I'll just leave this here.
Monday, February 4, 2019
Our National Dunning-Kruger Nightmare continues
As if President Unintelligible's inability to listen to any opinions that contradict (or even mildly differ) his wasn't bad enough, Time pointed out that his inability to listen to daily intelligence briefings is especially disturbing:
In the wake of President Donald Trump’s renewed attacks on the U.S. intelligence community this week, senior intelligence briefers are breaking two years of silence to warn that the President is endangering American security with what they say is a stubborn disregard for their assessments.
Citing multiple in-person episodes, these intelligence officials say Trump displays what one called “willful ignorance” when presented with analyses generated by America’s $81 billion-a-year intelligence services. The officials, who include analysts who prepare Trump’s briefs and the briefers themselves, describe futile attempts to keep his attention by using visual aids, confining some briefing points to two or three sentences, and repeating his name and title as frequently as possible.
What is most troubling, say these officials and others in government and on Capitol Hill who have been briefed on the episodes, are Trump’s angry reactions when he is given information that contradicts positions he has taken or beliefs he holds. Two intelligence officers even reported that they have been warned to avoid giving the President intelligence assessments that contradict stances he has taken in public.
Fantastic. And you thought that his ham-fisted approach to domestic politics was bad.
Oh, but it gets better. If you're into gallows humor, that is.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGIA), which oversees the spy satellites that map and photograph key areas, had tried to impress upon Trump the size and complexity of the North Korean site. In preparing one briefing for the President on the issue early in his administration, the NGIA built a model of the facility with a removable roof, according to two officials. To help Trump grasp the size of the facility, the NGIA briefers built a miniature version New York’s Statue of Liberty to scale and put it inside the model.
Intelligence officials from multiple agencies later warned Trump that entrances at the facility that had been closed after the summit could still be reopened. But the president has ignored the agencies’ warnings and has exaggerated the steps North Korea has taken to shutter the facility, those officials and two others say. That is a particular concern now, ahead of a possible second summit with the Kim Jong-Un later this month.
The briefers’ concerns are spread across multiple areas of expertise. Two briefers worry that a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping could produce a trade agreement that the President can trumpet but that fails to address China’s espionage, its theft of intellectual property that ranges from circuit boards to soybean hybrids, its military buildup, and its geopolitical ambition.
Three other officials worry about what one of them calls “precipitous troop withdrawals” from Syria and Afghanistan and a peace deal with the Taliban that in time would leave the extremist Islamic group back in charge and wipe out the gains made in education, women’s rights and governance since the U.S. invaded the country more than 17 years ago.
I have to wonder if I need to start stocking up on antacid, or just cut to the chase and start buying an over-the-counter proton pump inhibitor. Because if all of this this isn't ulcer inducing...
In the wake of President Donald Trump’s renewed attacks on the U.S. intelligence community this week, senior intelligence briefers are breaking two years of silence to warn that the President is endangering American security with what they say is a stubborn disregard for their assessments.
Citing multiple in-person episodes, these intelligence officials say Trump displays what one called “willful ignorance” when presented with analyses generated by America’s $81 billion-a-year intelligence services. The officials, who include analysts who prepare Trump’s briefs and the briefers themselves, describe futile attempts to keep his attention by using visual aids, confining some briefing points to two or three sentences, and repeating his name and title as frequently as possible.
What is most troubling, say these officials and others in government and on Capitol Hill who have been briefed on the episodes, are Trump’s angry reactions when he is given information that contradicts positions he has taken or beliefs he holds. Two intelligence officers even reported that they have been warned to avoid giving the President intelligence assessments that contradict stances he has taken in public.
Fantastic. And you thought that his ham-fisted approach to domestic politics was bad.
Oh, but it gets better. If you're into gallows humor, that is.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGIA), which oversees the spy satellites that map and photograph key areas, had tried to impress upon Trump the size and complexity of the North Korean site. In preparing one briefing for the President on the issue early in his administration, the NGIA built a model of the facility with a removable roof, according to two officials. To help Trump grasp the size of the facility, the NGIA briefers built a miniature version New York’s Statue of Liberty to scale and put it inside the model.
Intelligence officials from multiple agencies later warned Trump that entrances at the facility that had been closed after the summit could still be reopened. But the president has ignored the agencies’ warnings and has exaggerated the steps North Korea has taken to shutter the facility, those officials and two others say. That is a particular concern now, ahead of a possible second summit with the Kim Jong-Un later this month.
The briefers’ concerns are spread across multiple areas of expertise. Two briefers worry that a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping could produce a trade agreement that the President can trumpet but that fails to address China’s espionage, its theft of intellectual property that ranges from circuit boards to soybean hybrids, its military buildup, and its geopolitical ambition.
Three other officials worry about what one of them calls “precipitous troop withdrawals” from Syria and Afghanistan and a peace deal with the Taliban that in time would leave the extremist Islamic group back in charge and wipe out the gains made in education, women’s rights and governance since the U.S. invaded the country more than 17 years ago.
I have to wonder if I need to start stocking up on antacid, or just cut to the chase and start buying an over-the-counter proton pump inhibitor. Because if all of this this isn't ulcer inducing...
Thursday, January 17, 2019
The kind of Fearless Leader we're stuck with
Lose your majority in a house of Congress lately? Most Presidents would at least give lip service to the idea of possibly talking compromise on certain issues. Not President Toddler, though, since partial Federal shutdowns are apparently the price everyone gets to collectively pay these days for paranoia-induced vanity projects not getting built.
Then again, for Trump this is probably a great distraction from certain other issues - not the least of which includes some very private conversations with a very special friend of his where even his own interpreter was personally warned to keep his yap shut in front of other members of the administration. As morbid as my imagination can get, I can hardly imagine what the subject matter of that series of conversations amounted to. And considering some recent revelations about the FBI's thinking on Trump in 2016 and 2017, I hardly want to.
Then again, for Trump this is probably a great distraction from certain other issues - not the least of which includes some very private conversations with a very special friend of his where even his own interpreter was personally warned to keep his yap shut in front of other members of the administration. As morbid as my imagination can get, I can hardly imagine what the subject matter of that series of conversations amounted to. And considering some recent revelations about the FBI's thinking on Trump in 2016 and 2017, I hardly want to.
The alien abduction failed!
So I decided not to use a more pedestrian explanation of why I haven't posted for over a month. So sue me.
I have been busy as of late, though, especially with the anime programming for this particular convention, so please attend it in mid-February if you can.
I have been busy as of late, though, especially with the anime programming for this particular convention, so please attend it in mid-February if you can.
Thursday, December 6, 2018
In Memoriam: Pete Shelley, 1955-2018
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.
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.
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