Adios, Pete. The Buzzcocks were easily one of my favorite first-generation punk bands growing up, capable of combining melodic sensibilities and chainsaw guitars to produce memorable songs by the truckload. And as he would've wanted it, I'll remember the music above all else.
Thursday, December 6, 2018
Wednesday, October 3, 2018
Signal boost: Charles P. Pierce, All the Worst Elements
The title is truncated a bit to fit the subject line, but "This Vicious Buffoon Is a Vessel for All the Worst Elements of the American Condition" is the entirety of it. And it fits.
Everyone who does not agree with me is a traitor and a scoundrel.
—HRH George III, King of Great Britain and Ireland
This video should be the only news from now until Election Day, and probably beyond that, all the way to the next Election Day in 2020 as well.
This video captures perfectly where we are as a nation at this moment in history. It shows with startling clarity the end result of civic disengagement and democratic apathy. It shows without question that we have allowed our republic to fall into the hands of a sociopath whose feeling for his fellow human beings can be measured against a poker chip. It shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the better angels of our nation have been sold out to anger, and greed, and stone hatred. It shows precisely the depths to which our fellow citizens will follow this bag of old and rancid sins. Some of those citizens know better. Some of them don't. All of them are dangerous blockheads.
Look at the man behind the seal of the President of the United States, mocking the recollections of a survivor of sexual assault. In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, "And we shall overcome." I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh's madness in Oklahoma City. I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing "Amazing Grace" in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job. They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.
And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.
The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides.
We have had good presidents and bad—a Buchanan is followed by a Lincoln who is followed by an Andrew Johnson, and so forth. But we never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president* as currently occupies the office. We have had presidents who have been the worthy targets of scalding scorn, but James Callender went after giants. We never have had a president* so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt.
Watch him make fun of the woman again. Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut the fuck up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don't have to be heroes to be good presidents. They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too.
Watch him again, behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn't he a funny man? Isn't what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now.
Everyone who does not agree with me is a traitor and a scoundrel.
—HRH George III, King of Great Britain and Ireland
This video should be the only news from now until Election Day, and probably beyond that, all the way to the next Election Day in 2020 as well.
This video captures perfectly where we are as a nation at this moment in history. It shows with startling clarity the end result of civic disengagement and democratic apathy. It shows without question that we have allowed our republic to fall into the hands of a sociopath whose feeling for his fellow human beings can be measured against a poker chip. It shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the better angels of our nation have been sold out to anger, and greed, and stone hatred. It shows precisely the depths to which our fellow citizens will follow this bag of old and rancid sins. Some of those citizens know better. Some of them don't. All of them are dangerous blockheads.
Look at the man behind the seal of the President of the United States, mocking the recollections of a survivor of sexual assault. In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, "And we shall overcome." I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh's madness in Oklahoma City. I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing "Amazing Grace" in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job. They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.
And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.
The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides.
We have had good presidents and bad—a Buchanan is followed by a Lincoln who is followed by an Andrew Johnson, and so forth. But we never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president* as currently occupies the office. We have had presidents who have been the worthy targets of scalding scorn, but James Callender went after giants. We never have had a president* so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt.
Watch him make fun of the woman again. Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut the fuck up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don't have to be heroes to be good presidents. They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too.
Watch him again, behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn't he a funny man? Isn't what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now.
Thursday, September 27, 2018
"America's Dad" no more
I suppose that the real takeaway from Bill Cosby's conviction for sexually assaulting Andrea Constand is this: there are people out there who will disbelieve a rape victim's testimony no matter how compelling the evidence is if the perpetrator is famous or powerful enough. To add some background on this, here's an personal anecdote:
When all of this shit started hitting the fan a few years ago - 2015, if I recall correctly - one of my coworkers complained that people "should leave the man alone" (or words to that effect) apparently because she just could not believe that any of the women that were coming forward at the time actually had a legitimate reason to. Like a lot of true believers in the saintliness of certain public figures, she discounted the truthfulness of anyone who dared to sully Cosby's image; all they were, apparently, were women who had a grudge against him or were mere publicity hounds and not legitimate victims of some of his assaults from years back. She's not with the company I work for in Meatspace anymore, but it'd be interesting to see what her opinion is now.
We saw this sort of thing with Michael Jackson, of course. The difference is that Jackson was acquitted due to lack of proof and Cosby wasn't. My own personal belief is that Jackson probably was guilty, but I wasn't on that jury and it's pointless now since Jackson isn't around to deny it. This time the jury was in agreement, though, and my guess is that although the #Metoo movement had a lot to do with consciousness-raising about sexual assault in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal that wasn't the reason Cosby was convicted. It was simply a preponderance of evidence that did him in, not adverse publicity.
Even with his conviction, there are still some major points that some people don't get about the subject of alleged victims coming forward in situations like this; the defenders of Supreme Court nominee Bret Kavanaugh have said over and over again that the allegations against him are false and almost entirely motivated by politics. There's a serious problem with that assertion, however: no such allegations came out during the confirmation processes for Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, John Roberts, Samuel Alito or Neil Gorsuch, or any number of male nominees to the court before them with the exception of Clarence Thomas. And although Thomas was accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill, he wasn't accused of out-and-out sexual assault as Kavanaugh is. The really ugly thing about the Kavanaugh situation isn't that the charges are somehow automatically false (which they're not) or that Kavanaugh may be denied a seat on the SCOTUS bench because of them (which might not happen either, sad to say); it's the kneejerk reaction of way too many politically connected individuals in automatically believing that The Woman Made The Damn Story Up.
Yes, there are women who've fabricated rape stories: one of the most famous of those incidents was here in Illinois with Gary Dotson, and it was ultimately DNA evidence (his was the first conviction that was overturned in the US on that basis) as well as a very public recantation by his alleged victim Cathleen Crowell Webb. But to automatically assume that a woman coming forward years later has a sinister agenda isn't merely ridiculous; it's got more than a touch of misogyny to it, and if it turns out she was right it's a form of victim-shaming that a lot of people should know better than to engage in. And of course they don't.
So what did the other victims of Cosby get out of this? Nothing, other than his imprisonment; his legal bills will be huge, and there's every possibility that he'll be safely dead before anyone comes calling with a successful civil lawsuit for what remains of his money. Ultimately, though, automatically believing an alleged victim without due process may be a mistake, but more importantly reflexively not believing her might be an even bigger one.
When all of this shit started hitting the fan a few years ago - 2015, if I recall correctly - one of my coworkers complained that people "should leave the man alone" (or words to that effect) apparently because she just could not believe that any of the women that were coming forward at the time actually had a legitimate reason to. Like a lot of true believers in the saintliness of certain public figures, she discounted the truthfulness of anyone who dared to sully Cosby's image; all they were, apparently, were women who had a grudge against him or were mere publicity hounds and not legitimate victims of some of his assaults from years back. She's not with the company I work for in Meatspace anymore, but it'd be interesting to see what her opinion is now.
We saw this sort of thing with Michael Jackson, of course. The difference is that Jackson was acquitted due to lack of proof and Cosby wasn't. My own personal belief is that Jackson probably was guilty, but I wasn't on that jury and it's pointless now since Jackson isn't around to deny it. This time the jury was in agreement, though, and my guess is that although the #Metoo movement had a lot to do with consciousness-raising about sexual assault in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal that wasn't the reason Cosby was convicted. It was simply a preponderance of evidence that did him in, not adverse publicity.
Even with his conviction, there are still some major points that some people don't get about the subject of alleged victims coming forward in situations like this; the defenders of Supreme Court nominee Bret Kavanaugh have said over and over again that the allegations against him are false and almost entirely motivated by politics. There's a serious problem with that assertion, however: no such allegations came out during the confirmation processes for Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, John Roberts, Samuel Alito or Neil Gorsuch, or any number of male nominees to the court before them with the exception of Clarence Thomas. And although Thomas was accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill, he wasn't accused of out-and-out sexual assault as Kavanaugh is. The really ugly thing about the Kavanaugh situation isn't that the charges are somehow automatically false (which they're not) or that Kavanaugh may be denied a seat on the SCOTUS bench because of them (which might not happen either, sad to say); it's the kneejerk reaction of way too many politically connected individuals in automatically believing that The Woman Made The Damn Story Up.
Yes, there are women who've fabricated rape stories: one of the most famous of those incidents was here in Illinois with Gary Dotson, and it was ultimately DNA evidence (his was the first conviction that was overturned in the US on that basis) as well as a very public recantation by his alleged victim Cathleen Crowell Webb. But to automatically assume that a woman coming forward years later has a sinister agenda isn't merely ridiculous; it's got more than a touch of misogyny to it, and if it turns out she was right it's a form of victim-shaming that a lot of people should know better than to engage in. And of course they don't.
So what did the other victims of Cosby get out of this? Nothing, other than his imprisonment; his legal bills will be huge, and there's every possibility that he'll be safely dead before anyone comes calling with a successful civil lawsuit for what remains of his money. Ultimately, though, automatically believing an alleged victim without due process may be a mistake, but more importantly reflexively not believing her might be an even bigger one.
Thursday, September 20, 2018
"Paranoia, they destroy ya..."
My apologies to the Kinks for misuse of that quote, but it's pretty damn obvious that that's exactly what you get when you interview President Unintelligible on anything related to the Mueller investigation these days. As quoted by Charles P. Pierce in Esquire:
“What we’ve done is a great service to the country, really,” Trump said in a 45-minute, wide-ranging interview in the Oval Office. “I hope to be able to call this, along with tax cuts and regulation and all the things I’ve done ... in its own way this might be the most important thing because this was corrupt,” he said. “If I did one mistake with Comey, I should have fired him before I got here. I should have fired him the day I won the primaries,” Trump said. “I should have fired him right after the convention, say I don’t want that guy. Or at least fired him the first day on the job. ... I would have been better off firing him or putting out a statement that I don’t want him there when I get there.”
Other than the slight issue with not being able to fire the director of the FBI before your own inauguration as President, what's most evident about that quote and others from that piece in The Hill (Original here, for completeness' sake) is that Trump not only has some major issues with his thinking on the subject of exactly who's corrupt here (the smart money says it's his own flunkies, judging by all the indictments, guilty pleas and rolling over to cooperate with prosecutors and the like), but he also actually thinks he's doing us all a favor by trying to break effective independent law enforcement on the Federal level - at least where his own administration is concerned, of course.
But the thing that comes across the most in that word salad is that he thinks they're all out to get him.
Hence the reference to that Kinks song in the title.
It just fits too well.
“What we’ve done is a great service to the country, really,” Trump said in a 45-minute, wide-ranging interview in the Oval Office. “I hope to be able to call this, along with tax cuts and regulation and all the things I’ve done ... in its own way this might be the most important thing because this was corrupt,” he said. “If I did one mistake with Comey, I should have fired him before I got here. I should have fired him the day I won the primaries,” Trump said. “I should have fired him right after the convention, say I don’t want that guy. Or at least fired him the first day on the job. ... I would have been better off firing him or putting out a statement that I don’t want him there when I get there.”
