Today's Must-Read: A Crisis of Public Sanity

I'm borrowing Tom Sullivan's title for this one, because I can't come up with a better one. He starts off:

In many ways, Americans never seem to have recovered psychologically from the September 11 attacks. They were a kick to the gut, a shattering of our sense of invincibility still recovering from the trauma of Vietnam, a shattering of our sense of how things are and ought to be.

Digby tweeted an article Saturday from a February Texas Observer describing a bill introduced by Representative Matt Krause from the state legislature's far-right House Freedom Caucus. It would not only make it easier for state parents to get exemptions from vaccinating their children, it would prohibit the Texas Department of State Health Services from keeping a record of vaccine exemptions, limiting its ability to respond to disease outbreaks.

There's much more to it, of course -- decades of propaganda disguised as news; relentless attacks, mostly from the right, on mostly left-wing public figures (does the name "Hillary Clinton" ring a bell?); fringe elements not only becoming more open, but tolerated. That's just the first few things that come to mind, but they've all contributed to an American public life that is through the looking glass -- anti-vaxxers are just the latest manifestation.

The phenomena are not just a public health crisis, Bruni writes, but "a public sanity one, emblematic of too many people’s willful disregard of evidence, proud suspicion of expertise and estrangement from reason."

Read it -- it's a good summary on the rise of things like the Trump cult and associated aberrations. Bruni's piece is worth the time, as well.

Today in Disgusting People: Pick One

Your choice: Either Alex Jones or his lawyer:

When radio host Alex Jones published a video in 2017 titled “Sandy Hook Vampires Exposed,” the parents of a little boy killed in the Sandy Hook shooting bought security alarms for their homes, fearful that they would once again be harassed by Jones’ legion of followers convinced the shooting never happened.

Now a lawyer for Jones wants to make the parents’ home addresses public.

If I have to pick one, in this case I'd pick the lawyer:

[Mark] Enoch [Jones' lawyer], for his part, would not defend his newly filed objection to HuffPost when reached by phone Wednesday.

“I have no comment,” Enoch said. “The statute said what it said.”

When asked if he understood how this could further damage the lives of the parents, Enoch hung up.

If he's defending Alex Jones, he doesn't care about Jones' victims.

Read the whole article -- Jones is being sued six ways from Sunday. I hope he gets taken to the cleaners.

Via Joe.My.God.

Idiot du Jour

There seems to be this little corner of Iowa that has a racist, neo-fascist majority that keeps sending Steve King back to Congress. Here's an example of what a shining example of rational intelligence he is:

Speaking Tuesday during the House Judiciary Committee's, "Facebook, Google and Twitter: Examining the Content Filtering Practices of Social Media Giants," Rep. King demanded to know why a right wing site is losing traffic. King specifically mentioned a pro-Trump conspiracy theory and "fake news" website known as Gateway Pundit, run by Jim Hoft, a man whose name has become synonymous with "the stupidest man on the Internet," according to a Google search.

In the House hearing, King challenged Facebook's head of global policy management, Monika Bickert, to explain why Gateway Pundit supposedly "saw its traffic cut by 54%." Facebook, contrary to King's assumptions, does not guarantee traffic to any website.

Congressman King also suggested Facebook uses the Southern Poverty Law Center as an ethics "advisory group" to determine how much traffic a Facebook page or website would receive.

It's called the "free market," bozo: your traffic is determined by how popular your content is.

It figures that King would support a wacko-conspiracy theorist.

Welcome to the Twighlight Zone

This is from a couple of days ago, but I had to share it. I could never make something like this up, but someone has a vivid imagination.

Staunch pro-Trump vloggers Diamond & Silk made an appearance on Fox & Friends to talk about, in part, how awful and evil Hillary Clinton is. What was most alarming about this particular diatribe from the duo, however, was their completely false claim that the former secretary of state sold a bunch of uranium of Russia and now the country has nuclear weapons.

