EOMMD

It's the End of the Month Meme Dump, where you can find all sorts of good memes for your own use. Click 'em if you cannot read 'em.

7 Dirty Words

I think we are down to 6 now. Or 5. Or 4. In the Trump era, FUCK IT!

Root of all Evil

No, it's not money, or the love of money.

Code Red

Yes, Thomas Friedman is still a Republican.

Sounding Code Red: Electing the Trump Resistance

by Thomas Friedman in The New York Times

With the primary season winding down and the midterms soon upon us, it’s time to point out that this election is not about what you may think it’s about. It is not a choice between the particular basket of policies offered by the candidates for House or Senate in your district or state — policies like gun control, right to choose, free trade or fiscal discipline. No, what this election is about is your first chance since 2016 to vote against Donald Trump.

As far as I am concerned, that’s the only choice on the ballot. It’s a choice between letting Trump retain control of all the key levers of political power for two more years, or not.

If I were writing the choice on a ballot, it would read: “Are you in favor of electing a majority of Democrats in the House and/or Senate to put a check on Trump’s power — when his own party demonstrably will not? Or are you in favor of shaking the dice for another two years of unfettered control of the House, the Senate and the White House by a man who wants to ignore Russia’s interference in our election; a man whose first thought every morning is, ‘What’s good for me, and can I get away with it?’; a man who shows no compunction about smearing any person or government institution that stands in his way; and a man who is backed by a party where the only members who’ll call him out are those retiring or dying?”

If your answer is the former, then it can only happen by voting for the Democrat in your local House or Senate race.

Because what we’ve learned since 2016 is that the worst Democrat on the ballot for the House or Senate is preferable to the best Republican, because the best Republicans have consistently refused to take a moral stand against Trump’s undermining of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies, the State Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Civil Service, the basic norms of our public life and the integrity of our elections.

These Republicans have made the craven choice to stand with Trump as long as he delivers the policies they like on tax cuts, gun control, fossil fuels, abortion and immigration, even though many privately detest him.

It is up to the Democrats to say and do the opposite: To understand that as long as Trump is president, he’s unlikely to sign any legislation a Democratic majority in Congress would pass — but that’s not their job for the next two years. Their job is to protect America from Trump’s worst impulses.

Their job is to get hold of at least one lever of power — the House or the Senate — in order to oust the most corrupt Republican lawmakers who lead key committees, to properly oversee the most reckless cabinet secretaries, like Scott Pruitt, and to protect the F.B.I., the Justice Department and Robert Mueller from Trump’s intimidation.

I don’t write this easily. On many non-social, non-environmental issues, I’m not a card-carrying Democrat. I favor free trade, fiscal discipline, pro-business regulations, a democracy-expanding foreign policy, and I have an aversion to identity politics.

But all of that is on hold for me now, because something more fundamental is at stake: It’s not what we do — it’s who we are, how we talk to one another, what we model to the world, how we respect our institutions and just how warped our society and government can get in only a few years from a president who lies every day, peddles conspiracy theories from the bully pulpit of the White House and dares to call our F.B.I. and Justice Department a “criminal deep state” for doing their job.

So that’s why I have only one thought for this election: Get power. Get a lever of power that can curb Trump. Run for the House or the Senate as a Democrat; register to vote as a Democrat; help someone else register to vote as a Democrat; send money to a Democrat; canvass for a Democrat; drive someone to the polls to vote for a Democrat.

Democrats are never going to win the news cycle from Trump. He’s an attention-grabbing genius. But they can, and must, out-organize him, out-run him, out-register him and out-vote him.

Nothing else matters now. Remember the single stupidest statement from pro-Trump commentators after the election? It was: “The media took Trump literally but not seriously. But his supporters took him seriously but not literally.”

Actually, some of us took him seriously and literally — our only mistake was not taking him literally enough. I assumed that a candidate who lied so casually and so often in the campaign would also do so as president; I just didn’t think he would literally utter 3,001 false or misleading claims in his first 466 days in office. I feared Trump would indeed, as he vowed, tear up the Iran nuclear deal, withdraw from the Paris climate accord and start a trade war with China; I just didn’t think he’d literally do them all at once with so little expert input.

I figured Trump would try to destroy Obamacare; I just didn’t think he’d literally do it without having a better alternative — any alternative — in place. I figured Trump would seek to tighten the border with Mexico; I just didn’t believe that he’d literally ask Congress for $18 billion to extend the border wall. I knew we needed to “drain the swamp” of Washington; I just didn’t think the drain would literally have to start in Trump’s White House and the offices of his cabinet secretaries.