Other than the slight issue with not being able to fire the director of the FBI before your own inauguration as President, what's most evident about that quote and others from that piece in The Hill (Original here, for completeness' sake) is that Trump not only has some major issues with his thinking on the subject of exactly who's corrupt here (the smart money says it's his own flunkies, judging by all the indictments, guilty pleas and rolling over to cooperate with prosecutors and the like), but he also actually thinks he's doing us all a favor by trying to break effective independent law enforcement on the Federal level - at least where his own administration is concerned, of course.
But the thing that comes across the most in that word salad is that he thinks they're all out to get him.
Hence the reference to that Kinks song in the title.
It just fits too well.
Tuesday, August 7, 2018
In Memoriam: Stan Mikita, 1940-2018
Stan Mikita's death is particularly sad, especially considering the dementia that robbed him of his memories as a player in later years, but that's not what defined the man. Instead, this does:
541 goals, 926 assists and 1467 points, four NHL scoring titles and eight appearances as a NHL All-Star in a 22-year career spent entirely with the Chicago Blackhawks. He holds the team records for assists and points and is only second to Bobby Hull in goals scored. Add to all of that the fact that he played on the 1961 Blackhawks squad that would be the last to win the Stanley Cup until 2010 and you're looking at a career that marks Mikita as one of the top 5 players in franchise history, if not the top player, period.
He'll be missed.
541 goals, 926 assists and 1467 points, four NHL scoring titles and eight appearances as a NHL All-Star in a 22-year career spent entirely with the Chicago Blackhawks. He holds the team records for assists and points and is only second to Bobby Hull in goals scored. Add to all of that the fact that he played on the 1961 Blackhawks squad that would be the last to win the Stanley Cup until 2010 and you're looking at a career that marks Mikita as one of the top 5 players in franchise history, if not the top player, period.
He'll be missed.
Signal boost: No, the Trump Tower meeting was not "totally legal"
The following is a particularly well-reasoned editorial in the Los Angeles Times by Harry Litman and David Lieberman concerning the latest nonsense out of Trumpistan concerning the 2016 conversation between members of his political team (including Donald Trump, Jr.) and a Kremlin-affiliated Russian lawyer.
Exposing a longstanding lie blunt even by his standards, President Trump on Sunday confessed by tweet that the purpose of the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting between his campaign and a Kremlin-linked lawyer was “to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics.”
It was left to his lawyer Jay Sekulow to try to clean up the mess. Addressing whether the meeting constituted a criminal violation, Sekulow told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” that “you have to look at what laws, rules, regulations, statutes are purportedly violated here.”
So let’s do that. Meeting with a foreign power to get assistance with a presidential campaign is not totally legal; special counsel Robert S. Mueller III almost certainly could indict Donald Trump Jr. today for what is publicly known about the meeting; and the president should be deeply concerned about his own liability.
Mueller’s February indictment of the Internet Research Agency, and associated Russian entities and individuals, charged a conspiracy to influence the election to damage Hillary Clinton, Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and support Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump — let’s call it an electioneering conspiracy. The indictment charged violations of 18 U.S. Code § 371 — conspiracy to commit an offense against, or to defraud United States.
Under the “defraud clause,” as precedent and the U.S. Attorneys’ Manual make clear, the statute criminalizes “any conspiracy for the purpose of impairing, obstructing or defeating the lawful function of any department of government,” even if the object of the conspiracy is not a criminal offense. According to Mueller’s indictment, the conspiracy sought to defraud the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice — the agencies charged with preventing foreign nationals from making contributions, donations or expenditures (which can include not just money, but any “thing of value”) that would influence U.S. elections.
Conspiracy law, it’s important to note, punishes the act of agreeing to a forbidden goal regardless of whether that goal is achieved. So long as the government can establish that targets agreed to pursue the conspiratorial objective, they may be prosecuted as co-conspirators. Conspirators need only agree to help bring about the object of a conspiracy even if they are not aware of all the details of the conspiracy itself. For example, in “chain-conspiracies” usually involving narcotics, lower-level buyers and sellers are included in larger distribution conspiracy so long as they have some understanding of the existence of the larger plot.
The Trump Tower meeting clearly fits established definitions of “conspiracy to defraud the United States.” In early June, Trump Jr. received an email explaining that a Russian government official wanted to provide his father’s campaign with incriminating documents and information about Clinton as part of “Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump." Trump Jr. replied, "if it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer.” The June 9 meeting was confirmed two days earlier, on June 7. That night, Trump announced that he would “give a major speech” in the next week to discuss “all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons.”
On the face of it, Trump Jr. was approached by a foreign government seeking to influence an American election. Trump Jr. welcomed the possibility of influence, and candidate Trump’s actions, while circumstantial, indicate that he intended to make use of that information. It is irrelevant, in conspiracy law, that Trump Jr. found the information ultimately worthless, or as Trump said, that “it went nowhere.”
Michael Cohen’s allegations last week must have deeply terrified the president and those looking out for his legal interests. Cohen, the president’s former lawyer and “fixer,” reportedly is willing to tell Mueller that he was in the room when Trump heard about and approved the June 9 meeting. That would potentially place the president at the center of the decision to join the electioneering conspiracy. Trump’s later documented effort to dictate a false statement about the meeting looks like an attempt to cover up his culpability. A prosecutor and jury are entitled to view a cover-up as evidence of participation in the conspiracy.
More than one year after telling the world that the June 2016 meeting was about adoptions, Trump and his eldest son stand stripped of their false cover. There is no more denying that the meeting sought to enlist the help of a hostile power to swing the election Trump’s way. The effort and the false statements about it were plainly deplorable. Whether they also were illegal turns on questions of law that Trump cannot obfuscate or control. They are what they are. Mueller already has laid the legal predicate for the Trumps’ guilt. Trump is at last playing in a legit game, and his hand is weak.
Exposing a longstanding lie blunt even by his standards, President Trump on Sunday confessed by tweet that the purpose of the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting between his campaign and a Kremlin-linked lawyer was “to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics.”
It was left to his lawyer Jay Sekulow to try to clean up the mess. Addressing whether the meeting constituted a criminal violation, Sekulow told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” that “you have to look at what laws, rules, regulations, statutes are purportedly violated here.”
So let’s do that. Meeting with a foreign power to get assistance with a presidential campaign is not totally legal; special counsel Robert S. Mueller III almost certainly could indict Donald Trump Jr. today for what is publicly known about the meeting; and the president should be deeply concerned about his own liability.
Mueller’s February indictment of the Internet Research Agency, and associated Russian entities and individuals, charged a conspiracy to influence the election to damage Hillary Clinton, Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and support Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump — let’s call it an electioneering conspiracy. The indictment charged violations of 18 U.S. Code § 371 — conspiracy to commit an offense against, or to defraud United States.
Under the “defraud clause,” as precedent and the U.S. Attorneys’ Manual make clear, the statute criminalizes “any conspiracy for the purpose of impairing, obstructing or defeating the lawful function of any department of government,” even if the object of the conspiracy is not a criminal offense. According to Mueller’s indictment, the conspiracy sought to defraud the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice — the agencies charged with preventing foreign nationals from making contributions, donations or expenditures (which can include not just money, but any “thing of value”) that would influence U.S. elections.
Conspiracy law, it’s important to note, punishes the act of agreeing to a forbidden goal regardless of whether that goal is achieved. So long as the government can establish that targets agreed to pursue the conspiratorial objective, they may be prosecuted as co-conspirators. Conspirators need only agree to help bring about the object of a conspiracy even if they are not aware of all the details of the conspiracy itself. For example, in “chain-conspiracies” usually involving narcotics, lower-level buyers and sellers are included in larger distribution conspiracy so long as they have some understanding of the existence of the larger plot.
The Trump Tower meeting clearly fits established definitions of “conspiracy to defraud the United States.” In early June, Trump Jr. received an email explaining that a Russian government official wanted to provide his father’s campaign with incriminating documents and information about Clinton as part of “Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump." Trump Jr. replied, "if it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer.” The June 9 meeting was confirmed two days earlier, on June 7. That night, Trump announced that he would “give a major speech” in the next week to discuss “all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons.”
On the face of it, Trump Jr. was approached by a foreign government seeking to influence an American election. Trump Jr. welcomed the possibility of influence, and candidate Trump’s actions, while circumstantial, indicate that he intended to make use of that information. It is irrelevant, in conspiracy law, that Trump Jr. found the information ultimately worthless, or as Trump said, that “it went nowhere.”
Michael Cohen’s allegations last week must have deeply terrified the president and those looking out for his legal interests. Cohen, the president’s former lawyer and “fixer,” reportedly is willing to tell Mueller that he was in the room when Trump heard about and approved the June 9 meeting. That would potentially place the president at the center of the decision to join the electioneering conspiracy. Trump’s later documented effort to dictate a false statement about the meeting looks like an attempt to cover up his culpability. A prosecutor and jury are entitled to view a cover-up as evidence of participation in the conspiracy.
More than one year after telling the world that the June 2016 meeting was about adoptions, Trump and his eldest son stand stripped of their false cover. There is no more denying that the meeting sought to enlist the help of a hostile power to swing the election Trump’s way. The effort and the false statements about it were plainly deplorable. Whether they also were illegal turns on questions of law that Trump cannot obfuscate or control. They are what they are. Mueller already has laid the legal predicate for the Trumps’ guilt. Trump is at last playing in a legit game, and his hand is weak.
Greg Abbott continues to be bad at a couple of things
So he's bad at what, you might ask? Thinking, for one. And telling the truth.
As if his penchant for black helicopters and such wasn't bad enough, he decided to Tweet a bogus Winston Churchill quote because it would prove a point he was trying to make. A pity for him Churchill never said anything of the sort, although his attempt to walk it back was only a partial one:
"What I tweeted was a sentiment that I had," Abbott said at a news conference on changes to the state's bail laws. "It was irrelevant to me who may or may not have said that in the past. I didn't want to be accused of plagiarism for saying it. If no one else said it, attribute the quote to me because it's what I believe in."
Politicians: can't live with 'em. Actually, at times you can't take 'em seriously as adults, either.
As if his penchant for black helicopters and such wasn't bad enough, he decided to Tweet a bogus Winston Churchill quote because it would prove a point he was trying to make. A pity for him Churchill never said anything of the sort, although his attempt to walk it back was only a partial one:
"What I tweeted was a sentiment that I had," Abbott said at a news conference on changes to the state's bail laws. "It was irrelevant to me who may or may not have said that in the past. I didn't want to be accused of plagiarism for saying it. If no one else said it, attribute the quote to me because it's what I believe in."
Politicians: can't live with 'em. Actually, at times you can't take 'em seriously as adults, either.
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Now reading
The Legacies of Betrayal anthology (Graham McNeill, editor) from the simply upbeat Warhammer 40K blokes at Black Library/Games Workshop, who decided to add the phrase "let the galaxy burn" under the main title in case you didn't quite get the point.
