Thursday, November 30, 2017

What Fresh Hell? for November 30, 2017: Alabama evangelicals are MORE for Moore when they hear he diddles teenage girls. And Mrs Conway is in charge of drugs in The White House.





The *resident sent out Granny Sessions to introduce his new Opioid Czarina, Kellyanne Conway. She stood off to the side and watched.


Sessions said Trump has asked her "to coordinate and lead the effort from the White House.”


"It is a positive sign. She is a high-profile figure in the administration, showing the administration takes this seriously," opioid policy expert Andrew Kolodny of Brandeis University told BuzzFeed News.


Ms. Conway’s past familiarity with the issue is obscure. She is a pollster by trade and a liar by employment.


But Kolodny noted the administration still hasn't named someone to head its Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), or released a strategy to combat the crisis (one is promised in February),


That will be most of the operation’s funding. MOTUS has not requested any money from Congress to fill the depleted national public health emergency fund — now down to $66,000 — to pay for its health emergency declaration.
To do nothing except seem to be doing something, Sessions announced a Drug Enforcement Agency field office in Louisville and called on U.S. attorney's offices to appoint an opioid coordinator. Most US Attorney positions remain unfilled.
With her public opinion background and fondness for #AlternativeFacts, Conway will have the opioid crisis wrapped up just ahead of the Christmas wind-down of the Mueller investigation. As Senator George Aiken said of Vietnam, “We should just declare victory and get out.”
*****


Moore co-authored a study course, published in 2011 and recently obtained by ThinkProgress, that instructs students that women should not be permitted to run for elected office. If women do run for office, the course argues, people have a moral obligation not to vote for them. The course is also critical of the women’s suffrage movement, which in 1920 secured some American women the right to vote.


A new poll finds that Republican Senate candidate and accused child molester Roy Moore still holds a commanding lead among evangelicals in the state. In fact, a plurality of registered evangelical Christian voters say they are more likely to support him after hearing about allegations that he sexually abused a 14-year-old, dated teenage girls, and groped women in his office.

The new survey, which was conducted November 27-28 and released by JMC Analytics, reported that 64 percent of self-identified Alabama evangelicals say they support Moore over his Democratic opponent Doug Jones, a 7 point increase from a similar poll conducted by the same firm in early November, immediately after the allegations were first reported by the Washington Post.

Even more strikingly, 39 percent of respondents—a plurality—said they were more likely to support Moore after hearing about the rash of sexual misconduct allegations levied against him in recent weeks (28 percent said they were less likely, and 33 percent reported “no difference” in their opinion). This is technically an increase from early November, when 37 percent of evangelicals said they were more likely to support Moore despite the accusations—although it rests within the poll’s 3.8 percent margin of error.
Nationally, conservatives increasingly agree. Take Prof. Tully Borland, a Christianist philosophy professor at Ouachita Baptist University, whose alumni include The White House Press Secretary.
His views on morality in public life are, in some respects, black and white:

 But when it comes to Roy Moore, he’s “evolving.” Here’s what he wrote two weeks ago:
And here’s what he has up now, in The Federalist:


QED, y’all!
*****
In other news, South Carolina’s accidental governor, Henry McMaster, announced that his 2018 running mate will be a rich lady he met at a MOTUS inaugural party who has no government experience whatever but has given his campaign nearly $5000 so far.
McMaster needs a new lieutenant governor because the current on is running against him. His pick is a perfect fit for the intellectually low-wattage McMaster. In one of the worst- governed, least-regulated states in the nation, it takes special insight to say that government "has become an obstacle rather than a partner" for families and businesses in South Carolina.


‘We must return power where it belongs, to the people," she said. "It is high time for all of us to aim higher."
*****
A gay couple in Los Angeles decided for some holiday playfulness:






One person who will not be liking the image is Providence anti-gay Bishop Thomas Tobin, who says the image is sacrilegious.

