It Was Foretold

Why the human race can't have nice things:

• A dysfunctional relationship; or Media + the President.  Jon Stewart video on AlterNet.
• Another "Modest Proposal."  Heh.  Highlights:

  Now that we're going to get rid of the Dodd-Frank fiduciary rule requiring investment advisors to act in their customers' best interests—I actually heard some Republican hack on the radio saying that the rule was a limitation on consumer freedom of choice ("But I might want to choose an investment adviser who will use me to push up the the price of a stock that's going to collapse so he can make more for the firm, or himself, by shorting it!")—
  
  [...] Obama thought we'd like to get rid of those in favor of plans that give you preventive care without a copay. And worried about poor people who couldn't afford any insurance instead of Silicon Valley libertarians who don't need insurance because they know they're immune to cancer. (Nobody's immune to cancer.)
  
  Anyway, why don't we start licensing physicians who decline to take the Hippocratic Oath? What about my right to choose a doctor who doesn't mind doing a little harm? Harmful physicians could probably cut costs a lot, which is so important in health care for poor people, in line with the Ryan proposals.

  From Yastreblyansky, The Rectification of Names.
  
• Some deconstruction of David Brooks:

  I am getting the sense that his head is about to explode, or may have softly exploded already, in the philosophical incoherence of his entire existence, as a person who has made a career of opposing Enlightenment in favor of deferring to authority, mocking rationalism, bowing to religious obscurantism, now trying to root for it though he clearly hates it as much as ever, against the new enemy who embodies the things he's always stood for, but in such a vulgar and unpleasant way.
  
  Because what he really yearns for, as ever, is some better-quality fascism, tastefully appointed, a kindly whimsical fascism with the violence well offstage, a fascism with a human (avuncular) face.

  Also Yastreblyansky.  ETA:  Driftglass is also on that case:

  In the face of such blatant and radical revisionism marshaled in defense of a lifetime of fraud and incompetence, what can one say but, Holy Fuck, David! Literally the only earned credential you have to your name is a bachelors degree in history from the University of Chicago, David, and you forgot the fucking Civil War.

• What my father used to call "organized disorder;" Professor Chaos goes to a meeting.  (The Daily Irritant)
• Booman's analysis of the election.

Quid Pro Quo

After reading all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about how non-supporters of Trump are so mean to Trump, I propose that we give Trump the same level of respect and courtesy as he and "conservatives"/Republicans gave Obama.

It's only fair (the Christian thing to do would be to "turn the other cheek," but personally I have run out of cheeks).

In memoriam:

• Joseph Wapner, judge on The People's Court 
• Bill Paxton, actor (who I apparently confused with Bill Pullman)

Oh, And...

I keep forgetting to mention:  Pamela Merritt, aka Shark-fu (I think she has mothballed that identity) is back!

This is going to be painful.

The sad reality is that real people will suffer the real consequences of this election for years to come. The rich will get richer, Russia will remain Russia, Mexico won’t pay for a wall, and far too many people will learn that they got played.

(Read at home. Scatological [but true] imagery.)

Not the Völkischer Beobachter

• CNN, New York Times, Politico, et al. banned from White House press briefing because insufficient toad-eating they appear adversarial.

  New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush listed Breitbart, Fox News, Washington Times, Wall Street Journal, CBS, NBC, ABC and Bloomberg as news organizations that were allowed inside.

  Mmmmm-hhmmmmmmmmmmmm...Also:

  ON Friday at CPAC, Trump continued his habit of echoing Bannon’s rhetoric when it comes to dealing with the media, which Bannon calls the “opposition party” on a regular basis.
  “A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people, and they are. They are the enemy of the people because they have no sources, they just make them up when there are none,” Trump said.

  The Emperor is wearing non-reflective transparent and translucent clothing, what's the matter with you?
• "Raw audio?"  Really?  The tape-editing champ releasing raw audio?  His fingers must be itching mightily.  "Provided by a source he didn't identify?"  Mmmmmmmmmm-hmmmmmmmmmmm...