Stay trendy and dumb, and the money will roll right in
It's not just that Gwyneth Paltrow's GOOP empire has expanded to the point of being an extremely viable boutique (read: overpriced and vacuously trendy) business based on all sorts of ridiculous air-filled woo, but that the promotion of said woo in the face of all sorts of counterevidence (such as from gynecologist Jen Gunter) seems to not have slowed her death march into the land of big money quackery down one bit:
At Harvard, G.P. called these moments “cultural firestorms.” “I can monetize those eyeballs,” she told the students. Goop had learned to do a special kind of dark art: to corral the vitriol of the internet and the ever-present shall we call it cultural ambivalence about G.P. herself and turn them into cash. It’s never clickbait, she told the class. “It’s a cultural firestorm when it’s about a woman’s vagina.” The room was silent. She then cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “VAGINA! VAGINA! VAGINA!” as if she were yodeling.
(Yeah, I know - those last three sentences almost seem like a scene written by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in one of their more cynical moments, but no, she apparently really did do that.)
As of June, there were 2.4 million unique visitors to the site per month, according to the numbers Goop provided me. The podcast, which is mostly hosted by Loehnen and features interviews with wellness practitioners, receives 100,000 to 650,000 listens per week. Goop wanted to publish articles about autoimmune diseases and infrared saunas and thyroids, and now it can, on its own terms — sort of.
After a few too many cultural firestorms, and with investors to think about, G.P. made some changes. Goop has hired a lawyer to vet all claims on the site. It hired an editor away from Condé Nast to run the magazine. It hired a man with a Ph.D. in nutritional science, and a director of science and research who is a former Stanford professor. And in September, Goop, sigh, is hiring a full-time fact-checker. G.P. chose to see it as “necessary growing pain.”
Oh, but I can actually think of a better cure for those growing pains: actually involving more than just one former Stanford professor, but a number of actual doctors and scientists - if not to debunk some of this nonsense, then to provide something at least resembling a counterpoint to the mindless cheerleading for all of this crap.
I just don't think it'll happen. Too much work, and too hard on Gwyneth's sizeable bank account. Which, of course, is the real beneficiary here.
At Harvard, G.P. called these moments “cultural firestorms.” “I can monetize those eyeballs,” she told the students. Goop had learned to do a special kind of dark art: to corral the vitriol of the internet and the ever-present shall we call it cultural ambivalence about G.P. herself and turn them into cash. It’s never clickbait, she told the class. “It’s a cultural firestorm when it’s about a woman’s vagina.” The room was silent. She then cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “VAGINA! VAGINA! VAGINA!” as if she were yodeling.
(Yeah, I know - those last three sentences almost seem like a scene written by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in one of their more cynical moments, but no, she apparently really did do that.)
As of June, there were 2.4 million unique visitors to the site per month, according to the numbers Goop provided me. The podcast, which is mostly hosted by Loehnen and features interviews with wellness practitioners, receives 100,000 to 650,000 listens per week. Goop wanted to publish articles about autoimmune diseases and infrared saunas and thyroids, and now it can, on its own terms — sort of.
After a few too many cultural firestorms, and with investors to think about, G.P. made some changes. Goop has hired a lawyer to vet all claims on the site. It hired an editor away from Condé Nast to run the magazine. It hired a man with a Ph.D. in nutritional science, and a director of science and research who is a former Stanford professor. And in September, Goop, sigh, is hiring a full-time fact-checker. G.P. chose to see it as “necessary growing pain.”
Oh, but I can actually think of a better cure for those growing pains: actually involving more than just one former Stanford professor, but a number of actual doctors and scientists - if not to debunk some of this nonsense, then to provide something at least resembling a counterpoint to the mindless cheerleading for all of this crap.
I just don't think it'll happen. Too much work, and too hard on Gwyneth's sizeable bank account. Which, of course, is the real beneficiary here.
Idiot, Uninterrupted: You Gotta Have Friends...
So the latest odd strategy by the legal defenders of the Orange Thing In The White House is that he had his most famous proxy assert - no lie, now - that collusion with the Russians just wasn't illegal, period. Never mind the fact that this little idea seems to fly in the face of the Republic of Trumpistan's previous assertions that there was no such collusion - it's all okay now, according to Angry Grandpa Rudy.
Unfortunately, though, there's all of this:
So far, special counsel Robert Mueller has accused the Russians of hacking into Democrats' computers and stealing emails, as well as trying to stoke U.S. tensions before the 2016 election using social media. Mueller has already accused Trump's former campaign chairman and another top aide of working as foreign agents for Ukrainian interests and funneling millions of dollars from the work into offshore accounts used to fund lavish lifestyles.
Mueller might decide, for example, that a crime was committed if he finds evidence that an American was involved in the hack of Democrats, either by soliciting it or paying someone to do it.
The investigation also has exposed Moscow's aggressive outreach to the Trump campaign, including a promise of "dirt" on Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in a meeting attended by Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr.
If Trump or his aides knew in advance that Russia had the trove of stolen emails and did nothing to alert federal authorities, they could be accused of covering up the crime of stolen emails or working as foreign agents. Although it's rare for the Justice Department to charge people for not reporting illegal behavior, it's also not often that a special counsel team, with a wide-ranging mandate to find wrongdoing, is on the case.
As well, a conspiracy to defraud the United States can be used to refer to any two people using "deceit, craft, or trickery" to interfere with governmental functions, such as an election.
In other words, "collusion" might be shorthand. But if it relates to Russia and U.S. elections, it can still be very much against the law.
Unfortunately, though, there's all of this:
So far, special counsel Robert Mueller has accused the Russians of hacking into Democrats' computers and stealing emails, as well as trying to stoke U.S. tensions before the 2016 election using social media. Mueller has already accused Trump's former campaign chairman and another top aide of working as foreign agents for Ukrainian interests and funneling millions of dollars from the work into offshore accounts used to fund lavish lifestyles.
Mueller might decide, for example, that a crime was committed if he finds evidence that an American was involved in the hack of Democrats, either by soliciting it or paying someone to do it.
The investigation also has exposed Moscow's aggressive outreach to the Trump campaign, including a promise of "dirt" on Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in a meeting attended by Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr.
If Trump or his aides knew in advance that Russia had the trove of stolen emails and did nothing to alert federal authorities, they could be accused of covering up the crime of stolen emails or working as foreign agents. Although it's rare for the Justice Department to charge people for not reporting illegal behavior, it's also not often that a special counsel team, with a wide-ranging mandate to find wrongdoing, is on the case.
As well, a conspiracy to defraud the United States can be used to refer to any two people using "deceit, craft, or trickery" to interfere with governmental functions, such as an election.
In other words, "collusion" might be shorthand. But if it relates to Russia and U.S. elections, it can still be very much against the law.
Wednesday, July 18, 2018
Idiot, Uninterrupted: The Sequel
And so The Donald walked back his bizarre assertions about Russia's innocence in hacking the DNC in 2016.
Oh, wait. He didn't. Or did he? It's getting harder and harder to tell, since President Unintelligible believes that any answer he gives will always be the right one, no matter how much it contradicts previous ones.
Meanwhile, fear the deadly threat that is...Montenegro. All 600,000+ of 'em. Maybe they'll invade Milwaukee or some other city equivalent to their gigantic population.
Oh, wait. He didn't. Or did he? It's getting harder and harder to tell, since President Unintelligible believes that any answer he gives will always be the right one, no matter how much it contradicts previous ones.
Meanwhile, fear the deadly threat that is...Montenegro. All 600,000+ of 'em. Maybe they'll invade Milwaukee or some other city equivalent to their gigantic population.
Monday, July 16, 2018
Idiot, Uninterrupted
So you were one of the people who thought that the Federal indictment against 12 Russian GRU agents would actually convince one Donald J. Trump that being more assertive in his upcoming summit with Vladimir Putin was a good idea, right?
Guess again.
What's actually shocking about all of this (other than Trump's sniveling, conspiracy-mongering performance at that post-meeting press conference) is that Trump is now - and deservedly so - getting dogpiled on by seemingly everyone, including high-ranking members of his own party who weren't joining in on the fun previously. Even more shocking is that commentators on Fox News went after him despite the fact that most of their broadcasts fed the very large rodents running amok in his imagination. As you might guess, it was only the complete lunatics and/or self-serving demagogues who decided not to join in, including repulsive tragedy ghoul and all-around blithering dipshit Alex Jones. Then again, if Jones hadn't responded to a Putin dog whistle about George Soros positively I'd be astounded to the point where I'd be checking my pulse.
Equally astounding was President Unintelligible's complete lack of a handle on outward reality during this burning Hindenburg of a presser. You would think - or at least hope - that he'd lay off the conspiracy theory sauce for half a minute, but of course not. All in the service of improving relations with Russia, of course, although Charles P. Pierce pointed out why that really isn't much of a good thing, if at all:
Compared to the president* on Monday, Neville Chamberlain was Conan the Barbarian. In an unprecedented exercise in national self-abasement, the president* threw the American system of justice, the credibility of the intelligence community, and both Robert Mueller and Hillary Clinton into the woodchipper in order to keep faith with a former KGB thug who leads a failing kleptocracy who, just as an added fillip, and right at the end of their mutually disgraceful fandango, issued a non-denial denial of whether or not his government has compromising material on the president*. He's a laff riot, is our Vlad.
They're both cutups. Top rate comedians, in fact.
Too bad the joke is on everybody else.
Guess again.
What's actually shocking about all of this (other than Trump's sniveling, conspiracy-mongering performance at that post-meeting press conference) is that Trump is now - and deservedly so - getting dogpiled on by seemingly everyone, including high-ranking members of his own party who weren't joining in on the fun previously. Even more shocking is that commentators on Fox News went after him despite the fact that most of their broadcasts fed the very large rodents running amok in his imagination. As you might guess, it was only the complete lunatics and/or self-serving demagogues who decided not to join in, including repulsive tragedy ghoul and all-around blithering dipshit Alex Jones. Then again, if Jones hadn't responded to a Putin dog whistle about George Soros positively I'd be astounded to the point where I'd be checking my pulse.
Equally astounding was President Unintelligible's complete lack of a handle on outward reality during this burning Hindenburg of a presser. You would think - or at least hope - that he'd lay off the conspiracy theory sauce for half a minute, but of course not. All in the service of improving relations with Russia, of course, although Charles P. Pierce pointed out why that really isn't much of a good thing, if at all:
Compared to the president* on Monday, Neville Chamberlain was Conan the Barbarian. In an unprecedented exercise in national self-abasement, the president* threw the American system of justice, the credibility of the intelligence community, and both Robert Mueller and Hillary Clinton into the woodchipper in order to keep faith with a former KGB thug who leads a failing kleptocracy who, just as an added fillip, and right at the end of their mutually disgraceful fandango, issued a non-denial denial of whether or not his government has compromising material on the president*. He's a laff riot, is our Vlad.
They're both cutups. Top rate comedians, in fact.
Too bad the joke is on everybody else.
Tuesday, July 3, 2018
Ron Paul, "libertarian" icon
If there's anything I've learned over the last few years it's that Paul's political groupies really need to get over themselves because of certain things he's behind, such as this bit of recycled vileness (although he - or people who worked for him - have done that sort of thing before) that was recently Tweeted from his account. It's as if there's a mandatory rule in his thinking that says that everything sensible he says has to be followed up by something equally stark raving batshit.
