Why The Past Matters

Such a beautiful mini documentary from the NY Times today.
Why we hang on to things, places: because they matter in our story.

Susan Collins Gets Gussied Up

Before and After
Susan Collins: All gussied up (as my mothered would have called it) for her 'Big Day', no longer just One of the Guys, but THE Guy,  sadly and clearly overdoes it, in an attempt to appear female: bouffant hairdo, extreme blue eye shadow and just so wrong makeup, as she stands up for her fellow Republican mysogynists.  If she thinks they'll have her back when they're done with her, she's got another thing coming. I can't imagine how she sleeps at night. In fact, my guess is they're all zombies, and this is the Apocalypse.

Good Lord, whoever did her eyebrows should be flogged. It's downright camp, non? To don such a getup on such a sad day flies in the face of all that is decent. Her smug betrayal of women is infuriating, a move I'll wager she will live to regret, as will they all.

before

after

"I will make a bargain with the Republicans. If they will stop telling lies about Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them."  Adlai Stevenson 

And this is interesting, from Wiki:

"Many years later it was revealed that during the campaign Stevenson was approached by Soviet Ambassador Menshikov who offered Soviet financial and public relations help to assist him in getting elected if he decided to run. Stevenson flatly rejected the Soviet offer telling Menshikov that he, "considered the offer of such assistance highly improper, indiscreet and dangerous to all concerned." Stevenson then reported the incident directly to President Eisenhower."

No kidding... seriously?  Well, I'l be..


 

Thank you, Mr, Kimmel!

Unbelievably Mr. Kimmel is the ONLY media person actually discussing the madness of King Donald this morning, amply displayed at his rambling incoherent "press conference" (generous term) yesterday.

Not a single mention of the obvious insanity displayed by the president yesterday for 80 MINUTES RUNNING in the paper of record or on ANY major media outlets.

This continued normalization of Trump's bizarre mentality as reflected in his public statements by everyone from Faux News to MSNBC  is frighteningly familiar.

And it occurs to me that it is always the Republicans, from Nixon to Starr to Kavanaugh, who seem to insist the public suffer every demoralizing detail of the sexual exploits of politicians. You have the give the Dems credit, when they misbehave they try to keep it quiet, resign, apologize and quietly slink away. The Republicans seem to get a charge out of airing every detail of someone's dirty laundry, and anyone's will do.  They're clearly titillated, and assume the rest of us are as well. The question is (as I decide whether or not to watch this hearing today), are we? And if so, is that the final joke on us all? Would we be able to admit it if it were?

And then there's this madness... note China's representative subtle shrug of shoulders in response to Trump's bizarre accusation – the rep seems to be saying "whaddaya gonna do, guy's nuts". We feel ya.

Tim-berrrr!!!

"What a Difference a day makes –

Twenty-four little hours......"

Irony or Metaphor?

You can't make this stuff up....  From this week's Harper's Weekly.

"It was reported that Washington's rat infestation was increasing, with complaints at an all-time high. 'The rats are in some ways a byproduct of the success of the city,' said Jack Evans, a D.C. Council member."

(sigh)

A Timely Answer to "How Did We Get Here?"

Like Coastal Living? Watch This.

Aretha Franklin - Won't Be Long - Steve Allen Show - 1964

Heavenly choir much improved toDAY.

The Queen is Dead. Long Live THE QUEEN!

My soul gone cry for days. Sweet departed sister, soothe my soul.

Why Trump? Here's Why.

God help us...
My head has officially exploded.

All Is Not Lost

From the commenter Socrates, on the NY Times this morning:

"The only 'martial law' that might occur is the physical removal of Donald Trump from office into a federal holding cell, complemented by the military and the National Guard putting down a scattering of white supremacists gun-toting rallies in Trumpistan.

Republican Congresspeople and Cabinet members know Trump is incoherent, insane, unbalanced and unfit for office; they get fresh evidence of it every day.

