The Horror of White Genocide

Robyn Pennacchia at Wonkette:

Here is a statistic I just made up! No one who has ever sincerely used the term “white genocide” has ever given a woman an orgasm. Dick-insecurity is the number one cause of crying about “race-mixing” and “cucks” and “multi-culturalism.”

It is no coincidence that many of those leading the charge against interracial relationships happen to be of the MRA pick-up artist persuasion. They believe, basically, that if they can dissuade white women from having sex with black men by portraying them as Lotharios who will inevitably leave them or hurt them in some way, that there will be more pussy for them. Unfortunately for them, pussy don’t work that way.

The Resistance: Doing It in Line at the Grocery

Just wishful thinking maybe, but still inspiring.

Public Shaming:  It's Fun, and It Works.

 

Democratic Underground:

LaydeeBug (8,011 posts)

So I'm in line at the grocery store, and the lady in front of me used Food stamps and the guy in back of me started hemming and hawing. He said, "My god, do you believe this?" like trying to get me and the others in line to participate in his disgust. As loudly, and roundly as I could, and my theatre background lets me PROJECT people:

"FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE"
He was shocked. I mean shocked. "I'D RATHER SEE MY HARD EARNED TAX DOLLARS GO TO FEED HER OR ANY OTHER FAMILY INSTEAD OF LAUNCHING A 20 MILLION DOLLAR MISSILE AT A CAMEL'S ASS. SHE'S IN A VETERAN'S FAMILY, DID YOU EVER THINK OF THAT? YOU HAVE THE FUCKING NERVE TO SPIT ON OUR TROOPS BY AIRING YOUR SHIT NOW?"
"You think it's me and *MY* mouth?" he said,
'TRUST ME. EVERYONE HERE IS MORE OFFENDED WITH YOUR LITTLE DISPLAY THAN MY BIG ONE. YOU ARE A FUCKING TRAITOR AND ASSHOLE AND YOUR ACTIONS TOWARD THIS WOMAN IS WAY WORSE THAN MY PROFANITY ANYDAY"
The cashier laughed. I got three thumbs up and a high five.
Really.
Today.
About an hour ago.
After I cashed out, the hoopla went down, the lady approached me in the parking lot and told me thank you. Then, with pride, her eyes glistened, she said, "My father served in the Navy and my husband was a Marine before he died. How did you know?"
"I am the daughter of a Veteran too, we just have to stick together now. My Daddy didn't fight on foreign soil to see ours starve here. That man is the worst type of man"
Then she hugged me.
And I cried.

Don't Ever Do This. But If You Do ...

Via Down with Tyranny:

This one seems more appropriate than ever this year.


Peppermint flavor, 8 sticks

The Resistance: Obamacare Data

Political Animal:

We’re seeing the same thing with Obamacare data.

The White House is encouraging researchers to copy government data on Obamacare out of concern that President-elect Donald Trump might hit the delete key when he takes office.

Spooked by Trump’s rhetoric and pledge to repeal Obamacare, several dozen independent researchers are racing to download key health care data and documents before Jan. 20. They say they began the effort on their own, and then got a boost from Jeanne Lambrew, the White House’s top health reform official, who also sounded alarms the new administration might expunge reams of information from public websites and end access to data, researchers told POLITICO.

Criminalizing Immigration is a Crime Against Humanity

Unless the ones doing the deporting are full-blooded Native Americans.

 

Criminalizing immigration has two purposes:  expanding White Supremacy and enriching the private prison industry.

So easy to round up brown citizens with the non-citizens, and even easier to falsely accuse all of them of crimes since they're deported or imprisoned without trial.

From The Nation:

The people Trump says he will target—those “bringing drugs,” “bringing crime,” who are “rapists,” as he put it in the speech that launched his campaign—sound terribly scary. The idea that there are millions of them is quickly seeping into our political discourse as though it were fact. In reality, any effort to deport 3 million “criminal” immigrants will first require branding law-abiding people as 
criminals—a process that’s been unfolding across presidential administrations stretching back to Bill Clinton’s, but that Trump plans to escalate massively.

SNIP

All told, Trump’s agenda will likely spur a massive
 expansion of the federal prison system. The ACLU estimates that Kate’s Law alone could require the Bureau of Prisons to open nine new facilities. The morning after the election, stock prices soared for two of the country’s largest private-prison companies, Corrections Corporation of America (which recently changed its name to CoreCivic) and the GEO Group. These companies manage both the prisons and the civil-detention facilities where the majority of immigrants are held. In March, Trump told a crowd at a town hall, “I do think we can do a lot of privatizations, and private prisons—it seems to work a lot better.”

Lie number 70 zillion.  Private prisons are so corrupt and overpriced that ...