Thursday, June 28, 2018
In Memoriam: Harlan Ellison, 1934-2018
Harlan could be an incredibly prickly, combative individual - almost to the point of self-parody at times, especially when some of the fights were ones he probably shouldn't have picked - but he was also one of the SF authors who kept my interest in the genre going during my teenage years, and his short fiction (which was almost all of his output, since he wrote only a handful of novels) was easily some of the best I've ever read.
F*ck "civility"
There are professional columnists and more prominent bloggers who can say what I want to (and they will - see the links below) with far more politeness than I can muster right now, but the amount of gut punches that I took with a series of Supreme Court rulings this week - and practically all of them by an ideologically lock-stepping 5 to 4 vote - pissed me off to the point where I wanted no part of social media because I knew exactly how I would initially react on it. The title of this post is certainly more than a tipoff as to my sentiments, but let's face it: I knew that things would get bad if Trump had his way with the courts, and "bad" may be an understatement. We now have a much more restrictive, corporatist, downright elitist political landscape to deal with, and it's all because a idiotic Foghorn Leghorn cartoon made human flesh from Kentucky refused to even give a previous nominee the courtesy of a straightforward "no" vote in the Senate.
There are a lot of people out there who are now calling for "civility" towards an alleged President who shows none towards an incredibly wide-ranging group of others: domestic political opponents and allies alike, members of his own administration, foreign allies, you name it. The nicest he's been lately is to a Stalinist retread (third of a continuing series!) who leads the government of one of the worst human rights violators in Asia, if not the entire world. And then there's his esteemed Russian friend, of course. He can't ever not give him a thumbs-up for being such a great role model, right?
So before you ask me for civility directed at someone like that, ask yourself this - why should I? Or anyone else, for that matter? Especially when you know returning the favor (what we used to call "civil discourse" in a previous day)would never be considered?
Feel free to peruse the following pieces by Ed Brayton, Charles P. Pierce, Heather Digby Parton and Jordan Weissman for more on the events of the week.
There are a lot of people out there who are now calling for "civility" towards an alleged President who shows none towards an incredibly wide-ranging group of others: domestic political opponents and allies alike, members of his own administration, foreign allies, you name it. The nicest he's been lately is to a Stalinist retread (third of a continuing series!) who leads the government of one of the worst human rights violators in Asia, if not the entire world. And then there's his esteemed Russian friend, of course. He can't ever not give him a thumbs-up for being such a great role model, right?
So before you ask me for civility directed at someone like that, ask yourself this - why should I? Or anyone else, for that matter? Especially when you know returning the favor (what we used to call "civil discourse" in a previous day)would never be considered?
Feel free to peruse the following pieces by Ed Brayton, Charles P. Pierce, Heather Digby Parton and Jordan Weissman for more on the events of the week.
Wednesday, June 20, 2018
Monday, June 11, 2018
Running Through Hugo's Back Yard 21: The Fifth Season
Hugo winner: The Fifth Season, 2016, by N.K. Jemisin
My take: I had real trouble finding a copy of it around the time the 2016 vote for the Hugos came up, and there's a reason for that. Had a certain unpleasant incident involving the SFWA not happened, TFS might've been considered solely on its considerable literary merits without any outside controversy concerning issues involving racism in professional SF circles. Yes, there's tons of angst. Shitloads of it, in fact. But the angst fully flows from the plot and narrative and isn't ginned up for any easy sympathy with the characters on the business end of the book's events. I'll definitely get around to the two sequels.
Nuggety? Despite the fact there's plenty of action and more than a few nerve-wracking moments this just doesn't fit Torgersen's criteria. There's too much literary sensibility and not enough (or even any) kowtowing to supposedly traditionalist (read: space opera) SF conceits, which essentially means that TFS is far more a book about 21st century sensibilities than even some of the shiniest Bright New Future predictions of golden age SF. And like it or not, that's progress.
My take: I had real trouble finding a copy of it around the time the 2016 vote for the Hugos came up, and there's a reason for that. Had a certain unpleasant incident involving the SFWA not happened, TFS might've been considered solely on its considerable literary merits without any outside controversy concerning issues involving racism in professional SF circles. Yes, there's tons of angst. Shitloads of it, in fact. But the angst fully flows from the plot and narrative and isn't ginned up for any easy sympathy with the characters on the business end of the book's events. I'll definitely get around to the two sequels.
Nuggety? Despite the fact there's plenty of action and more than a few nerve-wracking moments this just doesn't fit Torgersen's criteria. There's too much literary sensibility and not enough (or even any) kowtowing to supposedly traditionalist (read: space opera) SF conceits, which essentially means that TFS is far more a book about 21st century sensibilities than even some of the shiniest Bright New Future predictions of golden age SF. And like it or not, that's progress.
Repulsive
...is exactly what you can call this new Federal policy towards certain classes of Asylum seekers:
The policy (US Attorney General) Jeff Sessions took aim at lies at the heart of an area of immigration law that has been hotly contested over the past two decades. During that time, advocates for victims of domestic violence have succeeded in winning cases that liberalized the law to protect victims of abuse or extortion whose home governments couldn’t or wouldn’t protect them. Many of the immigrants granted asylum as a result were fleeing Central American nations that offer little protection to victims of domestic abuse and gangs.
The government does not appear to keep statistics on exactly how many asylum claims fall into the categories Sessions is now excluding, but advocates estimate that domestic violence victims seeking asylum number in the tens of thousands each year. A large share of those requests have been successful, as a result of several administrative rulings and court cases during the Obama administration.
“There are many, many Central American women and women from other parts of the world who have been able to obtain protection,” said Denise Gilman, director of the immigration clinic at the University of Texas Law School in Austin. “Many women sitting right now in detention under these claims might lose their right to obtain protection and be deported to dangerous situations.”
The United Nations High Commission on Refugees had urged Sessions against changing the asylum rules. It warned that such action would violate international agreements the U.S. has entered into concerned refugees and would subject victims to being returned to situations where their lives are in danger. The American Bar Assn. warned that ending the asylum eligibility for victims of domestic violence “would further victimize those most in need of protection.”
So, yeah, trouble all around: both for former (and, to be perfectly blunt about it, possible future) victims affected by this policy change, but also in terms of our living up to those inconvenient little things called "international agreements" as well. And a humanitarian one that most sane people wouldn't argue with in the first place, to boot.
Then again, international agreements? Even among formerly close allies? Who the hell needs those these days?
The policy (US Attorney General) Jeff Sessions took aim at lies at the heart of an area of immigration law that has been hotly contested over the past two decades. During that time, advocates for victims of domestic violence have succeeded in winning cases that liberalized the law to protect victims of abuse or extortion whose home governments couldn’t or wouldn’t protect them. Many of the immigrants granted asylum as a result were fleeing Central American nations that offer little protection to victims of domestic abuse and gangs.
The government does not appear to keep statistics on exactly how many asylum claims fall into the categories Sessions is now excluding, but advocates estimate that domestic violence victims seeking asylum number in the tens of thousands each year. A large share of those requests have been successful, as a result of several administrative rulings and court cases during the Obama administration.
“There are many, many Central American women and women from other parts of the world who have been able to obtain protection,” said Denise Gilman, director of the immigration clinic at the University of Texas Law School in Austin. “Many women sitting right now in detention under these claims might lose their right to obtain protection and be deported to dangerous situations.”
The United Nations High Commission on Refugees had urged Sessions against changing the asylum rules. It warned that such action would violate international agreements the U.S. has entered into concerned refugees and would subject victims to being returned to situations where their lives are in danger. The American Bar Assn. warned that ending the asylum eligibility for victims of domestic violence “would further victimize those most in need of protection.”
So, yeah, trouble all around: both for former (and, to be perfectly blunt about it, possible future) victims affected by this policy change, but also in terms of our living up to those inconvenient little things called "international agreements" as well. And a humanitarian one that most sane people wouldn't argue with in the first place, to boot.
Then again, international agreements? Even among formerly close allies? Who the hell needs those these days?
Thursday, June 7, 2018
Wednesday, June 6, 2018
Signal boost: New York Times, "Grifters Gonna Grift"
The Trump administration at "work". From the Times, June 5th, 2018:
This is shaping up to be another red-letter week for Draining the Swamp.
On Monday, Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, splashed back into the news when members of the special counsel Robert Mueller’s team accused him in court papers of witness tampering. Swamp-watchers will recall that Mr. Manafort is facing a smorgasbord of charges related to tax, lobbying and money-laundering violations. Prosecutors now say that he has been using his free time while awaiting trial to try to contact some former European business associates in order to coach them into lying about his work on behalf of pro-Russia political interests in Ukraine. Mr. Manafort’s secret lobbying scheme is alleged to have been impressively elaborate — as, also, efforts to cover it up. But the straightforward phrase that leaps out from this latest court filing comes from a witness telling the F.B.I. that Mr. Manafort had tried to “suborn perjury.” Such an effort would qualify as a definite legal no-no.
Meanwhile, Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, has once again burnished his reputation as the Trump administration’s biggest grifter. On Monday, Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee asked the committee’s chairman, Representative Trey Gowdy, to subpoena the E.P.A. for documents relating to Mr. Pruitt’s “multiple abuses of authority in using agency staff for his own personal purposes.”
Specifically, Democrats want to know more about Mr. Pruitt’s reportedly asking his agency scheduler, Millan Hupp, to handle various tasks for him, including finding him a new place to live last summer — a monthslong, labor-intensive process — and trying to help him buy a used mattress from the Trump International Hotel in Washington.
The mattress caper was, at least, more exotic than Mr. Pruitt’s usual shopping misadventures — the nearly $10,000 to decorate his office, the dozen customized fountain pens for $1,560, the $43,000 soundproof phone booth. It even could be seen as a positive sign that he has abandoned his spendthrift ways. No matter: By Tuesday, Mr. Pruitt’s furnishing needs became old news when it was revealed that he had also asked an aide to help his wife, Marlyn, procure a Chick-fil-A franchise. Calls were arranged and the application process begun, but Mrs. Pruitt never did open a restaurant.
Now, as delicious as Chick-fil-A may be, using the agency’s staff to run one’s personal errands is, of course, a breach of ethics rules. Which may explain in part why, as The Washington Post reported, Mr. Pruitt took it upon himself to contact the C.E.O. of Concordia, a nonprofit in New York, to scare up work for his wife. According to its chief executive, Matthew Swift, Mrs. Pruitt received a few thousand dollars to help organize Concordia’s annual conference last year.
And so Mr. Pruitt continues to dazzle with his inventive capacity for misusing his position.
To be fair, the E.P.A. chief is hardly the only official in Washington who’s been testing ethical boundaries. Just a few days before he announced last week that he would not seek re-election, Representative Tom Garrett, a Republican from Virginia, was publicly accused by former aides of turning his staff into “personal servants.”
