"A Tiger in a Petting Zoo": What's the Endgame?

The naked truth is plain to see.

I can't keep up with all the news, and you fellas don't expect me to.  So here's just a few items worth noting.  But first, the legit weather report from the Washington Post, off my Google newsfeed:

Senators Schumer and Warren sound the alarm about that overgrown juvenile delinquent and his geek squad who now have their grubby fingers in all your government records and on your bank account:

 

And because they know all about you, they could tailor your Social Security check as they please - or withhold it for "undersirable" behavior. Does your retired Aunt Sadie, so upset about the price of eggs, know about this? What about disabled, gun-loving Cousin Clem in his red cap? Whenever the news finally trickles down to them and their pocketbooks, I hope they choke on it. 

Senator Adam Schiff tells it plainly: "this is a corrupt scheme to turn this country into one-man rule, and enrich Donald Trump and his wealthy friends like Elon Musk."

And now, not content with scooping up Canada, Greenland, and Panama - a costly invasion is not necessary; economic terror is enough to bring them all into submission - the Very Stable Genius wants to take over Gaza and rebuild it as "the Riviera of the Middle East" - after expelling the 2 million people who live there:

 

And here's a headline from Canada, which just got played like a hockey puck over tariffs, where all those nice, polite, friendly folks are trying to figure out the game plan:

 

Now you can watch the video if you like; suave Andy Chang has some very good charts and facts to show the big picture, but he misses the really big picture.  So your Head Trucker is going to cut to the chase here.

iT'S NOT ABOUT DRUGS.  IT'S NOT ABOUT TRADE BALANCES.  IT'S ALL ABOUT TOTAL DOMINATION BY GLORIOUS LEADER:  EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ALWAYS.

Why am I the only one who sees this?

Canada, stop trying to find a logical reason for the tariffs; there is none. If it's not one issue, the Orange One will make up another.  Any hammer will do to beat you into submission while he takes all your valuables.

People, it's all right out of Hitler's playbook:  Border problems.  Fake outrage about neighboring countries.  Scare tactics.  A police state.  Removal of civil servants and political opponents.  Demonizing one section or another of the citizenry.  A constant barrage of lies from state mouthpieces.  Scrubbing away facts from books and schools.  Keeping other states in perpetual fear of what might happen next.  Lebensraum - i. e., fake justification for seizing foreign territory.  Redrawing the map, renaming things.  Deportations.  Concentration camps.  And there is more yet to come!  It's only just begun . . . 

And fellas, cut the crap about "Oh my, we still have 1400+ days to go before his term ends."  HIS TERM WILL NEVER FUCKING END.  If good ol' Joe Biden had to be prised out of the Oval Office with a crowbar, do you really think Tyrant Trump will just quietly walk away from the power and glory?

Seriously, people??  HE'LL NEVER LEAVE.  HE WANTS TO BE KING OF THE WHOLE WORLD.

There now, I've said it.  You have been warned.  What to do about it, I don't know.  You'll have to figure that out for yourself.

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Trump: Don't Blame Me! Fear the Dangerous Dems!

Trump flew down to Alamo, Texas, today to have another look at his magnificent border wall - the first public appearance he has made since last week's attack on the Capitol by the mob he incited.  

Senator Lindsey Graham went with him on Air Force One - yes, that same Lindsey Graham, Trumpmeister's most faithful pup, who last week had to hide from the murderous throng, and later said on the floor of the Senate, "Count me out.  Enough's enough."

 

 Now he's trotting along behind his master again - as a dog returneth to his vomit. 

It's also reported that last night Trump had a "good conversation" with Vice President Mike Pence - whom Trump never called to check on while enraged fanatics were running through the halls of Congress shouting, "Hang Mike Pence" - and erected a gallows complete with noose on the grounds outside.  Last week, it was reported that Pence was "very angry" with Trump - but bygones are bygones, it seems. I guess they kissed and made up. What they talked about has not yet been reported, but you can bet it wasn't a Sunday school lesson. 

By the way, Trump isn't visiting the Alamo, which is in downtown San Antone, but the pee-mite town of Alamo, a mere suburb of the much larger city of McAllen, a farming center in the Rio Grande Valley. Still, the name of the Alamo is highly symbolic of a last stand, a fight to the death against tyranny, etc. - and you can believe that that, in and of itself, is a dog whistle to Trump's fanatical followers. 

