Month: February 2018

 
From Max’s Dad:

It’s the annual gathering of neo-fascists, dummies and closet cases in DC this week when CPAC holds their annual screechfest. In the past we might get the sight of El Rushbo dressed like and Eastern European mobster hopping up and down as nerdboys ejaculated red white and blue all over each other.

But this year, in the wake of another NRA sponsored slaughter of young people, CPAC is just another swarm of soulless miscreants bent on worshiping their cult leader and calling dead and wounded students snowflakes.

Forget about the day that domestic terrorist Wayne LaPierre ranted and raved about gun issues like the EPA and socialism. Forget about human praying mantis Dana Loesch telling the fawning geeks that CNN loves mass murder and treasures crying white mothers. Both these inhuman heartless nutjobs deserve scorn and shame. Yes I know they have none.

Friday featured the appearance of Cult Leader In Chief Donald F Trump.

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From The Onion:

ITHACA, NY—In an effort to raise awareness on a potentially massive squandering of personal resources by thousands of hip, happening Americans, analysts at Cornell University published an alarming study Monday confirming that the vast majority of citizens who have got it fail to regularly and persistently flaunt it.

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Courtesy The Cato Institute

 
From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. (Genesis 1:26-28)

Generations of Evangelicals have taken these verses and others to mean that the Christian God has given the earth and everything living upon it to them for their use; that they are to have dominion over the earth; that everything on earth is given to them by God for their use and benefit; that human need, want, and use comes before anything else. Don’t like this human-centric view of the world? Blame God, Evangelicals say.

Want to understand why millions of Evangelicals have zero concern over global climate change/warming, endangered species, or immoral capitalism? You can trace their indifference back to the belief that mankind is the ruler of planet earth and that they are free to use it any way they want. There are Evangelicals who have embraced a more nuanced view, believing that God gave the earth to us to be stewards over, and not to exploit it for our own needs, but for the most part, God’s chosen ones believe that the earth is theirs to use, abuse, and misuse.

Ask Evangelicals what will happen when this world is all used up and they will likely tell you that such a scenario will never happen or that God is planning to make a new Heaven and a New Earth, so there’s no need to worry.

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Wondering why a few conservative friends fail to be impressed.

 
From PZ Myers:

The Chronicle has a challenging proposition: Business Schools Have No Business in the University. The author makes a good case, and I agree with him. Business schools are incoherent, have no consistent curriculum, and I suspect that even most of their graduates would agree that the skills to succeed in business are ones you learn in real world practice. The sole reasons they exist are to give rich people a certificate of intellectual accomplishment — a kind of Wizard of Oz game — and to give them a place to send their kids that aren’t too challenging and give them the pretense that they’re fit to step into Mom or Dad’s shoes. There’s no better example of this function than our president.

Unable to truly create a profession of business, business schools more often function as finishing schools for the new junior executive. The finishing-school role that business schools have always played can be summarized this way: Donald J. Trump went to Wharton.

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From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors:

It’s true: yesterday I saw several Fox News Hosts (Hi Sean!) screaming about how the number of their Twitter followers were reduced when Twitter purged a slew of bots. I did not notice that any MSM sources said similar things, however, so it seems likely that the Russians know a fellow traveller when they see one.

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From our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit:

A North Korean envoy making a rare visit to South Korea said Sunday that his country was willing to open talks with the United States, a rare step toward diplomacy between enemies after a year of North Korean missile and nuclear tests and direct threats of war from both Pyongyang and Washington.

You might ask yourself why the North Koreans are now so interested in talking.

Well, it’s not because of Trump’s bluster and sanctions.

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From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:

There’s bank fraud, there’s tax fraud, there’s money laundering, there’s unregistered foreign lobbying, and while there isn’t just as yet a clear connection to how this ties into the Russian election tampering probe, it clearly shows how seriously leveraged and therefore, vulnerable to being used by or as foreign agents they were. Especially Manafort, as Josh Marshall sketches out (you need TPM Prime for that one, I think–you should really get TPM Prime). Anyway, Paul Manafort was a guy so desperate for money that he went out of his way to work for the Trump campaign for free (as did a lot of folks, apparently)–but it’s hard to imagine he got nothing of value out of the job. And he remained in contact with the campaign through the transition (via the VP candidate he “helped” choose—Mike Pence). (Gates, of course, remained with the Trump campaign right through the transition, himself.)

What kinds of thing would Manafort’s position with the Trump campaign be good for? Well, maybe getting a spot in an eventual Trump cabinet for one of his creditors? Or helping “tweak” the Trump campaign’s position on Ukraine? Who knows what checks Manafort’s mouth might have written out of the Trump’s eventual presidency account? (Which could only get paid if Trump’s win could be ensured?)

But back to Gates–one of the things he is copping to, is making false statements to investigators in the probe. That’s what tripped up Mike Flynn, too. It also tripped up damn handsome attorney Alex van der Zwaan. This guy, van der Zwaan, is fascinatingly connected to a Russian billionaire by marriage who is, like Trump’s steadfast fixer, Michael Cohen, suing Buzzfeed over the Steele Dossier. That billionaire, German Khan, owns Alfa Group which includes Alfa Bank, which is an interesting side-story in all this that you probably have already heard about.

But: what was Gates lying about?

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Wondering why a few conservative friends fail to be impressed.