Likewise, Mr. Manafort is not alone in playing fast and loose with lobbying rules. One of the more enlightening aspects of his indictment, in fact, was how it revealed the extent to which the K Street crowd dismisses as a joke the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, which requires Americans lobbying on behalf of foreign entities to disclose who is paying them. Mr. Manafort’s experience prompted nervous chatter among his fellow lobbyists as to whether his high-profile case would bring greater scrutiny of, and a crackdown on, FARA abuses more broadly.
More often than not, however, such misbehavior stays in the shadows. Or, when it comes to light, it’s shrugged off as politics as usual. It takes something — or someone — pretty special to cut through the white noise of cynicism that surrounds Washington. Which is precisely what the Trump era is providing: a breathtaking, overly vivid circus of conflicts of interests, abuses of office, ethical lapses and breaches of democratic norms that has captured the public’s attention with its audacity.
Some of this stems from the Russia investigation. In examining how Mr. Trump’s inner circle operates, Mr. Mueller is uncovering all manner of questionable dealings — some of them illegal, others merely appalling.
That said, the Trump Effect extends beyond the Mueller inquiry and into the shameless, often hapless characters with whom this president surrounds himself. Let’s not forget, among others, Tom Price (private jets), John McEntee (financial crimes) or Rob Porter (spousal abuse) — and down, down the drain they go.
When candidate Trump vowed to drain the swamp, he most likely didn’t do so with the thought of targeting his own cadre of aides and advisers. But whatever his intentions, the Trump era is proving to be a master class in the many ways to abuse power — and the many ways to get busted for it.
This is shaping up to be another red-letter week for Draining the Swamp.
On Monday, Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, splashed back into the news when members of the special counsel Robert Mueller’s team accused him in court papers of witness tampering. Swamp-watchers will recall that Mr. Manafort is facing a smorgasbord of charges related to tax, lobbying and money-laundering violations. Prosecutors now say that he has been using his free time while awaiting trial to try to contact some former European business associates in order to coach them into lying about his work on behalf of pro-Russia political interests in Ukraine. Mr. Manafort’s secret lobbying scheme is alleged to have been impressively elaborate — as, also, efforts to cover it up. But the straightforward phrase that leaps out from this latest court filing comes from a witness telling the F.B.I. that Mr. Manafort had tried to “suborn perjury.” Such an effort would qualify as a definite legal no-no.
Meanwhile, Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, has once again burnished his reputation as the Trump administration’s biggest grifter. On Monday, Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee asked the committee’s chairman, Representative Trey Gowdy, to subpoena the E.P.A. for documents relating to Mr. Pruitt’s “multiple abuses of authority in using agency staff for his own personal purposes.”
Specifically, Democrats want to know more about Mr. Pruitt’s reportedly asking his agency scheduler, Millan Hupp, to handle various tasks for him, including finding him a new place to live last summer — a monthslong, labor-intensive process — and trying to help him buy a used mattress from the Trump International Hotel in Washington.
The mattress caper was, at least, more exotic than Mr. Pruitt’s usual shopping misadventures — the nearly $10,000 to decorate his office, the dozen customized fountain pens for $1,560, the $43,000 soundproof phone booth. It even could be seen as a positive sign that he has abandoned his spendthrift ways. No matter: By Tuesday, Mr. Pruitt’s furnishing needs became old news when it was revealed that he had also asked an aide to help his wife, Marlyn, procure a Chick-fil-A franchise. Calls were arranged and the application process begun, but Mrs. Pruitt never did open a restaurant.
Now, as delicious as Chick-fil-A may be, using the agency’s staff to run one’s personal errands is, of course, a breach of ethics rules. Which may explain in part why, as The Washington Post reported, Mr. Pruitt took it upon himself to contact the C.E.O. of Concordia, a nonprofit in New York, to scare up work for his wife. According to its chief executive, Matthew Swift, Mrs. Pruitt received a few thousand dollars to help organize Concordia’s annual conference last year.
And so Mr. Pruitt continues to dazzle with his inventive capacity for misusing his position.
To be fair, the E.P.A. chief is hardly the only official in Washington who’s been testing ethical boundaries. Just a few days before he announced last week that he would not seek re-election, Representative Tom Garrett, a Republican from Virginia, was publicly accused by former aides of turning his staff into “personal servants.”
Likewise, Mr. Manafort is not alone in playing fast and loose with lobbying rules. One of the more enlightening aspects of his indictment, in fact, was how it revealed the extent to which the K Street crowd dismisses as a joke the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, which requires Americans lobbying on behalf of foreign entities to disclose who is paying them. Mr. Manafort’s experience prompted nervous chatter among his fellow lobbyists as to whether his high-profile case would bring greater scrutiny of, and a crackdown on, FARA abuses more broadly.
More often than not, however, such misbehavior stays in the shadows. Or, when it comes to light, it’s shrugged off as politics as usual. It takes something — or someone — pretty special to cut through the white noise of cynicism that surrounds Washington. Which is precisely what the Trump era is providing: a breathtaking, overly vivid circus of conflicts of interests, abuses of office, ethical lapses and breaches of democratic norms that has captured the public’s attention with its audacity.
Some of this stems from the Russia investigation. In examining how Mr. Trump’s inner circle operates, Mr. Mueller is uncovering all manner of questionable dealings — some of them illegal, others merely appalling.
That said, the Trump Effect extends beyond the Mueller inquiry and into the shameless, often hapless characters with whom this president surrounds himself. Let’s not forget, among others, Tom Price (private jets), John McEntee (financial crimes) or Rob Porter (spousal abuse) — and down, down the drain they go.
When candidate Trump vowed to drain the swamp, he most likely didn’t do so with the thought of targeting his own cadre of aides and advisers. But whatever his intentions, the Trump era is proving to be a master class in the many ways to abuse power — and the many ways to get busted for it.
Saturday, June 2, 2018
In Memoriam: Gardner Dozois, 1947-2018
Dozois was considered was a giant of science fiction just in terms of his editing work, but this further elaborates how much of a giant:
He had a long career as an author and was one of the most influential editors the field has seen, publishing Year’s Best anthologies for more than 35 years, serving as the editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction from 1984-2004, and editing or co-editing several original anthologies with Jack Dann, George R.R. Martin, and others.
He served as reprint editor for Clarkesworld Magazine and reviewed short fiction for Locus Magazine. A week before his death, Dozois received the Solstice Award from SFWA.
Dozois began publishing in 1966 when his story “The Empty Man” appeared in If magazine. His first novel, Nightmare Blue, co-written with George Alec Effinger, was published in 1975. In 1977, he took over editing Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year from Lester del Rey and began editing original anthologies with Dann in 1980. In the 1970s, he worked as an assistant on several magazines, including If,Galaxy, and World of Tomorrow. He took over as editor of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine from Shawna McCarthy in 1984.
Although he published less short fiction after taking over the editorial reins of Asimov’s, he did continue to publish new works as well as his own collections. He only published one solo novel, Strangers, but after he resigned from Asimov’s, he published the novel Hunter’s Run, co-written with Martin and Daniel Abraham.
He was the editor Guest of Honor at the Millennium Philcon, the 59th World Science Fiction Convention and in conjunction with his appearance, Old Earth Books published Being Gardner Dozois, a book length interview conducted by Michael Swanwick.
Dozois and co-editor George R.R. Martin received the World Fantasy Award for their anthology Dangerous Women. Dozois and Jonathan Strahan received the Ditmar Award for the anthology The New Space Opera, Dozois won the Readercon Award for his book Slow Dancing Through Time and the Sidewise Award for the short story “Counterfactual.” He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2011 and received the Skylark Award in 2016.
He had a long career as an author and was one of the most influential editors the field has seen, publishing Year’s Best anthologies for more than 35 years, serving as the editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction from 1984-2004, and editing or co-editing several original anthologies with Jack Dann, George R.R. Martin, and others.
He served as reprint editor for Clarkesworld Magazine and reviewed short fiction for Locus Magazine. A week before his death, Dozois received the Solstice Award from SFWA.
Dozois began publishing in 1966 when his story “The Empty Man” appeared in If magazine. His first novel, Nightmare Blue, co-written with George Alec Effinger, was published in 1975. In 1977, he took over editing Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year from Lester del Rey and began editing original anthologies with Dann in 1980. In the 1970s, he worked as an assistant on several magazines, including If,Galaxy, and World of Tomorrow. He took over as editor of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine from Shawna McCarthy in 1984.
Although he published less short fiction after taking over the editorial reins of Asimov’s, he did continue to publish new works as well as his own collections. He only published one solo novel, Strangers, but after he resigned from Asimov’s, he published the novel Hunter’s Run, co-written with Martin and Daniel Abraham.
He was the editor Guest of Honor at the Millennium Philcon, the 59th World Science Fiction Convention and in conjunction with his appearance, Old Earth Books published Being Gardner Dozois, a book length interview conducted by Michael Swanwick.
Dozois and co-editor George R.R. Martin received the World Fantasy Award for their anthology Dangerous Women. Dozois and Jonathan Strahan received the Ditmar Award for the anthology The New Space Opera, Dozois won the Readercon Award for his book Slow Dancing Through Time and the Sidewise Award for the short story “Counterfactual.” He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2011 and received the Skylark Award in 2016.
Congress: it's what lunatics are having for breakfast these days
If you think that the U.S. House of Representatives is plagued with unpalatable politicians already, candidates like Bill Fawell and Nathan Larson will make you feel downright nostalgic for the likes of Paul Ryan in the exceedingly slim likelihood they get elected.
First, some quotable material about Fawell:
Bill Fawell, a real estate broker who is running against incumbent Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos for Illinois’ 17th District, secured a spot on the ballot for November after an uncontested primary. The district voted overwhelmingly for Bustos in 2016 but also narrowly for Trump.
In rantings on blogs, as well as in a 2012 book, Fawell supported many popular conspiracy theories, including that 9/11 was an inside job. According to his arguments, a controlled explosion demolished the 7 World Trade Center tower in order to destroy secret CIA documents.
He also believes in the widespread practice of a satanist cult among those in power, along with a theory that contends that the illuminati run the country through powerful and influential public figures.
In a blog post in which he encouraged everyone to watch the Animal Planet Puppy Bowl instead of the Super Bowl—therefore withholding support for “godless” illuminati-associated Beyonce in the year she performed the halftime show—he called Madonna “the high priestess of Kabbala, that ever narcissist skank with the crooked teeth” and referred to Beyonce’s husband as “Beyonce’s cretin friend/manager/squeeze Jay-Z???”
In other posts, he laid out evidence that Michelle Obama is really a man; that New York City would be destroyed by the “U.S. Deep State government” to convince America to support war; and that Tony Podesta’s red shoes mean he is a satanist.
Think that's hinky? Read on about Larson. You ain't seen nuthin' yet:
An ex-con, self-declared racist with openly misogynistic views is running for Congress as an independent candidate in Virginia's 10th Congressional District.
In an interview with HuffPost on Thursday, Nathan Larson, 37, of Charlottesville, Virginia, was reportedly "open about his pedophilia" because he doesn't want to be constrained by political correctness.
"A lot of people are tired of political correctness and being constrained by it," Larson said. "People prefer when there's an outsider who doesn't have anything to lose and is willing to say what's on a lot of people's minds."
