AG Bill the Barr barian, the Cult of Trump, and the assault on Professionalism

Russia and the Trumpublicans agree to Destroy America

- Boofer O'Kavanaugh, what is best in life? 

- BEER! Baseball Tickets paid for by some unknown benefactor! And getting away with sexual assaults! 

- WRONG! AG Bill the Barr-barian? 

- To #OwntheLibs. See them driven before you. And to hear the lamentations of Obama! 

- That is Good!

In my last post I concluded we were in the Endgame as a Nation because the Republican Party is compised entirely of bad faith actors. Then AG Bill Barr goes out and proves I was correct.

Barr was hired as the new Roy Cohn for Traitor Trump and Big Bill has exceeded his past accomplishments under the Ronnie Raygun Iran-Contra Criminal Conspiracy,

A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not. - Former Worst President in American History Ronnie Raygun

Big Barr swept the whole Reagan Iran-Contra Criminal Conspiracy under the rug. But, now Barr is alleging the Obama DOJ and FBI conducted... You know what? Fuck the lying sack of shit Bill Barr. Blah blah blah Obama blah blah blah FBI... Bill Barr is a fat fascist fuck.  I'm not going to rehash or rebroadcast the lies and of the fat fascist Bill Barr. His repeated recent speeches are all setting up an overthrow of the independent Agencies and the adoption of an Authoritarian State. And the Russian pimps and gangsters are helping Bill Barr and the Republican Party and bragging about it openly

What is more to the point is the demand by Barr, the Republican Party and the MAGA Horde that the FBI, Department of Justice and all other agencies turn themselves into Cults of Personality, directly loyal to Traitor Trump.

The Republicans don't even hide this. Wittingly or not Republicans have during open sessions, through social media, and during the Impeachment circus have displayed their position. Every speech by Republican Congressmen has been as attack on the detached professionalism of the witnesses.

Republicans demanded witnesses tell them if they voted for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. The Republican inquisitors thought this was a Gotcha Moment of Partisan Bias. But, in reality besides being a gross violation of the right of the secret ballot this continued assault on our Democratic traditions is intended to ensure only those loyal to Trump are considered legitimate. Republicans have gone beyond Party over Country, they are fully into the Cult of Trump over Country.

Republicans, especially the smarmy Lindsey Graham, display their true intentions all the time with the continued attacks on Lisa Page and Peter Strzok. Graham has given multiple press interviews with his long southern drawl on full display, voice quivering and etched with rage, where he declares, "We know they hated Trump," So fucking what. Mitch McConnell and Graham have openly declared they will only conduct a sham trial, will take direct orders from the Trump White House, and are going to acquit before the Trial has even begun.

Conservatives have unknowingly shown their desire isn't for Justice but to cement the Cult of Trump.  The continued and repeated attacks on 'Never-Trumpers" and their conspiracy theories of the all-powerful 'Deep State' are the giveaways. The Deep State and Never Trumpers refer to those professional bureaucrats who do not broadcast their intention to defend Trump against any foes Republican or Democratic.

What the Cult of Trump and the MAGA Horde are trying to do is remove the detached professionalism of the bureaucratic core and replace it with a cadre Ultra Reactionaries personally loyal to Trump and the KAG. There has never been a more rightwing agency in American history than the FBI, but that isn't enough. A right-winger like James Comes or Robert Mueller might still believe in the overall concept of Justice and that is something Trump and his family of grifting criminals hate with every fiber of their being. And the MAGA Horde are easily led to that conclusion and have taken it upon themselves to identify and intimidate the Whistleblower and every other witness who dares not defend Trump.

The repeated pouting and "jokes" about Trump getting more than two terms because of the Impeachment or simply because Trump won't leave in 2025, or Trump will turn the Presidency over to Ivanka or Trump Jr. are jokes only until they are not. That's a key weapon the MAGA Horde and Faux Propagandists use everyday; floating some terrible or criminal act, gauging the response, and then either walking it back if necessary or incorporating it into the Cult of Trump ethos and pounding it into the heads of the Trump Horde.

These are the steps towards a Fascist Takeover. When Rule of Law disappears and is replaced with Rule of Man.

Conservative Fury! Senate Democrats to take away flavored Cigars

Democratic Senators, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut wrote FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg on Thursday urging her to ban flavored cigars. Brown joined by his Democratic Party colleagues Senators noted "these products pose a serious threat to public health" and "Flavored cigars are putting children's health at risk and increasing nicotine addiction and tobacco use among young people."

ROAR! You can pry my Hibiscus-Passion Fruit flavored cigarillo from my cold dead, nicotine stained fingers!

"Tobacco companies embody the adage ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,’" Senator Brown said in a statement. "From Joe Camel to tobacco candies and now flavored cigars, Big Tobacco is always trying to find new ways to hook young, impressionable customers—and those customers are our children.”

Faux News promoted this as more nanny-state regulation run wild and ran a story that The International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association authored a petition asking Congressmen, Senators and FDA officials to: Please don’t regulate premium cigars like cigarettes! Of course, No such petition to Congress would be complete without this type of language: And As an adult I want to make my own choices in life and not have a bureaucrat at the FDA making those choices for me.

Damn FDA bureaucrats! If I want to sell cigars soaked in formaldehyde shouldn't I have that choice?

People see what they what to see. Conservatives have created an alternate history for themselves with which they must view every issue as a left/right dichotomy.

It is incontrovertible that Tobacco Companies appeal to the youngest demographic possible, with the exception of those which cater to a different niche or audience. Thus what Senator Brown is saying is true "Big Tobacco" is always trying "to find new ways to hook young, impressionable customers". It's merely good business to get customers attracted to your product as soon as possible.

