I needed something. Target was the only place I could think of to get it. My beautiful better half-o-me is an island princess. She sees mass-shootings in Dayton — or Toledo, or wherever the toilet-tweeter we have illegitimately in our White House thinks it was — and she worries that it could happen here.
In Los Angeles. T
And, if not that, would ICE detain her because she looks like an island princess and has a sexy island princess accent, regardless of the fact she’s been a U.S. citizen for decades.
But, we chose to #PERSIST.
We went right into Target and we got what we needed. No guns or insane White Nationalist LOSERS anywhere to be found. I marched around passing cor “gotcha back, bro” looks to the security guard. I felt like a craze fan carrying one of those provocative foam “F#ck Duke” foam mittens (and maybe or maybe not something legally concealed, as us special cases can most certainly get permits for in California, as much as we despise that we feel we have to).
We actually feel safer than you Neo-Nazi pieces of garbage want us all to feel.
This goes in the “Don’t be a Chicken Little” file. I have a friend who is particularly susceptible to fearing the end is nigh at just about every turn (and, they shall not be outed. Sheeeiat. It’s not like this is the Trump Reich).
Jokes aside, this wannabe keystone dictator tweets out a signing statement, and stuff gets scary. We’ve all been mired in the flaming, stopped-up toilet that is the Trump presidency. But, I’m here to promise you that this pea-brained, mob-rule pretender was never, and will never threaten the long-arm of the justice underpinning the foundation of the United States of America.
I kind of favored this poster concept for the same reason I favored Firefly to begin with.
First, Firefly was an awesome show. Back in the early aughts when it aired (RIP), I was in the hey-ho daze of my career on the board. The lead character in the show was Captain Mal.
Cap’n.
Now, it’s obvious to anyone that the Cap’n in the world of a killer piece of sci-fi like Firefly is the Captain of a spaceship. But, it was more than that. Like all good ship captains in all the good sci-fi we love are captains in a less-formal sense. In a kind of leader of leaders kind of way.
I relate to the sentiment, ‘cos at the time Firefly was weekly TV fare, players on the board (in my pen), called me Cap’n Dannaroo (longer story than I care to give wings to again). I do still have the email addy (hardly in use, anymore) to memorialize the daze (scrubbed wildly clean, though it is).
In the Cap’n Mal sense, I wasn’t a “captain.” Not in a DOD-offshoot and sure as hell not of any ship, LOL. More, a field captain kind of cap’n. Field commanders — in commissioned military rank — are officers on the ground that have a number of lieutenants keeping the night lights glowing through the storms.
I was like that.
Though the Magnanimous Mouse is a symbol of Pristine Source in the Pursuit of Truth, it’s nice to think of the little soldier as the Cap’n. Like his daddy. And, his daddy’s before him.
OF NOTE: I heard that part of his pre-execution sentence for TREASON will be for him to have to physically eat every inch of copy from EVERY paper that participated in this national special.
UPDATE: After calling Omarosa a “Dog,” the other day:
Mueller’s team is rumored to now be mandating specific details of trump’s “last meal.” The papers he’ll be forced to eat aren’t just all of the “Dirty War Against the Free Press” copy. These tasty papers must line the floor of the pen at a Puerto Rico animal shelter for a week.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said to be LOLLING over this development.
OK. This is a little essay about a journalist I’m torn about. So, I’m just going to lay it out and let the chips fall where they may. Maybe it will serve as a collection of unsolicited advice to him and make him a better writer for it. Who knows. In this day and age, it will probably be taken as an attack and I’ll end up absorbing blows and other forms of insult for it — from him and his supporters, alike.
Oh well. I have never been one to shy away from trouble, so here it is.
Bill Palmer and his hyper-popular resistance blog, the Palmer Report (LINK). You either love him, or you hate him. If you love him, it’s because he says all the right things about just the right person that you despise: Donald Trump.
If you hate him, it’s because you consider him a conspiracy theorist and a hack of a journalist.
I am both of these critics.
I’ll start by saying I love his writing. Technically and artistically, he’s sound as a pound. Sterling silver. I haven’t seen his C.V., but I must deduce from reading hundreds of pages of his copy that he has a degree in creative writing. I dig this in any writer. When you can tell they’ve been formally trained. Mentored at some point in their studies. So, point to Bill.
As a game theorist and investigative journalist, I adore his ability to connect dots. His knack for breaking wild, bucking theoretical broncos into a logical corral is gold-medal quality stuff. Say what you want about his theories, they always make a lot of logical sense.
But, that’s where it ends, for me. There’s a laundry list of issues he needs to improve upon before he gets my seal of approval.
