Because if we're conditioned to believe made up bullshit to start with, we're a lot easier to manipulate in new and exciting ways.
Monday, December 12, 2016
Sunday, December 11, 2016
Sunday Question
When you say you'll pray for me, does that mean I need to do the thinking for both of us?
Today's Tweet
Funny how Trump supporters love to fly the flags of armies that got their asses kicked by Americans pic.twitter.com/r4bN63AiuF— Parker 🇺🇸🏳️🌈 (@Parker9_) December 9, 2016
Today's Quote
Yes, I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can find his way by moonlight, and see the dawn before the rest of the world.
--Henry David Thoreau
Saturday, December 10, 2016
Nobody Does This Better
driftglass:
I feel compelled to point out that back when Comrade Trump was declaring that his Party would be a Worker's Party, certain internet scoundrel hobos were trying in vain to call Meathead America's attention to the fact that, according to Comrade Trump's own words...
Comrade Trump Sings Songs Of Love
Comrade Trump promises that under his regime he will...
...tell American companies what they can produce and where they can produce it.
...tell American companies who they can hire and how much they will be paid.
...use the power of government to keep American workers working in dying industries despite what the market says.
...conquer inferior countries who have stuff we want.
...weed out the undesirables whoever they may be and wherever they may hide.
...build an axis of strong alliances with other like-minded Strong Menaround the world.
...not be held hostage by the counterrevolutionary forces of bourgeoisie science.
A Trump Biographer
From a piece at RawStory, quoting Mike D'Antonio:
He finished with a disturbing image of Trump as a mindless animal in a behavioral experiment.
“He no longer had to manipulate journalists and wait for them to act. He could tap out a few words and get what he wanted immediately. It reminded me of psychologist B.F. Skinner’s experiments with chickens that learned to push a button with their beaks for the reward of a food pellet. Once they had trained themselves, the birds couldn’t stop pecking even when the pellets no longer came and they injured themselves,” he said.
“Like Skinner’s animal subjects,” he concluded. “Trump has learned to get what he wants. No matter who criticizes him, no matter the consequences, he will keep doing it. Those who ask if he will stop scouring the press for evidence of enemies and using his power in indiscriminate ways should stop thinking of him as a conventional politician and start looking at him as a chicken.”There's no such thing as Proportionality for a Donald Trump, and he's surrounding himself with "birds of a feather", which is more than a bit fucked up when it comes down to a little thing we like to call The Nuclear Arsenal.
And yes, I know, everybody talked about that for a fleeting moment during the Scampaign®, but then it kinda fell off the ol' radar scope - like every-fucking-thing else that shoulda sunk this Powdered Cheese Dusted Asswipe but didn't because keeping him on my Librul TV Box may have been bad for the country, but holy crap, was it ever great for ratings.
 |
| Early proposal for Trump's POTUS portrait |
The Professional Left Podcast
A great take-down of the single-thread bullshit about how Hillary was just a rotten candidate and how she missed the mark and blah blah blah.
The Bible Bitch segment at the end is pretty spectacular this week - and if I believed in such things, I'd say God bless you, Blue Gal.
But I don't believe in such things, so I'll just say Keep Doin' Good, you guys.
Friday, December 09, 2016
Faking It
What are the tools we use to detect lies?
a) the absence of confirming evidence
-or-
b) the presence of conflicting evidence
What are the tools for finding the truth?
a) the presence of confirming evidence
-and-
b) the absence of conflicting evidence
From a piece last month at NPR:
A lot of fake and misleading news stories were shared across social media during the election. One that got a lot of traffic had this headline: "FBI Agent Suspected In Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide." The story is completely false, but it was shared on Facebook over half a million times.
We wondered who was behind that story and why it was written. It appeared on a site that had the look and feel of a local newspaper. Denverguardian.com even had the local weather. But it had only one news story — the fake one.--and--
He was amazed at how quickly fake news could spread and how easily people believe it. He wrote one fake story for NationalReport.net about how customers in Colorado marijuana shops were using food stamps to buy pot.
"What that turned into was a state representative in the House in Colorado proposing actual legislation to prevent people from using their food stamps to buy marijuana based on something that had just never happened," Coler says.--and--
At any given time, Coler says, he has between 20 and 25 writers. And it was one of them who wrote the story in the "Denver Guardian" that an FBI agent who leaked Clinton emails was killed. Coler says that over 10 days the site got 1.6 million views. He says stories like this work because they fit into existing right-wing conspiracy theories.
"The people wanted to hear this," he says. "So all it took was to write that story. Everything about it was fictional: the town, the people, the sheriff, the FBI guy. And then ... our social media guys kind of go out and do a little dropping it throughout Trump groups and Trump forums and boy it spread like wildfire."As with all disruptive innovations regarding social media (all media is social media, btw), The Intertoobz has become just another vast wasteland.
Paraphrasing The Maestro, as he purportedly quipped to the lady cellist, "Madam, you have between your legs a magnificent instrument capable of bringing great joy and fulfillment to all of humankind - must you sit there and merely scratch at it?"
