Today's Tweet

God-knobbers - whaddaya gonna doo?.

infallible being cannot create fallible beings unless it wants to

and if it wants to create fallible beings and then punish them for being fallible, then it cannot itself be infallible in the first place, because abject masturbatory sadism is a failing indeed.

— Saint Brian The Godless (@AWorldOutOfMind) January 7, 2020

And Another Thing

OK, the hair-on-fire brigade got all up in arms for good reason, but it turns out that 45* is just a fucking dolt and it seems the world understands this to the point that while they take this shit very seriously, they know now that they have to be the grownups and not go too nuts when he does something that's unbelievably stoopid - even for him.

I have to think there's a strong probability that Iran is just biding their time, and they'll kick us in the nuts when they're good-n-ready.

45* gave a brief statement this morning, and somehow, for now, things are relatively calm again.

WaPo, Paul Waldman:

Five Takeaways From Trump's Deranged Speech On Iran

Having prepared carefully to deliver inspiring words that would bring all Americans together as they worry about the possibility of another war in the Middle East, President Trump stepped to the podium Wednesday morning and instead gave a brief speech that was vintage Trump: lacking in even the barest eloquence, replete with lies, delivered with garbled pronunciation and weirdly somnolent affect, and unintentionally revealing.

• Trump’s Iran policy has been a catastrophic failure.
• Trump desperately wanted to find a way to declare victory and back off.
• Trump is still obsessed with Barack Obama.
• Trump is comically insecure about his manhood.
• Trump still has no idea what he wants to accomplish with regard to Iran or how to do it.

Some fallout - so, Cynical Mike says that maybe Iran isn't in a big hurry to retaliate in kind partly because 45*'s dumbfuck move serves the purpose of "unity" and "rally 'round the Ayatollah", which makes the social oppression a little easier because it pushes down on certain protests - most notably (as usual) the movement to free middle eastern women from the repressive bullshit imposed on them by religious control freaks.

I'm thinking we'll prob'ly see less of this in Iran - young women resisting the forced hijab.

We Have The Best Toys

So, if someone magically appeared before me - having materialized from the 1950s or something - I'd have to explain to them that I have a device in my pocket which allows me access to nearly the sum total of humankind's knowledge, and what I use it for is to watch cat videos and get into heated arguments with strangers.

Today's Hair-On-Fire Moment

It's been going around for a while now. And as always, it's a good idea to take it all with a grain of salt.

That said, one of the main goals of the Daddy State is to get us thinking there's nothing that can be trusted to be truly true and really real.

A little critical thinking is in order at all times.

And remembering the basic techniques is a good place to start - as well as this relatively new shit coming from Cult45.

It's not about persuasion - it's about power.

I tell an obvious lie.

While you're engaging it...

...I'm off to my next lie.

And the power thing - that can explain a lot about why the rubes stay with 45* no matter what. He has the power, and they get to feel powerful by proxy - without having to invest time or effort at gaining or applying any actual knowledge.

Today's Quote

The woman who doesn't require validation from anyone is the most feared individual on the planet.

-- Mohadesa Najumi

Storm Warning

WaPo, Paul Waldman:

Many Americans are terrified of what would happen if Donald Trump won a second term in office. But perhaps we should be nearly as scared of what will happen if he loses in November.

More specifically, a victory by Democrats at the federal and state level could produce a backlash in which Trump’s fervent supporters, not to mention those on the far-right fringe, conclude that the ordinary avenues to political influence are hopelessly corrupted and therefore other, more radical means must be employed.

We may be getting a small window into how things could devolve in that direction in Virginia, a perfect place to witness how frustration at the loss of power can manifest itself in disturbing and even dangerous ways.

- and -

The Oath Keepers are just one of a number of far-right extremist groups taking an interest in Virginia’s gun laws and this protest in particular, so much so that traditional gun-rights groups like the National Rifle Association seem to be growing unsettled about the image being presented by a bunch of camo-wearing cosplay warriors toting AR-15s around the capitol grounds.

For now, those extremists are only trying to intimidate people with the threat of murderous violence, not actually engaging in it (and yes, when you show up at a protest with your AR, you are most definitely threatening violence). But what will happen if 2020 sees Trump turned out of office and Democrats gain more victories on the state level?