“I think and we think that Hillary Clinton reminds us of a nasty sore that’s rotten to the core that really won’t go away,” Diamond said, as Silk said “That’s right” to punctuate her every point.

“And listen, I think it’s time for her to go somewhere and be quiet,” Diamond continued. “If she’s going to be on the national platform, or on her little platform, she needs to talk about her dirty deeds. How she paid for that fake dossier to try to undermine President Trump during the election. How she sold 20 percent of the uranium to Russia and now Russia have nuclear weapons. And you know that uranium is bomb-making material.”

The Soviet Union had nuclear weapons in 1949. Hillary Clinton was about three years old at that point.

And no, she didn't sell "20% of the uranium" to Russia.

But then, this is Fox News, the second largest purveyor of fake news.

There's video at the link, if you can stand it.

And, just to show that a good conspiracy theory never dies, there's Roseanne Barr, who is using her new-found popularity to go right over the edge:



Also known at "Pizzagate Redux" -- you remember the child sex-trafficking ring Hillary was running out of the basement of a pizza parlor in D.C. -- that didn't have a basement.

Reports are that Barr has always been a disgusting person; this is just the latest manifestation.

There's more detail at the link.

Cartoon du Jour

There's something reminiscent of Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter in this:

Or maybe it's just that this is where the Republican party has gotten to.

Via Digby.

Waiting for a Presidential Tweet

Presented without comment, from Media Matters:

From the June 29 edition of Genesis Communications Network’s The Alex Jones Show:

ROBERT DAVID STEELE: This may strike your listeners as way out but we actually believe that there is a colony on Mars that is populated by children who were kidnapped and sent into space on a 20 year ride. So that once they get to Mars they have no alternative but to be slaves on the Mars colony. There’s all kinds of --

ALEX JONES (HOST): Look, I know that 90 percent of the NASA missions are secret and I’ve been told by high level NASA engineers that you have no idea, there is so much stuff going on. But then it goes off into all that, that’s the kind of thing media jumps on. But I know this: we see a bunch of mechanical wreckage on Mars and people say, “Oh look, it looks like mechanics.” They go, “Oh, you’re a conspiracy theorist.” Clearly they don’t want us looking into what is happening. Every time probes go over they turn them off.

Alex Jones is, after all, one of the Hairpiece's major news sources.

Via Joe.My.God.

Over the Edge

Presented without comment:

Conspiracy theorist broadcaster Alex Jones alleged on his radio program today that liberals are inciting violence and leading the U.S. into a civil war.

Jones claimed, absurdly, that liberals are advocating on “every publication outlet they own” for people to “kill the president, kill his family and kill his supporters.” The result, according to Jones, is that “people are getting beat up in the head with clubs, with bike locks, they’re getting stabbed. It’s happening everywhere. The Islamicists know it’s their time.”

Without referencing any specific events, Jones described what he interprets as signs of the impending war: “Communists here in Austin openly attacking our camera crew and our reporters, and having semiautomatic rifles with their fingers on the triggers. I mean, they are ready to go. They are ready to bring in the civil emergency.”

He then warned “our military, our police, and our citizenry” against acting “like cowards during the civil emergency” and instead encouraged them to “offensively in a defensive move, politically get back in their faces and also defend ourselves from physical attacks.” Otherwise, Jones said, the left will “intimidate the nation into a new dark age.”

“I’m encouraging people to hold the line, like Gandhi or Martin Luther King, and not strike out offensively because it’s politically hurting the left,” Jones added. “But if they launch a full offensive, then we’ve got to really launch back physically.”

I mean, what can I say?

Via Joe.My.God. Video at the link.

