Chris Christie Is an Incompetent Boob and a Goddamned Liar (Part 994 of an Endless Series)

Posted by Rude One

Now, the Rude Pundit is no big-time politician who is friends with football team owners and kings, nor is he running for president, but he's pretty damn sure that if he were governor of a state that just got face-fucked by an historic blizzard with historic floods, he'd probably think it's his responsibility to stay in his goddamn state, just to show everyone that he gives a happy monkey fuck. But not New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

Oh, sure, he was shamed into leaving the campaign trail in New Hampshire for a day to hang out and drink hot chocolate with the kids back at home. But as soon as the storm was over (and it was a big fucking storm), Christie told the snow-coated Garden State to kiss his big happy ass goodbye and jetted off in a private plane. When questioned about that decision this morning on Morning Blow, Christie, as is his way, was a total cock about it: "I don't even know what critics you're talking about. There is no residual damage, there is no residual flooding damage. All the flooding receded yesterday morning. And there was no other damage."

And, sure, the southern portions of the Jersey Shore might be a little more Philadelphia, a little more Delaware, but, you know they are still part of the state that Christie allegedly runs.

That part of the state got floods that dwarfed Hurricane/Superstorm/Big Honkin' Weather Event Sandy for them. In fact, this was their Sandy, since that the south shore dodged that bullet. But this more than made up for it. The flood waters recorded were a foot higher than the previous record in some areas.

As for the aftermath, or, as Christie calls it, "residual damage," the governor must understand that if a building gets flooded, especially if it has three, four, five feet of water in it, there is damage that may involve gutting the place or condemning it. Certainly, there is a fuck load of shit messed up. And it ain't isolated to a couple of homes.

The mayor of that town up there, North Wildwood, said, "We had between four and five feet of water in the downtown. Our entire dune system was compromised, and we had a big breach on 3rd Avenue. We had whitecaps and ice flow right through town. It was surreal."

Christie is prancing around New Hampshire, calling himself "the disaster governor," and saying that makes him a good leader. Well, shit, at least he didn't just fuck off to Disney World this time. He pretended he gave a fuck for a few minutes. If deluding yourself and lying to people is leadership, then Chris Christie should be the fuckin' emperor of the world.

Ring Of Fire On Free Speech TV

GOP Establishment In Freak-Out Mode: They Can't Stop Trump Or Cruz From Grabbing Nomination

By Steven Rosenfeld

 

"The party has been hijacked," says one GOP insider.

 

The Republican Party has added a new twist to its renowned blame games. Its Washington-centric establishment is saying the race for the 2016 presidential nominee is all but over before the voting starts.

As national news organizations are reporting just days before Iowa caucuses, it looks like either Donald Trump will mount a successful hostile takeover of the GOP, or the senator most despised by its establishment, Ted Cruz, will grab the nomination. That realization has prompted a growing chorus of GOP strategists and party insiders to chime in with last-minute advice to avoid what others say is inevitable, or simply panic.

“Whoever is not named Trump and not named Cruz that looks strong out of both Iowa and New Hampshire, we should consolidate around,” Henry Barbour, a Mississippi-based strategist told the New York Times, in a piece this week emphasizing time is running out for a “credible alternative.” His uncle is ex-RNC chair and former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour.

“This whole thing is a disaster,” Curt Anderson, ex-RNC political director and veteran operative, told Politico.com in a piece that asked who let Trump get this far. “I feel the party has been hijacked,” said RNC member Holland Redfield. “It will be a major internal fight.”

“All of the hand-wringing and alarm-sounding within the Republican establishment is sound and fury signifying nothing,” Chris Cizilla, the Washington Post’s top handicapper wrote Wednesday. “The train has left the station. The boat has left the dock. The genie is out of the bottle. Pandora’s box is open.”

And what a box it is! Before Trump hijacked the headlines by trying to bully Fox News into dumping Megyn Kelly as a moderator for Thursday night's debate, and then walked away because he didn’t get his way (his press statement said, “this takes guts”), he was drawing the worst GOP publicity hounds.

In recent days, that’s included Sarah Palin, Jerry Falwell. Jr., Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley and Donald Rumsfeld.

“I see someone who has touched a nerve with our country,” Rumsfeld said of Trump. But the one-two punch of Palin’s and Grassley’s support is seen as influential among Iowa Republicans, who are disproportionately right-wing and evangelical. That’s why Mike Huckabee won Iowa in 2008 and Rick Santorum won in 2012. 

No matter the reason, the finger-pointing has begun. Republicans who tried to ignite a stop-Trump movement told Politico that the super PACS and donors that lined up behind their more mainsteam candidates—Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Chris Christie—misspent millions by slamming each other and not attacking Trump or Cruz. “It’s not just campaigns that are coming under fire—it’s also donors, many of whom were presented with the opportunity to go after Trump but didn’t pull the trigger,” Politico wrote. “Much frustration has been directed at the RNC, which some believe has been pushed around by the party’s surprise poll-leader.”

Trump’s Fox News Gambit

Going into the week before the Iowa caucuses, polls showed the dark mood of Republicans favors Trump and Cruz. The base is in a “sour” mood, the Post reported, although that’s too genteel. Ninety percent say the country is on a wrong track. Eighty percent don’t like the way the federal government works. Sixty percent say people like them are losing influence in America. Forty percent say they are “angry” about all of this—hence Trump’s standing: he has the support of 37 percent or so of likely GOP primary voters and has been leading for months. 

Trump yet again showed how he can uniquely manipulate the media by reviving his fight with Fox News’ anchor Megyn Kelly. He deliberately picked a fight with her the way he picks fights with protesters at his rallies. The timeline of this latest attention-grabbing gambit saw Trump threaten to pull out of Thursday’s TV debate unless Fox pulled Kelly from one of three moderator slots. But Fox did not budge, forcing Trump to follow through on his threat or look weak—a cardinal sin for him.

The great negotiator might have pulled a dumb move on the eve of what was lining up to be the biggest night of his life—winning the Iowa caucuses to begin his hostile takeover of the GOP. As he will see, politics abhors a vacuum and he just gave Cruz, who’s slightly trailing, and the posse of other mainstream candidates more airtime to attack and make their case. Undecided Republicans will see other choices without Trump hogging the limelight. Whether that’s a masterful move by the master negotiator remains to be seen. The Washington Post Wednesday reported that Trump supporters are parroting his lines that Kelly is biased and Fox can’t be trusted.

What’s most notable about this latest made-for-media dustup is what it reveals about Trump’s character—how thin-skinned he is when faced with critics who don’t fawn over him. On Tuesday night, Trump held a rare press conference and clashed with reporters who repeatedly asked him to respond to charges that he should not be endorsed by evangelicals because of his past marital infidelities. Come Wednesday, the Times’ campaign blog speculated that Trump knows he will be attacked for past pro-choice stances and would not be able to monopolize the debate coverage by attending. The Times also blogged that his campaign was walking back remarks about not attending the debate.

As the Boston Globe noted, “Cruz continues to work on his Iowa ground game while Trump continues to fight with the media.”