Still, Democrats can’t count on winning by just showing up. They still have to connect with some centrist and conservative voters — and that means understanding that some things are true even if Trump believes them: We do have a trade issue with China that needs addressing; we cannot accept every immigrant, because so many people today want to escape the world of disorder into our world of order; people want a president who is going to grow the pie, not just redivide it; political correctness on some college campuses is out of control; people want to be comfortable expressing patriotism and love of country in an age where globalization can wash out those identities.

Democrats need to connect with some voters on those issues but then take them in a constructive direction, in contrast with Trump’s destructive direction.

In the end, I don’t want to see Trump impeached, unless there is overwhelming evidence. I want to see, and I want the world to see, a majority of Americans vote to curtail his power for the next two years — not to push a specific agenda over his but because they want to protect America, its ideals and institutions, from him — until our next presidential election gives us a chance to end this cancer and to birth a new G.O.P. that promotes the best instincts of conservatives, not the worst, so Americans can again have two decent choices.

Again, this is Code Red: American democracy is truly threatened today — by the man sitting in the Oval Office and the lawmakers giving him a free pass.

Original.

Dunning-Krueger Effect

From The Infographics Show on YouTube. This one describes most Trump supporters.

Jesse Duplantis

Oh, Lord. Televangelist Jesse Duplantis says God told him he needs a new plane. Hey, Jesse, God told me that you are a charlatan and he told you to ditch your planes. Who you gonna believe? A proven charlatan or an atheist?

What do you want to bet his "followers" will cough up the money for him?

Televangelist says God told him he needs 4th private plane

Jesse Duplantis, a televangelist with viewers across the globe, says God told him he needs a new jet.

Specifically, God told Duplantis he needs a Dassault Falcon 7X, a three-engine private jet capable of carrying 12 to 16 passengers at speeds up to 700 miles per hour. The Falcon 7X, which would be the fourth plane owned by Jesse Duplantis Ministries,  has a range of almost 6,000 miles and costs about $54 million new, according to SherpaReport (although used ones are listed online for as little as $20 million).

Duplantis said God told him he needed the plane "in one of the 'greatest statements the Lord ever told me.'"

"He said, 'Jesse, you wanna come up where I'm at?'" according to Duplantis.

"And I said, 'What do you mean?'"

"He said, 'I want you to believe in me for a Falcon 7-X."

"So, I said, 'OK.' But the first thing I thought of: 'Well, how am I going to pay for it?'"

Duplantis said he then recalled something God told him in 1978. "'Jesse, I didn't ask you to pay for it, I asked to believe for it.'" 

more BS at the original

it's good for you!

Murphy Brown

Another old sitcom re-boot is in the works. This one will be worth watching: Murphy Brown! I have not been able to stomach watching the new Roseanne. Roseanne has swallowed the Trump BS hook, line, and sinker.

authoritarianism

A cute, short little video on authoritarianism. 

Resist!

where is Obama?

The article in The Atlantic below is dated March 10, 2018, but the issue is only more urgent now than it was then. While Trump continually tries to dismantle most anything Obama touched, he also includes insults along the way. And here I thought the way to deal with a bully was to stand up to him.

Where Is Barack Obama?

The former president’s reticence in the Trump era is only hurting his party.

by Julian E. Zelizer

At a moment when many of his former voters believe that America is facing a genuine democratic crisis, former President Barack Obama has been largely silent about what is happening in American politics. Other than a handful of appearances—an interview with David Letterman in a new Netflix show, or an oral history project at MIT—he insists on following protocol and tradition for former presidents, resisting the temptation to jump back into the political fray.

For the past year, President Trump has worked with the Republican Congress to dismantle crucial parts of Obama’s legacy, including affordable health care, progressive taxation, climate-change regulation, oversight of the financial system, and immigration reform. Discussions of Medicare and Medicaid cuts surfacing in recent weeks suggest that an effort to roll back Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society might be next.

That, in itself, is not unusual—when control of the White House switches hands, presidents often work to reverse key policies. And, for the most part, ex-presidents hold their peace, placing the need for a smooth transfer of power and the health of democracy ahead of securing their own legacy.

But what Trump has done over the past 14 months is anything but usual. He has employed recklessly bellicose rhetoric against dangerous adversaries such North Korea, created massive conflicts of interest by refusing to separate himself from his business empire, risked setting off a debilitating trade war without any careful deliberation, generally ignored overwhelming evidence that the Russians tampered and plan to continue tampering in our elections, and has been willing to play in the sandbox with noxious white nationalism. Trump has used his Twitter account, press conferences, and speeches to sow doubts about the legitimacy of the press, U.S. intelligence agencies, and law-enforcement officials. He has brought a level of instability and chaos to American government that is extraordinarily harmful to the health of the body politic.

