A DOCUMENTARY EVERYONE (AND THEIR FOLKS) MUST WATCH

ALL THE WORST PEOPLE...

Jeff Sessions protege and HP Lovecraft lookalike Stephen Miller, Trump's 31-year-old "policy wank" and new favorite brown-noser, follows David Duke (who declares the admiration to be mutual) and racist cartoonist Ben Garrison on the Twitter machine, and dropped his best friend the summer before high school because he was Latino. Which I guess shouldn't come as a surprise, all things considered. And yet, somehow, it still manages to register...

H.P. LOVECRAFT MEETS M.C. HATECRIME!

OUT LIKE FLYNN! AND SO IT BEGINS...

Oh, this is just too fucking rich.

The Hill's reporting on the Flynn debacle -- which, trust yer old pal Jerky, is the beginning of the end for the Trump administration -- is the best I've seen so far.

NEW KEITH OLBERMANN ~ MICHAEL FLYNN MUST BE FIRED (AND ARRESTED)

DDD TOP TEN LIST ~ WHAT KELLYANNE CONWAY LOOKS LIKE!

"Our Top Ten Lists Go To Eleven!"

It's been a long time since yer old pal Jerky has put together one of his patented Daily Dirt Top Ten Lists. After all, there probably isn't a more shopworn comedy conceit under the Sun. And yet, I get a lot of pleasure out of putting these lists together; and seeing as David Letterman retired last year, who better than yours truly to pick up the hack slack? Furthermore, I can think of no more worthy subject for this, the first of what is sure to be many such lists, than the Wicked Witch of the West Wing herself, the one and only... Kellyanne Conway! Brace yourselves, folks... this one gets kinda rough! - YOPJ

11. Kellyanne Conway looks like Wayland Flowers should be standing next to her with his arm up her ass.

10. Kellyanne Conway looks like a scarecrow brought to life by an evil gypsy curse.

9. Kellyanne Conway looks like Jigsaw from the Saw movies wearing a wig made from straw that pigs wouldn't eat.

8. Kellyanne Conway looks like she's a few weeks overdue for her monthly bath in the blood of unsuspecting young virgins.

7. Kellyanne Conway looks like how the inside of a menopausal woman's purse smells.

6. Kellyanne Conway looks like she lives on Diet Coke, nicotine gum, and a devastatingly powerful cocktail of psycho-pharmaceuticals.

5. Kellyanne Conway looks like she auditioned to be a cable TV horror host, but was rejected for giving children nightmares.

4. Kellyanne Conway looks like Dennis Leary. Even he thinks so!

3. Kellyanne Conway looks like a Real Doll designed by someone using images cut and pasted from old Mexican murder tabloids.

2. Kellyanne Conway looks like someone took a skin shed by Ann Coulter during a molt and pumped it full of fluids collected from one of Roger Stone's swinger orgies.

1. Kellyanne Conway looks like the kind of person who would willingly go to work for a person like Donald Fucking Trump.

***

GUEST POST BY OUR OLD PAL MOJO

Hey folks! As old school Dirt readers are already aware, yer old pal Jerky used to provide plenty of room for readers to express themselves, be it in the form of letters to the editor, guest editorials, "First Amendment Zone" commentary, and other such venues. Today's offering comes from our old pal Mojo, who has been among the Daily Dirt's hardest of core enthusiasts for a very long time, indeed. His musings on race and racism in Canada, a series of thoughts kicked off upon reading this MacLean's story, are hereby presented for your infotainmentational delectation. Enjoy! - YOPJ 

Dear Jerky;

Racism was hit and miss in Canada when I was young. In my little town if you heard a racist comment it was directed toward First Nations people. At the time, we mostly saw them only after they'd received their allotment, when they'd come into the towns from the Rez to get drunk. We just called them Indians back then. I won't mention some of the other names, but there were as many as there were for blacks in the U.S. 

These were not the Noble Savages we learned about in history class. The ones we saw were mostly mean and nasty drunks. We used to go to court on Wednesdays to sit in the audience and see who got caught doing what. The nastiest thing I heard a judge say was during the case of a native woman who had stabbed her husband with a poker because he was being abusive ("went Indian" as the phrase was back then). He whined about being stabbed and the judge said: "Pity it didn't go deeper; it might have let some of the wine out."

