Slouching Towards Oblivion

Friday, August 18, 2017

Hey Hey - Goo-ood Bye


WaPoAshley ParkerPhilip RuckerRobert Costa and Damian Paletta

“No matter what happens, Steve is a honey badger,” said this person, who like others interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. “Steve’s in a good place. He doesn’t care. He’s going to support the president and push the agenda, whether he’s on the inside or the outside.”

Bannon doesn't care.

First off, he knows he's insulated. He doesn't have to worry about the effects of shitty draconian policies on regular people cuz he's not regular people.

Guys at Bannon's level pretty much think they own the government anyway (or at least they think they should - 'course we haven't exactly been giving them whole big bunches of reasons to think otherwise). And there's always the probability that he just enjoys having the power, and the time, to dabble.

Wanting to prevent ridiculously rich and craven people from "governing" at their leisurely  whim was kinda the whole point of 'The United States of America' in first place, wasn't it?

So lemme see - what might keep these assholes kinda reined in so they'd hafta spend more time minding their own goddamned business and less time fucking with the rest of us?

Anybody wanna talk Tax Reform?  Be ready - cuz that's coming soon, but for now:

The Un-Poodling Of The Press


And thus it starts. Some of the Press Poodles have finally had enough, and they're actually calling some the liars on their lies - sometimes live, in real time, on the air.

Don Lemon smacks Jack Kingston:


Jake Tapper points out some of 45*'s malarkey:


And I'm hoping to be a little hopeful that maybe kinda sorta we're seeing the Poodles pushing back against the False Equivalence bullshit - bullshit, btw, that they've been pimping right along with assholes like 45* and his asshole acolytes like Jack Kingston.

Obviously, they're not there yet, but I'll give the 4th Estate a baby bulldog today instead of the usual rainbow poodle.


Way to go, guys. 

We are trying to be not so fucked(?)

Cakin' It


Weekend Update Summer Edition:




And in case it's blocked, here's the URL

He Has No Soul

"He is the malevolent fury..."

Lawrence O'Donnell with Bill Moyers


And here are some of the art pieces Lawrence referred to:
hat tip = Walker Thornton




















Monday, August 21, 2017


Thursday, August 17, 2017

Trumpy Bear

Like everybody else, I keep thinking it just can't get any weirder - and then it does.

I have no idea if this is a real thing, but here it is.


The company peddling this thing is apparently real - looks that way anyway.

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste or intelligence of the American consumer.

A Letter

Stonewall Jackson - Monument Avenue, Richmond VA

From 2 direct descendants of Stonewall Jackson.

Slate, Jack Christian and Warren Christian - Monuments Must Go

We are native Richmonders and also the great, great grandsons of Stonewall Jackson. As two of the closest living relatives to Stonewall, we are writing today to ask for the removal of his statue, as well as the removal of all Confederate statues from Monument Avenue. They are overt symbols of racism and white supremacy, and the time is long overdue for them to depart from public display. Overnight, Baltimore has seen fit to take this action. Richmond should, too.

- snip -

Confederate monuments like the Jackson statue were never intended as benign symbols. Rather, they were the clearly articulated artwork of white supremacy. Among many examples, we can see this plainly if we look at the dedication of a Confederate statue at the University of North Carolina, in which a speaker proclaimed that the Confederate soldier “saved the very life of the Anglo-Saxon race in the South.” Disturbingly, he went on to recount a tale of performing the “pleasing duty” of “horse whipping” a black woman in front of federal soldiers. All over the South, this grotesque message is conveyed by similar monuments. As importantly, this message is clear to today’s avowed white supremacists.

As is usually the case here in USAmerica Inc, we get hung up on the symbol itself - or we get too use to feeling comfortable with the hagiographic bullshit swirling around those symbols - and we forget about what the damned thing actually stands for.

Participation Trophies.

Jefferson Davis - Monument Avenue, Richmond VA

JEB Stuart - Monument Avenue, Richmond VA

Robert E Lee - Monument Avenue, Richmond VA

That Funny Aussie Guy

Jim Jefferies

"A name so American I can't even pronounce it."

Today's GIF

It's like a warning flasher. I wonder if somebody could develop a lapel pin like this.

Today's Tweet



Learn sumpthin', bubba

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Keith


How far from acceptable


Hardening Evidence

So, this isn't fully baked yet - it has to be submitted for peer-review and then maybe we'll see it in the journals.

Vox, Brian Resnick

One of the starkest, darkest findings in the survey comes from a simple question: How evolved do you think other people are?

Kteily, the co-author on this paper, pioneered this new and disturbing way to measure dehumanization — the tendency to see others as being less than human. He simply shows study participants the following (scientifically inaccurate) image of a human ancestor slowly learning how to stand on two legs and become fully human.

Participants are asked to rate where certain groups fall on this scale from 0 to 100. Zero is not human at all; 100 is fully human.



- and (btw) -

Also important:
Alt-righters in the sample aren’t all that concerned about the economy. The survey used a common set of Pew question that asks about the current state of the economy, and about whether participants feel like things are going to improve for them. Here, both groups reported about the same levels of confidence in the economy.

What’s more, “the alt-right expected more improvement in the state of the economy relative to the non-alt-right sample,” the study states (perhaps because their preferred leader is president).

Fake Jesus wept.

This Gets Weirder Still

"So you're not really a White Supremacist?"

"Apparently not."


It's a wonderment.

hat tip = @justcallmeBABA

Cornered

Christopher Cantwell - Alt-Right, Smug-White, Fucking Nazi Ass-Wipe - the guy they spotlighted in that VICE piece on HBO a few days ago.

It's the Age Of Poor Poor Pitiful Me.


Something that just got clearer: these jagoffs talk trash all the time about how "all those people" are getting everything for free, and they're a burden to society, and honest tax-paying Americans always have to pick up the tab, and blah blah blah.

But Cantwell's not bitchin' because somebody else is gettin' the goodies - he's bitchin' cuz he's not gettin' the goodies.

There's a lot of weirdness rattling around in my brain about all this - economic pyramids, and wealth disparity, and Maslov's Hierarchy, and the downward pressure of that Supply Side crap, and what always happens when there's too much power in too few hands and too many people with nothing more to lose.

The kicker is - I wasn't expecting Cantwell to be so scared. You don't cry like that if you're not scared.  And that's quite the odd little wrinkle.