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Vox: Photos Of The Crowd At The Women's March Vs. Donald Trump's Inauguration

January 21, 2017, 2:38 pm
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The Current Political Catastrophe And The Way Forward

January 21, 2017, 3:57 pm
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Dear L,

I've told a few people that I think I'm sub-clinically depressed by the monstrosity taking place.

That said, it is hopeful that Trump's approval rating is only 41% (on average) and that a president's popularity plummets during her first two years in office; partly because the first year is when presidents must implement all their difficult and/or unpopular decisions. Then, the psychological down-slope of Year 1 has enough momentum to continue downhill during year two.

Sitting presidents hope that by Year 4, the unpopularity of the decisions they made during Year 1 will have been fully digested and evacuated.

This is why off-term elections always see such big congressional gains going to the party that is out of power.

Not only does Trump have very little "political capital" going into his administration, he will enjoy no honeymoon - at least not with the American people like those "pussies who grabbed back" earlier today.

Plus, whatever honeymoon he might have with his "fellow" Republicans (at least the "old guard") will be over by the time Deplorable Donald has had a year or two to fuck up. 

 Of course, one never knows...

But if we can keep Ruth Bader Ginsburg "on life support" until three years from now -- scumbag Republicans themselves made the case that "you" can't replace a Supreme Court Justice during a president's final year in office -- then the Dems might win the whole shebang in 2020 - including a Supreme Court majority.

Between now and then -- and 2018 will be "the test drive" -- we must persuade indolent Democrats to get off their asses and VOTE. 

This is not an easy task since even Obama's personal appeals fell on many deaf ears in the black community.

The Non-Voters Who Decided The Election: Trump Won Because Of Lower Democratic Turnout

For decades, I have told political lazy bones that we have no right to expect much from politics.

However, what is burningly important is to prevent the election of crazy people.

Everything else is gravy. Forget about it. 

Progress just doesn't matter than much, mostly because the give-and-take of democratic politics insures that "progress" is almost always incremental, with X steps backward for Y steps forward.

We musn't let wishful thinking seduce our psyches into dependence on Big Change.

All that is needful is to keep the crazies out.

Focus on quarantining the loons.

Love

Alan

Image result for trump as monster

On Sat, Jan 21, 2017 at 12:31 PM, LS wrote:

Dear Alan,

I was walking around today wondering why I felt such heaviness. I realized what I felt was grief, profound grief, as though someone very dear to me had died. I am generally a very optimistic person. Today I feel as though we are witness to a dramatic change in direction for this country and it grieves me. All the more reason for those of us who have been complacent in our governance to now step up and be the change we seek. 

Love you my friend,

Leigh

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 20, 2017, at 2:12 PM, Alan Archibald <alanarchibaldo@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Jim,


Thanks for your live feed.

Somewhere in a mouldering Louisiana grave, Huey Long is smiling - partly at the plutopath's populism but mostly at his brazen trumpery.

"On Being An American," H.L. Mencken Reviews Donald Trump's Inauguration

Borowitz Report: More Than Three Hundred Million Americans Now Enrolled In Trump University


Love

A'bald

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Since The Pope Preaches Against Global Warming, Can Catholic Officials "Pull A Kim Davis?"

January 21, 2017, 4:08 pm
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Alan: I would love to see the tables turned on "conservative""Christians."

Then, once we demonstrate "viability of principle" through moral resistance to global warming denial, push for recognition of a Christian's duty to withold that percentage of federal income tax that pays for warmaking.

Gospel Of Mark: Why Doesn't Kim Davis Deny Marriage Licenses To The Previously Divorced?

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Trump Wages War Against The Media As Demonstrators Protest His Presidency

January 21, 2017, 5:56 pm
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The National Mall When Trump Was Being Sworn In
The National Mall One Hour Before Women's March Ceremonies Began

Alan: It's past time to call Trump's bullshit exactly that. 

And if Trump believes his bullshit, he is dangerously delusional. 

Now that he's in a position where he can't simply order his mercenaries to work his will, he could become volcanically eruptive in the face of intractable opposition. 

