A Fine Trolling.

littlemarco-800x430

Screen Grab.

Yet more constituents, frustrated by the republican response of running away in the face of questions, and people wanting actual answers, have come up with another excellent trolling effort. The target this time is Marco Rubio, who like his compatriots, is hiding in fear of having to give a straight answer.

“Missing – U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (FL-R),” the flier reads, with a picture of the Republican senator. The signs add that Rubio “refuses to take meeting with his constituents” regarding his votes in favor of Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

“Side note, he accepted $100,000 from DeVos family, which might have swayed his vote.”

The fliers also charge Rubio with not responding “to hundred of emails, phone calls and voicemails” and claim he has not been seen in his office for weeks.

Rubio engaged Tillerson in a contentious back-and-forth during the Secretary of State’s confirmation hearing, at one point asking Tillerson if he would label Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal.”

Despite originally sparring with Tillerson, Rubio confirmed the former Exxon CEO, Rubio voted for Tillerson, prompting a Greenpeace activist to protest the Florida senator by holding a spine prop behind him during a press gaggle.

Rubio also voted to confirm DeVos, despite a massive public campaign to sway the senator’s vote.

Naturally, there was an outraged denial from Rubio’s spokesperson:

“Anyone who claims they can’t get in touch with Senator Rubio’s office is being dishonest,” the spokesperson said. “Our Tampa office only has two employees and serves multiple counties, yet they have met with dozens of these liberal activists.”

“This is nothing more than a strategy outlined in an online activist manual to carry out ‘mass office calling,’” the spokesperson continued. “In the manual, activists are instructed that ‘you and your group should all agree to call in on one specific issue that day.’ They are further instructed that ‘the next day or week, pick another issue, and call again on that.’ Their goal is to flood offices with calls and emails and then go to the press and claim they aren’t getting a response.”

Right. That’s why rethugs are canceling town halls left and right. This is a way to apply pressure, and rightfully so, because people want answers. Full story here.

On National Strike.

On strike today. See you all on Saturday!

 

Demonstrators block an escalator at the international terminal as protests against President Donald Trump's executive order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries continue at San Francisco International Airport, Sunday, Jan. 29, 2017. (AP Photo/Olga Rodriguez).

Demonstrators block an escalator at the international terminal as protests against President Donald Trump’s executive order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries continue at San Francisco International Airport, Sunday, Jan. 29, 2017. (AP Photo/Olga Rodriguez).

In a column for the Guardian on Monday, American writer Francine Prose called for a “nonviolent national general strike” to demonstrate “how many of us there are, how strong and committed we are, how much we can accomplish.”

She wrote: “Let’s designate a day on which no one (that is, anyone who can do so without being fired) goes to work, a day when no one shops or spends money, a day on which we truly make our economic and political power felt.”

Calls to do just that have been circulating online recently, with activists setting Feb. 17 — the Friday before President’s Day — as the day for a #nationalstrike against the presidency of Donald Trump.

No one working, no one buying anything, for one day. I realize not everyone will be able to blithely ignore their job for one day, but if you can get away with it, please, please, do. Affinity will be closed for the strike on Friday, February 17th, and I will post a reminder prior to the day. Pretty sure most people can manage to forgo shopping for one day. Be ungovernable.

The full, in-depth story is at News.Mic.

The Race to Ruination.

Photograph: Isopix/REX.

Photograph: Isopix/REX.

George Soros has an interesting article up at The Guardian, about Russia and the EU. There are some very good points made, and it’s difficult to pay attention to everything happening on the world stage right now, which is a gift to unscrupulous leaders.

…Putin is a gifted tactician, but not a strategic thinker. There is no reason to believe he intervened in Syria in order to aggravate the European refugee crisis. Indeed, his intervention was a strategic blunder because it embroiled him in a conflict with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, which has hurt the interests of both.

But once Putin saw the opportunity to hasten the EU’s disintegration, he seized it. He has obfuscated his actions by talking of cooperating against a common enemy, Isis. He has followed a similar approach in Ukraine, signing the Minsk agreement but failing to carry out its provisions.

