Maybe They've Discovered the Power of Unions

Humpback whales congregate (for dinner).

Side Dish

• Remember that joke about how the Republican health plan was "Die quickly"?  Ever suspect it wasn't really a joke?  Southern Beale provides some evidence:

  But after the laughs died down I remembered my November panic attacks about being old and fat and weak and I realized,
  

  Oh my god. Alexandra Petri is right. They are culling the herd.

  And it’s not just Trump, it’s the entire Republican Party. It’s the entire ethos of conservatism: if you’re poor or weak or sick, get outta the way. You’re dragging the country down. You are dead weight on American greatness.

  (Link to Alexandra Petri's Washington Post article transferred to this quote.)  Did someone just mutter "Social Darwinism" out there?
  
• Why wait until college?  Shouldn't something that important be taught starting in first grade?  (What's that you say?  We have to preserve children's innocence?  They shouldn't have to learn that everyone lies to them that early? What about Santa Claus?  What about [*gasp*] advertising?)
• (Well, what about Santa Claus?  Most children figure that out before they turn 10.  It's adults who need to believe that their kids believe in Santa Claus.  As for advertising, finding that sort of hyperbole credible is the mark of a fool, or someone who would take politicians at their word.  Really, one can be open to new experiences and beauty and still distrust out-and-out untruths.  But maybe Americans really can't handle the truth¹.)
• (This also feeds into the demand, usually by con artists and swindlers and, generally, Persons Who Mean You Harm, that they be trusted.  Not merely believed, but trusted.  People don't like to hear this, but the correct answer to a wheedling "Don't you trust me?" is "NO."  Preferably loudly enough to be heard a mile away.)

¹ In your dreams, Charlie. Return to text.

Breaking News: Water is Wet

• Billionaires' stealth attempts to quash university student protests and dissent. Because one should keep an open mind about hate. Not.  (Alex Kotch, AlterNet)
• Video:  CNN's Fareed Zakaria calls out the 45th president's most notable quality.  (Scarce, Crooks and Liars)  Warning:  Uses the unbleeped term for falsehoods, so NSFW or where such usage might be alarming.

In Memoriam

• Bernie Wrightson (loads slowly), illustrator (via Mark Evanier)
• Jimmy Breslin, New Yorker, journalist, writer, columnist (The Daily News gives his age as 86; the New York Times lists him as 88. We'll see who has to print the correction.) AP obit at sfgate with more details.  [ETA:  Daily News  flinched; they have him now as 88; the URL given here is slightly altered and redirected.]

In Memoriam -- Chuck Berry

Chuck Berry. Mr. Rock and Roll. He was 90, but it's still a shock. Peter Guralnick appreciation.  The BBC's obit.

His was the music I grew up on, that got filtered through generations of musicians, that was recognizable even disguised as reggae.

In Memoriam

• Derek Walcott, poet, Nobel laureate, playwright
• James Cotton, blues harmonica master

...Maybe Later

*the blahs*

Y'Know,

Microwave?

Seriously?

Nobody has to lift a finger or twist a lip to make those people sound stupid.

Yahrzeit

Yahrzeit.

Cumulative Effect of Lies

Robert Reich, AlterNet:

Trump and his administration aren’t just telling big lies. They’re also waging war on the institutions we depend on as sources of truth.

In so doing, they’re undermining the basic building blocks of American democracy.

In Memoriam

Robert Osborne, cinemaphile/face of Turner Classic Movies.

"If I wasn't doing it (on TV) I'd be doing it as a hobby," Osborne said, "so I might as well get paid for it."

Now That's How You Do It!

Stephen King (the real one) gives le snicker juste to the accusation of wiretapping.

"HE HAS SCISSORS," indeed.

Driftglass For the Win

Because he's correct.

The terrible truth that no one can bring themselves to say out loud is that Modern Conservatism has been a scam from the start. A massive fraud, gathering speed and careening down a steep and terrifying road towards Trump for the last 30 years. A corrupt cult that hired men like David Brooks for the same reason the mob hires pricey lawyers: to rig up alibis for their despicable enterprise and explain away their loathsome behavior.

Emphasis added.

Quelle surprise!

A study has found that "moral outrage" may be a way to assuage guilt.

Gee, ya think?

Abstract here.  Reason's take is here.  (Let's just say Reason has a [libertarian] dog in this fight.)

Including the Underwear (*Yeuccccchhhh*)

Clear non-reflective vinyl, held together with fishing line.  That's what the Emperor and his minions are wearing.  Hope you haven't just eaten.

• Deep background:  The long-term effects of the slave trade on the African side.  With graphs and statistics.

  The study undertook a number of different statistical tests to identify the presence and strength of the two channels. They found that each of the tests generated the same answer: both channels are present. The slave trades negatively affected domestic institutions and governance, which results in less trust today. In addition, the slave trade also directly reduced the extent to which individuals were inherently trusting of others. We also found that, quantitatively, the second channel is twice as large as the first channel.

  There's more. (naked capitalism.)
• Garrett Epps at the Atlantic on "Papers, Please" (more on this story):

  After days of research, I can find no legal authority for ICE or CBP to require passengers to show identification on an entirely domestic fight. The ICE authorizing statute, 8 U.S.C. § 1357, provides that agents can conduct warrantless searches of “any person seeking admission to the United States”—if, that is, the officer has “reasonable cause to suspect” that the individual searched may be deportable. CBP’s statute, 19 U.S.C. § 1467, grants search authority “whenever a vessel from a foreign port or place or from a port or place in any Territory or possession of the United States arrives at a port or place in the United States.” CBP regulations, set out at 19 C.F.R. § 162.6, allow agents to search “persons, baggage, and merchandise arriving in the Customs territory of the United States from places outside thereof.”
  
  I asked two experts whether I had missed some general exception to the Fourth Amendment for passengers on a domestic flight. After all, passengers on flights entering the U.S. from other countries can expect to be asked for ID, and even searched. Barry Friedman, the Jacob D. Fuchsberg professor of law and affiliated professor of politics at New York University, is the author of Unwarranted: Policing Without Permission, a new book-length study of intrusive police investigation and search practices. “Is this remotely constitutional?” he asked. “I think it isn’t. We all know generally the government can’t come up and demand to see identification.” Officers need to have statutory authority to search and reasonable suspicion that the person to be searched has violated the law, he said. Andre Segura, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, told me that “I’m not aware of any aviation exception” for domestic passengers.

• One has to marvel about wonder at all the compulsive prevarication in the current regime administration.
• Sessions denies meeting with Russians.
• Journalist baffled.
• "Cover-up"
• Evidence preservation
• And there has been an upswing in anti-Semitic activity (Comrade Misfit cites one such incident) and apparently nothing will be done about it.  Because 70+ years ago didn't really happen.

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.