  One excerpt reveals that CNN did not include a particular poll in its reporting eight years ago. However, it is common for news organizations to be discerning about which polls they choose to report on.

  Eight years ago. Riiiight. The tapes are still being audited for something, anything derogatory.  Or, of course, something that can be edited into something derogatory, because this is, after all, a ratfucker "conservative activist."

In Further News

• The ACLU posts a map with the 100-mile (!) zone considered "border" for the Border Patrol.  Via my reading list at Dreamwidth.)  We'll be in real trouble when Godzilla decides to fly to Florida by way of Portland, OR, no?  And meanwhile we'll devolve into a "Papers, please" state.  
• Department of The Winter Palace Was Propaganda:  Criminalizing demonstrations and protests in Arizona.  Although somebody noticed such a law would also bite them in the butt:

  Farley, however, said the legislation does far more than simply going after those who might incite people to riot, something which actually already is a crime. And he warned Republicans that such a broad law could end up being used against some of their allies.
  For example, he said, a “Tea Party’’ group wanting to protest a property tax hike might get permits, publicize the event and have a peaceful demonstration.
  “And one person, possibly from the other side, starts breaking the windows of a car,’’ Farley said.
  “And all of a sudden the organizers of that march, the local Tea Party, are going to be under indictment from the county attorney in the county that raised those property taxes,’’ he said. “That will have a chilling effect on anybody, right or left, who wants to protest something the government has done.’’

"Papers, Please"

This happened:  Customs agents demanded identifying documents from passengers on a domestic flight.

SFO to JFK. Pretty domestic.

As Rolling Stone reports, CBP made a little boo boo...they are not legally authorized to investigate anyone inside the US. Their authority is limited to international arrivals only.

International arrivals. London Heathrow, say, to JFK. Kinshasa to O'Hare. Not San Francisco to New York.

"Papers, please."

Clock is Ticking

Narrowing chances to stop fascism, via the experiences of Stefan Zweig, whose memoir The World of Yesterday is reviewed by George Prochnik in The New Yorker.

One tragic lesson offered by “The World of Yesterday” is that, even in a culture where misinformation has become omnipresent, where an angry base, supported by disparate, well-heeled interests, feels empowered by the relentless lying of a charismatic leader, the center might still hold. In Zweig’s view, the final toxin needed to precipitate German catastrophe came in February of 1933, with the burning of the national parliament building in Berlin–an arson attack Hitler blamed on the Communists but which some historians still believe was carried out by the Nazis themselves. “At one blow all of justice in Germany was smashed,” Zweig recalled. The destruction of a symbolic edifice—a blaze that caused no loss of life—became the pretext for the government to begin terrorizing its own civilian population. That fateful conflagration took place less than thirty days after Hitler became Chancellor. The excruciating power of Zweig’s memoir lies in the pain of looking back and seeing that there was a small window in which it was possible to act, and then discovering how suddenly and irrevocably that window can be slammed shut.

In Memoriam

• Richard Schickel, film critic
• Larry Coryell, jazz guitarist
• Clyde Stubblefield, funk drummer

No Sooner Had I Hit "Publish"

than this erupted (actually it had probably erupted while I was hunting down the links and spell-checking usw, but one never sees these things until too late).

You know that saying, "Provocateurs provoke."  Some of them just can't stop.

New York Times, with details.

AlterNet (with video, at least for now).

Crooks and Liars (more about the turmoil at CPAC and Breitbart--there seem to be lines even they will not cross).

Comrade Misfit:

So, CPAC invited him to underscore their commitment to free speech, but then disinvited him because he was saying things that they didn't want to be associated with.

ETA: Simon & Schuster cancelled the book deal.
EFTA (2/21/17):  He has "resigned" from his editor job.

All Around Mike Hat

• Cerberus at Sadly, No! calling out bigotry:

  The angry bitterness at the idea of privilege eroding to the point where people other than white straight Christian male-dominated couples are humanized and allowed to just exist as people in a handful of locations or locales.
  
  The idea that someone can exist without your permission and how it feels like a genuine slight to someone who has never actually experienced oppression, the way you are “forced” to acknowledge that existence and react to it.
  
