Silver Mylar Balloons

[bodysong]

14 Mar 2019

US official reveals Atlantic drilling plan while hailing Trump’s ability to distract public

Revealed: Interior department official says he is ‘thrilled’ by Trump’s ‘knack for keeping the attention of the media and public focused somewhere else’

A top US official told a group of fossil fuel industry leaders that the Trump administration will soon issue a proposal making large portions of the Atlantic available for oil and gas development, and said that it is easier to work on such priorities because Donald Trump is skilled at sowing “absolutely thrilling” distractions, according to records of a meeting obtained by the Guardian.

In its drive to boost domestic fossil fuel production, the Trump administration has spearheaded an effort in recent years to open undeveloped federal waters to oil and gas drilling, despite fierce opposition from coastal residents, politicians and environmental groups. In 2018 it issued a draft of its plan, and in the coming weeks, the interior department is planning to officially propose a five-year program for oil and gas leasing in federally controlled coastal waters, up to 200 nautical miles and more from the shoreline.

“We have 120 municipalities, 1,200 elected officials, 42,000 businesses and 500,000 that have registered their opposition to offshore drilling and exploration in the Atlantic,” said Vicki Clark, a representative of the Business Alliance for Protecting the Atlantic Coast, a coalition of small businesses, commercial fishing families and others along the eastern seaboard. “And yet, big oil has more influence over this administration.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...fficial-reveals-plan-and-distractions-delight

 

[bodysong]

The Fresno County Republican Party canceled plans for its Lincoln Reagan dinner next month featuring Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Tulare, as its keynote speaker after social media calls for people to crash the event.


It’s unclear if the social media frenzy led to the GOP’s decision. Chairman Fred Vanderhoof could not be reached for comment on Friday. Late Friday afternoon, the county GOP tweeted that the event will be rescheduled for “security reasons.”


Due to security reasons, our Lincoln Reagan Dinner will be rescheduled.
— Fresno County Republican Party (@FresnoCountyGOP) March 22, 2019

Several tweets called for Fresno-area residents to flood the event and “moo” at Nunes – a reference to Nunes’ decision to sue Twitter, a Republican political operative and two parody accounts including “Devin Nunes’ cow” for $250 million earlier in the week.

The dinner was originally planned for April 11 at Pardini’s in northwest Fresno.

As news of the lawsuit spread, celebrities and influencers threw tremendous weight behind the cow account, causing its Twitter follower count to rise from about 2,000 to 620,000 as of Friday afternoon.

https://www.fresnobee.com/news/politics-government/article228290764.html

Devin Nunes’ cow
@ DevinCow
United States
Hanging out on the dairy in Iowa looking for the lil’ treasonous cowpoke.

8,801
Tweets

1,952
Following

623,619
Followers

 

[bodysong]

Matt Lewis Verified Account
@mattklewis

Getting rid of the electoral college also means creating a system where this map isn’t enough to elect a Republican.

(includes a pic of a map that paints a map of the USA
that is almost completely, deeply red, except for specks of blue,
a few small blobs of blue.

It seems to paint the largest concentration of blue in
New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Utah )


7:45 AM - 22 Mar 2019 from Alexandria, VA


Tuxedo Mask
@ TheLoveBel0w

Brooklyn, NY

Electric word life, it means forever and that's a mighty long time.

Tuxedo Mask@ TheLoveBel0w replied to @mattklewis's map, with a map that tracks voters

(The highest concentration of red seems to be Kentucky. Below the Great Lakes, the red drips down for a good distance. A corridor of red where the Southern states meet at the borders.)

"Bless your heart, but dirt does not vote."

9:03 AM - 22 Mar 2019

polly
@tofuandpitbulls Replying to @TheLoveBel0w @mattklewis

Dirt does vote. That’s how we got Trump.

9:21 AM - 22 Mar 2019


Kachemak Bay, Alaska

@shannynmoore

Might be the dumbest take of the day. People are to be represented- not acres. This shouldn’t be hard.

(quoted @mattklewis remark about "Getting rid of the electoral college also means creating a system where this map isn’t enough to elect a Republican."

12:33 PM - 22 Mar 2019

 

[bodysong]

(begin rant)

Never have to hear the truth, again.

Rupert Murdoch's FOX TV and Julian Sinclair Smith's Sinclair Broadcasting will ensure that your tender, delicate ears will never be bothered by things you do not want to hear. Pure propaganda, demonizing opposing voices, and slanted journalism justifying talking points, tailored to your needs. They will re-write history, over-write reality, and erase any inconvenient facts. You will never be made to feel uncomfortable, or uncertain, because they will remove any prompt leading to thought. They will justify everything.

Disregard the cognitive dissonance.

(end of rant)

In this, our perverted world, what's abnormal is not obscene wealth, but its consequences.

There is an important difference between the two perspectives. In the second, the camp of misery is not about the city killing many of its people, but extremely poor people killing an affluent city. Now that is rich.

https://www.thestranger.com/slog/20...s-seattle-is-dying-news-special-is-killing-me

 

[bodysong]

Sarah Huckabee Sanders has told lots of lies, and it’s not hard to give examples.