In August, after the release of a critical report by the DOJ’s inspector general, the Justice Department ordered the Bureau of Prisons to begin closing down all of its private facilities. That process will now likely come to a screeching halt.

SNIP

Sima Atri, an attorney with the Congress of Day Laborers who represents Diaz-Castro, argues that a single misdemeanor conviction for illegal entry shouldn’t turn her client into a deportable criminal under the current guidelines. “We argue, basically, that nothing has changed from before he was picked up by ICE and today,” Atri says. “He’s still a father who has lived here for years, and who has never been convicted of a crime.”

The Resistance: Turn the Senate Now

No waiting for 2018!

Rude Pundit:

So while we're still tilting at the burning windmills of Russian interference and possible Obama spine-stiffening on things like Merrick Garland, let's not overlook one real Hail Mary pass on confronting Donald Trump and halting his history-demolishing agenda. What about trying to turn three Republican senators into Democrats (or, at least, turn independent and then caucusing with the Democrats)? It's crazy, sure, and unlikely, in that it relies on the possibility of there existing rational Republicans, but surely there are ones who have a gut-level fear of what Trump might do. Check this out:

SNIP

That's the prize: the ability to get some facts on the table about Trump that could lead to impeachment. And that ain't gonna happen unless one of the houses of Congress has legal authority to demand those facts.

Obviously, this plan relies on a number of factors: that Republicans could behave honorably; that the Democratic Party could have the guts to go through with this strategy; that some Democrat, like Manchin, doesn't turn, too; and that all are ready for a republic-defining confrontation.

It's a slim hope. But you gotta believe that there are elected Republicans who are freaked out right now. Majority power is the only thing that can bring Trump down. Hell, tell any senators that switch to independent or Democrat that once Trump is out of the picture, they can switch right back. Or try to win the majority in the midterms.
You wanna defeat an irrational opponent? You gotta figure out how to build a wall around his irrationality.

Hey,Veterans: Repugs Hate You and Think You're Stupid

Zandar nails it: 

Next time Republicans scream about how "Obama failed our nation's veterans" and "refused to help our troops" please remember that the Senate GOP just killed a vet benefits bill less than a week before Christmas because "we can't spend that kind of money."

The largest piece of veterans legislation in decades — aimed at expanding health care, education and other benefits — was rejected Thursday by the Senate on a procedural issue after proponents failed to obtain 60 votes to keep the bill alive. 

Wrangling over an issue -- veterans -- that often receives bipartisan support, the legislation died on a vote of 56-41, with only two Republicans voting for it. 

Most Republicans said it was too large, too costly and would burden a Department of Veterans Affairs already struggling to keep up with promised benefits. 

Sen Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent and chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee who authored the bill, argued that many provisions in the bill have won bipartisan support in other pieces of pending legislation before Congress. 

Republicans complained about how to pay for it. Sanders' legislation had more than 140 provisions costing $21 billion over 10 years. 

Most of that money was to come from billions of dollars the government projected it would be allowed to spend on wars overseas in the fight against al-Qaeda. 

But Republicans argued that this is "phony" budgeting because U.S. participation in the Iraq War is over and operations in Afghanistan are winding down. 

The legislation would have restored cost-of-living increases for the pensions of future military retirees; expanded VA health care by allowing acquisition of 27 new medical facilities and paid for reproductive services for 2,300 troops wounded in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. 

It also would have expanded compensation for family caregivers of disabled veterans — something now provided for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan — to families of veterans of all wars. 

The bill was supported by nearly all veterans groups.

SNIP

Literally a fraction of one F-35 Joint Strike Fighter's cost.  Oh well.  Can't actually give the Department of Veteran's Affairs money, because screw them, right?

But military voters overwhelmingly voted for Republicans in November.  Congrats, soliders, sailors and airmen, you got what you voted for.

Year of Hatred, Rape, Genocide and War in Kentucky

Makes you wonder if any of these motherfuckers have actually read the thing.

I put the over/under on how soon some freakazoid is going to justify firebombing a mosque filled with worshippers or torturing a trans person to death by saying "It's the Year of the bible!" at Easter.

That's always been the freakazoid favorite time for massacring non-christians.

The Resistance: Destroying One Weapon

That list of Muslims that Smirky/Darth started and the Orange Menace was hoping to use to launch his unconstitutional deportation of non-christians?

It's gone.  President Barack Obama destroyed it.

Alex Daugherty
McClatchy Washington Bureau
Posted with permission from Tribune Content Agency 

 

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WASHINGTON — In 2001, Roskana Mun was a 16-year-old Bangladeshi immigrant living in one of New York City's most diverse neighborhoods. After 9/11, the U.S. government started tracking foreign Muslim men and boys, and Mun's neighborhood changed as men were detained and in some cases deported.