Today's Must-Read: Americans Weren't the Only Ones Campaigning

A rather sobering article from Josh Marshall, on Russian dissemination of fake news during our election season and the reaction of other governments to the news, especially Germany:

But while they are on their guard, here in the US people are already starting to forget. We're on to worrying about Trump's latest outrage, taking up our preferred position in the internecine warfare within the Democratic party, cursing the pollsters and a lot else. Indeed, it's not just that many of us are starting to move on. All along the reality of what happened - that our election was manipulated by a highly effective Russian subversion campaign - is difficult to fully process or accept.

Marshall links to this article from Buzzfeed, which you should also read -- much more detail. In fact, click through to everything he's linked to in his article.

It was only half tongue-in-cheek that I referred to Trump several times as a Russian puppet. While maybe not strictly accurate (but at this point, who can tell, considering the ways he's mixing the presidency and his own business interests), I was more on target than I knew: Putin got the president he wanted.

Scary.

Today's Must-Read: The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy

Digby nails it again. Considering the stress on Hillary Clinton's "ill health" coming from the right, this is more than relevant:

Back in the 1990s the political establishment made fun of Hillary Clinton for her comment that the press was missing the real story of "the vast right wing conspiracy" that had been dogging her family throughout her husband's presidency. Any mention of it provoked eye-rolls and knowing smirks among the cognoscenti who were all absolutely sure that it was just more evidence of Clinton's guilty conscience over something.

But she was right. And there was some real reporting on it even at the time although as it was revealed, the Republicans would throw out another shiny object and the press pack would go running in the opposite direction like a herd of gazelles so it was very difficult to get a handle on the whole story.

One of the key players is Larry Klayman, whom you may know as "the dumbest lawyer in America no named Mat Staver" (with full credit to Ed Brayton). Klayman specializes in filing frivolous lawsuits, but to give him his due, he's not after winning -- he's after character assassination and causing major headaches for his targets. Digby goes into some detail on his tactics.

The sad part is, it doesn't matter whether any of it is true or not. Digby cites "Cokie's Law" in another article that's worth a look:

Cokie's Law is "it doesn't matter if it's true or not --- it's out there."

The press, of course, eats it up, because it hasn't been about journalism for a long time -- it's all click bait.

Birds of a Feather

I've finally figured it out: Katrina Pierson is just as disconnected from reality as her boss is:

Specifically, Pierson told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday that Capt. Humayun Khan “probably” died because Obama and Clinton crippled our military’s ability to fight by changing the rules of engagement.

“But surely you can understand the confusion, considering how Donald Trump never voted for the Iraq War, Hillary Clinton did,” Pierson said. “Then she didn’t support the troops to have what they need. It was under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that changed the rules of engagements that probably cost his life! So I don’t understand why it’s so hard to understand why Donald Trump was confused.”

There is a very obvious problem with this, of course: Khan was killed by a car bomb all the way back in 2004. During that time, Clinton was a senator for New York and Obama wasn’t even a senator yet.

The reaction has been swift and merciless:

Joker-Joker-Deuce ‏@CombatCavScout

 

Obama decided that too many lifeboats would offend radical Islamic terrorists abord the Titanic. #KatrinaPiersonHistory @KatrinaPierson

• Retweets 101
• Likes 313
• 

4:31 PM - 2 Aug 2016

101 retweets 313 likes

That's just the beginning. Click through -- it gets very rich and strange.

Remember That Climate Change Hoax?

You know -- the one started by the Chinese so they could take over our economy. Or was it Obama? It's probably Clinton.

Not to confuse anyone with facts, but:

The first six months of 2016 have been the world’s hottest ever on record, according to NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — the third year in a row to set a record. The heat has caused the Arctic sea ice to contract so rapidly that the ice cover may reach its lowest extent on record before the end of this year.

Scientists took temperatures from around the world to gauge monthly averages. Every month, except March, in 2016 has been warmer since reliable records started being maintained, that is, 1880. The average for June this year was 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the average June in the 20th century. Overall, 2016 has been 2 degrees warmer than the 20th century.

It's not just hot summers (like the one we're having in Chicago right now). It's other things as well:

Don't buy real estate in a coastal resort area.