PolitiFact cites four times the White House press secretary gave objectively false information.

She said in a November briefing that diversity visa immigrants are not vetted (false). She said in an October briefing that Chicago, which has high rates of gun-related crimes, has the toughest gun laws in the country (pants on fire!). She claimed in July that President Donald Trump has “in no way, form or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence” (false), despite videos showing otherwise. In March 2017 she said “multiple news outlets” reported that when he was president, Barack Obama ordered wiretapping of Trump (false).

Some of the things Sanders has said are laughably untrue.

She insisted this month that the Trump administration is “committed to a free press” ― right after Trump hinted at stripping reporters of their credentials and claimed, once again, that mainstream news outlets critical of his presidency are “fake news.”

In May 2017, she claimed there was not “ever an attempt” to blame Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, despite a statement that week from then–press secretary Sean Spicer putting the blame squarely on Rosenstein.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sarah-sanders-false-information_us_5b059328e4b0784cd2b0afcb

 

[bodysong]

San Antonio Blocks Chick-fil-A From Airport Over Anti-LGBTQ History


6-4 vote, San Antonio City Council pointedly insisted the fast food chain be excluded before the contract would be approved.

According to a report by Eater, the 2017 tax filings for the Chick-fil-A Foundation (the charitable division of the Chick-fil-A company) show that "$1.65 million was donated to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which imposes a ban on 'homosexual acts' for its employees (as well as a general 'sexual purity' policy)." Eater also reported that the Chick-fil-A Foundation donated sums of money to the Salvation Army and the Paul Anderson Youth Home, two organizations with a recorded anti-LGBT history.

The news of Chick-fil-A's continued antiqueer donations is a stark contrast to a statement the company put out in November 2018 about how they didn't want to be perceived as anti-gay anymore.

https://www.pride.com/news/2019/3/20/chick-fil-foundation-still-gives-lot-money-anti-lgbt-orgs

 

[bodysong]

Twitter Moments Verified Account
@TwitterMoments

Betsy DeVos faced sharp criticism after unveiling
$18 million in proposed cuts to the Special Olympics
program, which helps children and adults with disabilities.

3:29 PM - 26 Mar 2019

Ted Lieu Verified Account
@ tedlieu
California

Husband of Betty, the love of my life.
Father of two great kids. USAF veteran.
Member of Congress. In that order.
Also, I don't take orders from Vladimir Putin.



Ted Lieu Verified Account
@tedlieu

No one ever said, hey let's go hurt Special Olympics.
Until the @realDonaldTrump Administration
came along.

6:40 PM - 26 Mar 2019

In her budget proposal for 2020, Secretary
of Education Betsy DeVos moved to cut
all federal funding of the Special Olympics


"In addition, the budget would cut special education
grants to states by 26 percent, and take funding away
from programs benefiting deaf and blind students."


Representative Mark Pocan asked DeVos about the plan to eliminate Special Olympics funding:

Pocan: “Do you know how many kids are going to be affected by that cut?”


DeVos: “We had to make some difficult decisions with this budget,” she answered.
“I don’t know the number of kids.”


http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019...-to-cut-funding-for-the-special-olympics.html

Pocan: “It’s 272,000 kids.”

 

[bodysong]

The original Constitution was wildly undemocratic.


The Electoral College was originally designed to create elite electors who would make their own decision on who should serve as president, as well as to give slaveholders extra representation via the three-fifths clause.


Senators were originally appointed rather than elected, and of course voting was originally restricted primarily to white male landowners.


the national interest
Mar. 29, 2019

Conservatives Can’t Distinguish Between Democratic Reform and Authoritarianism


By Jonathan Chait@jonathanchait


http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019...electoral-college-popular-vote-democracy.html

 

[bodysong]

Investigators are still trying to determine the nature of the malware Zhang allegedly brought into the club, sources told the Herald. It is not clear how much of a threat the malware posed and whether it might have been intended to gather information at the president’s club or possibly to destroy an existing network or program, they said.

Secret Service agent Samuel Ivanovich, who interviewed Zhang on the day of her arrest, testified at the hearing. He stated that when another agent put Zhang’s thumb drive into his computer, it immediately began to install files, a “very out-of-the-ordinary” event that he had never seen happen before during this kind of analysis. The agent had to immediately stop the analysis to halt any further corruption of his computer, Ivanovich testified. The analysis is ongoing but still inconclusive, he said.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article228963409.html

Techies Snicker at Secret Service Agent’s Mar-a-Lago Malware


“You don’t put an unknown USB into your computer,” said Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer at Veracode. “That’s in all the training everyone gets, even in your dumb corporate training. You even tell your mom that.”

Wysopal’s tweet highlighting the apparent gaffe earned more than 3,000 retweets Monday, as the computer security community executed a collective face-palm. “Whoa! Never seen that USB execution thing before!” quipped Kaspersky researcher Kurt Baumgartner. “Sounds like an agent trying to crack the case before the cyber team got there,” opined Eric O’Neill, a former FBI surveillance specialist.