"Women had to juggle raising a whole family and face the threat of detention," Mun said. "Girls had to step up, and young people who were 13 or 14 years old had to quit school to work."

Mun now works for DRUM, a New York-based advocacy group for South Asian immigrants. She said the U.S. government's tracking of men from Muslim-majority countries for a decade had disrupted daily life, causing shops to close in neighborhoods like Midwood, Brooklyn, after hundreds of men were deported.

The tracking program administered by the Department of Homeland Security, called the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, required males 16 and older from 25 countries to undergo additional vetting in the interest of national security.

After 10 years and 13,000 deportations, President Barack Obama stopped enforcing the program in 2011. It hadn't caught a single terrorist.

On Thursday, the DHS announced that the regulatory framework for the system has been dismantled, effectively gutting a quasi-Muslim registry just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump enters the White House. The move prevents the dormant program from being quickly restarted to track the movements of certain Muslim men living in the United States.

The Constitution.  It's not just for white, straight, christian, male wingnuts.

God's Not Dead

Divine Irony:

This Is The Resistance, Too

Ninja Onion Choppers Alert!

Political Animal

If your faith in humanity has taken a hit lately, you’ll want to watch this as a way of restoring it just a bit. But fair warning: grab a kleenex first.

Karim Sulayman - I trust you from Meredith Kaufman Younger on Vimeo.

There's Nothing Christian About Christmas

Gifts, feasting, caroling, lights, decorating evergreens, even charity:  all establishing pagan traditions centuries if not millenia before anyone invented christianity.


LiveScience:

When you gather around the Christmas tree or stuff goodies into a stocking, you're taking part in traditions that stretch back thousands of years — long before Christianity entered the mix.

Pagan, or non-Christian, traditions show up in this beloved winter holiday, a consequence of early church leaders melding Jesus' nativity celebration with pre-existing midwinter festivals. Since then, Christmas traditions have warped over time, arriving at their current state a little more than a century ago.

SNIP

The Christmas tree is a 17th-century German invention, University of Bristol's Hutton told LiveScience, but it clearly derives from the pagan practice of bringing greenery indoors to decorate in midwinter. The modern Santa Claus is a direct descendent of England's Father Christmas, who was not originally a gift-giver. However, Father Christmas and his other European variations are modern incarnations of old pagan ideas about spirits who traveled the sky in midwinter, Hutton said.


But why this fixation on partying in midwinter, anyway? According to historians, it's a natural time for a feast. In an agricultural society, the harvest work is done for the year, and there's nothing left to be done in the fields.

"It's a time when you have some time to devote to your religious life," said Shaw. "But also it's a period when, frankly, everyone needs cheering up."

The dark days that culminate with the shortest day of the year ­— the winter solstice — could be lightened with feasts and decorations, Hutton said.

But the big pagan source of Christmas - the one most blatantly stolen by Christians - is Saturnalia.

 It was a public holiday celebrated around December 25th in the family home. A time for feasting, goodwill, generosity to the poor, the exchange of gifts and the decoration of trees. But it wasn’t Christmas. This was Saturnalia, the pagan Roman winter solstice festival.

How Repugs Destroy Public Goods

They've been doing it for five decades: scream lies about high taxes, incite hatred against poor and minority communities and blame the "government" their own voters depend on. Repugs get elected, trash the place, leave it for Democrats to clean up, then point to the cleanup costs and scream more lies.  

 

Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo:

But the GOP never does anything that's not at least a twofer. Privatization — of roads and water systems, for example, or public schools via charter expansion — is not just about converting "We the People" assets into private profits for cronies. It's about disrupting the income streams of Democratic-leaning city governments. The goal is to weaken them politically, stripping them of revenue by creating a slow-rolling economic crisis that will force cities to either raise taxes or slash services or both, allowing Republicans in a few years to argue, See, see how badly Democrats have handled your economy? Elect us and we'll show you how it's really done.

The Resistance: Be This Guy

Down with Tyranny:

Run for Office! Here's a Tool!

From Josh Marshall:

One of my takeaways from the 2016 election comes from Texas's 32nd congressional district. We've heard a lot of post-election discussion about the need for a 50 state strategy, party building and organizing. But nothing captures it like TX-32. Hillary Clinton actually won the pretty red 32nd district. But Republican Pete Sessions held on to win. Why? Well, in large part because the Democrats didn't even field a candidate. Yes, he might still have won. But you cannot win if you don't field a candidate. Which brings me to this site. I'd meant to post this a few weeks ago. But better late than never. Here's a new site called RunForOffice.org. It's simple and useful. Type in your address and it will tell you which offices you're eligible to run for, the filing deadlines and other key information. Clearly, there's quite a lot more to 50 state organizing and party building. But this a deceptively helpful tool and a great data project.