Here are various clips of Trump's remarks today, in which he typically absolves himself of all responsibility for last week's insurrection and warns that impeachment is "very dangerous to America" - another dog whistle - trying to paint the Democrats and everyone else who doesn't kneel before him as the real threat to the country. 

Of course everything he says, including a, an, and the, is a total fucking LIE. He is so eaten up with conceit, he can't breathe without lying, just to glorify himself.  He has no remorse and no conscience.  He sicced a mob of killer dogs on the members of Congress - Republicans and Democrats alike - including the next three persons in the line of presidential succession.  And instead of lifting a finger to stop the attack, he sat in front of the television, gleefully watching the chaos he caused.

OF COURSE THIS MONSTER SHOULD BE REMOVED, IMPEACHED, ARRESTED, PROSECUTED AND JAILED FOR HIS CRIMES.  THERE IS NOTHING TO DEBATE OR ARGUE ABOUT.  ENOUGH IS ENOUGH IS FUCKING ENOUGH.

 

And then there's this:  Don't expect many Republicans to vote for impeachment or any other anti-Trump motion - even if they know that Trump is a huge fraud, they are terrified of being murdered by the frenzied MAGA mob, as freshman Republican Congressman Peter Meijer of Michigan explains:

 

As it was written:  Sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind.

Update, 7:55 p.m.--Pence Declines to Invoke 25th Amendment.

Well, there it is.  The Senate is in recess and will not even receive the impeachment papers until January 19th at the earliest - a day before Biden's inauguration.  So we just have to wait it out now, and pray God the monster doesn't go "wild" again.  God help us all!

But I have to believe the monster will not live happily ever after.  Sooner or later, somewhere or other, he will meet his nemesis, as tyrants always do.  What goes around, comes around.

 

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The Firehose of Falsehood

Trump isn't nuts, he's trying to make you nuts, writes Mark Follman at Mother Jones.  Excerpt:

Trump may well be a dangerous psychopath, but he isn’t crazy. He doesn’t spread lunatic conspiracy theories because he believes them. Not for a moment does he actually think that Joe Biden secretly arranged the murder of Navy SEALs in a scheme to stage the takedown of Osama bin Laden. When Trump shared those claims recently on Twitter, his motivation was, as always, to provoke, entertain, confuse, “trigger the libs,” and change the subject from his own failures. . . .

It’s worth looking again at the big picture here, one Mother Jones began documenting shortly after the 2016 election: Trump is using the autocrat’s playbook. Vladimir Putin’s, to be specific. As contributor Denise Clifton wrote more than three years ago, Trump’s deluge of demagoguery and lies “echoes a contemporary form of Russian propaganda known as the ‘Firehose of Falsehood.’” With Election Day nearing, the comparison has never been more apt.

In 2016, the nonpartisan think tank RAND published a study of the tactics and techniques used in Kremlin-controlled media. The end goal of what the researchers called “a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions” was to entertain, confuse, and overwhelm the public. (The entertainment component can serve as inspiration for loyal followers—for example, a string of broadcast traveling stage performances showcasing a greatest-hits of outrage and outrageousness.)

Look back at just about any point in Trump’s presidency and it’s evident how he has fulfilled four defining features of the Kremlin playbook, as identified in the RAND study:

• “High numbers of channels and messages”: Trump by no means controls the American media, but he has access to an unprecedented version of state-controlled television in Fox News, along with enormous unfettered reach through Facebook and Twitter (which further feeds all manner of news outlets).
• “Rapid, continuous and repetitive”: There are countless instances of Trump repeating a lie or line of attack multiple times during interviews, press conferences, and campaign rallies.
• “Lacks commitment to consistency”: In one recent example, Trump pushed for more coronavirus aid from Congress before railing against it and then calling for it again, in a span of less than 24 hours. In another, he turned his back on aid for wildfire-stricken California only to quickly reverse his position.
• “Lacks commitment to objective reality.” This one is pretty self-explanatory, but just in case… here are 20,000 examples.

Follman's well-written essay is worth reading in full.  Bottom line:  don't give up, don't look away, keep hope alive and VOTE HIM OUT!

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Lies, Damned Lies, and Kellyanne Conway

Defending Truth, Justice, and the American Way -
Kellyanne Conway in her fantasy outfit work uniform.

Or, how to be Minister of Propaganda in four easy lessons - see the Vox video below for directions.

The Flynn scandal is opening a big can of ugly worms, not the least of which is on-camera proof of the blatant dishonesty of Trump's head cheerleader.

