The Bully’s Puppets 0
Robert Reich looks at how the rich and powerful use misdirection plays to get even more rich and powerful and expresses hope that persons are finally catching on. An excerpt; follow the link for the rest.
The bullied are still there; Trump is still exploiting their anger.
For nearly a decade, Trump has channeled that anger into racism, nativism and misogyny. He has encouraged his followers to feel powerful by bullying those with even less power: poor Black and Latino people, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, Muslims, families seeking asylum, undocumented workers, pregnant women who can’t afford to travel to a state where abortions are legal.
This bullying game has been played repeatedly in history by self-described strongmen who pretend to be tribunes of the oppressed by scapegoating the truly powerless, but who are actually fronting for the rich and powerful.
In reality, Trump and his lackeys work for the oligarchs — cutting their taxes, rolling back regulations that protect the public but that cost the oligarchs, and dividing the rest of us into warring factions so we don’t look upward to see where most power and wealth have gone.
The good news is that Americans are catching on.
A Trumpled Crypto Con 0
What can I say?
Grifters gotta grift.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” (Updated) 0
Yet another “responsible gun owner” chooses to settle a dispute with politeness.
Addendum:
The “responsible gun owner” may be required to accept responsibility.
What You Watch Is Watching You 0
From Ars Technica, via Bruce Schneier:
Scary details at the link.
Aside:
And people fret about government surveillance . . . .
Methinks corporate surveillance is much more dangerous.
The Unswayables 0
Werner Herzog’s Bear offers a theory as to why Donald Trump’s cult is so loyal to a man who has repeatedly demonstrated that he is loyal to no one and nothing. Here’s a bit (emphasis added):
Trump and his MAGA slogan symbolize the maintenance of all kinds of hierarchies. His name on a sign means support for men in charge, white people in charge, LGBTQ people in the closet, Christianity assumed, and immigrants deported. While not all Trump supporters fit all of these categories, each has at least of one these hierarchies in mind when it comes to their support. Trump could indeed shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose support because what he does is literally meaningless. All of his meaning is symbolic.
I commend the entire piece to your attention.
(Missing link found.)
Happy Birthday to Me 0
This blog first came live 19 years ago today from my guest room on one of the original IBM Pentiums (given to me by a co-worker who was cleaning out a closet) running Slackware v. 10.x. I wanted to learn how to self-host a website.
A lot has happened since then, including database crashes, data loss, migration to a hosting provider, migration from shared hosting to a VPS, etc., etc. I’m no longer self-hosting, but I’m still learning stuff . . . .
All That Was Old Is New Again 0
Eamma and the crew discuss Fox News’s attempt to make birtherism great again.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Settle disputes over parking places with politeness.
Thus passeth another day in the NRA’s Gun Den of Eden.
This New Gilded Age 0
At Above the Law, Joe Patrice notes that, in real estate price-fixing management company RealPage’s own words, the price-fix was in.
QOTD 0
Phoebe Atwood Taylor, in the voice of Asey Mayo:
Funny. Civ’lization doesn’t seem like such a swell thing when you’re in it, but when you ain’t got it, it begins t’ appear like there was somethin’ in it after all.
Taylor, Phoebe Atwood, Death Lights a Candle (Woodstock, VT: Countryman Press, 2005) p. 125
A Tune for the Times 0
(Warning: Short commercial at about the one-minute mark, but the tune is worth it.)
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
The New Secesh decide that, if all else fails to bring back the Confederacy, let’s craft a Way-Back machine?
A Notion of Immigrants 0
David debunks de bunk.
Aside:
This conspiracy theory is, indeed, laughable from the git-go, as David points out.
But it’s not really about elections.
It’s about rallying the bigots and racists who are Trump’s base.
Republican Thought Police 0
“Vengeance is ours,” sayeth the Republican Thought Police.