Larson admitted to HuffPost he was behind the websites suiped.org and incelocalypse.today, which no longer exist but provided forums for pedophiles and misogynists.
Though he never claimed to engage in sexual acts with minors in posts on these websites, Larson allegedly expressed a desire to do so. In his various writings, Larson also endorsed incest, kidnapping and rape.
In Larson's view, women are not "competent to make their own sexual decisions at any age."
Larson also admitted to Business Insider he once confessed to raping his ex-wife but said that was a "mistake" and he now wishes to "recant" that confession.
Meanwhile, Larson's campaign manifesto includes praise for Adolf Hitler and vehemently anti-feminist language.
He described Hitler as a "white supremacist hero" and in a section supporting gun rights stated, "Guns don't kill people - feminists do." Larson argued in order to prevent future school shootings "patriarchal" rule must be reinstituted in American families.
There's more, of course, but I figure that anyone who's read through all of the above will need to get a fresh air-sickness bag to read the rest.
First, some quotable material about Fawell:
Bill Fawell, a real estate broker who is running against incumbent Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos for Illinois’ 17th District, secured a spot on the ballot for November after an uncontested primary. The district voted overwhelmingly for Bustos in 2016 but also narrowly for Trump.
In rantings on blogs, as well as in a 2012 book, Fawell supported many popular conspiracy theories, including that 9/11 was an inside job. According to his arguments, a controlled explosion demolished the 7 World Trade Center tower in order to destroy secret CIA documents.
He also believes in the widespread practice of a satanist cult among those in power, along with a theory that contends that the illuminati run the country through powerful and influential public figures.
In a blog post in which he encouraged everyone to watch the Animal Planet Puppy Bowl instead of the Super Bowl—therefore withholding support for “godless” illuminati-associated Beyonce in the year she performed the halftime show—he called Madonna “the high priestess of Kabbala, that ever narcissist skank with the crooked teeth” and referred to Beyonce’s husband as “Beyonce’s cretin friend/manager/squeeze Jay-Z???”
In other posts, he laid out evidence that Michelle Obama is really a man; that New York City would be destroyed by the “U.S. Deep State government” to convince America to support war; and that Tony Podesta’s red shoes mean he is a satanist.
Think that's hinky? Read on about Larson. You ain't seen nuthin' yet:
An ex-con, self-declared racist with openly misogynistic views is running for Congress as an independent candidate in Virginia's 10th Congressional District.
In an interview with HuffPost on Thursday, Nathan Larson, 37, of Charlottesville, Virginia, was reportedly "open about his pedophilia" because he doesn't want to be constrained by political correctness.
"A lot of people are tired of political correctness and being constrained by it," Larson said. "People prefer when there's an outsider who doesn't have anything to lose and is willing to say what's on a lot of people's minds."
Larson admitted to HuffPost he was behind the websites suiped.org and incelocalypse.today, which no longer exist but provided forums for pedophiles and misogynists.
Though he never claimed to engage in sexual acts with minors in posts on these websites, Larson allegedly expressed a desire to do so. In his various writings, Larson also endorsed incest, kidnapping and rape.
In Larson's view, women are not "competent to make their own sexual decisions at any age."
Larson also admitted to Business Insider he once confessed to raping his ex-wife but said that was a "mistake" and he now wishes to "recant" that confession.
Meanwhile, Larson's campaign manifesto includes praise for Adolf Hitler and vehemently anti-feminist language.
He described Hitler as a "white supremacist hero" and in a section supporting gun rights stated, "Guns don't kill people - feminists do." Larson argued in order to prevent future school shootings "patriarchal" rule must be reinstituted in American families.
There's more, of course, but I figure that anyone who's read through all of the above will need to get a fresh air-sickness bag to read the rest.
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Signal Boost: Los Angeles Times, May 23rd, 2018
I'll just leave this here since I think this entire mess - now bordering on a constitutional crisis - is bound to get far worse before it gets better:
Trump ‘hereby demands' the Justice Department investigate his conspiracy theories. That's not how it works
For almost a year, Donald Trump's rage about the investigation into his campaign's possible collusion with Russia — or, as he calls it, "the greatest Witch Hunt in American History" — has threatened to provoke him to trigger a constitutional crisis by firing the lawyers leading that investigation or by making it impossible for them to do their jobs.
On Sunday, Trump seemed ready to cross that threshold. Pressing a conspiracy theory for which he had no evidence, the president tweeted that "I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes - and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!"
This threat of intervention was ominous. If Trump was willing to order the Justice Department, which is supposed to act independently and without political influence, to instead pursue investigations that served him personally and politically, would he be equally willing to demand an end to one he considered a political liability?
The leadership of the Justice Department scrambled to try to placate the president without compromising its integrity any more than necessary. After Trump's tweet, the department announced that its inspector general would expand an ongoing internal review to determine "whether there was any impropriety or political motivation" in the FBI's counterintelligence operation connected to the 2016 campaign.
Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the current Russia investigation conducted by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, issued this statement: "If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action."
These responses can perhaps be justified as damage control. More concerning is a statement released by the White House on Monday after Trump met with Rosenstein, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly. The statement said that Kelly would set up a meeting, now scheduled for Thursday, at which officials of intelligence agencies and members of Congress would "review highly classified and other information they have requested."
This was apparently a reference to documents the president's allies in the House have been seeking from the Justice Department, including information about an informant who spoke to Trump campaign personnel known to have dealt with suspected Russian agents. The informant, a retired U.S. academic living in England, seems to have morphed in the imagination of some Trump supporters into a spy planted inside the campaign by his enemies in the Obama White House — an idea Trump floated again on Tuesday.
If the Justice Department judges some information to be too sensitive to release, it shouldn't change its opinion simply because the president applies pressure. It's also troubling that the only two congressmen, both Republicans, will attend the meeting: Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare) and Troy Gowdy (R-S.C.). Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has led the effort to obtain the records.
Trump's defenders in Congress and in the conservative news media insist that law enforcement and U.S. intelligence services should stay out of partisan politics. But if there is evidence that a presidential campaign is being courted or manipulated by agents of a foreign power, it can't simply be ignored.
Whether anyone involved in the Trump campaign criminally cooperated with Russian efforts is something Mueller is attempting to establish. The question is whether he will be allowed to complete his investigation unmolested by the president who derides his efforts as a witch hunt. After Trump's latest outburst — and the Justice Department's response, however careful and calibrated it may have been — we're more concerned than ever that the president might take that chance.
For someone who insists that there was "no collusion!" and that he has nothing to hide, Trump has sought to undermine this investigation from the start, baselessly attacking those who are conducting it, diverting attention to sideshows and injecting politics into what should be a fact-finding process. In doing so he has walked close to the line of obstructing justice.
Trump ‘hereby demands' the Justice Department investigate his conspiracy theories. That's not how it works
For almost a year, Donald Trump's rage about the investigation into his campaign's possible collusion with Russia — or, as he calls it, "the greatest Witch Hunt in American History" — has threatened to provoke him to trigger a constitutional crisis by firing the lawyers leading that investigation or by making it impossible for them to do their jobs.
On Sunday, Trump seemed ready to cross that threshold. Pressing a conspiracy theory for which he had no evidence, the president tweeted that "I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes - and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!"
This threat of intervention was ominous. If Trump was willing to order the Justice Department, which is supposed to act independently and without political influence, to instead pursue investigations that served him personally and politically, would he be equally willing to demand an end to one he considered a political liability?
The leadership of the Justice Department scrambled to try to placate the president without compromising its integrity any more than necessary. After Trump's tweet, the department announced that its inspector general would expand an ongoing internal review to determine "whether there was any impropriety or political motivation" in the FBI's counterintelligence operation connected to the 2016 campaign.
Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the current Russia investigation conducted by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, issued this statement: "If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action."
These responses can perhaps be justified as damage control. More concerning is a statement released by the White House on Monday after Trump met with Rosenstein, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly. The statement said that Kelly would set up a meeting, now scheduled for Thursday, at which officials of intelligence agencies and members of Congress would "review highly classified and other information they have requested."
This was apparently a reference to documents the president's allies in the House have been seeking from the Justice Department, including information about an informant who spoke to Trump campaign personnel known to have dealt with suspected Russian agents. The informant, a retired U.S. academic living in England, seems to have morphed in the imagination of some Trump supporters into a spy planted inside the campaign by his enemies in the Obama White House — an idea Trump floated again on Tuesday.
If the Justice Department judges some information to be too sensitive to release, it shouldn't change its opinion simply because the president applies pressure. It's also troubling that the only two congressmen, both Republicans, will attend the meeting: Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare) and Troy Gowdy (R-S.C.). Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has led the effort to obtain the records.
Trump's defenders in Congress and in the conservative news media insist that law enforcement and U.S. intelligence services should stay out of partisan politics. But if there is evidence that a presidential campaign is being courted or manipulated by agents of a foreign power, it can't simply be ignored.
Whether anyone involved in the Trump campaign criminally cooperated with Russian efforts is something Mueller is attempting to establish. The question is whether he will be allowed to complete his investigation unmolested by the president who derides his efforts as a witch hunt. After Trump's latest outburst — and the Justice Department's response, however careful and calibrated it may have been — we're more concerned than ever that the president might take that chance.
For someone who insists that there was "no collusion!" and that he has nothing to hide, Trump has sought to undermine this investigation from the start, baselessly attacking those who are conducting it, diverting attention to sideshows and injecting politics into what should be a fact-finding process. In doing so he has walked close to the line of obstructing justice.
Monday, April 23, 2018
Stupid editing tricks
Someone might want to remind Declan Finn that beating someone senseless because of something insulting they said is still frowned upon by most law enforcement agencies in the US even if you claimed you did it "in self defense".
As for the rest of the ConCarolinas kerfuffle, if this were really about John Ringo's politics and not his behavior at other conventions (reasons detailed here and here), he'd be just as welcome as, say, Larry Niven or David Weber. More flies with honey than with vinegar, etc.
As for the rest of the ConCarolinas kerfuffle, if this were really about John Ringo's politics and not his behavior at other conventions (reasons detailed here and here), he'd be just as welcome as, say, Larry Niven or David Weber. More flies with honey than with vinegar, etc.
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
Wednesday, March 14, 2018
In Memoriam: Stephen Hawking, 1942-2018
Hawking's passing wasn't exactly unexpected, considering his nearly lifelong illness; what was unexpected was the fact that he survived ALS for over 50 years while becoming one of the most important scientists of that same half-century. His death is a gigantic loss to the science world, of course, but a couple of essays published by Gregory Benford in 2005 and 2012 (and reproduced on File 770 here and here) show a more personal side of Hawking. From the former:
A week after my evening at Cambridge, I got from Stephen’s secretary a transcript of all his remarks. I have used it here to reproduce his style of conversation. Printed out on his wheelchair computer, his sole link with us, the lines seem to come from a great distance. Across an abyss.
