Radio
R4Ts! If I didn’t have to work I’d totally attend this anti-vax rally
#Revolution4TRUTH Join us on March 31, 2017 in Washington DC.
Learn more and register here: https://t.co/ugp7DHTupj pic.twitter.com/gXLp4wkPAP— Barb Loe, NVIC (@NVICLoeDown) February 11, 2017
It’s a shame really, because I can’t think of any better way to spend a day than surrounded by anti-science dipshits who are going after the press because “OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES AND PARENTAL RIGHTS ARE UNDER ATTACK IN AMERICA” (!!!!)
IF you recognize that the corporate, mainstream media withholds the truth and no longer provides oversight to investigate government corruption…
IF you believe the health of Americans has been adversely affected by the media’s failure to publicize the truth about various toxins entering our air, water, food supplies and medicines…
IF you believe the press has failed the people by becoming nothing more than an instrument of government directed propaganda…
If I were a conspiracy-minded dolt I’d note the language used by the R4T people and the existence of an anti-vax president who hates the press and add another layer to my tinfoil hat.
On R4T’s call to action page, after yelling about Fake News and the press some more, they do mention Congress and
We are calling on our elected representatives in state legislatures and in Congress to protect our parental rights and civil liberties and to restore Truth, Integrity, and Transparency in Government agencies responsible for ensuring the public health and safety in America.
Still stupid and if they can get enough people to listen to them, dangerous. But less stupid than holding a march because news organizations haven’t sunk so low that they will repeat anti-vaccine rubbish as the unvarnished truth.
Fun fact – Eli Lilly, which is HQed in Mike Pence’s home state, developed Thiomersal.
Conservatism is the new plainsong
this tweet makes more sense if you add “MOM!” at the end of each line pic.twitter.com/WBP4SLOJw5
— JuanPa (@jpbrammer) February 12, 2017
I feel that I’ve been reading posts that mock conservatives who insist that being in favor of patriarchal values for everyone (whether everyone wants patriarchal values or not) makes conservatives the real rebels, for as long as I’ve been reading blogs.
I’ve also regularly learned that conservatives are on the verge of getting their own TV shows and movie production companies and web browsers and running away to very redundantly join the circus.
Writers like Edroso at Alicublog are very good at skewering the wanna-be hep cats. I think the regular announcements that Conservatism is Hot, Hip (not never hip-hop) and Happening stems from a few things.
There’s the lack of anything that smacks of originality that is the hallmark of the conservative movement. It turns out a desire to reinforce and maintain a form of society that is thousands of years old doesn’t allow for much flexibility of thought.
There’s the need to keep the fresh blood flowing (and not just so Peter Thiel does not have to drink … wine). Come hang out with people who think music your parents listened to as kids is still cool the cool kids is a much better appeal to the younger marks generation than Come hang out with a bunch of duds who sound like that one hairy-nosed uncle who stands two inches away from you and shouts his political opinions and killer halitosis right in your face.
Finally, Cons may be visited by the nagging realization that in all the books and TV shows and movies they like, the characters who go around forcing other people to Obey The Rules are the bad guys. However, if the RW was able to leave people alone it would not be the RW. So they lie. In the same way that they declare they’re Christians while doing something that Christ fellow said not to do, they declare they’re non-conformists while furiously stamping on anyone who doesn’t conform with their view of normal.
Does it work? Maybe. Will competing appeals from supremacist orgs prove more alluring? That depends on how quickly the Republicans turn the economy and welfare programs into a smoking crater. If history is any guide, whites turn to supremacy when they’re desperate.
Below – real punk rockers doing the best things so conservatively.
Sunday Links
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Jin (Type 094) Class Ballistic Missile Submarine. By CSR Report RL33153 China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities—Background and Issues for Congress by Ronald O’Rourke dated February 28, 2014 – United States Naval Institute News Blog, Public Domain.
Some random thoughts for your Sunday afternoon…
- Mexico’s Next Move
- Robert Jervis on President Trump and IR Theory; responses by Michael Barnett and Randall Schweller.
- Britain’s T class SSNs may have a major issue.
- The human toll of naval shipbuilding.