There will certainly be a conservative backlash, a new tea party of people angered by the failure of the political system to produce the results they favor. But it will be different this time, because the president has spent years telling them that any outcome they don’t like — in particular, any victory by Democrats — is itself proof that the system is corrupt, perhaps irredeemably so.

I'm a boomer, and I have to acknowledge that I helped get us into this mess.

So if the time comes and it's all on the line, I'll have to stand up and say, "Fuck you guys - here I am - shoot me."

Hoping I have the guts to pull it off.

Oh It's On, Bitch

hat tip = Driftglass, Professional Left Podcast

I think it's prob'ly a real thing, which makes it really hard for me to unravel the circularity of parody and self-parody and the un-self-awareness of it all.

Empty podia for the Dems.

And the GOP queen? Why, it's Mike Pence, of course.

Today's Pix

click

☟👁☟

Today's Tweet

I wonder if Mr Dobbs has ever heard of this Trump guy.

Made a slight change pic.twitter.com/pFzflvkNby

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) January 4, 2020

Who They Are

WaPo - Stuart Stevens:

Here’s a question: Does anybody have any idea what the Republican Party stands for in 2020?

One way to find out: As you are out and about marking the new year, it is likely you will come across a Republican to whom you can pose the question, preferably after a drink or two, as that tends to work as truth serum: “Look, I was just wondering: What’s the Republican Party all about these days? What does it, well, stand for?”

I’m betting the answer is going to involve a noun, a verb and either “socialism” or “Democrats.” Republicans now partly define their party simply as an alternative to that other party, as in, “I’m a Republican because I’m not a Democrat.”

In a long-forgotten era — say, four years ago — such a question would have elicited a very different answer. Though there was disagreement over specific issues, most Republicans would have said the party stood for some basic principles: fiscal sanity, free trade, strong on Russia, and that character and personal responsibility count. Today it’s not that the Republican Party has forgotten these issues and values; instead, it actively opposes all of them.

Republicans are now officially the character doesn’t count party, the personal responsibility just proves you have failed to blame the other guy party, the deficit doesn’t matter party, the Russia is our ally party, and the I’m-right-and-you-are-human-scum party. Yes, it’s President Trump’s party now, but it stands only for what he has just tweeted.

A party without a governing theory, a higher purpose or a clear moral direction is nothing more than a cartel, a syndicate that exists only to advance itself. There is no organized, coherent purpose other than the acquisition and maintenance of power.

This is a sad fall. In Ronald Reagan’s America, being born an American was to win life’s lottery; in Donald Trump’s America, it makes you a victim, a patsy, a chump.

Trump didn’t hijack the GOP and bend it to his will. He did something far easier: He looked at the party, saw its fault lines and then offered himself as a pure distillation of accumulated white grievance and anger. He bet that Republican voters didn’t really care about free trade or mutual security, or about the environment or Europe, much less deficits. He rebranded kindness and compassion as “PC” and elevated division and bigotry as the admirable goals of just being politically incorrect. Trump didn’t make Americans more racist; he just normalized the resentments that were simmering in many households. In short, he let a lot of long-suppressed demons out of the box.

This paranoid element in the party has existed for decades, since the Joe McCarthy era, when some Republicans who saw dark forces threatening the country argued that only radical action by “true” Americans — white, Christian, conservative — could safeguard the nation. Barry Goldwater revived the theme in 1964, and George Wallace won five states with it as a third-party candidate in 1968. I worked in every Republican presidential campaign from 1996 through 2012 and assumed that those guys had long been vanquished and that optimism and inclusion had prevailed. I was wrong.

This impeachment moment and all that has led to it should signal a day of reckoning. A party that has as its sole purpose the protection and promotion of its leader, whatever he thinks, is not on a sustainable path. Can anyone force a change? I’m not optimistic. Trump won with 46.1 percent of the vote in 2016, while Mitt Romney lost with 47.2 percent in 2012; no wonder Republicans have convinced themselves that the path to victory and power lies with angry division. Having ignored the warning signs for years myself, I know the seductive lure of believing what you prefer while ignoring the obvious truth.

Which is this: We are a long way — more than a half-century — from 1968, much less 1952. The United States is now a diverse, chaotic collection of 330 million people, a country of immigrants and multiculturalism that is growing less white every day. It is not some gauzy Shangri-La of suburban bliss that never existed.

I’d like to say that I believe the party I spent so many years fighting for could rise to the challenge of this moment. But there have been too many lies for too long.