(Though confidentially, fellas, your Head Trucker recognized decades ago that politicians of all stripes and all parties do exactly the same thing nearly every time they are on camera, and the public is used to it by now, sad to say. There must be a secret school for this stuff in Washington and in every state capital. Conway's greater sin is to make it so very, very obvious, used in a wicked cause.)

1. MSNBC's Morning Joe team calls Conway a flat-out liar this morning:




2. On NBC's Today show, Matt Lauer tells a haggard, somewhat disheveled Conway to her virtual face that she is making no sense:




3. Vox breaks it down for us:

A Window of Time

Politifact is tracking Trump's claims.

George Prochnik in the New Yorker, writing about Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig (1881-1942):

In his memoir, Zweig did not excuse himself or his intellectual peers for failing early on to reckon with Hitler’s significance. “The few among writers who had taken the trouble to read Hitler’s book, ridiculed the bombast of his stilted prose instead of occupying themselves with his program,” he wrote. They took him neither seriously nor literally. Even into the nineteen-thirties, “the big democratic newspapers, instead of warning their readers, reassured them day by day, that the movement . . . would inevitably collapse in no time.” Prideful of their own higher learning and cultivation, the intellectual classes could not absorb the idea that, thanks to “invisible wire-pullers”—the self-interested groups and individuals who believed they could manipulate the charismatic maverick for their own gain—this uneducated “beer-hall agitator” had already amassed vast support. After all, Germany was a state where the law rested on a firm foundation, where a majority in parliament was opposed to Hitler, and where every citizen believed that “his liberty and equal rights were secured by the solemnly affirmed constitution.”

Zweig recognized that propaganda had played a crucial role in eroding the conscience of the world. He described how, as the tide of propaganda rose during the First World War, saturating newspapers, magazines, and radio, the sensibilities of readers became deadened. Eventually, even well-meaning journalists and intellectuals became guilty of what he called “the ‘doping’ of excitement”—an artificial incitement of emotion that culminated, inevitably, in mass hatred and fear. Describing the healthy uproar that ensued after one artist’s eloquent outcry against the war in the autumn of 1914, Zweig observed that, at that point, “the word still had power. It had not yet been done to death by the organization of lies, by ‘propaganda.’ “ But Hitler “elevated lying to a matter of course,” Zweig wrote, just as he turned “anti-humanitarianism to law.” By 1939, he observed, “Not a single pronouncement by any writer had the slightest effect . . . no book, pamphlet, essay, or poem” could inspire the masses to resist Hitler’s push to war.

Propaganda both whipped up Hitler’s base and provided cover for his regime’s most brutal aggressions. It also allowed truth seeking to blur into wishful thinking, as Europeans’ yearning for a benign resolution to the global crisis trumped all rational skepticism. “Hitler merely had to utter the word ‘peace’ in a speech to arouse the newspapers to enthusiasm, to make them forget all his past deeds, and desist from asking why, after all, Germany was arming so madly,” Zweig wrote. Even as one heard rumors about the construction of special internment camps, and of secret chambers where innocent people were eliminated without trial, Zweig recounted, people refused to believe that the new reality could persist. “This could only be an eruption of an initial, senseless rage, one told oneself. That sort of thing could not last in the twentieth century.” In one of the most affecting scenes in his autobiography, Zweig describes seeing the first refugees from Germany climbing over the Salzburg mountains and fording the streams into Austria shortly after Hitler’s appointment to the Chancellorship. “Starved, shabby, agitated . . . they were the leaders in the panicked flight from inhumanity which was to spread over the whole earth. But even then I did not suspect when I looked at those fugitives that I ought to perceive in those pale faces, as in a mirror, my own life, and that we all, we all, we all would become victims of the lust for power of this one man.” . . .

I wonder how far along the scale of moral degeneration Zweig would judge America to be in its current state. We have a magnetic leader, one who lies continually and remorselessly—not pathologically but strategically, to placate his opponents, to inflame the furies of his core constituency, and to foment chaos. The American people are confused and benumbed by a flood of fake news and misinformation. Reading in Zweig’s memoir how, during the years of Hitler’s rise to power, many well-meaning people “could not or did not wish to perceive that a new technique of conscious cynical amorality was at work,” it’s difficult not to think of our own present predicament. Last week, as Trump signed a drastic immigration ban that led to an outcry across the country and the world, then sought to mitigate those protests by small palliative measures and denials, I thought of one other crucial technique that Zweig identified in Hitler and his ministers: they introduced their most extreme measures gradually—strategically—in order to gauge how each new outrage was received. “Only a single pill at a time and then a moment of waiting to observe the effect of its strength, to see whether the world conscience would still digest the dose,” Zweig wrote. “The doses became progressively stronger until all Europe finally perished from them.”