The biggest giveaway is that the review was cut short when the examining agent noticed “a file” installing itself on the agent’s machine. “He stated that he had to immediately stop the analysis and shut off his computer to halt the corruption,” testified the Secret Service’s Samuel Ivanovich, according to The New York Times. The thumb drive’s behavior was “very out of the ordinary,” Ivanovich added.

Forensics examiners don’t usually interrupt malware when it’s in the middle of giving itself away, security experts point out. “For all you know, if the thing is doing something, and you pull it out, it might detect that it’s been seen,” said Wysopal. “Forensically it makes no sense.”


https://www.thedailybeast.com/secre...ar-a-lago-malware-and-tech-community-snickers

 

[bodysong]

Stephen Miller: 'He's Waffen-SS'


Julia Ioffe
Julia Ioffe Verified Account
@juliaioffe

This alert—with the word “purge” being used to describe what the president would like to due to a security structure he perceives as not being tough enough—is really startling when you’ve spent the last week reading about the Stalinist Purges of the 1930s.

11:51 AM - 8 Apr 2019

More Top Homeland Security Officials Set to Leave in Trump Purge


Since Friday, five senior Department of Homeland Security officials have been told to exit or otherwise stepped aside as President Trump rails against U.S. immigration laws.

The New York Times The New York Times @nytimes


Julia Ioffe Verified Account
@juliaioffe Replying to @juliaioffe

Those purges, I might add, we’re carried out to consolidate power in the hands of one man (Stalin) so that his directives could be carried out without political or legal resistance inside the system.

11:56 AM - 8 Apr 2019

Julia Ioffe
Julia Ioffe Verified Account
@juliaioffe Replying to @juliaioffe

I’ll also add that history doesn’t actually repeat itself, but sometimes things remind you of other things and a comparative approach to history is often fruitful.

11:57 AM - 8 Apr 2019

SFGate
SFGate Verified Account
@SFGate

Hardliner Stephen Miller reportedly given total control of border policy

7:24 AM - 8 Apr 2019

“Miller’s going to clean house,” said a former White House official, calling Alles “Kelly’s best friend.” The former official, who did not want to be identified speaking about his one-time colleagues, predicted more departures. “He’s firing all of Kelly’s people.”

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la...er-immigration-whats-next-20190408-story.html

 

[bodysong]

“I have agreed to stay on as Secretary through Wednesday, April 10th to assist with an orderly transition and ensure that key DHS missions are not impacted,” she announced on Twitter late Sunday.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/kirstjen-nielsen-to-stay-on-for-orderly-transitionuntil-wednesday


Kirstjen Nielsen’s attempt to suck up to Trump ended badly.

It always does.

By Dana Milbank


“I have determined,” Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen wrote in her resignation letter Sunday night, “that it is the right time for me to step aside.”

This was vintage Nielsen: boldly asserting the dubious in the face of the obvious. During her rocky tenure, she secured the homeland against facts and decency alike as she struggled in vain to suck up to President Trump.

Trump changes Cabinet secretaries like suits and will soon have temporary appointees in half a dozen Cabinet-level jobs.

Nobody debased herself quite as often as Nielsen did in her quest to keep the job, defending Trump after the “s---hole countries” and Charlottesville scandals, enduring frequent rebukes from Trump and leaks about her imminent firing, embracing his incendiary language and enduring his extralegal instincts, swallowing her moral misgivings to embrace the family-separation policy (while denying any such policy existed), and implausibly claiming that children weren’t being put in cages.

Excerpts from a hearing last month:

Lawmaker: “Are we still using cages for children?”

Nielsen: “Sir, we don’t use cages. . . .”

Lawmaker: “I’ve seen the cages. I just want you to admit that the cages exist.”

Nielsen: “Sir, they’re not cages. . . .”

Another lawmaker: “What is a chain-link fence enclosed into a chamber on a concrete floor? . . . Is that a cage?”

Nielsen: “It’s a detention space.”

(This past week a cage for adults, children, and babies was set up under a bridge in El Paso.)


Nielsen had already made her famous counterfactual assertion: “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.” She later stood next to Trump as he signed an order rescinding the policy they supposedly didn’t have.

Inside the White House, Stephen Miller, 33, and Jared Kushner, 38, reportedly agitated for her ouster. Anonymous officials repeatedly spread word that her firing was imminent. Trump let her twist in the wind, saying in November he’d make a decision about her “shortly.” Nielsen redoubled her suck-up efforts.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...e9-9625-01d48d50ef75_story.html?noredirect=on

 

[bodysong]

The 1967 United Nations Refugee Protocol, to which the United States is a signatory, broadened protections for people seeking asylum. In 1980, Congress incorporated these standards and definitions into U.S. immigration law.

Who Is Eligible And Where Can You Apply?

"Any alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival ...), irrespective of such alien's status, may apply for asylum ..."