But Obama has largely remained silent. That should not come as surprise. His reticence reflects one of the problems that constrained his presidency—his hesitation and resistance to getting down and dirty in the muck of partisan politics. He aimed high, but American politics went low.

snip 

Now Democrats are reliving the political frustration from the Obama years. Right when the Democrats are in desperate need of strong leadership, looking for someone who has the muscle and clout to push back against the aggressive, smash-mouth, destructive politics of Trump, the former president has not done nearly enough to step in to fill this void.

much more at the original. 

King Crimson

Can you believe that King Crimson is still around and touring? They were not one of my favorite bands back when, but I'll bet it would be an interesting show.

This tune is "Starless".

get a grip!

Eugene Robinson is talking to Democrats.

Democrats have it too good to shoot themselves in the foot

by Eugene Robinson

If political power were won by hand-wringing and anguished introspection, the Democratic Party would rule the galaxy.

The hum of obsessive and counterproductive worry is rising: President Trump’s approval has crept up from abysmal to merely awful! Candidates from the party’s progressive wing have won some House primaries! Republicans have not, in every single case, chosen candidates who are unelectable! The Russia investigation is a year old, and still nobody has been frog-marched out of the West Wing in chains! And Trump is still president!

Get a grip, people. Try to focus. The November election is too important, and the political terrain too advantageous, for Democrats to waste time on their customary defeatism.

The Trump administration is dangerous, wrongheaded and inept, both domestically and abroad. Its corruption is staggering. Its corrosion of democratic norms is tragic. And it should be clear by now that the Republican-led Congress will do nothing to restrain a mercurial president who sets the nation’s agenda by what he “learns” from watching hours and hours of “Fox & Friends.”

If Democrats were in control of the House or the Senate, they could fulfill the responsibilities that Congress is given by the Constitution. They could conduct oversight. They could investigate, with subpoena power. They could protect special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and allow him to follow evidence wherever it leads.

So, yes, this midterm election is important. The Senate will be tough to flip, because of which seats are up this year, but Democrats can definitely take the House — if they stay confident, think clearly and listen to the constituents whose votes they seek.

In varying proportions, midterm elections are always both national and local affairs. This year’s promise to be more national than usual, because of Trump, and that gives Democratic candidates a tremendous advantage.

In Gallup’s latest weekly report, Trump’s approval rating is at 43 percent. That’s the highest figure in more than a year and well above Trump’s weekly low of 35 percent in mid-December. But still, it’s 43 percent — well below Barack Obama’s 48 percent or Bill Clinton’s 51 percent at this point in their presidencies, and of course miles below George W. Bush’s astronomical post-9/11 numbers.

It is amusing to watch as journalists sally forth into Trumpland and return with the shocking news that Trump’s most avid supporters still like him. Of course they do. They are, duh, his supporters. But sophisticated observers, such as The Post’s Dan Balz, have also detected a measure of weariness with all of the chaos. Asked about Trump, one Minnesota voter told Balz that “I find myself drawing back a bit.”

Midterm elections often hinge on intensity — which side is more motivated, more passionate. If you look at the massive protest mobilizations against Trump and his policies since he took office, along with the huge pro-Democratic shifts we’ve seen in special elections, you have to conclude that Democrats have a big advantage in intensity. Recall 2010, when tea-party fervor generated a Republican wave that swept away the comfortable Democratic majority in the House.

That is why Republicans are trying so desperately to find some rallying cry that can generate similar enthusiasm among the GOP base. The latest is impeachment — the idea, being pushed by Trump, that if Democrats take the House they will promptly try to impeach him, even though no crime has been committed. (I know you’re shocked that Trump makes this all about him.)

The Democratic leadership is trying to squelch loose talk of impeachment, but Republicans are going to keep sounding the false alarm. If this boosts GOP intensity, Democrats will just have to raise theirs even higher.

It’s not as if Democrats lack material to work with. The ethical lapses, violations and outright outrages by Trump administration officials make this the swampiest presidency since Warren Harding’s. Trump’s economic policies punish the poor, the working class and all of our grandchildren so that the wealthy can have nicer vacations and bigger yachts. His initiatives on immigration, the environment and a host of other issues seek to defy the national consensus.

Midterm elections are also part local. There are 435 House contests, and obviously no cookie-cutter candidate or campaign will suit all of them.