Real Courage

This is the kind of courage it's going to take to stop the orange menace and his hate-mongering hordes.

Charlie Pierce:

The other (hero who died this week) was Larry Colburn, who was flying in a helicopter over a village in Vietnam called My Lai on the morning of March 16, 1968.

SNIP

Larry Colburn was 18 years old, manning a gun on a helicopter, when he heard his pilot, Hugh Thompson, tell the crew that, down on the ground, American soldiers were massacring non-combatants, including women and children, and that he, Thompson, was going to do something about it. Per The New York Times:

"Mr. Thompson was just beside himself," Mr. Colburn recalled in an interview in 2010 for the PBS program "The American Experience." "He got on the radio and just said, 'This isn't right, these are civilians, there's people killing civilians down here.' And that's when he decided to intervene. He said, 'We've got to do something about this, are you with me?' And we said, 'Yes.' " Mr. Thompson confronted the officer in command of the rampaging platoon, Lt. William L. Calley, but was rebuffed. He then positioned the helicopter between the troops and the surviving villagers and faced off against another lieutenant. Mr. Thompson ordered Mr. Colburn to fire his M-60 machine gun at any soldiers who tried to inflict further harm. "Y'all cover me!" Mr. Thompson was quoted as saying. "If these bastards open up on me or these people, you open up on them. Promise me!"

"You got it boss," Mr. Colburn replied. "Consider it done." Mr. Thompson, Mr. Colburn and Glenn Andreotta, the copter's crew chief, found about 10 villagers cowering in a makeshift bomb shelter and coaxed them out, then had them flown to safety by two Huey gunships. They found an 8-year-old boy clinging to his mother's corpse in an irrigation ditch and plucked him by the back of his shirt and delivered him to a nun in a nearby hospital.

To me, this always has been one of the more astonishing displays of courage of which I've ever heard, and I heard about it the way everyone else did, years later, because the Army did its best to cover the whole thing up and to slander the reputations of the helicopter crew involved. (Needless to say, the Nixon Administration was particularly venal in this regard.) Were we a truly vibrant and evolved republic, Larry Colburn's funeral would be on national television. Children would read about him in school. There would be memorials on the National Mall and at West Point.

The Resistance: Working for 2018

Deadline to file for 2018 elections in Kentucky - congress, all 100 state reps and 19 of the 38 state senators - is January 30, 2018.  Way too fucking early, I know, which is why we've got to get our asses in gear right fucking now.  We've got 13 months to recruit candidates to take back the Kentucky House before Bevin and his repugs destroy the state completely, and get at least one congressional repug out.

Howie Klein of Down with Tyranny:

Blue America hasn't spent precious time since the election asking you to sign petitions for impractical symbolic appeals to the electoral college, or to waste your money on an un-winnable, pointless Senate race in Louisiana.

We are very focused on what can be done-- politically-- to break the back on Trumpism. And that focus is, clearly, taking back the House in 2018.

If Trump and Ryan do half the damage they promise, even an incompetent DCCC won't be able to keep the two dozen seats that need to change hands from flipping; effectively putting the brakes on Trumpism.

Blue America is working daily to recruit solid progressive candidates in districts from coast the coast. You can follow-- and support-- the results of our progress here.

Thieving and Pissing Off Liberals

Steve M:

I think there are two "overarching theories" in the Trump administration:

1. KA-CHING! Money is meant to flow to the plutocracy, especially Trump family members, Putin fans, and other captains of dirty-fuels industries.

2. What do liberals hate? That's what the Trump administration intends to do.

Economic Justice is Racial Justice

There will always be white supremacist racist motherfuckers who will starve their own children rather than see a single morsel of food go to someone black or brown or muslim or LGBT or anything else they fear and hate.

Fuck them.  Guarantee civil and human rights to all, and let the chips fall where they may.

Paul Campos:

Currently there’s a fierce debate in the Democratic party and among what passes for the left in this country about the extent to which resistance to white nationalist authoritarianism, i.e., the contemporary Republican party, ought to focus on economic/class issues, or, supposedly in the alternative, what is called “identity politics.”

As many people are pointing out this is a false dichotomy.  This post is about some new data that highlight in the starkest terms two inexorably interrelated facts:

(1) Since the 1970s, the poor, the working class, and most of the middle class have seen (or rather failed to see, cf. the election of Donald Trump) essentially ALL the trillions of dollars of economic growth America has experienced over this time go, in ascending order of intensity, to the upper middle class, the middle upper class, the rich, the very rich, the obscenely rich, and the we don’t really have a word for that yet rich.

(2) Since the 1970s, what was at that time a shamefully vast gap between the economic status of white and black Americans has remained totally untouched by efforts to ameliorate it. (It would be more accurate to say that efforts to ameliorate it have been completely cancelled out by efforts to quash the former initiatives).

