It's Changing

It doesn't matter if you believe it or you don't - climate change is not some global conspiracy of thousands of scientists and hundreds of national governments being valiantly resisted by a plucky band of billionaires.

National Phenology Network (USANPN.org)

Nobody's trying to snooker you out of a few extra tax bucks and your F-350 Super Duty. Get over yourself.  We'd just like your help figuring out how we can all keep what we've got without committing suicide-by-toxic-waste. Can we try that for a while?

Today's Tweet

bury me with this screencap pic.twitter.com/gU5cTlf48O

— crumb dumpster (@xylodemon) February 28, 2017

Alive And Well

These idiot groups always get puffed up when there's a Democratic POTUS, but then for whatever reason they settle down a bit when the Repubs take over. 

Not this time.

Van Jones at New Republic:

These groups—Klansmen, neo-Nazis, white nationalists—did more than talk and meet and march. They plotted to turn their hatred into violence. “They laid plans to attack courthouses, banks, festivals, funerals, schools, mosques, churches, synagogues, clinics, water-treatment plants, and power grids,” reports the Southern Poverty Law Center. “They used firearms, bombs, C-4 plastic explosives, knives, and grenades.”

It would be all too easy to turn away from this reality, or consign it to the distant past. But Milano turned his camera lens directly toward it. For many, these images will be shocking. Others will be more saddened than surprised. But thanks to his work, we are all met with the direct evidence that white supremacist groups are thriving in America.

This goes on not more than 2 hours south of my place:

Today's GIF

In keeping with how weird it's been lately, here's a bear playing tetherball:

Countervailing

From Mock Paper Scissors, a list of people banding together on Twitter to form a Shadow Cabinet in order to fact-check and countervail 45*'s bullshit:

• LAURENCE TRIBE, “Attorney General” — Constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School.
• MARIELENA HINCAPIE, “INS/ICE/Immigration” — executive director, National Immigration Law Center
• DERAY MCKESSON, “Justice Issues” – Co-founder, Black Lives Matter, civil rights activist.
• ROBERT REICH, “Labor/Commerce” — Ex-Labor Secretary, best-selling author.
• LAURA TYSON, “Treasury/Trade” — Ex-chair CEA, professor at BerkeleyHass Business School
• DAVID CAY JOHNSTON, “IRS” — Pulitzer prize-winning journo/author. Founder of new DCReport.
• DIANE RAVITCH, “Education” — Professor at NYU, author/editor of 24 books on education.
• JOAN CLAYBROOK, “Transportation” — Ex-head of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
• ROB WEISSMAN, “Consumer Agencies” — President, Public Citizen.
• DAVID FREEMAN, “Energy & EPA” — Ex-head of TVA & NYS Power Authority.
• DAVID HIMMELSTEIN, STEFFIE WOOLFINDLER, “HHS/Health” — Distinguished Professors at Pub. Health School, CUNY/Hunter; co-founders Physicians for National Health.
• COLIN KAHL, “NSA/Terrorism” – V.P. Biden’s National Security Adviser.
• ROSA BROOKS, “State Department” — Ex–DoD counselor, author, columnist Foreign Policy.
• ANDREW BACEVICH, “Defense Department” — Author/historian, BU.Pardee School Global Affairs.

@ShadowingTrump

Today's Tweet

'Good luck Great Britain'
Carnival in Germany. pic.twitter.com/sNRjfHEmNG

— Jelle Simons (@jelle_simons) February 27, 2017

Post-Truth Credibility

Vox:

Back on February 18, CBS News’s Major Garrett reported that Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as secretary of the Navy was likely to withdraw from consideration. 

If the press secretary habitually tells obvious lies (like about Inauguration Day crowd sizes) or says plausible-sounding things that later turn out to be false (like indignantly denying Garrett’s story), then he ends up like the proverbial boy who cried wolf. When there’s a crisis — a natural disaster, a foreign war, a terrorist attack, a bank panic, an epidemic, anything — the Trump administration, like all previous administrations, is going to want to credibly convey accurate information to the public. But it’s not clear it will be able to.

45* and Company lie to us a lot - seems like all the time, actually.  Either they're lying by design, or because they're incompetent so they're doing it just because one guy has no fucking clue what the other guys are doing or saying, or all of the above, or all of the above plus any variety and combination of other reasons.

It's just a constant stream of bullshit.

And some of the things we know now have to make us suspicious of everything that will come out of every department from now on (eg: 45* asked for an Intelligence Report that would fit the criteria for Muslim Ban 2.0).

So what will be the difference between this month's Labor Stats and reality? There's not much standing in 45*'s way as far as reporting an enormously inflated Unemployment number, thinking that'll support his claims from last year during his campaign, and now justify the bullshit he's trying to float about having inherited a mess from Obama.

This shit has to end. And it doesn't just run its course and burn itself out and go away on its own. A little retrospect informs us that power at this level is not ceded lightly. 

It's said that nobility dies by its own hand. That can mean a few different things, but mostly it means people at the top of the pyramid give up their power when someone forces them to do it.

Honorable people will have to step up and make this end.

Featured Artist - Pawel Kucynski

The Un-Coverage

Wondering why this guy isn't a household name.

ITV:

Srinivas Kuchibhotla, aged 32, died following the shooting in a crowded Kansas City bar, while Alok Madasani, also 32, was injured. Ian Grillot, a 24-year-old American who jumped to the defence of the two men, was also shot.

Witnesses told police the shooter shouted "get out of my country" before opening fire in Olathe.

Officers have charged 51-year-old Adam Purinton with murder and attempted murder following the incident on Wednesday.

-and-

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said any attempt to connect the president's rhetoric on immigrants to the tragedy in Kansas "would be absurd."

Just another isolated incident that can't possibly be connected to all the others. 

Yeah, OK - go ahead cuz we're all buyin' that shit, right?

Today's Quote

I found much that was alarming about being a citizen during the tenures of Richard Nixon and George W Bush. But whatever I may have seen as their limitations of character or intellect, neither was anything like as humanly impoverished as Trump is: ignorant of government, of history, of science, of philosophy of art, incapable expressing or recognizing subtlety or nuance, destitute of all decency, and wielding a vocabulary of seventy-seven words that is better called Jerkish than English.

--Philip Roth