  Hell, it’s the origin of why so many Trump supporters flocked to Twitter after his election to rage at liberals, because even though “their guy” won, what they wanted most of all was the fantasy that the nazis sold that all the liberals would retreat scared in the election of a fascist dictator and stop talking about their life experiences and recloset themselves from any public life so that bigots could go back to pretending that those people don’t exist.
  
  And it’s why no amount of appeasement makes these bigots happy, because what they are actually angry about is that they can never go back to a state of ignorance over the existence of someone different and the terrifying prospect of actually having to do work oneself to change or recognize the way your actions harm others.
  
  And it’s clung to, because there’s power in hatred. If you believe that a certain category of race, religion, gender, sexuality are subhuman, then you get to be fundamentally superior to whole swathes of a country without doing anything and no matter how far you fall you can feel superior to even the most successful member of your hated group.
  
  And that’s why the nazis recruited with such fervor under Obama. Because to white supremacists, clinging to the idea that they were better than any black man got heavily challenged by the existence of Obama as president cause it’s hard to make an argument that some wife-beating angry Redditor living in his mom’s basement is actually superior to the President of the United States.
  
  But now, the bigots are ascendant and while the white supremacists are making the headlines, other hate groups are celebrating their own unique brands of awful.
  
  Enter the TERFs.
  
  [...]
  
  A) This should illustrate the futility in polite engagement with bigots. Because even the most minor statement of our existence is going to be enough to enrage them. Like, she’s raging to the very usage of the word transphobic and is trying to act like that’s the equivalent of say, for example, hundreds of angry TERFs swarming some scared 14-year-old trans girl’s blog to endlessly shout slurs at her.
  
  No matter what we do, they will hate us and they will use our kindness as a weakness to argue that even the mildest of responses is the equivalent to actual hate speech and calls for violence.
  
  B) Of course the issue is the recognition of bigotry. Because bigots hate being recognized for what they are and hope they can shout everyone down into treating them like a civilized guest with reasoned arguments rather than someone motivated by the simple fear and hatred that someone exists that they are not familiar with and they want the right to remain ignorant about them.
  
  And that’s the problem with white American culture writ large and why the GOP is willing to go to these extreme lengths to try and retain that cultural power. We simply hate owning up to our shit and the way our actions hurt others.

  It's much longer and points at the flaw of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
  
• Driftglass reposts "The Story of Little Red State Fundy" and it's still pertinent.  Also dissects Sunday morning talking heads, but you knew that.
• Comrade Misfit has a White House job application...  Via infidel753, via Hackwhackers, via NYTimes.
• Wonkette.  Of course.  Evan Hurst on Reince Priebus' run-in with Chris Wallace.

  HAHA FOX NEWS LIKES OBAMA BETTER THAN TRUMP. You heard it here first! Priebus responded by trying to remind Chris Wallace that Obama sux, but Wallace wasn’t having it, reiterating that while Barry Bamz O’Sexxxy was a total pain in the ass, he never called the press the literal enemy of the people, so go to hell, Reince.
  
  Priebus is particularly pissed about that New York Times story about constant contact between the Trump campaign and Russia, and says it’s “complete garbage” because it relied on unnamed sources. In fact, on “Face The Nation” on CBS, Priebus took aim at one of the very foundations of Journalism, How Does It Work?, saying there should never be unnamed sources, because how can you trust something if the person saying it won’t put their name on it?

• Palate cleanser.

Oh, And...

Tom Boggioni, Raw Story, reposted at AlterNet:

The man President Donald Trump picked to replace outgoing National Security Adviser Mike Flynn decided to not take the job after watching Trump’s disastrous Thursday press conference, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes is reporting.