Trump Wages War Against The Media As Demonstrators Protest His Presidency 
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The Non-Voters Who Decided The Election: Trump Won Because Of Lower Democratic Turnout

January 21, 2017, 8:01 pm
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Day 2 Of Trump Presidency & Press Secretary Tells Egregious Bald-Faced Lie For Liar-In-Chief

January 21, 2017, 8:13 pm
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"Medicare For All Should Replace Obamacare," Harvard Medical School Prof & NEJM Editor

January 21, 2017, 8:25 pm
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Image result for single payer healthcare graph national geographic

Medicare For All Should Replace Obamacare

Republicans have no realistic alternative to the ACA. It's time for single-payer


Marcia Angell is a corresponding member of the Faculty of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Faculty Associate in the Center for Bioethics. She stepped down as editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine in 2000. 



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With False Claims, Donald Trump Attacks Media On Crowd Turnout

January 21, 2017, 8:46 pm
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Best Signs At Women's Post Inaugural Protest: "SuperCallousFascistRacistExtraBraggadocious"

January 21, 2017, 9:00 pm
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Ex-CIA Chief Brennan Bashes Trump Over Speech During Narcissist's CIA Visit

January 21, 2017, 9:15 pm
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Stephen Colbert Reviews Trump's Inauguration

January 21, 2017, 9:48 pm
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Science Denial And Doubling Down On Mistaken Beliefs Once Science Proves Them Wrong

January 21, 2017, 10:02 pm
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"The Danger Of Science Denial"
A Meanspirited But Accurate Attack On Creationists - And The Larger Meaning Of Science Denial
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/11/a-meanspirited-but-accurate-attack-on.html

Evolution, Climate and Vaccines: Why Americans Deny Science

The U.S. has a science problem. Around half of the country's citizens reject the facts of evolution; fewer than a third agree there is a scientific consensus on human-caused climate change, and the number who accept the importance of vaccines is ticking downward.
Those numbers, all gleaned from recent Pew and Gallup research polls, might suggest that Americans are an anti-science bunch. But yet, Americans love science. Even as many in the U.S. reject certain scientific conclusions, National Science Foundation surveys have found that public support of science is high, with more than 75 percent of Americans saying they are in favor of taxpayer-funded basic research. 
"The whole discussion around scientific denial has become very, very simplified," said Troy Campbell, a psychologist at the University of Oregon. [6 Politicians Who Got the Science Wrong]
Campbell and other psychologists are presenting findings from polls and other research that they say reveal Americans' complex relationship with science. The presentations are occurring today (Jan. 21) at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) in San Antonio.
Science denial — whether it comes in the form of dismissing fact-based evidence as being untrue or in accepting notions that are not factual as being true — is not typically rooted in blanket anti-science attitudes, the research showed. But the facts aren't always paramount, either. Often, people's denial of scientific evidence is based on motivations other than finding truth, such as protecting their social identity, the research said.

Why deny?

One key thing to understand about people who engage in science denial is that very few people deny science as a whole, according to research by Yale University psychologist Dan Kahan, also presenting at SPSP on Saturday. For example, the more liberal a person is, the more likely he or she is to agree that humans are causing global warming; a conservative is far more likely to blame natural climate variation or say scientists are making the whole thing up. [Wishful Thinking: 6 'Magic Bullet' Cures That Don't Exist]
But that same conservative may be just fine with the evidence for the efficacy of vaccines, and there is virtually no partisan split on issues like the safety of nanotechnology, the use of artificial sweeteners in drinks or the health impacts of living near high-voltage power lines, Kahan wrote in a book chapter soon to be published in the "Oxford Handbook on the Science of Science Communication." 
Kahan's research has also shown that the more science-literate people are, the more strongly they hold to their beliefs — even if those beliefs are totally wrong.  
In other words, it's not about hating science or misunderstanding the facts. It's about motivation.
"Beliefs are difficult to budge, because people don't act like scientists, weighing up evidence in an even-handed way," Matthew Hornsey, a psychologist at the University of Queensland, wrote in an email to Live Science. "When someone wants to believe something, then they act more like lawyers trying to prosecute what they already want to be true. And they cherry-pick the evidence to be able to do that."
The real question, Hornsey said, is why people want to believe something that flies in the face of scientific evidence. In some cases, the reason can be political: Solving the problems created by climate change would mean standing in the way of the free market, something conservatives tend to oppose.
In other cases, people might have some other vested interest in their beliefs, Hornsey said. A smoker may not want to believe her or his habit is really going to cause lung cancer, because that would mean the person would have to quit. Social identity can also be an important driver of beliefs, Hornsey said. Studies of teens in Midwestern towns have found that these individuals typically go along with the crowd, he said, believing in evolution if the majority of their friends do and believing in creationism if that's what the people around them believe.
"For someone living in a 'creationist community,' to express belief in evolution might be seen as a distancing act, as a signal that one was defiantly assuming an outsider status," Hornsey said.