That quote is from the Immigration and Nationality Act. It means that the right to at least apply for asylum is enshrined in U.S. law.

With Nielsen, Alles Out, What Does Trump Want For Homeland Security?

pic included

President Donald Trump greets Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen after he arrived on Air Force One at Naval Air Facility El Centro, in El Centro, Calif., Friday April 5, 2019.

(Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/04/09/kirstjen-nielsen-trump-homeland-security-border-immigration

https://www.wbur.org/news/2018/12/03/asylum-explainer


As Vox immigration reporter Dara Lind notes, this may not be one of the president’s more politically thought-out staffing moves:

It’s … doubtful that whoever Trump might nominate in lieu of Vitiello would be confirmed by the Senate. Democrats are increasingly unwilling to endorse any aspect of federal immigration enforcement as run by Trump, and some Republicans remain leery of Trump immigration-hawk favorites like former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.



When Vitiello was nominated, he was seen as the only confirmable candidate for the position; he was a career law enforcement officer who’d come from a leadership position at CBP. That, apparently, is no longer tough enough for Trump. Who could pass that bar, whether the Senate will fall in line, and what a “tougher direction” might look like in practice remain to be seen.

According to the New York Times, Trump believed that a possible reason for the move was that Vitiello did not favor closing the border, a move the president considered last week before rescinding the threat. (Perhaps Trump forgot that ICE does not actively patrol the border, but is responsible for deporting undocumented Americans within the interior.) Another reported reason was that Stephen Miller — the White House chief policy adviser, and by far the administration’s most hawkish voice on immigration — didn’t think Vitiello was up to the task. “Stephen would like to put Atilla the Hun at ICE,” one candid White House official told the Post.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/trump-wants-a-tougher-ice-director-what-does-that-mean.html

 

[bodysong]

WIRED Verified Account
@WIRED

Today's House hearing on the rise of hate crimes and white nationalism devolved into a four-hour squabble over who’s most hated, and who’s doing the hating, in America. The haters, in other words, got their way and the tech giants got off scot free.

1:26 PM - 9 Apr 2019

In Congressional Hearing on Hate, the Haters Got Their Way


YouTube even had to disable comments on the House Judiciary Committee’s livestream of the hearing because it filled up with so much filth.


WIRED WIRED @WIRED


issie lapowsky Verified Account
@issielapowsky Replying to @issielapowsky

Now Candace Owens is accusing the hearing of being a fear-mongering exercise by Democrats. "They blame Facebook, they blame Google, they blame Twitter...They believe if it wasn’t for social media voices like mine would never exist."

8:08 AM - 9 Apr 2019


issie lapowsky Verified Account
@issielapowsky Replying to @issielapowsky

"I will not pretend to be a victim in this country." Owens says, but she did just tell the story of getting chased out of a restaurant by antifa.

8:09 AM - 9 Apr 2019

issie lapowsky Verified Account
@issielapowsky Replying to @issielapowsky

And more than an hour later we are finished opening statements. Nadler asks Hershenov if Democrats are manipulating statistics, as Owens alleges, to make white supremacy seem worse. Hershenov says no.

8:12 AM - 9 Apr 2019

 

[bodysong]

YouTube Flooded By Racists During Hearing on Big Tech Enabling Racism

4.09.19

Racist and anti-Semitic YouTube users overwhelmed the official YouTube livestream of a House Judiciary Committee hearing on white nationalism on Tuesday, forcing YouTube to disable the ability to comment on the stream.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/youtu...aring-on-how-big-tech-enables-racism?ref=home

At House Hearing, the Right Still Isn’t Ready to Talk About White Nationalism


Reps. Louie Gohmert and Ken Buck, egged them on (Candace Owens, communications director for Turning Point USA, and Zionist Organization of America’s Mort Klein) and, at one point, Rep. Greg Steube yielded his time to Owens to make whatever comments she wanted to.

Ken Buck asked Candace Owens if her status as a “pro-life” conservative “triggers” liberals.


At one point, Gohmert used this hearing about a deadly domestic terrorism threat to ask why his friends “Diamond & Silk”–the YouTube-famous, Trump-boostering sisters Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson–were still reporting difficulties posting videos to their Facebook page.

The current state of mainstream discussion about extremism revolves around in a dizzying dance of denial, misdirection, and ineptitude, while our government’s apparent inability to combat extremism effectively erodes our institutions, as its enablers evade any form of accountability. The profit-driven companies that provide the platforms on which hate flourishes only respond to issues when bad press comes to light, but fail to implement effective structural changes to combat the threats posed by extremism.