Democrats should worry less about whether a given primary candidate is progressive or centrist and more about whether he or she can connect with voters in that particular district. Period.

Stop fretting about possible battles next year. Remember that an ideological debate within a House majority isn’t a problem. It’s a byproduct of winning.

Read more from Eugene Robinson’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A.

Original.

John Fetterman

There is some real energy on the Democratic side of the voting populace this time around. Hopefully, Dems will re-take the House and, if we're lucky and tough, will re-take the Senate too. And then they better play some hardball with this thug Trump!

Here's another rising Dem, John Fetterman.

John Fetterman: Pennsylvania Democrats’ tattooed rising star, explained

Two days ago, John Fetterman was the mayor of a 2,000-person western Pennsylvania Rust Belt town, running in a hotly contested primary for statewide office. Today he’s the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor.

Fetterman, 48, is unmistakable: 6-foot-8, with a goatee and tattoos. And he dealt incumbent Democrat Lt. Gov. Mike Stack, an established name in Pennsylvania Democratic Party politics, a major upset Tuesday night. He also happens to have the backing of Bernie Sanders.

Fetterman drew 40 percent of the vote to clinch the nomination, emerging from a crowded field of four Democrats who were challenging Stack. The incumbent lieutenant governor has been mired in several scandals over excessive spending and mistreatment of staff, and failed to even gain incumbent Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s endorsement. Stack ended the night in third place, becoming the first lieutenant governor in modern Pennsylvania history to lose a primary reelection race.

Fetterman is now Wolf’s running mate, and the two will face Republican state Sen. Scott Wagner and real estate executive Jeff Bartos in November.

Fetterman’s rise has caught the nation’s eye. Over the past decade, he has made it in and out of national headlines — and Colbert Report appearances — as the Harvard University graduate who made it his mission to breathe life back into the predominantly black steel town of Braddock, Pennsylvania. But in the context of this midterm election cycle, Fetterman is almost a caricature of the 2016 presidential election postmortem.

“John Fetterman being the first person in Pennsylvania history to defeat a sitting Lt. Gov in a primary seems to obliterate the ‘Bernie-endorsed candidates can’t win’ fiction,” David Sirota, a prominent progressive commentator, tweeted.

But as stylistically different as Fetterman is to his running mate, there’s not a lot of daylight between the two on policy.

Wolf (Left) and Fetterman (Right)

Fetterman’s career in politics is atypical. After graduating college, he followed his father’s path into the insurance business, but the death of a friend made him reconsider his career. He began working with Big Brothers Big Sisters, quit the insurance gig, and joined AmeriCorps, moving to Pittsburgh.

He went to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government for a master’s degree in public policy and settled in Braddock, a town that had gone from holding 20,000 people and part of Andrew Carnegie’s steel empire to a population of just over 2,000, with unemployment at three times the state average. The town has been ravaged by drug abuse and a homicide rate in the double digits.

Fetterman won the Braddock mayoral election in 2005 by one vote. Four years later, he won in a landslide and appeared The Colbert Report, explaining the five dates tattooed on his arm to Stephen Colbert on national television. Each one represented a murder that had occurred in his town under his leadership.

more at the Original.

family suicide

A new wrinkle in suicide bombing: families! 

From Patheos, a gathering of freethinkers, atheists, and heathens.

Muslim Couples and Their Children Blow Themselves Up in Indonesia, Killing Many

You know that the morals of deeply religious people totally set them apart from ethically compromised heathens like you and me, right?

Well, about that:

A wave of deadly bombings on Sunday and Monday and evidence of more planned have shaken Indonesia just ahead of the holy month of Ramadan, with entire families — including children — carrying out suicide attacks against Christian worshipers and the police. …

[M]embers of a single family carried out three attacks against separate churches in the city around Mass time, killing seven people.

According to CNN, here’s how that went down:

The father, identified by police as Dita Oepriarto, was said to have driven his wife Puji Kuswati and their two daughters, aged 9 and 12 [pictured above in an old family photo], to the Indonesian Christian Church. The trio went inside and detonated a bomb.

Oepriarto then drove the van to the Pentecostal Central Church, where, from inside the vehicle, he detonated another bomb, police said.

Around the same time the couple’s two teenage sons, aged 16 and 18, drove motorcycles to the Santa Maria Catholic Church, where they also detonated bombs.

But that’s not all. Two other Muslim families went on bombing missions, too. Apparently, in these cases, the family that prays together slays together.

On Sunday night, three members of another family, including a child, were killed when a bomb exploded at their apartment outside Surabaya when the police moved in to arrest them.