Changing minds

When someone's self-image or social acceptance is at stake, badgering them with facts isn't likely to change their minds, research has shown.
In fact, a 2010 studyfound that when people were shown incorrect information alongside a correction, the update failed to reverse their initial belief in the misinformation. Even worse, partisans who were motivated to believe the original incorrect information became even more firm in their belief in that information after reading a correction, the researchers found. For example, conservatives who were told that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq war believed that claim more firmly after reading a correction.
So researchers are suggesting more-subtle ways to change people's attitudes toward accepting scientific facts. Hornsey said he and his colleagues call this "psychological jiujitsu," in reference to the martial art that teaches people to use their opponent's own weight against them. [Best Supporting Role: 8 Celebs Who Promote Science]
In this approach, people who accept scientific facts might try to get at the root of the disbeliefs held by those who don't, and then address that basis, rather than addressing the surface denial. Campbell and his colleagues have found, for example, that if free-market solutions to climate change are presented as an option, self-identified Republicans become less likely to deny climate science.
Using this jiujitsu approach is challenging, Hornsey and his colleagues wrote in an article soon to be published in the journal American Psychologist, because people's underlying motivations are not always clear. Sometimes, the people themselves may not know why they think the way they do. And no single message will fit all possible reasons for disbelief, the researchers warned. [Evolution vs. Creationism: 6 Big Battles]
"A two-tiered strategy would be optimal: messages about evidence and scientific consensus that should be sufficient for the majority, and a jiujitsu approach for the unconvinced minority," the authors wrote.
There's another trap to watch out for, though, Campbell warned: smugness. If a message from a science-accepting person comes across to a denier as being holier-than-thou, or as judgmental of a person's whole character, it's likely to backfire, he said.
"I like to say, 'Tell people they already are the people you want them to be,'" Campbell said. For example, "don't go to somebody and say, 'You don't care about the environment enough.' Point out all the ways they do care about the environment."
From there, Campbell said, there is common ground to work from. Successful persuasion, he said, finds common values without triggering people's self-protective instincts.
"The general thing I think is important to say is 'I like and care about you,'" Campbell said. Once respect is established, he said, "any criticism is very much tapered, and is not a holistic admonishment of who you are."
Original article on Live Science. 

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What Does It Take For The Press To Call A Lie A Lie?

January 21, 2017, 10:28 pm
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The Very People Who Demanded To See Obama's Birth Certificate Don't Seem At All Interested...

January 21, 2017, 10:35 pm
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Watch: CNN Spent Ten Straight Minutes Tearing Down Trump's Lies

VIDEO: Trump Tells More Lies Than Any U.S. Politician. Why Do "Patriots" And "Christians" Believe A Liar

Pulitzer Prize-Winning PolitiFact Finds That Only 1% Of The Things Trump Says Are Entirely True

Compendium Of Pax Posts Re: Trump's Non-Stop Ability To Tell One Lie After Another
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2017/01/compendium-of-pax-posts-re-trumps-non.html

Keith Olbermann's 176 Reasons Trump Shouldn't Be President
(Yes, It's All Here And Worth Hearing In One Relentless Torrent)

Who Lies Most? A Pants-On-Fire Comparison Of America's 20 Best Known Politicians


"Are Republicans Insane?" Best Pax Posts

"There Are Two Ways Of Lying..." Denis De Rougemont And Donald Trump





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The Pumpkin Fuhrer Paying Tribute To His Master

January 22, 2017, 8:06 am
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Best Signs At Women's Post Inaugural Protest: "SuperCallousFascistRacistExtraBraggadocious"

January 22, 2017, 8:19 am
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Trump's Horrific "Roll-Out" Of Presidential Yahooism, Paranoid Hostility And Aggressive Ignorance

January 22, 2017, 8:32 am
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VIDEO: Trump Tells More Lies Than Any U.S. Politician. Why Do "Patriots" And "Christians" Believe A Liar

Dear F,

Thanks for your email.