Not Republican, But Authoritarian

Whether he shows up or not, what the country is witnessing is not just a candidate whose uncanny ability to provoke and manipulate the press has upended previous rules of presidential campaigns, rendering mainstream competition all but irrelevant. Voters are also witnessing what an extreme authoritarian looks like and how he operates. That searing conclusion comes from former Nixon White House counsel John Dean, who has written many books about political authoritarians and their rise in the Republican Party.

“Trump, after decades in the glare of media attention, instinctively understands exactly how to manipulate the fourth estate better than any political figure in modern America,” he recently wrote.

“By being himself, he is taking the country to school on how to dominate public attention with his inflammatory rhetoric, which he intuitively employs through unfiltered social media.”

Dean wrote that people who know Trump say he’s not behaving any differently on the campaign trail than he does in his business life. “I spoke with an attorney who has been involved in a number of real estate disputes with Trump, over many years, who said Trump acts in a very similar fashion in his business dealings. He insults and belittles opponents, and is an extremely sore loser, whose standard operating procedure is to try to bully and bend the rules his way.”

“We are going to know a lot more about authoritarian politics when the 2016 presidential race is completed,” Dean said, referring not just to Trump but also to the vast numbers of Americans who are drawn to following extreme authoritarians. What that says about the fate of the modern Republican Party also remains to be seen, but you can be sure that its mainstream leaders see the writing on the wall and are finding it disconcerting.

Related Stories

• Dumb and Dumber: Trump, Palin and the Celebration of Stupidity in U.S. Politics
• Astounding Video Surfaces of Racist, Sexist, Homophobic, Bullying, Crude Ted Cruz as a Brash Bragging Teenager
• Dear Ted Cruz: Even David Brooks Hates You

Primary Phenomena

Ed Schultz News And Commentary: Monday The 25th Of January

On Monday’s show, Ed gives commentary on President Obama weighing in on the Democratic Primary, and Michael Bloomberg floating the possibility of an independent run for President.

We are joined by Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor and Part-Owner of the Nation, to discuss the significance of the Des Moines Register’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton.

Larry Cohen, former President of the Communications Workers of America and Sanders Campaign surrogate, joins the show to discuss the lead up to the Iowa Caucus.

Flint Residents Told That Their Children Could Be Taken Away If They Don’t Pay For City's Poison Water

By John Vibes, The Free Thought Project

Not only is the Michigan government poisoning residents, but now they are threatening to take their children for not paying for it. 

 

Flint, MI – As the water crisis in Flint deepens, it is becoming apparent that the effects of the lead-infested water are not just a health hazard, but the situation has the potential of ruining many more lives outside of the poison issue. There is no denying that the water in Flint is undrinkable and that it is contaminated with lead and other substances, and it is clear that the government of Flint is responsible for the problem.

However, the city’s government continues to charge people for the poison water and then threatening to foreclose their home or take their children if they refuse to pay. Michigan law states that parents are neglectful if they do not have running water in their home, and if they chose not to pay for water they can’t drink anyway, then they could be guilty of child endangerment. Activists in Flint say that some residents have already received similar threats from the government if they refuse to pay their bills.

Flint residents have recently filed two class action lawsuits calling for all water bills since April of 2014 to be considered null and void because of the fact that the water was poisonous.

“We are seeking for the court to declare that all the bills that have been issued for usage of water invalid because the water has not been fit for its intended purpose,” said Trachelle Young, one of the attorneys bringing the lawsuit said in court.

“Essentially, the residents have been getting billed for water that they cannot use. Because of that, we do not feel that is a fair way to treat the residents,” Young added.

Recent estimates have indicated that it could take up to 15 years and over $60 million to fix the problem, and the residents will be essentially forced to live there until the problem is solved. Despite the fact that the issue is obviously the government’s responsibility, they have made it illegal for people to sell their homes because of the fact that they are known to carry contaminated water.

Meanwhile, residents are still left to purchase bottled water on their own, in addition to paying their water bill.

Although this problem is finally getting national media attention in Flint, they aren’t the only city with contaminated water supplies. In fact, a recent report published by The Guardian showed that public water supplies across the country were experiencing similar issues.

This crisis highlights the many dangers of allowing the government to maintain a monopoly on the water supply and calls attention to the fact that decentralized solutions to water distribution should be a goal that we start working towards.

The National Review’s priceless Donald Trump freakout is a testament to right-wing hypocrisy

The National Review wants conservatives to know that Trump is bad news. Too bad they helped create him

By Gary Legum
 

(Credit: AP)

I had promised myself I would keep an open mind about any arguments made in National Review’s “Against Trump” issue. Sure, it would be the first time I’ve ever done that when reading this magazine of “conservative thought,” which really started off as a repository for whatever racist swill William F. Buckley pulled out of the dark corners of his mind, where leering black men in berets and leather gloves endlessly lurked. It was an inauspicious beginning that has not gotten better with age.

And sure, National Review’s laughably bad writing has inspired so many other pretenders to the right-wing media’s scholarly throne that the very words “conservative intellectual” long ago graduated to a “jumbo shrimp” level of oxymoron.

But still. Conservatism is a political philosophy with its own tenets. Donald Trump clearly doesn’t care about any of them, which must appall anyone who still deludes themselves that they are rational believers in the project, free of the emotion and paranoia and self-pitying victimhood that fuel the modern conservative movement — a description that covers nearly every NR writer. If conservatism is to have any future as a governing principle, if it is to be anything other than irrelevant in America, surely someone somewhere on the right would take seriously the project of reclaiming it from the Breitbarts and Federalists of the world, of polishing this blackened diamond until it gleams again.

My open-mindedness lasted just long enough to read the list of contributors.

It would be bad enough if NR had used its own staff for this exercise. Lord knows what hilariously bad arguments Jonah Goldberg of “Liberal Fascism” fame would have brought to bear. But good Lord ‘n’ butter, Glenn Beck? Katie Pavlich? Dana Loesch, a woman famous for suggesting it was okay for American soldiers to drop their pants and piss on their dead enemies? Erick Erickson, whose most lasting contribution to political culture was to introduce the phrase “goat-fucking child molester” to the lexicon?

William F. Buckley was a terrible human being in a million ways, but seeing these names among NR’s contributors would have him spinning so fast in his grave he might actually tunnel out of it.
Still, a promise is a promise. Let’s look at Erickson running down a list of Trump’s apostasies against conservatism:

He supported the prosecution of hate crimes… On all these things, Donald Trump now says he has changed his mind.

Trump once thought hate crimes should be prosecuted, and to Erick Erickson, this is a negative. Let’s move along. How about Mark Helprin. Here’s his opening sentence:

A diet, caffeine-free Marxist (really, the only thing wrong with being a Marxist is being a Marxist); a driven, leftist crook; and an explosive, know-nothing demagogue — all are competing to see who can be even more like Mussolini than is Obama.

How many jars of paste do you have to have eaten for lunch to suggest Bernie Sanders is both a Marxist and a fascist within the same sentence? Forget Helprin. Though I should note that elsewhere, Thomas Sowell makes an implicit comparison of Obama to Hitler. Unfortunately no one thought to compare our current president to Emperor Hirohito, thus missing out on hitting the rare trifecta of Axis-leader references.