It is hard to understand why US and EU leaders take Putin at his word rather than judging him by his behaviour. The only explanation I can find is that democratic politicians seek to reassure their publics by painting a more favourable picture than reality justifies. The fact is that Putin’s Russia and the EU are engaged in a race against time: the question is which one will collapse first.

The Putin regime faces bankruptcy in 2017, when a large part of its foreign debt matures, and political turmoil may erupt sooner than that. The president’s popularity, which remains high, rests on a social compact requiring the government to deliver financial stability and a slowly but steadily rising standard of living. Western sanctions, coupled with the sharp decline in the price of oil, will force the regime to fail on both counts.

Unless something happens to prevent it, the current regime in the U.S. will help Russia out financially, by most likely lifting sanctions and going through with that 500 billion dollar oil deal in the Antarctic. If that does take place, it won’t be good, certainly no better than where things stand right now.

The full article is at The Guardian.

Devil-Worshiping, Luciferian, Demon-Possessed Maniacs!

Belzebuth ou Belzebub ou Beelzebuth, J.A.S. Collin de Plancy. Dictionnaire Infernal. Paris : E. Plon, 1863. Prince of demons, the first in power and crimes after Satan. Cornell University Library.

Belzebuth ou Belzebub ou Beelzebuth, J.A.S. Collin de Plancy. Dictionnaire Infernal. Paris : E. Plon, 1863.
Prince of demons, the first in power and crimes after Satan. Cornell University Library.

Rick Wiles has come completely unglued, not that he had far to go in that regard. He’s now floating in Alex Jones territory, doing all he can to keep the pizza place conspiracy alive, although I don’t know why. I’ve lived through two major Satanic Panics, where nationwide devil worship was posited, a massive conspiracy of murder, rape, and sacrifices, oh my! None of this shit actually happened, but plenty of people were happy to believe it, at the behest of those who found it a good way to make money. Books were written, it was on news shows, the whole thing. I guess I get to live through a third one, if these idiotic christian fanatics get their way. I’ll just go with the assumption that this latest is yet another way for these professional liars to fill their coffers. Mr. Wiles and his cohorts should remember that in their chosen mythology, there’s the demon Mammon.

Mammon

Mammon, J.A.S. Collin de Plancy. Dictionnaire Infernal. Paris : E. Plon, 1863.

Wiles also can’t shut up about Ms. Clinton:

Claiming that a tweet from Clinton mocking the conspiracy theory was itself proof that the conspiracy is real, Wiles declared that Christians have no idea how many of their elected leaders are part of a “demonic system” that kidnaps children “to be raped, molested and then murdered.”

Our elected leaders, you say. Okay, why not have a close look at our elected leaders? We can start with the current administration. Plenty of material there without all the demonic pizza.

“Hillary Clinton is telling up front what this is all about,” he said. “She’s bragging it’s about Pizzagate. She’s telling them, ‘We took you down, you dared talk about our filthy child molestation and we took you down.’ That’s what she’s saying.” (Flynn’s son has avidly promoted the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, causing him to lose his job in the administration’s transition team, and Flynn himself has also embraced many wildconspiracytheories, including one linking Clinton to “sex crimes [with] children.”)

I’m pretty sure what Ms. Clinton said amounted to “Oh, bullshit!”

Wiles asserted that “devil-worshiping, Luciferian, demon-possessed maniacs” have formed a “criminal cabal [that is] running this nation and much of the world” that allows them to engage in “child trafficking, child molestation, child rape, [and] child murder.”

The Catholic Church is rife with people who molest and rape children. Child trafficking, child molestation, child rape, and child murder is most often done by people who believe in a god, often the christian god. The person who started raping me when I was a child characterized themselves as a good christian. Lots of “good christians” tied up in those activities. Christians are major consumers of porn. I think you should look to your own houses, they are taking on the stink of the Augean Stables.

When the truth is finally revealed, Wiles warned, “there will be mass vomiting in the society when the people find out what these demon-possessed rulers have been doing for decades with children.”

