It’s been a very busy day. Store to Door came early, and Wendy is coming this evening. There will be no Monthly Report for January and only a partial report for February. A screw-up at our HSP, the site that owns the servers where Politics Plus lives, trashed all the usage data that I collect to put in our Monthly Report from 1/12 through yesterday. It’s fixed now, but rather than risk that happening again, I signed up for Google Analytics and bought a plugin to incorporate it into the Dashboard that I, the Administrators and the Editors use. Next month I will have a redesigned Monthly Report for the partial month of February. Unlike with most plugins, I had to hand install the Pro version onto our servers, something I had not done before, so it took me several hours. I’m running way late.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:25 (average 4:31). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From The New Yorker: In a blistering attack on the media, President Trump said on Monday that the press has consistently refused to report the voices he hears in his head every day.
Trump praised the “really terrific information” he gets from the voices, which often speak to him when he is roaming the White House in his bathrobe in the middle of the night.
“They tell me that I won by the most votes ever and had the biggest Inauguration crowd ever,” Trump said. “These are fantastic voices and they’re doing a great job.”
Trump said the refusal to report what the voices tell him makes the media “the most dishonest people on earth.”
“There might be a hundred people protesting outside the White House, and at the exact same time, five hundred voices talking to me inside my head,” he said. “Guess which the press will write about?”
Andy may be on to something there. RESIST!!
From Think Progress: Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act are two terms that refer to the same piece of legislation. There are no differences between the two because they are in fact the exact same thing.
They are the same thing on the federal level. They are also the same thing on the state level. It is one thing.
Both Republicans and Democrats use the terms “Obamacare” and “the Affordable Care Act” to talk about the same thing. This is correct.
A recent poll found that approximately one-third of Americans believe that Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act are different laws. They are mistaken; it is the same law.
I wonder how a whole bunch of very stupid Trump voters are going to feel when they scream for ObamaCare to be repealed, until they realize their health insurance is gone. RESIST!!
From Raw Story: Historian Ron Rosenbaum spoke out this week about how President Donald Trump is using Adolf Hitler’s “playbook” from Mein Kampf for undermining democracy.
In a recent column for Los Angeles Review of Books, the author of Explaining Hitler breaks his silence about the recent U.S. election, and about how the “normalization” of Trump is strikingly similar to the Nazi Party’s march to power.
“What I want to suggest is an actual comparison with Hitler that deserves thought,” he writes. “It’s what you might call the secret technique, a kind of rhetorical control that both Hitler and Trump used on their opponents, especially the media.”
According to Rosenbaum, Trump is using the Mien Kampf “playbook” to throw the media off balance and to normalize actions and statements that would have been unthinkable just months ago.
“It looked like the right-wing parties had been savvy in bringing [Hitler] in and ‘normalizing’ him, making him a figurehead for their own advancement,” Rosenbaum notes. “Instead, it was truly the stupidest move made in world politics within the memory of mankind. It took only a few months for the hopes of normalization to be crushed.”
I’ve been saying the Fuhrer is using Nazi methods since he usurped the White House, but folks, who don’t know me, have no reason to believe me. Rosenbaum, on the other hand, is an expert. RESIST!!
Cartoon:
12 Responses to “Open Thread – 2/8/2017”
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3:36 Very pretty.
TNY – Well, that explains a lot! Thanks, Andy!
TP – One-Third. Yes. This has been making me crazy for a while. And we all probably speak to some of them every day. But if the subject doesn't come up, we never know we have been concersing with an idiot.
RS – My advice is to skip the RS link and go straight to the recent column link, read it is full, and then read as many comments as you can. And then maybe bookmark that link for reference in case needed to explain to someone who might listen. Or maybe even "print" it to a PDF and save that, in case the LARoB goes the way of the Munich Post. It is not impossible.
Cartoon – Yup.
NYer: Oh, how funny! A farfinknewgin living in a state of denial with his tiny hands….LOL, Andy.
TP: Jimmy Kimmel did a video on this.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jimmy-kimmel-lie-witness-news-obamacare-affordable-care-act-965487
RS: Good article, Bookmarked, and passing this on too. "NICHT MEIN FUHER!!" RESIST!!
Cartonn: ugh!
You sound very busy! As I'm not computer literate, I didn't understand what you wrote, but Kudos to you for your hard work, I sure do appreciate you. Hope that you get a chance to rest and relax. Enjoy your evening, take care, and Thanks, Tom.
TC, you just "Keep on keepin' on," man!
New Yorker: "The voices! The voices, they are my real, bigly real, friends!"
RS: How many times before the election did I said that the Empty Orange is using the Hitler Playbook? I do not know the truth of the old rumor that he's kept Mein Kampf on his night table, but, bullies tend to use the same techniques to intimidate, narcissists tend to use the same tactics to manipulate; they've honed their diabolical skills over many years, can easily see what works and what does not; MALIGNANT NARCISSISTS would be, perhaps, even more apt to use the same malignant tactics, because these serve their purposes so fucking well!!
