Slouching Towards Oblivion

Sunday, November 26, 2017

Defending The Indefensible


Kyle Mantyla, RightWingWatch - here's a quick look and a clip from a radio talk show in Alabama:

Extremist anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ activist Flip Benham was among the Religious Right activists who gathered in Alabama last week to defend Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore amid multiple reports that Moore had pursued sexual relationships with teenage girls when he was in his 30s. Yesterday, Benham was interviewed by Alabama radio hosts Matt Murphy and Andrea Lindenberg on their “Matt & Aunie” show about the press conference and the allegations against Moore, and to say that the interview was a debacle would be an understatement.


These radio poodles are not exactly raving lefty loonies. So there's (apparently) some real resistance to this Roy Moore clown. And it'll be interesting to see how the exit polls shake out.

The Nazi Next Door


NYT put up a piece by Richard Fausset that everybody seems to think is "normalizing" Nazis. Kinda hard to disagree with that.

Here's a look:

HUBER HEIGHTS, Ohio — Tony and Maria Hovater were married this fall. They registered at Target. On their list was a muffin pan, a four-drawer dresser and a pineapple slicer.

Ms. Hovater, 25, was worried about Antifa bashing up the ceremony. Weddings are hard enough to plan for when your fiancé is not an avowed white nationalist.

But Mr. Hovater, in the days leading up to the wedding, was somewhat less anxious. There are times when it can feel toxic to openly identify as a far-right extremist in the Ohio of 2017. But not always. He said the election of President Trump helped open a space for people like him, demonstrating that it is not the end of the world to be attacked as the bigot he surely is: “You can just say, ‘Yeah, so?’ And move on.”


Nice try, NYT.  But you fucked it up. Again.

Here's a piece from James Hamblin at The Atlantic, mocking the Times as they just "put this out there and let you guys see for yourselves how awful it is that Nazis are just like everybody else":

“What can I say,” jokes Stevenson, as he sees me taking note of the spice rack. “I like garlic powder.”

We both chuckle. The shimmering evening sun glints off the porcelain saltshaker and casts a long shadow onto the linoleum. As I follow its path, his wife Stephanie appears in the kitchen doorway, an exasperated look on her face.

“You forgot to put the toilet seat down again,” she says, rolling her eyes and pulling her phone out of her back pocket. Stephanie is pretty. Her hair is saffron and flaxen, and she wears jeans also, and she has a wry smile.

Stephanie Stevenson is followed by a normal dog, who walks into the room with a slight limp, and Stephen pets it. He leans in.

“The Jews control all the money, and the world would be better off if they were dead,” he says, petting the dog. “Who’s a good boy?”

The question is rhetorical. I ask about the wallpaper.

Some people disagree with Stevenson’s political views.

“He’s a nice enough guy,” said the local grocer, Butch Tarmac, a registered Democrat. “He buys apples and pancake mix. I also like those things. But I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on the bit about the one true race cleansing the soil and commanding what is rightfully theirs.”

Dreamtime Timeline



The bingo card is likely to expand by leaps and bounds - and I think we'll have plenty of candidates, cuz there's probably a whole battalion of these assholes we don't even know about right know. 


















Saturday, November 25, 2017

Trae Crowder

"Happy holidays - sorry everything sucks."

InfoPorn


The Podcast



Sweeping Generalization Alert


The pizza guy is not really a pizza guy.
The lady plumber is not really a plumber.



What we see on way too many cable news shows is not news.
Those journalists on your TV machine are not really journalists.

It's not a news program. It's a performance.  It's InfoPorn.

Thursday, November 23, 2017

Today's WTF

Dan Avery, NewNowNext:

MassResistance is an anti-gay hate group that opposes marriage equality and anti-bullying programs as attempts to “normalize homosexuality.” Members even attacked Governor Mitt Romney as being too soft on LGBT rights.

So it’s a little surprising the group’s Texas chapter opened its teen summit with… this.


That is possibly the best combination of Coming Out and Fuck-You-Trolling ever.

Today's Tweet



Daddy State Rule #2: Every boast is an admission of inadequacy and/or an attempt to take credit for someone else's work.

 

Today's Today

Happy Thanksgiving






Wednesday, November 22, 2017

If It's Not Collusion


...what the fuck is it?

Terry Gross, Fresh Air on NPR 

Today's Tweet



A poem

 

Not Just Yet


I think it has to be obvious to most of us that there's a substantial chunk of the deep south that's still pretty fucked up in the head.

But once in a while we see that faint glimmer of hope.

Patricia Murphy, Daily Beast:

B.L. Shirley is a Republican woman from a Republican county who always—always—votes Republican. And yet, on a windy, grey morning last weekend, the Talladega, Alabama, retiree found herself in, of all places, a Democrat’s campaign office, wondering just what she could do to defeat the GOP candidate running for a seat in the U.S. Senate from her state.

“Roy Moore,” she said, when asked why she would go canvassing for Democrat Doug Jones before the special election on Dec. 12. “I think Roy Moore is an impostor. I am a Christian and I don’t want to be counted in his camp. He’s a divisive person.”
Things change when we change. And they change for the better or for the worse according to how we change ourselves.

Today's Both Sides



Max Greenwood, The Hill:

The Republican National Committee (RNC) and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) will not support GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore in Alabama's special election, even after President Trump stood by him on Tuesday.


Officials with the RNC and the NRSC, the party's Senate campaign arm, told The Associated Press they have no intention of reconsidering their decision to pull support for Moore, who has been accused of pursuing sexual and romantic relationships with teenage girls while he was in his 30s.

The two GOP committees severed ties with the candidate earlier this month, ending their financial and field support for his campaign. Dozens of Republican officials have called on Moore in recent days to withdraw his Senate bid.

Think about it for just a short minute: Al Franken gets slagged and the Dems are on him like he's moldy bread. But Trumpublicans had to have a meeting to decide where they stood on Pedophilia.



What was the holdup?

I remember when "conservatives" were saying a Democrat couldn't order pizza without running it by a focus group.

Yeah - and again: Trumpulicans had to huddle up and be told that pedophilia is something they should probably not support.

PEDOPHILIA...

...for fuck's sake.

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Today's Pix

















Today's Podcast



Preet Bharara's podcast - with Jeff Flake:


Flake seems like a decent and at least marginally reasonable guy, but don't mistake him for any kinda hero.

The issue of guns comes up at about 34:00, and Bharara asks him about Congress Critters voting with the NRA every time because they're afraid of what the Ammosexuals will do if they don't vote that way. Flake runs as fast as possible to the False Equivalence of a Both-Sides response, saying there're plenty of instances of members "on the left" being influenced by big money donors blah blah blah.

I think about that for a short minute and I'm left with the notion that Flake is saying it's OK for him to trade dead kids for the safety of a continued stream of campaign donations and the near-guarantee of no primary challenges.

In a very real sense, he admitted his vote against gun control is - and has always been - for sale.