Oh, there’s plenty of vomiting already taking place over the way theists deal with children. Religion allows for some of the very worst child abuse, such as refusing to provide your child with medical care. Or deciding they are demon possessed, and using that as an excuse to beat the shit out of them. Or denying them an education. Or finding some way to justify sexually abusing them. Or filling their heads with visions of eternal anguish and torment at the hands of a psychopathic god.

“Many of the key officials, elected and appointed, and in corporate board rooms and in Hollywood and in New York City, they are part of a global child molestation ring,” said Wiles, who insisted that Clinton is now “relishing in the fact that they brought down General Flynn because he knows what they are and what they’re doing.”

So Hollywood and New York City are the latter day Sodom and Gomorrah? Trump’s from New York, perhaps you ought to cool it with the east coast blame, eh? The Tiny Tyrant might not like that. The only thing that brought down General Flynn was General Flynn. Like everyone else in the current administration, he was in over his head, lacked the requisite experience, and embodied the Peter Principle.

Via RWW.

Religious Freedom, A License to Discriminate.

Vice President Mike Pence speaking at the Heritage Foundation’s President’s Club Meeting in December. CREDIT: AP Photo/Cliff Owen.

Vice President Mike Pence speaking at the Heritage Foundation’s President’s Club Meeting in December. CREDIT: AP Photo/Cliff Owen.

It’s no secret that the constant rethug push for “religious freedom” is nothing more than ugly bigotry, and a way of oppressing already marginalized peoples. They are finally coming out and admitting as much.

The Heritage Foundation has been called “a driving force” behind the Trump White House due to its many close ties with the administration. This week, Heritage issued a new report drawing a strict line in opposition to any kind of nondiscrimination protection for LGBT people, citing “religious freedom” as such a vital right that any LGBT law would be a burden, regardless of whether it offered even the broadest of religious exemptions.

Heritage’s new report, “How to Think About Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) Policies and Religious Freedom,” takes the position that laws that protect LGBT people from discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations would be “unjustified.” To arrive at this conclusion, author Ryan T. Anderson undermines the legitimacy of LGBT identities and dismisses the reality of discrimination that LGBT people experience, shrugging off the consequences of that discrimination.

Anderson’s approach is to simply redefine terms in a way that suits Heritage’s anti-LGBT agenda. Wedding vendors that have been penalized for not serving same-sex couples, for example, weren’t “discriminating” against people because of their sexual orientation, but they simply refused service “because they judged in conscience that they could not endorse certain morally relevant conduct.” This is an argument that courts have roundly rejected, because only gay and bi people would enter a same-sex marriage, so it’s de facto discrimination based on sexual orientation, but the report simply denies that it’s “discrimination” or even “mistreatment” at all.

The Heritage Report also insists that sexual orientation and gender identity are not comparable to traits like race and sex because they are “subjective identities,” and thus not “verifiable.” They can only be defined, the report claims, based on “actions,” such as same-sex weddings or gender confirmation surgeries — not identities that people experience at every moment of their lives. This is nothing short of erasure of the LGBT human experience, diminishing it only to “actions” that religious conservatives can reject as “immoral.” It is in no way an accurate representation of how LGBT people experience their identities — and certainly runs contrary to everything psychology has learned about sexual orientation and gender identity.

Crucial to the report’s thesis is to downplay the extent that LGBT people even experience discrimination. This contradicts numerous studies that have shown rates of discrimination that cannot be characterized by mere anecdotes. The recent massive U.S. Trans Survey, for example, found that nearly 1 in 5 transgender people have lost a job just for being transgender. And statistics like those do not even count the invisible discrimination that takes place; studies like résumé tests are showing that many LGBT people are discriminated against without even knowing it.

[…]

Heritage has drawn a new line in the sand by saying that its opposition to LGBT protections is uncompromising and that it is not even open to considering exemptions. It’s nothing short of an admission to what LGBT advocates have been arguing all along: that conservatives are simply using “religious freedom” as a pretext for allowing discrimination against LGBT people.