It Doesn't Pay to Get Out of Bed Half the Time

• In Memoriam:  Norma McCorvey, "Roe" of Roe v. Wade.  Fascinating and tragic.
• Pointing out the absence of the "concept of consent" in anti-marriage-equality thinking.
• Followed by sex, porn, and fundamentalism.  (This and the previous item from Nothing left to do but smile smile smile ..., Daisy Deadhead maintaining a presence.)
• John McCain rhetorically refutes Buttercup *.  Without mentioning him by name.
• Anti-Semites get gleeful over insults to Jewish reporter. (AlterNet)
• Professional basketball player believes world is flat.  Seriously.
• Trevor Noah suggests treating racism as a disease.  Video (The View).  (LeftofCenter, Crooks and Liars)  (I class racism as a mental illness, but that's probably mean.)

*

See Plaidder on Tumbler's "Buttercup vs. the U.S. Constitution" which states:

(BTW, after reading about how constantly repeating the 45th president’s name has the effect of making people more well-disposed toward him because he becomes familiar, I’ve decided that on this blog I will refer to him only as “buttercup,” as in, “buckle up, buttercup.”)

Return to reference.

Hey! Hire Me! I'm Supremely Unqualified!

But I'm very sunny once I've had my coffee!

(Context)

Role Model

There were these commercials in the late '80s for Isuzu, a Japanese car/truck company.  They were the brainchild of the notorious Della Femina Travisano and Partners ad agency and featured the character Joe Isuzu, who--

Well, you'll see.

This is a hiarious ad. Just, I'm beginning to think that those subtitles should be used about the current administration in Washington.

"Eppur si muove"

He may not have actually said it but it was attributed to him nonetheless.  Happy 453rd birthday, signor Galilei.

Holding onto truth in the face of power/lies is probably going to be an important attribute.

A Truth That Needs Spraying

Authoritarians hate humor. 

Via Comrade Misfit, who said:

But now, contrary to their expectations, they have to govern. They are supposed to run one of the three branches of government. And it's becoming clearer, day by day, that they have absolutely no fucking clue how to do that.

His Royal B.A.D.ness

I remembered this morning that Blogroll Amnesty Day/Weekend hasn't actually happened yet.

I have to rearrange my blogroll (blogs need to be moved to archives, blogs which have fallen in frequency need to be rotated into Time Insensitive, blogs which Are No More need to be removed, etc.) and I don't want to step on anyone's pixels...

(Damn.  I could use "Starship and Coffee" now.)

Barnacle Bill the Sailor

(No, I can't believe it didn't occur to me until this morning that I could Google the lyrics.  There are various versions, too.  Golly!)

OK.  Onward:

• Have I mentioned Colorblind Christians?
• "Private Activism, Public Indifference"
• "Immigrants Have Always Seemed Threatening"
• "The Heresy of Nationalist Christianity"
There are footnotes. You'll survive. I'd quote from these articles but I can't decide...
• Mike's Blog Round Up pointed me to Republic of Gilead, which skewered a "Christian Patriarchialist" who was being clueless about the Women's March.  Thanks, Frances!
• Zandar Versus The Stupid:

  So at this point Miller is on TV screaming so loudly about voter fraud that nobody believes him. Of course, as I've said before, when a tyrant continues about things that aren't true, he plans to act like they are.

• I finally took the plunge and went directly to  Robert Reich's blog.  
• Republicans and Obamacare
• Obamacare and Republicans
• Neutering the press
• Reasons the wall is Dumb
• 7 of the things the Democratic Party needs to address
• Disrespector in Chief
• I've been muttering for years that even making eye contact with the National Enquirer (and associated rags) lowers one's IQ by 20 points.  I didn't know how bad it was.  (Politico.)  I mean, I automatically dismiss anything appearing in the Enquirer, as I dismiss Breitbart as a whole, as I dismiss the New York Post (and grind it underfoot).  Apparently, we now have the equivalent of the Völkischer Beobachter.  (Or, as the article suggests because it's been gone less than thirty years, Pravda.)  [ETA:  Via skippy, to whom I just commented about B.A.D.]
• In memoriam:
• Al Jarreau, singer
• Nicolai Gedda, singer (operatic tenor, actually)

Department of No!! Really??

• Cory Booker calls the alt-right by its name:

  "You say alt-right. Let's be clear, alt-right is a euphemism for white supremacy and what he was trying to do on that platform," Booker corrected.