Did you see Colbert's January 20th review of The Liar's inauguration? It's not consistently great but has many good bits.

Here are some protest signs I liked from yesterday's women's march. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2017/01/best-signs-at-womens-post-inaugural.html

Photo by Slate&rsquo;s Bryan Lowder
Elsewhere...

Trump might have his hands full for all four years just battling the CIA (and then, in sequence, every other government agency). http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2017/01/ex-cia-chief-brennan-bashes-trump-over.html

And... The Despicable One's press secretary (a piece o' work named Spicer) is already his own worst enemy. 

Like everyone else, both neons (my nomenclatural spin on Trump's version of neo-nazi) only got one chance to make a first impression and here's the pose they struck:

Inline image 1
(Of course, it won't be enough to alienate "Christian""conservatives" but -- hey! -- once you're "saved!" you've got a vested interest in being an asshole... for eternity.)

Finally, I'm happy with my reply to a "critic" on John Tarantino's Facebook page. I think it's one of the best things I've written in months. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2017/01/thats-whats-wrong-with-democrats-my.html

The upshot?

I'll bet long odds Democrats (both the party and as the antonym of fascist) win The Oval Office in 2020.

Pray that Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Scalia's best friend!) holds on for 1000 days. That will put us in the 4th year of Trump's presidency and Republicans themselves have established precedent that the ruling party does not have the right to name a Supreme Court Justice that close to a presidential election.

In the meantime -- and in the absence of a Putin-coordinated terror attack -- I'm almost ready to sit back and enjoy the show. 

Trump Will Go Full-Throttle Fascist After The First Major Terror Attack. 
Putin Knows This.

Love 

A

On Sun, Jan 22, 2017 at 1:06 AM, FV wrote:


Dear A , Jimbo

SNL tonight had to drive D.T. to distraction.

They ended singing To Sir With Love in front of a picture of Obama. 
If you don't remember the Lulu song from the Sidney Poitier movie check out the words. I could see Donald turning red. Interesting turn of phrase. 

Love




F




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Kellyanne Conway Says White House Is Offering "Alternative Facts" On Inauguration Crowd Size.

January 22, 2017, 11:01 am
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Alan: Increasingly, the only plausible explanation for Trump's victory -- and subsequent behavior as "president" -- is that he made a pact with Satan. 

Of course, this is not literally true but it is false news that should "go viral" among "Christian""conservatives."

I will also mention that Hillary's trouncing of Donald Trump in the popular vote supples every American with the "alternative fact" that Ms. Clinton is the true president of the United States.

In the "Trump-Conway Universe," why not?

Post-truth, ANYTHING goes.

Conway: Trump White House Offered "Alternative Facts" On Crowd Size

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/22/politics/kellyanne-conway-alternative-facts/

With False Claims, Donald Trump Attacks Media On Crowd Turnout
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2017/01/with-false-claims-donald-trump-attacks.html

Image result for pax on both houses, find out what the deplorables want
Trump's Campaign Manager, Kellyanne Conway Admits 
That Donald's Supporters Are "Downright Nasty" And "Skeeze"

Hillary Clinton Received 4.55% More Popular Votes Than Pussy Grabber | made w/ Imgflip meme maker

"That's What's Wrong With Democrats" 
My Reply To A Critic On Friend T's Facebook Page
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2017/01/thats-whats-wrong-with-democrats-my.html

Trump's Horrific "Roll-Out" Of Presidential Yahooism, Paranoid Hostility And Aggressive Ignorance
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2017/01/trumps-horrific-roll-out-of.html



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The Borowitz Report: "Disturbed Man Gets Past White House Security, Gives Press Conference"

January 22, 2017, 11:06 am
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Disturbed Man Gets Past White House Security, Gives Press Conference

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—A man who was described as “visibly deranged” eluded the Secret Service on Saturday and gave a five-minute press conference at the White House.

The man, who somehow obtained White House credentials in order to bypass security, unloaded a delusional and paranoid rant that left a room full of experienced reporters shaken.