- US and India are sharing info on Chinese submarines.
- Primer on the US and Chinese nuclear arsenals.
And of course:
I wonder if any of the characters in this story disapproved of this state of affairs… https://t.co/y6rsD3Tjce
— Robert Farley (@drfarls) February 12, 2017
Revenge of the Turds
When mom casually but knowingly mentions that people are noticing that pets are disappearing pic.twitter.com/cCAqupj5Tg
— Mark Agee (@MarkAgee) February 12, 2017
Evidence is mounting that Stephen Miller was an insufferable steaming pile of turds in high school and college and nobody liked him. Because of this he’s now going to make us all pay.
If you’ve seen Stephen Miller in action recently, you’ll notice he’s still quite turdly, with his cold, dead eyes constantly straying to the teleprompter whenever he does an interview because it’s hard to peddle that much bullshit without the aid of one. He’s a stony-faced liar and I look forward to his being crushed under the weight of his own mendacity.
“Excuse me, nothing, you be as cold as you want, but you just fucked a good man out of six thousand dollars and his goddamn bonus ’cause you didn’t know the shot”
Kyle Shanahan ne regrette rien:
If Kyle Shanahan lies awake every night thinking about his play-calling down the stretch for the Falcons in Super Bowl LI, it wouldn’t be hard to blame him. The Falcons ran the ball five times after taking a 25-point lead, one of which was wiped out by a holding penalty.
They remained aggressive but ultimately it cost them because they left too much time on the clock for Tom Brady and the Patriots, who came back to win the game 34-28. Call it whatever you want — and it’s totally fair to call it a choke — but it was not good execution or decision-making down the stretch.
Shanahan, who accepted the head coaching gig with the 49ers almost immediately after the game, says he wouldn’t do anything differently despite the outcome.
“We played that game how we played the entire year,” Shanahan said at his introductory Niners press conference, via NFL.com. “I called plays in that game the way I have the entire year. Doesn’t mean I’m always right. Doesn’t mean they’re always going to work. But I promise you I prepare as hard as I possibly can. I always do what I believe is right, with our coaching staff and with the players, and then you live with the consequences.
I guess you would expect Shanahan to rationalize here, except that I think that he’s telling the truth about his thinking: his playcalling had been AGGRESSIVE all year, and he wasn’t going to change based on minor details like the specific game situation he was in. It’s crazy, but it’s not uncommon.
I’ll even say that Shanahan and Quinn have probably gotten too much grief for the pass call on 3rd-and-1 that led to the Hightower strip sack. You can second-guess that, but it’s within a reasonable range of play calls — a first down there is yoooge, and it’s not ridiculous between the quality of Atlanta’s passing game and the fact that Atlanta’s center was into his 50th minute of playing on a broken leg to think going to the air gives you a better shot. That play is more on Freeman’s failure to pick up the rusher than the coaching staff. But passing after the Jones catch when two runs into the line give you a better than 9-in-10 shot of a game-sealing field goal? (And even if you miss the field goal, burning clock or forcing the Patriots to burn timeouts is still pretty big, given that while outstanding the New England offense was operating with a distinctly Andy Reid-like pace.) That’s just flat stupid, unforgivable on the part of Shanahan and Quinn. It’s the job of the coaching staff to give their players the best chance to win, and Shanahan pissed the game away because that’s how he would coach a regular season game against Jacksonville and you gotta dance with the ones what brung ya in the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE, and Quinn — an exceptional defensive coach and apparently a good motivator, but a ghastly in-game tactician — inexplicably let him. Sometimes coaches get blamed unfairly for a bad loss, but not this time. It’s 100% on them. And I’m beginning to better understand why Shanahan decided to take what might be the worst head coaching job in the NFL. He probably thinks he’s so good he can win with no talent, a green-as-a-pool-felt GM and horrendous ownership, and again he’s about to learn the hard way.
And what’s even worse is that for all the Shanahan’s guff about bring aggressive, with 52 seconds left and a great passing attack, he…pretty much played for overtime, knowing what the rules are and that his defense was completely out of gas. Quinn deserves a lot of the blame for getting As from the Rex Ryan College of Timeout Preservation, of course, but getting conservative at exactly the point when the game situation called for aggressiveness makes his decision to give away the game look even worse, if that’s possible.