  [Emphasis in original]
  (Karoli Kuns, Crooks and Liars)
  
• Mike Lux, also Crooks and Liars, on rebooting the Democratic Party; particular suggestion is:

  Democrats need to stop listening to the beltway pundits telling them they need to make false choices. We don’t have to decide between base voters and working class voters: in fact, most of our base are working class people who have been as hard hit by this economy’s heavy tilt to the top 1% as anyone, and populist economic messages work for both base and swing voters. We don’t have to choose between being populists and being pro-business: progressive populism is very much aligned with the small businesses, start-ups, green energy companies, and good neighbor companies that we ought to be helping. We don’t have to choose between rural and urban America, as progressive policies on energy, health care, Wall St, farming, anti-trust, education, the minimum wage, and health care are major assets in both big cities and small towns. Democrats need to stop playing either/or politics and stop having debates between ourselves that don’t make any sense.

  In short, knock off the dichotomizing.
• Hullabaloo, excerpting an article in Politico on Trump's surprise that the Presidency is not run like a business, with the photo of a petulant-looking president that lacks only a rattle or pacifier or something like that.  (Comrade Misfit suggested Photoshop.  Heh.)
• In reference to the massacre that didn't actually happen, Big Bad Bald Bastard posts a picture of one of the Lexington Avenue express trains.  With comment.
• Senator Al Franken, in conversation with Bill Maher (David Ferguson, Raw Story) on what the Republicans are thinking (the "video" does not play).
• The Rude Pundit:

  One last thing: There is another reason why Republicans and racist conservatives and Nazis want you to think that Democrats are the party of the KKK. They're saying none-too-subtly that non-white people are stupid because they support Democrats. See, Republicans can't be the racists, despite all the plainly racist policies they want because there is this one racist thing that they're not guilty of. It's a fuckin' low bar they've set for themselves and they barely crawl under it.

• The Rectification of Names.

  Conservative Trumposceptics are having a hard time processing it. On the one hand, because it's Trump, they've given themselves permission to see one aspect or another of how bad the decree was, its terrible drafting, its incompetent execution, even some of its hideous consequences; but on the other hand, the court decision is an example of dread JUDICIAL ACTIVISM, or a violation of the sacred constitutional principle that judicial review applies only to the actions of Democrats, and thus ipso facto bad in its own right

Candle in the Rain

Interesting proposal.  (The big banks will probably shoot it down, just for starters.  And ...entities... will conspire to sabotage the enterprise [no, not the Enterprise.  The business] which will contribute to a certain corporate paranoia.  It's an idea.  If you are old enough you may remember lots of small banks, both savings and commercial, all over the place; over the last 30 or so years, most of these have been either merged or bought up.  There are still credit unions.)

Money

Money.

Money.

Money.

Money.

• Paul Krugman (via Janet Allon at AlterNet) on false populism and Donald Trump.

  If that sounds like populism, we definitely have a bridge to sell you.
  
  Since GOP-ers in Congress probably don't have enough votes to overturn Dodd-Frank, they may have to settle for crippling enforcement of it, which they can fairly easily do by "undermining the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, whose goal is to protect ordinary families from financial scams," Krugman points out. The recent Wells Fargo scandal was only revealed because of this entity.
  
  What gives then? Why are consumer protections in the so-called president's sights? His oh-so populist Goldman Sachs appointee to his National Economic Council, Gary Cohn, made the analogy that the fiduciary rule is like “'putting only healthy food on the menu' and denying people the right to eat unhealthy food if they want it," Krugman writes. And we do know that Trump likes fast food. Krugman thinks the analogy is inapt, however. To him, it is more like "preventing restaurants from claiming that their 1400-calorie portions are health food."

  Actual populism favors consumer protections.
• When I typed that last sentence, the Internet cut out.
• Enriching private prisons and criminalization of immigrants.  (Crooks and Liars, The Liberal Yell, a former Border Patrol person.)