[…]

Republicans are expected to re-introduce the “First Amendment Defense Act” any day now, which will create a special license to discriminate solely for those who oppose LGBT equality. And President Trump has promised to sign it.

Think Progress has the full story.

Killing Ourselves Harshly.

CREDIT: Pexels

CREDIT: Pexels.

We are in a hell of a lot of trouble in regard to climate change, and all the denials are simply going to push us over the cliff, so to speak. If a concerted effort is not made, right now, we will have successfully condemned our species, and many others, too. Other species are already suffering for our disregard, and we are now feeling the effects ourselves, and yet the denial continues. America’s role in climate denial looms large, with the current regime obstinately fixated on denial. I don’t care much that those peddling denial don’t care for the term denier, it fits, and I’ll keep using it until the denial stops, although I won’t be holding my breath on that score. It doesn’t surprise me when older people take a nosedive into denial. What does surprise me is all those who have children and deny, deny, deny. I’d think they might care at least a little bit, about their descendants. Here’s the Oh Fuck roundup:

Two years ago this month, in a well-publicized and much lampooned political stunt, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) brought a snowball to the Senate floor to highlight the “unseasonable” cold and cast doubt on climate change.

The Republican lawmaker would have been hard-pressed to find a snowball anywhere in his home state this past weekend.

Oklahoma just endured a spell of exceptionally hot weather. Mangum, Oklahoma saw temperatures close to 100º F, setting a state record. The average February high in Mangum is 56º F.

It is extremely unusual to see such sweltering temperatures in the dead of winter, but climate change is loading the dice for record-breaking heat. Here, the human fingerprint is clear. Carbon pollution traps heat, warming the planet. This, in turn, shifts the entire distribution of temperatures.

[…]

Many people may welcome a temperate day in February, but warm weather in normally cold months disrupts ecosystems. Trees may bloom after an unseasonably balmy spell — and then suffer frost damage when cold weather returns. Flowers may blossom and shed their petals before bees arrive to pollinate them. These minor destabilizations have a ripple effect, impacting flora, fauna, and the industries built around them.

Full story here.

A crack in Antarctics’s Larsen C ice shelf has grown sharply in recent months. CREDIT: NASA.

A crack in Antarctics’s Larsen C ice shelf has grown sharply in recent months. CREDIT: NASA.

The Arctic and Antarctic are seeing an accelerated collapse of both sea and land ice.

When you add in Trump’s aggressive agenda to undo both domestic and global climate action, we are facing the worst-case scenario for climate change — and one new study finds that the worst case is “societal collapse.”

The unprecedented drop in global sea ice we reported on last month has continued. Arctic sea ice reached a new record low, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reports.

Full story here.

Excuses, Republican Style.

EXCUSE

The excuses for not doing a damn thing about the current clusterfuck are flying fast, and none of them are remotely good. Think Progress has outlined four of them.

This might be bigger than Watergate. Late Tuesday night, the New York Times reported that U.S. spy agencies had intercepted multiple phone conversations between associates of President Donald Trump and Russian intelligence agents. That means Trump allies may have colluded with a foreign power in an effort to undermine the American democratic process — and that Russia may now have access to the highest levels of American government.

[…]

But lest anyone think GOP lawmakers are dragging their heels, it’s important to note they’ve offered up some good reasons for their desultory approach. Here are some of the best ones.

1. There’s already an ongoing investigation, so a new one would be redundant.

That’s a favorite excuse of House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who have now spent months deflecting calls for an independent commission by gesturing at existing committees and U.S. intelligence agencies.

[…]

2. Executive privilege means we can’t get the information we’d need.

Speaking of Devin Nunes, the House Intelligence Committee leader said Tuesday that he would not examine conversations between Flynn and the president because of executive privilege.

[…]

3. Flynn resigned, so the whole thing took care of itself.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) told reporters Tuesday the fact of Flynn’s resignation meant there was no point in scrutinizing the events leading up to it.

“It’s taking care of itself,” he said.

[…]

4. We’re too busy trying to repeal Obamacare.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) thinks a full investigation would get in the way of all the other important work that Congress needs to do — such as cutting people’s health insurance.

