A Thought

Our butts have the ability to excrete all three states of matter.

Four if you eat Taco Bell.

hat tip = Reddit r/showerthoughts

Today's Tweet

OK, so -

"Whoa - keep your germy mouth to yourself."

- or maybe -

"Kissing my ring means you're kissing every germy slob who went before you."

Pope Francis really doesn't want anyone kissing his ring.
This from today, after Mass ... pic.twitter.com/CZUO8ppNfo

— Catholic Sat (@CatholicSat) March 25, 2019

The pope is the guy who's s'posed to be the earthly embodiment of a god that's all-knowing and all-powerful. So why does he seem like he's worried about being a vector for infectious disease?

A Bitter Pill?

It's nothing poor people and POC aren't used to - but now it's one more shitty thing that middle class white people have to swallow - and we don't fucking like it.

Trae Crowder:

Coupla notes:

1. Nobody's gotten away with anything - yet - because...
2. We haven't seen the Mueller Report - yet - we've only seen the Barr Memo

But Crowder's right - we have work to do. Let's do the work.

Today's Other Side

The Christian Left would like to remind everybody that maybe we got Trump because god was all out of frogs and locusts.

Thank you, and stay tuned - the plagues have just begun.

Today's Thread

Claire Willett, via Twitter:

In sitting with my feelings about the Mueller report (or more accurately the Barr report) and vividly reliving my feelings on Election Day 2016, it makes me think that one facet of my own privilege I still need to work on is this abiding belief in the myth of Grown-Ups.

A grown-up is not an adult. Adults are real and it's just an age classification. A grown-up is the person who takes care of things and fixes things and protects you from the scary dangers of the world and is always wise and just and brave and right.

They only exist in the minds of kids, and then you get older and you're like "shit my babysitter was SEVENTEEN!!! My parents were in their TWENTIES!!! No one knew ANYTHING! They were ALL just making it up as they went along!!!" and the myth more or less gets replaced by reality.

The belief in Magical Grown-Ups is a side effect of privilege. It's feeling safer when there are cops nearby, or expecting doctors to fix everything. It's when a kid needs help and your first instinct is to call their parents. In any crisis, somewhere a Grow-Up is in charge.

It was my deep and abiding faith that Grown-Ups would save us that left me stunned speechless by the 2016 election, when many people - who had either shed that myth long before, or didn't grow up with it at all - were able to see the crash coming from miles and miles away.

The same part of my Primal Child Brain which secretly believed that somehow a doctor would magically fix my dying mother also, on some level, despite all evidence to the contrary, still believes that a Grown-Up is coming to save us from *gestures vaguely at everything*

Hillary Clinton is a grown-up and Robert Mueller is a grown-up and the Constitution was written by grown-ups and surely somewhere along the line, someone is going to come rescue us from the Titanic before it sinks. The painful reality, of course, is that I am 37. I AM A GROWN-UP

And I wonder if maybe that's one of the unspoken ties that bind those of us from privilege who keep getting taken by surprise when the system fails us - because we were raised to believe the systems all worked, since we were the people they were designed and created to work for.

It makes sense, on some level, when you're a kid. You get sick, and your mom and the doctor take care of you. But the danger in retaining it as an adult is that on some level it's really just buck-passing. "Someone else will take care of this - so I don't have to do it myself."

But there were no grown-ups to magically save us from Trump getting elected and there were no grown-ups to stop his policies from hurting people (no matter how some of his more seasoned advisors may flatter themselves) and there were no grown-ups to prevent Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

There are no grown-ups to stop Mitch McConnell from his rampant abuses of power and there are no grown-ups to make sure every criminal in this government goes to jail and there are no grown-ups locking down security to protect the NEXT election from Russia. There's only us.

The one place of leverage we have is the House of Representatives, and that's because of the hard work of millions of voters and dedicated public servants. We flipped the House because WE were the grown-ups. None of it was magic.

It's uncomfortable and embarrassing to confront your own naivete like this, but I think it's also really important. The one piece of the machinery that's even KIND OF working is the one we fixed ourselves, because we were the only ones who could. No magic. No loophole. Just us.

We may be feeling more than a little lost, but Willett said clearly what we need to remember - grownups wrote our constitution. They gave us a road map so we could lead ourselves outa this shit.

We have to stop being comfortable with Self-Infantalization, and start taking seriously our responsibility to be the grownup in the relationship we have to have with ourselves first.

No gods. No avenging angels. No Daddy State. Just each other. As adults.

Hanging Off The Cliff

Americans should be in much better physical condition considering how much we love jumping to conclusions.