Now, they've improved themselves in our neck of the woods, and I'm proud to call them my neighbours, and several are my friends. 

I never witnessed truly hateful racism until I lived in Toronto. The things I heard Italians calling Greeks, and most whites calling Asians, made me mad. And all based on false stereotypes. But the racism was not institutionalized the way it was in the southern states. Things have improved vastly since then, though you will still find isolated instances.

 
Unfortunately, thanks largely to the American government using fear to control and manipulate their population starting around 9/11 and escalating ever since, I have seen prejudice occur more and more often in Canada, pushed by the media and the politicians, particularly the Conservative Party of Canada. That's the party that rose from the ashes after Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives suffered a terminal defeat at the polls, forcing them to join with the far-right Reform Party, creating something more like the American Republicans. 

Before the merger, Reform had serious trouble growing beyond their regional, rural roots, because many of their policies were openly racist and discriminatory against minorities and women. Now, thanks to their re-branding as the Conservative Party, formerly fringe right-wingers have gained some apparent respectability, and it's becoming more common in Canada to hear politicians say nasty things about Muslims. They're instilling the same fear in the population that was so successfully used to manipulate the American people. 

There is nothing to fear. It is stupid to be afraid of something that hasn't happened and probably won't. By all means people should always be prepared if something does happen, but it becomes far more likely to happen if people allow fear to colour their feelings and actions towards these groups. 

I have read the Qu'ran and Islam is a religion of peace, no more encouraging violence than the Torah of the Jewish people. Shari'a is not of the religion of Islam but is a tool used by the leadership to control the people. It is one of the things they are coming to Canada to escape. they are entitled to their rules of Halal just as the Jewish are entitled to rules governing kosher. 

A Muslim is just like any of us. They want to be able to enjoy their customs (not Shari'a) and holidays. They no more want our government shoving their beliefs down our throats than the rest of us do. They want quiet and peaceful lives, free of injustice and tyranny. They want to live, work, learn and be happy, just like the many ethnicities and races that make Canada the wonderful place it is. 

Let us leave the past in the past. Build a bright new future. It's the least we owe our children and the world.

Sincerely;
Yer Old Pal MoJo

MYSTERIES OF THE PETRO-CYCLE

WHEN HATE IS THE ONLY THING LEFT

On Sunday, January 30, at 7:50 in the evening, a young man wearing a mask and carrying a rifle walked through an unlocked door and into a mosque in the Quebec City suburb of Sainte Foy. As he shouted “Allahu akbar!”, the young man pointed his rifle at the fifty men who had assembled for evening prayers and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. His gun had jammed. Undeterred, he ran back to his car, retrieved a 9mm handgun with a 15 round capacity, returned, and opened fire, emptying his gun into the crowd.

By 7:55, the shooting was over, and the first call was made to 911. Police arriving on the scene found a bloodbath of dead and dying men, and yet, incredibly, the first thing they did was rough up witnesses, survivors, and those tending to the wounded, possibly adding to the body count. An investigation is pending.

At 8:10, another call was made to 911. Someone claiming to be the gunman wanted to give himself up. By 8:50, Alexandre Bissonnette, a 27-year-old anthropology and political science student and part time blood bank employee was in custody.

By the time the dying was done and the counting finished, Bissonnette would be charged with six counts of first degree murder and five counts attempted murder.

Not counting the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, in which 60 innocent Muslims lost their lives, Bissonnette’s rampage stands as the deadliest ever attack on Muslims in North America. Despite Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calling the massacre a terrorist attack, terrorism charges have yet to be filed against Bissonnette.

And maybe therein lies a question worth exploring. If Alexandre Bissonnette is a terrorist--and I believe that he is--then what kind of terrorist is he?

According to Bissonnette's friends and classmates, throughout junior high he was a shy, unpopular introvert with an interest in firearms, hunting, and the military. While attending Universite Laval, his interests evolved to include a variety of conservative causes. He joined student organizations and discussion groups, both online and off, and made efforts to participate.