“I just don’t think it’s useful to be doing investigation after investigation, particularly of your own party,” said Paul. “We’ll never even get started with doing the things we need to do like repealing Obamacare if we’re spending our whole time having Republicans investigate Republicans. I think it makes no sense.”

All the excuse details are at Think Progress.

Survival Mode.

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© DonkeyHotey.

Seems that everyone in the White House is close to panic, and in survival mode. Perhaps we should all be in survival mode, too.

The past several days have been tumultuous for the Trump White House, and administration sources are now leaking information about the mood of panic that’s emanating from the West Wing.

Sources tell Axios’s Mike Allen that the White House at the moment is in a state of “borderline chaos” and that “some staff is in survival mode” and is “scared to death” by what’s about to happen.

A “West Wing confidant,” meanwhile, tells Allen that it looks like “nobody is in charge” at the White House at the moment, and that the scandal surrounding fired National Security Adviser Michael Flynn shows the Trump administration is either “reckless” or simply has “total incompetence.”

[…]

On Tuesday evening, both the New York Times and CNN reported that senior Trump campaign officials were in constant contact with Russian intelligence officers during the 2016 presidential race.

Here’s hoping the current mess is one the repubs will not be able to ignore and handwave away. Full story here.

Also see: I was hoping you could tell me what the fuck is going on over there.

*Spits*

19-6

© C. Ford.

North Dakota legislators have been pushing a raft of draconian bills through to make any protesting impossible to do, if you’re actually outside your abode. The worst of them is one which would allow drivers to ‘accidentally’ hit a protester without penalty. Thankfully, it didn’t pass, but the shit-filled asshole who authored it still wants it to be enacted, because:

Republican state Representative Keith Kempenich told local media that he sponsored the bill after his mother-in-law was caught in a protest while driving.

Kempenich defended the bill Monday before a vote, saying current laws had failed to protect citizens, and that the much publicized bill was mischaracterized by the media.

“I’d like to see this bill passed forward. I think that it shows that we are willing to stand up for the citizens of this state,” he said.

How about you say what you mean, you piece of shit? You want that bill to pass because you think us nasty Indians ought to be killed. We sure as hell obviously aren’t citizens of this state in your colonial, genocidal eyes. Fuck you, Kempenich.

Via Raw Story.

The GOP? Oh, Having Breakfast With Their Wives.

CREDIT: CNN screengrab.

CREDIT: CNN screengrab.

So, where are all the repubs, and why are they keeping so darn quiet over the Flynn mess? Well, it’s Valentine’s Day, so…it must be the wives’ fault! Or something.

Asked on Tuesday morning about the conspicuous silence of Republican leadership about the resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) dismissed the scandal.

“Well, it’s Valentine’s Day and I guess they’re having breakfast with their wives,” Collins said during a CNN interview with Chris Cuomo. “Really, all I can say is I’m sorry to see Gen. Flynn go. I don’t know the details of what transpired. I do know Gen. Flynn, I know that he’s very loyal to President Trump, I know he’s a great American.”

I don’t do Valentine’s Day, never saw the point, but somehow I never got the impression it was a breakfast sort of thing. You don’t know details. That little song and dance is getting seriously old, and it’s only been a month. Yes, yes, Flynn’s a great guy, he just seriously fucked up, indulged in illegal behaviour, and may have been subject to extortion, but of course, that doesn’t require any sort of investigation, no.

Collins, who served on the Trump transition executive committee and was President-elect Trump’s congressional liaison, went on to repeatedly say he thinks it’s time to “move on” now that Flynn has resigned.

He’s far from the only Republican who thinks that. On Tuesday, House Oversight Committee Chair and tireless Benghazi investigator Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) said he doesn’t see a need to further investigate Flynn’s pre-inauguration contact with Russian officials, including conversations about Russian sanctions.

Oh, Chaffetz, who also doesn’t think there’s any need to investigate the Tiny Tyrant’s violations of the constitution, and is protecting the public at large from those tax returns being made public, under the rubric of American freedom and privacy. Yeah.