The Anti-Elitist Lie
I'm sure you've noticed:
Trump loves to bash "the elitists", but he'll be installed as the 45th POTUS on the strength of a majority of the 538 Electoral College votes - even though he got his ass kicked by more than 2 1/2 million votes of the actual populace.
Tell me again - how is this putz in any way "Representative Of The People"?
Tell me again - how is this putz in any way "Representative Of The People"?
Yo Yo Ma And Lil Buck
In Beijing - wondering how much longer we can count on any of this being even possible as Trump fucks up everything he touches everywhere he goes.
Thursday, December 08, 2016
Sec'y Of Labor
Mr Puzder, per Mr Frum:
Let’s absorb the magnitude of the Pudzer appointment. Trump’s signature issue was immigration restriction. Number 1.— David Frum (@davidfrum) December 8, 2016
He slammed hard the Bush family in general and Jeb Bush in particular as weak and low energy on immigration.— David Frum (@davidfrum) December 8, 2016
The Labor Department enforces immigration law in the workplace - the key way that immigration laws are enforced.— David Frum (@davidfrum) December 8, 2016
And the person Trump names to head Labor? Perhaps the most outspoken advocate of Bush-style immigration policy in US business community!— David Frum (@davidfrum) December 8, 2016
Today's Zeitgeist
Stop worrying about your Social Security. Considering Trump's picks for EPA & FDA, plus the GOP's plan for repealing ObamaCare, won't none of us live long enough to need it.
New Music
Rican Beach --Hurray For The Riff Raff
Ephesians 6:12
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Alynda Lee Segarra wrote "Rican Beach," the first song from Hurray for the Riff Raff's forthcoming album, The Navigator, about a fictional city which has been segregated and gentrified beyond recognition. "You can take my life, but don't take my home," she sings with worn pride. Upon its release, Segarra dedicated the song to protesters currently standing ground over safe water at Standing Rock, North Dakota, and in Peñuelas, Puerto Rico, where coal ash waste is contaminating the drinking supply, sharply connecting literally toxic forms of community displacement to their modern, equally insidious analogue.
Ephesians 6:12
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Ace Lyons
A retired USN Admiral weighs in on killing our way out of our problems in the Middle East.
(via Right Wing Watch)
Interesting that this is one of the boneheads Trump listens to, even as he continues to look at David Patraeus (basically the "Father of" the Counterinsurgency Strategy this Lyons guy says is the wrong way to go).
But then take a gander at this one from Tiger Beat On The Potomac (thanks, Charlie), aka: Politico, with the understanding that pimping confusion and volatility is Trump's stock-in-trade, and it gets a tiny bit easier to see that maintaining any kind of delicate balance anywhere in the world is in no way any kind of priority for Mr Unpredictable.
In confusion there is profit.
This isn't politics; it's a fucking robbery.
(via Right Wing Watch)
Interesting that this is one of the boneheads Trump listens to, even as he continues to look at David Patraeus (basically the "Father of" the Counterinsurgency Strategy this Lyons guy says is the wrong way to go).
But then take a gander at this one from Tiger Beat On The Potomac (thanks, Charlie), aka: Politico, with the understanding that pimping confusion and volatility is Trump's stock-in-trade, and it gets a tiny bit easier to see that maintaining any kind of delicate balance anywhere in the world is in no way any kind of priority for Mr Unpredictable.
In confusion there is profit.
This isn't politics; it's a fucking robbery.
No More Mr Nice Jesus
It should be a good one to point at and say, "Wouldn't it be nice if Christians could forget all the shit and get back to being all Christian-y?" But this actually is the Jesus some "Christians" believe in now, so I'm not holding out a lot of hope on that one.
Wednesday, December 07, 2016
Change Comin'
His Most High Awesomely Tremendous Excellency, "President" Trump has decided Hail To The Chief just ain't cuttin' it*.
So we've gone to great lengths (and at practically no expense at all) here at Fuck That Guy Central to bring you the proposed official version of a tune we're sure will be required every time Mr Trump enters any venue.
So we've gone to great lengths (and at practically no expense at all) here at Fuck That Guy Central to bring you the proposed official version of a tune we're sure will be required every time Mr Trump enters any venue.
(* What - you think I can't just make shit up and peddle it as Real News? That's how we do things now. Pay attention.)
Meanwhile, Out There In The World
Trump's avoidance of the President's Daily Brief is not something we seem to be terribly worried about. It makes me wonder if he's counting on getting the information 2nd hand from his yes-man-asshole-sycophants advisers, or if he really thinks he can just go with his gut. And either way, I guess, that's just pretty fucked up right there.
Anyway, even tho' it sounds a bit huffy and pearl-clutchy in places (and it could be little more than self-promotion - this is the Trump Era remember), here's a cheery little yarn from John Pilger at AlterNet:
Anyway, even tho' it sounds a bit huffy and pearl-clutchy in places (and it could be little more than self-promotion - this is the Trump Era remember), here's a cheery little yarn from John Pilger at AlterNet:
When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of 6 August, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, unforgettably. When I returned many years later, it was gone: taken away, “disappeared”, a political embarrassment.