It goes without saying that the coach on the other sideline owes his success in large measure to being focused on specific situations and matchups rather than abstract theories of how his team is supposed to play. But this also shouldn’t be forgotten:
9. While few may remember the call, Belichick’s decision to go for it on fourth-and-3 from his own 46-yard line with more than six minutes left in the third quarter might have saved the game. I’m not sure exactly how many coaches would have punted in that situation, but I’m willing to bet that it’s more than a few. Brady’s 17-yard strike to Amendola on that play kept New England’s drive afloat and, in the end, was one of the primary reasons that a comeback was even possible.
Just three weeks earlier, Pete Carroll uncharacteristically give up on a playoff game against Atlanta, kicking to win like Mike McCarthy himself rather than maximizing his team’s chances to win. Do I think there was any way in hell that Seattle was coming back against Atlanta with a secondary reduced to Sherman-and-another-double-bourbon and an offensive line featuring players who weren’t good enough to be regulars on Seattle’s offensive line? Of course not. But, then, it didn’t look like the Pats had any real chance either. Coach to give your team the best chance to win, because you never know. Atlanta gave away the game, but most teams wouldn’t have taken the gift. Give enough free shots to the greatest dynasty in NFL history, though, and they’ll beat you.
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Stephen Miller?
With Kellyanne “Bowling Green Massacre” Conway on videotape violating ethic rules, it was Stephen Miller’s chance to do his best Joseph Goebbels impression on the Sunday talk shows. He did not disappoint.
In the clip below, provided by Bradd Jeffrey, Miller simply lies. Nonstop. He argues that voters bussed in from Massachusetts cost Tump and Ayotte victories in New Hampshire. He repeats figures from the long discredited study (thanks, Monkey Cage!) about non-citizens voting. He invoked Kris “Voter Suppression” Kobach as an authority on voter fraud. It was an ugly, disgusting display of falsehoods in the service of partisan propaganda and stripping people of their rights.
Naturally, our President—whose authoritarian dispositions are counterbalanced only by his laziness and incompetence—wanted to make sure that we all know that Miller did a smashing job (also that Mark Cuban’s criticisms are just because he has a sad that Trump wouldn’t be his bestest friend).
But the more important is this: in the clip below, George Stephanopoulos proves, despite some headlines to the contrary, utterly ineffectual. He demands evidence and looks incredulous, but Miller just chews up the time being a lying liar who lies. In turn, Miller effectively turns ABC into a vector of disinformation.
Trump aide Stephen Miller repeats Trump’s blatantly false claim about mass illegal voting. There is zero evidence. pic.twitter.com/9NvPXjPYVO
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) February 12, 2017
Disinformation that would make Putin blush. There is no other term. These people have the nuclear codes. What else are they lying about? https://t.co/VtUn86Dkew
— Brendan Nyhan (@BrendanNyhan) February 12, 2017
There’s only one solution to Nyhan’s observation. Any journalist whose job description doesn’t include the line “forward Trump Administration propaganda” should impose a blackout on Miller.
A final note: this section of Miller’s interview is downright chilling:
if this is an issue that interests you, then we can talk about it more in the future. And we now have our government is beginning to get stood up. But we have a Department of Justice and we have more officials.
An issue of voter fraud is something we’re going to be looking at very seriously and very hard.
Hold onto your hats, people. More disenfranchisement and democratic backsliding is just around the corner.
Stay mad.
Stay mobilized.
Get organized.
UPDATE: the alternative is to follow Sam Wang’s recommendation:
When access to officials no longer yields true information, why have them on unfiltered? At a minimum, a delay for factchecking. https://t.co/Ouht1Ityd8
— Sam Wang (@SamWangPhD) February 12, 2017
Trump Henchman Emulates Trump
Jason Chaffetz, a few dozen pounds of well-used fry grease molded into the shape of a weasel, asserted that the constituents angrily questioning him about his refusal to investigate even the most egregious Trump misconduct after years of Hillary Clinton snipe hunts were PAID OUTSIDE AGITATORS. You will be shocked that this claim has exactly as much evidence as his Clinton snipe hunts:
Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) says paid protesters were among the thousand-plus people who gave him a raucous, negative reception at a town hall in Salt Lake City on Thursday. The crowd chanted “shame!” and “do your job.”