Even official Republicans will not stand for Trump's declaration of martial law in the United States of America.

Given that Trump insanity, the 25th Amendment would be swiftly invoked to remove Donald to a uniquely padded, mirrored federal prison cell and Pastor Pence would then assume his Christian Shariah Law duties.

Pastor Pence would calmly explain to Trumpers that Donald is unwell and is receiving the much needed psychotherapy he never received as a young boy...and that the march to White Male Christian Power continues on the road to American fascism.

While it's true that this nation is at civil war with itself, with the reincarnation of the Old Confederacy fighting against modernity, equality, justice, science, contraception and non-whites, Americans will have to fight this war at the ballot box and in the court of public opinion against the worst generation of Republican propagandists, vote-riggers, greedsters, racists and Know Nothings this nation has ever seen.

America is much better than Donald Trump and his Deplorables.

We will prove it on November 6 2018."

From your Lips........

And the Hits Just Keep On Comin'

From this week's Harper's Weekly:

July 17, 2018

   

During an interview at Trump Turnberry, a golf resort that has not turned a profit since Donald Trump assumed ownership, the US president stated that the European Union was a "foe" and Russia a "foe in certain respects," and that he "hadn't thought" about asking Russian president Vladimir Putin about extraditing to the United States 12 Russian military officers, one of whom operated under the username Guccifer 2.0, for their role in the hacking and distribution of Democratic National Committee emails during the 2016 presidential campaign, which occurred "on or about" the date that then-presidential nominee Trump publicly suggested that hackers should try to find "the 30,000 missing emails" from his opponent's private email server. At a joint summit in Helsinki the day after the interview, Putin suggested that US and Russian investigators work together to improve US cyber security, and Trump said that he holds "both countries responsible. I think the United States has been foolish. I think we've all been foolish." At press events during a NATO conference in Belgium, Trump exaggerated the portion of NATO funding that is provided by the United States by almost 500 percent, took credit for NATO military spending increases that member countries agreed to in 2014, and described a speech by French president Emmanuel Macron as "beautiful" but admitted that he had no idea what Macron was saying. Trump's chief of staff, John Kelly, who also attended the talks, was "displeased" by an early meeting "because he was expecting a full breakfast and there were only pastries and cheese." The US Embassy advised Americans in London to "keep a low profile" during Trump's state visit to the UK.

 

A 75-year-old man currently serving life in prison for two murders announced his run for US Senate in Minnesota, a state that only forbids inmates from contesting state-level offices; and a Republican congressional candidate in California, who stated on a radio show that his campaign is dedicated to exposing the Holocaust as a fiction, distanced himself from robocalls about the "Jewish takeover of America" made on his behalf. A white woman in Memphis, Tennessee, was fired for calling the police on a black man who was wearing socks while swimming in a pool; police in Ohio pulled over an 11-year-old black boy who was delivering newspapers on his route; a police officer was filmed passively observing the abuse of a woman who was labeled "not an American" for wearing a shirt bearing the flag of Puerto Rico, which has been a territory of the United States since March 2, 1917; and protesters in Chicago clashed with police after a white officer shot and killed a black man. Video was released that showed police officers in Georgia using a smartphone coin-flip app to decide whether or not to arrest a woman who was pulled over for speeding; and a congressman in Arizona told police he was allowed to break the speed limit because of his "immunity as a government official." A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by the family of an unarmed black man fatally shot by an Ohio police officer because the victim's civil rights had not been violated, and a federal court ruled that Transportation Security Administration agents cannot be sued by passengers for abusing them during searches because they are more akin to meat inspections than law enforcement. The US government missed its deadline to reunify all 98 immigrant children under five years old with parents from whom they were separated at the border, and a "spiritual adviser" to President Trump said that Jesus "would not have been our Messiah" if he had broken immigration laws.