To be fair, there are a couple of decent arguments in the collection. Yuval Levin, for example, makes the smart point that Trump’s appeal as someone who will bring “great management” to the government is a contradiction of conservatism, “an inherently skeptical political outlook… [that] assumes that no one can be trusted with public power.” As a statement of principle and an analysis of why Trump’s brand of Republican politics cannot be considered conservative, this is correct.

This observation, though, highlights a big absence from any of NR’s statements, which is any self-awareness for all the ways in which the magazine and these writers and media personalities have contributed to the rise of Trumpism. Such denial has been a theme among conservatives this election season. They are happy to blame just about any other force for Trump’s rise to the top of their party’s primary: Democrats, Obama, Trump’s impeccable charlatanism somehow pulling the wool over the base’s usually brilliant eyes.

But the reason Trump’s promise of “great management” resonates with the base is due partly to the wholesale demonization of the left that conservatives have engaged in for decades. Specifically, in the right’s overhyping of every non-scandal within the perpetual anger machine of its media organs – and yes, this includes National Review – it has fed the notion that what is missing from our government whenever Democrats have a majority in any branch of it is not some strong sense of restraint by the holders of power, but mature and competent leaders.

This tendency was on display long before Trumpism. The right has spent seven years denigrating President Obama as a callow and inexperienced leader whose every utterance is evidence of his narcissism, incompetence and autocratic tendencies. Benghazi never would have happened if Obama hadn’t been fucking off in the White House while the consulate was still under attack! (What was he doing? We don’t know but it must have been bad!) Immigrants wouldn’t be flooding across the border in droves if President Nine Iron wasn’t busy playing golf all the time! Jihadists wouldn’t be threatening the existence of America if the president would just say the magical words “radical Islam” instead of taking Christmas vacation in the exotic foreign land of Hawaii!

National Review and the “Against Trump” writers, all of whom have been complicit in and active agents of this ridiculous dumbing down of their audience, might have more reason to complain if they ever offered substantive policy critiques instead of constantly spitting out strings of buzzwords (Benghazi! Soros! Alinsky!) like a computer bot in a feedback loop. Or if they would ever acknowledge the successes of some Obama initiatives like the Affordable Care Act instead of, as Jonathan Chait has chronicled, constantly denying it has had any positive effects in the face of any evidence to the contrary.

In short, the right wing has paved the way for the simplistic thinking of its voters that has led to Trump. It’s a little disingenuous for National Review, the self-styled gatekeeper of conservative thought, to complain about it now, considering its own role in it.

Roland Martin corrects a multitude of factually incorrect statements made by Stacey Dash on Fox News

Roland Martin took Fox News contributor Stacey Dash to task for her comments about BET and Black networks during Thursday’s edition of NewsOne Now.



During an interview on Fox News, Dash said:

“We have to make up our minds. Either we want to have segregation or integration. If we don’t want segregation, then we need to get rid of channels like BET and the BET Awards and the [NAACP] Image Awards, where you are only awarded if you are black. If it were the other way around we would be up in arms. It’s a double standard.”

As a result of those factually incorrect remarks, Martin decided to straighten the Clueless star out.
In an opinion piece for The New York Daily News, Martin wrote:

“Dash wants to make this grandiose statement about segregation or integration, and decides to single out a black-focused cable network and an awards show. But what she didn’t say is that these entities were created because of a lack of proper representation on the major networks and awards shows.”

Martin, host of TV One’s NewsOne Now, also highlighted the fact that despite Dash’s call to “get rid” of Black television networks, the BET Awards, and the NAACP Image Awards, she forgot about her appearance as a presenter during the NAACP Theatre Awards in 2011.

In what Martin called a “boldface lie” in his Daily News piece, Dash made the outlandish claim that BET award recipients only win if they are Black.

On Thursday’s edition of NewsOne Now, Martin continued to bring the “fever to the funkhouse,” saying, “Whites have been actually nominated and actually won BET Awards.”
“Guess what,” Martin continued, “You’ve also had non-Blacks who’ve actually won Image Awards — in fact, that’s where I met Sandra Oh from Grey’s Anatomy — at the Image Awards. America Ferrera has actually won, George Lucas got an Image Award, so did Steven Spielberg, so did Bono.”
“Oh — guess what — I don’t think a DNA test will show that they’re Black,” Martin said.

Later, Martin highlighted a series of magazines Dash was featured on that cater to an African-American audience. NewsOne Now then splashed the covers of Jet, Smooth, Monarch, Krave, Pride, Heart & Soul, and the infamous King magazine on the screen — all of which featured Dash prominently on their covers.

Martin then took his takedown of Dash to the next phase: “If you dare to open your mouth to criticize things that are Black specific, you might want to check your own history and your past Stacey, because guess what — I know how to use Google — I know how to call you out.”
“See, I’m not a fake fraudulent commentator on television. See, I don’t act, this is real. I went to school for this, you didn’t,” said Martin.

He concluded his evisceration of Dash: “The next time you embarrass yourself and you lie, please pull your phone out, pull your iPad and say, ‘Let me at least call a brother like Roland who might tell me before I go on, don’t make an a$$ out of yourself,’ looking like a damn fool.”

Insert dropped mic right here.

Why Is Stacey Dash So Damned Stupid? An Investigation

By Damon Young

How exactly did she get so clueless?

 

Stacey Dash
Rob Kim/Getty Images

On Wednesday, life-size human Bratz doll Stacey Dash found her way to a television studio.

Flabbergasted that a human Bratz would have the wherewithal and agency to walk into a television studio, the people at the studio began filming her, hoping, perhaps, to capture a miracle. And then, while being filmed, she opened her mouth. And then words came out of her mouth.

Sentences, even! Words such as, “If we don’t want segregation, then we need to get rid of channels like BET and the BET Awards and the [NAACP] Image Awards,” and “There shouldn’t be a Black History Month.”

Immediately, the words that came out of this human Bratz doll’s mouth were replayed, repeated and roundly ridiculed. Mainly because this human Bratz looks and sounds and acts so human that her thoughts about race and racism are taken seriously. Well, not seriously seriously. But as if an actual human said them.

Remarkably, this—the doll speaking ridiculous words and us (humans) reacting to those words—has happened before. Which, when you think about it, is really a testament to the people at Bratz for creating such an anatomically correct doll. Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, then you must be a human Bratz doll called “Stacey Dash.”

OK, OK, OK, OK. I’ll admit it. I’m just kidding. Stacey Dash is not a human Bratz doll. She is, in fact, a human being, with (presumably) a Social Security number and (presumably) independent thoughts. It’s just so damn easy to believe that she might not actually be a grown human woman—particularly a grown, human black woman—because the things that escape her mouth are so consistently and hilariously elementary that you can’t help suspecting that there’s a 7-year-old Geppetto in a bedroom somewhere controlling her thoughts and actions with a surprisingly sophisticated remote control.