People noticed a change roughly a year ago, roughly coinciding with French Far Right politician Marine Le Pen's visit to the province of Quebec. Bissonnette began professing great admiration for Le Pen, as well as then American Presidential candidate Donald Trump. His rhetoric grew ever more strident and extreme, his interactions with others more anti-social.

Bissonnette soon veered into hardcore racism and anti-Muslim invective. His trolling eventually became so intense that few who were aware of his online activities were surprised to discover that he had perpetrated a deadly massacre.

So, what does this mean, re the question at hand?

Well, for one thing, even though Bissonnette appears to have been completely self-radicalized, and even though he acted alone, it means that we would be fools to dismiss him as a deranged, apolitical "lone wolf" like, say, Elliot Rodger, or Adam Lanza. 

In fact, I think the opposite could be argued. I think that Bissonnette, hollowed out by the corrosive power of the politics of right-wing hate, was left utterly defenseless when the wider culture began its rapid terminal slide towards populist extremism. A non-stop diet of Far Right propaganda succeeded in pounding all the reason, proportion, and empathy out of him, then filled him anew with an incandescent grievance... a horrible swelling of inchoate missionary zeal that would find its ultimate expression in a tragic spasm of barbarous brutality.

In this sense, Bissonnette is not just a soldier for, but an avatar of, the alt.right politics of hate. His politics are literally all that is left of him. 

Being a hollowed out cipher who exchanged his mortal soul for a half-baked pseudo-ideology copy/pasted from Reddit is something that Bissonnette shares with his predecessors in the annals of alt.right terrorism: Anders Breivik and Dylann Roof.

And yes, I am suggesting that there is a substantial, substantive difference between right-wing terrorists of generations past, like Timothy McVeigh, and today's alt.right terrorists... though I'm sure all three secretly dream of one day hoisting foamy mugs with McVeigh in the hallowed mead halls of Valhalla. One needn't watch all two hours of Roof's FBI confession video, or read all fifteen hundred and fifteen pages of Breivik's manifesto, to realize that there is a certain, shall we say, confusion grinding away behind those addled pates. 

Not that confusion is any defense against extremism. The fact that people don't come much more confused than Omar Mateen, for instance, didn't mean much to the hundred and one people he shot (49 killed) in Orlando last year. Which brings us to the Trump administration's impeccably timed announcement that the federal anti-extremist program will no longer be targeting "right wing extremists".

Which is problematic, when you consider that pretty much every single terrorist--be he Jihad-besotted suicide-bomber, or neo-Pagan wannabe Viking, or even pseudo-intellectual “cultural Christian”--is, at heart, a "right wing extremist". The days of the Weather Underground and the Red Brigades have long since passed, after all.

Then again, maybe the real reason the Trumpniks decided to shut down efforts focused on uncovering non-Muslim right wing extremists is because they figured out a more cost effective way of doing so. For instance, by simply calling roll at police stations across the country.

In any case, if you or someone you love is currently involved in a hate group, and extrication from said situation is proving difficult, why not pay the good folks at Exit USA a visit? They've been where you are, and they know the way out.

CASUAL FRIDAYS WITH THE MAJORITY REPORT

DDD EXECUTIVE SUMMARY FOR FEBRUARY 7, 2017

MINUTIA AND INCONSEQUENTIA

• Good news, folks! The Illuminati finally got off their asses and set up an official website! Yer old pal Jerky has already looked into it for you, and I gotta say, it seems pretty legit. They're even selling this really snazzy black wooden pyramid thingy (pictured below) with three metal pendants hidden inside. At $70 per unit, enlightenment has never been so affordable!
• The offices of VICE have always reputedly been the scene of cocaine-fueled bacchanalia, but finding out former VICE Canada music editor Yaroslav "Slava Pastuk" Pastukhov used his influential position to coerce employees, interns, and young musicians into serving as drug mules for an international drug smuggling cartel? That's just... well... actually, nah. That's totally the kind of thing I always figured was going on behind the scenes there. 
• Neil Freeman has put together a beautiful map of the United States as redrawn with entirely new states, each of which has a population of roughly six million people. It's his way of dealing with the increasingly untenable problems associated with the electoral college. It also has the added benefit of being quite lovely, with evocative place names and a certain je ne sais quoi. 