Neil Potts, who attended the hearing representing Facebook, and Alexandra Walden, who represented Google, both claimed that their companies were working to combat extremism on their platform—even as YouTube locked the comment sections of a livestream of the hearing because it was flooded with racist speech.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/...l-isnt-ready-to-talk-about-white-nationalism/

Luke Barnes
@LukeBarnes_92

GOP playbook for this hearing:

- I condemn white nationalism
- Ask Candance Owens something
- Brexit, Democrats are the real racists,
White Nationalism isn’t a thing,
abortion, etc. etc. etc.
- Repeat

8:30 AM - 9 Apr 2019

Luke Barnes
Luke Barnes
@LukeBarnes_92

I shouldn’t have expected any better
but it was kinda disappointing to
watch Republicans turn this Committee
into an attempt to Own the Libs™

1:51 PM - 9 Apr 2019


Elham Khatami Verified Account
@ekhatami Replying to @LukeBarnes_92

At today's House Judiciary hearing on white nationalism/hate crimes, Republicans derailed the convo by making statements about Rep. Ilhan Omar and allowing witnesses Candace Owens & Mort Klein to spew lies and hatred.


1:43 PM - 9 Apr 2019


ThinkProgress Verified Account
@thinkprogress

House Judiciary Committee hearing on white nationalism devolves into political tit-for-tat

1:36 PM - 9 Apr 2019

 

[bodysong]

Israel election: Netanyahu wins fifth term as rival concedes


Hanging over Netanyahu’s victory are the indictment recommendations, allegations he dismisses as a “witch-hunt”.

Now the election is over, Israel’s attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, is freed of the political pressure not to influence the vote with potentially damning, but unproved, case details. Therefore, the process of the indictments is expected to gather pace and a pre-trial hearing in which Netanyahu can defend himself will start.

Though not legally required to resign if formally charged, Netanyahu could lose allies if he is proven guilty. But Israeli media also reported his coalition partners might push through a law to give him immunity.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...nyahu-wins-fifth-term-as-rival-gantz-concedes

Jake Blumgart
Jake Blumgart
@jblumgart

"Mr. Netanyahu is now almost certain to try to extract a deal from his coalition partners to pass a law retroactively granting him immunity from prosecution."

11:03 AM - 10 Apr 2019


Israel has shifted to the right and to be on the other side, to be branded “left”, is fatal. (Although, given that context, there’s some comfort in the fact that nearly half the population did back anti-Netanyahu parties – including the small constituency for those, such as Labour and Meretz, who still campaign for a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.)

What will Netanyahu do with this new mandate? Benn is surely right to predict that the coalition will see a trade-off – “immunity in exchange for sovereignty”. Netanyahu’s coalition partners will rewrite the law to protect the PM, and in return he will move ahead with annexing parts of the occupied West Bank – a promise he had long refrained from making, until the campaign’s final weekend. There was a time when no Israeli PM would have dared make such a move, fearing the US response. But Trump offers no such restraint.

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...tanyahu-victory-palestinians-israel-west-bank

New York Times weighs in

 

[bodysong]

Thursday, April 11, 2019


One local family business chain succeeds, and the kindest and most generous leader won. Another local business chain was sold for $$$$$$$$$$, and year after year, the local employees must fight the new owners.


The union noted in a statement that Stop & Shop’s parent company, the Netherlands-based Ahold Delhaize, witnessed more than $2 billion in profit last year and received a $225 million tax cut from the federal government in 2017.

While Stop & Shop continues to propose drastic cuts in worker benefits, Ahold shareholders voted on April 10 to give themselves an 11.1 percent raise in dividends over last year. The expected payout on April 25 is expected to be about $880 million.

https://www.masslive.com/business/2...n-strike-without-contract-since-february.html

International mergers never seem to work out well, for the employees.

The Amazon Model of Employment

An Endless Supply of Employees to Damage and Ruin

"Revealed: Amazon employees are left to suffer after workplace injuries"

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...zon-employees-suffer-after-workplace-injuries

 

[bodysong]

George W. Bush

On domestic policy, Bush’s record is more mixed. It’s true that in 1990 he agreed to reverse his “Read My Lips” pledge and raise taxes in order to shrink the deficit. He signed the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act and the Clean Air Act. But all three measures were the result of pressure from congressional Democrats rather than Bush’s own motivation.


Raising taxes, passing civil rights legislation, signing environmental protection bills, compromising with Democrats — all of these are anathema to modern Republicans.


Over and over, Bush smoothed his path to the White House by jettisoning one core belief after another. In doing so he not only helped dig the grave of the moderate wing of the Republican Party — of which he had been a standard-bearer — but he also modeled a style of politics that other opportunistic Republicans would imitate. Bush, like many Republicans, wanted to have it both ways: an all-means-necessary approach to politics and a “kinder, gentler” governing style. But over the years, Republican voters have responded far more viscerally to the former rather than the latter.

For all of Bush’s patrician demeanor — for the decorum and decency that he demonstrated as a former president — there is a straight line between Willie Horton and Donald Trump’s racist demagoguery of undocumented immigrants. Bush’s presidential record remains impressive, and history has given him the credit he is due. Unfortunately, that’s not the part of his legacy that has lived on in American politics.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion...onservatism/PKj8S9YOzPKc8LQGmBVfJP/story.html

 

[bodysong]

Remember the Deadwood TV series, and the Pinkertons ?