Again, she is not a Bratz. Which begs the question: How did this happen? Why is Stacey Dash so stupid? How did a grown, human black woman come to act and sound and think like a human Bratz doll? Who is responsible for this happening?

I don’t have any answers. But I do have some theories.

1. God was distracted.

It’s no secret that Stacey Dash is considered by many people to be an extremely physically attractive woman. She’s appeared on countless magazine covers, has been named on countless lists of the most attractive women in Hollywood and legitimately appears to be ageless. Just as Morgan Freeman has been 75 for 25 years, Stacey Dash has been 25 for 25 years. I am one of those “many,” as her airport run in Kanye West’s “All Falls Down” video remains the third-most-transfixing thing I’ve ever seen on screen.

But the stark dichotomy between her outward appearance and what appears to be inside her brain makes me think that someone made a mistake when creating her, and that “someone” happens to be God. Of course, I don’t know this for certain, but I think this might have happened: When God is creating people, they pass through two factories, the looks factory and the brains factory. God typically attempts to give people a somewhat equal amount of both. But when Stacey Dash came through the conveyor belt of the looks factory, God got distracted—maybe Jesus or Tupac was in the kitchen burning toast again—and God left her in the looks factory too long. And by the time he realized his mistake, he had to rush her through the brains factory so the line wouldn’t get backed up.

2. She made a deal with a witch.

Maybe you don’t believe in God. But maybe you do believe in witches. If so, it’s not particularly difficult to envision a scenario in which a 12-year-old Stacey Dash encountered a witch on the way to middle school and the witch granted her eternal beauty on the condition that her brain stays 12 years old. And she accepted. And you can’t really blame her for this, because who wouldn’t? If the 12-year-old me happened to happen upon a witch on the way to school, I totally would have taken, I don’t know, world-class athleticism if it meant I had to keep my 12-year-old brain. (Which, apparently, is the deal Pacman Jones took.)

3. It’s a conspiracy to rid the world of Staceys.

There are two common ways of spelling “Stacey”: Stacey with an “e” and Stacy without the “e.” There’s also no good reason why two spellings of this name should exist. Perhaps someone named Stacy with a lot of power and waaaaaaaay too much free time realized this (Stacy Keach, perhaps?), and programmed Stacey Dash to be an abject idiot so that no parents would ever think to name their daughter (or son) Stacey again.

4. Stacey Dash isn’t actually stupid. She just has an exceedingly rare inverse astigmatism that causes a colorblindness that makes her see black as white and white as black.

If this is true, everything she’s said about race makes perfect sense. Because if she sees white people as black, of course she’d believe that there’s no need for BET or Black History Month or Ebony magazine or The Root! Of course she’d wonder why black people needed all this extra stuff, when black people already make up the majority. Of course she’d make so many appearances on Fox News. She probably thought she was at an Earth, Wind & Fire concert or a Kappa cabaret.

Again, if this is true—and I have no reason to believe it’s not—it’s deeply, terribly tragic and we all owe her an apology. If you’re reading this, Stacey Dash, I’m sorry for thinking you were a life-size Bratz doll or just really, really, really stupid.

It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.

Damon Young is the editor-in-chief of VerySmartBrothas.com. He is also a contributing editor at Ebony.com. He lives in Pittsburgh and he really likes pancakes. You can reach him at damon@verysmartbrothas.com.

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Right-Wing Media Desperately Trying To Pin The Blame For Flint Water Disaster On Democrats

Posted By Rude One

It's pretty easy to pinpoint blame for the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. The Republican governor appointed an emergency manager to oversee Flint and strip authority away from the elected officials of the city. The different city managers in 2013 and 2014 signed off on a switch in the water supply from Detroit and Lake Huron to the polluted Flint River. Yes, the city council voted for the switch to save money, but that vote didn't matter since it was up to the city manager who was, as mentioned, appointed by the Republican governor. The results of tests of the water were either mishandled or suppressed by the state's Department of Environmental Quality. That's a department that is under the Republican governor.

So Republicans are to blame. Quite clearly. Quite directly. This ain't a stretch of logic. This ain't bullshit grasping at straws. A Republican appointing people to make decisions for a town is pretty much A+B=C, a straight fuckin' line here.

But not if you're one of the spooge-bucket carriers for the sniveling right-wing in this country. Oh, no, according to them, the blame rests with Democrats for mismanaging Flint for decades, thus leading to the appointment of the city manager, thus leading to lead-fucked kids.

That's not an exaggeration of the position of much of the conservative punditocracy. The fuckin' National Review (motto: "Hey, even we won't hire Bill Kristol") has an editorial titled, helpfully, "Flint Is Not a Republican Scandal." The editorial gleefully points out that Darnell Earley, the emergency manager who was in place when the water supply change took place, is a Democrat, which is true, except that he served at the pleasure of the Republican governor, Rick Snyder, who most recently appointed him the emergency manager of the Detroit public schools, which is going about as well as you might imagine.

By the way, the Michigan Democratic Party called on Snyder to fire Earley because of his fuck-ups on the water. By the way, the emergency manager before Earley, who signed the executive order on switching water, Ed Kurtz? He's a Republican. Oh, and, by the way, the water switch? It had to be signed off on by the state government run, as you know, by Republicans.

Inflamed bunion John Nolte of that shithole of thought, Breitbart, goes even further: "The city of Flint, Michigan, has been imploding since the 1980’s. Now, due to mismanagement by city officials, the water is poisoned with lead. In every way imaginable, the city is an arm-pit. But how is that possible when Utopian-Democrats have run the city unchallenged for years? How is that possible when in 2006, Flint was voted the 10th most liberal city in America?"

Kevin Williamson of National Review says much the same: "Flint, like big brother Detroit down the way, has a long history of political dominance by the Democratic party. Its current mayor is a Democrat; so was her predecessor; the mayor before him, Don Williamson, was a career criminal (he did time for various scams some years back) and a Democrat who resigned under threat of recall."

At FrontPage, another conservative cockknob magazine, another cockknob writes, "Democrats turned Flint into a deadbeat city. A deadbeat city with high crime, high rates of structure fires, lots of potholes and failing services. Flint, Detroit, Newark, Oakland, Chicago and a hundred other failed and failing cities are their handiwork...Flint’s dirty water originated with its dirty Democratic Party overlords. Blaming Republicans won’t clean it up."

You know what's missing from all of these articles about how the poor, deluded people of Flint keep electing Democrats who keep them poor and deluded? The fucking collapse of the fucking auto industry that caused the closure of the GM plants in the 1980s, reducing the jobs in that field there by over 90% as of this year, from 80,000 to around 5000. You want to head back in time to lay blame? You better go a little further back than just the last couple of administrations in the city.

The conservative logic on this is that Flint was asking to get raped by Republicans because Democrats had dressed it so slutty.

The problem is that the governor's office roofied Flint. We know that by the emails, which show, at best, that Snyder's office wanted to close its eyes and pretend the poisoning of a 100,000 people wasn't happening. At worst, it just didn't care. And, frankly, it doesn't matter what party was involved. Someone should be arrested. 