And still Zweig have might noted that, as of today, President Trump and his sinister “wire-pullers” have not yet locked the protocols for their exercise of power into place. 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.

Controlling Your Body, Killing Your Soul

Title page of an anti-masturbation book originally printed in London in 1716, reprinted in Boston in 1724.

I suffered through years of agony in a fundamentalist kind of church, agonizing over my terrible but unstoppable sin of masturbation, to the point of suicidal despair.  I suspect some of you fellas can relate.

It's hard to believe that kind of ignorant, assoholic propaganda is still going on in the 21st century, but apparently it is.  Below, a foul-mouthed but brilliant dissection of the underlying motive for all that - which is to control you and sell you more toxic snake-oil.

There is religious faith which is wholesome, fortifying, and sane - and it's important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, or to take someone's hope away.

But condemning young men to hell for beating off is neither good, nor sane, nor holy.  It is a monstrous con job, an evil mind-control scam.  But listen to what Dusty says:



Original anti-masturbation video here.

WTF: Boys Beware!

When Wally got into the car with the mustachioed man wearing sunglasses, Beav felt all creeped out, so he wrote down the license tag number on his Nifty notebook . . . later on, after Wally had been released on probation, he beat the Beaver's ass good for being such a snitch . . . .

Actually, I never saw any movies like this in school; in the Deep South, think it would have been way too outrageous to show something like this even as a warning.

But you younger gays need to understand how far we've come in just one lifetime: when I was a kid, this was all anybody knew about "homos": shadowy figures lurking in the background of the imagination, waiting to do something awful, something unspeakable. A horrible, revolting, terrifying specter.

Nobody was out. Hell, nobody could be out, given this level of mass hatred.

And when that awful day came that you put it all together and realized that you - yeah, you - were in fact that nasty, despicable thing - there was nobody you could talk to about it, nobody you could tell - not your teacher or your preacher, not your best friend, not even your parents. Oh God, especially not your parents!

Finally, after the umpteenth grilling by his parents, Wally broke down and admitted the revolting truth: "Yeah, right, okay, I am a pervert, so what?" Then a wave of remorse washed over him, as he fell to his knees with tears running down his cheeks. "Mom . . . Dad . . . I'm sorry . . . I'm so sorry." June covered her face in horror, while Ward reached for the telephone. . . .

Wally wrote contrite letters every week from reform school, begging his parents' forgiveness, but they never wrote back. They had their own problems - June's nervous breakdown, Ward's alcoholic binges, the screaming arguments that had all the neighbors talking, the DWI's, the unpaid bills, the weeds that began to sprout in the once-immaculate lawn . . . but Beav seemed to take it all in stride. In fact, he was secretly very happy: at last, he had the whole bedroom to himself and could beat off any time he liked. . . .

You guys who grew up later, when homosexuality was at least not a totally forbidden thought - when at least you knew there were millions of others like you in the world - and somewhere, a place you could be yourself, and that was okay - be glad, be very glad.

A Storm of Lies - and Laughter

First, the oh-so-scary storm warning from the wingnut National Organization for Marriage (quick - hide the children and the dogs before viewing):



Then, the "best parody" of quite a few that have come out in recent days:



Though I also like the straightforward refutation of NOM's lying claims in this video:



And as usual, Rachel Maddow connects all the dots in this goofy picture:



Even better: You have to watch Stephen Colbert's hilarious send-up of the storm ad.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Colbert Coalition's Anti-Gay Marriage Ad
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

And check out Frank Rich's brilliant New York Times piece:

Yet easy to mock as “Gathering Storm” may be, it nonetheless bookmarks a historic turning point in the demise of America’s anti-gay movement.

What gives the ad its symbolic significance is not just that it’s idiotic but that its release was the only loud protest anywhere in America to the news that same-sex marriage had been legalized in Iowa and Vermont. If it advances any message, it’s mainly that homophobic activism is ever more depopulated and isolated as well as brain-dead. . . . . It is justice, not a storm, that is gathering. Only those who have spread the poisons of bigotry and fear have any reason to be afraid.