 "Just came across this photo of a 'gay nativity' scene — two Josephs dressed in pink watching over the Christ Child," Bishop Tobin wrote on his Facebook page, as NBC 10 News reports.

"How sad that someone believes it’s okay (or funny or cool) to impose their own agenda on the holy Birth of Jesus. Pray for those who did so, for their change of heart, and that Jesus will forgive this sacrilege, this attack on the Christian Faith."
at No comments:

He can be forgiven the Pharma Douche smirk, he won. Just, and no thanks to "Conscience" Republicans




In just ten months, a lawyer called Gregory Katsas parlayed his hit-the-ground-running-against-The-Gays campaign in The White House Counsel's Office into a lifetime appointment to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, where most challenges to federal government action are heard.

 Given Trump appointees' louche regard for conflicts of interest, Judge Katsas will have no trouble- or shame- rubberstamping his previous work.

 He won confirmation in the Senate, 50-48, yesterday.

 All the Carolinas' senators voted for him.

 America's Consciences, Sens. Flake, Corker and McCain, proved all hat and no cattle once again.

 Flake voted "aye."

 Corker and McCain chose not to vote.


at No comments:

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

What Fresh Hell? for November 29, 2017: America, at last, has its Roderick Spode*



One might be forgiven if one predicted the *resident will soon start beat-boxing the Mad Scene from Lucia, after his perfect shitstorm of bizarro tweets this week.
David Graham, in The Atlantic, sums up the case for a choice: do Americans demand that Commissioners in Lunacy step in via the 25th Amendment, or do his defenders have to finally admit they elected- and have made themselves out whores for- a bigot of the most venal and enthusiastic sort?:
Over the past 24 hours, President Trump has delivered a concentrated dose of misinformation, self-sabotage, hypocrisy, and bigotry that stands out even by the standards of his short and eventful political career.

The president blew up negotiations to fund the government with a tweet attacking Democratic congressional leaders. He retweeted inflammatory and misleading anti-Islam videos from a bigoted far-right British politician. He joked about presenting a “Fake News Trophy” to media networks. He called attention to Matt Lauer, the NBC host fired on Wednesday for sexual misconduct, despite Trump’s own past admissions of sexual assault. He baselessly implied that NBC host Joe Scarborough, a onetime informal adviser, might have been involved in the death of an intern years ago in Florida. And several outlets reported that the president privately continues to claim preposterous things, including that it wasn’t him on the Access Hollywood tape and that Barack Obama really wasn’t born in the United States.

It’s unclear what precipitated the meltdown. Trump was having a decent stretch in office, including relatively smooth progress for the GOP tax bill. Taken individually, none of these examples is all that unusual for Trump. His bigotry toward Muslims has been on display for years. He has blown up budget negotiations before. He frequently passes along unverified and false information. His hypocrisy about sexual-harassment allegations is not new. He has a weakness for conspiracy theories.

Taken together, however, they offer yet another display of poor judgment and divisive leadership from the putative leader of the free world, and they again cast doubt on his fitness for his office. They are also further evidence that Trump’s hypocrisy, bigotry, and dishonesty are not an act. He means it all.
This morning, he retweeted three videos from a British hate group. We know its that because the woman who heads it is awaiting trial for harassment of Muslim women in the Ph.D. program of Spite and Hatefulness that is Northern Ireland:
[Jayda] Fransen, 31, is deputy leader of Britain First, a minor anti-Islam party with an estimated 1,000 followers that has had no electoral success. Fransen lost her deposit when she stood for parliament in a 2014 byelection, receiving just 56 votes.

She has been charged with using threatening or abusive language following an appearance at a far-right rally in Belfast this summer. She is due to appear at a Belfast court next month.
His press secretary, whose every day’s work reveals an ethical and moral void odd in such an ostentatious Christianist (Ouachita Baptist University, ‘04), defended the posts:

White House press secretary says it doesn’t matter if racist videos Trump tweeted are real or fake

"Whether it's a real video, the threat is real."
The longer she flacks for MOTUS, the more her explanations come to sound like MOTUS’ own word salads, garnished by thoughts run across a cheese grater.