I’ll kick it off with his presentation. Not many of the people who will be reading this know that I was once a website “information architect.” Not a website designer. Oh, my, no. That’s a whole other set of skills way out of my purview (regardless of my insistence on once playing the amateur web designer out of a cocksure insistence on rocking all things pixelated). The firm I was with in the mid 2000’s contracted that artistic specialty out to a crack team of the “Mexican” intellectual labor of Europe: the Polish (they work on the cheap like our Southern neighbors).
Back to the concept of info-architecture (and I swear it is relevant, here). It’s doubtful you even know what an info-architect is (I mean, why would you)? Quick primer: they dream up how a website will best be presented — aesthetically and functionally — then they send the plans to designers, who then make it work; and to the graphic designers, who pretty it up, proper.
Palmer doesn’t have the expertise to design blueprints for even the most basic website, and certainly has no design or artistic expertise. He doesn’t have the skills, and as you’ll see below, he doesn’t have the resources to farm it out, either. Because he has neither, his website looks little better than the old, painfully-ugly Angelfire websites of the 1990’s:
So, it’s ugly.
That’s one thing. But, layered into it is a SPAM garden of foul. You’ll notice in the screen-grab above, the bevy of spam advertisements throughout. Sickly ads that pay his bills while he writes. Unfortunately for Bill, he has no editorial control over who gets to advertise on his website, so he ends up with non-FDA approved Viagra substitutes and penis enlargement devices alongside Russian dating service ads.
It all just takes away from any credibility his content may have had.
Then there’s the journalistic credibility issues.
As good as the logical hypotheses he may make, his journalistic techniques and general ethics are sorely lacking. For example, when he does provide source links, they lead back to his former essays as if they are legitimate source for his claims. It is a rarity that he provides any outside links to back up his claims. As if the reader is supposed to take his word for the veracity of the dots he is connecting.
It doesn’t work like that, and even a first-year undergraduate in a journalism program knows this as rote. He / she was already well-versed in this set of rules by the time he / she graduated high school. So, shame on Bill Palmer for that.
Then, to top it off, Palmer ends every article with a cup in an outstretched hand, begging for spare change. Worse, he follows even that with a request for his users to visit another group of clickbait websites from which he will enrich himself a little more.
And, worse on top of worse, Palmer ends with a “gimme your email address” request under the guise of offering you his articles before he publishes. This, first of all, isn’t honest, as you receive the articles in your inbox simultaneously as they are published. And, secondly, your email ends up used to send other offers from 3rd party advertisers to further “go fund him.”
In a nutshell, as much as I love reading Bill Palmer’s content in his Palmer Report (LINK), I can never suggest it to any respectable reader. It’s not even worthy toilet reading, Sorry Bill. And, sorry loyal readers of his blog (I know a handful). There are better outlets to satiate your thirst for Trump takedown news.
Source in media — especially citizen media — is king. It is pretty apparent that Bill Palmer doesn’t get this concept. His technique gives his creative fancy and apparently his wallet their freedom to maintain their “independence.” But, they don’t do the pursuit of the journalistic art any justice. If you are in the market for good citizen journalism — reporting based on ethics the ethics of truth and sourcing to back it up, might I recommend Magnana Mouse (LINK)?
Magnana Mouse is a magazine that is easily as opinionated as a Bear Jew (shout out to Quintin Tarantino’s extreme Nazi-hunter saga’s hero, Donnie Donowitz, the “Bear Jew“). Thick in unforgiving opinion, but steeped in source uber alles. More PBS than even MSNBC, as, for better or worse, it’s strictly not-for-profit.
I am one of two writers at the blog, along with a writer who goes by Johnny S. Doe. John is a former analyst for a non-partisan think tank, and now manages a team of U.S. Congressional staff chiefs, coordinating them under the wing of the same firm he was once with. As interesting as his position is, he doesn’t ever write about the inner-workings of what he does (as much as I would like it if he would. Since taking the position he’s currently in, his writing consists of editing my essays and adding / removing content.
But, it’s good. And, I also get to use it as an outlet to keep my artistic, as well as my journalistic swords sharp. I do all of the design, too. Then, there’s the Facebook Page, Magnana Mouse Citizen Media sister page on Facebook. If you’re on that social media black hole, please follow us there, too (LINK). And, of course, there’s Twitter (LINK). If you tweet, please follow us there!
The Daily Kos is a community of thousands of writers of political and social essays on current events, community-moderated and discussed veraciously by members. Visit: www.dailykos.com
Didja know Magnana Mouse is on the Daily Kos? Yep. Magnana Mouse has been there for a year or so. I’ve personally been a writer on the site far apart from Magnana Mouse’s existence since there were only 7,000 people using it. My User ID says it so-like.