Deadwood - The Pinkertons are Muscle, for the Bosses

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzUaOMGYmbY

blurb from youtube

Alma Garrett and Al Swearengen talk about the Pinkertons. He doesn't like 'em. S2 E07, "E.B. Was Left Out"


Zoya Teirstein
Apr 12, 2019

Sunday, subscribers to New York Times Magazine will receive a noteworthy issue in their mailboxes. Its theme is climate change, marking the second time in eight months that the magazine has dedicated an entire issue to the pressing problem.



Pinkerton, an agency originally formed in the mid-1800s “in response to the lawlessness of the frontier,” is rebranding itself as disaster-security-for-hire prepared to mitigate the risks of climate change for its clients: hurricanes, mass migration, violence, food shortages, and more.

Shannon observed a talk by Pinkerton’s senior vice president in charge of the Americas: “‘You’re going to turn to desperate measures,’ he said. Everybody will. The other Pinkertons nodded.”

What services, exactly, do the Pinkertons offer? “Armed warehouse defense, executive extraction, 24-hour surveillance, chartered helicopters and planes, escorted cargo shipments.” As Shannon writes, “Pinkerton sells safety.” Climate change is the new threat.

Whereas the New York Times Magazine’s previous climate-themed issue focused on a single narrative, its second foray into the world of climate writing puts a lineup of articles in conversation with one another about the economic, political, and moral feasibility of reigning in climate change.

In sum, the Climate Issue gives you a good idea of where humanity is headed if a policy that is both “big enough to matter and popular enough to happen” doesn’t come around soon: nowhere good.

https://grist.org/article/headed-for-a-reckoning-a-look-inside-nyt-magazines-climate-issue/



https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/10/magazine/climate-change-pinkertons.html

Hmmmm...

Each mega corporation had what was seen as a privately owned bank, and a privately controlled insurance company, within the corporation itself. Hiring privately controlled para-military force would prove to be useful in such 'unsettled' times. Only the obscenely rich could afford that.

 

[bodysong]

Sarah Huckabee Sanders Told Mueller She Lied to Media About Comey


And deep in Volume II of Mueller’s 400-plus-page document, the special counsel writes that Sanders admitted that this was a lie. The report reads:

Sanders told the press after Comey’s termination that the White House had heard from “countless” FBI agents who had lost confidence in Comey. But the evidence does not support those claims. The President told Comey at their January 27 dinner that “the people of the FBI really like [him],” no evidence suggests that the President heard otherwise before deciding to terminate Comey, and Sanders acknowledged to investigators that her comments were not founded on anything.

According to the report, Sanders later told investigators that her comment was a “slip of the tongue,” and that a similar statement made “in the heat of the moment” was also not founded on anything. Shocking!

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/sarah-sanders-told-mueller-she-lied-to-media-about-comey.html

tRump's Hopey Hicks

Mueller’s report further highlights a Russian official’s contact with Hicks, a top Trump confidant who was communications director of the campaign and later for the White House, immediately after Trump’s election victory. Hicks is from Greenwich.

“At approximately 3 a.m. on election night, Trump campaign press secretary Hope Hicks received a telephone call on her personal cell phone from a person who sounded foreign but was calling from a number with a DC area code,” the report said. “Although Hicks had a hard time understanding the person, she could make out the words ‘Putin call.’ Hicks told the caller to send her an email.”

The next morning, Mueller reported, Hicks received an email from Sergey Kuznetsov, an official at the Russian embassy, with the subject line “Message from Putin” and a congratulatory message in English and Russian that he asked to be conveyed to Trump.

“Hicks forwarded the email to [Jared] Kushner, asking ‘Can you look into this? Don’t want to get duped, but don’t want to blow off Putin!’"

A request for comment was left Thursday for (Hope) Hicks, who is now an executive vice president and chief communications officer for Fox.

https://www.courant.com/politics/hc...0190418-g3guipsbx5dihkwh7lg7xmdrrm-story.html

 

[bodysong]

20 April 2019

The 'debate of the century':

what happened when Jordan Peterson debated Slavoj Žižek


Peterson and Žižek represent a basic fact of intellectual life in the twenty-first century: we are defined by our enemies.

Jordan Peterson, Canadian psychology professor and author
Slavoj Žižek, psychoanalytic philosopher, cultural critic, and Hegelian Marxist


The great surprise of this debate turned out to be how much in common the old-school Marxist and the Canadian identity politics refusenik had.

One hated communism. The other hated communism but thought that capitalism possessed inherent contradictions. The first one agreed that capitalism possessed inherent contradictions. And that was basically it. They both wanted the same thing: capitalism with regulation, which is what every sane person wants. The Peterson-Žižek encounter was the ultra-rare case of a debate in 2019 that was perhaps too civil.

But there was one truly fascinating moment in the evening. It came right at the end of Žižek’s opening 30-minute remarks.


“We will probably slide towards apocalypse,” he said. And Peterson agreed with him:

“It is not obvious to me that we can solve the problems that confront us.”