It was “more of a paid attempt to bully and intimidate” than a reflection of the feelings of his constituents, Chaffetz told the Deseret News.
“Chaffetz said he will continue to make himself available to voters but may now avoid providing a venue ‘for these radicals to further intimidate,’” the paper adds.
But reporters who were at the event and interviewed attendees say they found no evidence anybody was paid to be there.
Anyway, if anyone can find one of these PAID PROTESTORS, let me know because I want in on this racket.
As always, the deeper question is why a cartoonish partisan supervillain who would be way too on-the-nose for a House of Cards character was able to set the agenda for the mainstream media’s coverage of Clinton for 2 fateful years.
Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 70
This is the grave of Virgil Earp.
Born in 1843 in Hartford, Kentucky, Earp joined the Union army in 1863, serving with the 83rd Illinois Infantry. He was married at this time with a baby daughter. His wife was told he had died. She then married another man and moved to Oregon. He left the army in 1865 and went to Iowa, where he thought his family resided. But they were long gone. He remarried in 1870 but the woman disappeared from all public records so we don’t know what happened. Earp and his brothers Wyatt and Morgan moved all around the West for a long time, doing a variety of jobs, including law enforcement. He eventually found himself in Dodge City, Kansas with his brother but it’s unclear if he served in law enforcement. He did however hear through friends about opportunities in Tombstone, Arizona, and convinced his brothers to move there with him. In 1880, Virgil was appointed town marshal on and off for the next couple of years.
It was here that he played a critical role in the Shootout at the O.K. Corral. After a series of threats by outlaw cowboys known as the Cochise County Cowboys, Tombstone passed a law requiring people to turn in their guns. The Earps had tried to crack down on the Cowboys organized crime activities and their lives were frequently threatened. On October 26, 1881, the two sides battled in Tombstone and 3 of the Cowboys were killed. Virgil, his two brothers, and Doc Holliday were originally charged with murder but a judge quickly exonerated them. That was not the end of their travails. On December 28, the Cowboys attempted to kill Virgil, shooting him three times in the back. They failed, but they destroyed his left arm. Morgan Earp was assassinated in March 1882. While Wyatt led a posse to kill the Cowboys, Virgil went to recover at his parents house in California.
He took two years to recover from his wounds. After that, he served in a variety of law enforcement positions in California. He later ran a saloon, moved to Colorado and then Arizona, where he got involved in mining and ranching. It was not until 1898 that he discovered his first wife and daughter were alive. They made contact and he became close with his daughter and grandchildren he did not know he had. He died in Goldfield, Nevada in 1905.
Earp has been portrayed many times in popular culture. Among the highlights are Tim Holt playing him in John Ford’s My Darling Clementine, Guy Wilkerson in Anthony Mann’s Winchester ’73, John Hudson in John Sturges’ Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Frank Converse in another Sturges production, Hour of the Gun, a far too old for the part Sam Elliott in George Cosmatos’ Tombstone, and Michael Madsen in Lawrence Kasdan’s Wyatt Earp. Also, Charles Maxwell played him in an episode of Star Trek, which I guess I have never seen.
Virgil Earp is buried in River View Cemetery, Portland, Oregon.
#WomenScienceDay (Update x 2)
It’s the International Day of Women & Girls in Science.
Science and gender equality are both vital for the achievement of the internationally agreed development goals, including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Over the past 15 years, the global community has made a lot of effort in inspiring and engaging women and girls in science. Unfortunately, women and girls continued to be excluded from participating fully in science. According to a study conducted in 14 countries, the probability for female students of graduating with a Bachelor’s degree, Master’s degree and Doctor’s degree in science-related field are 18%, 8% and 2% respectively, while the percentages of male students are 37%, 18% and 6%.
That makes it a perfect day to read a herpetologist’s response to a Blightfart sharticle about women and science. Or you can just squee at the pictures of the cute snakes and turtles and so on.
