tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post2626791979518534403..comments2024-03-28T14:52:13.218-05:00Comments on Stonekettle Station: PetulanceJim Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11259550121437562338noreply@blogger.comBlogger204125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-27660621576352704972019-02-08T10:43:29.593-06:002019-02-08T10:43:29.593-06:00Only Alan Smithee would be allowed to direct that....Only Alan Smithee would be allowed to direct that. <br />Its an inside joke in the film industry: Alan is the name directors use to keep their real names off a crapfest. <br />whitelillynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-64448703177913110982017-04-01T10:46:17.272-05:002017-04-01T10:46:17.272-05:00Thanks for the link, anon. I recommend looking up ...Thanks for the link, anon. I recommend looking up Edward Bernays to get an idea of how this all began. And Chomsky's "Manufacture of Consent" is a must-read.<br /><br />I wouldn't be surprised if the right-wing propaganda machine didn't read that book carefully to help refine its techniques.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-46695177869626909182017-03-26T11:57:01.269-05:002017-03-26T11:57:01.269-05:00The thing is, Jim, the Dems have done nothing BUT ...The thing is, Jim, the Dems have done nothing BUT compromise with -- or rather capitulate to -- people who have no intention of ANY kind of compromise. The Democratic Party has slid so far to the right that it should now be call a Right-Centrist Party. They are as beholden to the money changers as their colleagues on the right and far-right. Jae Sheddyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17254745003419062924noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-50150953401092062572017-03-16T11:55:06.654-05:002017-03-16T11:55:06.654-05:00Hey Jim,
I have a suggestion for your FB group app...Hey Jim,<br />I have a suggestion for your FB group approval process. Do a search for anyone who has CONTRIBUTED to you! I've been camped out here on the street for several days now waiting to get in. I'm cold, hungry, and I really need to pee!<br />Clare Powers O'Neillunderdoghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16650029264007800285noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-25819352077284259612017-03-15T16:57:09.239-05:002017-03-15T16:57:09.239-05:00Sadly, ever since John Kerry, prior military servi...Sadly, ever since John Kerry, prior military service has been a handicap to seeking the Presidency. Because people in the military have to make decisions, and no matter what those decisions are, someone will be unhappy and willing to complain years down the line. The ideal candidate is someone who has never made a controversial decision in their life.Bruce Coulsonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-5914811523750850582017-03-14T19:22:36.304-05:002017-03-14T19:22:36.304-05:00Not only was that authentic frontier gibberish...Not only was that authentic frontier gibberish...Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14232805580968578341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-76714499940348774942017-03-05T17:42:48.605-06:002017-03-05T17:42:48.605-06:00This is something I've been saying all along t...This is something I've been saying all along to anyone who will listen. Unfortunately, I live in the Red State part of California, so I have to keep my doors and windows locked and my shotgun loaded.<br /><br />Watch for 45's "Reichstag Fire"!Sisyphushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12997190543226527492noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-76611985838390432632017-03-02T12:16:11.782-06:002017-03-02T12:16:11.782-06:00to conclude-
then what? Marches and protests and ...to conclude-<br /><br />then what? Marches and protests and rallies. Not only this- but coordinating with the private sector- the business leaders to force the hand of Congress to have this resolved. Economic warfare. Economic protests. (ref Gov Pence in Indiana when he tried to push thru his religious 'liberty' legislation in 2015- major fail.. BIGLY FAIL- and that was through a coordinated effort by private sector, major employers, the colleges, the NCAA, and the many pro sports teams). <br /><br />As for a coup d'etat? Well- I have no doubt that Pres Obama spoke with the Joint Chiefs and senior military prior to his departure. I believe he advised them BIGLY to honor the Constitution and NOT the person in the WH without discretion. <br /><br />And as we now hear that Obama made sure that intel re trump and Russia was distributed extensively to assure things didn't disappear, the information will continue to come out. The 'fake news' groups are conducting and publishing great, detailed studies of trump's finances, questionable relations and sources of income. I have little doubt that there is MUCH MORE to come out. US Intel has been insulted by trump as well as our military. <br /><br />This will continue to play out. Expect folk like the Koch Bros etc will be telling Repubs in Congress to get this fixed NOW. They will throw trump under the bus without question- when they get the green light from their $$$$ WS gods. (and knowing pence, he has already met with his congressional buddies to assure a 'safe and smooth' transition). <br /><br />We'll see what happens with Sessions. He lied, he perjured himself before Congress. With Flynn gone for lying setting the standard, Sessions needs to resign. Congress needs to demand his resignation. Its not a matter of what Sessions talked about- its the fact that he lied under oath. <br /><br />We'll see... but the pressure on trump and his administration will not let up. More information will come out about trump's reliance and debt to Russian 'investors'.