 

A women and her mechanic died from carbon monoxide poisoning while having intercourse inside a car that was running in her garage, and a woman was found alive in her car seven days after it plunged 200 feet off a cliff in Big Sur, California. Scientists isolated a "ghost particle," a subatomic particle that can travel through solid matter, inside a cubic kilometer of ice in Antarctica. Thirty-three people have been evacuated from a seaside village in Greenland because of an 11-million-ton iceberg got close to shore. Studies revealed that rats were depriving coral reefs of bird droppings; and, as they were being transported to a new wildlife reserve in Kenya, eight endangered black rhinos died. A jaguar escaped its enclosure at a New Orleans zoo and killed four alpacas, an emu, and a fox; a mob in Indonesia slaughtered nearly three hundred crocodiles at an animal sanctuary after a man was killed near the reptiles' breeding pond; and a family of woodchucks ate the wiring in US House Speaker Paul Ryan's car, rendering it useless. A new study found that penis size does not matter to mice.--Matthew Hickey

Tell It Like It Is

18 U.S. Code § 2381 - Treason

• US Code
• Notes

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Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 807; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(2)(J), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2148.)

Who Is America? Apparently It's These Guys

Don't Fall Asleep

NOT "Best Speech Ever", But Interesting...

99%? Not So Fast...

Stewart's article in the June Atlantic Magazine is worth the time it takes to read it. It's the best analysis of the situation in the US I've read this century.

Here's the link. Don't miss it.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/

The Only Brave Person in the Room

What is wrong with this audience? More concerned about access to powerful "newsmakers" than appreciating the truth in Ms. Wolf's humor.  So, what has traditionally been a Roast is now subject to censorship?

Well, Okay. I hear the next big thing in dance is the goose-step.

George Saunders Has A Nun In His Head

Bernstein, The greatest 5 min. in music education

Um...Which Lives Matter?

From this week's Harper's Weekly"

April 4, 2018

By Joe Kloc     

   

A 38-year-old animal rights activist and vegan-lifestyle advocate posted to her website accusations that YouTube had failed to properly compensate her for ad revenue generated by videos she uploaded to the site, then drove to the company's headquarters, took out a pistol, shot three people, shouted, "Come at me," and fatally shot herself. A survivor of a mass shooting at a high school in Florida tweeted that the YouTube shooting was "proof" that children aren't the only Americans who need to worry about being shot to death in their day-to-day lives, and US president Donald Trump proposed additional tariffs on Chinese-made flamethrowers. Trump tweeted that the US "Department of 'Justice'" was "an embarrassment" because it was "slow walking" the turnover of documents related to investigations of his political opponents, a 33-year-old white man and Trump campaign associate from the Netherlands was sentenced to 30 days in prison for lying to special prosecutors investigating state-sponsored interference in the US presidential election, and a 43-year-old black woman from Texas was sentenced to five years in prison because she unknowingly violated the conditions of her supervised release by voting in that election. A police officer in Asheville, North Carolina, stopped a black man for jaywalking, forced him to the ground, repeatedly punched him in the face while he shouted, "I can't breath," tased him multiple times, and called him a "bro" and a "tough boy"; a deputy sheriff in Sacramento, California, ran over a 61-year-old woman who was attending a demonstration for Stephon Clark, a 22-year-old unarmed black man who was holding his cell phone in his grandmother's back yard when two officers approached him and shot him eight times, which they told investigators they did because he lunged at them; and an autopsy of Clark's body revealed that the majority of shots were fired into his back. In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, prosecutors announced that they would not charge a white police officer who was filmed shouting, "I'll shoot your fucking ass" at a 37-year-old black man named Alton Sterling, whom he then shot six times and called a "stupid ass motherfucker," which the officer later told investigators he said because he was "mad" at Sterling for "making" him kill him. A 68-year-old white man in Kentucky assaulted his wife with a flashlight and then pointed a rifle at responding officers, opened fire, and was apprehended alive; and footage was released of a police officer in Houston shouting, "I'll shoot your ass" at an unarmed black man named Danny Ray Thomas and then moments later firing a fatal shot into Thomas's chest. Police in Augusta, Georgia, apprehended alive a 22-year-old white man who fired multiple shots at the driver and the passenger of a nearby vehicle; police in Chicago apprehended alive a 21-year-old man in a train station who was carrying a loaded pistol, wearing body armor, and holding a duffel bag filled with SWAT equipment; and police in Elgin, Illinois, released more than 30 hours of footage of the traffic stop of a 34-year-old black woman named Decynthia Clements, which showed the officers agree that if force was necessary to apprehend her they would use rubber bullets and Tasers, and then order Clements from the car and shoot her with live ammunition, killing her. "She had a couple knives in her hands," said one of the at least seven officers at the scene. "I don't know what else we were going to do."