SNIP

It’s a commonplace of a lot of political argument in this country right now to claim that white working class resentment is based in the supposed economic decline of white America relative to the improving economic fortunes of black America. This relative decline is imaginary.

SNIP

Fighting for economic justice in this country is fighting for racial justice, and vice versa.

The Resistance: Syndromes to Avoid

Robert Reich, via Crooks and Liars:

Posted with permission from AlterNet

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As the era of Trump approaches, some of you are succumbing to the follow four syndromes:

1. Normalizer Syndrome. You want to believe Trump will be just another president-more conservative and pompous than most, but one who will make rational decisions once in office.

You are under a grave delusion. Trump has a serious personality disorder and will pose a clear and present danger to America and the world.

2. Outrage Numbness Syndrome. You are no longer outraged by what Trump says or what he does-his incessant lies, his cabinet picks, his bullying, his hatefulness-because you've gone numb. You can't conceive that someone like this is becoming president of the United States, so you've shut down emotionally. Maybe you've even stopped reading the news.

You need to get back in touch with your emotions and reengage with what's happening.

3. Cynical Syndrome. You've become so cynical about the whole system-the Democrats who gave up on the working class and thereby opened the way for Trump, the Republicans who suppressed votes around the country, the media that gave Trump all the free time he wanted, the establishment that rigged the system-that you say the hell with it. Let Trump do his worst. How much worse can it get?

You need to wake up. It can get a lot worse.

4. Helpless Syndrome. You aren't in denial. You know that nothing about this is normal; you haven't become numb or stopped reading the news; you haven't succumbed to cynicism. You desperately want to do something to prevent what's about to occur.

But you don't know what to do. You feel utterly powerless and immobilized.

Millions of others feel equally powerless. But taking action-demonstrating, resisting, objecting, demanding, speaking truth, joining with others, making a ruckus, and never ceasing to fight Trump's pending tyranny-will empower you. And with that power you will not only to minimize the damage that is about to occur, but also get this nation and the world back on the course it must be on.

If you find yourself falling into one or more of these syndromes, that's understandable. Normalizing, numbing, becoming cynical, and feeling powerless are natural human responses to the gross absurdity and genuine peril posed by Trump.

But I urge you to pull yourself out. We need you in the peaceful resistance army, starting January 20.

The Fatal Flaw

It's not that he successfully suppressed his inner Angry Ni**er, it's that he never had one to begin with.

Eric Loomis:

Tressie McMillan Cottom’s response to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ essay on Barack Obama is powerful:

For all his intimacies with his white mother and white grandparents, my first black president doesn’t appear to know his whites.

There’s no other way to explain Obama’s inability to imagine that this nation could elect Donald Trump. Those of us who know our whites know one thing above all else: whiteness defends itself. Against change, against progress, against hope, against black dignity, against black lives, against reason, against truth, against facts, against native claims, against its own laws and customs. Even after Donald Trump was elected, Obama told Coates that all is not lost. He is still hopeful about the soul of white America. He said nothing about the soul of black America. That is where my hope resides. It is where my faith has always resided.

The anger that David Axelrod says was so a part of Harold Washington and that Barack Obama wonderfully did not have is also the hope that defends against America’s worst impulses.* To think Obama is commended for not being angry, for not having the fortitude of deep knowledge about how white identity politics sustains and circumscribes black lives is enough to make me cry.

Barack Obama never seemed to really understand the nature of his opposition, from his early years of being Grand Bargain curious to the rise of Trump. This may be why his response to Trump in the last month has been near silence. I am strongly hoping Obama takes a major leadership role in the fight against Trump to come, not retiring like most presidents, but rather becoming a modern John Quincy Adams, fighting against injustice quite publicly. But it may take Obama coming to terms with the true depths of American racism to do this. And somehow, maybe he doesn’t quite get that.

The FBI Committed Treason to Get Trump Close Enough to Steal the Election

Hillary won, by three million votes.  The Electoral College is an inexcusable remnant of the Slave Power, which 150 years after being outlawed is still undermining Democracy.

A rogue FBI is the consequence of Democrats letting repugs get away with treason for the past 42 years: pardoning Nixon, letting Ronnie Raygun and Bush Sr. skate on Iran-Contra, Pelosi and Obama refusing to prosecute Smirky-Darth for war crimes.  All in the name of "moving forward."

The result is we are sprinting backward toward the feudal brutality the Kochs and Exxon-Mobil have finally achieved.

Kevin Drum:

Here's a quick review:

• Goaded by rabid congressional Republicans, the FBI spent prodigious resources on Hillary Clinton's email server, even though there was never a shred of evidence that national security had been compromised in any way.
   
