NOT Cassandric!

It has been hot as blazes here lately – a week of 90s and heat index 100+. So both cats are now sleeping in the bedroom with the AC, which means I have not been sleeping well at all, since Franklin is usually on my half. Thus I took a nap earlier today, and now am pretty awake. Since it has been a really bad week for the Good Guys, I thought I'd put a post here.

Plus, summer Sox/Yankees are on the tv, so seems apt. 
How a bad week you ask?

[Wow, seriously, I can't indent?!? Poor paragraph editing options. Otherwise this would structurally be better. But I know, it's free, blah blah]

• The SCOTUS travel ban and Kennedy retiring (we now know his political lean)
• The bullshit Janus decision
• Marching in the streets is underappreciated

 Granted my week was pretty swell. We're doing a job search, and HR is still coordinating visits. I was really productive in terms of writing lectures (hello, Ambioris) and even reading. See above. But the Union thing is really suck.

Sorry I didn't clip the credit, but tbc: not mine!

I did a bad job labeling the "receipt," but I would agree that this only ends with marching in the streets. And not the torch-lit night-time marching either.

Mostly though, something has been bugging me, and a public threshing out would be good.

But a larger thing has been percolating in my head, and here I can at least list the theory: Trump has the RNC emails. Given to him, obviously.
Granted, those could only have come from "someone" who had authorized and state-supported extensive hacking into Western political organizations.

(You seriously think only the DNC emails were hacked? You also probably think that back-channels into this White House don't exist. If you also think that Dear Leader Trump is great and MAGA!! – please leave this blog.)

I've seen marginally thoughtful people struggling to understand why and how the Republican Party has capitulated so thoroughly to Trump. And I would point at them and laugh. (Thoughtful people know why – they read Kruse or Schickler or Sugrue; there are others on my list, but I have only read through these so far.)

Because THIS is what the Republican Party has been working toward since the 1910s.

Yes I know the problems of this picture, thus her mother here is clearly shown being searched.

Why the leadership of the GOP has gone so quickly, so willingly and so FAR down the rabbit hole of authoritarianism and fascism without so much as a "Meep" to the effects this could, perhaps have on their political party is interesting though, just the same.

So: Putin gave Trump the RNC emails to ensure the party's docility. 

And if Trump did have the RNC emails, and the coordinated propaganda and character sliming, and the Gorsuch conspiracies, and the financial crimes (looking at you, NRA and Cambridge Anal), that would explain the deafening silence. You know, if you needed an additional reason beyond the racism and ethnic cleansing.

This champion's name is roslyn la liberte it seems. She can have capital letters when she reca..... well, or not. 

Richard Nixon in a dress

Apparently the Great Alaska Grifter was in town yesterday, and because people are f***ing retarded and seem to care, she got followed around. Thankfully, she fled shortly after for the north, where apparently this interview took place.

I was obviously struck by the "America is for Americans" line, since I have heard that a thousand times in my dissertation research. And I think this perfectly proves what her appeal, her audience, and her own ideology all point toward. As Raymond Pearl pointed out in a 1927 article skewering racial nativists who were twisting scientific information to serve their purposes, this is all intentional. They nativists, he wrote, really mean that we have to keep out people that "I don't like because they're not like me." And this is entirely the case here.

This woman is famous for one reason, and one reason only: she stokes the fears and resentments of white people. She legitimizes their grievances against those people who are "not American" - meaning not white, Christianist morons. Her popularity in this country is embarrassing.

Rush the Clown, Racism, and McCarthyism

While I was out runnings errands yesterday, I decided to listen to Rush the Clown for a few minutes. (My own version of self-flagellation/sadomasochism.)
Did you know that the current financial meltdown on Wall Street was caused by RACISM? I know, I didn't know that either!! Thank heavens we have Rush the Clown to edify all of us. See if you can follow the logic (which I gleaned from the three minutes that I could tolerate listening to his bullshit):

The reason the financial markets are collapsing, I think it is commonly agreed, is b/c of the significant volume of "toxic" debt banks are holding, the result of lending institutions granting loans to anybody and everybody with "Bad Credit? No Credit? No job? NO PROBLEM! Come down and we'll fix you up!" Lending institutions extended loans to highly risky borrowers. Their intent, as far as I understand, was to utilize these loans to help people get into houses or cars or tap into equity, for which they were charged higher-than-average interest rates and fees (again, b/c the borrowers with marginal credit could not secure them otherwise).
So far, so good, right? The lenders then made money on the higher interest rates and fees, until the housing markets collapsed, the amount of money borrowed exceeded the value of the house or car, borrowers defaulted on payments, and then the lenders held the assets/security (the house or the car), which weighed down their bottom line and available capital. This became the "toxic" debt. Right?

Enter Rush the Clown: the reasons banks and lending institutions made these risky loans to borrowers was b/c of racism. Seriously, I swear that's what he said. His logic: the only reason banks made these loans was b/c they feared the implications (perhaps class- or race-action lawsuits) against them for denying loans to "minorities" who weren't able to get the same loans as whites. So they made all these risky loans that drove some to bankruptcy, others to the brink of collapse, others to be absorbed by larger banks b/c blacks made them do it. Blacks played the "race" card to secure the loans. Banks made risky loans not to profit from the higher interest rates, not to profit from the higher fees, not to make oodles and oodles of money, but to avoid being thought of as racists. Blacks got risky loans b/c they were black, not b/c banks, now deregulated, with little oversight and with new book-keeping practices probably derived from ENRON, were trying to make a buck.

Now of course, this is total bullshit. The NYTimes has a great map and article HERE and HERE. A brief look shows the vast majority of property-value collapses comes from southwestern California, Florida, Nevada, Arizona. Yes, there are a lot in Michigan, and the Detroit area. But race doesn't seem to have anything to do with it. People's ambitions for "bigger, better, nicer" got the best of them, they found predatory lenders ready to help enable them, and now WE are all left holding the bag (a bag which my guess is will eventually cost us over $1 trillion, maybe 1/3 of which may ultimately be recouped).

THEN, later that night, b/c it was a Friday and I didn't have to write a lecture for the next day, I finally watched Good Night, and Good Luck. 1. OUTSTANDING MOVIE. 2. It made me so painfully said to compare Murrow and his vigorous defense of American rights and civil liberties in the face of McCarthy's hysterical witch-hunt to today's supine, lazy, LAME media that allows politicians to lie without consequence, to stealthily stoke class- and racial-anxities at will, and to let the "Truth" become a casualty of the "Story."
And I realized the perfect description for O'Reilly and Rush the Clowns is simply that: they are McCarthyists. They use fear, intimidation, hysteria, innuendo and slander to shout down any criticism, or even any possibility of criticism.

We need, DESPERATELY, a Joe Welch. (Welch was the Army attorney during the infamous Army-McCarthy hearings who stood up to McCarthy with the famous, angry denunciation, "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" You can hear the whole exchange HERE (and it's definitely worth listening to).