<br />PennyForMyThoughtshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12685904837603964036noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-20678462413845562652017-03-02T12:15:39.791-06:002017-03-02T12:15:39.791-06:00There are several factors to take into considerati...There are several factors to take into consideration- the playing field has been changed, the standard historic roles & moves of the chess pieces have been outright rewritten. <br /><br />Consider trump's chief confidante- Bannon. The historic Repub Party had no place in their tent, let alone in the speaker's table, for an anarchist. Bannon's goal is not to assert power for Republican gain, but power to implode our nation (and, really, the structures defining all nations). <br /><br />"I am a Leninist and my goal is to tear down the State". I’m not sure it matters whether trump is truly bright or stupid, calculated or disjoin. Is he in this for personal gain? Of course. Does he have a sense of national pride? Not as any party leader has ever promoted (at least, not in the US). <br /><br />When CPAC became TPAC we know that there really is no stability or basis to 'the other side'. Its a frikken free for all! Ryan and McConnell and others are acting to promote their own pet projects or the legislation dictated to them by their $$$ benefactors. <br /><br />So- how does anyone address this with logic and objective debate? The 'Ryan' Republicans campaigned on smaller govt, yet we are seeing a massive over reach by the trump administration- from threatening private businesses on free trade ("we'll make it very much harder for them to leave this country") to massive federal expenditures- $25 BILLION for a wall that 'Mexico will (NOT) pay for"; $1 TRILLION in federal projects via alleged public / private ventures- how many damn toll roads on OUR public highways will there be? Fees for every single bridge across the nation? <br /><br />Bannon wants to deconstruct our nation- who elected him? We gave him no voice at the national table, albeit there are many who followed breitbart for their daily ration of LSD-laced facts. <br /><br />Courtesy of gerrymandering, legislators no longer feel a need or responsibility to answer to "We the People". Their seats are effectively guaranteed. So who is their guidance counselor? The private interests who press legislation thru ALEC. We- we no longer count. We are irrelevant. <br /><br />trump, imo, is merely a one dimensional character- a fictional creation of what he thought POTUS should be. He received large donations and now he is paying them back (as is Congress)- see DeVos donations to members of Congress, as well as ~$43 MILLION to the Republican candidates. <br /><br />What DO we do when Citizens United guarantees that the game is fixed, that the refs already have the game called? <br /><br />We can point to the poor voter turnout and the very small (hand) margin that trump took to win the EC votes. There would be change if not for low voter turnout. Perhaps a bit of optimism. We see for House seats, that repairing Congressional districts will take a monumental amount of work. (trump did campaign on term limits, maybe we can force him to call for this? hahahaha... ya, i know, right??) <br /><br />But look at the number of R governors and R senators. These are state-wide results. There is a big amount (BIGLY?) of dysfunction in the D side of the aisle. Maybe with Schumer, we'll see an adult voice championing things (Reid, for whatever good he tried to accomplish, was NOT made for prime time tv.) <br /><br />Re the options to address the immediate issues- of trump complicity or outright conspiracy with Russia to engage in a technical/electronic war on our election- something DOES need to happen. If the Repubs (and one POS Joe Manchin, as one person said- a DINO) rationalize and twist the issue re Sessions and his blatant perjury as a non-event, then-<br />PennyForMyThoughtshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12685904837603964036noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-13577009260229168652017-03-02T11:32:01.229-06:002017-03-02T11:32:01.229-06:00exactly!exactly!PennyForMyThoughtshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12685904837603964036noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-84728585000162214212017-03-02T11:19:11.277-06:002017-03-02T11:19:11.277-06:00Let me guess, your "friend's" name i...Let me guess, your "friend's" name is Elizabeth? She's certainly persistent, I'll give her that. And while I got sick and tired of her OCD on Twitter, I did indeed allow her not-so anonymous comment to post on the Red Sea essay (which is where your comment belongs and not here. Just saying). <br /><br />Despite the fact that you've posted on the wrong essay, I'll let your comment stand and I will go you one further and concede the point. For argument's sake, let's say you're right. I'm totally off base. <br /><br />So, I'll ask again, same question I asked your "friend" on Twitter: <b>What's YOUR plan?