Wednesday, November 16, 2016
Today's Quote
"Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly, and focused on happier things than 'politics'. They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren't nice people? Resistors."
Stop Making It Normal
On the Know-Nothing language: "What's with this I've-Never-Met-The-Guy defense? I never met John Wilkes Booth, but I let his past work inform my opinion of him."
Today's Tweet
Having no sense of irony (and having abandoned all regard for the perspectives of history), the Trumpkinites see this as a perfectly accurate representation of recent events.
Upside down and backwards as usual.Wrong. pic.twitter.com/KcTTLjrsfN— Tomthunkit™ (@TomthunkitsMind) November 16, 2016
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
A Man For All Seasons
Sir Thomas More was not quite the cool guy Robert Bolt wrote him up to be, but the point Paul Schofield's character makes is absolutely the essence of what we're supposed to be about here in USAmerica Inc.
We'll see what we see, but I'm not holding out any great hope for Donald Trump to be any kind of statesman.
Dueling Narratives
Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone:
Trump made idiots of us all. From the end of primary season onward, I felt sure Trump was en route to ruining, perhaps forever, the Republican Party as a force in modern American life. Now the Republicans are more dominant than ever, and it is the Democratic Party that is shattered and faces an uncertain future.
And they deserve it. The Democratic Party's failure to keep Donald Trump out of the White House in 2016 will go down as one of the all-time examples of insular arrogance. The party not only spent most of the past two years ignoring the warning signs of the Trump rebellion, but vilifying anyone who tried to point them out. It denounced all rumors of its creeping unpopularity as vulgar lies and bullied anyone who dared question its campaign strategy by calling them racists, sexists and agents of Vladimir Putin's Russia.
But the party's willful blindness symbolized a similar arrogance across the American intellectual elite. Trump's election was a true rebellion, directed at anyone perceived to be part of "the establishment." The target group included political leaders, bankers, industrialists, academics, Hollywood actors, and, of course, the media. And we all closed our eyes to what we didn't want to see.
On Friday, I almost assaulted a fan of my work. I was in the Philadelphia International Airport, and a man who recognized me from one of my appearances on a television news show approached. He thanked me for the investigative reporting I had done about Donald Trump before the election, expressed his outrage that the Republican nominee had won and then told me quite gruffly, “Get back to work.” Something about his arrogance struck me, so I asked, “Who did you vote for?”
He replied, “Well, Stein, but—” I interrupted him and said, “You’re lucky it’s illegal for me to punch you in the face.” Then, after telling him to have sex with himself—but with a much cruder term—I turned and walked away.
A certain kind of liberal makes me sick. These people traffic in false equivalencies, always pretending that both nominees are the same, justifying their apathy and not voting or preening about their narcissistic purity as they cast their ballot for a person they know cannot win. I have no problem with anyone who voted for Trump, because they wanted a Trump presidency. I have an enormous problem with anyone who voted for Trump or Stein or Johnson—or who didn’t vote at all—and who now expresses horror about the outcome of this election. If you don’t like the consequences of your own actions, shut the hell up.
And now, South Park explains the Liberal Elite:
Knowledge, and the ability to demonstrate that knowledge, is considered snobbish. A willingness to take an active (or activist) position on any issue requiring others to change their thinking and/or their behavior is "Elitist" and will not be tolerated by the rubes Real Americans.
"We demand you make it better - at the expense of people who aren't us"
Ah Ha
Charlie Pierce always refers to Reince Priebus as "Obvious Anagram Reince Priebus", and all I could ever got was "Rubes Epic Rein". That's pretty close, but not quite as satisfying as the one Samantha Bee came up with.
BTW - If you haven't already, start listening for the standard "Know Nothing" signals. There's a really good one from Paul Ryan in this clip at about 2:10 when Sam goes to the CNN bit. And it continues with Newt saying he's never even heard of The Alt-Right.
BTW - If you haven't already, start listening for the standard "Know Nothing" signals. There's a really good one from Paul Ryan in this clip at about 2:10 when Sam goes to the CNN bit. And it continues with Newt saying he's never even heard of The Alt-Right.
We are so fucked.
Monday, November 14, 2016
We All Need A Friend Like Joe
We all need a friend who is as petty as Joe Biden pic.twitter.com/uWHajE90FX— •The Instigator• (@AmBlujay) November 12, 2016
hat tip = @mellierenee
Time To Revisit
It's aging a bit, but this is a great way to remember that we didn't get here by accident.
Like the man said - shit doesn't just happen. Shit gets done, by somebody to somebody
Paying particular attention to things like:
Leo Strauss and The Univ of Chicago
The noble lie
The charge of False Consciousness
The Triple Negative and Group B
A world of moral certainties
The mobilization of the Religious Right
The purity efforts of an Algerian chicken farmer
Political Reality is what the power wants us to believe it is
All that and more!
Sunday, November 13, 2016
Presto Change-O Followup
In a post I put up a few days ago, I postulated that rat-fucking played a key role in electing Trump.
I'm not a big fan of Greg Palast - I have to wonder about a guy who wears that 1950s Reporter Costume on a regular basis - but he's managed to do some decent work on occasion and if he's uncovered something worth looking at, I wanna look at it.
So:
I'm not a big fan of Greg Palast - I have to wonder about a guy who wears that 1950s Reporter Costume on a regular basis - but he's managed to do some decent work on occasion and if he's uncovered something worth looking at, I wanna look at it.
So:
Before a single vote was cast, the election was fixed by GOP and Trump operatives.
Starting in 2013 – just as the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act – a coterie of Trump operatives, under the direction of Kris Kobach, Kansas Secretary of State, created a system to purge 1.1 million Americans of color from the voter rolls of GOP–controlled states.
The system, called Crosscheck, is detailed in my Rolling Stone report,
“The GOP’s Stealth War on Voters,” 8/24/2016.
Crosscheck in action:
Trump victory margin in Michigan: 13,107
Michigan Crosscheck purge list: 449,922
Trump victory margin in Arizona: 85,257
Arizona Crosscheck purge list: 270,824
Trump victory margin in North Carolina: 177,008
North Carolina Crosscheck purge list: 589,393
On Tuesday, we saw Crosscheck elect a Republican Senate and as President, Donald Trump. The electoral putsch was aided by nine other methods of attacking the right to vote of Black, Latino and Asian-American voters, methods detailed in my book and film, including “Caging,” “purging,” blocking legitimate registrations, and wrongly shunting millions to “provisional” ballots that will never be counted.It's shitty, and it's underhanded, and it's dirty, and it's perfectly legal. This is where we are now.
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