Twilight Zone

We entered the Twilight Zone; yes, I had been thinking of our new era as an episode we cannot turn off.

Rely on driftglass to identify just which episode: "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street"...

And the pity of it is, these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone...

R.I.P., Mose Allison

Sad to learn of his passing yesterday, at 89.

A lot of brilliance has gone out of the world. The work that captured so much only becomes more relevant.


Impossible to pick a favorite, but I've always loved the lyrical twists in this social commentary.


From his last recording: "Let's give God a vacation/He must be tired of it all ..."

And, The Winner Is...

The last, best flatterer to get his ear!

"Finalist", as on Reality TV... Who wasn't thinking that? Although Charles Pierce went for another Trump venue—

Finalists? The swimsuit competition between Giuliani, Carson, and Bolton must have been a sight to see.

That from a long post on "Camp Runamuck in Manhattan," lede of which is, "You have to wonder just how far from its best self the United States has wandered when one of the nation's leading war criminals is nervous about the incoming administration."

John Yoo is the war criminal being referenced. From Yoo quotes ("I don't think he has a very good sense of how our law enforcement system works"), Pierce segues to Camp Runamuck, where

...Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of the president-elect, is now the straw boss of the larval regime. It has been reported by various people that Kushner has purged from the inner circle anyone who was in any way friendly to Chris Christie who, as U.S. Attorney in New Jersey, sent Kushner's pappy to the federal sneezer for a spell, partly because Kushner's pere had gotten back at his brother-in-law by setting the poor sap up with a pricey woman of the town.

In short, the transition team of a president-elect who already has demonstrated a jones for reckless revenge is now being run by a guy who has made a life's work of reckless revenge against anyone who helped send his father up the river for an act of reckless revenge. This is no longer a political operation. It's a Sergio Leone film.

Current chaotic jockeying aside, winners will be selected; in Pierce's words, "The actual parade of horribles will come in due time."

Sticking To A Media Diet

More than ever, it's a cinch to avoid consuming anything from the usual suspects. What I do take in comes via those bloggers with strong stomachs, and with the talent for evisceration that the major outlets offerings deserve.

Shakezula, for instance; all her stuff is must-read, in full.

This, on Nick Kristof's post-election column—

Abusers are horrible people, but their enablers are almost as bad, and with the I like to watch vibe thrown in as a nightmare bonus.

And on that topic, here's the NYT's human rights, women's rights, health, global affairs concern troll to explain why we'll feel so much better if we give our lunch money to the class bully.

Yet, like it or not, we Americans have a new president-elect, and it's time to buck up. I've seen past elections that were regarded as the end of the world — including, in many Democratic circles, the Reagan triumph of 1980 — and the republic survived. This time as well, our institutions are stronger than any one man. We are not Weimar Germany.

We are not Weimar is an awesome rallying cry. If you're a moron. And it is not a comfort to be reminded various concepts survived Reagan. Unlike the NYT's human rights columnist, I'd don't think that makes up for the many living, breathing human beings who didn't survive Reagan, in part because Smilin' Ron was one of the many malicious homophobes who convinced themselves that there could be such a thing as a virus that only killed gay men.

As an aside – when talking about actual human beings, the verb survive is a very chilly one. Thanks in part to people like Trump, we know human beings can survive – that is still have vital functions – all sorts of horrible things. Torturers rely on the durability of the human body. In America, people have developed bizarre, psuedo-evolutionary theories about the mental and physical durability of African-Americans that combines with a number of other biases to lower the quality of health care they receive, even when they can afford it. That people will survive should be so basic an assumption that it doesn't warrant mentioning. When it does warrant mentioning, it should be a cause for alarm.

Or to put it in terms Mr. Attitude of Platitude might understand, at least explain why the standard dropped from Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness to You'll live.

Here, she's only getting warmed up in delivering the "Buck you, Nick Kristof" the column deserves.

This. If it is still publishing David Farenthold, the WaPo is nevertheless poised for its most natural role: shamelessly floating along in the whirl of a pussy-grabbing new Gilded Age.

All; In The Family

Mr. I Know How To Do Things tries getting top security clearance for the kids—then denies seeking it.

They need access now, to explain stuff to him. And for later on—to find out, Where's the key to the treasury?

Also this, from Yastreblansky—

Trump presidency is going to be all about jobs:

Rudolph W. Giuliani, a close adviser to Mr. Trump, said on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday that excluding Mr. Trump's family from a role in his businesses "would basically put his children out of work." The public, Mr. Giuliani said, needs to trust Mr. Trump.

Ivanka's, Donny's, and Eric's jobs.

To Each His Own Grift

Ben Carson's failed "book tour posing as a candidacy" is capped off by this announcement--

According to Dr. Ben Carson's business manager Armstrong Williams, Dr. Ben Carson will not serve in President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.

Williams told Circa, that "the President-elect offered him anything he wanted to do. But in the end he didn't want anything." Adding that "his background didn't prepare him to run a federal agency."

Impresario

Shakezula, on media reaction to Steve Bannon's being named Trump's Karl Rove—

In the Trumpnited States of MAGAmerica, a president who makes a white supremacist one of his top advisers is not divisive. Noting that the white supremacist advising the president is in fact a white supremacist is divisive and irresponsible. So everyone should shut up.

Trump spoke not only to a dying demographic of elderly whites. Through his social media enabled bullying and vulgarity, Trump also spoke the language of young enraged white men. Like neo-Nazis and Klansmen, they may have not have voted in the past, but they turned out last week.

That there were no longer norms of behavior was obvious throughout this, the first Twitter election. But I hadn't made the connection between likely Trump voters and the last few years of reports about the behavior of young male gamers. Some have immersed themselves in social media campaigns to terrorize women; others joined a chorus that cheered on threats of rape and death.

I wonder if anything will ever come out about Bannon's previous gaming business ventures, immediately prior to his taking over Breitbart. If he wasn't directly involved in encouraging online terror, he was positioned to see marketing opportunity. Mother Jones noted this in September—

... he took over at Breitbart News in 2012. Bannon may have applied his web knowledge gained from his time at IGE and Affinity to Breitbart News, which he transformed into the preeminent destination for the internet-savvy, meme-centric alt-right—in part by stoking the anger behind Gamergate, which saw harassment of female gamers by their male peers.

How could they not have been thrilled to turn out for President Sexual Predator.