Interesting Times

Anyone else feel like we are sleepwalking off a precipice ?  And that our governments are utterly unprepared for the next shoe to drop, having exhausted all the tools in their toolbox during the last crisis ?*


Meanwhile, apparently this is a thing:

People's poorly remembered experiences with an unusually titled series of childrens' books**, from their childhood, at a time when they were just barely learning to read, as evidence of alternate dimensions/parallel universes, rewritten history, interference by aliens, time-travel, or the like...

As a lifelong fan of escapism (hey, I still watch Doctor Who, though I'm not sure Moffat appreciates the escapist element fully), I can't blame people for wanting to escape from reality.  Certainly not in times like these.  The present sucks, and the future looks bleak indeed.  But meanwhile our overlords in government and in the business-classes are continuing to pursue policies that are destroying our planet, and planning for the future when then need to pull up the ladders behind them, as they batten the hatches, and leave us to drown, safely ensconced (they hope) in their fortified private compounds.***  And ninety-plus percent of us aren't paying any attention whatsoever.

Aw, what the hell ?  No-one cares.  Interview with a/the Vampire, Fruit/Froot Loops, Nelson Mandela dying in prison, Sex in/and the City, 52 states in the US, New Zealand changing location, Henry VIII with a turkey-leg in his hand****, Magic mirror on the wall...have at it.

We're all gonna die !  Possibly imminently if the conflict with Russia goes nuclear.  But...isn't this just the cutest likkle doggie you ever did see ?!!

* Mixing metaphors all over the place.  And no, I don't fully understand the significance in the drop-off of the PRC and others purchasing US debt.  Nor am I sure I want to...

** Always thought the spelling was weird; Never imagined it would be inspiring conspiracy-theories in multiple generations of adults.

*** Mixing metaphors with abandon now.  Whee !

**** Wouldn't chicken be more likely ?

That Mitchell and Webb Look: Diana Assassination

Jade Helm 15

So, years of the GOP and the right-wing media in the United States fomenting irrational fears about the Federal government and Barack Obama, led some of their followers to actually believe that a routine training-exercise by the US military represented some sort of threat of invasion/illegal takeover by the Federal government.  To the degree that actual sitting Congressmen expressed concern publicly, and the actual Governor of Texas, ordered the State Guard to monitor the activity, being carried out by...the military of the United States of America.

Sounds crazy, doesn't it.  But what could actually go wrong ?

Other than shots being fired by two white guys in a pickup, at soldiers in training.

Or a bunch of anti-government nuts hoarding guns and making explosives, to use apparently in defence against said non-existent federal takeover.

And the exercise isn't even halfway over yet, so who knows what more might be in the pipeline ?

Not that the conclusion of the exercise in September with the US somehow miraculously not under martial law will do squat to ease the paranoia of the nuts in question (ie, a huge swath of the GOP's electorate).  'No', they'll say, 'what really happened is that we spooked 'em.  We showed Obama and those other UN New World Order-types that we knew what they was up to and they warn't gonna mess with Texas**.  You wanna come here, 'n' take our, guns, then suck on this !'  Followed by the explosive sound of a gunshot as one of them accidentally blows off their own head, or that of their dog, or their child.  But they died free, see, and that Commie Muslim Kenyan interloper didn't get 'em after all.


* I didn't intend to say a word on this idiocy, but it...just...won't...go away...And now we're getting close to people actually being killed over this nonsense.

** I know, I know, these two cases in question weren't in Texas...Oh that it were only the population of one state that had gone batshit-insane.

That Is All

DefundPlannedParenthoodSanctuaryCitiesHillaryClintonsEmailKatesLawISISCrossingtheMexicanBorderSellingFetalBodyPartsJadeHelmObamaTakingAwayYourGunsCreepingSocialismIRSPersecutingTheTeaPartyObamaIsNevilleChamberlainWorseThanSlaveryWorseThantheHolocaustDeathPanelsAmeroDemocratsBetrayingIsraelFomentingClassWarfareDenyingAmericanExceptionalismMostDangerousPlaceforaBlackBabyisintheWombVinceFosterSecuretheBorderFirstSoonPeoplesWillBeMarryingAnimalsCriminalizingChristianityFakeBirthCertificateSolyndraAcornReverendWrightBillAyersDemocratsaretheRealRacistsEricHolderGroundZeroMosqueSecretMuslimObamaAteDogsFastandFuriousVAScandalObamaPlanningIllegalThirdTermGroverNorquistisaMuslimSpyWhiteyTapeSecretFEMAReeducationCampsBlackPanthersResetButtonCommunityOrganizerSaulAlinskyObamaBowingSurrenderingtoIranLoveChildofMalcolmXMichelleObamaRuinedMySchoolLunchRulesforRadicalsWhyDoesObamaHateAmericaForcedtoMakeGayWeddingCakeWorstPresidentEverGlobalWarmingisaHoaxSupportingCubanDictatorsChristianNationStandwithIsraelWorsethanHitlerWhichSymbolKilledMoreBlackBabiesShariaLawinAmericaBadDealBenghazi!!!!!