But what this really shows is those who are offended and up-in-arms over Nanny State Over Regulation have no idea what they are angry about, if they did they would know the main market for funky flavored 6-for-a-dollar gas station cigars are marijuana smokers. You see "dope-smoking criminals" remove the tobacco from the cigar, pack the now empty leaf with weed and have thus created a blunt.

So, if this regulation had been targeted against Hookah Lounges or Head Shops the reaction from Faux and it's bevy of conservative genuflecting sycophants would have been much different.

Liberals and Atheists now bringing twice the Smarts

I'm feeling happy so Highly Evolved ~ Highly Evolved, The Vines

According to a long and detailed study by Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science, has concluded that if you are a Liberal or Atheist you are more intelligent than other humans.

Kanazawa's theory is that intelligence—particularly our ability for on-the-spot problem solving and reasoning—arose as an adaptation to deal with the unusual and unexpected, such as a sudden forest fire.

Since disasters like that are rare in daily life, responding to them wouldn't likely be something our ancestors were hard-wired to "know" how to do. Surviving the fire required both the ability to think up a new behavior, and the willingness to try it out.

Passed down via genetics, those two traits are still the calling cards of an intelligent brain—expressed as a tendency toward adopting nontraditional social values and preferences, Kanazawa says in his new study, published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.

As a result of their iconoclastic ancestry, he suggests, people with higher levels of intelligence are more likely to adopt social values and behaviors that are relatively new to human life—liberalism, atheism, staying up late, and (for men) monogamy, for example.

This tendency toward iconoclasm stems from smart people's brains being better adapted to dealing with new situations, according to Kanazawa.

So, if you are compassionate to fellow humans or if you are able to understand natural forces, like earthquakes or thunder, are not the result of 'your' god's displeasure you have a higher level of intelligence.

Well, as nice it is to think I have excellent reasoning skills and am therefore smarter than others, the ability to adapt old knowledge to new situations is one component to Intelligence. I find I am more in agreement with Stephen Jay Gould and Howard Garndner that there is no "general intelligence factor" (g) and that there are multiple intelligences which are a mishmash of many different fields and kinds. As a reference how many times have your heard the old cliche, 'So and So is book smart but doesn't have street smarts'. This is an unacknowledged reference to the 'multiple intelligences' theory.

Additionally, traditional intelligence tests, Standford-Binet IQ, were often biased and stemmed from earlier times when those biases weren't recognized as prejudicial to reliable test results. However, I'd like to set aside some time and read Satoshi Kanazawa's paper, in order to confirm his conclusion, and thus stick out my chin and puff up my chest and lord my superior intelligence over the mouth breathing jackanapes.

Center Right Front and Center

Coming of Age in the Plague of Reagan and Bush
Watching Capitalism gun down Democracy ~ Your Next Bold Move, Ani DiFranco

Democrats have won the Presidential Election Popular Vote in 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2008. The only reason Bush managed to win in 2004 was because Redupelicans used Bush's Abject Failure of SEPTEMBER 11! Shouting it every time they could and frightening the evangelicals by making scary noises about Marriage and threatening them with catching TEH GAY.

As the election power of Screaming September 11 fades the Republicans fall back to the classic move of blaming their failures on the Democrats. Liz Cheney is the latest Republican, joining Dana Perino, Mary Matalin, Rudy Guiliani in claiming they weren't responsible for the failure of 9/11. [When is it no longer Bush's Fault?]

However, it's only a part of the Grand Strategy of the Republican Party. Republicans and Conservatives are engaged in a generations long struggle to create a set of facts which they can reference and continue the duping of their followers. From this set of facts, Redupelicans can continue to get Americans to vote against their interests.

It's a brilliant strategy. The constant repetition of the Center Right Republican truth, the false piety, the Talk Radio invective, the Fox News blather, the mass produced propaganda books (Liberals are Fascists! Liberals are Godless!) have allowed Republicans to steal the wealth of America and funnel Trillions of Dollars to their Corporate Controllers for over a 100 years.

However, the Right's greatest recent success has been in taking over the Texas State Board of Education which exert extreme influence over the information which goes into Nation-wide K to 12 Textbooks. With their school board power the Right has succeeded in reducing the age of the earth, highlighting the strengths of Creationism, glorifying Newt Gingrich for freeing the slaves, praising Phyllis Schlafly for saving American Women from the Perils of Learning and correcting the record of racist Republican Bigots who loved Martin Luther King Junior so much they wanted him to die to truly appreciate him.

Conservapedia, perhaps unsurprisingly started by Phyliss Schlafly's son and while widely panned and recognized as a joke has still garnered the support of the extremists on the right for their de-liberalization of the bible project; stating Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations. While this is absurd it's not what current people or Theologians believe but whether or not the Conservatives can brow-beat their children and future ones into accepting the Conservative Bible.

Both parties are made up of people who view themselves at the top of the American Social Stratification ladder; Especially when they reach the level of the Federal Government. And like all rich powerful self-important people they don't believe the regular laws apply to them, however, the Right shields and defends their members when they transgress because they view the exercise of political power as the highest good, when the Republicans are doing the exercising.

That way when the Bush unleashes the Smokin' Gun Mushroom Cloud lie and Dick Cheney simply states, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction, the Right is more than willing to believe those lies or if unable then to accept the Noble Lie Theory.

Unlike the bigots who suddenly emerged for fiscal responsibility when a black man became President, but looked the other way when Republicans stole Trillions, I will hold the Republican Party responsible for their lies.