***

SUGGESTED READINGS

1. Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the Fifty Greatest Progressive Rock Albums of All Time is an odd thing. On the one hand, it's a weird list, with some unforgivable omissions and a bunch of entries that, in yer old pal Jerky's opinion, don't really qualify as progressive rock... and I'm pretty loose and inclusive when it comes to prog! On the other hand, it's a great, eclectic bunch of albums, and brings attention to some very deserving and little known acts. So if you're interested in becoming a prog rock connoisseur (and who isn't these days?) this list should serve as a more than decent jumping off point.

2. All you foodies out there who love to indulge in “rare” and unique foods and delicacies that you can only get in certain parts of the world, sometimes only at certain times of year… please allow me to introduce the humble Madawaska ploye! The ploye is an extra special, hearty crepe (fancy talk for unflipped pancake) made with a special kind of buckwheat flour found only in the northwest panhandle of New Brunswick, and in nearby, neighboring regions in the US state of Maine and the Canadian province of Quebec... but not too deep into either! Yer old pal Jerky grew up eating these savory, spongy, dark yellow ployes, usually with a slathering of butter and a shmear of "cretons", which is another Madawaska delicacy, a fatty meat spread akin to head cheese, but a lot more... grey. It ain't pretty, but it's tasty. You can also eat them with molasses or maple syrup, if you have a sweet tooth.

3. Whenever yer old pal Jerky's academic background in Philosophy comes up, people are always full of questions. What is it, exactly, that's being studied? What qualifies one thinker as a philosopher and another as, say, a literary essayist? or a political scientist? or a critic of some sort? Doesn't anybody who lives by a credo, in effect, practice philosophy? Well friends, those of you who'd like to learn more about what it is, exactly, that philosophy students study, are in luck, because Wheaton College has generously made available the entirety of Professor Arthur Holmes' influential 81-lecture course, "A History of Philosophy", on Youtube, kicking things off with "Part One: The Beginning of Greek Philosophy", in which he comes to grips with some influential pre-Socratics:

This, my friends, is the good stuff, and indicative of the amazing things that the Internet is capable of. If you were to dedicate just an hour per day to the study of the history of philosophy, simply by watching Professor Holmes' course and taking notes while you do, you'd be finished in under three months! And you'd have a university-caliber introduction to the foundations of Western civilization under your belt. Furthermore, yer old pal Jerky guarantees that, if you take this course and make a good faith effort to understand it, a lot of things will, all of a sudden, make a lot more sense to you. In fact, I've been thinking of using Professor Holmes' course as the basis for a new, experimental website of sorts... an interactive sort of thing. Anyway, keep your eyes on this space for news!

***

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"The news is currently that spinning image of a newspaper, but it never stops spinning."

- Our old pal Conan O'Brien, cracking wise on the Twitter machine.

DDD EXTRAS

Our sister-site, the Useless Eater Blog, continues to provide you with all the low-down nitty-gritty on all the strange and savage goings on in the world of humans being human beings! Like for instance that time Savonarola made a bonfire out of all those vanities. Did you know that happened on this day, back in 1497? Hard to believe it was so long ago, isn't it? Ah well... such is life.

"YOU'RE IN FOR A BIG SURPRISE!"

WHILE I PREP MY TRUMP CABINET DOSSIER, ENJOY OUR OLD PAL MIKE MALLOY'S TAKE!

...AS YER OLD PAL JERKY SCRAMBLES TO KEEP UP...

WHERE THOSE EXECUTIVE ORDERS COME FROM

What a week it’s been! Like a diabolical infant colossus suffering from projectile diarrhea, Dear Leader Trump spent the last few days giving the rest of the world a taste of the foul be-shittening that Americans have suffered since his inauguration. 

Last week, for instance, he threatened to send military troops to "deal with" Chicago's crime problem; this week, we learned that he leveled similar threats against Mexico. Last week, he put federal employees on notice about their social media habits; this week, Iran was put on notice over a successful missile test (and by the way, congratulations, guys!). And of course, this week, we learned that during his call with Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull, Trump complained about a deal to accept twelve hundred refugees as the "worst ever", and said the call itself was the day's "worst by far". Last week, of course, Trump was busy being America's worst President ever, by far.