And on Monday morning, a family of five riding on two motorbikes detonated a bomb at the entrance of the Surabaya Police Headquarters — killing all but one of them and injuring four police officers.

We’ve seen children used as suicide bombers on religious missions before, but I can’t recall a situation where an entire family, minors included, decided to blow other people to smithereens for the greater glory of Allah. Times three.

Ah, religious fundamentalism — always astonishing you with new lows.

All told, 12 civilians and 13 terrorist suspects were dead from two days of violence, with at least 46 people injured, including police officers.

The Times notes that

Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, practices one of the most moderate forms of Islam in the world, but still has a homegrown terrorism problem. The country has experienced numerous attacks in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, including deadly terrorist bombings on the resort island of Bali in 2002 and 2005, and bombings of international hotels in Jakarta in 2003 and 2009.

If these are the kinds of acts that occur in a climate dominated by “moderate forms of Islam,” I’d hate to ponder (again) what those who grow up around extremist Islam are capable of.

ISIS, truthfully or not, has claimed responsibility for the Indonesian attacks, calling them “martyrdom operations.” 

Original.

Rob Reiner

Rob appeared recently on Morning Joe on MSNBC. He's got a new movie coming out called Shock and Awe, and it looks awesome. I'm glad he's fighting on our side.

New Rule

Bill Maher hits the nail on the head in this one.  The U.S. has been taken over by the Trump mafia. They act like gangsters...they look like gangsters.  When will Trump's supporters finally figure out that the mob is now in control? Never, if they continue to only watch Fox News.

barrage of lies

Michael Bloomberg gave the commencement speech to the graduating class at Rice University in Houston recently.

Michael Bloomberg calls 'epidemic of dishonesty' bigger threat than terrorism

The Guardian

Americans are facing an “epidemic of dishonesty” in Washington that is more dangerous than terrorism or communism, according to former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.

In a commencement speech on Saturday at Rice University in Houston, the billionaire said “an endless barrage of lies” and a trend toward “alternate realities” in national politics pose a dire threat to US democracy.

The 76-year-old, who flirted with an independent presidential run in 2016, did not call out any politicians by name. Although he derided Donald Trump as “a con” and a “dangerous demagogue” before his election, in an interview before the speech at Rice Bloomberg refused to comment specifically on the president. Fact checkers have determined that Trump has made hundreds of false and misleading statements since entering the Oval Office.

“This is bigger than any one person,” Bloomberg said. “It’s bigger than any one party.”

In his speech, Bloomberg evoked the legend of the nation’s first president, George Washington, who as a boy supposedly said he could not tell a lie when asked if he cut down a cherry tree.

“How did we go from a president who could not tell a lie to politicians who cannot tell the truth?” Bloomberg asked. He blamed “extreme partisanship” for an unprecedented tolerance of dishonesty in US politics and said people were now committed more to their political tribes than the truth, suggesting that the nation is more divided than any time since the civil war.

“There is now more tolerance for dishonesty in politics than I have seen in my lifetime,” Bloomberg said. “The only thing more dangerous than dishonest politicians who have no respect for the law is a chorus of enablers who defend their every lie.”

For example, he noted that Democrats spent much of the 1990s defending President Bill Clinton against charges of lying and personal immorality, just as Republicans attacked the lack of ethics and honesty in the White House. The reverse is happening today, he said.

In one jab at Trump, he noted that the vast majority of scientists agree that climate change is real. Trump and his Republican allies have repeatedly called climate change a hoax promoted by America’s adversaries.

“If 99% of scientists whose research has been peer-reviewed reach the same general conclusion about a theory, then we ought to accept it as the best available information – even if it’s not a 100% certainty,” Bloomberg said. He added, in a direct reference to Trump’s past remarks: “That, graduates, is not a Chinese hoax.”

He warned that such deep levels of dishonesty could enable what he called “criminality”. Asked what specifically he meant, Bloomberg noted “lots of investigations” going on, but he declined to be more specific.

Several Trump associates are facing criminal charges as part of a federal investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. Three have pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI. Federal investigators want to interview Trump himself, although the president’s legal team has resisted so far.

“When elected officials speak as though they are above the truth, they will act as though they are above the law,” Bloomberg told graduates. “And when we tolerate dishonesty, we get criminality. Sometimes, it’s in the form of corruption. Sometimes, it’s abuse of power. And sometimes, it’s both.

“The greatest threat to American democracy isn’t communism, jihadism, or any other external force or foreign power. It’s our own willingness to tolerate dishonesty in service of party, and in pursuit of power.”

Original.