Sarah Palin And Donald Trump: 69ing On The Road To Hell

Posted By Rude One

Pausing between licks on her clit, Donald Trump said to Sarah Palin, "Now, tell me. Is that not the best tasting dick you've ever had in your mouth?" Palin, into the task at hand, uttered a muffled affirmation that, yes, Trump's penis was indeed delicious. "You got that right," Trump continued. "I make sure to keep it nice and clean. I get this special soap just for the male private area from a place in Spain. And I eat lots of fruit. Blueberries. Kiwi. Only the best. So when I blow my huge load, it'll be like sweet yogurt. You'll be asking for seconds."

Palin reached out a hand and started to push Trump's back, indicating that his head should be buried in her snatch and not talking about his own prick, which, to be honest, she could barely keep hard. "Oh, right," Trump exclaimed. "You know you don't taste too bad, either. You could barely tell you had any kids, let alone ones like that big-headed boy. It's a well-maintained, top-shelf slit, and I should know." Palin hit him again, and he went about clumsily attempting to bring her to orgasm.

That was the deal they made, and Trump knows all about the deal.

Palin didn't need to say much in her liaison with the leading Republican presidential candidate in a penthouse at the Ames Holiday Inn. And, indeed, if you had walked in on them, you'd have wondered if it was a pair of lovers giving oral pleasure or two leathery snakes eating other from the tail up.

When she gave her endorsement to Trump in Iowa, Palin went on, at length, about...well, really, it was kind of hard to tell since her "speech" would more accurately be described as an oxy-fueled, deranged, incomprehensible stream of consciousness that would make James Joyce say, "What the fuck are you talking about?" before drinking himself to a thankful death.

From what it's possible to piece together, or maybe to interpret, like it's Faulkner at his most obscure, Obama is a pussy, liberals are victimizing real conservatives, and Trump will, shit, make America great again or something. Seriously, you figure this shit out: "Where, in the private sector, you actually have to balance budgets in order to prioritize, to keep the main thing, the main thing, and he knows the main thing: a president is to keep us safe economically and militarily. He knows the main thing, and he knows how to lead the charge." The Rude Pundit reads really difficult theory and criticism. He actually can understand a Judith Butler article (shout-out to the academic geeks out there). He can't understand those sentences up there. Besides, there is no reason that we would treat this speech as anything other than ranting madness, which comes across even more when you watch it and see Palin shifting and twitching and gesticulating around like a ferret that got into the meth stash.

Surely, Trump had to pay her to be there. Palin may be many things, but she knows how to grift for some cash. She probably didn't even go to Cruz and jumped right to the billionaire so she could support the drug and alcohol habits of her brood of inbred beasts. Surely, Trump regretted it as soon as he realized he would have to stand there for however long Palin was going to have to blather on before she finally crashed and needed another hit of Klonopin or Vicodin or whatever takes the edge off her mania. In fact, you can pinpoint the moment when Trump realized that he might have made a terrible mistake. It's about 13 minutes in:

You gotta love that look of Trump glancing angrily to the side, as if asking some poor, demeaned assistant, "When the fuck is this kooky broad gonna finish? I got a tanning appointment." Don't pity Trump here. Laugh at him for thinking that he was getting a loyal dog when what he really bought was a rabid wolverine.

Trying to discern the substance of a Palin speech is like trying to figure out how to stick your hand into a roach-filled hole to get that coin you dropped: you might find what you're looking for, but you're gonna end up disgusted, skeeved out, and coated with goo. And here is that goo-slicked nickel: "The permanent political class has been doing the bidding of their campaign donor class, and that’s why you see that the borders are kept open. For them, for their cheap labor that they want to come in. That’s why they’ve been bloating budgets. It’s for crony capitalists to be able suck off of them."

Leaving aside the obvious jokes on the phrase "suck off of them," Palin dissed "crony capitalist" in front of a man who has profited mightily from that system. That kind of ideological dissonance might be alarming, but, well, Palin.

So maybe what Trump wanted was Palin to assure the yokels and the yahoos in Iowa that he was the right man to stand up to "special interests." To the rubes who would vote for Trump just because Palin supports him, that means he'll represent white and dumb and evangelical America. Their Idiot Queen has deemed it so. So it must be. The road to hell is paved with such pitiful alliances.

And Palin gets to extend the expiration date on the Palin product line. Someone's gotta pay for all that bail when Viper or Quack or Titty or whatever the fuck her kids are named get arrested.

Oh, and fuck you, John McCain.

Sarah Palin's Bizarre Trump Endorsement Analyzed

By David Schilling

 

Here is the anatomy of a very disturbing scene.

Has the world known a greater horror than what it witnessed on Tuesday when Sarah Palin endorsed Donald Trump for president of the United States? I don’t mean physical horror, like murders, genocide or sexual violence. I mean lingering existential dread, the kind of sick feeling that burns the inside of your stomach like you just drank a pint glass full of battery acid.

We looked directly into the eternal abyss and were left forever changed by it. Pundits much smarter than I have said that Palin’s decision to endorse Trump might shift the upcoming Iowa caucus in his favor because Palin still has many supporters and donors in the state. My God, Iowa. My God …

I watched all 20 minutes of Sarah Palin’s mush-mouthed, meandering speech and analyzed it for you, but first, I’d like to offer up these five quotes. Some of them are from former MTV reality star and burgeoning space angel devil warrior symbologist Tila Tequila and some are from former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. Can you tell the difference? Answers at the end of the piece.

1. “I only exist in your dreams. Literally. The dream reality exists inside of vibrating atoms at the nucleus.”
   
2. “Where they’re fightin’ each other and yellin’ ‘Allah Akbar’ calling jihad on each other’s heads forever and ever.”
   
3. “I’d rather beg than depend on the government because then they’ll own your soul.”
   
4. “I own this world. You’re now transitioning into MY domain! It shall be fully completed by May.”
   
5. “Power through strength. Well, then, we’re talking about our very existence, so no, we’re not going to chill. In fact it’s time to drill, baby, drill down.”

And so it begins. These two really look great next to each other, don’t they? When in the same room, their spray tans seem almost human. Imagine a hyper-intelligent species from another galaxy coming to Earth and intercepting the satellite feed of this horrendous speech. First of all, they’d have no idea how to decipher our language and second, they’d assume Valencia oranges were our babies.

Instead of leaving the stage for a pee break or sitting down outside of the frame like anyone else would, Trump lingers. He just stands there like the Colossus of Rhodes, breaking character only to give a thumbs up or smile when Palin forms a complete sentence.

“Looking around at all of you, you hardworking Iowa families. You farm families, and teachers, and Teamsters, and cops, and cooks. You rockin’ rollers. And holy rollers! All of you who work so hard. You full-time moms. You with the hands that rock the cradle. You all make the world go round, and now our cause is one.” Goodnight you princes of Maine, you kings of New England!