As Craig Chandler writes in Public Books, the people in charge just don’t give a fuck what they say or whether it makes any sense:
Trump is resolutely against knowledge. It’s not just that he doesn’t have much, or that too much of what he thinks is true is really false. The very idea of knowledge seems to make him uncomfortable. He takes the notion that he can’t make up whatever truth he wants as a personal affront, a limit to his autonomy, and an insult to his narcissistic ego. He believes in being smart—and brags frequently about his IQ. I’m sure he believes in information, preferably insider information about stock trades, real estate opportunities, or what his enemies are up to. He just doesn’t believe in knowledge.

Correct information is a first step in knowledge. But whether it is embodied in theories or practical reason, knowledge is more than just discrete and isolated facts. It is the ability to judge alleged statements of fact, the ability to put these together in meaningful ways—to “connect the dots,” and to understand the implications.

We know Trump is at ease with lying. He lies habitually; lies to himself; and believes his lies. His claim that more people attended his inauguration than Obama’s could be checked and proven false by photos, videos, and Park Service reports—but that didn’t seem to bother him (though contradiction on that basis did). He lied to get elected. He lied about his failure to marshal assistance for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. He lies about economic policy and about the risks of nuclear war. He lies about health care and the environment. He lies about whether Mexico is really going to pay for a wall on our mutual border. He lies about his own behavior. This is pervasive and extraordinarily damaging. But lying is not the whole issue.
Trump mocks experts and panders to poorly supported opinions. He favors ad hoc policy-making over careful analysis and preparation. If Donald Trump baked, he would yell at cakes to rise instead of looking at a recipe.

Trump’s contempt for knowledge shapes his approach to appointing government officials, the gathering of official data, funding education and science, and relating to the news media. It extends to contempt for citizens’ right to know what their government is doing and for the government’s need for knowledge to do its work. This amounts to an attack that threatens to undermine both good governance and one of the foundations of democracy.
Not, of course, that it will sway his braying base. One of the better-connected of them, with friends in The Federalist Society (now busily packing the federal courts with zanies and mountebanks whose crochets and whimsies will spew for decades to come), explains how Jesus has, through decades of recasting as the triune of the American Church of God the Republican, come to find value added in the Temple moneychangers’ presence (a public-private partnership between theocracy and commerce, dontcha know), explains,


Just go back to the Old Testament and see how he used secular leaders. God employed foreign kings to bring about his purposes of rebuilding the holy site of Jerusalem. For example, King Cyrus of Persia helped the Jews with royal decrees and financing to construct the temple, and later foreign armies defended them.

The stories of Esther, Daniel, and Joseph are all full of God’s power being exercised through political leaders, revealing the difference between the secular and the sacred. Esther even allowed a man who was falsely accused of rape to meet his death because that was best for the Jewish people. The man had never touched her, but she allowed him to be falsely accused of sexual abuse because it was politically expedient—and it saved her people from death.

The Scriptures reveal how God used all sorts of things to fulfill his plans, including directing a dumb “ass” to rebuke his servant Balaam to open his eyes to God’s truth. God forbade his people from forming unholy alliances and intermarrying with foreigners, because this was true spiritual corruption, but he used pagan authorities, armies, and even religious people from foreign lands to execute his will. In Joshua, God’s people worked with a prostitute, and lies were even justified.

Today, God uses the “ungodly” as doctors, lawyers, teachers, and politicians. To vote for, associate with, or even advocate for a person working in the secular arena who will bring about the “greater good” despite being personally immoral, pagan, or the member of some “unapproved” Christian sect (as the Catholics once were in America) is justified. To refuse to do so out of fear of God’s judgment on our nation is fusing the city of man and the city of God in a way that God didn’t even do.