So in case you don’t have time to read for yourself, I’ll summarize. Men sometimes drop out of science and math mid-career, but only, like, 48% of them. Women hit the road running WAY more often. Like, 52%. So it makes perfect sense to Milo the cat AND to me that women should only get maybe 10% of the spots in STEM programs. Because 52-48=10 women who stick around, and those girls are mostly dried up old maids who never had a date in high school.
Women don’t like science and math because people are mean, and math is hard, and we’d rather be curling our hair and painting our nails and biting each other in the back and stuff like that. I’m so, so lucky that I fell into herpetology as a career because that’s, like, not real science at all. Herpetology is basically Home Economics.
Like, we work with these totally endangered species, but incubating the eggs is really just baking.
[…]
And sometimes we have to feed the Komodo Dragon, but that’s mostly like walking the dog. Or watching Game of Thrones.
Squeeing at the Komodo Dragon is not recommended.
Update II – Here she discusses caring for herps, including the need to create an interesting environment.
Update I – Yale University reversed its decision on renaming Calhoun College today. It will be renamed after computer science pioneer, rear admiral and Vassar alum Grace Murray Hopper.
Grace Brewster Murray was born in New York City in 1906. She entered Vassar in 1924, concentrating in physics and mathematics.
[…]
Hopper also took many courses outside her concentrations, in economics, public finance, botany, physiology, geology and electronics. She graduated from Vassar in 1928 with honors in physics and math and went on to study mathematics at Yale on a Vassar fellowship.
The Ballad of Rand Paul, International Man of Principle and Seriousity
Above: Not a nickel’s worth of difference
The nomination of Jeff Sessions would presumably be intolerable to any actual libertarian. Then there are Republican hacks who sporadically cosplay as libertarians:
“In some ways, the Democrats made it much more certain that I would vote for him by trying to destroy his character,” Paul said Thursday in an interview with The Washington Post and Roll Call for C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” series. “I think it’s very upsetting that they didn’t choose to go after him on particular issues, like civil asset forfeiture, where they might have been able to persuade someone. They chose to go after a man’s character.”
“The Democrats could have gotten my vote [sic]. But they chose instead to point out that a Republican Senate refused to confirm Jeff Sessions as a District Court judge because he was too racist, as evidenced by his extensive history of racism. I am a man of serious principle who will totally stand up to the Trump administration next time, just you watch.” Ah, yes, one of the central themes of the Republican Party: “racism is no longer a thing, but being accused of racism is the most horrible thing imaginable.”
But in Thursday’s conversation, Paul repeatedly emphasized that any discussion of Sessions’s views got lost in the Democratic attacks. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s viral, short-circuited speech against Sessions, in which the Democrat from Massachusetts quoted Coretta Scott King’s 1986 letter of opposition to Sessions as a judicial nominee, struck Paul as “personal” and not based on “principle.”
Right, there’s no “principle” in involved on the part of people who oppose vote suppression or support the Civil Rights Act, it’s just “personal.” Conversely, voting for someone because you know him as a Senate colleague is principled, not personal. This is all obvious.
In fairness, his evidence is pretty compelling:
“The thing is, I’ve seen pictures of him marching for voting rights with [congressman] John Lewis,” Paul said of Sessions.
“Jeff Sessions did not personally attack John Lewis in Selma, so there can be no principled opposition to his record on civil rights suck it libtards.”
And, now, the punchline:
And Paul hadn’t given up hope of influencing the president, as a senator from a state that he won handily.
Sure, he’s bound to settle down and start treating you right anytime now.
Remember when there were people on the left who took Rand Paul seriously? That was really pathetic.
Fake leaders are obsessed with fakery
GOProjection never ends, Jason Chaffetz edition.
Chaffetz not buying anger at his town hall. Says protesters were outside agitators: https://t.co/hVFusmobaq pic.twitter.com/dK029ZGjzS
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) February 11, 2017
I have no idea how this will play with the Republican voters who don’t want to lose their health insurance. I could see it making them angrier at Chaffetz, but I can also see them backing down because they think being associated with paid homosnowflake liberal protesters is a fate worse than death.