So you see how they all connect.

Not that choosing targets farther afield helped bolster Trump's approval ratings at home. In fact, the opposite seems to have happened, as everyday, more Americans appear to be waking up to the reality of this shared nightmare. One indicator of this is the fact that it's taken Trump exactly 8 days to slide into majority disapproval status... something no President in living memory managed to do before serving at least a few hundred days.

Whether Trump's historic plunge in popularity was entirely due to the fallout from the disastrously incompetent roll-out of his unconstitutional "Ban on (some) Muslims"--up to and including White House spokeslizard Kellyanne Conwoman's use of the (fictional) Bowling Green Massacre as justification for it--or whether it was something else, pollsters have yet to determine.

For instance, Americans may have been expressing their displeasure at Trump choosing to fill the Supreme Court vacancy stolen from President Obama with Neil Gorsuch, a 40-something Scalia clone who started a Fascism Forever club back in his prep school days. Of course, he now says he was kidding--which I suppose makes his college years some sort of perverse performance art project--so I'm sure it's okay. I mean, I'm sure no Republicans would have complained if, say, Justice Sotomayor had chosen to write "Viva la Reconquista!" in her high school yearbook, then spent her college years working to make Texas and California part of Mexico again... right? 

And by the way, what the fuck was up with that handshake?!

Unfortunately, most Americans couldn't care less who sits on the Supreme Court. So that probably isn't what caused Trump's approval ratings nosedive. Could it be because they discovered that Trump's plan to bestow "religious freedom" upon America involves creating "wholesale exemptions for people and organizations who claim religious objections to same sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion, and trans identity"? This, in the same week that he asked Jerry Fucking Falwell Jr to head up "a White House task force on reforming higher education"?!

Sadly, that probably wasn't it. It's far more likely folks didn't appreciate the way Trump used the 65th annual National Prayer Breakfast to put on a clinic for how to be a flaming asshole, by attacking Mark Burnett--who had just introduced him--and mocking ratings for The Apprentice ever since Arnold Schwarzenegger replaced him as the show's "boss", prompting this response from Arnold:

Then again, Americans love them some drama, so maybe the drop in Trump's popularity is just blowback from that botched Navy SEAL raid in Yemen.

What's that you say? You haven't heard about that botched Navy SEAL raid in Yemen? The one that led to the loss of SEAL Team 6 member William Owens and a $300M Osprey? The one that killed scores of innocent civilians, despite initial Pentagon claims of "no civilians killed"? The one that Trump okay'd over din-din? The one that was undertaken "without sufficient intelligence"? The one he didn't bother overseeing from the White House Situation Room, despite being in the White House at the time? The one described as "a disaster" by multiple government officials? The one that some Trump loyalists tried floating a "Blame Obama" tactic over, before having that tactic decisively slapped down, forcing them to switch narratives midstream and declare "Mission Accomplished!"? 

Yes, that botched Navy SEAL raid in Yemen.

It should be noted, however, that in the midst of all that human wreckage, Trump did at least get to fulfill one of his most beloved and oft-repeated campaign promises. He got to "take out" the family member of a suspected terrorist! That's exactly what happened when a bullet ripped through 8-year-old Nawar al-Awlaki's neck at some point during the raid. After reportedly suffering for two hours, Nawar was reunited with her big brother (and fellow American citizen) Abdulrhaman, who was killed alongside their father, accused Al Qaeda propagandist Anwar, in a drone strike authorized by the previous administration, back in 2011. 

So, you know, at least something about this raid went right.

SATAN, LAUGHING, SPREADS HIS WINGS

As for all the countless things that went wrong--including the non-stop farrago of lies about the op put out by the Trump administration, up to and including the bizarre release/retraction of a video they tried to claim was captured during the raid--surely we'll get to the bottom of things after a few hundred million dollars' worth of overlapping Congressional investigations. I mean, thank goodness the Benghazi hearings set such a high bar in establishing precedent for how to deal with this sort of thing. I can hardly wait to watch the fireworks on C-SPAN!