Hopefully I am not the only one who heard the above quote and thought about Rebecca De Mornay in the 1992 psychological thriller The Hand That Rocks the Cradle – a film about a vindictive, childless nanny who tries to steal another woman’s family through seduction and physical intimidation. See, the federal government is the nanny (state) in this analogy and you are the poor, victimized family who just wants someone to raise their children for them so that they can focus on their careers. But nooooo, this nanny wants to take your kids, and your husband, and your guns, and your taxes, and eventually … your life!

What I’m saying is that The Hand That Rocks the Cradle explains the entire Republican platform and you should watch it immediately.

Palin deftly segues into what convinced her to endorse Trump rather than all the other equally bloodthirsty Republican candidates.

“He is from the private sector, not a politician – can I get a ‘Hallelujah!’ Where, in the private sector, you actually have to balance budgets in order to prioritize, to keep the main thing, the main thing, and he knows the main thing: a president is to keep us safe economically and militarily. He knows the main thing, and he knows how to lead the charge. So troops, hang in there, because help’s on the way because he, better than anyone, isn’t he known for being able to command, fire!”

Oh, I can just see it now. Once “Make America Great Again” becomes passe, the new Trump campaign slogan will be, “Donald Trump: He Knows the Main Thing … and Knows How to Keep It.” Or better yet, “Donald Trump and the Main Thing” will be the name of a high school ska band in Kingston, New York.

As Palin ploughs on, Trump’s teeth finally make an appearance on the campaign trail. As disturbingly white as those teeth may be, it’s preferable to his pursed mouth that looks like he’s about to kiss a live salmon.

“Trump’s candidacy, it has exposed not just that tragic ramifications of that betrayal of the transformation of our country, but too, he has exposed the complicity on both sides of the aisle that has enabled it, OK?”

OK …

At this point, even Trump looks completely baffled. No matter what you think of the man’s hateful, moronic rhetoric, at least it’s coherent. Right now, as I watch this video, I can feel myself going mad.

All Palin and No Logic Makes Dave a Dull Boy.

“That’s why they’ve been bloating budgets. It’s for crony capitalists to be able suck off of them.” If you think that sounds obscene, wait until you get to the part about slurping off the gravy train.

Palin fawns over Trump a bit more, then spins a few conspiracy theories about how the Republican establishment wants the Donald to disappear and that the Democrats would never “eat their own”. I accept that the traditional GOP power-brokers don’t want Trump to be their nominee, but to say that Democrats are somehow the model of an efficient political machine that simply bends over for the old school candidate is ludicrous. In fact, in 2008 the Democratic party split in half during their primary, almost annihilating both Hillary Clinton and upstart Barack Obama in the process. If you are not Sarah Palin and actually read the news, you’d remember that there was even talk of a brokered convention that year.

“We, you, a diverse, dynamic, needed support base that they would attack. And now, some of them even whispering, they’re ready to throw in for Hillary over Trump because they can’t afford to see the status quo go, otherwise, they won’t be able to be slurping off the gravy train that’s been feeding them all these years. They don’t want that to end.”

Was this speech written, or was it found at the bottom of the ocean next to the Cloverfield monster?

And now, Palin totally falls apart and starts speaking as though a tiny man with a cattle prod is silently electrocuting her underneath her podium while she tries to finish her remarks. “Well, and then, funny, haha, not funny, but now, what they’re doing is wailing, ‘Well, Trump and his, uh, uh, uh, Trumpeters, they’re not conservative enough.’” Christopher Dorner’s manifesto made more sense than this. I haven’t seen a speech this bad since the first Police Academy movie.

“They didn’t want to talk about these issue until he brought ’em up. In fact, they’ve been wearing a, this, political correctness kind of like a suicide vest.”

Never before has the idea of a suicide vest sounded more appealing. “So, all I have to do is press this button and the bad lady’s voice will go away? Please, God, sign me up.”

“He builds things, he builds big things, things that touch the sky.” I hope the sight of this bothers you as much as it bothers me.

Cool grandma Sarah decides to let it all hang out and toss some hot jive: “You know, they stomp on our neck, and then they tell us, ‘Just chill, OK just relax.’ Well, look, we are mad, and we’ve been had. They need to get used to it.” This is truly the “I Have a Dream” speech for idiots.

“The self-made success of his, you know that he doesn’t get his power, his high, off of OPM, other people’s money, like a lot of dopes in Washington do. They’re addicted to OPM, where they take other people’s money, and then their high is getting to redistribute it, right?” For a brief moment, I thought Palin was accusing the entire federal government of being addicted to smack. Debilitating drug addiction might explain the contents and composition of this speech.

By the way, you know what you call people who derive pleasure from giving the less fortunate among us money? Christians.

Trump looks off stage. Who is he looking at? A stage manager? Is he searching for an exit?

Regretting every single one of his life choices and praying for salvation?

“And you’re ready for the tax reform he talks about to open up main street again. And you’re ready to stop the race-baiting and the division based on color and zip code, to unify around the right issues.

The issues important to me, or I wouldn’t be endorsing him. Pro-life, pro-second amendment, strict constitutionality. Those things that are unifying values and their time-tested truths involved. These are unifying values from big cities to tiny towns, from big mountain states and the Big Apple, to the big, beautiful heartland that’s in between.”

Aren’t those all the most divisive issues in the country? Those are the issues we’re supposed to unify around? Here are a few issues that actually unify the country:

• Ice Cream Is Delicious
• McDonald’s All Day Breakfast
• Star Wars
• Zayn Should Have Stayed in One Direction. He’s Totally Sabotaged His Own Career.
• Free Beer

If that was Donald Trump’s platform, he’d have my vote for Permanent Emperor of the Universe.

“Now, finally friends, I want you to try to picture this, it’s a nice thing to picture. Exactly one year from tomorrow, former president Barack Obama. He packs up the teleprompters and the selfie-sticks, and the Greek columns, and all that hopey, changey stuff and he heads on back to Chicago, where I’m sure he can find some community there to organize again. There, he can finally look up, President Obama will be able to look up, and there, over his head, he’ll be able to see that shining, towering, Trump tower. Yes, Barack, he built that, and that says a lot. Iowa, you say a lot, being here tonight, supporting the right man who will allow you to make America great again. God bless you! God bless the United States of America and our next president of the United States, Donald J Trump!”

I am truly flabbergasted that Sarah Palin hasn’t come up with new insults to direct at Obama. This guy is a two-term president who has overseen the passage of major legislation like the Affordable Care Act, dined with countless world leaders, and will likely leave office with improvement on most major economic markers since he got the job. All that, and the best she can do is to mock him for working as a community organizer.

It has never worked to mock this man for helping people in need. You’d be better off joking about his gigantic dumbo ears or his mole instead of impugning the very idea of human kindness. Obama is 2-0 against these clowns and yet they persist in claiming that using a teleprompter disqualifies you for the office of president. To Sarah Palin, a truly impressive achievement is paying to erect a building shaped like a hunting rifle.

As if Palin’s speech wasn’t grotesque enough, we have to see Trump’s kissing face. What is he kissing? The invisible demon whispering in Palin’s ear? I have to assume that an outside entity was feeding her lines, as it is the only explanation for her shambolic, disjointed lunacy. Inexplicably, a human being who speaks like the comment thread underneath a YouTube video remains a political force in this country.