The Battle of Light vs. Darkness

Joe.My.God. has posted this rightwing propaganda video, which is just in time for Halloween: sure spooks the shit outta me. Notice the strong resemblance to Hitler's fearmongering radio broadcasts, and the seig-heil Nuremburg rallies. All in the name of God: love = hate, right?

And all this just to ensure that two men and a little dog far out on the prairie in a remote province can NOT live out their lives together in peace and dignity, under the protection of the law like any other loving couple. Light versus darkness: oh yeah, it is that, but these dopes/dupes have got it exactly backwards.

Prop 8 is hotly contested out in California; and as one fundie Joe quotes over there put it, "if same-sex marriage stands in California, it will sweep all over the world." That's exactly right. And about damn time.

I forgot to post a donation link with my Write to Marry post the other day; deadline is midnight tonight, and the stakes are high. Give what you can, please.

It's ALL the fault of teh gayz!

Of course. Haven't you been warned already? Gay rights = end of the world. Queer love = destruction of the planet. It's so simple, really.

Of course, WE have been destroying the family for years and it must be nearly beat down to nothing at this point, because now WE are working night and day to destroy the economy, too. Seriously. As witness this statement from anti-gay Liberty Counsel:

Washington Mutual became an active supporter of the homosexual agenda. But today, it is no more. Corporate America has learned the hard way that anti-family policies are bankrupt in more ways than one. . . .

Google executives should be searching for ways to make the internet more usable rather than promoting a radical redefinition of marriage. Companies that promoted anti-family policies have learned the hard way that such policies are bankrupt. K-Mart learned its lesson several years ago. Washington Mutual and Wachovia, both of which actively promoted the homosexual agenda, have come to realize that anti-family policies will bankrupt the bottom line.

Um, or maybe WE aren't destroying the economy: God's doing it to punish all our queer-loving friends and kin. The head of the anti-gay Christian Civic League of Maine, campaigning to abolish domestic partnerships and forbid equal marriage in that state, has this flash straight off the wire from his hotline to heaven:

We are all rightly concerned about the nation's financial situation today. Our crisis is a symptom, not the cause.

Ruth Graham told her husband Billy years ago that God would have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah if He doesn't judge America. They were reflecting on a list of sinful conditions existing in our nation in the 1960s. Things have only deteriorated since then.

I am not saying I know whether this financial crisis is God's judgment or not. It is not for me to know that definitively. Graham's observations are instructive, however.

So now you know. Queers are behind every bleeping disaster known to man, physical, financial, and otherwise. Which is exactly why your ancestors in the Middle Ages burned them at the stake every chance they could; gee, don't you wish those happy days were here again? Oh, when will the poor misguided masses wake up and see what's happening?!

As Joe.My.God. puts it so adroitly:

Katrina, earthquakes, forest fires, Wall Street. Tremble before our mighty power!

MWUHAHAHA!

P.S.--As a kid growing up in the segregated South, I remember vividly how the grown-ups (including my own dear family, I'm sorry to say) laid the blame for all kinds of ills on the "n*ggers" and vehemently predicted every sort of calamity to follow if they got civil rights. How'd they get off the hook, hmmm? Answer: Straight white ignoramuses are even more scared of sex than they are of race. Funny how that works, isn't it?

P.P.S.--Come to think of it, the Jews got blamed for everything bad that ever happened too. Next in line after the gayz is all them illegal aliens (read: non-Anglos), ya know. Hmmm. Notice a bit of a pattern going on here?

McCain's Big Lie

People will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough, people will sooner or later believe it.

Shades of the Third Reich: McCain has won tonight's debate! Even though, as I write, the debate won't begin for another two hours yet.

But not to worry. The Washington Post reports that this morning, at least two ads proclaiming the fact of McCain's victory appeared on the website of the online Wall Street Journal: click here to see the screenshot.

And of special interest, as Reuters reports, this was before McCain announced that he had changed his mind and would indeed go to the debate! "McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said the ad posting was a mistake by the Wall Street Journal. Oops."

And you thought McCain really meant it on Wednesday when he said he wasn't going to show at the debate. Ha-ha, fooled you. And me. And the whole country. Oops, hell.

As a commenter on another blog asked, Will he announce next week that he has won the election, too?

Well, let's remember the old saw: fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Does anyone need more proof that this utterly reckless man has no business being President?

I've said it before and I will say it again: the rotten-to-the-core Republican party is patently unfit to govern this nation ever again. It's got to go. And the sooner, the better.