I love the intertoobz
STOP!! I'm dying.. 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/MUo5oUMlsZ— Molly (@MsMollyRachael) December 13, 2018
Friday, December 14, 2018
Today's Tweet
I love the intertoobz
Thursday, December 13, 2018
Today's Tweet
Post-Truth assholes will say anything as they try to make the world fit their fantasies.
"Heather Heyer died of a heart attack."— Southern Poverty Law Center (@splcenter) December 12, 2018
"It was a Michigan man who drove the car that killed her, not Fields."
"Fields was under attack."
All false. All debunked by Fields' trial. He's been convicted of first-degree murder. https://t.co/nzXl0BX5Rh
Like A Boss
I'm not a Nancy Pelosi fan. She takes a back seat to no one when it comes to that weird and semi-phony politician thing they all do on occasion.
But she delivers in the clutch. And given a chance in the oval office the other day, she put an epic bitch slap on that big orange fuck that I hope portends what he can expect from all of us from now on.
Jennifer Rubin, WaPo:
For all those Americans who have pined for moments when someone would say to President Trump, “That’s just false, Mr. President” or “Excuse me, but you’ve been fact-checked on that repeatedly,” Tuesday brought moral vindication. If you’ve found yourself defending the concept of objective truth or furious that the conservative movement has entered some postmodernist moment when facts are whatever you say they are, soon-to-be-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) delivered in a face-to-face confrontation over funding for Trump’s border wall. (As an aside, I’m at a loss to understand how any Democrat could oppose literally the only elected Democrat who has publicly called out the president to his face, scoring a direct hit.)
She ferociously held her ground in an Oval Office showdown, daring him to make good on his boast that he had the votes in the House for his wall. Pelosi declared that “there are no votes in the House, a majority of votes, for a wall — no matter where you start.” Trump insisted that he’d have the votes if he wanted them. " Well, then go do it. Go do it," she said confidently. Wham!
She managed to get under Trump’s skin. Eli Stokols of the Los Angeles Times later reported, "It sort of spiraled out of control, and when the President left the Oval Office after Pelosi and Schumer left, a number of people saw him, he stormed out of the Oval, walked into an anteroom just off the Oval Office, and had in his hand a folder of briefing papers, and he just scattered them out of frustration, threw them across the room and expressed frustration to the people who were present.”
But she delivers in the clutch. And given a chance in the oval office the other day, she put an epic bitch slap on that big orange fuck that I hope portends what he can expect from all of us from now on.
Jennifer Rubin, WaPo:
For all those Americans who have pined for moments when someone would say to President Trump, “That’s just false, Mr. President” or “Excuse me, but you’ve been fact-checked on that repeatedly,” Tuesday brought moral vindication. If you’ve found yourself defending the concept of objective truth or furious that the conservative movement has entered some postmodernist moment when facts are whatever you say they are, soon-to-be-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) delivered in a face-to-face confrontation over funding for Trump’s border wall. (As an aside, I’m at a loss to understand how any Democrat could oppose literally the only elected Democrat who has publicly called out the president to his face, scoring a direct hit.)
She ferociously held her ground in an Oval Office showdown, daring him to make good on his boast that he had the votes in the House for his wall. Pelosi declared that “there are no votes in the House, a majority of votes, for a wall — no matter where you start.” Trump insisted that he’d have the votes if he wanted them. " Well, then go do it. Go do it," she said confidently. Wham!
- and -
Nevertheless, it was Pelosi who did what the media has not done — interject, fact-check to his face and refuse to allow him to operate in a parallel reality. It’s not just that Trump has blurred the difference between facts and lies, but that so few have stood up to him in the moment for all the public to see. Perhaps Pelosi will start a trend.
Nevertheless, it was Pelosi who did what the media has not done — interject, fact-check to his face and refuse to allow him to operate in a parallel reality. It’s not just that Trump has blurred the difference between facts and lies, but that so few have stood up to him in the moment for all the public to see. Perhaps Pelosi will start a trend.
It would seem The Once And Future Speaker has taken my advice and brushed up on her Sun Tzu:
When your adversary is of choleric temperament, aggravate him.
