…teflon don, indeed…I mean he’s about as slimy as they come & those Gerontologically Obselete Parasites have been greased up & bent over assuming the position for about as long as they’ve been abusing their positions as a branch of government in a supposedly representative democracy…guess some folks are just born slippy
Trump acquitted by Senate in impeachment trial
…it is what it is…& we all knew it was coming & that when it did this was about the way it would go…so why it feels like such a gut-punch is hard to say…perhaps some lingering attachment to the idea that the citizenry of the land of the free & the home of the brave might, at the highest reaches of its institutions, be able to call upon some lingering semblance of respect for honor, duty, probity & other such quaint notions
…or, hell – just some respect for itself
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/trump-impeachment-sen-doug-jones-says-he-will-vote-convict-n1130756
…yeah, I know – hopelessly naive when you think about it…which apparently I can’t help but do…I mean, I can’t remember the whole thing verbatim but I’m pretty sure there’s some stuff in the oath these people swear when they take their place in the Senate that once upon a time indicated that my fond imaginings were held to be not-unreasonable expectations
…even – or possibly even especially – this guy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/05/mitt-romneys-stand-ages/
…so…it doesn’t help that they finally got to Spartacus
…we can debate whether the death grip the pre-embalmed corpse that is Mitch retains on the levers of power represents the true nuclear option in this brave new world but even as we lose another star from the firmament it’s worth remembering how this shit works at the end of the day
…after all, one explanation for why we seem to have wound up on what a lot of folks refer to as “the darkest timeline” is that the sheer mass of bullshit introduced into the world by these malignant fuckwits has accreted to the point of being able to warp space-time by virtue of its gravitational properties…& I don’t know about you but I’m about as critical of that mass as I know how to be
Impeachment didn’t remove Trump. But what if elections won’t either?
…& remember that that nuclear option isn’t really the big dog when it comes to blowing shit up…your really big bangs aren’t even the ones that start out as explosions…& when you’re a corpulent corporate bastard with no heart or soul & no discernible brain (much less mind) the likelihood of collapsing in on yourself seems like an odds-on kind of a thing
…still, they do say it always helps to keep things in perspective
Holy fucking shit….Sage mother Fucking Francis. One of my favorites, never thought I’d see it on here. I have seen him several times and even in Syracuse, where he sat and talked with my friends and I for a minute. Awesome, also, this site helps me wake up each morning, thank you.,
I’d never heard of him before SplinterRIP and Myo introduced me to him. I don’t listen to a lot of Rap and Hip Hop. But they converted me. If you stop by DUAN on any given night you’ve got a good chance of seeing something by Sage Francis.
another one of his best, and one of my favorite albums (personal journalist)
…always had a soft spot for “a healthy distrust” but it’s tough to pick a favorite if I’m honest?
Too soon?
https://gawker.com/5893793/did-robert-downey-jr-really-just-accuse-kirk-douglas-of-a-brutal-rape
No, he was never formally accused or charged of a crime. But don’t forget that the same types of stories were well known in Hollywood about Harvey Weinstein and Keven Spacey for years too.
More sad news. Tim the Elephant has died. RIP big guy.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-51391422
Brief preface: Obama is a flawed man, so he was a flawed president and I hope he’s held to account someday.
Today’s one of those days where I remember for eight straight years the GOP and the media and the general public questioned every one of Obama’s actions on the daily and now those same people just shrug and grin when Trump actively harms the country and initiates policies designed to hurt people. After Trump won, some said “Well, now you know how people felt about Obama!” which is bullshit because Obama was extremely benign in all that he did.
Trump is a terrorist.
…not just any terrorist…he’s a stochastic terrorist…which is almost impressive given you know he couldn’t spell stochastic without autocorrect bailing out his slack ass
…right there with you rrpete
Yeah, as much as people love to bitch about “liberal media bias”, they sure never had a problem parroting bullshit right wing talking points as if they were facts and not just a bunch of propaganda. Major “news” outlets had as much to do with damaging Obama’s ability to get shit done as the Republicans.