• In July, Comey broke precedent by calling a press conference and delivering a self-righteous speech about Clinton's "carelessness." Why did he do this, when FBI protocol is to decline comment on cases after investigations are finished? The answer is almost certainly that he wanted to insulate himself from Republican criticism for not recommending charges against Clinton.
   
• Weeks later, Comey finally released the investigation's interview notes. Only the most devoted reader of bureaucratic prose was likely to suss out their real meaning: there had never been much of a case in the first place, and contrary to Comey's accusation, Clinton had never been careless with classified material. Like everyone else, she and her staff worked hard to exchange only unclassified material on unclassified networks (state.gov, gmail, private servers, etc.). There was a difference of opinion between State and CIA about what counted as classified, but this squabbling had been going on forever, and had driven previous Secretaries of State nuts too.
   
• As Podesta notes, the FBI took a preposterously lackadaisical attitude toward Russia's hacking of the DNC server. Outside of a badly-written novel, it's hard to believe that any law enforcement organization would do as little as the FBI did against a major assault from a hostile foreign power aimed at one of America's main political parties.
   
• Even when plenty of evidence was amassed about Russia's actions, Comey downplayed it in private briefings. This gave Republicans the cover they needed to insist that Obama not mention anything about it during the campaign.
   
• Two weeks before Election Day, Comey authorized a search of Anthony Weiner's laptop, even though there was no reason to think any of the emails it contained were new, or that any of them posed a threat to national security. Then he issued a public letter making sure that everyone knew about the new evidence, and carefully phrased the letter in the most damaging possible way.

Any one of these things could be just an accident. Put them all together, and you need to be pretty obtuse not to see the partisan pattern. In every single case, Comey and the FBI did what was best for Republicans and worst for Democrats. In. Every. Single. Case.

If you want to believe this is just a coincidence, go ahead. But nobody with a room temperature IQ credits that. The FBI has spent the entire past year doing everything it could to favor one party over the other in a presidential campaign. Democrats ought to be in a seething fury about this. Instead, they're arguing about a few thousand white rural voters in Wisconsin and whether Hillary Clinton should have visited Michigan a few more times in October.

Winter Solstice 5:44 a.m. Wednesday

Of course the Xians stole it.  That's what they do. 

 

International Business Times:

For many who are already sick of long nights and wondering when the sun is going to start making a longer appearance in their lives, hope is right around the corner. Winter solstice will occur on Wednesday, marking the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, the moment when the North Pole is tilted furthest away from the sun – 23.5 degrees, to be precise. For 2016, the exact moment falls at 5.44 a.m. EST, Dec. 21.

While it also marks the start of astronomical winter, the winter solstice heralds the shift toward increasing sunlight hours. That is certainly something to be cherished today but for many cultures throughout history it has been considered a hugely significant event.

Pagans

Thousands of years ago, when people were dependent on the harvesting of crops for survival, the seasons and the sun were of crucial importance. Thus the winter solstice was seen as a rebirth, marking the start of lighter days. Many ancient civilizations, including the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, made offerings to gods as a celebration of the sun’s return.

One of the most enduring pagan celebrations of the winter solstice is the ancient German festival of Yule. As well as sacrifices being offered to the god Odin, it was an occasion for much merriment, with feasts, ale drinking and singing.

Stonehenge

Celebrations of winter solstice continue to this day, with one of the most prominent set to take place at Stonehenge. The English historical landmark is believed to have been constructed thousands of years ago by Celtic druids to line up with the exact position of the sunset on winter solstice. It was then the sight for a festival featuring animal sacrifices and much eating and drinking. In 2016, people – druid or not – will be given free admission to the site to observe the solstice, sans-sacrifice.

Christmas

Winter solstice celebrations also continue to live on with Christmas. Many traditions of Yule are linked with the Christian holiday, such as the Yule Log, which was burnt during Yule celebrations in ancient times and has now been made into a tasty treat. Christmas trees, mistletoe and gift-giving also have their roots with the winter solstice.

But the very date Christmas is celebrated also has its roots in the Pagan rituals. No date is given for Jesus’ birth in the Bible and it was originally Easter that was given far greater significance in the Christian calendar. It wasn’t until the fourth century that celebrating Christmas was crystalized in the calendar. It is believed by some that the date of Dec. 25 was chosen for Christmas in part because it coincided with the Roman winter solstice celebration of Saturnalia.

The best way to celebrate the beginning return of light and life is to get naked outside friends, jump in a hot tub and fuck your brains out.

 

You Are Not Entitled to Your Opinion

If your opinion is stupid.

 

PZ Myers:

You don’t get to declare whatever you dislike to be an opinion. You don’t get to regard your opinions as somehow sacrosanct. I am going to give you the information that shows your opinion is wrong, and the purpose of my teaching is to get you to change your opinions to something more productive and correct, and more in line with reality. Those kinds of opinions should not survive an encounter with the facts.