  The GEO Group and CoreCivic will be paid millions if not billions of our tax dollars via the Trump Administration. Trump will insist he’s keeping America safe when in reality he is tearing families apart, destroying our economy that relies on immigrant workers and business owners and creating an endless supply of clientele for private prisons.

Dear Donnie: Your Pal Vlad Does Not Play Nice With Others

Critic of Vladimir Putin suffers "full organ failure" and is in a hospital in grave condition.

Vladimir Kara-Murza, an outspoken critic of the Putin regime, may also have been poisoned in 2015.

Leftovers

• Fred Korematsu (Wikipedia entry).

  In the early 1980s, while researching a book on internment cases, lawyer and University of California, San Diego professor Peter Irons came across evidence that Charles Fahy, the Solicitor General of the United States who argued Korematsu v. United States before the Supreme Court, had deliberately suppressed reports from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and military intelligence which concluded that Japanese-American citizens posed no security risk. These documents revealed that the military had lied to the Supreme Court, and that government lawyers had willingly made false arguments. Irons concluded that the Supreme Court’s decision was invalid since it was based on unsubstantiated assertions, distortions, and misrepresentations. Along with a team of lawyers headed by Dale Minami, Irons petitioned for writs of error coram nobis with the federal courts, seeking to overturn Korematsu's conviction.
  
  On November 10, 1983, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of U.S. District Court in San Francisco formally vacated the conviction. Korematsu stood in front of US District Judge Marilyn Patel and said, "I would like to see the government admit that they were wrong and do something about it so this will never happen again to any American citizen of any race, creed, or color."[31] He also said, "If anyone should do any pardoning, I should be the one pardoning the government for what they did to the Japanese-American people."[32] Peter Irons described Korematsu's ending statement during the case as the most powerful statement he'd ever heard from anyone. He related the statement as being as empowering as Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech.[33] Judge Patel’s ruling cleared Korematsu’s name, but was incapable of overturning the Supreme Court’s decision.

• Avedon's Sideshow:

  So far they are following the same playbook they used to let Scott Walker defeat them. Mass demonstrations are all very nice, but if they don't lead to people going out into the communities and finding a way to talk to strangers about the things they have in common and getting them onside, they end up being worthless.
  
  [...]
  
  (And while I would never say that demonstrations are useless - they're not - I do want to see people do more than just demonstrate. I'm happy to say that whatever made people numb-out over the last 17 years seems to be evaporating, but you still need to talk to people who don't already agree with you if you want to get something done.)

• Might be Chopin.
• "Lather was thirty years old today..."

Rising Convergence

• Both Welcome Back to Pottersville and Down With Tyranny linked to Zeit Online, which posted a long piece on the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's appointment as chancellor and what happened afterward.  (It's in English; German version here.) A taste:

  Hitler needed only five months to establish his power. By the summer of 1933, fundamental rights and the constitution had been suspended, the states had been forced into conformity, the unions crushed, the political parties banned or dissolved, press and radio brought into line and the Jews stripped of their equality under the law. Everything that existed in Germany outside of the National Socialist Party had been "destroyed, dispersed, dissolved, annexed or absorbed," François-Poncet concluded in early July. Hitler, he claimed, had "won the game with little effort." "He only had to puff -- and the edifice of German politics collapsed like a house of cards."

• Robert Reich posted warning signs of incipient Trump tyranny in early January.  (From Salon.)
• Kim Kardashian (West) counters Trump's fearmongering with Statistics.  Lawnmowers, indeed.
• Rick Perlstein's "The emperor's empty grandstands."  (Washington Spectator)  The ground-level view.
• I cannot read this and not see red.  In several directions.  Slavery was a staining, insidious, corroding sin--yes, I said sin--and evil--yes, I said evil--and until that sin is expiated and atoned for, there will be racism, because a good chunk of racism is refusing to face the necessity of atonement, and there will be no absolution until there is atonement.  
• The video that Sean Spicer is reacting to.  Spicer's reaction.  (Saturday Night Live's YouTube channel.)
• Other way.
• Counter demonstration.
• We are supposed to be smarter (or more clueful) than the Germans in 1933.  Not seeing that, much.