Today's Keith

Watch this video on The Scene.

It really is Garbage In, Garbage Out.  If Repubs want a better GOP, they're gonna need a whole buncha better voters.

My Blogiversary

My first post

A Tweet

Michelle Obama on birther claims: Pres. Obama showed dignity “by going high when they go low” https://t.co/vhFCCpkHBa

— CNN (@CNN) September 28, 2016

"When they go low, we go high."  And ya know - the Obama's are just better people than most.  Cuz me (and, I think, Luther) would most likely interpret that like this: "you go at my knees and I'm coming back for your fucking head". 

Which is kinda how it works out - the way FLOTUS does it anyway.  Glad I'm on her side.

Geez, These Kids

TPM:

Eric Trump on Wednesday joined Donald Trump's surrogates in applauding the Republican nominee for not bringing up Bill Clinton's sex scandals during the Monday debate, even saying that the moment is "something I’ll always remember."

"Gee - I'll always remember that time on national primetime TV, seen by 70 million Americans plus maybe twice that many around the world - I'll remember my dad deciding not to be a giant gold-plated monument to Total Douchenozzlery" .

First time for everything, I guess.  But indeed, Eric , how proud you must be - as are we all, of course.

And if you open that window just a bit, you can hear me rolling my eyes so hard I can see what's left of my brain after having to acknowledge that even people like Donald Trump are allowed to breed. 

A Quickie

hat tip = Tweeter @djred678

Keith Olbermann

Who is Carter Page?

Watch this video on The Scene.

Today's Gotcha

25 solid rational reasons to vote for Donald Trump

What They Say

Repubs - the ones with most of the money and power - love to lead the bitch session about Dems and Libruls who're busy spending "Other People's Money".  What they always conveniently neglect to mention is that the reason it's "your money" is that they don't contribute much at all, and they're always busy pimping us into helping them pay even less while getting a bigger and bigger share of the benefits.

All the little grey areas and loopholes in our ridiculous Tax Code; an economy increasingly tilted in favor of wealthy people - none of this happens if we stop allowing guys like Donald Trump to play us for suckers.  

   

You Can Quote Me

Trump is that guy - kind of a passing acquaintance - who just shows up at the friendly neighborhood poker game, where he mooches everybody's beer, he bets with IOUs, and he has to be reminded to ante up every.fucking.hand.

--mike

Today's Chart

And for anybody still insisting on being hung up on the "Yeah, but she's still lying so it's OK for me to sit here doing nothing but pining over Bernie", spare me the purity crap.

Governments lie. Politicians lie. Insurance Salemen lie. Cops lie. Your wife and kids lie.

You lie.

The point is that we can sift thru it; we can make a fairly accurate determination as to what the lie seems to be about vs what the lie is really about; we can test the statements in various ways to assign values to the lies and the liars - we can, to an extent, quantify the rhetoric. We can then put all this on a spectrum, and we come up with an assessment - which gives us reasonable rationale for flipping a coin or just going with your gut feeling.

Yeah, hey, I'm funny.  But, there are facts here. 

Fact 1: 

Hillary lies a little less than 30% of the time, while Trump lies more than 65% of the time. 

Fact 2: 

Hillary makes true statements more than 50% of the time, while Trump makes true statements less than 20% of the time.

Fact 3: 

Hillary tells the truth more than twice as often as Trump, while Trump lies more than twice as often as Hillary.

Fact 4: 

More is more, and less is less.

Look, I don't really know, but I hafta say this again - Hillary's been raked over the coals for 25 years, and she's standing tall.  Trump spent 90 minutes on stage with her last nite, and he's a mass of welts and bloody blisters today.

Political Reality

From Vox:

Donald Trump is great at doing the seemingly unimaginable. He won the Republican nomination over 15 other potential nominees who looked better on paper, with a thin ground game, little cash on hand, and not much buoying him in the early going beyond his celebrity. On that level, maybe he’s a political savant?

But when he’s asked to do something that’s fairly standard campaign ritual — host a political convention, say, or compete in a debate — he very rarely pulls it off. He’s just not that good at the basics of politics, and that only underscores how flimsy and empty most of his policy proposals are.

And if there’s one big takeaway I have from his first presidential debate against Hillary Clinton, it’s that Trump failed almost as much as a performer as he did a candidate.

Turns out that real live politics is just not the same as hosting a game show.

Attempting A Modified Dahmer Defense

Trump: 

Hillary is hitting me with tremendous commercials, some of it said in entertainment, somebody who's been very vicious to me, Rosie O'Donnell, I said very tough things to her, and I think everybody would agree she deserves it, and nobody feels sorry for her. I was going to say something extremely rough to Hillary, to her family, and I said to myself, I can't do it. I just can't do it. It's inappropriate. It's not nice, but she spent hundreds of millions of dollars on negative ads on me, many of which are absolutely untrue.

The guy is a 6-year-old who throws himself on the floor kicking and screaming if you don't tell him what a good little boy he's been because he didn't take a shit on the dining room rug and then wipe his ass with the cat. 

Today's Tweet

"#TrumpWon!" - Said no one with eyes, ears or rational judgment - EVER. pic.twitter.com/ogzIn5GCNG

— Pin Head (@PiercedSkull) September 27, 2016

All That Blow

Sounds like pretty much every party I went to in the late 70s.

All That Winning

John Oliver

Raisins - fucking epic is all this is.

Sometimes A Troll

I gotta say - I expected a push-back that was more in line with the usual rabid attacks from the fetishists.  

Still early I guess - could be a lot more coming when everybody starts getting home from work tonite(?)

I'll update if anything interesting happens.

Today's Keith

Go to Olbermann's GQ Video page to see the other stuff too.

Good Cop, Bad Cop (updated 9-27)

There's a good reason Invisibility is considered the ultimate super power.  It removes all possibility of being held to account.  If there's no evidence, ie: if nobody can see what you're doing, there's no way to hold you responsible for what you've done.

So WTF, Danville cops?

I called the Danville (Virginia) Police Dept to ask for comment, and left a message. I'll try to update as soon as possible.

hat tip = FB friends MM-M & VW-E


Update:

Says purpose of lifting hood is to cool engine. Some cars have good vents, some don't. @ABC13News pic.twitter.com/pccPPVoWtz

— Valerie Bragg (@ValB_WSET) September 26, 2016

Seems more or less reasonable to me - the local citizens' bunch will continue to keep on eye on this stuff.  Way to go, guys.

Now We're Talkin'

Go get 'em, Dems.

HuffPo:

WASHINGTON ― Democrats are finally paying attention to state politics.

Over the past few years, major donors, national Democrats, the White House and state officials have begun organizing to win back state houses that have been dominated by Republicans since 2010.

And even as the presidential race tightens nationally, Democrats are increasingly confident the party will be able flip a significant number of state legislative chambers, riding a wave of disgust with GOP nominee Donald Trump. At least 14 state House or Senate chambers are well within reach, according to a Democratic memo circulated this week.

You can't elect a president and expect everything to be suddenly peachy.  We put Obama in the White House and it's like we just left him there, thinking he'd do what we elected him to do with no further help from us, ignoring the fact that the Repubs really were turning out to be as shitty as some were trying to tell us they were.

I'll take my share of the hit on that one - I spent a good 18 months calling the guy President Lawn Chair because I was pissed that he bailed on the Public Option without even trying, and made no move on Gitmo etc.  Criticism may have been warranted, but what we shoulda been doing is working to send him the support he needed in the various legislatures - national and state and local.

My bad.

Hopefully, that pendulum could be starting to swing back in favor of an honest majority.

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