies gaming the system etc), but it's just not there yet.  

But she's putting it out there in pretty good shape.  For me right now, it's a matter of supporting her as "a wonk I think I can trust on policy", if we can figure out how to keep pressure on her and rein in her apparent difficulties with the seemier aspects of making deals and thinking she has to hide those details from us - to the point where she lies when she really doesn't have to.

Anyway, it's a pretty thoroughly boring stump speech, and that's a good thing, kids. Cuz it sure beats the fuck outa what that other guy's doin'.

Mr Insurance

Donald Trump has "targeted" Ohio Pennsylvania and Florida, figuring if he wins those 3 "Battleground States" he'll have a real shot.

Unfortunately for Trump, he also has to hold every state that Romney won in 2012.

Evan McMullin is running for president.

Evan McMullin is ex-CIA.

Evan McMullin is a Mormon.

Evan McMullin has some rich buddies backing him.

Evan McMullin has missed getting on the ballot in some very important states, but he managed to get on the ballot in Utah.

Evan McMullin won't win in Utah, but he'll syphon off plenty of votes - very possibly enough to make Hillary the winner in Utah.

Trump is up by about 7 points in Utah - where favorite son Romney won by 48 points in 2012. Mormon matters.

Evan McMullin's mission is to fuck up the election for Donald Trump.

Today's Pix

Stochastic Probability

Applied to politics = 

Stochastic terrorism is the use of mass communications to incite random actors to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable. In short, remote-control murder by lone wolf.

It's not like we aren't aware of this shit, Mr Trump.

At each step, plausible deniability increases through the diffusion of responsibility. "Oh, it was just a lone nut, nobody could have predicted he would do that, and I'm not responsible for what people in my audience do."

Trump knows what he's done, even if his intent at the time was nothing more than one of his usual stunts to say something heinously inflammatory in order to generate some free media.

And the statements that have come from his campaign are again the usual bullshit aimed at kicking the news cycle around to keep the coverage going - to give the story legs.

"It's called the power of unification – 2nd Amendment people have amazing spirit and are tremendously unified, which gives them great political power. And this year, they will be voting in record numbers, and it won't be for Hillary Clinton, it will be for Donald Trump." --Jason Miller, Senior Communications Advisor.

That's a near-perfect, classically content-free "explanation".  Notice, there's nothing in there that even tries to pretend that Trump is condemning violence against a political opponent.

Charlie Pierce put up a quote from (I think) Hunter S Thompson, and tag-lined it with this:

What he said on Tuesday is something Donald Trump does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for. It seems one could stoop even lower than Nixon to be president.

And of course, the usual asshole apologists were out to make sure we got a good dose of False Equivalence:

Here's the point on this little piece of your freak show, Mr Halperin: If it was bad for Hillary to say what she said in 2008, then it's bad for Trump to say what he said 2016.

See how that works?  Bad is bad is bad.  You don't get to say Hillary was wrong to do it back then, so it's OK for Trump to do it now. dick

But what riles me now is that neither The Hillary gang nor the Press Poodles are getting after this with any kind of zest or gusto.

"Here's what Americans need to hear from you, Mr Trump, and in no uncertain terms:

- you are not calling for violence

- you condemn violence against any political opponent at any time for any reason

- you reject the support of anybody who'd even think violence against a political opponent is in any way OK

- you understand that sometimes we get a little nutty, but everybody has to leave their guns out of this

- be passionate; be vocal; be steadfast - just don't be a dick"

Are ya getting any of this, Mr Trump?

Trump Trumps Trump

Trying to be fairer than I think I have to be, some of the contradictions can be explained because we have to allow people to change over time.

That said, holy fuck, dude.  You don't take a position one day in one situation, and then change it completely the next day when you're talking to somebody else.

The guy is the classic old-school sales-putz.  You just say whatever you think you need to say in the moment.  It's not about leading with your values - because this guy apparently has none - it's about looking for the cues from your prospect and pandering to them.  So, he says whatever he thinks the interviewer (eg) wants to hear.  And if he contradicts himself, he can either flatly deny it or he can blame the listener for misunderstanding, which gives him the opportunity to blather some more and explain the intricacies of his pitch because you're just too dumb to get it.

We can see you, Donald.  We're writing this shit down so we can keep track of it, so we can try to make sense of it later.  And it's one hot fucking mess.

More Cracks

First - reports of the demise of DumFux News are greatly exaggerated - or maybe they're just kinda premature.

But second - dang - It's been more than a little obvious for a good long time that Fox and the GOP are so inter-connected as to be divisions of the same Billionaire Hobby Corporation. So much so that if one craters, it pulls the other one in after it. And isn't that a happy prospect?

Get Real, Kids

"Journalism"

And again - why are we allowing all the real journalism to happen on 1/2 hour cable shows?

I wouldn't mind one little bit if we broke up the Media Mega-Giants, but I'm not advocating for a plan to then prop them up as viable outlets. Business is business, and you can't mandate profitability.

This will probably be a fairly long slow process of evolving into a workable model, but it occurs to me that along with all the scary shit about Report-o-Bots and Digital Content Generators, one thing we could get from the techno-wizardry is some kind of a built-in Fact Check mechanism.  Right now, I can high-lite a word or a string of text (on my Mac), right-click on it and look it up in the dictionary, or Google it, or go to Wikipedia or whatever - the point being in this case that the same technology that gets us a problem can be used to help us solve that problem.

In the meantime, we need to keep on keepin' on by learning more about applied skepticism and critical thinking.  

Because, even tho there are a few signs of improvement, this shit will prob'ly just get weirder before it starts to get anywhere close to relaxed and groovy.

Press Poodle of the future

Something We Should Know

It's just about being made to think Da Gubmint is taking it away from me and giving it to somebody I think doesn't deserve it.  

We don't know shit and what makes that a bad thing is that we don't even wanna know that we don't know it.