Where are all the Conspiracy-Theorists When You Need Them ?

Photographer: Maring Photography/Getty Images/Contour by Getty Images

Newlyweds Donald Trump Sr. and Melania Trump with Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bill Clinton at their reception held at The Mar-a-Lago Club in January 22, 2005 in Palm Beach, Florida.

Not gonna dwell on this, but given all the other ridiculous shit that gets thrown around...

We have in the Republican primaries one individual currently that is sucking all the attention away from the other candidates, who will deny at least one 'serious' candidate a place in the first debates on Fox News, and who is an absolute dream-candidate for the Democrats, speaking as he does to the Republican base's more angry paranoid bigoted id, and attracting all kinds of negative attention to the GOP from the media.

And that candidate, who as he himself repeatedly brings up, is (according to him) fabulously wealthy, and can afford to run, even if it costs him multiple business-deals, in the name of 'making American Great Again.'

And said candidate just so happens to be a long-time friend of, past proponent of, and past contributor to, one Hillary Clinton, a corporatist shill for Wall Street, who happens to be the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.  And who happens to benefit enormously from the Donald's presence in the race.

Crazier things, and all that...

Breitbart: Obama Thinks Iran is...'Rational' !

Gasp.  <Faints>  How dare he speak so of our former alliesthe evil empire that is the Satanic Republic of Iranistan ?

Okay, okay, let's get to it...

However, the most interesting point reported by The Times of Israel, is Obama’s opinion of the Iranian regime.

(Reported by The Times of Israel !  Not like we can't just read the damn transcript for ourselves)

Goldberg asked Obama if the fact that the Iranian regime is anti-Semitic, and thus possessed of a warped view of the way the world works, shouldn’t preclude a negotiating strategy that treats Tehran as a rational player. But the president replied that the regime’s survival instinct is more powerful than other calculations, including its hatred of Jews and imperialist aspirations.

“Well, the fact that you are anti-Semitic, or racist, doesn’t preclude you from being interested in survival,” he said. “It doesn’t preclude you from being rational about the need to keep your economy afloat; it doesn’t preclude you from making strategic decisions about how you stay in power; and so the fact that the supreme leader is anti-Semitic doesn’t mean that this overrides all of his other considerations.”

Tehran, he continued, won’t make irrational decisions — an apparent reference to the regime breaking away to a nuclear weapon or attacking another country — that would threaten its very survival. “What we’ve been very clear [about] to the Iranian regime over the past six years is that we will continue to ratchet up the costs, not simply for their anti-Semitism, but also for whatever expansionist ambitions they may have,” he said.

Just shocking.  I can't believe he said all that.  It's just outrageous !  What is wrong with the man ?

Obama is right. Iran is suffering severe internal problems. Rampant, out of control drug abuse, obscene levels of corruption, and severe economic problems are tearing at the foundations of the Iranian tyranny.

According to the Daily Mail, around seven per cent of Iran’s population remain addicted to hard drugs. On top of Iran’s already hideous problems with the flood of dirt cheap opium and heroin pouring out of Afghanistan, Iran has lately acquired a dangerous taste for crystal meth.

Okay, just WTF now ?

...

For all we know, the Supreme Leader of Iran himself could be a meth addict – suffering drug induced psychosis, paranoia, experiencing drug induced delusions about his own mission to remake the world, lusting for the destructive might which nuclear weapons would grant to his addled megalomanic fantasies.

Hitler was a well known meth addict  – under the influence of meth, he ordered the commission of irrational atrocities, such as the infamous Nero decree, Hitler’s order to destroy everything of value which might be seized by advancing Russian soldiers. The Nero decree was not executed – Albert Speer, in the final days of the war disobeyed Hitler, and refused to pointlessly destroy the infrastructure of Germany. But an occasional outbreak of reason was more the exception than the norm, in Hitler’s meth fuelled Reich.

And that's how the 'article' ends.  Reductio ad Hitlerum.  Shit.