If Memory Serves....

Oh, and then there's this...

Requiescat In Pacem

The Meaning of Life

“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.”

Stephen Hawking

From Harper's Weekly: Why gun ownership is a joke

Following the year’s 30th mass shooting, which claimed the lives of 17 people at a school in Parkland, Florida, lawmakers debated the best way to stop gun violence in American schools.[1][2][3][4] As the 31st, 32nd, 33rd, 34th, and 35th mass shootings occurred, the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, which has repeatedly passed amendments to federal funding bills that prevent the Centers for Disease Control from directly researching the causes of gun violence, said the killings could not be addressed with a “magic bullet”; and US president Donald Trump, who has previously expressed a fear of sharks, blood, stairs, watching prostitutes urinate, collecting rent in Cincinnati, and holding a 27-year-old bald eagle named Uncle Sam, said that an officer who did not intervene in the Parkland shooting was a “coward,” that he would have stopped the shooter himself even if he “didn’t have a weapon,” and that “highly trained” teachers should be armed in the classroom.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] A school board in Kentucky voted to allow teachers to carry concealed weapons, police in Louisiana raided the home of a student who observed that the symbol for a square root resembled a gun, and a high school in Pennsylvania suspended a teacher for discussing the Parkland shooting in class.[14][15][16] The governor of Kentucky said the country needed to have “an honest conversation” about violent music and pornography “in the hands” of “young people”; congresspersons in Florida rejected a ban on assault rifles and then passed a resolution that declared pornography a public heath risk; a former Pennsylvania senator blamed “absent dads” for mass shootings; and the National Rifle Association, which in combination with its self-described “lobbying arm” paid $5 million to lobbyists last year, announced through its chief spokeswoman that it wasn’t “a lobby group” for gun ownership.[17][18][19][20][21] Trump said the country must “do something” about how “young people’s thoughts” are shaped by “violence on video games”; and the NRA’s president said that “socialists” wanted to take away American’s handguns and semi-automatic rifles so that citizens wouldn’t be able to defend themselves against an attack by the US government, which employs a total of 1,373,650 active-duty personnel; owns 5,884 combat tanks, 41,062 armored vehicles, 1,934 self-propelled artillery guns, 19 aircraft carriers, 63 destroyers, 70 submarines, 2,296 fighter planes, and 947 attack helicopters; maintains a stockpile of 6,800 nuclear bombs, including some that are 80 times more powerful than the bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima during World War II; and operates on a budget of about $600 billion, which congressional Republicans said should be increased, and which the military used in part to fund Army-themed video games designed to recruit teenagers.[22][23][24][25][26][27][28] 

Corporate Wokeness? Or Hall of Mirrors?

Some food for thought from a savvy commenter in today's NY Times responding to a rare, sporadically lucid op ed from Ross Douthat.
Because facts still do matter to the mentally intact.
 

drspock   New York 44 minutes ago

We have to remember that "the corporation" is a creation of capital. It's function is to consolidate and increase surplus capital. It always magnifies the the difference between the rent producers and the rent collectors.

The period that refers to as "the Treaty of Detroit" was a time where organized labor still had some power. More importantly, it was a time when overseas markets had not recovered from WWII and couldn't afford the consumer good that we were churning out.

Globalism isn't about "free trade" and it didn't just happen. It was engineered when capital expansion was tapping out the American worker and economic growth abroad had reached level where its exploitation could be profitable.

Treaties were negotiated, laws were changed, tax policies changed, all toward that end. The final piece of the puzzle was globalizing the financial system. The enormous capital surplus established in the US now reached the entire globe. When countries pushed back, we made them an offer they couldn't refuse.

If the question raised by this article is does capitalism have a conscious? The answer is a resounding NO. It has a single, prime directive-profit and more profit. Profit that leaves social destruction in its wake, profit that is rapidly destroying the planet itself, and profit that has seized control of the levers of government and turned it, like the corporation into another of capital's tools.

And then there's this guy, just as brill:

Matt Carnicelli

 is a trusted commenter Brooklyn, NY 1 hour ago

Ross, did you seriously believe that these tax cuts would lead to significantly higher wages?

Please, voodoo economics is, was, and forever shall be a scam. By the year 2017, everyone with a brain should known it was a scam - and that the deficits this scam would incur will not be productive deficits. We are just redistributing money back to oligarchs who will only hide it in the Cayman Islands or use it buy more politicians.

The question that conscience-based conservatives like yourself should be addressing is what went horribly wrong in Christianity after Luther's Reformation - like how Jesus' compassion for the poor and de facto socialist attitudes were transformed into the idiocy of predestination, and the sadism of Calvinist economics; or how Jesus' authentic ethos of compassion, brotherhood, and non-violence was exchanged for one of "praise the Lord and pass the ammunition".

Ross, the fact is that ever since the Reagan devolution, wealth-obsessed conservatives have again and again made fools of conscience-based conservatives; and as openly acknowledged by David Brody in his now infamous Sunday apologia for evangelicals supporting Trump - in which he writes that "the goal of evangelicals has always been winning the larger battle over control of the culture" - these same conservatives long ago sold their souls in an attempt to impose their constipated, corrupted style of Christianity on a nation originally conceived out of an ethos of perfect spiritual freedom.

"The sadism of Calvinist economics"... Nailed it. Thank you, Matt! 

French Women: Deja Woke

IS THERE ANYTHING these two Comedic Geniuses CAN'T do?

And in heels?

Is This Any Way to Run a Government?

Read it and weep.

http://docs.house.gov/meetings/IG/IG00/20180129/106822/HMTG-115-IG00-Transcript-20180129.pdf

From Michele Goldberg's excellent Op-ed today explaining all this memo mess;

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/opinion/dont-believe-the-liberal-fbi.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

It really is time for the men to step aside, don't you think? As Mattis looks for justifiable reasons to take us to war with Syria. Yes, it seems The Don feels it's time for a more serious distraction from the Mueller Probe than a measly memo. Mmmmm, a good solid episode of American boots on the ground, that's what's needed. Buck the people up, as it were. Make 'em proud to be 'Mercans again.

Let's Be Clear

A coup d'état also known simply as a coup (/kuː/), a putsch golpe de estado, or an overthrow, is a type of revolution, where the illegal and overt seizure of a state by the military or other elites within the state apparatus occurs.

A little further clarity:

Coup d'état definition, a sudden and decisive action in politics, especially one resulting in a change of government illegally or by force.

As To Journalists...

It is my belief that the writer, the free-lance author, should be and must be a critic of the society in which he lives. It is easy enough, and always profitable, to rail away at national enemies beyond the sea, at foreign powers beyond our borders who question the prevailing order. But the moral duty of the free writer is to begin his work at home; to be a critic of his own community, his own country, his own culture. If the writer is unwilling to fill this part, then the writer should abandon pretense and find another line of work: become a shoe repairman, a brain surgeon, a janitor, a cowboy, a nuclear physicist, a bus driver. -Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (29 Jan 1927-1989)

An Appropriate Portrayal

What Are "Authoritarian Voters"?

More history on this at 10 minutes into video below.