Anyway, Magnana Mouse. Haven’t been cross-posting the Magnana Mouse blog to there on the Magnana Mouse page. Will, but, man, we’re busy up in my joint, and I only have so much time to pretend I still do stuff like this for dime.
What I do do there is comment and reply to the replies. Follow me, it’s fun, promise.
The Daily Kos is similar to Facebook in that it is filled with people who give a shit about their realities. Great people. Doctors. Politicians. Activists. Union folk. Actors and directors. All kinds of people writing about current events from their life perspectives. A better stock to discuss and debate relevant topics with than you’ll find on Facebook or any other where with pixel backdrop you’ll run across.
But, just like Facebook, “organic grassroots” sets of wee ideallist progressive hopefuls and the same Libertarians and Young Republicans who don’t realize you know they’re playing pretend flock around their “feel the bern” or bust campaigns.
I don’t debate them, because, well for a number of reasons. When Hillary is representing the party, we don’t want them angry and 3rd party suicidal. That, and arguing with them is just pointless. They know their impressions of Bernie and of Clinton are right. Even if they’re wrong. Kind of exactly like the Tea Party. Corective information will only soligdify their convictions.
“Global warming? Whatever, dude.”
I don’t outright argue. I come off as playfully condeseending. Toying with their naive behavior. Kind of how you let the kids be kids because, well, they’re kids and kids need to be kids. Figuring out the box’ edges is tanamount to knowing how to push the boundaries.
Today, an essay was posted: “Now that Bernie Sanders is taken seriously, supporters must get real,” that implies that now that people have started to listen to the crazy, they have to stop being poo-flinging children under the table and come sit with the adults and they’ll all just magically know what do do with the various forks and whatnot. I laid one out.
Oh, they’re going to get what, all of a sudden?
Real? This should be nice. Heard the same thing from Camp Donald yesterday. Now that they’re solidly out in front of the Clown Car Night Train, they’re gonna have to get real. It’s all relative. What “real” is. Hey, my daughter saw the LGBT Hillary commercial last week. Little tyke smiled; cried a little, and whimpered, “Daddy, is she going to do Obama’s job? I hope so. She’s a nice one.”
It’s OK for Sanders organsmic grasstooters to ignore “real” for some longer. It doesn’t make much of a matter. Creative thought and fantasy is great outlet. As long as we all stay in the calm bold forward of the big Blue, all’s well and ends well.
I just hope the Libertarians, nihilists, and mole Young Republicans gaming how they’re gaming are monumentally affected by their dark causes. That’s not the same as wishing pain and deserved suffering on someone, right? Meh, I’ll worry about hell after a couple decades with a left-leaning SCOTUS.
Couple things about it.
First, they’re going to “get real?” That’s something to poke fun at. Real. They’re all kind of annoyingly delusional. Their grandparents learned from the gut punch of supporting George McGovern and ending up with Nixon for it and their parents learned the same thing when their support of Ralph Nader gave us all Dubya, two wars, and a near-depression. Hopefully, these kids don’t need to learn the same kind of lesson.
They won’t, though, I think we all know. Hillary will embarrass sweet ol’ Bernie. He says silly revolution kind of stuff that sounds neat, but is about as real as what Donald Trump is vomiting up. The bigots in the GOP loved obstructing President Obama because Socialist. But, Bernie vomits up actual socialism. The Republicans would hog-tie him from go, and this guy tearing out the roof in a rainstorm is about as far from what most Democrats would even joke at accepting. So, this is about as real as teleportation and war for peace sake.
The bit with my “daughter” sniffling in want of having Hillary succeed Obama was a joke. I don’t have a daughter. Or a son. Just a prop for a ribbing. The other day, one of the “recommended” essays was a Bernie-swarm propaganda piece about a little daughter hearing Bernie’s speech in South Carolina on TV and telling Daddy, “please vote for him, he’s the bomb, big daddy.” Total fiction. They don’t bother with “Real,” so my “daughter” doesn’t, either.
Now, listen to my daughter and go vote Hillary, alright?
Fer Real.
Yeah, the rest of it is a swipe at all of the right wing moles doing with poor Bernie what they did with the Occupy movement. Of them, and of all the low-hanging idealistic fruity boys and girls who cavort with them not even having a clue what they do.
Poor Bernie.
(Photo By Tom Williams)
But, I digress. Come follow along with Magnana Mouse on the Daily Kos. If you have an account, follow us. Uprate our comments and when we publish blogs, “recommend them.” And, no matter what, peruse the Daily Kos. The diaries are ethically-sourced and you’ll be more informed than if you had an AP IV hooked up to your jugular.
D'Mused America - Steve's Unchained 