For all we know, Bill Clinton could be a lizard-person from an alternate dimension.  George W Bush could have been an elaborate AI construct in the matrix. Vladimir Putin could be the second coming of Christ as understood in the cryptic version of the Gospel of Judas.  Steve Jobs could have been secretly an Arab (well, not really a secret as such).  Margaret Thatcher could have had a secret sexual obsession with Ken Livingstone.  For all we know, Ayn Rand could have been a rabidly anti-Christian atheist (uh, well, actually...)  Stalin could have had a really vulnerable soft spot for puppies, and secretly donated to funds for orphans.  For all we know, Luke Skywalker could have been the bastard child of Darth Vader.  For all we know, John McCain's anti-aging regimen could involve the daily bathing in the blood of Mexican babies.  For all we know, the staff at Breitbart might contain an actual journalist or two.... What after all....do we...actually...know ?


So easy, and ultimately futile (given the audience) to mock, but the full interview is arguably worth reading...okay, skimming, especially if you want to skip the facile spin than the traditional outlets will inevitably want to place on it:  http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/05/obama-interview-iran-isis-israel/393782/


Below the fold, here's how the interview ends, and the part that I personally found the most interesting:

In Defence of Dumbfuckery

Er, Digby...just why exactly would you assume the young lady in question is confusing  her 'pseudo-scandals' ?  And wait, is Watergate a 'pseudo-scandal' now or 'the greatest political scandal in American history' ?

Really, there's three questions to ask here:

1. Was Hillary involved in the Watergate hearings ?
2. Did Hillary lie at the Watergate hearings ?
3. Is a self-confessed fan of Ted Cruz likely to care about the actual facts regarding 1 or 2 if they support a current right-wing meme ?

We could answer our first question with a quick trip to Wikipedia, but hey, 'anyone can edit Wikipedia' right ?  (Well, sorta...)  So how about a reference to oh, I don't know...The William J. Clinton Presidential Library say ?

After graduating from Wellesley College in 1969, Hillary entered Yale Law School where she met Bill Clinton. In 1974, at the height of the Watergate scandal, Hillary worked on the staff assisting the House Judiciary Committee with its investigation of the Nixon administration.

So, yeah.

Hillary Rodham (center), a lawyer for the Rodino Committee and John Doar (left), chief counsel for the committee, bring impeachment charges against President Richard Nixon in the Judiciary Committee hearing room at the U.S. Capitol in 1974 in Washington.

Short answer to our second question is that no-one knows for sure except perhaps Hillary.  But it does seem to be quite the right-wing meme that Hillary was fired from the Watergate hearings by Jerry Zeifman for lying, based on an article by one Dan Calabrese.  Snopes calls it False, and says that in fact Mister Zeifman had no authority to fire her (...but would if he could...), but it does sound like his recollections on the subject over the years have been changeable.

And again in 1998, Zeifman was undeniably quoted in a Scripps Howard News Service article as confirming that not only did he not "fire" Hillary, but that it was not even within his power to do so:

Jerome Zeifman, chief Democratic counsel on the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 ... does not have flattering memories of Rodham's work on the committee. "If I had the power to fire her, I would have fired her," he said.

So, she wasn't actually fired, and we certainly can't prove she lied, but that's not really important, because one guy said she's a liar...and...we get to link Hillary's name in a negative way to another famous political scandal.  Which leads us to...

Pregunta número tres.  Well, who are you going to believe ?  Snopes ?  'The Liberal Media' ?
Or Daily Kos...sorry, Fox News, Hot Air, Breitbart, and Rush Limbaugh ?

I think you already know the answer to that.  And you know what, Amber *Liberty Girl* is free to believe what she wants, even if that's that Vince Foster was murdered to prevent him talking about a secret deal with the UN to take away everyone's guns and/or a secret lesbian tryst between Hillary and Janet Reno.  And she's young, so she may yet one day evolve out of the right-wing media bubble.

Give her a chance maybe ?  After all, I'm making an awful lot of assumptions about her political background (as is Digby) based on a quick perusal of her Twitter feed.  It may be that she just genuinely doesn't trust Auntie Hill.  I don't blame her for that if that's the score.  I don't either.

Your Daily Bullshit from the Tabloid Media, Complete with Chemtrails !

We do just love us some conspiracy-theories when it comes to air-disasters, don't we ? So, this story seems to be doing the rounds currently at all the usual tabloids:

So nothing to do with the suicidal pilot, the plane was hacked !  Wait, what was that you said ?  Bullshit ?  But it's from (a letter to) the Financial Times, so that makes it serious journalism.  Much props tabloid journos.  We've got us a quote from an 'aviation expert', the president of an actual (seemingly now defunct) airline.  Mister Matt Andersson.  Hmm, I wonder...

Wait, what's that second picture say again ?

Huh.  Weaponisation of weather.  Chemtrails.  Someone make this shit up ?  Where'd it come from ?  Oh, the Letters section of the Guardian: