Propaganda 101

Take a look at the image below.

For me and other citizens living in the US, this represents right about where all the various media outlets fall in terms of political bias. Yet, the right wing blogger mentality that will sadly soon be running our nation would see this and howl in derision. All those "useful idiots" in the middle? Yeah, they're all secret communist agents. Fox is more middle of the road. And the Daily Caller, Drudge and Zerohedge? Well, they are the only truth tellers out there, dammit!!

This is EXACTLY how Donald Trump won the election.

Paul Krugman has a great piece up called "Useful Idiots Galore" which perfectly summarizes how much like a fiddle we were all played. In particular, his comments about the mainstream media were dead on right.

The bigger surprise was the behavior of the news media, and I don’t mean fake news; I mean big, prestigious organizations. Leaked emails, which everyone knew were probably the product of Russian hacking, were breathlessly reported as shocking revelations, even when they mostly revealed nothing more than the fact that Democrats are people. Meanwhile, the news media dutifully played up the Clinton server story, which never involved any evidence of wrongdoing, but merged in the public mind into the perception of a vast “email” scandal when there was nothing there.

I completely agree. But there's something deeper that Krugman has missed. Propaganda 101 tells us that the first thing you have to do is get a good chunk of people to stop listening to trusted news sources. After that, it's merely a matter of introducing alternative news sources that don't cause heads to hurt (see: cognitive dissonance.). Enter the Drudge Report, Zerohedge, InfoWars and, of course, Fox News...all of which peddled pro-Russian stories the entire election. What does all this amount to?

President Donald Trump.

What a bunch of suckers. Putin probably has daily stomach aches from laughing at how easy it was to fool so many Americans. When US hegemonic power begins to erode in the world because of all of this and we start to see hints of authoritarianism here at home, will they still find a way to blame liberals?

Or will they finally understand what they have done and accept responsibility?

The President's Press Conference

A stunning press conference and, I have to say, one that really pissed me off. One of the president's biggest faults is to under react to situations. He sure did when he found out that Russia and Putin personally hacked the DNC and the RNC. You didn't want a scrum, Mr. President?

Well, life is messy...sorry to be the one to inform you...sheesh.

Crack That Nut!

Who is Behind the Great and All Powerful Trump?

Politifact Lie of the Year

Politifact has released its Lie of the Year and it's fake news. The saddest part about this is just how much it's contributed to the election of Donald Trump. At t his point, it's not the fact that Trump is going to be a disaster that's the worse thing. It's that people will blame liberals and the media for his incompetence.

In short, they will continue to believe the fake news.

#Knockitoff

Taking to social media to declare how 2016 sucks because of another celebrity death has become sooooo played. Yes, we all know that your lives are over now that someone you didn't know from a very large demographic (which means every year for the next few years is going to #suck) has passed away.

As both my son and daughter pointed out tonight at dinner...how about all the civilians that have died for the last several years in Syria? Or the family members you know who have suffered and died from cancer? Or the people that simply passed away this year in Anytown, USA that were loved and will be missed by many?

Sure, I miss Prince and David Bowie among others but turning it all into a giant obsession about the year 2016 is completely ludicrous. Knock it off, inter webs!!!

Quote of the Year

Donald Trump understood at least one thing better than almost everybody watching the 2016 election: The breakdown of a shared public reality built upon widely accepted facts represented not a hazard, but an opportunity.

---The New York Times Editorial Board

Hi, I'm A Puppet

TRUMP: I'm a 'smart person,' don't need intelligence briefings every single day

Translation: "I'm a puppet of authoritarians in league with Vladimir Putin."

Full interview below...

Coup D'Etat: 2016

With the recent announcement that the CIA concluded that Russia was trying to help Donald Trump win the White House and that Rex Tillerson, former Exxon exec and Putin tied individual, I think we can officially state that the 2016 election was a coup d'etat. The question is...how did it happen? It's pretty simple when you think about it. Imagine you are Russia and its oligarchy...

First, you cement ties with like minded (and by like minded I mean people that have the same sort of authoritarian ideology that you do) individuals that could be maneuvered in key positions of power. I'm talking here about Michael Flynn, Rex Tillerson, and Donald Trump.

Second, you identify any opponents and exploit their weaknesses. If you hack the DNC and the RNC, for example, you only release information about the DNC. You use dupes like Matt Drudge and Zerohedge to do your propaganda work for you in terms of Hillary Clinton and other Democratic candidates.

Third, you disseminate propaganda to the angry populists in the country you are targeting who are filled with fear and xenophobia. This is half of the people who vote in key counties across the battleground states. You play to their weaknesses and make them believe that your candidate (Donald Trump) is going to solve their problems. Most importantly, you employ fake news that is as enticing to them as catnip. They lick it all up because you have convinced them, quite successfully, that your opponents are the ones who are "commies," "statists," and Marxists. This is the part where you LAUGH YOUR FUCKING ASS OFF because you are actually doing what they are deeply afraid of....

Weakening United States hegemony in the world.

I'm not sure what is going to come from President Obama's deeper dive into all of this. At the very least, it will weaken the Trump presidency and give the Democrats some ammo to stir up the shit storm. I sure hope they do because I don't want to see our country lose power in the world.

There's No Question Any More: Dinosaurs Had Feathers!

It's long been a topic of debate: were dinosaurs warm- or cold-blooded? Were they crocodile-like lizards or were they chicken-like birds? Did they have leathery skin or bright feathers?

Now there is irrefutable proof: dinosaurs were like birds and they had feathers. Scientists have found the tail of baby dinosaur preserved in amber, and it was covered in tiny feathers:

The dinosaur was a coelurosaur, a theropod related to Tyrannosarus Rex and the velociraptors of Jurassic Park fame. It was trapped in amber 99 million years ago.

By coincidence, last night I happened to watch the 1997 sequel of Jurassic Park, in which a human-engineered T. Rex somehow escapes from one island, populates another island and grows to full size in just a couple of years, and then rampages through the streets of San Diego when idiotic humans bent on corporate profits threaten its baby and underestimate its potential for death and destruction.

But the 1997 Jurassic Park T. Rex still had reptilian skin instead of iridescent feathers.

For decades scientists had come to believe more and more that dinosaurs were the precursors of birds, and that reptiles like crocodiles were a separate classification. There were clues in the structure of the hands and wrists, the hips and ankles. There was fossil evidence of feathers in several types of dinosaurs in the past, but rock fossils aren't as detailed or dramatic as amber. Amber almost literally freezes soft tissue in time.

DNA in dinosaur blood in the gut of a mosquito trapped in amber was the conceit for Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park dinosaurs. Sadly, DNA has a half-life of only 521 years, so that means it completely degrades in less than seven million years. It's impossible to recover dinosaur DNA.

Or is it? Birds descended from dinosaurs, so that means their DNA started on the same branch of the evolutionary tree as T. Rex. Might it be possible to "rewind" millions of years of evolution in bird DNA to that branching point, and then engineer that DNA, "fast forwarding" it with mutations that imbue T. Rex characteristics?

Scientists have already done experiments on chicken embryos that cause dinosaur-like snouts to develop. And tooth-like protrusions have been found in chicken embryos with a mutant version of the talpid² gene, which turned on the sonic hedgehog gene (yep, it's really called that), which is involved in tooth production in vertebrates.

If you put that engineered DNA in an ostrich egg and hatched it, you wouldn't have the T. Rex. But you would have a kind of T. Rex that might have existed in some alternate version of reality.

In the Jurassic Park movies the T. Rex was portrayed an unstoppable force of nature that men could not hope to control. So would recreating one be a foolhardy and dangerous experiment?

A T. Rex is about the size of an African elephant: the gigantic T. Rex "Sue" has been estimated to be about nine tons, while the largest elephant discovered weighed in at 11 tons. T. Rex had a bigger brain relative to its body size than most dinosaurs, much of it dedicated to the senses of vision and smell.

But elephants have much bigger brains than T. Rex, and humans are generally able to control elephants. So, yeah, a newly engineered T. Rex might get loose and kill someone. But elephants -- and lions, tigers, wolves and humans -- have been doing that for millennia.

If we want to worry about people getting killed inadvertently by inappropriate use of biotechnology, the potential for death and destruction is much greater from super bacteria created through overuse of antibiotics in hog production than it is from re-engineering dinosaurs.

One Month After the Election...

As of right now, Hillary Clinton has received 65.4 million votes. Donald Trump has received 62.8 million votes. And yet 80,000 people in only three states decided this election. What does that tell you?

It tells me a few things

1. The math has officially become absurd.

2. People that whine about the tyranny of the elite are hypocrites if they think that 80,000 people in three states can decide what is best for the rest of us. 

3. Trump has no mandate. There was no Brexit style rebuke of the establishment. More people in this country voted against him or are ambivalent.

4. Vladimir Putin is laughing his ass off  at how easily the right wing in this country has been duped by fake news and propaganda designed to bring out the worse aspects of nationalism and authoritarianism (racism, xenophobia etc). And they call the left "useful idiots?" Keep an eye on what Putin does in the next four years.

Weather Channel To Brietbart: Shut The Fuck Up

The Weather Channel issued the following statement today.


And, because several readers have requested it, here is the list of all the bullshit arguments climate deniers make fully and completely refuted by peer reviewed science.

If You Are a Right Wing Blogger or Right Wing Blog Commenter...

Anyone that has frequented right wing blogs as I have knows that their news sources are largely full of crap. Considering that they are being utilized in a "Lenin-useful idiot" sort of way by Russian companies (and Vladimir Putin) working to undermine the United States takes the bullshit to a whole new level.

Of course, it's entirely possible that they aren't really being scammed and are doing all of this willfully. If this is indeed the case, then my previous thoughts on the liberals with a little "l" are confirmed. They, not the liberals they foam at the mouth about, are the authoritarians. It's not really all that surprising given their predilection for bombast, hysteria, and out and out bullying.

The recent shooting at the pizzeria in Washington DC illustrates just how serious this issue has become. Making the matters worse is President Elect Trump's choice for national security adviser, Michael G Flynn. Apparently, Flynn and his son are quite the purveyors of fake news.

The elder Flynn, who served as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency before he was pushed out by the Obama administration in 2014, called attention to the phony story just days before the election last month with a breathless posting on Twitter: “U decide - NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc...MUST READ!” Hours after the gunman was apprehended, the younger Flynn renewed his support for the lie. “Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it’ll remain a story,” Michael G. Flynn said on Twitter late Sunday evening. “The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many ‘coincidences’ tied to it.”

Well, that's just great. Everything that we hear is true until proven otherwise. I've said many, many times that this ideology is a national security threat and now they are in charge of national security? Worse, supporters are cheering this on as if this a blog comments section that they so desperately need to "win." I'm wondering what goes through their heads when they read this:

The son traveled with his father to Moscow last year, according to family associates, where his father was seated beside Russian President Vladi­mir Putin at a gala thrown by RT, the Kremlin-controlled propaganda news outlet.

Could this BE any more obvious?

If you are a right wing blogger or right wing blog commenter who has warned us all about the boiling pit of sewage that is communism and are now ignoring this...blaming the liberal media for this...downplaying this as nothing...or secretly embracing this because you are a closet authoritarian...

a). kindly go fuck yourself
b). see someone in the mental health profession because your mind isn't right
c). stop trying to throw our country into the shitter just because you are afraid of progress and aren't getting your way.

This isn't a game anymore, folks.

Great Response!

11h

Donald J. Trump 

✔ @realDonaldTrump

Just tried watching Saturday Night Live - unwatchable! Totally biased, not funny and the Baldwin impersonation just can't get any worse. Sad

 Follow

ABFoundation 

✔@ABFalecbaldwin

...@realDonaldTrump

Release your tax returns and I'll stop.
Ha

11:34 PM - 3 Dec 2016

 
•  12,88412,884 Retweets
 
•  31,47831,478 likes

A Liberal Elitist Speaks

As a member of the liberal elite in the US, why am I responsible for the poor life choices and willful ignorance of other people? As a teacher and highly educated person, I've been told in this election by voters, pundits and the right wing media that I am a smug liberal who has been taught a lesson now that Trump has won. Apparently it's my know it all ness and desire for progression that offends them.

At the core of this issue is the concept of responsibility. Far too many people don’t want to take responsibility for their lot in life and want to blame others for their choices. The factory worker in the Rust Belt who voted for Trump and is angry about the liberal elites would serve him or her self better by accepting that the computer chip, not the faux boogieman of media/Democrats/Progressives/academics.

It’s not their fault that he/her chose their path in life. People who are filled with anger, hate and fear need to scapegoat and are incapable of taking responsibility for themselves. It always has to be the fault of someone else and why not someone who is more accomplished and intelligent? In the final analysis, this kind of stuff (seen in the OP’s link) is petty jealousy and insecurity.

Of course, the bigger issue of the coming Trump presidency is not so much the man himself but the masses that will believe when he refuses to accept the responsibility of his actions. They will cheer him because they too always love to blame others, specifically the media and liberals, for their actions not really working out in reality.

We live in a post truth world. and when the reality of the 21st century starts to sink in, the authoritarians like Trump and his supporters will do what their ilk always do: find a scapegoat. Some would argue that they already have…

Ten Days After: Harassment and Intimidation in the Aftermath of the Election

Oh, The Irony...

Right wing bloggers love to haul out H. L. Mencken and use his writings as some sort of prophecy towards the doom that liberal are all leading us towards. How fitting that this cartoon has recently been making the rounds...

At What Point Does The Math Become Absurd?

Clinton Lead Tops 2.5 Million as Trump Popular Vote Lie Spreads

And that's not even the worst part of this piece...

The apparent origin of the 3 million figure and that false claim that Trump would have won the popular vote had it not been for illegal voters—cited by both the Trump supporter and the candidate himself—is the conspiracy theory web site Infowars. Trump, by the way, called Infowars founder Alex Jones to thank him for his support after the election and has appeared on his show.

I wonder if Alex Jones is up for a cabinet post.

Twenty Five

In the season four finale of The West Wing, terrorists kidnap the president's daughter. President Bartlett, played by Martin Sheen, invokes section three of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, temporarily ceding the presidency to the speaker of the House (there is no vice president). Bartlett (correctly) believes he is incapable of making decisions in the best interest of the country while his daughter is being held hostage.

Now imagine that the president has dozens of unguarded children scattered around the globe, susceptible to kidnapping, murder and extortion. Could any decision he makes ever be considered in the best interests of the country, when his babies are constantly under threat?

That scenario will come to pass when Donald Trump assumes the presidency in January. The targets won't be Trump's actual children, but his office buildings, golf courses, hotels and resorts, which terrorism experts call "soft targets." I alluded to this problem in an earlier post, and now security analysts are voicing the same concerns.

Trump has now acknowledged as much, and claims that he'll be separating himself from "business operations" to avoid conflicts of interest. This is totally bogus. He will still own the properties. He will still derive income from them. They will still have his name on them. He will still know and communicate with the cronies who will control them. They will still be his babies.

This vast network of mostly unprofitable properties (i.e., tax dodges) will be a drag on Trump's presidency, making him vulnerable to terrorism, bribery, blackmail and extortion. His ego will never allow him to truly let go of his babies.

He could, of course, ameliorate these concerns by actually selling these properties on the condition that they be renamed, and by releasing all his tax returns from the last 20 years so that we can see that he really has divested himself of these conflicts of interest. But what are the odds he'll do that?

After the first couple of terrorist attacks on Trump properties questions will arise about whether Trump is caving in to terrorist demands. Will the vast majority of Republicans in congress that Trump insulted throughout the election have the balls to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment and install their dream guy Mike Pence as president?

Donald Trump's paranoia is going to make Dick Nixon look like Pollyanna.

New Name, New Package!

Trump Supporter On Airplane

What am I not supposed to think about Trump supporters again?