</b><br /><br />Come now, don't be cagey. Answer the question. What's your plan? <br /><br />You won't compromise. You don't believe there are any rational conservatives left. You regard half the country as <i>The Enemy</i>. You don't believe the system will work. You don't believe you can win via legal means. You believe the opposition is illegitimate and therefore not worthy of consideration or any respect. They hate you and you hate them and there can be no peace between you. Got it. I'm totally there. <br /><br />So what's your plan? <br /><br />Violent revolution? Civil War? Coup d'etat? And when you succeed, assuming that you do, and you seize power, what then? Purges? Genocide? Ghettos? Reeducation camps? Mass deportation? What? <br /><br />Please, explain. And be specific. Jim Wrighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11259550121437562338noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-90627293970348597842017-03-02T10:47:42.328-06:002017-03-02T10:47:42.328-06:00Jim Wright here is a reaction from a friend:
Here ... Jim Wright here is a reaction from a friend:<br />Here is my reaction to the first essay by Jim Wright I have ever disagreed with. I can't post the comment to him directly, so I hereby send it out into the ether...<br /><br />Every bit of this presupposes that the playing field is the same as it was 40, or even 8 years ago. It is not. Allowing oneself to be constantly sealioned into submission by brazenly mendacious trolls who have no intention whatsoever of debating substantive issues in good faith is every bit as much a recipe for political failure as any elaborately constructed straw-man-liberal who is pedantically unwilling to compromise because of unicorns. Go ahead, Charlie Brown. Compromise with Lucy. Try to kick that football again. You'll get it this time.<br /><br />There simply is nobody left to compromise *with*. If you think they're there, they're not. We're being baited. Traditional strategies will no longer work. We've passed that point. The Right got here through a long and rigorous campaign of conscious, willful disruption spanning decades, and employing the most unethical means possible. It's time to observe their goals, reason out the means by which they hope to achieve them, and do absolutely everything possible to disrupt them, hopefully ethically this time. Reasoning with them, compromising with them, debating them - all of that just plays right into their greasy hands.<br /><br />"You want to fix voter suppression in all its various forms? Then you have to WIN. FIRST. That means you have to use the system as it exists NOW."<br /><br />Bullshit. The Right didn't. Not one little bit. They came from behind, deliberately screwed with the system, and it seems to have worked out rather well for them.Christopherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03607616179315918797noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-60111477816519294832017-02-26T06:27:12.662-06:002017-02-26T06:27:12.662-06:00Anyone brave enough needs to read this article in ...Anyone brave enough needs to read this article in the Guardian:<br /><br />https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage<br /><br />For the view that what Trump was doing with his word salad in that presser was NOT just blathering, that it's intentional, and driven by AI bots mining Facebook and tweeting from ghost accounts, and generally useing algoythms to game google with the object of changing hearts and minds, and doing it at the speed of light, not the creak of brain.<br /><br />Psyops in other words. Of a very new kind. Funded by some VERY deep pockets.<br /><br />From the article:<br /><br />There’s nothing accidental about Trump’s behaviour ... “That press conference. It was absolutely brilliant. I could see exactly what he was doing. There’s feedback going on constantly. That’s what you can do with artificial intelligence. You can measure ever reaction to every word. He has a word room, where you fix key words. We did it. So with immigration, there are actually key words within that subject matter which people are concerned about. So when you are going to make a speech, it’s all about how can you use these trending words.”<br /><br />But there is a lot more. The article is long but really worth the effort. And chilling as all Hell. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-51396226061681411562017-02-24T02:34:56.070-06:002017-02-24T02:34:56.070-06:00Thanks Jim, great writing. I got half way through,...Thanks Jim, great writing. I got half way through, and my head is spinning. I'll have to come back later and read the rest of it. Incredible. Davuihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02344530326145163790noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-14848681704092376992017-02-22T12:10:42.409-06:002017-02-22T12:10:42.409-06:00I believe your verbatim transcript to be unnecessa...I believe your verbatim transcript to be unnecessarily cruel.Mikeinthedirthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08768075238274395015noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-76797333116619062082017-02-22T12:07:55.519-06:002017-02-22T12:07:55.519-06:00You win.You win.Mikeinthedirthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08768075238274395015noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-9586340416269287702017-02-22T11:39:47.042-06:002017-02-22T11:39:47.042-06:00Sadly, Congress, when