“We were all very, very scared,” Tracy Klugian, a reporter who witnessed the incident, said. “The things he was shouting made absolutely no sense, and he seemed to just get angrier and angrier.”

After a stream-of-consciousness tirade in which he accused the reporters of being part of a far-reaching conspiracy to distort reality, the man abruptly walked off “before he could do any real harm,” a Secret Service spokesman said.

Reporters who left the White House called the incident the scariest five minutes of their lives and said that they were grateful it did not escalate further.

“We were all terrified that, at some point, he was going to ask us if we had any questions,” Harland Dorrinson, a reporter, said. “None of us wanted to say anything that would set him off.”

Conway: Trump White House Offered "Alternative Facts" On Crowd Size

With False Claims, Donald Trump Attacks Media On Crowd Turnout
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2017/01/with-false-claims-donald-trump-attacks.html





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New Yorker: "Medical Mysteries" (Including "The Woman Who Scratched Through Her Skull")

January 22, 2017, 11:23 am
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The New Yorker

A selection of stories from The New Yorker’s archive

Medical Mysteries

Literary scholars have a theory about detective stories: they say that they express our fears about modern life. Living in a big city, far from your family, you don’t know whom to trust; as a result, you come to regard everybody with a healthy dose of skepticism. If that’s true, then what do medical mysteries—stories of unaccountable illnesses and clever cures—say about us? This week, we bring you seven such stories. In Atul Gawande’s “The Itch,” a woman starts scratching and can’t stop; her horrifying plight has the side effect of revealing something about the way our brains work. Similarly, Richard Preston’s “An Error in the Code” explores a rare disorder that causes people to harm themselves; it offers a window into the laws that govern normal human behavior. Stories like these—and Oliver Sacks’s “The Case of Anna H.,” about a woman who loses the ability to recognize objects—seem to evoke the combined wonder and fear we feel in response to new discoveries about the frailties of the human body. Other pieces, such as Cynthia Zarin’s “An Enlarged Heart” and Laura Hillenbrand’s “A Sudden Illness,” speak to the fact that, in an age of technological predictability, our health is one part of life over which we have relatively little control. Finally, Berton Roueché’s “Sandy” (concerning a case of mass hysteria at a Florida elementary school) and Margaret Talbot’s “The Bad Mother” (about parents who fake their children’s illnesses) are about how, sometimes, people are so unknowable that even the scientific community finds itself flummoxed. Considered together, the pieces below suggest that often it’s not other people we need to watch out for—it’s ourselves.
—Erin Overbey and Joshua Rothman, archivists

Anna did particularly badly in tests of visual perception. She called a violin a banjo, a glove a statue, and pliers a banana.
A Neurologist’s Notebook|October 7, 2002

The Case of Anna H.

In January of 1999, I received the following letter, from a woman I will call Anna H.: “Dear Dr. Sacks, My (very unusual) problem, in one sentence, and in non-medical terms, is: I can’t read. I can’t read music, or anything else.”
BY 
 

Photograph by Jacqueline O’Neill
Personal History|July 7, 2003

A Sudden Illness

BY 



Photograph by Wayne Miller / Magnum
Annals of Medicine|August 21, 1978

Sandy

“She was wrong in thinking that all those aches and pains and chills and nausea were illusory. They were real, all right. And this was a real epidemic. It was an epidemic of mass hysteria,” Dr. Nitzkin said.
BY 
 

It was August, and we were at the beach. All winter we dreamed of the house.
Personal History|August 18, 2003

An Enlarged Heart

It began with a cough. Her brother had a cough. And, after all, what was a cough? They had all had them. In winter, they passed them around like sweets.
BY 
 

Sufferers of Lesch-Nyhan syndrome are uncontrollably driven to harm themselves.
Annals of Medicine|August 13, 2007

An Error in the Code

Decades after the discovery of Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, it is still mysterious. It is perhaps the clearest example of a simple change in the human DNA which leads to a striking, comprehensive change in behavior.
BY 
 

Scientists once saw itching as a form of pain. They now believe it to be a different order of sensation.
Annals of Medicine|June 30, 2008

The Itch

Only in the Emergency Department at Massachusetts General Hospital, after the doctors started swarming, and one told her she needed surgery now, did M. learn what had happened. She had scratched through her skull during the night—and all the way into her brain.
BY 
 
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