Portraying the flinty faces of science—daunting complexity twinned with numbing wonder—demands both craft and art. Some of us paint with fiction. Stephen paints with his impressionistic views of vast, cool mathematical landscapes. To knit together our fraying times, to span the cultural abyss, demands all these approaches—and more, if we can but invent them.
Stephen has faced daunting physical constrictions with a renewed attack on the large issues, on great sweeps of space and time. Daily he struggles without much fuss against the narrowing that is perhaps the worst element of infirmity. I recalled him rapt with Marilyn [Monroe], still deeply engaged with life, holding firmly against tides of entropy.
A week after my evening at Cambridge, I got from Stephen’s secretary a transcript of all his remarks. I have used it here to reproduce his style of conversation. Printed out on his wheelchair computer, his sole link with us, the lines seem to come from a great distance. Across an abyss.
Portraying the flinty faces of science—daunting complexity twinned with numbing wonder—demands both craft and art. Some of us paint with fiction. Stephen paints with his impressionistic views of vast, cool mathematical landscapes. To knit together our fraying times, to span the cultural abyss, demands all these approaches—and more, if we can but invent them.
Stephen has faced daunting physical constrictions with a renewed attack on the large issues, on great sweeps of space and time. Daily he struggles without much fuss against the narrowing that is perhaps the worst element of infirmity. I recalled him rapt with Marilyn [Monroe], still deeply engaged with life, holding firmly against tides of entropy.
In Memoriam: Kate Wilhelm, 1928-2018
It seems like all I do these days is post obituaries. This isn't the biggest one I'll post today, but there's no underestimating Wilhelm's influence on the SF community, both in terms of the fiction she produced and her involvement with the Clarion writer's workshops.
Thursday, March 8, 2018
In Memoriam: Peter Nicholls, 1939-2018
His Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (co-edited with John Clute) will remain an indispensable guide to the SF-perplexed for decades after his passing; I can remember referring to a copy of it at the library at Northeastern Illinois University when I couldn't even buy a used copy, and the only book that might've caused me to check out the works of more SF authors was Baird Searles and Co.'s A Reader's Guide to Science Fiction, which I still own a badly dog-eared copy of somewhere; it's just that Searles' book comes off as a comparative light introduction while Nicholls' and Clute's comes off as definitive to the point of being obsessive.
Mother Russia, abusive parent
The correlation you can draw between the attempted assassination of yet another pair of Russian expatriates (in this case, former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia) and this ill-disguised threat on Russian state television is quite a simple one: cross Vladimir Putin and you'll end up dead.
Meanwhile, in another part of the world, a certain other demagogic politician possessing a good deal less intelligence than Czar Vladimir apparently continues to believe that his good buddy would never, ever attempt to interfere with American elections. At least that's what this unspent $120 million intended to prevent such interference in the future seems to indicate.
Meanwhile, in another part of the world, a certain other demagogic politician possessing a good deal less intelligence than Czar Vladimir apparently continues to believe that his good buddy would never, ever attempt to interfere with American elections. At least that's what this unspent $120 million intended to prevent such interference in the future seems to indicate.
Tuesday, February 27, 2018
1,000
A bit of an artificial milestone since it doesn't take into account my posts at Blogspot under a previous title, but we live in an era where people are crazy enough to post about far less, so...
Stand back: it's the Fightin' Cheeto and his fists of fat!
There's not too many ways you can describe this, except to say that if you can't accept it as evidence of President Unintelligible's persistent delusions of grandeur there probably isn't anything else you'd accept, either.
Unsurprisingly, PU still remains a gold mine of late-night comedy material.
Unsurprisingly, PU still remains a gold mine of late-night comedy material.
Monday, February 5, 2018
Primary season in Illinois: where the nuts get harvested early
It's not the fault of the entire 3rd Congressional district, really; they weren't the ones who adequately failed to housetrain Art Jones or his Adolph Hilter-worshipping political instincts, but if you're going to blame someone for putting him in a position to snap up the Republican nomination in that district I suppose it's whoever wasn't paying attention to assorted unpleasant facts like these before letting him run as an uncontested primary candidate:
Arthur Jones, a 70-year-old retired insurance agent, told the Chicago Sun-Times he once led the American Nazi Party and heads up a group called the America First Committee, which excludes Jewish members. On Jones’ campaign website, under a section titled, “The ‘Holocaust’ racket,” he insists the murder of 6 million Jews was the “biggest blackest lie in history” and that the Holocaust amounted to “propaganda, whose purpose is designed to bleed, blackmail, extort and terrorize, the enemies of organized world Jewry.”
Jones is running unopposed in a highly Democratic district that includes a part of Chicago and is expected to be easily defeated in the general election.
According to his website, Jones is campaigning to, among other things, “bring our troops home NOW to defend our borders”; to end “amnesty” for undocumented immigrants and sanctuary cities; to make English the official language; and to fight an agenda he believes, that the federal government has to “change” neighborhoods “found to be too White, too Christian, or too straight.”
The Chicago Tribune reported that he opposes interracial marriage and school integration and was unsure when asked whether black people or Latinos should have the right to vote.
Ah, well. We don't have Andy Martin to kick around anymore, so we end up with Jones instead.
In other local electoral news, someone actually came up with a way to make Bruce Rauner look practically warm and fuzzy in comparison:
The latest example of this phenomenon comes from Illinois, where Republican state Rep. Jeanne Ives is challenging incumbent Gov. Bruce Rauner for the gubernatorial nomination. Like Trump against Jeb Bush, Corey Stewart against Ed Gillespie in Virginia, and Roy Moore against Luther Strange in Alabama, Ives hopes to upset a more established Republican by fanning anger and prejudice.
“Thank you for signing legislation that lets me use the girl’s bathroom,” says a deep-voiced male actor wearing a dress, in a new ad released by Ives’ campaign. The ad attacks the incumbent governor for purportedly backing liberal policies and uses a procession of conservative boogeymen to mockingly “thank” Rauner for his aid. A black woman in a Chicago Teachers Union shirt thanks Rauner for a “bailout” of teacher pensions, a white woman in a pink hat thanks him for “making all Illinois families pay for my abortions,” and a man dressed as antifa thanks the governor for making “Illinois a sanctuary state for illegal immigrant criminals.”
State Republican leaders condemned the ad. “There is no place in the Illinois Republican Party for rhetoric that attacks our fellow Illinoisans based on their race, gender or humanity,” said party chairman Tim Schneider in a statement. A Republican candidate for attorney general, Erika Harold, called on Ives to “immediately” take the ad off the air.
But Ives still has considerable conservative support for her message. A member of the Illinois GOP central committee, John McGlasson, called it “a clear, unambiguous message about what Rauner stands for,” and Politico notes that a former Rauner ally, Republican strategist Dan Proft, has jumped ship to Ives’ campaign. It’s unclear how Republican voters will respond to Ives’ message, but the 2016 presidential primary provides clues: 39 percent of Illinois Republicans backed Donald Trump for the nomination, beating out Ted Cruz by 8 percentage points, and swamping both John Kasich and Marco Rubio.
So if you're from here, don't make the mistake of assuming that the racist and xenophobic yahoos are just running amok in places like Alabama, Texas, or South Carolina; there are plenty of them up here as well. They just don't run the entire political operation here like they do in those aforementioned states.
Yet.
Arthur Jones, a 70-year-old retired insurance agent, told the Chicago Sun-Times he once led the American Nazi Party and heads up a group called the America First Committee, which excludes Jewish members. On Jones’ campaign website, under a section titled, “The ‘Holocaust’ racket,” he insists the murder of 6 million Jews was the “biggest blackest lie in history” and that the Holocaust amounted to “propaganda, whose purpose is designed to bleed, blackmail, extort and terrorize, the enemies of organized world Jewry.”
Jones is running unopposed in a highly Democratic district that includes a part of Chicago and is expected to be easily defeated in the general election.
According to his website, Jones is campaigning to, among other things, “bring our troops home NOW to defend our borders”; to end “amnesty” for undocumented immigrants and sanctuary cities; to make English the official language; and to fight an agenda he believes, that the federal government has to “change” neighborhoods “found to be too White, too Christian, or too straight.”
The Chicago Tribune reported that he opposes interracial marriage and school integration and was unsure when asked whether black people or Latinos should have the right to vote.
Ah, well. We don't have Andy Martin to kick around anymore, so we end up with Jones instead.
In other local electoral news, someone actually came up with a way to make Bruce Rauner look practically warm and fuzzy in comparison:
The latest example of this phenomenon comes from Illinois, where Republican state Rep. Jeanne Ives is challenging incumbent Gov. Bruce Rauner for the gubernatorial nomination. Like Trump against Jeb Bush, Corey Stewart against Ed Gillespie in Virginia, and Roy Moore against Luther Strange in Alabama, Ives hopes to upset a more established Republican by fanning anger and prejudice.
“Thank you for signing legislation that lets me use the girl’s bathroom,” says a deep-voiced male actor wearing a dress, in a new ad released by Ives’ campaign. The ad attacks the incumbent governor for purportedly backing liberal policies and uses a procession of conservative boogeymen to mockingly “thank” Rauner for his aid. A black woman in a Chicago Teachers Union shirt thanks Rauner for a “bailout” of teacher pensions, a white woman in a pink hat thanks him for “making all Illinois families pay for my abortions,” and a man dressed as antifa thanks the governor for making “Illinois a sanctuary state for illegal immigrant criminals.”
State Republican leaders condemned the ad. “There is no place in the Illinois Republican Party for rhetoric that attacks our fellow Illinoisans based on their race, gender or humanity,” said party chairman Tim Schneider in a statement. A Republican candidate for attorney general, Erika Harold, called on Ives to “immediately” take the ad off the air.
But Ives still has considerable conservative support for her message. A member of the Illinois GOP central committee, John McGlasson, called it “a clear, unambiguous message about what Rauner stands for,” and Politico notes that a former Rauner ally, Republican strategist Dan Proft, has jumped ship to Ives’ campaign. It’s unclear how Republican voters will respond to Ives’ message, but the 2016 presidential primary provides clues: 39 percent of Illinois Republicans backed Donald Trump for the nomination, beating out Ted Cruz by 8 percentage points, and swamping both John Kasich and Marco Rubio.
So if you're from here, don't make the mistake of assuming that the racist and xenophobic yahoos are just running amok in places like Alabama, Texas, or South Carolina; there are plenty of them up here as well. They just don't run the entire political operation here like they do in those aforementioned states.
Yet.
Wednesday, January 31, 2018
"Big Game", big pick, big deal
People not interested in the upcoming Super Bowl can skip this, unless they're actually interested in reading my immortal prose (what? I repeat, what?) concerning the upcoming Super Bowl.
Two things are rather obvious at this point:
1) Outside of his little football world, Tom Brady is a woo-promoting jackass;
2) That's still no reason to go after his daughter in public, though, like one radio host did.
That being said, I'm under the impression that if anyone's going to upset The Belicheck Machine That Ate The AFC it might be Philly. The Eagles are every bit as capable of making life tough for opponents as the Pats are, and the fact that they mercilessly pounded the Vikings 38-7 in a game where the Vikes were favored by Vegas is proof of that. Even so, the Pats have more experience. And they have a quarterback who's incredibly skilled and pulling off last-minute wins even if he is a quack medicine-promoting idiot off the field.