Bait him until he becomes arrogant and he overreaches - then crush him.
She set the bar back where it belongs - like a fuckin' boss.
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
In Search Of Real Americans
The people at our southern border have come here because deep inside, they have a strong desire for freedom, a reasonable expectation of justice and a powerful instinct for democracy.
I think that says quite a bit about them - but it says even more about the people who see them as enemies, and want to keep them out.
Jesus Rodriguez, Politico Magazine:
The caravan migrants who arrived at the border nearly a month ago don’t have a country. But they do have a government.
In the time since the caravan left Honduras in mid-October, the asylum-seekers have fashioned a proto-democracy out of their group of some 6,000 migrants overwhelmingly from Central America, most of whom have walked for most of the trip, at times hitching rides in the backs of cars or trucks.
To hear President Donald Trump tell it, the caravan is nothing more than a “lawless” mob of potentially violent criminals. But dozens of phone interviews and WhatsApp conversations with advocacy groups and migrants, as well as social media updates from groups on the ground, show that the migrants have organized a surprisingly sophisticated ruling structure, complete with everything from a press shop to a department of public works.
When the migrants needed to make public announcements, debate the best routes and vote on different plans, they established a nightly general assembly as a forum open to all, Athens-style. Their legislative floor was an abandoned truck parking lot or an unused sports stadium. Some of the migrants even took turns as communications directors, drafting press statements that were transmitted through a media group of more than 370 journalists on WhatsApp.
- and -
Ask some on the right to define the caravan and they might conspire about highly organized hordes of criminals funded by the Venezuelan state or billionaire philanthropist George Soros who want to rush the American border. (“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Trump said Oct. 31 in reference to the Soros claim, one day after the migrants elected their Governance and Dialogue Council.) Some liberals, on the other hand, will try to convince you that this is a hapless, hopeless lot with no agency, no rights and no recourse for help.
- and -
The only U.S. government representative who has taken action so far has been Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who traveled to the border in early December and helped broker the passage of five asylum-seekers across the border. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) swiftly criticized Jayapal, blasting her as a “congressional coyote.”
(Walter) Coello, the Honduran migrant who once had to negotiate for his life with MS-13, thinks he could rise above the classic Washington mudslinging and appeal to a higher sense of humanity. He knows exactly how he would lobby Trump if he was sitting across from him.
“First, may God bless you,” Coello would say. “We want work. We are not criminals. We hope that God will soften your heart.”
You know we're going to see The Ten Commandments at some point between now and Year Year's Day. And you know I'm about to reference the scenes where Chuck Heston's saying let my people go and Ann Baxter's fucking with Yul Brynner "hardeneing Pharoah's heart", right? And I knew you knew that.
Today's Tweet
That asteroid can't get here soon enough
For that “hard to buy for” person on your Xmas🎄 list:— ᎠᏌNᎬᎷYᎢᎻᎪNᏩ™️ (@Kris_Sacrebleu) December 11, 2018
Company sells edible butthole chocolates and offers a service for people to get custom molds of their buttholes. It even comes in packaging that says "Pure Belgian Chocolate."https://t.co/uRMkkal7dK
hat tip = @athyvaya
Tuesday, December 11, 2018
Guardians Of The Truth
That'll put a knot in his knickers
It has long been the first move in the authoritarian playbook: controlling the flow of information and debate that is freedom’s lifeblood. And in 2018, the playbook worked. Today, democracy around the world faces its biggest crisis in decades, its foundations undermined by invective from on high and toxins from below, by new technologies that power ancient impulses, by a poisonous cocktail of strongmen and weakening institutions. From Russia to Riyadh to Silicon Valley, manipulation and abuse of truth is the common thread in so many of this year’s major headlines, an insidious and growing threat to freedom.
- and -
In its highest forms, influence—the measure that has for nine decades been the focus of TIME’s Person of the Year—derives from courage. Like all human gifts, courage comes to us at varying levels and at varying moments. This year we are recognizing four journalists and one news organization who have paid a terrible price to seize the challenge of this moment: Jamal Khashoggi, Maria Ressa, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, and the Capital Gazette of Annapolis, Md.
