Friday, December 16, 2016
Thursday, December 15, 2016
In Putin's Image
From Bloomberg:
So I guess we're seeing the implementation of what the Leftie Loonies have been saying all along - The US is a Private Enterprise Operation with a Militarized Police Force and Nuclear Weapons.
USAmerica Incorporated.
Donald Trump is building a cabinet in his own image. The first billionaire U.S. president has appointed two billionaires and at least nine millionaires, with a combined net worth of about $5.6 billion, to run government departments. Two appointees to cabinet or cabinet-level positions are former generals. And fewer than half have any prior government experience. Many of Trump's nominees have close ties to Wall Street and corporate America. Altogether, his cabinet is shaping up to look a lot different from his predecessors.
The expansive corporate connections, collective wealth and varied policy goals of Trump's cabinet-level picks say a lot about the priorities set to shape his administration. Here are Trump's cabinet nominees so far, in order of their succession to the presidency.It's interesting - Trump's picks for the various Business Units of the Federal Government are all high-roller CEO types, and his picks for Law Enforcement and National Security are all hardass authoritarian enforcer types.
So I guess we're seeing the implementation of what the Leftie Loonies have been saying all along - The US is a Private Enterprise Operation with a Militarized Police Force and Nuclear Weapons.
USAmerica Incorporated.
Wednesday, December 14, 2016
Keith Again
"Compromise" is among my favorite words.
NEW: As 20+ Trump Electors hint at vote switch, the way out: Electoral College can and must prevent his inauguration pic.twitter.com/lBCaVnXy3o— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) December 14, 2016
Today's Chart
Again:
The presence of confirming evidence
and
the absence of conflicting evidence
yields a higher probability for truth
-------------
The absence of confirming evidence
or
the presence of conflicting evidence requires continued skepticism and further review
Today's Tweet
RT @billmckibben: When scientists protest, their picket signs have footnotes #standupforscience pic.twitter.com/IOKvhuODFH— Dr Kelly Sennholz (@MtnMD) December 13, 2016
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
Call 'Em Out
When you notice something wrong in the way the Press Poodles are behaving - like normalizing Trump's shit, Both Sides, etc:
AP: 212-621-1500
ABC: 212-456-7777
CBS: 212-975-4321
CNN: 434-827-1500
NBC/MSNBC: 212-664-4444
NPR: 202-513-2000
NTY: 212-556-1234
NTY DC: 202-862-0300
WaPo: 202-334-7410
WSJ: 212-416-2000
Welcome To The Trump Era
All that is not profitable is prohibited.
All that is not prohibited is mandatory.
Curiouser
It's one guy - and it's CNN - but there seems to be an increasing amount of smoke.
Dmitri Alperovitch said that their firm did, in fact, catch 2 groups associated w Russian intelligence agencies in the act#TrumpLeaks pic.twitter.com/jJDyfBwUmM— Khary Penebaker (@kharyp) December 13, 2016
Today's Tweet
You wanted gubmint to run like a bidness - well, here it comes.
So Trumpians, still think Trump has your best interests in mind? DUH! pic.twitter.com/VWTSAQDTTW— philip harris (@pharris830) December 13, 2016
Monday, December 12, 2016
"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.
Sunday, December 11, 2016
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 šŗšøš³️š (@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
Saturday, December 10, 2016
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.
Friday, December 09, 2016
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
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"?
Tell me again - how is this putz in any way "Representative Of The People"?
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.
Thursday, December 08, 2016
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
Today's Zeitgeist
Stop worrying about your Social Security. Considering Trump's picks for EPA & FDA, plus the GOP's plan for repealing ObamaCare, won't none of us live long enough to need it.
New Music
Rican Beach --Hurray For The Riff Raff
Ephesians 6:12
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Alynda Lee Segarra wrote "Rican Beach," the first song from Hurray for the Riff Raff's forthcoming album, The Navigator, about a fictional city which has been segregated and gentrified beyond recognition. "You can take my life, but don't take my home," she sings with worn pride. Upon its release, Segarra dedicated the song to protesters currently standing ground over safe water at Standing Rock, North Dakota, and in PeƱuelas, Puerto Rico, where coal ash waste is contaminating the drinking supply, sharply connecting literally toxic forms of community displacement to their modern, equally insidious analogue.
Ephesians 6:12
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Ace Lyons
A retired USN Admiral weighs in on killing our way out of our problems in the Middle East.
(via Right Wing Watch)
Interesting that this is one of the boneheads Trump listens to, even as he continues to look at David Patraeus (basically the "Father of" the Counterinsurgency Strategy this Lyons guy says is the wrong way to go).
But then take a gander at this one from Tiger Beat On The Potomac (thanks, Charlie), aka: Politico, with the understanding that pimping confusion and volatility is Trump's stock-in-trade, and it gets a tiny bit easier to see that maintaining any kind of delicate balance anywhere in the world is in no way any kind of priority for Mr Unpredictable.
In confusion there is profit.
This isn't politics; it's a fucking robbery.
(via Right Wing Watch)
Interesting that this is one of the boneheads Trump listens to, even as he continues to look at David Patraeus (basically the "Father of" the Counterinsurgency Strategy this Lyons guy says is the wrong way to go).
But then take a gander at this one from Tiger Beat On The Potomac (thanks, Charlie), aka: Politico, with the understanding that pimping confusion and volatility is Trump's stock-in-trade, and it gets a tiny bit easier to see that maintaining any kind of delicate balance anywhere in the world is in no way any kind of priority for Mr Unpredictable.
In confusion there is profit.
This isn't politics; it's a fucking robbery.
No More Mr Nice Jesus
It should be a good one to point at and say, "Wouldn't it be nice if Christians could forget all the shit and get back to being all Christian-y?" But this actually is the Jesus some "Christians" believe in now, so I'm not holding out a lot of hope on that one.
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