Pants on Fire

It was ages ago, during the Gore Vs Bush contest that Al Gore quoted some figure - lets say it was 4.5%. After the debate the Bush people sprang up to tell us "Gore Lied! He Lied" the figure was closer to 4.6% apparently. Such is the joy in finding error in an opponent, all sense of proportion evaporates along with the ability to see how ridiculous you are. In politics degree doesn't matter. A mistaken prediction of insurance cost is right there with selling missiles to Iran and conducting a secret illegal war and training death squads to kill nuns. All that matters is Who, not what.

This joy sings loudest in the hearts of liars. Barack Obama once said there were more black males in prison than in university. Not quite true, but didn't the headlines howl with outrage. It's happening now that Obama has left the building. It's important to portray him as the purveyor of frequent and grievous lies. Books and articles are appearing to distract from Trumps Treasons and felonies, rapes, thefts and frauds by telling you Obama is a liar. He's just as bad so don't criticize Trump

It's hard for me to understand that people think they're not being clowns by comparing the insignificant with the felonious, that Obama saying he thought you could keep your doctor makes him the same kind of liar as saying Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons ready to land on us in 45 minutes. The lives of millions and the expense of trillions are equal to  having your insurance force you to see a different doctor.

But that's how people think: political people that is. We hate to be wrong, foolishly wrong so much we will twist time and space to make it seem like we were really right all along. Endless articles have been written showing just how much of a liar Obama is and it's memorized by Obamahaters all over America to be taken out and waved in your face.

Johnson, Nixon, Clinton and Reagan to begin with - they were caught in lies of some sort. Some changed the world and cost many lives. But Gore lied too. He was 0.1% off in some meaningless figure. Gore lied.

It's only my opinion but we may at the moment have the most profound liar in our history in the oval office. If you don't realize that you're not worth talking to, and I'm not wasting words on you, but the worse he gets, the more felonies, conflicts of interest, secret illegal deals add up the more that's true. You're hopeless in fact. Please realize that I consider you a mortal enemy of everything I hold dear and will act accordingly.

So Whether we find bank records of illegal deals, illegal transactions, tax fraud or pictures of Trump with underage girls and piss whores or signed contracts to yield sovereignty to Putin and invite attacks, you're going to tell me all about crooked Hillary and lying Obama and if you're lucky you might get away unscathed. I'm nowhere near as fast as I used to be you know.

UNNERVING INNERVATIONS

Here is a variation of the knee reflex test. Called the "hammer strikes thumb" test (self-explanatory), its purpose is to measure the time it takes for a pain signal to reach the brain and elicit an "ouch" response. As a measure of the bullshit threshold, some people wince faster than others. Wham!

Among normal people, the pain reflex is instantaneous.  For Trumpsters, however, the pain response can take weeks, months, years ... or never. Personally, I prefer people who can feel pain in real-time. Otherwise, those numb and dumb Trumpster types drive me bonkers and bring out my sadistic streak. Wham! 

RussiaGate? Wham!!!  Falsehoods and fraud?  Wham!!!  Wiretap rap?  Wham!!!  Feel anything yet?

Page Views by Country

Here are page view statistics for the Swash Zone, March 6 through 10, 2017:

United States 1,634

Russia 1,611

Croatia 441

United Kingdom 16

South Korea 14

China 11

Germany 11

Why are page views from Russia almost on a par with those in the USA?  What can possibly interest them?  Have they never seen a talking (O)CT(O)PUS before?

In the Beginning

In the beginning was the lie and the lie became Trump.

'verum est falsum' will replace e pluribus unum on the new coinage of Great Again America. What's true is false. And no one does it better than our new ruling party. Am I joking? Being facetious or is it true? emails, Benghazi and Clinton one told a lie both sides are just as bad, it's all illusion.

Notice how pointed questions of why it isn't perjury to lie under oath begin to pixillate and blur within moments as the center drifts to discussions of how many people talk to ambassadors every day and after all when he said no, yes is almost the same thing because it was a conversation about something else and wasn't that Obama from Kenya after all?