It also ignores that God’s purposes are manifest through fallen men, whether they’re in the church or in the world. Think of all the secular leaders we’ve had in America and consider their fallenness. Read the histrionics of Christians in the days of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson over the “evil” men who were infecting our “holy nation.” Have we declined because of these fallen, deeply flawed leaders? Did we suffer as a nation for putting a Catholic in the presidency with John F. Kennedy? Some purist Christians would say “Yes!” Are they right? Did we suffer as a nation because, theologically (and morally) speaking, JFK was “unfit” for the presidency? I’d say no.


Back in Britain, growing less Great by the day, Prime Minister Theresa May got out her cheeseparer:
Theresa May’s spokesman said on Wednesday: “Britain First seeks to divide communities by their use of hateful narratives that peddle lies and stoke tensions. They cause anxiety to law-abiding people. British people overwhelmingly reject the prejudiced rhetoric of the far right which is the antithesis of the values this country represents, decency, tolerance and respect.”


But despite criticising Trump, No 10 rejected calls from Labour MPs, including David Lammy and Chuka Umunna, to revoke the US president’s invitation to pay a state visit to Britain. May’s spokesman said: “The invitation for a state visit has been extended and accepted. Further details will be announced in due course.”
Tillerson’s Moron, whose lust for a gilt-and-garters court presentation worthy of Downton Abbey is perhaps exceeded only by that he feels for Ivanka, responded by mooning May:






Of course, when you preside over a monkey kingdom worthy of King Louis in The Jungle Book, no one can be smarter than The Chief Baboon. As he did with his thoughtless “thoughts and prayers” tweet to the wrong shot-up evangelical church week before last, the *resident’s Deputy Assistant for Twitter sent his multi-hued, ass-baring reply to the wrong fucking person:

However, the “@theresamay” that Trump targeted does not belong to Theresa May, the British prime minister, but a woman called Theresa Scrivener. Minutes later Trump deleted and reposted the tweet, this time with the correct handle: @Theresa_May.
Not even Sarah Huckabee Sanders was ready to waddle out and defend this:
But the White House defended the retweets. The principal deputy press secretary, Raj Shah, told reporters on Air Force One: “We think that it’s never the wrong time to talk about security and public safety for the American people. Those are the issues he was raising with the tweets this morning.”

Asked if Trump was aware of the source of the tweets, Shah replied: “I haven’t spoken to him about that.”
*****
Jonathan Chait notices a companion trend in the Administration’s policies, also mirroring the Boss’ psychic eruptions:


In a timely example reported by Ars Technica, the chairman of the Federal Communications is busily trying to change the subject from the millions of bot-messages he uses to justify a class-based Internet by blaming opposition to his sensible, Edmund-Burke-with-a-smartphone reliance on the prejudices and inchoate experiences of The People policies on those sex fiends in Hollywood:
Internet users have made it clear to US telecom regulator Ajit Pai that his proposal to scrap net neutrality rules is unpopular with the masses. But with two weeks left before the Federal Communications Commission votes to eliminate net neutrality rules, Pai today blamed actress/singer Cher and other celebrities for boosting opposition to his plan.

In a speech hosted by conservative group R Street and the Lincoln Network, Pai also addressed criticism from MCU actor Mark Ruffalo, actress Alyssa Milano, former Star Trek actor George Takei, and Silicon Valley actor Kumail Nanjiani. Pai also claimed that Twitter and other Web companies pose a greater threat to Internet freedom than Internet service providers like Comcast.
Net neutrality rules unnecessary because ISPs will do the right thing, Pai says. The case of Comcast throttling BitTorrent proves his point: they haven’t done it since! The pressure and disapprobation of the people will keep them in line lest they forget their edenic urges always to do right.
Just like the pressure to get better service, lower rates, and unbundling has worked.
And once Pai passes his next rule- the one invalidating all state regulations of the bound-and-gagged internet companies, we will all enjoy the blessings of the Garden:

*If you read P.G. Wodehouse, you wouldn't have to ask.
at No comments:

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

What Fresh Hell? for November 28, 2017: Randy Munchkins, Roy Moore, and more poor.