So I’m already in agreement with this philosophical position that “No, you’re not entitled to your opinion”. There are different kinds of opinions, and this is a very useful explanation.

Plato distinguished between opinion or common belief (doxa) and certain knowledge, and that’s still a workable distinction today: unlike “1+1=2” or “there are no square circles,” an opinion has a degree of subjectivity and uncertainty to it. But “opinion” ranges from tastes or preferences, through views about questions that concern most people such as prudence or politics, to views grounded in technical expertise, such as legal or scientific opinions.

You can’t really argue about the first kind of opinion. I’d be silly to insist that you’re wrong to think strawberry ice cream is better than chocolate. The problem is that sometimes we implicitly seem to take opinions of the second and even the third sort to be unarguable in the way questions of taste are. Perhaps that’s one reason (no doubt there are others) why enthusiastic amateurs think they’re entitled to disagree with climate scientists and immunologists and have their views “respected.”

I have to agree. The statements “I like chocolate ice cream” and “I think the earth is 6000 years old” are both opinions all right, in a shallow and colloquial sense, but they are qualitatively different. That I respect your right to have your own taste in ice cream should not imply that I also grant you the privilege to ignore our shared reality. The author, Patrick Stokes, explains all this with examples from anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers, but it’s true for lots of phenomena.

It’s the core of the Answers in Genesis claim that they are using the same facts, but different views (they prefer to use the word “worldviews” over “opinions”, but it’s the same thing). They think they’re entitled to their own opinions and interpretations of reality, and that they can look at a Cretaceous fossil and declare that, in their opinion, that dinosaur died in the Great Flood in 2304BC…they certainly have the right to say that, but they go further and demand that you respect that opinion as equally valid to that of a scientist.

We also see it in politics. Look at this claim by Scottie Nell Hughes:

“On one hand, I hear half the media saying that these are lies. But on the other half, there are many people that go ‘No it’s true,’” Hughes said. “And so one thing that has been interesting this entire campaign season to watch, is that people who say ‘facts are facts,’— they’re not really facts.”

“Everybody has a way—It’s kind of like looking at ratings, or looking at a glass of half-full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth or not true. There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore, as facts,” she added.

I’m pretty sure Hughes would argue that the facts show that she is a mammalian humanoid, with records to show that she was born to fully human parents, but it is my opinion that she, and all the other Trump surrogates, are actually alien reptoids who hatched from eggs incubated in a dungheap. And apparently, she’d agree that her facts are useless and my interpretation is perfectly valid.

Unless, of course, we can agree that some opinions are falsifiable.

As always, if your opinion is that scientific facts like global warming, heliocentrism and evolution are wrong, please report to the roof of the nearest 10-story building and jump off. Gravity is just an opinion.

What Does Trump's Secretary of State Value More?

Serving the people of the United States of America or his stock options?

Political Animal:

On the idea that Tillerson would divest himself of Exxon stocks, Mitchell Schnurman found that might not be possible because “1.9 million shares [of his 3.7 million] held by Tillerson, worth over $177 million, were not vested at the end of 2015. And they’re not scheduled to vest for years.” Questions about this should certainly be raised at his confirmation hearing.

But of course the same question applies to the Dorito-Dusted Toupee, who is only in this for the grifting.

Lexington Police Recruit Class Missing Something ....

Thirteen white men, four black men and one white woman as far as I can tell from the photograph.  

 

 

 

Step it up, Lexington.  You needed nine more women and two Hispanics in that class.  But congrats on 22 percent African-Americans.

From the Herald:

Eighteen recruits graduated Thursday from the Lexington Police Training Academy.

The ceremony on the Bluegrass Community and Technical College’s Newtown Campus marked the end of 32 weeks in the academy.

The class increases the size of the police force to 546 sworn officers, police spokeswoman Brenna Angel said. Additionally, there are 12 recruits in the academy’s next class.

The Resistance: Speak Up!

Political Animal:

* It is extraordinary that an outgoing Secretary of the Interior feels the need to speak these words in 2016. But then, we are living in extraordinary times.

Scientists must confront climate change deniers and speak up if U.S. President-elect Donald Trump tries to sideline climate research, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell is due to say on Wednesday.

“If you see science being ignored or compromised, speak up,” Jewell will tell a meeting of earth and space scientists in San Francisco, according to a draft of the speech seen by Reuters…

“Think about where to raise your voice and then do it,” Jewell will tell a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) – a global association of researchers. “The American people must be able to trust science.”

Repealing Obamacare is All About Stealing All Your Money and Giving It To Millionaires

Just like everything repugs do.

 

Political Animal:

* For years, liberals were cautious about touting the redistributive effects of Obamacare. As Republicans continue to look towards repeal of the law, Howard Gleckman crunches the numbers on how that will affect Americans across the class divide.