When I think back on the tone the media took with Obama I recall that everything ended with a concerned question. For example:
“Today, President Obama announced that all dogs are good boys. But do all Americans think so? Let’s ask Ted Cruz”
But Trump literally sundowns every day and they report it matter-of-factly.
“Today, President Trump tweeted “Eat shit libz.” The inflammatory language has some rankled. His border wall is coming along, but some say not so much.”
And this is why Trump still polls at 40%. If people got to watch him babble, unedited, like he today at the White House, maybe they would “get it” because that’s him every day. If the news explained to people that it isn’t normal for an adult man to whine about every grievance done him, maybe we’d get a few more people to turn. Instead, the “news” is a 24/7 uncritical advertisement for Trump.
…more & more I think it’s that at some level they (& very possibly we) are scared to lay hold of the various loose ends & dangling clauses that spill forth most particularly from sphincter-lips himself but to a greater or lesser extent from a wide swathe of politicians & media pundits alike
…they had a good thing going when everyone could abide by some unwritten rules about mutual backscratching & the benefits of avoiding a state of mutually assured destruction but that sort of thing was a hell of a lot easier when “the paper of record” was considered a trusted source of honest factual reporting, rightly or wrongly
…but once the 24hr rolling news cycle took hold it seems like we started to take leave of our collective senses…never mind there’s enough world out there with enough going on in it that we could fill 24hrs of coverage a day pretty much exclusively with stuff that would actually be news to most of us…nah…what we can do instead is utterly saturate the media landscape with a million & one flavors of the same half a dozen stories in a way which – surprise, surprise – lends itself to the cause of proselytizing for fundamentally mendacious misrepresentation in service of malign political interests…that all too frequently align almost entirely with those of extreme wealth & meagre morals
…the tangerine toddler broke the thing & the cracks are well & truly showing but if those on the media side of things stop accepting self-serving pablum as though it’s a substantive answer to a serious question how much of that precarious symbiosis do you figure survives?
…& now that it’s dawned on me that I might even be asking that in earnest…I think I could do with a drink if you don’t mind
Bottom line is that they are so afraid of being called bad names by right wingers that they completely overcompensate to the point of shirking their actual journalistic responsibilities.
Also most of these media companies are owned by huge corporations and are therefore less inclined to want anything resembling some dirty commie point of view.
Yep, I am not allowing the “Democrats in Disarray” narrative to take hold here. Apparently the phone number caucus leaders needed to use was posted to 4chan and Trump supporters flooded the lines. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-06/trump-fans-flooded-iowa-caucus-hotline-top-democrat-says
Christ. Fucking assholes.
…this kind of thing is exactly the sweet spot for the assholes who think they’re smarter than everyone else because they’re gaming the system to what they still somehow believe is their advantage
…the fact is that not only do they not understand the ramifications of the wanton damage they’re causing…or perceive the degree to which the benefit to hostile interests of their doing so utterly eclipses the paltry justifications they rely on to feel good about themselves
…they can’t allow themselves to…so their subconscious fights tooth & nail to keep them down that rabbit hole…the alternative is the implosion of their entire worldview & a substantial portion of their psyche
…because let’s face it if you’re still in the bag for those folks after what they’ve been up to you’re either irredeemably corrupt yourself…or not able to think clearly enough to process the simple truth that to support the republicans in the next election cycle is to court destruction on the scale of the proverbial turkeys voting for christmas
…as far as I’m concerned there probably already ought to be some campaign team out there mocking up posters of all the senators that voted to acquit cheetolini as big ol’ gobblers with a strap-line about christmas being in november this year
I think some of them straight up are addicted to chaos, too. I don’t even think they sit down and consider the consequences – they just want to fuck shit up.
The U.S. Senate has conducted 16 impeachment trials in its history.
Trials #1-15: Witness testimony.
Trial #16: GOP: LOL.
https://www.citizensforethics.org/press-release/impeachment-witness-testimony-2/
Look at that!
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/satellite-caucuses-give-a-surprise-boost-to-sanders-in-iowa/
the popular vote has been berned:
Buttigieg 42,235 25.0%Sanders 44,753 26.5%
Warren 34,312 20.3%
Biden 23,051 13.7%
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/04/us/elections/results-iowa-caucus.html