Really, this was all fated to happen. No two people on this planet seem less concerned with criticism, more content with themselves, or more oblivious to the obscenity of the words they speak. Let us never forget that almost 60 million Americans voted for John McCain in 2008. That’s 60 million people in a nation of over 300 million that had no qualms about having Sarah Palin a breath away from the nuclear codes. To them, there was nothing wrong with her speech yesterday. It probably made perfect sense. The stumbling, the atrocious grammar, and the folksy gibberish just endears her to them more. Sarah Palin has not disappeared because her supporters haven’t either. The marriage of Trump and Palin is simply the unification of a movement that has been gaining steam in this country ever since the election of George W Bush. This is not a nation of thinkers. It’s a nation of deciders and robber barons and blowhards.

ANSWERS:

“I only exist in your dreams. Literally. The dream reality exists inside of vibrating atoms at the nucleus.” TILA

“Where they’re fightin’ each other and yellin’ “Allah Akbar” calling jihad on each other’s heads for ever and ever.” SARAH

“I’d rather beg than depend on the government because then they’ll own your soul.” TILA

“I own this world. You’re now transitioning into MY domain! It shall be fully completed by May.” TILA

“Power through strength. Well, then, we’re talking about our very existence, so no, we’re not going to chill. In fact it’s time to drill, baby, drill down.” SARAH

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Palin Claims Trump's 'Not An Elitist' During Rambling Endorsement Speech

By Heather

The Snowbilly from Wasilla wants us all to believe that Donald Trump is just a regular working Joe like you and me. The cable "news" networks decided to give Donald Trump some more free airtime this Tuesday and treated their audiences to twenty minutes of Sarah Palin's rambling word salad of an endorsement and for those of you who aren't fond of the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard, here's a taste:

PALIN: Yeah, our leader, a little bit different. He's a multi-billionaire, not that there's anything wrong with that. But it's amazing. He is not elitist at all. Oh, I just hope you all get to know him more and more as a person and a family man, what he's been able to accomplish with, it's kind of this quiet generosity.

Yeah, maybe his largess kind of, I don't know, gets in the way of that quiet generosity and his compassion, but if you know him as a person, you'll get to know him more and more, you'll have even more respect. Not just for his record of success and the good intentions for America, but who he is as a person. He's not an elitist.

PoliticusUSA has more on her never ending word salad of an endorsement here: Sarah Palin Goes On A Demented Mentally Unstable Rant About Obama While Endorsing Trump

Sarah Palin was supposed to be endorsing Donald Trump, but within moments of taking the stage, Palin unleashed a demented and mentally unstable rant about President Obama.

Palin said:

Thank a vet and know that United States military deserves a Commander In Chief who loves our country passionately, and will never apologize for this country. A new Commander In Chief, who never leave our men behind. A new Commander In Chief one who never lie to the families of the fallen.

I’m in it because just last week we’re watching our sailors suffer and be humiliated on a world stage at the hands of Iranian captors in violation of international law. Because a weak-kneed capitulator in chief has decided that America will lead from behind, and he who would negotiate deals like kind of with the skills of a community organizer maybe organizing the neighborhood tea. Well he deciding that America would apologize as part of the deal as the enemy sends a message to the rest of the world that they capture, and we kowtow, and we apologize, and then we bend over and say thank you enemy.

Palin also whined about the media and was her generally unhinged self. Sarah Palin was a moldy flashback to the past. Palin brought out all of her old 2008 Obama slurs. Palin inaccurately accused President Obama of incompetence, apologizing for America, and lying.

The circle has now been completed as the ugly racism that Sarah Palin injected into the Republican Party in 2008 has matured into the candidacy of Donald Trump. Palin laughably accused Obama and Democrats of race baiting, while standing beside Donald Trump who called all Mexican immigrants drug dealers and rapists.

Sarah Palin is a permanent stain on the United States of America, and she has come back into the 2016 race to satisfy her own ego and replenish her dwindling coffers.

Trump may gain a few voters in Iowa by trotting her out there, but she's toxic as a surrogate when it comes to a general election. I hope he keeps her around for the rest of his campaign.

XSplit Gamecaster 2.7.1512.1839

By Softpedia Games

Stream your gaming sessions over Youtube or record them on your PC all with the push of a button

XSplit Gamecaster is a very useful gaming tool that will allow users to stream or record video from the game with ease.

One of the most easy to use streaming applications out there

No configurations is necessary as the application will scan your current configuration and will choose the best settings. All you need to do is start the game and starts the streaming/recording. After starting a game, you need to press a key combination and you'll gain access to the Xsplit control panel from where you can choose to stream or record.

There are three different options for streaming a video: you can choose to stream the game through your YouTube channel, your Twitch channel or your Ustream account. Please note that when streaming a video, you will have to login on your chosen streaming channel and this comes with a price: Xsplit will have access to your account, your emails and will even be able to post for you.

The features will simply amaze you

You will be able to stream your videos with resolution up to 1080p. You must know that the higher the resolution, the higher the setting for your system. 1080p, for example, will require a 2nd Generation Core i7 CPU, 4 gigabytes RAM minimum and over 8 gigabytes of free space on your hard disk.

Another thing I just loved about Xsplit gamecaster is that it's compatible with PC, Xbox, PlayStation and lots of other consoles. Now friends from all over the world will be able to see you while owning at Dota 2, Battlefield or even Assassin's Creed.

If you're more of a strategy enthusiast, the draw on screen feature will surely make you happy. You will be able to point out the current strategy for all the other team members to follow by highlighting the most important units on the battlefield or the targets that need to be attacked.

The streaming tool for the gamer in you

The option to play and share with your friends the highlights of a game or even the entire match sounds more than great, and when you can do this with the click of a button it sounds awesome.

5 screenshots

XSplit Gamecaster was reviewed by Alexandru Niculaita

4.5/5 http://games.softpedia.com/get/Tools/XSplit-Gamecaster.shtml#download

How To Watch 'The Big Short,' 'Making A Murderer' And 'Concussion' Without Losing Your Mind

By Lauren Duca

 

Tales of real-life corruption and evil bureaucracy are hot entertainment — and infuriating to watch.

 

Pop culture is drenched in bureaucratic corruption right now. Between “Making a Murderer,” “Concussion” and “The Big Short,” we have three portraits of flawed institutions, seemingly lacking in a clear villain. None point to a single figure responsible for the unethical nonsense on display.

Instead, in each distinct yet eerily similar story, it’s clear that unquestioning cooperation is required for corruption to prosper. It takes a village to induce depravity.