Repealing the Affordable Care Act would cut taxes significantly for the highest income one percent of US households, according to a new Tax Policy Center analysis. At the same time, it would raise taxes on average for low- and moderate-income households.

 

 

Now that's what I call wealth redistribution.

The Resistance: How the Minority Party Cheats

Political Animal:

This is the kind of thing Zachary Roth was referring to when he wrote:

Today’s conservatives have no such confidence that the people are on their side. In fact, they are beginning to perceive that they’re in the minority – perhaps more glaringly than ever before. And yet this realization has brought with it another more hopeful one: being outnumbered doesn’t have to mean losing.

Roth goes on to describe the various assaults on democracy that are being embraced by Republicans in order to avoid losing, even in the minority. Doug Muder wrote about about how these attacks on our democratic institutions are fueled by igniting a confederate insurgency:

The essence of the Confederate worldview is that the democratic process cannot legitimately change the established social order, and so all forms of legal and illegal resistance are justified when it tries…

The Confederate sees a divinely ordained way things are supposed to be, and defends it at all costs. No process, no matter how orderly or democratic, can justify fundamental change.

Shared Values

Racism is so much more rewarding when it's sanctified by your church.

 

PZ Myers:

That’s easy. They’ve encouraged them to get rid of the sheets, stop burning crosses, put on nice clothes, get elected to high office, and perpetuate the same hate and discrimination and oppression under a different name: “alt right”, “white nationalism”, “conservativism”. The KKK, a Christian racist organization, has shriveled away as it took over the Republican party, a Christian racist organization.

The Church Lady now says, “Don’t you dare call their policies racist! That’s offensive!”

The War on Religion

Divine Irony:

Pay no attention to the ridiculously-out-of-season tornadoes.

The National Weather Service just issued a fucking Tornado Warning for Western and Southwestern Kentucky.

On the seven-fucking-teenth of De-fucking-cember.

Tornado season in Kentucky is April 1 to June 30.  Always has been.  Never will be again.

No, this is not global warming.  Nothing is ever global warming.

But if, after January 20, the National Weather Service suddenly stops reporting weather that does not fit the climate change denialists' fantasies, you'll know why.

The War on Abused Children

Divine Irony:

And Phillippine mass murderer Duterte is proving it with his executions of thousands of addicts.

The Resistance: A Practical Guide

Organize, organize, organize.

 

TPM:

A group of former congressional staffers has a message for Democrats dismayed at Donald Trump’s election: act like the tea party.

In an online guide made public Wednesday night, a number of those onetime Hill staffers say that the best way for individuals to derail the policy agenda of Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) is to organize locally and badger their own congressional representatives to vote against individual pieces of legislation.

The guide argues that, like the “Tea Party patriots” who found common cause in their unified loathing of President Barack Obama, progressives who oppose Trump should stand against him before all else rather than try to articulate a policy agenda that has no hope of advancing while the GOP controls all three branches of government.

“We believe that the next four years depend on citizens across the country standing indivisible against the Trump agenda,” the authors write in the guide, which is formatted as a live Google document. “We believe that buying into false promises or accepting partial concessions will only further empower Trump to victimize our fellow citizens. We hope that this guide will provide those who share that belief useful tools to make Congress listen.”

Cops Already Have All Your Info, Just Waiting for the Right Charge

And under the Fascist Tangelo, Living While Non-White, Non-Male, Non-xian and Non-Straight will be capital crimes.

Patricia J. Williams at The Nation:

This lack of regulation—and public ignorance of such systems’ existence—means that police departments are able to use facial recognition to identify and track law-abiding citizens as well as criminal suspects. Many police departments are able to run “continuous, real-time scans of people walking by a surveillance camera”—without warrant, reasonable suspicion, or any other limitation. The report found that of 52 agencies polled, only one prohibits officers from “using face recognition to track individuals engaging in political, religious, or other protected free speech.” In addition, facial-recognition technologies are manufactured by private companies using proprietary algorithms generally classified as intellectual property or trade secrets. Hence, few measures exist for ensuring accuracy through public oversight, regular maintenance, or published operating standards.

In addition, the potential for error—particularly racially based error—seems built into the machine

Having “nothing to hide” only gets you so far when there is no way to contest the judgments of a hidden gaze. “We don’t want the bad guys to know that we’re out there,” declared Rhodes. “We want them to worry about whether or not they’re being watched.” This appropriation of surveillance authority creates a pervasive us versus them mentality, eradicating the boundary between liberty and license. So here we are, fellow citizens—at a moment when libertarianism’s distaste for oversight intersects with technological totalism. We flow seamlessly, helplessly, into sweeping currents of the quietly totalitarian.