Trump also tried to shift focus from the Flynn scandal to leaks on Tuesday morning.

Of course. Donny changes his opinion so damn much he makes wheat in the wind look ramrod straight. Whatever lie will serve at the moment, that’s our Tiny Tyrant. The full story is at Think Progress.

It’s Only 3 Million Per Weekend.

President Trump and his wife Melania Trump arrive on Air Force One at the Palm Beach International Airport on February 10. CREDIT: MPI10 / MediaPunch/IPX.

President Trump and his wife Melania Trump arrive on Air Force One at the Palm Beach International Airport on February 10. CREDIT: MPI10 / MediaPunch/IPX.

On February 17, President Trump will head to his $200,000-per-membership Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach for the third consecutive weekend, according to the Palm Beach Post.

Each trip reportedly costs taxpayers upward of $3 million.

Trump’s reluctance to spend a weekend in Washington stands in contrast to what he promised during the campaign, when he said he’d “rarely leave the White House.”

“I would rarely leave the White House because there’s so much work to be done,” Trump told a reporter in 2015. “I would not be a president who took vacations. I would not be a president that takes time off… You don’t have time to take time off.”

Three million. More than that actually, but even a flat three million, for a fucking weekend? This totals to over 9 million for a month in office. Repubs howled with outrage if the Obama family even mentioned the word vacation, but this flagrant misuse of funds meets with silence? That’s bad enough, but given Trump’s penchant for being seen unpresidenting and making himself a massive security leak, shouldn’t someone in the capital tell Donny no? As there seems to be no effort at all in impeaching the tiny tyrant, someone will have to step up and explain to his idiotness that no, the presidency is not a reality show.

Earlier Saturday, Trump played golf with Abe — marking the second time he hit the links since his January 20 inauguration. Trump repeatedly criticized President Obama for golfing during his presidency:

If the hypocrisy of republicans were a noise, everyone on the planet would be stone deaf. Disgusting. Think Progress has the full story.

Why not a comic book…

Lord Commander Trump Decapitates the Establishment Republicans.

Lord Commander Trump Decapitates the Establishment Republicans. © DonkeyHotey.

The NY Times has an article up about the current state of the white house, and it’s not good. Most worrying to me is the Tiny Tyrant’s demand when it comes to policy option papers, but there’s plenty to be anxious about.

But what is happening under the Trump White House is different, officials say, and not just because of Mr. Trump’s Twitter foreign policy. (Two officials said that at one recent meeting, there was talk of feeding suggested Twitter posts to the president so the council’s staff would have greater influence.)

A number of staff members who did not want to work for Mr. Trump have returned to their regular agencies, leaving a larger-than-usual hole in the experienced bureaucracy. Many of those who remain, who see themselves as apolitical civil servants, have been disturbed by displays of overt partisanship. At an all-hands meeting about two weeks into the new administration, Ms. McFarland told the group it needed to “make America great again,” numerous staff members who were there said.

New Trump appointees are carrying coffee mugs with that Trump campaign slogan into meetings with foreign counterparts, one staff member said.

Nervous staff members recently met late at night at a bar a few blocks from the White House and talked about purging their social media accounts of any suggestion of anti-Trump sentiments.

Golly, that doesn’t smell like that vaunted American freedom to me.

Ms. McFarland often draws on her television experience to make clear to officials that they need to make their points in council meetings quickly, and she signals when to wrap up, several participants said.

And while Mr. Obama liked policy option papers that were three to six single-spaced pages, council staff members are now being told to keep papers to a single page, with lots of graphics and maps.

“The president likes maps,” one official said.

Why not a daily comic book? That worked for Bush Jr. Oh, too many pages I guess. The Tiny Tyrant doesn’t like to read. I guess having someone read to him is out, that wouldn’t look presidential enough or something. Perhaps stick figures and word balloons?

For his part, Mr. Bannon sees the United States as headed toward an inevitable confrontation with two adversaries — China and Iran.

I don’t think we need a drawing for that one. These people are determined to embroil us all in a war none of us may survive.

The full article is at The Times.