First off, we have “Making a Murderer,” which presents a police force so irrationally hellbent on putting a man away for a crime, they practically brainwash themselves into believing their suspect is guilty. It’s worth noting that there’s certainly an alternative way of presenting the content of Stephen Avery’s trial. Like most documentaries, “Making a Murderer” has a clear opinion that it doesn’t work to obscure. Still, in the effort of proving Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey were framed for the murder of Teresa Halbach, the potential for unethical behavior quickly spans the Manitowac County hierarchy. From Lt. James Lenk to prosecutor and “Fraggle Rock” monster Ken Kratz or Dassey’s own lawyer Len Kachinsky, few hands are left clean. In order to simplify things for the jury, the defense would like to argue that one or two people could have planted the pieces necessary to convict Avery. Perhaps they’re right. But, as the case unfolds, we see a system built on unethical practices like coercing testimony and concealing evidence. It’s little wrongdoings from a laundry list of people that add up to a sentencing that will more than likely rob a man of his life.

In “Concussion,” a similar phenomenon is at play. In light of Dr. Bennet Omalu’s discovery of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the National Football League convinces itself that its precious hobby is not dangerous to its players (or, depending on your level of cynicism, deliberately covers up the fact that it is). Since “Concussion” is a dramatization of real-life events unlike “Making a Murderer,” there was certainly more of an opportunity to send up a clear antagonist. Yet, while NFL chairman Roger Goodell leads the public charge against Omalu’s condemning findings, it is clear that the effort to conceal the possible side effects of the sport straddles the business of football in its entirety. Press reps, suits and the doctors they hire are all partially responsible for allowing the condition to remain hidden. This is not Goodell huddling up employees and telling them to keep quiet about evidence of CTE; it’s a system of people each doing their small part to prevent Omalu from disrupting the status quo, if only by staying quiet.

Structural corruption is at its most brazen in “The Big Short.” The film reveals crookedness so far-reaching it extends through entire companies, ultimately poisoning the whole of the American banking system. It’s tough to explain the way the housing market falls apart (and Adam McKay goes out of his way to simplify things, recruiting Anthony Bourdain and Margot Robbie in a bathtub to break it all down). Put most simply, by the end of the film it’s clear the banks likely knew mortgages would fail and didn’t bother to fix things, assuming the taxpayers would bail them out. As Steve Carell’s character puts it, creasing his brow into the depths of his dramatic role, “They knew, they just didn’t care.” The “they” in that simple statement hits on how entrenched and far-reaching the issues lie. Again, it’s not some awful, mustachioed CEO directing his company to destroy the lives of millions of Americans, because “Muahaha, profit anyway.” It’s an industry holistically complicit in accepting crookedness as the way business that is done.

Finishing “Making a Murderer” or leaving the theater after “Concussion” or “The Big Short,” the questions of “who’s responsible?” and “how could they let this happen?” linger. The knee-jerk reaction looks to the dark psychology of authority, the banality of cogs in the machine following orders, but there’s no Hitler stand-in in any of the three stories. Rather, we see a structural lack of ethics built on the sum total of individual ethical infractions. Each scenario seems like an implausibly malicious case, leading to false imprisonment, fatal injuries or our country’s near-financial ruin, but lining them up reveals more mundane forces fueling the devastation. And so, the question turns to our own culpability. In order to watch each film without descending into despair, we have to look at how the portraits of corruption they reveal reflect back on ourselves. We are all susceptible to the phenomenon we see on-screen. These are often perfectly “normal,” often boring people, going about their day without asking questions. The takeaway should be that there is not always going to be a horned creature demanding you “do your job.” We all play a role in the systems that allow for these horrors, sometimes just by letting things be. In Manitowoc County, the NFL, Wall Street and far outside the boundaries of each, evil can be as simple as going with the flow.

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Crisis Management

Bernie Sanders is winning with the one group his rivals can't sway: voters

By Trevor Timm

Perhaps more important than Sanders’s gain in the polls is how it happened: by patiently hammering on his message, regardless of what other candidates said.

As Trump continues to dominate both parties for media attention, and Hillary Clinton remains a favorite to win with Wall Street, Bernie Sanders is suddenly surging again among those who actually matter: voters. But more important than his rise in the polls is how he’s doing it.

A string of polls over the past two weeks show that the once-independent Vermont senator is tied or in the lead in the two early primary states, Iowa and New Hampshire, and all of a sudden, in striking distance of Hillary Clinton nationally. With very little fanfare, he has been leading in New Hampshire for months, with some recent ones putting his lead in the double digits.


But Iowa seemed distinctly in Clinton’s corner for the last quarter of 2015 until this week, just a month away from the primary. A Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday night showed Sanders vaulted into the lead, with a slew of others show him pulling in close to a tie.

 

Digging deeper into the numbers shows even more good news for Sanders: nationally, he is beating Clinton by 2-1 with voters younger than 45, and by 20 points with female voters younger than 35. In New Hampshire there is not one demographic group in which Clinton is beating Sanders. He’s also made recent gains among African Americans and Hispanics – both demographics long considered Clinton strongholds.

But perhaps more important than the news of Sanders’s gain is how it happened: by patiently hammering on his message of drawing attention to economic inequality, raising taxes on the rich, dramatically expanding Medicare and Social Security, making public universities free of charge and criminal justice reform.

 

He has, to great criticism by beltway pundits, avoided the rest of the candidates’ descent into constant fear-mongering about terrorism and hyping the “threat” from Isis. Instead he has mocked both the media and other candidates for doing so, as BuzzFeed reported last month:

“As a nation and as a people, we have got to understand that our country faces a myriad of very serious problems… if you turn on the TV, what they now say is, ‘Well we’ve got one problem, it’s Isis,” Sanders said, launching into a sarcastic impression of the “they” on television this week.

Clinton, meanwhile, has sounded more like the Republican candidates with her conventional forever war posture, her defense of the disastrous Libya intervention and her calls for an escalation of the war in Syria. Apparently she’s not concerned that she’s running for the nomination from a party who rejected her in 2008 partly because of her support for the Iraq war.

Sanders disappointingly isn’t running as an anti-war candidate, either, and it’s a shame he’s not more aggressive in rejecting the militarism that has infected the country since 9/11: he’s indicated his support for the CIA’s drone program, continued war in Afghanistan and has been largely silent on the fact that the war against Isis is by, almost all accounts, illegal since Congress hasn’t authorized it as the Constitution requires.

 

But he has proven false the idea that candidates have to drop everything to treat Isis as a threat to America’s existence requiring 24/7 hand wringing, rather than what they really are: a comparatively small problem in the day-to-day lives of Americans that we only exacerbate by doing the terrorists’ PR work for them and upending our rights to supposedly “defeat” them.

 

All of this is not to say Clinton should not still be considered the favorite. Nate Silver still has Clinton with a 73% chance to win Iowa and a 55% chance to win New Hampshire. She also has strong support in the African American community that will be critical for the third primary in South Carolina, and a much higher national profile for Super Tuesday in March, when more than a dozen states will be voting at the same time.

She also has one trump card that Sanders never will, given her establishment ties: a massive advantage in “super delegates”, who make up a large percentage of the delegates who will actually decide the nomination at the Democratic convention this summer but who aren’t beholden to vote the way their state’s primary ended up.

But it’s clear that Sanders is not going to fade away, as many predicted in the fall after it looked like his support was leveling off; he is only getting stronger. Given that most voters don’t even start paying attention until after the Iowa caucus, Democrats would do themselves well by putting the Clinton coronation on hold for now.