A Republican congressman running for Tennessee governor wants hospitals to go back to turning away the poor.
*****
Breitbart News is shocked, shocked!


The Democratic Party’s nominee for Alabama senator voted for his party’s nominees for President.
*****
Roy Moore is struggling to keep his campaign organization afloat. He is almost broke, his communications guy quit, and he is being outspent on TV 10 to 1. But hate and hypocrisy are his tailwinds:
“Even if the allegations are true, as Christians we believe in second chances,” said Pat Hartline, who lives in neighboring Cherokee County and was also in attendance. She said she will vote for Moore because he is a Christian conservative who supports gun rights. “He’s for all the right policies,” she said.

Roy Moore crawled out from under his rock last night to warn Alabamians of the Gay Menace, and they swallowed it right up.
Then his staff tried to rough up some reporters:
*****
Moore, who now says he and the *resident are co-martyrs, the victim of angry non-10s, remains silent on the latest #AltRight attempts to smear Moore’s accusers. All women are sex-crazed liars who feel a strange allure emanating from fat old pols, after all.
*****


From article on his wife’s reluctance to go along with The White House Reality Show, this:


As Mrs Trump would say in Slovenian,
To ni moja stvar. To je Donaldova stvar.


In other words, she married him for better or worse, but not for lunch.
But to the Breitbart bros, she’s free porn every day of the week.
*****
Her stepson, foiled in his Great White Hunter trophy campaign, made a bold move to cement his claim to be the dumbest of the clan:
*****
In Hollywood- Washington for beautiful people- Access Hollywood says MOTUS’ tape is so real, dude.




*****
at No comments:

Maybe one day we will see something like this from an American president.

at No comments:

Caution:news editors at play

The overnight staff at The Guardian had some fun with the front page sidebar last night:


at No comments:

Monday, November 27, 2017

What Fresh Hell? CyberMonday, November 27, 2017: Flat earthers, God-botherers, don't tell the Ulster Unionists Prince is dead; how cities auction their citizens to Amazon; and Charlie Manson's will.

Generations pass, and people forget. That’s why we need reminding how The Charleston Post & Courier- and the South Carolina GOP- incubated racial animus in the party 55 years ago. And how it spread.
*****




Flat-Earther Delays Launch In His Homemade Rocket, Saying 'It's Not Easy'

He didn’t get a BLM permit to launch himself in a rocket to take pictures proving the earth is flat:
"I don't believe in science," Hughes told the AP earlier this month. "I know about aerodynamics and fluid dynamics and how things move through the air, about the certain size of rocket nozzles, and thrust. But that's not science, that's just a formula. There's no difference between science and science fiction."
*****
The *resident, of course, is all in with the stupid. Last week he endorsed this website:
The word MAGAPill appears to be a portmanteau combining the Trump campaign slogan beloved by white nationalists with the symbol of an internet forum for men who believe they are sexually oppressed by feminists, so that’s a promising start. And here, with a hat tip to Judd Legum of ThinkProgress, is a sampling of some of the subjects that MAGAPill has covered in past weeks:

Lady Gaga’s involvement in Hillary Clinton’s child-sacrifice practices
The Vatican’s knowledge of “ancient occult magic”
The encroachment of sharia law
The government’s coverup of evidence that the recent massacre in Las Vegas was actually carried out by multiple shooters
The Jews (click here to see a MAGAPill tweet which deploys the anti-Semitic triple parentheses dog whistle that's often deployed by far-right writers)
*****
Stupid is contagious. The Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland, a ten-member parliamentary rump of zanies and gay-bashers who sold their support of UK PM Theresa May’s government for one billion pounds in pork, tweeted congratulations to Prince William for his engagement today. Then she was told she meant Prince Harry.
*****
Some Commonwealth stupid imported to the US by an Australian God-botherer, Ken Ham, resulted in a $102 million, for-profit theme park about Noah and his Big Adventure:
...His family also played a crucial role. They are depicted throughout the museum feeding and watering animals and cleaning cages. Noah’s wife, in particular, was essential personnel. “Mrs. Noah,” as she’s called, was likely quite “fit and active,” despite being six hundred years old, and cooked and wove textiles in addition to helping care for the animals. “Noah’s wife is one of the more overlooked characters of the Bible,” her introduction read, “considering every one of us contains some of her DNA!” We never learned her name.
Ham mulcted Kentucky taxpayers of a wad of tax-free tax money to put The Ark Experience over the top. Apparently, one of the reasons that sailed through state government was because the state’s GOP legislators were all busy creeping their staff. Now the Bible-thumping Teabagistani governor is demanding that his party’s legislative horndogs resign and sin no more.
*****
The notion that power makes dumpy men sexy is, of course, bipartisan:
California Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra resigned Monday following multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, making him the first lawmaker to leave office amid a spate of reports rocking the state Capitol.

The Los Angeles Democrat had previously said he wouldn't seek re-election and would leave office at the end of the next legislative session. But on Monday, Bocanegra said that he's decided to leave immediately following reflection over the Thanksgiving weekend and conversations with family, friends, and supporters...

Bocanegra's resignation comes as the Senate Rules Committee stripped state Sen. Tony Mendoza of his committee chairmanship amid a misconduct probe. Mendoza is a Democrat from Artesia, near Los Angeles.
*****
Why do we put up with this? Stumbling and Mumbling posits that we so revere the wealthy we demand that government reward them with money extracted from our own pockets. Take the Amazon HQ2 “Who Can Build The Best Whorehouse?” Contest. Seattle journalist Danny Westneat has uncovered how cities are willing to throw democracy out the window for money:
Example: Chicago has offered to let Amazon pocket $1.32 billion in income taxes paid by its own workers. This is truly perverse. Called a personal income-tax diversion, the workers must still pay the full taxes, but instead of the state getting the money to use for schools, roads or whatever, Amazon would get to keep it all instead.

“The result is that workers are, in effect, paying taxes to their boss,” says a report on the practice from Good Jobs First, a think tank critical of many corporate subsidies.

Most of the HQ2 bids had more traditional sweeteners. Such as Chula Vista, California, which offered to give Amazon 85 acres of land for free (value: $100 million) and to excuse any property taxes on HQ2 for 30 years ($300 million). New Jersey remains the dollar king of the subsidy sweepstakes, having offered Amazon $7 billion to build in Newark.

But more of a bellwether to me are proposals that effectively would put Amazon inside the government.

Some are small. Boston has offered to set up an “Amazon Task Force” of city employees working on the company’s behalf. These would include a workforce coordinator, to help with Amazon’s employment needs, as well as a community- relations official to smooth over Amazon conflicts throughout Boston. (Surely Amazon can handle these things itself?)

But the most far-reaching offer is from Fresno, California. That city of half a million isn’t offering any tax breaks. Instead it has a novel plan to give Amazon special authority over how the company’s taxes are spent.

Fresno promises to funnel 85 percent of all taxes and fees generated by Amazon into a special fund. That money would be overseen by a board, half made up of Amazon officers, half from the city. They’re supposed to spend the money on housing, roads and parks in and around Amazon.

The proposal shows a park with a sign: “This park brought to you by Amazon,” with the company’s smiling arrow corporate logo.

“The community fund projects would give Amazon credit for the funding of each project,” the proposal says. “The potential negative impacts from a project would be turned into positives, giving Amazon credit for mitigating it.”
Several North Carolina cities are bidders, but here in the Tar Hell State, they get to keep the details secret from those of us who will stump up the protection money.
*****


*****
On the other hand, as a private citizen, Donald Trump wouldn’t be able to bare his ass to the world, using World War II heroes as props.

Watch it all. Then feel free to vomit.



*****

 And Charles Manson not only accumulated a $400,000 estate while spending sixty of his 83 years in prison, he left it to a male groupie.
at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)