Hey! What's Trey Gowdy up to these days, anyway? I hear that dude is a real Rottweiler.

***

WHAT ABOUT BANNON?

1. Politico's Adam Wren sat through all the “documentaries” put out by the de facto US President Steve Bannon this week so you wouldn’t have to. So what did he discover? Well... let's just say that there are those who seem to think that Bannon is some kind of evil genius. Turns out they're half right.

2. Who knew that, back in the days before you could tell he was dying of long term alcoholic liver toxicity just by looking at him, de facto US President Steve Bannon was involved in Biosphere 2?! The folks at Motherboard have the inside scoop. You won't learn much about the project itself, which was "written off largely as a stunt, and not very good science to begin with", but what it tells us about one of the most powerful people in the world "could be the greatest finding of all."

3. Speaking of Bannon’s intellectual pedigree, were you aware that he's long been obsessed by a book touting a peculiar theory of history? As Linette Lopez explains in this Business Insider report...

In the book, authors William Strauss and Neil Howe theorize that the history of a people moves in 80-to-100 year cycles called "saecula." The idea goes back to the ancient Greeks, who believed that at a given saeculum's end, there would come "ekpyrosis," a cataclysmic event that destroys the old order and brings in a new one in a trial of fire.
This era of change is known as the Fourth Turning, and Bannon, like Strauss and Howe, believes we are in the midst of one right now. 

According to the book, the last two Fourth Turnings that America experienced were the Civil War and the Reconstruction, and then the Great Depression and World War II. Before that, it was the Revolutionary War. 

All these were marked by periods of dread and decay in which the American people were forced to unite to rebuild a new future, but only after a massive conflict in which many lives were lost. It all starts with a catalyst event, then there's a period of regeneracy, after that there is a defining climax in which a war for the old order is fought, and then finally there is a resolution in which a new world order is stabilized. 

This is where Bannon's obsession with this book should cause concern. He believes that, for the new world order to rise, there must be a massive reckoning. That we will soon reach our climax conflict. In the White House, he has shown that he is willing to advise Trump to enact policies that will disrupt our current order to bring about what he perceives as a necessary new one. He encourages breaking down political and economic alliances and turning away from traditional American principles to cause chaos. 

In that way, Bannon seems to be trying to bring about the Fourth Turning.

Knowing that a guy who believes all of the above--and who also believes that Sarah Palin, the Duck Dynasty guys, and Donald Fucking Trump are the best America has to offer--is now de facto President of the United States of America is enough to set even the stoutest knees to knocking. I think I speak for every sane human being on Planet Earth when I say: "Cirrhosis, don't fail us now!"

CASUAL FRIDAYS WITH THE MAJORITY REPORT

As yer old pal Jerky whips up the latest edition of the Daily Dirt Diaspora Report for y'all's intellectual delectation, why not spend a little time with our old pals at The Majority Report? I've been listening to these guys since the Dubya years, back when they were on terrestrial radio as part of the ill-fated Air American experiment in progressive radio (and any such effort that fails to find a space for Mike Malloy isn't worthy of the name), and with the minor exception of 7of the 8 years that Obama was in office, I've been listening ever since! To be honest with y'all, I listen to Sam Seder and his band of merry tricksters pretty much every day, as they're as close to my own stance, politically--in that they hate the Dum-Dum Left almost as much as they hate the Redhat movement--as I can find online.  Hopefully, so will you be too! 

THINKING HAPPY THOUGHTS ON FEBRUARY 1

THE QUESTION

After spending the better part of two days putting together the last edition for you guys (clip it and save it!), cataloging every shitty thing that happened in the first 10 days of Trump, I went into hibernation. And when I woke up, I was hungry. So I dragged myself over to my favorite Pakistani joint, where I’ve been a regular for years.

As my friend Abdul served my lunch, he sat down beside me and we started to talk. We’ve talked about politics on many occasions, going back to the era of Preznit Dubya. Despite working 12 hour shifts six days a week feeding a steady stream of hungry Torontonians, Abdul is well versed in world history. His take on world events is usually pretty savvy, and I've known him to be an admirer of shrewd plays, even by politicians he might not personally care for.

Today, however, he seemed genuinely puzzled. He was completely at a loss in accounting for Trump's post-inauguration moves. He was full of questions, most of which boiled down to this:

“Why has Mister Trump decided to begin his Presidency in this way? Why is he doing all these awful things? What is he hoping to accomplish?”

I thought about it for a moment. And then it came to me... it's because he’s got nothing else.

Trump’s campaign was erected on a twin platform of economic populism and nationalist demagoguery.

On the campaign trail, he promised to serve the former by “draining the swamp”, ridding Washington DC of the corruption that he claimed was the root of all America’s economic problems. In service of the latter, he promised to enact a raft of illiberal, racist, misogynistic, anti-Muslim legislation, designed to roll back decades of civil rights advances.

Thanks to his Billionaire’s Club cabinet picks and his transition team peppered with former Goldman Sachs executives, it is now painfully obvious to all but the most deluded Redcap cultist that Trump never had any intention of doing anything to help “the little guy”. As if the gold plated toilet bowls weren’t enough of a warning sign.

So basically, without the economic populism, nationalist demagoguery--sowing chaos left and right, fighting a running war against journalism, science, and reality, winking at the White Supremacists in his Amen Corner--is literally all he's got. 

Folks, it's usually at this point, in most Third World countries, that the population begins speculating on whose side the military is going to take. It's not a pleasant thought, but America's fate, and perhaps that of the world, rests with the few honorable, decent Republicans still left in the GOP after the Tea Party purges of the last 8 years.

I'm an atheist, and I've been praying every night this week. I suggest y'all do the same.

Sincerely,

Yer Old Pal Jerky

INFO CLEARING HOUSE

• John Gartner, a top Johns Hopkins psychotherapist, has decided to breach a longstanding ethics edict agaisnt issuing psychiatric diagnoses without meeting the person being diagnosed in order to sound the alarm about what he sees as Trump's potentially disastrous psychoses.
• Did you know that a Trump-connected dirty tricks operation was caught on camera soliciting violent and/or destructive acts from left-leaning, progressive protest organizations? This is actually a helpful illustration of how CNN is not just "the flip-side" of FOX News, because if it was, they would have covered this story for days on end.
• Are ALEC-backed legislators in state houses across the USA pushing for a surprise Constitutional Convention? It certainly looks like it... and the repercussions could be awful.
• Yer old pal Jerky has never been one to put particularly heavy stock in the idea that Presidents are responsible for the state of the nation’s economy, either for better or for worse. I think it's mostly luck, in either case. However, seeing as I see conservatives crowing about DOW 20,000, I thought I might as well burst their bubble with an explanation as to why there's actually not much cause for cheering in those numbers. 
• It's good to know that career foreign service officers aren't just standing around staring with dropped jaws and eyes agog while Trump makes an origami swastika out of the US Constitution! Instead, they've decided to issue a strongly worded memo! Through the "anonymous dissent channel" of course.
• With multiple arrests and at least one death in Russia's intel community now being connected to its creation and public release, the so-called "Steele Dossier" is looking increasingly credible. Which means Trump really is a piss freak. Interesting.

***

SUGGESTED READINGS

1. This Politico story, written by three people and arguing that "Trump's flashy executive actions could run him aground", seems kind of naive, perhaps missing the point--as discussed in this piece, which posits that chaos may be the entire point.

2. Here's another piece by Yonatan Zunger, this time describing what those who have been targeted by Trump and his minions--Muslims, immigrants, Latinos, Blacks, women, LGBQT, academics--can expect to have happen in the coming weeks and months: an acceleration of, and increase in, legislative provocation.

3. Another magnificent video by Vic Berger, this time, looking at Trump's announcement of President Bannon's pick for the Supreme Court, Neil Gorushisushushisush! Also see the Quote of the Day for more on this pick.

***
QUOTE OF THE DAY

"The illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little longer."

- Henry Kissinger, as quoted by Trump's Supreme Court nominee, 
Neil Gorush, in his undergraduate yearbook photo.

DDD EXTRAS

• As always, be sure to check out our sister site, the Useless Eater Blog, for a daily rundown of all the weird stuff that happened on this day in history, every single day!