They are representative of a broader fight by countless others around the world—as of Dec. 10, at least 52 journalists have been murdered in 2018—who risk all to tell the story of our time.
- and -
They are representative of a broader fight by countless others around the world—as of Dec. 10, at least 52 journalists have been murdered in 2018—who risk all to tell the story of our time.
Welcoming Some Chickens Back To The Roost
It seems obvious that Maria Butina is a key player in one of the many subplots in this whole Russia-Trump-GOP shit fest.
I've become pretty well convinced that one of the big reasons for the deafening silence coming from the Republicans in congress is that the NRA has been a major carrier for channeling Russian money into American politics.
Betsy Woodruff, Daily Beast:
Maria Butina, a Russian national who cultivated relationships with powerful American conservative activists, agreed Monday to plead guilty to conspiring to violate laws prohibiting covert foreign agents. As part of her agreement, which was reviewed by The Daily Beast, she has promised to cooperate with American law enforcement.
I've become pretty well convinced that one of the big reasons for the deafening silence coming from the Republicans in congress is that the NRA has been a major carrier for channeling Russian money into American politics.
Betsy Woodruff, Daily Beast:
As a result of the deal, Butina will become the first Russian national since the 2016 election to plead guilty to a crime connected to efforts to influence American politics. After running a gun rights organization in Russia, she moved to the United States, where she spent years building relationships with conservatives in hopes of influencing a future Republican presidential administration. During the campaign season, she questioned then-candidate Donald Trump about sanctions; built relationships in the upper echelons of the American gun rights community; arranged for NRA leaders to travel to Moscow; and bragged that she was a channel between Team Trump and the Kremlin, as The Daily Beast first revealed.
She also struck up a romance with Paul Erickson, a longtime Republican gadfly close to NRA leaders. He sang Disney songs with her on camera, called her his “Siberian princess” in emails reviewed by The Daily Beast, and—since her July arrest—has visited her regularly in jail.
In March 2015, according to the plea deal, Butina worked with an unnamed U.S. person—known to be Erickson—to draft a proposal for a diplomatic endeavor. Given the fraught relationships between the governments of Russia and the United States, she “cast herself as a possible unofficial transmitter of communications” between the two countries.
This thing is very deep and very wide.
And every day is a new illustration of the immediate need to get a handle on the problems caused by allowing too much money into our political system. Particularly the unregulated dark money that always fucks up a good thing. Always.
Every chapter in the consolidated American Theme Book has a cautionary tale about the shitty things rich people do when they get to thinking they can do whatever the fuck they want because they're rich and they own everything.
I'm gob-smacked thinking the "conservatives" can't quite get their little pea brains to remember the message of every fucking one of those John Wayne movies they say they love so much.
Suddenly, all these idiots are siding with bosses paying Liberty Valance and Santa Ana and Ned Pepper.
Anyway -
45* kept saying he was really rich, and didn't need anybody's help financing his campaign, but we knew all along that 1) he's not as rich as he claims, and 2) his disclosure forms were always a little fuzzy, never really divulging where the money came from during his run in the primaries.
And we can leave aside the fact that the Press Poodles gave him many millions in unearned media, cuz that only gets him so far.
And I'm not taking about the RNC raising and spending a jillion dollars after he got the nomination.
The efforts on his behalf came from people and places of very dubious repute, and so the money that went into those efforts is (and has to be) invisible.
But anyway again, I also like thinking about the turnaround where Ms Butina is concerned. Most people want to be released on bail while they maneuver their defense. Maria Butina knows she'll need protection from her "friends" for the rest of her life - so the greatest threat Mueller can make against her is to let her out of jail. And that's kinda fun.
Also fun is the thought of the NRA going into austerity mode, possibly because all that Russian money dried up - kinda sudden-like.
Old Ice
Chris Mooney, WaPo:
Over the past three decades of global warming, the oldest and thickest ice in the Arctic has declined by a stunning 95 percent, according the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s annual Arctic Report Card.