They are both self-described “radical pessimists”, about people and the world. It made me wonder about the rage consuming all public discussion at the moment: are we screaming at each other because we disagree or because we do agree and we can’t imagine a solution?

In the end Peterson-Žižek was less of a heavyweight boxing match than a WWE Grand Slam. Not that I was disappointed. I did see “the debate of the century”, the debate of our century. It was full of the stench of burning strawmen. A big deal, with huge numbers, and really very little underneath.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...son-slavoj-zizek-happiness-capitalism-marxism

While Toronto sports fans were glued to screens to see how their beloved Leafs and Raptors did in playoff games Friday evening, a contest of intellectual heavyweights captivated a packed crowd at the Sony Centre.

Bestselling author and psychologist Jordan Peterson was debating “Happiness: Capitalism vs. Marxism” with Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, in an event that was more than a year in the making.

Peterson, a professor of psychology who is taking an unpaid leave from the University of Toronto, most recently authored 12 Rules for Life. He has become a cause célèbre for his many controversial opinions, and has been called a favourite of the alt-right.

Zizek, who is Peterson’s direct opposite in style and manner, wore a rumpled, long-sleeve cotton shirt. The celebrated author and philosopher has written three books on Marxism and four on French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Like Peterson, he has been a public intellectual whose many utterances have been parsed and discussed over the years.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/20...-zizek-each-draw-fans-at-sold-out-debate.html

 

[bodysong]

While Peterson assumed that he was entering a debate with a classical Marxist, and that much of that debate would be centered around Marxism, Žižek came with a different agenda. In his thirty-minute introduction, Žižek did not focus on Marx at all, but began the talk lamenting how marginalized he and Peterson are from “politically correct” academia:

"Peterson and I…are both marginalized by the official academic community and supposed to defend here the Left liberal line against neoconservatives. Really? Most of the attacks on me are precisely from Left liberals. Just remember the outcry against my critique of LGBT ideology."

After establishing that he and Peterson share a common enemy, Žižek went on to discuss various topics.

But throughout the debate, Žižek stated that he is a pessimist numerous times. He sees the contemporary Left in much the same way that Peterson does, as a swamp of resentment and victimhood. He does not subscribe to the optimistic vision of Marx, which advocates for free and transparent social relations. In contrast, Žižek and Peterson claimed that human beings are not rational, but instead inherently tend towards self-sabotage.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/04/jordan-peterson-slavoj-zizek-marxism-liberalism-debate-toronto

And they both agreed, could not have agreed more, that it was all the fault of the “academic left”. They seemed to believe that the “academic left”, whoever that might be, was some all-powerful cultural force rather than the impotent shrinking collection of irrelevances it is. If the academic left is all-powerful, they get to indulge in their victimization.

And that was the great irony of the debate: what it comes down to is that they believe they are the victims of a culture of victimization. They play the victim as much as their enemies. It’s all anyone can do at this point.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...son-slavoj-zizek-happiness-capitalism-marxism

 

[bodysong]

Nothing Is a Greater Waste of Time Than the Planned Debate Between Jordan Peterson and Slavoj Zizek

Charles Mudede
Mar 5, 2019

As for Peterson, there is nothing in what he says or writes that can be recovered and meaningfully applied to the actual human world (maybe that of gorillas or chimps). Even his thoughts on cultural Marxism, whatever that is or means, are of no value whatsoever. It's not serious thinking.

But what ultimately separates Peterson from Zizek, what makes their debate, which happens on April 19 and is called “Happiness: Capitalism vs. Marxism,” meaningless, is that Peterson, a clinical psychologist, actually and truly believes that capitalism ultimately won an economic contest with socialism.

History is not one, continuous story of technological revolutions. But, due to its contradictions, capitalism is.

And it's not the progress of humankind but that which propels it to maintain the sole source of all profits: surplus value. It's hard to believe that the fans of Peterson have reached such depths. Postone is speaking another language, and so is Zizek. These thinkers are oranges, but Peterson is not even worthy of being described as an apple. There is no argument here.

Steven Shaviro
@shaviro

Instead of Peterson, Zizek should debate Melania, in Slovenian.

4:02 PM - 28 Feb 2019

Steven Shaviro
@ shaviro

Detroit, MI, USA

I was born a few weeks after Anthony Head, & a few days before Jackie Chan. Science fiction. Music video. Alfred North Whitehead. Kitsch Marxist. Sex negative.

 

[bodysong]

Because Rich Seattle Has Too Many Poor People, QFC Has Installed Monitors That Assume You Are One of the Poor

by Charles Mudede • Apr 19, 2019

On the screen appears you holding a can of tuna or rolls of toilet paper and the words, in red:


RECORDING IN PROGRESS


Zach Renner
@ZLRenner

@SuzyFoodSport

Displeased to see that I'm now treated as a criminal at my QFC. I do understand that shoplifting is an issue, but accusatory screens like this at every checkout are a good way to send customers like me over to Trader Joes or Safeway where I'm treated as a customer.

