Random Shots

(...and cheap ones at that)

The good news is that Billy Graham is still dead.

The bad news is that Franklin Graham still isn't.

The good news is that Billy Graham recently discovered there is no god.

The bad news is that we have to live in this fucked up world without George Carlin.

Good Neighbor Sam

More smoke.
More mud in the water.
More confusion and chaos.

The point is to make people think there's no such thing as 'objective reality'. There are no 'facts'. Nobody's capable of either telling the truth, or knowing the truth when they hear it.

This part of the plan - at its core - is to make it look like there's no plan.

But there is a plan, and it's about Power & Money. Because there's always a plan, and it's always about power & money.

The closer Mueller gets to showing us the enormity of this crime, the bigger the spectacle has to be to keep us entertained.

The crime gets wider & deeper & bigger & uglier, so now it's Sam Nunberg's turn to go on national TV and set himself on fire for our amusement.

Are you not entertained.
WaPo, Aaron Blake:

Former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg had a surreal day Monday. After deciding he wouldn't cooperate with a grand jury subpoena from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's Russia investigation, he went on a media blitz to, well, air some things. Each interview seemed intent upon out-shocking the last.

By the end, he had suggested that President Trump may have worked with the Russians, dared Mueller to throw him in jail, repeatedly inquired as to what journalists thought his fate might be, and said he thought Trump knew about that Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer. Nunberg did no fewer than three separate interviews with CNN, two with MSNBC and several others.

So what on earth was all that about? Below are some ideas. (And it bears noting that not all of these are mutually exclusive.)

It was an elaborate, Roger Stone-ian show

- and -

During Monday's interviews, Nunberg oscillated between saying Trump hadn't colluded and suggesting he might have had some arrangement with Russia. He at one point said Trump was too smart to fall victim to Russian blackmail, only to later say that Trump “caused this, because he’s an idiot.” He also said that “there is nobody who hates [Trump] more than me.”

“I'm not a Donald Trump fan, as I told you before, okay?” Nunberg told CNN. “He treated me like crap.”
Stay focused , and remember - the guy can say he's your enemy's enemy, but that don't make him your friend.

You want a friend? Buy a dog.

Today's GIF

Honoring #MeToo and #TimesUp:

Meme For A Day

I only wish this made as much sense to some people as it oughta.

Smarm Space

Smarm Space is the gap - big or small - between what you know you should do and what someone thinks they can force you to do. 

It's also the distance between what you're committed to do and what you actually do.

In sales, it's the difference between what you promise before you close, and what you deliver afterwards.

Most of us will hold up our end of a bargain. We sign the papers and we come through with the goods. Being true to our word - being honorable - we understand that's what keeps any civilization from coming completely unglued.

Smarm Space is where the loopholes are; where loopholes can be manufactured by a good-n-smarmy lawyer.

Smarm Space is where 45* lives, because he is without a sense of honor.

Trump Inc, at Propublica:

Today's Tweet

It's no surprise learning McConnell wanted to help 45*. I think lotsa folks were willing to look the other way - and/or waste a vote on Bernie or Jill Stein or Sponge Bob because they were so sure about Hillary winning it. I think what most people really had in mind was to keep the margin manageable.

What has to fuck with everybody's head is the purely and nakedly cynical ambition that McConnell and Ryan demonstrated then, and insist on staying with now.

EXCLUSIVE: @DenisMcDonough says Mitch McConnell “watered down” the White House’s statement on Russian interference in the election. #MTP pic.twitter.com/VLeAWmZXBt

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) March 4, 2018

 

Today's Pix

(click one and enjoy the magic)

Some Art

Gunduz Aghayev:

In 1998-2002 he studied in Azerbaijan State Painters' Academy. His first exhibition was held in 2004. The second exhibition of his works was held in Baku Muesum Center. His exhibitions were held outside of country, as well. He took part in exhibitions held in Russia (2008), Turkey (2011) as well as "Friendship" exhibition held by the French embassy in 2002 and international artistry exhibition held in Turkmenistan in 2013.

Also he participated in the "Art for democracy" project. As a protest against injustice in his country he turned to cartoon genre and faced strong pressure; he was sacked of all projects. After constant pressure, in 2014 he left Azerbaijan.

ProLeft Podcast

(paraphrasing) "OK, you're vegan - I get it, and good for you - but this is the zombie apocalypse, and we're all sorry your dietary preferences aren't being accommodated, but this can of Beefaroni is pretty much the difference between living to fight another day and crapping out completely."

The Professional Left

podcast

Don't forget the swag

Oh, Those Moonies

"...they cling to guns or religion..."  Yeah - that stupid Obama guy.

Vox, Tara Isabella Burton:

As the debate over gun control raged across America in the wake of last month’s school shooting in Florida, a group of worshippers wearing bullet crowns and toting AR-15 rifles gathered in a Pennsylvania church this week to hold a “commitment ceremony” for about 250 couples.

The ceremony was held at the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary in Newfoundland, Pennsylvania. The weapons, which Reuters reported were unloaded, were meant to represent the biblical “rod of iron” referenced in the Book of Revelation, used by God’s representative to dominate his enemies.

As the nearby Wallenpaupack Area School District moved its students to another school over concerns about the armed celebrants, church leaders argued for the power of guns to do God’s will — and protect the innocent. “Each of us is called to use the power of the ‘rod of iron’ not to arm or oppress as has been done in satanic kingdoms of this world, but to protect God’s children,” said the church leader, Rev. Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon, in a statement. “If the football coach who rushed into the building to defend students from the shooter with his own body had been allowed to carry a firearm, many lives, including his own, could have been saved.”
One thing I noticed: in every picture I've seen so far, all of the AR15s are 'safed' with a zip tie through the receiver, making it almost impossible to load them with any ammo.

If the guns (and the gun owners) are blessed with ethereal powers for good, then earthly measures to ensure they don't fall into evil ways are totally unnecessary.

It's almost as if there's some kinda scam going on here.

Trae Crowder

It's National Heart-Wrenching Tragedy Day again - already?

Trump Inc Podcast

Not quite what the name might imply - this is WNYC looking into 45*'s finances.

This one looks at how 45* managed to go broke running a joint that basically had a license to steal.



I stayed at the Taj a few times when I was selling hospital stuff in the 90s, manning an exhibitor booth during the annual meetings of New Jersey ER docs.

It was always in February, but still, the place never had any kinda crowd at all.

A few dozen in the gaming rooms, never more than 8 or 10 people at any of the bars, and you could walk into any restaurant in the place and get a table any time - never any live entertainment, even in the big theaters.

And these meetings were always scheduled over a weekend.

I never noticed anything, of course.  It just gives me more of a really creepy feeling thinking about one more shitty thing involving Donald Trump, to go along with thinking about what shitty things he and his gang are pulling every day he stays in office.

Fever Swamp

Lies
Damned lies
Statistics
Politicians
The internet

Don't forget what we're up against.

WaPo, Craig Timberg & Drew Harwell:

Forty-seven minutes after news broke of a high school shooting in Parkland, Fla., the posters on the anonymous chat board 8chan had devised a plan to bend the public narrative to their own designs: “Start looking for [Jewish] numerology and crisis actors.”

The voices from this dark corner of the Internet quickly coalesced around a plan of attack: Use details gleaned from news reports and other sources to push false information about one of America’s deadliest school shootings.

The posters on anonymous forums, a cauldron of far-right extremist politics, over the next few hours speculated about the shooter’s ethnicity (“Hope the kid isn’t white”) and cracked off-color jokes. They began crafting false explanations about the massacre, including that actors were posing as students, in hopes of blunting what they correctly guessed would be a revived interest in gun control.

The success of this effort would soon illustrate how lies that thrive on raucous online platforms increasingly shape public understanding of major events. As much of the nation mourned, the story concocted on anonymous chat rooms soon burst onto YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, where the theories surged in popularity.

I see plenty of examples of spin -and some pretty hard spin - on "the left", but most of the nonsense that qualifies as truly toxic garbage is coming from "the right".

So don't fall for the Both Sides bullshit.

Today's Tweet

I think it's easy to see why some people scoff at the notion of Global Climate Shift. 

They look at these graphs (eg) and they see about a 1°C rise over 150 years - having heard the semi-panic in "the liberal voices of the left" about the catastrophe coming if it rises another 1 or 2 degrees. 

I hear this one all time: "It takes 150 years to go up 1°, so in the next 150-200 years - before it's a real problem - they'll come up with something to fix it and make it OK."

Of course, that's old news because the pace is accelerating, and the point of no return is not just closer than they figured a few years ago, but could be right on top of us now.

Most "conservatives" I know aren't big on Continuing Education, preferring the comfortably numb position of assuming all that new stuff is just Political Correctness. Plus the voices coming from "the right" have been telling them for 30 years it's all nonsense because "the truth is always somewhere in the middle", and they buy into that shit even when it's a question of 2+2=4 vs 2+2=6. So they can blow it off as just more political noise that they don't need to worry about.

We get so conditioned that when we see the "once-in-a-lifetime storm" is happening about every 2 or 3 years, we can regard each one as the anomaly instead of understanding that this freaky shit is actually the new norm.

I think that - along with some other things - is starting to change. 

Because the pendulum swings.

Want to see 168 years of climate change in two minutes?

Here is our movie, updated through 2017. pic.twitter.com/ppwXgFPGdA

— Robert Rohde (@rarohde) January 18, 2018

 

Nature Bats Last

While we're having to waste time arguing over stoopid shit that should be obvious to a cave snail, we've got a problem that is fast-becoming truly unsolvable.

Cape Morris Jesup at the northern tip of Greenland just registered a temperature of +6 C (43 F).

Here is a map of the parts of Europe that are currently colder than the northernmost weather station on Earth. pic.twitter.com/8LoJjSxGxL

— Robert Rohde (@rarohde) February 24, 2018

 

Live Science, Mindy Weisberger
During the Arctic winter, when the sun hides from October to March, the average temperature in the frozen north typically hovers around a bone-chilling minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 20 degrees Celsius). But this year, the Arctic is experiencing a highly unusual heat wave.

On Feb. 20, the temperature in Greenland not only climbed above freezing — 32 degrees F (0 degrees C) — it stayed there for over 24 hours, according to data from the Danish Meteorological Institute. And on Saturday (Feb. 24) the temperature on Greenland's northern tip reached 43 degrees F (6 degrees C), leading climate scientists to describe the phenomenon on Twitter as "crazy," "weird," "scary stuff" and "simply shocking."

Weather conditions that drive this bizarre temperature surge have visited the Arctic before, typically appearing about once in a decade, experts told Live Science. However, the last such spike in Arctic winter warmth took place in February 2016 — much more recently than a decade ago, according to the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). And climbing Arctic temperatures combined with rapid sea-ice loss are creating a new type of climate feedback loop that could accelerate Arctic warming, melting all Arctic sea ice decades earlier than scientists once thought.

Last week, it was warmer at Cape Morris Jessup in Greenland than it was in Paris.