When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of 6 August, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, unforgettably. When I returned many years later, it was gone: taken away, “disappeared”, a political embarrassment.
So, instead of putting somebody in charge of the operation who knows quite a bit about it because she actually helped formulate it and implement it - which means she could make changes in ways that don't threaten the enterprise (not to mention the continued existence of human habitation of the whole fucking planet), we decided in effect, that it doesn't really matter what else happens as long as Hair Fuhrer gets to line his pockets to the point where we might be able to catch a few nickels and dimes from the overflow.
The basic premise here is that Trump will Un-Manage this shit. He doesn't take the briefings (I think) because he's delegating the whole thing. He'll take status reports - and he'll make a show of being large-and-in-charge by issuing loud boisterous demands for results - but the point is that he's still just using his position to get the ultimate inside information so he can boost his profitability.
This is not politics - this is a fucking robbery.
Fake lord have mercy.
Once In A Lifetime
From this:
To this:
And it only took 78 years.
I wish I was clever enough to make some kind of subtle analogy about Trump's arrival and this "date which will live in infamy".
Tuesday, December 06, 2016
Ride On, Mr Trump
Once upon a time, the good guys weren't the ones who just take what they want, spouting the entitlements they think they've earned because of their willingness to push people around.
Push back.
hat tip = driftglass
Chris Hedges
There is something kind of appealing to the notion of just blowing it all up and starting over. But you almost never get anything straightened out or settled that way. What you wanted the new thing to look like when you started the destruction is never what you end up with.
Revolutionaries always come in promising bread and freedom, and they always fail to deliver anything but a very long period of even greater suffering, because all that really happens is an exchange of one Ruling Elite for another.
Revolutionaries always come in promising bread and freedom, and they always fail to deliver anything but a very long period of even greater suffering, because all that really happens is an exchange of one Ruling Elite for another.
Today's Tweet
4-year-old: *dumps a pile of chocolate out of her stocking*— James Breakwell (@XplodingUnicorn) December 6, 2016
Me: What did Saint Nicholas bring you?
4: Breakfast.
Jay Smooth
On getting back to work.
No matter what, you still chop the wood and you still carry the water.
No matter what, you still chop the wood and you still carry the water.
Monday, December 05, 2016
New Art Installation
"Flint" by TiRock. Art Basel in Miami. pic.twitter.com/7iW6XgQB6Q
— NANA JIBRIL 🌙 (@girlswithtoys) December 5, 2016
Today's Quote
An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanquished, war eliminated.
--Madalyn Murray O'Hair
Today's Tweet
Hillary Clinton's margin in the popular vote is now approx 2.7 mil more than Trump. https://t.co/5DS4Vpxckx— Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) December 5, 2016
While Trump is tweeting about the landslide he "won" - there must always be the revisioning.
The Face Of Terrorism
Edgar Maddison Welch:
And that's where we're getting to now. For a long time I thought people were just having a hard time figuring out how to tell the difference between the hoax and the real deal, but that ain't it. A pretty substantial slice of the American pie chart is convinced they get to choose their own reality. And I know that's not exactly news to anybody, but I think it's important to remind ourselves that it's becoming very pronounced, and to understand that it's starting to produce some very bad outcomes.
In case you'd like to see for yourself what goes on in Wingnutopia:
From a piece at Heavy:
A 28-year-old North Carolina man is accused of firing a gun inside a Washington, D.C. pizza place after he went to “self-investigate” an election-related “fictitious online conspiracy theory,” police say.
Edgar Maddison Welch entered the Comet Ping Pong restaurant, which was packed with customers, about 3 p.m. Sunday, and pointed a gun at an employee, the D.C. Metro Police Department said in a press release.
The employees and diners inside the restaurant were able to flee, and police said Welch, of Salisbury, fired his gun after they left.--and--
The “PizzaGate” conspiracy theory was spawned out of Wikileaks emails in November, and involves claims that leaders of the Democratic Party, including Hillary and Bill Clinton and Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, were part of a pedophilia ring operating out of the Comet Ping Pong pizza place, according to the BBC.
No evidence has been found to confirm the theory, which has been debunked by Snopes, many news sites, including the New York Times, and also on Fox News.The bullshit story was debunked on DumFux News, but because Fox is no longer the information source of choice for anyone under about 65, bugbrains like this Welch guy never get the word (not that bugbrains are gonna care about what is or isn't true).
And that's where we're getting to now. For a long time I thought people were just having a hard time figuring out how to tell the difference between the hoax and the real deal, but that ain't it. A pretty substantial slice of the American pie chart is convinced they get to choose their own reality. And I know that's not exactly news to anybody, but I think it's important to remind ourselves that it's becoming very pronounced, and to understand that it's starting to produce some very bad outcomes.
In case you'd like to see for yourself what goes on in Wingnutopia:
(this is toxic shit - be careful with it)
Sunday, December 04, 2016
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