The finding suggests that the sea at the top of the world has already morphed into a new and very different state, with major implications not only for creatures such as walruses and polar bears, but in the long term, perhaps, for the pace of global warming itself.
The oldest ice can be thought of as a kind of glue that holds the Arctic together and, through its relative permanence, helps keep the Arctic cold even in long summers.
“The younger the ice, the thinner the ice, the easier it is to go away,” said Don Perovich, a scientist at Dartmouth who coordinated the sea ice section of the yearly report.
- and -
The new findings about the decreasing age of ice in the Arctic point to a less noticed aspect of the dramatic changes occurring there. When it comes to the icy cap atop the Arctic ocean, we tend to talk most often about its surface area — how much total ocean is covered by ice, rather than by open water. That’s easily visible — it can be glimpsed directly by satellite — and the area is, indeed, in clear decline.
But the loss of old and thick ice, and the simultaneous decline in the total ice volume, is even larger — and arguably a much bigger deal. Young and thin ice can regrow relatively quickly once the dark and cold winter sets in. But it may not add much stability or permanence to the Arctic sea ice system if it just melts out again the next summer.
In fairness, the ice volume has rebounded somewhat since 2012. And PIOMAS is only a model, cautioned the University of Washington’s Axel Schweiger, who runs the analysis. (The model draws upon direct measurements of ice thickness taken from submarines, satellites, and other sources.) Still, Schweiger agreed that when you think about the total volume of the ice, rather than its mere surface extent, you realize that far more has been lost.
“We’ve lost about half of the extent, we’ve lost half of the thickness, and if you multiply these two things, we’ve lost 75 percent of the September sea ice,” he said
Scientists get it wrong sometimes. I'll still take their word for things over the deniers because science is self-correcting - deniers will always just deny because that's what they believe, as opposed to people who can be convinced due to evidentiary knowledge.
Over the past three decades of global warming, the oldest and thickest ice in the Arctic has declined by a stunning 95 percent, according the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s annual Arctic Report Card.
The finding suggests that the sea at the top of the world has already morphed into a new and very different state, with major implications not only for creatures such as walruses and polar bears, but in the long term, perhaps, for the pace of global warming itself.
The oldest ice can be thought of as a kind of glue that holds the Arctic together and, through its relative permanence, helps keep the Arctic cold even in long summers.
“The younger the ice, the thinner the ice, the easier it is to go away,” said Don Perovich, a scientist at Dartmouth who coordinated the sea ice section of the yearly report.
- and -
The new findings about the decreasing age of ice in the Arctic point to a less noticed aspect of the dramatic changes occurring there. When it comes to the icy cap atop the Arctic ocean, we tend to talk most often about its surface area — how much total ocean is covered by ice, rather than by open water. That’s easily visible — it can be glimpsed directly by satellite — and the area is, indeed, in clear decline.
But the loss of old and thick ice, and the simultaneous decline in the total ice volume, is even larger — and arguably a much bigger deal. Young and thin ice can regrow relatively quickly once the dark and cold winter sets in. But it may not add much stability or permanence to the Arctic sea ice system if it just melts out again the next summer.
Remember - it's the volume, not the area:
- and - keeping in mind the tendency of "conservatives" to cherry-pick the data, watch out for the assertion, "everything's just peachy because the ice is making a comeback" - along the same lines of their famous bullshit about how "AGW has paused, and the planet is actually cooling now".
In fairness, the ice volume has rebounded somewhat since 2012. And PIOMAS is only a model, cautioned the University of Washington’s Axel Schweiger, who runs the analysis. (The model draws upon direct measurements of ice thickness taken from submarines, satellites, and other sources.) Still, Schweiger agreed that when you think about the total volume of the ice, rather than its mere surface extent, you realize that far more has been lost.
“We’ve lost about half of the extent, we’ve lost half of the thickness, and if you multiply these two things, we’ve lost 75 percent of the September sea ice,” he said
Scientists get it wrong sometimes. I'll still take their word for things over the deniers because science is self-correcting - deniers will always just deny because that's what they believe, as opposed to people who can be convinced due to evidentiary knowledge.
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