Trump has not remade the GOP in his own image.

He is the near-perfect reflection of what that party has become.

Hear What They Say

...but be sure to watch what they do.

Business Insider:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters Friday morning, just hours after the US military killed the top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, that "the world is a much safer place today." Some allies and partners suggested otherwise, however, and Pompeo's own government agency advised Americans to flee Iraq.

"The world is a much safer place today," he said. "And I can assure you that Americans in the region are much safer today after the demise of Qassem Soleimani."

His comments came as the State Department urged American citizens in Iraq to leave immediately.

"Due to heightened tensions in Iraq and the region," the US Embassy in Baghdad said in a security alert Friday, "the US Embassy urges American citizens to heed the January 2020 Travel Advisory and depart Iraq immediately."

"US citizens should depart via airline while possible, and failing that, to other countries via land," the embassy instructed.

The Emoluments

The CREW scorecard

Today's Tweet

Gonna be OK.

live video of Jared handling Middle East peace pic.twitter.com/6MfuarWdPi

— shauna (@goldengateblond) January 3, 2020

I get the feeling 45* has been relatively silent on this because he's scrambling for a way to tell his boss he had to do it - or "the generals made me do it" - or whatever boot-licking ass-kissing bullshit he thinks Vlad might believe.

Shooting For Jesus

WaPo Editorial:

Lives were saved when a member of the volunteer security team at a Texas church fatally shot a gunman who had opened fire on the congregation during a Sunday morning church service. Thanks and praise for his skilled actions are due Jack Wilson. But what must not be forgotten or forgiven is that two innocent people were shot to death in a house of prayer by a man who — despite a troubled and violent past — had access to a gun because of this country’s lax gun laws.

“Keith is a violent, paranoid person with a long line of assault and batteries with and without firearms. He is a religious fanatic, says he’s battling a demon . . . He is not nice to anyone.” That is how one of his ex-wives described the gunman in 2012 as she sought a protective order against him. Keith Thomas Kinnunen, 43, who killed church deacon Anton Wallace, 64, and church security volunteer Richard White, 67, at the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Tex., had an extensive rap sheet in numerous places across the United States. Included in his troubled history was the 2012 determination by an Oklahoma judge that he was mentally incompetent to stand trial on charges he attacked the owner of a doughnut shop; he was committed to a psychiatric facility. In 2016, he was arrested after being spotted acting suspiciously near an oil refinery in New Jersey while armed with a shotgun; he ended up pleading guilty to criminal trespass.

None of that prevented him from getting a firearm. Exactly how is unclear, but Texas has one of the nation’s least restrictive gun laws with no requirements for background checks when the seller is not a licensed dealer. That irrational permissiveness needs to be addressed, but gun advocates — cheered on by President Trump — instead seized on the terrible events to promote their agenda that the answer to gun violence is more guns. So much for not politicizing tragedy. And never mind the rates of suicides and homicides in Texas, or that the state has been home to some of the country’s deadliest mass shootings.

First: Three dead - including a parishioner who was a security volunteer. And that's what gun-humpers are calling a win?

Second: I guess it's OK to jump on the tragedy and talk about the politics when the ammosexuals deem the situation some kind of proof of their position that gun violence is how you stop gun violence.

Today's Tweet

With a touch of Eternal Sadness.

When the birds start singing fire engine sounds... 😧
Credit: Gregory Andrews, Newcastle. pic.twitter.com/g11BMry1HC

— Isobel Roe (@isobelroe) January 1, 2020

Today's GIF

A good reminder to start the new year.

It says, "We the people" not "We the acreage".

DIRT DON'T VOTE

Tweet Scoring

45*'s belligerent tweets:

5,889 - attacking someone or something 

2,405 - attacking Democrats specifically

2,065 - attacking investigations

2,026 - praising himself

1,710 - promoting bogus theories & beliefs

1,308 - attacking news organizations

   851 - attacking minority groups

Tune For The Day

That's How Every Empire Falls - (John Prine) cover RB Morris

A bitter wind blows through the country
A hard rain falls on the sea
If terror comes without a warning
There must be something we don't see
What fire begets this fire?
Like torches thrown into the straw
If no one asks, then no one answers
That's how every empire falls.

Today's Brian

Brian Tyler Cohen

On The Eve Of 2020

Let's skip the 2019 retrospectives 

and go straight to kickin' some GOP ass in 2020