not agenda-driven, is reacti...Sadly, Congress, when not agenda-driven, is reactive. So, after the world ends, they will consider a bill. Or at least a resolution.Mikeinthedirthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08768075238274395015noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-62460970413177301842017-02-21T16:27:12.337-06:002017-02-21T16:27:12.337-06:00I think his word-salad might be deliberate, as one...I think his word-salad might be deliberate, as one poster above mentioned. It's a device.MarianWnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-53484377848581465052017-02-21T16:22:09.792-06:002017-02-21T16:22:09.792-06:00I live a couple of miles directly below the Orovil...I live a couple of miles directly below the Oroville Dam, so I have been highly distracted this last week and only peripherally aware of the week's T*rump fuckery, so I'm very late in reading your cathartic essay.<br /><br />Of all of his exchanges with reporters one of the most disturbing is with the jewish reporter who asked him about the recent increase in anti-semitic violence. I never would have ordinarily submitted myself to the torture of watching this horror show, but my family members had it on. My eyes, ears, hair & the TV barely survived.MarianWnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-281194122034890522017-02-21T16:08:24.272-06:002017-02-21T16:08:24.272-06:00Dear Jim,
I'm pretty sure you misinterpreted ...Dear Jim,<br /><br />I'm pretty sure you misinterpreted his use of "I used it"<br /><br />"...our military, but they don't have the right equipment and their equipment is old. I used it. I talked about it at every stop...<br />And I think one of the reason I'm standing here instead of other people is that frankly, I talked about we have to have a strong military."<br /><br />“I used it"<br /><br />He wasn't saying that he used the equipment, he was openly admitting to one of his campaign manipulations, using the military rebuild rhetoric the same way as: I'll build a wall, mexico will pay;<br />crooked hillary emails; deporting illegals, banning muslims, dishonest media, law & order etc. etc.MarianWnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-28354387488150800032017-02-21T14:03:47.780-06:002017-02-21T14:03:47.780-06:00He's the 45th president.He's the 45th president.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-12392701517619214442017-02-21T13:46:15.219-06:002017-02-21T13:46:15.219-06:00Given trump's peculiar assemblage of friends a...Given trump's peculiar assemblage of friends and consorts, perhaps we should be asking for a 'nice high school wrestling coach' instead. <br /><br />paging Dennis Hastert... Dennis Hastert, please report to the warden's office. you have a call from trump. PennyForMyThoughtshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12685904837603964036noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-44247983942832100102017-02-21T13:13:41.524-06:002017-02-21T13:13:41.524-06:00Would a nice High School forensics coach like to g...Would a nice High School forensics coach like to give a critique on President Trump's speaking style? I would be curious.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-28972140793003826972017-02-21T11:38:31.503-06:002017-02-21T11:38:31.503-06:00Of course it might not be petulance at all, it mig...Of course it might not be petulance at all, it might be... sassines.<br /><br />check it out: small change in sound, much better match-up with the body language. It's a revelation: <br /><br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwMVBoibxCcBBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00626511956106130872noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8243351006478134285.post-71351936247621878062017-02-21T08:41:03.445-06:002017-02-21T08:41:03.445-06:00Consider, first, his own personal indictment- just...Consider, first, his own personal indictment- just imagine his defense attorney yanking his arm- DO NOT GO UP TO TESTIFY- TAKE THE FIFTH!!! (trump response- I don't drink, sniiffffffff)<br /><br />trump admitted that he WAS, indeed, aware of Flynn's actions AND would have told him to talk with Russia if he hadn't already... <br /><br />TRUMP: No, I fired him because of what he said to Mike Pence. Very simple. Mike was doing his job. He was calling countries and his counterparts. So, it certainly would have been OK with me if he did it. I would have directed him to do it if I thought he wasn't doing it. I didn't direct him, but I would have directed him because that's his job."<br /><br />More- VP pence's lies have been paraded full frontal courtesy of Rience Previus' adamant clarifications on Fox News Sunday- Chris Wallace. <br /><br />Wallace basically pulls out a virtual calendar and has Rience show the dates of "who knew and when did they know it?"<br /><br />And voila- Riense states that pence was, in fact, informed of Flynn's actions- WELL BEFORE pence lied to the American public. (it starts at the ~8 minute mark and climaxes ~3 min later!)<br /><br />This really destroys pence's false narrative that he is pure and innocent (and ready to be POTUS when trump is impeached). PennyForMyThoughtshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12685904837603964036noreply@blogger.com