A reporter's question about why we need to investigate something for which there is no evidence or even a suggestion of it, becomes a discussion of FISA courts and the lying press and all the things Obama did that Republicans found threatening.

Enough of this dastardly distraction and diversion and doubletalk. Sessions lied under oath twice and unequivocally and it's perjury and it's a felony not an innocent mistake. There is no evidence that President Obama in anyway instigated a wiretap of Candidate Trump's telephones and those who would absolutely know if he did are denying it. Making such accusations without evidence should be actionable and is not presidential and if it's unpatriotic and "Liberal" to question the president (pace Mr. Miller) it's revolution time. It's throw the bastards out *today time, tar, feathers and all.

Apparently any evidence against Trump & Co. from money laundering for Russian Crooks and Iranian Mullahs to rape and assault and fraud and enough civil liabilities to fill a thousand courtrooms is written in smoke and it dissipates as you watch. What is never was, and what never was will always be, blessed be the lie et in saecula saeculorum amen.

Hope Springs Infernal

 Certum est, quia impossibile.

Tertullian - De Carne Christi

It's been too easy to hope, too tempting to giggle as the President makes a bloody fool of himself with tantrums and childish lies like the spoiled brat he is who just can't understand why things don't automatically go his way.  I still look forward to enjoying his further humiliations and embarrassments even if all we'll be able to get from him is increasingly irrational accusations of  the WTF kind.  But it's not about Trump really, any more that it's the Flying Lady hood ornament that makes a Rolls what it is.

The gates to hell don't say "abandon all hope" they tell you to keep the faith. That way the disappointment will be eternal. 

Total, absolute and utterly conclusive proof that there was no wiretapping by Obama or Alexander Graham Bell for that matter will not do one thing to tarnish the myth that it did happen, just as Obama always will have been born in Kenya or Malaysia or both even with a birth certificate notarized by 9 Supreme Court Justices and filmed in wide screen Technicolor.

Absurdity is traditionally a cornerstone and a buttress for belief, not an argument against it.  We're dealing with a religion in the Trump movement, a bit of a new religion. It has its own prophets and preachers and all the other trappings.  I can't give it a name but it constitutes legions and it's growing.  Its sacraments are phrased in hate and anger and scorn and numberless acts of denial. Denial of science, technology, mathematics and the more absurd the denial, the more tenaciously held.  What you see isn't true and what doesn't exist is dogma and everything that argues against us is proof of this.

Many of us, our culture being as compartmentalized as it is today aren't aware  of the disciples, the writers of gospels. By now we know about Limbaugh and the Sons of Fox, but Alex Jones, Mark Levin, Steve Bannon and Breitbart are all deeply immersed in fantastical Armageddons and mystical transformations as well as the end times for the Administrative State and the structures of the Republic. It all needs to wither away or be destroyed and don't ask why or how. It's a mystery,  and just as no major religion and few minor ones ever are defeated by being disproved or by being reduced to absurdity, this one won't either.  Denial denies all.

Economic recovery is collapse. Dramatic reductions in crime are "carnage" Crime is caused by Immigrants and we are in more danger from all things than we ever have been. The lizard people are everywhere and they're all Jewish and the Illuminati and the Elders of Zion are all in charge of the invisible "deep state" which is "leftist" with it's contradictory Leninist capitalism and fake news.  Come inside friend. No matter how ignorant, stupid or degraded you may be.  We will make you feel smart. We will make you important and powerful and give you the tools to bring it all down.

Species don't evolve but the truth does. In time Obama will truly have staged some silent invisible coup and started a police state with marshal law and sharia law and armed gangs dressed like Pancho Villa will have been dumping megatons of drugs and raping millions and putting millions out of work.  In time Hillary will have murdered more than any serial killer, her husband will have bankrupted the economy and she will have made ten billion dollars in some mysterious fashion by being "in" with Wall Street, whatever that means. The giggling masses will believe and even when the story changes, it will always have been true.

We don't stand a chance and it will all be ushered in by the nicest people who will turn you in to the inquisition without hesitation for saying the wrong thing and god bless the troops for protecting our freedoms.