Puzzle — 3:22 No butterfly fricassée tonight Puddy Tat!
The New Yorker — LOL!!! Andy is doing straight reporting again, I think. Reporting on Drumpfenfarten's voices, Andy is likely the only "honest press" as far as Drumpfenfarten is concerned! Good thing he does not know Andy as we do.
Resist!!!
Think Progress — I have seen "on the street" interviews which actually asked if people liked Obamacare or would they prefer the ACA instead. It was bloody amazing at how many people preferred the ACA. Talk about an uneducated populace! When people see their affordable healthcare disappear with nothing to replace it (except the Republicare deatgh benefir of course), especially the Drumpfians, there will be hell to pay!
Resist!!!
Raw Story — Say "NO" to normalising Drumpfian antics and policies. Say "YES" to the truth! Drumpfenfarten is a plague on the US, on humanity!
Resist!!!
Cartoon — Is it too late to let them go now?
Well losing the data sucks, but finding a solution for future month ends is good. And you got the bonus of learning something new! I had physio this afternoon which helped as a stress reliever. I am still very tired from the emotional rollercoaster ride etc these past weeks, but I did make progress on arranging a memorial service for my mother. It will be Saturday 04 March 2017 at 1300 hours in my church — exactly 1 month after her passing. My brother and his wife will be coming out for a few days at that point. Hopefully we won't still have snow. Just east of here in the Fraser Valley, about an hour's drive, they received 88 cm (35 inches) of snow last Friday through Sunday, and they are supposed to get another 80 cm (31.5 inches) today and tomorrow. OMG! This has been a very snowy year. In the last 27 years, there has only been one year with a lot of snow that I can remember, but nothing like this year. Take care.
This is the worst year in my memory. \
I hope that the visits from your family help you process your grief.
And then there are those that say climate change is a hoax?!
So sorry to hear that HSP has screwed up your data, TomCat, and that you switch to Google Analytics (which is pretty good by the way) and had to fork out for a plug in to get it to work. And all that extra work! You could really have done without it at political and medical dire times like this. Give me a shout if there's anything I can do to help.
TNY: Andy is voicing those voices not in Drumpf's head but all over the world who loud and clearly say: The lost majority vote President of America is certifiably mad.
TP: It's a shame that the poll didn't ask people if they voted for Trump, however it is disturbing that " This confusion [about Obamacare and the ACA being the same thing] was more pronounced among people 18 to 29 and those who earn less than $50,000 — two groups that could be significantly affected by repeal." but " Among Republicans, a higher percentage (72 percent) said they knew Obamacare and the A.C.A. were the same, which may reflect the party’s longstanding hostility to the law." That could warrant the conclusion that the "regular", .i.e. older and higher-income Republicans think that by a repeal they'll be even better of than they are now, but that the Drumpf voters indeed have no idea that they brought their own health insurance into peril.
The trouble is that by the time these poor uninformed sods wake up to reality, the damage is already been done so we need to make it clear to them before it happens and
RESIST!
RS: Many here have been saying Drumpf was using Hitler's handbooks (not only Mein Kampf, but also the propaganda Göbbels masterminded), but since Drumpf is in the White House and showing his complete incompetence and incapability to gaps any concept that is put in writing longer than 144 characters, I firmly believe that Steve Bannon and his own minions are the ones who have been whispering in Drumpf's ear (remember those voices Andy mentions above?) far longer than we thought and who have been masterminding both Drumpf's campaign and presidency to undermine democracy. So getting Drumpf impeached is one thing, but getting Bannon and his other advisers out of there is another and for that we need to
RESIST!
Cartoon: From here it sometimes looks like some states have joined since then.
Thanks! You have access to the dashboard. Feel free to tweak.
First of all, thank you for all your hard work on our behalf, TC – you are greatly appreciated!
Last night after Sessions was approved (grrr), I was on Twitter and the Rump sent about 15 separate tweets to each major paper and tv station, each one saying, "we won again, na na, na, na, na" This morning all signs of such tweets were gone. There is supposedly a leak in the WH which talks about how worried staff is and what bizarre things are going on….latest is that at 3 am, Rump called Gen. Flynn to ask him an economic question…. apparently, Flynn says this is so and that he told Rump that wasn't his area of expertise.
The fact that SCROTUS (So Called Ruler Of The United States) has NO general knowledge of macro-economics (he wanted to know if a strong dollar was good or bad) – but the fact that stories like this are leaking out daily signals that his staff has NO respect for him.
(Besides – why would he call a general? He's repeatedly told us he knows MORE than all the generals.)
Because he views the military as the solution to all challenges, foreign and domestic.
Thanks all! Hugs!!