So Pats by 2.
However...
I have shit luck picking Super Bowl winners since I started doing it again in 2006. Last year was a rare exception (Pittsburgh beating Arizona in 2008 was the other one, and I didn't even cover my own spread that time), but considering my lack of luck picking winners in - which years were they, now? - 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 you can at least rest assured that just because I was right about the Pats in 2016 I might not be this year considering my Monopoly money-worthless 2-9 record.
So, Pats haters? Don't give up hope.
Yet.
Two things are rather obvious at this point:
1) Outside of his little football world, Tom Brady is a woo-promoting jackass;
2) That's still no reason to go after his daughter in public, though, like one radio host did.
That being said, I'm under the impression that if anyone's going to upset The Belicheck Machine That Ate The AFC it might be Philly. The Eagles are every bit as capable of making life tough for opponents as the Pats are, and the fact that they mercilessly pounded the Vikings 38-7 in a game where the Vikes were favored by Vegas is proof of that. Even so, the Pats have more experience. And they have a quarterback who's incredibly skilled and pulling off last-minute wins even if he is a quack medicine-promoting idiot off the field.
So Pats by 2.
However...
I have shit luck picking Super Bowl winners since I started doing it again in 2006. Last year was a rare exception (Pittsburgh beating Arizona in 2008 was the other one, and I didn't even cover my own spread that time), but considering my lack of luck picking winners in - which years were they, now? - 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 you can at least rest assured that just because I was right about the Pats in 2016 I might not be this year considering my Monopoly money-worthless 2-9 record.
So, Pats haters? Don't give up hope.
Yet.
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
Dave "Sherlock" Freer, Super Detective
The entire issue of Dave Freer's apparent obsession with the idea that Camestros Felapton is Toby Meadows (another hint that pseudonyms are practically mandatory when dealing with certain types of people online) has been written about more adroitly elsewhere (by Camestros himself, namely here, here and here, and Jim C. Hines, among others), the one thing that caused this to devolve from a almost comical wild goose chase to something repulsive and ugly is the borderline libelous statement that Freer makes (which is quoted in the Hines post) that Foz and Toby Meadows are involved in a relationship "reminiscent... of the situation between MZB and Breen" (i.e.,convicted pedophile Walter Breen and his wife Marion Zimmer Bradley, who was also accused of sexual abuse by her children and several others after her death). This was nothing but a crude, downright despicable personal attack on Meadows and her husband that was made because Freer is apparently so vewy, vewy angwy that he has no problem coming off as Elmer Fudd incarnate in human flesh in terms of emotional self-control.
This would all seem exceptionally pathetic, except that he accused two people he doesn't know personally of being in a relationship that promotes pedophilia. Without a single bit of proof to back that assertion up, of course. And all because one of them had the audacity to disagree with something he wrote. Apparently, Freer thinks that's so much of a crime that it's worth using the rhetorical equivalent of a tactical nuclear warhead to kill a fly. Foz Meadows has responded to this drivel herself, but here's a point I'd like to make:
If anyone can come off as the perfect combination of a paranoid conspiracy theorist and a sadistic turd with a truly fetid imagination, it's someone who turns to defamatory personal attacks when he has no proof for the former but plenty of proof as to the latter. And this, by the way, is over something as trivial and pointless as who the pseudonymous author of a blog devoted to science fiction really is.
If anyone can come up with an example of something as inane as this they've seen online recently, please post it in the comments. I need a cheap laugh. I'm certainly not getting one writing about this.
This would all seem exceptionally pathetic, except that he accused two people he doesn't know personally of being in a relationship that promotes pedophilia. Without a single bit of proof to back that assertion up, of course. And all because one of them had the audacity to disagree with something he wrote. Apparently, Freer thinks that's so much of a crime that it's worth using the rhetorical equivalent of a tactical nuclear warhead to kill a fly. Foz Meadows has responded to this drivel herself, but here's a point I'd like to make:
If anyone can come off as the perfect combination of a paranoid conspiracy theorist and a sadistic turd with a truly fetid imagination, it's someone who turns to defamatory personal attacks when he has no proof for the former but plenty of proof as to the latter. And this, by the way, is over something as trivial and pointless as who the pseudonymous author of a blog devoted to science fiction really is.
If anyone can come up with an example of something as inane as this they've seen online recently, please post it in the comments. I need a cheap laugh. I'm certainly not getting one writing about this.
Thursday, January 25, 2018
Mark E Smith, 1957-2018
Damn it, it's almost as if someone is trying to destroy the soundtrack of my formative years piece by piece.
Luckily, they won't succeed.
Luckily, they won't succeed.
Nassar Gets Dropped Hard
I wasn't expecting anything other than this, really, but the man remained an utterly grating asshole throughout the trial and especially in the wake of the victims' collective impact statements:
But before delivering her sentence, Aquilina read aloud a letter Nassar wrote to the court recently in which he defended his medical care, said he was "manipulated" into pleading guilty, and accused the women of lying.
"I was a good doctor because my treatments worked, and those patients that are now speaking out are the same ones that praised and came back over and over," Nassar wrote. "The media convinced them that everything I did was wrong and bad. They feel I broke their trust. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."
The letter "tells me you still don't get it," Aquilina said, tossing the letter dismissively.
"I wouldn't send my dogs to you, sir," she added.
I would, however, send dogs at him. Attack dogs do need their practice, after all.
He needn't worry too much, though. There are some things even dogs won't eat.
In other news - and in contrast to what the not particularly bright Joel Ferguson had to say on the subject earlier - MSU President Lou Anna Simon did indeed resign from her job.
Win-win in my opinion, but that's of little consolation to Nassar's victims.
But before delivering her sentence, Aquilina read aloud a letter Nassar wrote to the court recently in which he defended his medical care, said he was "manipulated" into pleading guilty, and accused the women of lying.
"I was a good doctor because my treatments worked, and those patients that are now speaking out are the same ones that praised and came back over and over," Nassar wrote. "The media convinced them that everything I did was wrong and bad. They feel I broke their trust. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."
The letter "tells me you still don't get it," Aquilina said, tossing the letter dismissively.
"I wouldn't send my dogs to you, sir," she added.
I would, however, send dogs at him. Attack dogs do need their practice, after all.
He needn't worry too much, though. There are some things even dogs won't eat.
In other news - and in contrast to what the not particularly bright Joel Ferguson had to say on the subject earlier - MSU President Lou Anna Simon did indeed resign from her job.
Win-win in my opinion, but that's of little consolation to Nassar's victims.
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
In Memoriam: Ursula K. Le Guin, 1929-2017
From the New York Times:
Ms. Le Guin’s fictions range from young-adult adventures to wry philosophical fables. They combine compelling stories, rigorous narrative logic and a lean but lyrical style to draw readers into what she called the “inner lands” of the imagination. Such writing, she believed, could be a moral force.
“If you cannot or will not imagine the results of your actions, there’s no way you can act morally or responsibly,” she told The Guardian in an interview in 2005. “Little kids can’t do it; babies are morally monsters — completely greedy. Their imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy.”
The writer’s “pleasant duty,” she said, is to ply the reader’s imagination with “the best and purest nourishment that it can absorb.”
Ms. Le Guin’s fictions range from young-adult adventures to wry philosophical fables. They combine compelling stories, rigorous narrative logic and a lean but lyrical style to draw readers into what she called the “inner lands” of the imagination. Such writing, she believed, could be a moral force.
“If you cannot or will not imagine the results of your actions, there’s no way you can act morally or responsibly,” she told The Guardian in an interview in 2005. “Little kids can’t do it; babies are morally monsters — completely greedy. Their imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy.”
The writer’s “pleasant duty,” she said, is to ply the reader’s imagination with “the best and purest nourishment that it can absorb.”
And this is what we call a special kind of Stupid...
From Deadspin, which has been covering the hell out of the Larry Nassar case and continues to turn over many large turds of muck concerning the issue:
In an interview on local radio show Staudt on Sports, Michigan State board of trustees member Joel Ferguson reinforced the university board’s stance that the majority of board members still support university president Lou Anna Simon, saying, “there’s so many more things going on at the university than just this Nassar thing.”
After brushing off the largest sexual assault scandal in American sports history, Ferguson maintained the stunning pace of arrogance by claiming that not only should Simon keep her job, but that nobody on the school’s senior leadership should be held accountable for the roles they played in abetting Larry Nassar’s years of sexual abuse. Calling Nassar a “pervert,” Ferguson posited the former Michigan State employee was “on an island by himself”—a statement that is categorically false, as Nassar was subject to annual reviews by superiors as both a team doctor within the Michigan State athletic department and as an associate professor who taught students within the university’s Division of Sports Medicine and College of Osteopathic Medicine. These same superiors were the ones made aware of numerous complaints against Nassar dating back as far as 1997 and who, at one point, allowed him to continue seeing patients one-on-one in the midst of an internal investigation.
Well, that was lovely, wasn't it?
It's all okay as long as it's in the name of college sports and raising money for the mighty university, right? I can't wait until one of these privileged mopes (and that's precisely what Ferguson is, CEO credentials and all) ends up having to defend a dean or a university president for not acting against a coach or a player who's either a serial killer or an outright child murderer.
I'm sure that'll come off as being a beautiful moment for all of us as well.
In an interview on local radio show Staudt on Sports, Michigan State board of trustees member Joel Ferguson reinforced the university board’s stance that the majority of board members still support university president Lou Anna Simon, saying, “there’s so many more things going on at the university than just this Nassar thing.”
After brushing off the largest sexual assault scandal in American sports history, Ferguson maintained the stunning pace of arrogance by claiming that not only should Simon keep her job, but that nobody on the school’s senior leadership should be held accountable for the roles they played in abetting Larry Nassar’s years of sexual abuse. Calling Nassar a “pervert,” Ferguson posited the former Michigan State employee was “on an island by himself”—a statement that is categorically false, as Nassar was subject to annual reviews by superiors as both a team doctor within the Michigan State athletic department and as an associate professor who taught students within the university’s Division of Sports Medicine and College of Osteopathic Medicine. These same superiors were the ones made aware of numerous complaints against Nassar dating back as far as 1997 and who, at one point, allowed him to continue seeing patients one-on-one in the midst of an internal investigation.
Well, that was lovely, wasn't it?
It's all okay as long as it's in the name of college sports and raising money for the mighty university, right? I can't wait until one of these privileged mopes (and that's precisely what Ferguson is, CEO credentials and all) ends up having to defend a dean or a university president for not acting against a coach or a player who's either a serial killer or an outright child murderer.
I'm sure that'll come off as being a beautiful moment for all of us as well.
Thursday, January 4, 2018
At least the U. of Arizona did the right thing, for once
...unlike either Penn State or Baylor, who seemed utterly incapable of getting rid of some of their baggage.
Ah, Rich Rodriguez. We hardly knew ye, apparently, and it's too bad that we eventually did.
Ah, Rich Rodriguez. We hardly knew ye, apparently, and it's too bad that we eventually did.
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