11:58 PM - 15 Feb 2019


In this way, we must see the new screens in QFC with other expressions of the homeless crisis, such as the bizarre tower of police power that was erected in the parking lot of the Rainier Avenue Safeway (it's now gone, because its ominousness was so unpopular). And the grim facts described in KUOW's Sydney Brownstone piece, "A homeless man steals clothes from a Seattle Goodwill, goes to jail. His story isn’t unusual."


A homeless man steals clothes from a Seattle Goodwill, goes to jail. His story isn’t unusual


These are three of the 318 people charged by Seattle prosecutors for stealing from Goodwill — one for as little as $13 worth of merchandise — in a single year. In that time, between November 14, 2017, and November 14, 2018, the City of Seattle prosecuted more people for stealing from Goodwill than any other retailer.


In nearly every case, the items were returned to the store after the suspect was caught.

“Taxpayers basically subsidize Goodwill’s recovery of a $7 pair of socks that they already got back to the tune of several thousand dollars-worth of money spent on prosecutors and courts and jail,” said James Carr, a public defender in King County. “It's just absurd.”

The lowest amount someone was prosecuted for in the data reviewed by KUOW was $13. However, while it's almost impossible to calculate how much the City of Seattle spends on these cases, Carr's estimate could be close: For homeless defendants who pleaded guilty to a Goodwill theft charge, the average time spent in jail was 13 days, costing the city roughly $2,585.62 on jail booking and daily maintenance alone.

According to Seattle Goodwill’s annual report, the nonprofit made more than $9.2 million in net proceeds from its thrift stores, and another $6.7 million from donors, grants and investments between 2017 and 2018.


KUOW’s analysis of theft data shows that Goodwill theft charges net the highest number of homeless defendants than any other retailer in the city.

https://www.kuow.org/stories/a-home...goodwill-goes-to-jail-his-story-isn-t-unusual


The city will not put money into the problem directly, but civil society (businesses, schools, homeowners, and so on) will spend lots of it and legal resources on criminalizing something that is, in essence, not real (though it is experienced as such).

https://www.thestranger.com/slog/20...tall-monitors-that-assume-you-are-one-of-them




The organization gets donated items for free, the item is not stolen, because it never left the charity's doors, and was put back on the shelf or rack.

 

[bodysong]

Mass. Judge And A Retired Court Officer Charged With Helping Defendant Evade ICE

Judge Shelley Richmond Joseph and the now-retired court officer, Wesley MacGregor, are accused of helping the defendant, an undocumented immigrant, slip out the back door of Newton District Court while an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent waited to arrest him on a federal detainer in April 2018.


https://www.npr.org/2019/04/25/7171...icer-charged-with-helping-defendant-evade-ice

The charges against Joseph and MacGregor were swiftly condemned by the state's attorney general, who called the case “a radical and politically-motivated attack” on the courts by federal authorities.

Lawyers, judges and advocates have criticized President Trump's administration for stepping up immigration arrests at courthouses, saying it is disrupting the criminal justice system and scaring people away from halls of justice.

Massachusetts U.S. Atty. Andrew Lelling said the charges were not meant to send a message about immigration policy. Everyone must be held to the rule of law, even the privileged and powerful, he said.

https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-massachusetts-judge-immigration-20190425-story.html

Trump chose him.




U.S. Attorney MA Verified Account
@DMAnews1 Replying to @DMAnews1

Defendants released on conditions after pleading not guilty during an arraignment in federal court in Boston.


1:55 PM - 25 Apr 2019

 

[bodysong]

Samatha Bee's "Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner" TV show


In a callback to last year’s Correspondents’ Dinner, wherein White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders warped Wolf’s jokes so that she could play the victim, Bee dedicated the night’s “In Memoriam” segment to the White House press briefing, noting, “It’s been 47 days since the last briefing, which raises a very serious question: what the fuck does Sarah Huckabee Sanders do all day? Does she just lie into a mirror or… I don’t even know!”

The host was then interrupted by the night’s “humor adviser” Sarah Huckabot Sanders, a humorless robot dressed in a wig, pink football pads, and with a Southern accent. “Unacceptable! That was about my appearance! How dare you! How dare you!” the robot replied.

https://crooksandliars.com/2019/04/samantha-bee-dedicates-memoriam-segment

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, quoted

"I'm sorry that I wasn't a robot like the Democratic Party"

— ABC News (@ABC) April 19, 2019

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/sarah-sanders-lied-mueller-report-comey-lies.html

Referring to"smokey eye" make-up technique, and creativity of using ashes (sourced from burned lies) is not an insult toward someone's physical appearance. Sarah Huckabee Sanders pretended that was what comedian Michelle Wolf was trying to do.


The White House Correspondents’ Dinner (took) place this (past) Saturday, almost a year to the day since Sarah Huckabee Sanders was feasted on as part of the after-dinner entertainment from Michelle Wolf.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/miche...sarah-huckabee-sanders-to-their-faces-at-whcd

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is still twisting reality into pretzel shapes. Crying victim, again, when there is no cause.

rolleyes: