tingilinde

what is it about republicans in the trump administration and bigfoot?

ah yes - conspiracy theory people.

and Matthew Whitaker may be the nutjob .. the evil/scammy nutjob - to rule them allsnip

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● Asserted that “time travel” could be “possible, perhaps within the next decade” and tried to raise money using bitcoin for time-travel research by one of Whitaker’s fellow board members. 

● Announced, in the same media release heralding Whitaker’s appointment to the board, a patent application for an extra-deep “masculine toilet” for the well-endowed. Specifying the size of “average male genitalia,” the release said “this invention is designed for those of us who measure longer than that.”

Some think Whitaker’s association with the company (he did legal work for World Patent Marketing in addition to lending his name and hawking its wares) makes him patently unfit to serve. To the contrary, it is patently obvious he is the right man for this moment.

Only a man steeped in time travel and Bigfoot could successfully sell the notion that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s inquiry is a “hoax” that should be shut down. In tapping, as the nation’s top law enforcement officer, a man with experience with hucksterism and conspiracy theories, President Trump has embraced his inner crackpot.

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Time travel may be the best sales point to the right.

 

 

 

 

how blue was the wave?

Perhaps bluer than you might think.  And, of course, orange is the new red,.

 

a tip of the hat to Jim

the psychology of trump supports

There will be a range, but this is interesting.

a tip of the hat to Julia

 

it's not tribalism

It's racism  (via The Atlantic)

snip

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I am not arguing that the Democratic Party or its members are particularly virtuous. A little more than a century ago, it was the Republican Party that was reliant on a diverse coalition of voters, and the Democratic Party that rode white rage to power. Rather, I am saying that when a party’s viability is dependent on a diverse coalition of voters, that party will necessarily stand for pluralism and equal rights, because its survival depends on it. And when a party is not diverse, it will rely on demonizing those who are different, because no constituency exists within that party to prevent it from doing so, or to show its members that they have nothing to fear..

In the Trump era, America finds itself with two political parties: one that’s growing more reliant on the nation’s diversity, and one that sees its path to power in stoking fear and rage toward those who are different. America doesn’t have a “tribalism” problem. It has a racism problem. And the parties are not equally responsible.

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don't blame the young

Why young people don't vote. 

snip

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Our system has adopted universal suffrage, which points toward open and easy access to the ballot, but our heritage in political exclusivity—where voting was once a privilege reserved for property-owning white men—continues to influence our handling of elections. Voter identification laws are tied to a sordid history of discrimination and vote suppression, but even procedures as uncontroversial as voter registration contain assumptions about who should participate. (Indeed, voter registration was first developed as a method to keep recent immigrants and the poor from the ballot box in Northern cities and was used similarly against black Americans in the Jim Crow South.) Our voting system is tilted toward people with stable, conventional lives. And that, overwhelmingly, is who participates, producing a conservative bias in the status quo.

Our government is less representative than it could be because of our voter-unfriendly policies. So even if you disdain young people who can’t find the will or time to vote—even if you’re unsympathetic toward the uninspired or the uninterested—you should want to fix this problem.

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a tip of the hat to Helen

 

 

on the demise of the moderate republican

The New Yorker on a nearly extinct species.

snip

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The Tuesday Group is about the same size as the Freedom Caucus, but it is far less cohesive, which allows the Republican leadership to isolate each of its members. “People like me—you can pick us off one at a time,” Costello said. “We might all be centrists, but we’re centrists for different reasons. Some might be more pro-environment, some are more pro-labor.” The Freedom Caucus holds the real power in Congress. Voting discipline, once imposed by whips and committee chairmen, is now enforced by the most extreme conservatives in the House, and by the activist base and the right-wing media, which can intimidate members of Congress with primary challenges and orchestrated attacks. The deadliest threat of all comes from the President, who ended the career of Representative Mark Sanford, a critical-minded conservative from South Carolina, with a single contemptuous tweet a few hours before the polls closed on primary night in June: “Mark Sanford has been very unhelpful to me in my campaign to maga. He is mia and nothing but trouble.” I asked Dent why more Republican members of Congress hadn’t raised their voices against Trump. “I can answer in one word,” he said. “Fear.”

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a reprieve for endangered wolves

Good news for endangered wolves... the Trump Administrations Fish and Wildlife Service can't allow endangered wolves to be shot.

snip

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The critically endangered American red wolf might have been saved from extinction.

In a scathing court decision Monday, a federal judge in North Carolina ripped the Interior Department’s management of the last red wolf population in the wild, saying that an agency sworn to uphold a congressional mandate to preserve the animals violated it over and over, and even gave private landowners the right to shoot them.

Chief Judge Terrence W. Boyle reminded the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which gave the authorization, of its own statement in 1999. “Wildlife are not the property of landowners but belong to the public and are managed by state and federal governments for the public good,” he wrote.

Boyle ruled that a temporary injunction issued against Fish and Wildlife’s shoot-to-kill authorization in 2016 during the Obama administration is permanent. The agency must prove that a wolf is a threat to humans or livestock before it can make a decision to take its life.

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a tip of the hat to Sukie

 

 

 

the republicans excel at swap building

scamming veterans ...  just the guy for the DoJ.  

a tip of the hat to Jim

 

saying it all

 

 

crackpottery

Matthew Whitaker doesn't believe in the fundamental principles of US democracy - just the sort of guy Trump loves...

a tip of the hat to Sukie