The Enigma of Arrival

They jump up, they sit down. They jump up again, blank expressions on their face as though listening intensely to instructions or some inaudible tune. Marionettes in dark suits, they jump up, they sit down.

The mind recalls scenes from Korea, the dark clad people grovelling in tears at the loss of a leader who owns their lives and their families and who must be impressed with their devotion lest he kill them on the spot. In the big room the Republicans jump up, they sit down. The other half slump in their seats, dark rags not able really to sit. Not reacting, looking at their hands: failed men in a homeless shelter, waiting. Refugees and a packed train station, waiting; cattle in the chutes. All people caught up in a huge drama and no longer the people we knew only moments ago with motives, and positions and goals and explanations and narratives. They all jump up, they all sit down.

He inherited, lies the man at the podium, a chaotic mess. He's the last US president since James Madison to wear a wig, although it's died and not powdered. He lies outright about it, making up figures, contradicting himself when he mentions a recovery albeit slow, he says, neglecting to mention that it was a recovery from the biggest recession in nearly 90 years and caused by policies he again proposes. We've had a rarely equaled economic expansion, rarely achieved employment levels and wage growth is accelerating, but that's fake news. The real news is bad. He needs it to be.  The real news comes from me and none else. And you will believe.

It wouldn't be appropriate to comment as a reporter or columnist. We have to pretend not to be "fake." No, let's just watch. Just stand here like refugees in shabby clothes and our things in cheap suitcases waiting in a public place for the trains.

"As we speak," says the big ugly man who looks so much like an ugly little man on camera:

"as we speak, they're rounding up bad guys."

I can picture men and women and children running through dark alleys, sneaking out of back doors, hiding in culverts and under abandoned cars in the uncaring conservative night, the wind of American hate blowing like a stink from a slaughterhouse. In the big room, they jump up, they sit down and we watch, stunned.

DONALD TRUMP: DOG WHISTLING PAST THE GRAVEYARD

At last count, 55 Jewish Community Centers receive 70 bomb threats. In Missouri, vandals overturn 150 gravestones in a Jewish cemetery. What accounts for the national pandemic?

Anti-Semitism has always lurked in the shadows of Western civilization, a constant menace made permissible by fear-mongering and demagoguery. In part, Trump’s embrace of extremism, nativism and reckless rhetoric account for the latest resurgence.

“I don't have time for political correctness” — incendiary words from a presidential contender. “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose voters” — arrogant words pitched to an angry rabble summoning them from darkness. Steve Bannon and Mike Flynn — the president fills high profile cabinet posts with self-avowed bigots.

In a press conference last week, the president dodged questions from an Israel reporter — ordering him to “sit down.” Trolls from neo-Nazi websites applaud the snub.

President 45 finally denounces the scourge. “The anti-Semitic threats targeting our Jewish community and community centers are horrible,” he admits grudgingly.

For an egotist who turns every public stage into an “I” for an “I”, his torpid appeal is a day late and a dollar short. The Anne Frank Center of New York condemns his words as “a pathetic asterisk of condescension.”

In short order, this is how Donald Trump unleashed a wave of anti-Semitism unseen since the 1930s.

FEAR AND VICTIMHOOD IN THE HOKEY POTUS AGE

In the opinion pages of our local newspaper, one letter writer fabricates a claim of victimhood:

“The word I keep hearing over and over from liberal Democrats as they protest everything is ‘fear.’ My fear is that if I wear my “Make America Great Again” hat in public I may be assaulted. If I am overheard saying that I supported Trump I may be verbally assaulted. That is what I call ‘real’ fear. True Trump supporters are generally a quiet, hard-working, taxpaying, respectful group of people. We need a little more conversation and a little less confrontation,” she writes.

If this letter were an honest appeal for “conversation,” I would have no argument. However this is not an invitation to hold a conversation but an argument built of straw. How many people wear their partisan hats when venturing outside their homes? Are quiet, hard-working, taxpaying Hillary voters just as likely to be harassed by a rabid Trump voter?

