"Leadership"

Because if we're conditioned to believe made up bullshit to start with, we're a lot easier to manipulate in new and exciting ways.

Electors

Contact Info for Red State Electors

If you call, be nice - even if they aren't.

Sunday Question

When you say you'll pray for me, does that mean I need to do the thinking for both of us?

Today's Tweet

Funny how Trump supporters love to fly the flags of armies that got their asses kicked by Americans pic.twitter.com/r4bN63AiuF

— Parker 🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈 (@Parker9_) December 9, 2016

Today's Quote

Yes, I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can find his way by moonlight, and see the dawn before the rest of the world. 

--Henry David Thoreau

Nobody Does This Better

driftglass:

I feel compelled to point out that back when Comrade Trump was declaring that his Party would be a Worker's Party, certain internet scoundrel hobos were trying in vain to call Meathead America's attention to the fact that, according to Comrade Trump's own words...

Comrade Trump Sings Songs Of Love

Comrade Trump promises that under his regime he will...

...tell American companies what they can produce and where they can produce it.

...tell American companies who they can hire and how much they will be paid.

...use the power of government to keep American workers working in dying industries despite what the market says.

...conquer inferior countries who have stuff we want.

...weed out the undesirables whoever they may be and wherever they may hide.

...build an axis of strong alliances with other like-minded Strong Menaround the world.

...not be held hostage by the counterrevolutionary forces of bourgeoisie science.

A Trump Biographer

From a piece at RawStory, quoting Mike D'Antonio:

He finished with a disturbing image of Trump as a mindless animal in a behavioral experiment.

“He no longer had to manipulate journalists and wait for them to act. He could tap out a few words and get what he wanted immediately. It reminded me of psychologist B.F. Skinner’s experiments with chickens that learned to push a button with their beaks for the reward of a food pellet. Once they had trained themselves, the birds couldn’t stop pecking even when the pellets no longer came and they injured themselves,” he said.

“Like Skinner’s animal subjects,” he concluded. “Trump has learned to get what he wants. No matter who criticizes him, no matter the consequences, he will keep doing it. Those who ask if he will stop scouring the press for evidence of enemies and using his power in indiscriminate ways should stop thinking of him as a conventional politician and start looking at him as a chicken.”

There's no such thing as Proportionality for a Donald Trump, and he's surrounding himself with "birds of a feather", which is more than a bit fucked up when it comes down to a little thing we like to call The Nuclear Arsenal.  

And yes, I know, everybody talked about that for a fleeting moment during the Scampaign®, but then it kinda fell off the ol' radar scope - like every-fucking-thing else that shoulda sunk this Powdered Cheese Dusted Asswipe but didn't because keeping him on my Librul TV Box may have been bad for the country, but holy crap, was it ever great for ratings.

Early proposal for Trump's POTUS portrait

The Professional Left Podcast

A great take-down of the single-thread bullshit about how Hillary was just a rotten candidate and how she missed the mark and blah blah blah.

The Bible Bitch segment at the end is pretty spectacular this week - and if I believed in such things, I'd say God bless you, Blue Gal.

But I don't believe in such things, so I'll just say Keep Doin' Good, you guys.

Click to send 'em some love

Today's Pix

Imitations

Faking It

What are the tools we use to detect lies?

a) the absence of confirming evidence

-or-

b) the presence of conflicting evidence

What are the tools for finding the truth?

a) the presence of confirming evidence

-and-

b) the absence of conflicting evidence

It's a problem. It's a big fucking problem. And we are woefully ill-prepared.

From a piece last month at NPR:

A lot of fake and misleading news stories were shared across social media during the election. One that got a lot of traffic had this headline: "FBI Agent Suspected In Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide." The story is completely false, but it was shared on Facebook over half a million times.

We wondered who was behind that story and why it was written. It appeared on a site that had the look and feel of a local newspaper. Denverguardian.com even had the local weather. But it had only one news story — the fake one.

--and--

He was amazed at how quickly fake news could spread and how easily people believe it. He wrote one fake story for NationalReport.net about how customers in Colorado marijuana shops were using food stamps to buy pot.

"What that turned into was a state representative in the House in Colorado proposing actual legislation to prevent people from using their food stamps to buy marijuana based on something that had just never happened," Coler says.

--and--

At any given time, Coler says, he has between 20 and 25 writers. And it was one of them who wrote the story in the "Denver Guardian" that an FBI agent who leaked Clinton emails was killed. Coler says that over 10 days the site got 1.6 million views. He says stories like this work because they fit into existing right-wing conspiracy theories.

"The people wanted to hear this," he says. "So all it took was to write that story. Everything about it was fictional: the town, the people, the sheriff, the FBI guy. And then ... our social media guys kind of go out and do a little dropping it throughout Trump groups and Trump forums and boy it spread like wildfire."

As with all disruptive innovations regarding social media (all media is social media, btw), The Intertoobz has become just another vast wasteland.

Paraphrasing The Maestro, as he purportedly quipped to the lady cellist, "Madam, you have  between your legs a magnificent instrument capable of bringing great joy and fulfillment to all of humankind - must you sit there and merely scratch at it?"

The Anti-Elitist Lie

I'm sure you've noticed:

Trump loves to bash "the elitists", but he'll be installed as the 45th POTUS on the strength of a majority of the 538 Electoral College votes - even though he got his ass kicked by more than 2 1/2 million votes of the actual populace.

Tell me again - how is this putz in any way "Representative Of The People"?

Not Without Some Tredipation

Click To Open - NSFW, 
and not for everybody

Yo Yo Ma And Lil Buck

In Beijing - wondering how much longer we can count on any of this being even possible as Trump fucks up everything he touches everywhere he goes.

Sec'y Of Labor

Mr Puzder, per Mr Frum:

Let’s absorb the magnitude of the Pudzer appointment. Trump’s signature issue was immigration restriction. Number 1.

— David Frum (@davidfrum) December 8, 2016

He slammed hard the Bush family in general and Jeb Bush in particular as weak and low energy on immigration.

— David Frum (@davidfrum) December 8, 2016

The Labor Department enforces immigration law in the workplace - the key way that immigration laws are enforced.

— David Frum (@davidfrum) December 8, 2016

And the person Trump names to head Labor? Perhaps the most outspoken advocate of Bush-style immigration policy in US business community!

— David Frum (@davidfrum) December 8, 2016