And we're always willing to help each do exactly that.

Lawfare Blog:

Leave it to President Trump to describe as “Total EXONERATION” a document that specifically quotes Special Counsel Robert Mueller as saying that one of his principal findings “does not exonerate” the president.

The brief letter sent by Attorney General William Barr to congressional leaders on Sunday afternoon summarizing Mueller’s findings is a complicated document. In key respects, it contains very good news for President Trump about a scandal that has dogged his presidency since before he even took office. The determination of just how good the news is - whether it amounts to the exoneration Trump claims on these points or whether we’re dealing with conduct just shy of prosecutable - will have to await the text of Mueller’s report itself. But for those who quite reasonably demanded a serious investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and of cooperation and coordination with it on the part of the Trump campaign, it has to be significant that Mueller, after the better part of two years of investigating, has not found that anyone associated with the Trump campaign knowingly conspired with Russia’s efforts.

In other respects, however, Barr’s summary of Mueller’s report is ominous for the president. While Mueller did not find that Trump obstructed his investigation, he also made a point of not reaching the opposite conclusion: that Trump didn’t obstruct the investigation. Indeed, he appears to have created a substantial record of the president’s troubling interactions with law enforcement for adjudication in noncriminal proceedings—which is to say in congressional hearings that are surely the next step.

What makes the document more complicated still is the fact that it offers only a skeletal description of Mueller’s report. It only purports to convey Mueller’s top-line findings and does not include any of the evidence or legal analysis that underlies those findings. It doesn’t tell any of the stories that the Mueller report will tell. It only distills and announces two high-altitude legal conclusions from those stories. Assuming that Barr is characterizing Mueller’s findings reasonably, that leaves a whole raft of questions unanswered about what those stories will be - and what their impact will be.

We'll see what we see. 

We don't know what's what yet. 

There are still 57 indictments under seal.

There are numerous court transcripts that remain heavily redacted.

There are 17 other investigations in process - some of which are beyond the reach of 45*'s Executive Branch Mafia.

And there are no simple 10-word answers to any of the questions that we all still have.

If there are signals for me to find in Barr's letter, they include:

• We ain't seen nothin' yet
• Keep your powder dry
• Muddle through and stumble forward

If Barr is the plutocrat I think he is, we're going to see another iteration of The Great Smoothing-Over. ie: after every big fuckup, we have "cooler heads" who step in to calm us down and keep us from actually starting to shoot each other again.

(Ed Note: Not that we're particularly shy about gunning each down like rabid dogs - I'm talking about choosing up sides for a flat-out civil-fucking-war)

Anyway, I include only the big fuckups that I can remember from my own lifetime.

1. JFK assassination
2. Civil rights / Vietnam era riots
3. Watergate
4. Iran-Contra
5. Iraq war
6. The crash of 2008

Obviously, there are others, but the main feature of The Smoothing is that justice is largely denied. And that's what Mr Barr is good at.

I'll go out on a limb and say that 45* is not the one who picked Bill Barr, any more than 45* was the one who picked either Gorsuch or Kavanaugh.

But before I go full Howard Beale, I'll try to heed my own advice and just wait for whatever shoes are going to drop next.

Fake lord help us.

Today's Tweet

Remember now - karma's only a bitch if you are.

What did he think was going to happen?? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣pic.twitter.com/TsEUhEuv4d

— Hear Me Roar (@Stop_Trump20) March 24, 2019

Is It Really That Bad?

• Russian interference in our 2016 election
• Russian interference with the Brexit referendum
• Russian troll farms
• Russian bot factories
• Russian cyber attacks
• Russian support for Jill Stine
• Russian money laundered thru the NRA
• Russia TV highlighting Tulsi Gabbard

Russia, Russia, Russia - much more of this Russia shit and I may have to give up some of my favorite porn sites.

And that's gonna piss me off.

Please Forgive Me

...if I get a little bitchy with "progressives" who're pissin'-n-moanin' like Bob Mueller spit in their oatmeal yesterday.

• There are still 57 sealed indictments.
• There are still 17 OTHER investigations.
• There's something going on with a DOJ airplane that came in from London last night.
• Stop with the bullshit. 
• We don't have time to whine about it.
• Dont make me come down there.

Today's Tweet

Fuckin'-ay, Bubba.

Mayor @PeteButtigieg: “Trump is a bully. And that’s one of the reasons I’m not too worried about it. I’m from Indiana. I’m gay. I can handle bullies. I’m literally used to incoming rocket fire— I think I’ll be all right.” 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/dfd1VXwiTU

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) March 23, 2019