Misplaced attribution has turned our public life into a bully pulpit of exaggerations and fabrications. Real news records real events; not the falsehoods of a demagogue who weaves self-serving narratives to mislead the public. Here are examples of real news in recent weeks:

In Quebec City, a gunman kills 6 people at a local mosque. Authorities arrest a Canadian national whose Facebook page reveals an admiration for Donald Trump (Toronto Star).

Two Texas mosques are destroyed by fire in one month, one within hours after the president signs his Muslim travel ban (Texas Tribune).

CNN reports a wave of bomb threats that close 54 Jewish Community Centers. In the face of pandemic anti-Semitism, the president dodges questions from an Israel reporter — ordering him to “sit down.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center documents a sharp rise in hate crimes since the election. These reports correlate with slogans and remarks made by candidate Trump during the campaign.

Over 1,000 incidents committed by rabid Trump supporters, but how many are attributable to a liberal Democrat? Imagined fear is the province of children. Playing the victim card is a dishonest and disingenuous argument at best.

There is no excuse for willful self-delusion. Those who voted for the candidate ignored his defects of character: His appeals to bigotry and racism; his admitted misogyny; his bullying of a disabled reporter; his predatory conduct; his litany of cheats, deceits, nativism, and narcissism.

When voters deny such defects of character and turn mirrors to the wall, they are refusing to see their own reflections and to hold themselves accountable.

THE HOCUS POCUS POTUS

“A landslide,” he claims.  Let's fact check the feckless claims and vainglorious grandstanding.  In Electoral College votes alone, the man ranks near the bottom. In terms of popular vote, the picture is far worse.  A simple pie chart shows the certified election result, raw data as follows:

Eligible Voters — 231.6 million

Eligible voters not voting — 92.7 million (40%)

Raw Vote Total — 138.9 million

Clinton Vote — 65.8 million (29%)

Trump Vote — 63 million (27%)

Other (third parties) — 7.8 million (3%)

Clinton plurality over Trump — 2.8 million

As you can see, only 27% of eligible voters decided the election. Almost three (3) voters in four (4) did not vote for the troll in the hole — hardly a landslide (or mandate) as claimed.

Yet the man-child in the White House and his minions cling to a falsehood. Let’s recall an old adage: “Figures don’t lie but liars figure.” Which is why I prefer to call him by his real title: BOGUS POTUS #45.

What the Hell Just Happened?

The unthinkable happened. Because the American electorate revelled in their unthinking. We saw it unfold in microcosm right here in the venerated blogosphere. Asked who they would vote for, uncaring millennials said something like, "Oh, I dunno. I'll probably vote for Jill Stein." Bernie Bots openly flouted their hatred of Hillary Clinton whilst claiming true liberal cred out of the other side of their mouths. When asked if their boy lost the primary, would they cast their votes for HRC? "We won't!" they proudly proclaimed.
What just happened? Who are the good guys? Who can we trust? We thought Jill Stein was a crunchy progressive?

Turns out she actually campaigned on the concept of principled collaboration with Russia, spouting the pseudo-liberal line of bullshit, "The United States is now embarking on a $1 trillion program to update its nuclear weaponry while we are slashing programs to fight hunger, address homelessness, and provide economic security for our people,"

And the full-on crock-of-shit, "Solutions to problems such as jihadi terrorism will require Russia and the United States to work together, shedding outdated cold war attitudes that prevented collaboration on problems facing both nations."

And even the reprehensible, "The Obama Administration's obsession with toppling the government in Damascus is fundamentally inconsistent with winning the fight against ISIS," Stein asserted. "US pursuit of regime change in Libya, Iraq, and Syria created the chaos that promotes power grabs by extremist militias. Many of the weapons we are sending into Syria to arm anti-government militias are winding up in the hands of ISIS. This isn't a clever foreign policy - it's disastrous militarism."

On another topic, I'm sure you were as dumbfounded as I was when Rand Paul said it was time to get busy repealing Obamacare instead of investigating. They trying to pull young minds into the abyss.