The Smokin' Crater Party

 

Marge Greene says in 2022 she is going to “blow away the Democrats’ socialist agenda,” then blows up a car with “socialism” on it with a 50-caliber rifle she is auctioning off for contributions. pic.twitter.com/b10wGwVVW2

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 18, 2021

I'm not brand new, so I know that one of the points of an ad like this is outrage and getting liberals to point to it and here I am, Pavlov's liberal, pointing. Does she even have to run ads in her extremely red district? (But of course, shhhh, this is about fundraising and whatnot). But leaving aside the Palin-crosshairs-style violence indicated and the McCarthyist claim of anything she doesn't like as socialism, and it's really just distilled trolling. Because she believes trolling is her job.

No kidding. She recently told Steve Bannon that she's the "most effective member of Congress." That's objectively nonsense. She lost her committee seats. She's responsible for no legislation. What the heck is effective--did she mispronounce "defective"?  But she trolls and gets a response. It doesn't have to be a good response. 

Not every Republican trolls at MTG's level, but they all have the same basic idea of what governing is about--do stuff libs hate, but do things that are actually...useful? No. Absolutely not. So if Governor Abbott in TX wants to concentrate on the border instead of the power grid, or MS Gov. Reeves acts bemused when challenged on his state's lousy COVID-19 numbers, it's makes sense to realize that the ad above is the goal. Ask not what good government can do for you, ask what you can do to troll the libs. 

And you get to "govern" over a smoking crater for your trouble. 

Tempting Us With A Good Time?

I’m Joe Biden and I approve this message. pic.twitter.com/TuRZXPE5xK

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 20, 2020

My gut tells me we wouldn't be so lucky as to actually see the back of Trump straightaway once he's lost because I don't believe Trump will actually acknowledge that he has done so. But if the "mute button" was just on him? If he just....mattered less? Solace.

UPDATE: This morning, Trump speculates to Fox & Friends that Justice Ginsberg's last request is a hoax cooked up by House Democrats. If he doesn't want to honor her request, fine (I mean, it's not her call TBH) but why calumniate other than from sheer fuckery?

No Holiday in Cambodia

"Ocasio-Cortez already receives a high number of death threats; by allowing this PAC to air an ad that links her to genocidal violence in Cambodia, ABC grants undeserved legitimacy to ideas that make her a target."https://t.co/fUWquQjDKc

— Democratic Coalition (@TheDemCoalition) September 13, 2019

This is probably deeply ill-advised of me to notice, but I'm a Gen-X blogger who realized a long time ago that I'm not really presidential material (even if the fitness of the current resident makes even me and my tattoos feel a little like, what the hell? Y not?) so let me just say--wow, but by the visibly melting frame of the yet-living Hank Kissinger, are we really going to go through whether the left-liberalism calling itself democratic socialism is kinda Khmer Rougey and not take notice of the entire right-wing foreign policy failure at influencing positive change with respects to....

Why, no. No we are not doing that. Or at least, you go ahead and do that history dissertation if you've a mind, but:  This is actually just my usual warning that conservative rhetoric is inflammatory and that inflammatory rhetoric is really the thing we should worry about regarding genocide, not mere issues of domestic economy. Because conservatives have been doing this thing with inflammatory and violent rhetoric. And sometimes it results in bad things.

Will they blame Meredith McIver?

But I guess if you are going to copy, go bold!

Lady Doritos is a Weird Thing

The idea that Doritos is thinking about making a "crunchless" version just for the ladies is kind of amazing. Instead of recognizing that women also need to make noise when eating a crispy product, and using marketing dollars to normalize or empower women to eat noisily if that is even a thing that needs doing, the marketing folks think maybe there should be a Dorito flavorful enough for a man, but made for a woman. And that product shall have no crunch.

Experiencing our crunch seems to me to be what feminism is about. If we want to have a crunchless experience, we can have yogurt and cottage cheese. We can have oatmeal and cream of wheat. But what if the sound of one mouth crunching was our satori? What if the extreme flavor of salsa rio or cool ranch was the flavor of our feminism? What if to never crunch was to take a step back in our snackular liberation? 

I say that the sound of one woman snacking is a bell of liberty for any woman to eat and be nourished, to receive comfort from food and take up that space. I will not be crunchless in the hope of people thinking I was snackless. I will, Jay Leno-like, brandish my snacks aloft and be seen and heard. Because I am woman, hear me eat. I am strong. I am consumerable. I am chip-eating.

This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag is For Mad Men

Sometimes I think that when Donald Trump says "Make America Great Again", he really means something like "Make America the 1950s Again". You know, that Leave it to Beaver vision of white suburban neighborhoods where kids got into shenanigans, but wives were wearing the dresses and pearls in the home doing random stuff, mostly in the kitchen and the Daddies went to work. It just so happens he's about to start off with a Korean War to get us there...and maybe exhuming McCarthy while he's at it. 

Which sets us up for the theme of this TrumpWorld Grab-bag:  Mad Men. This isn't the first time I've referenced Mad Men here on the blog, but that was in reference to a small web-consulting outfit that sometimes did some stuff for Republicans--low-key, you might call it, but I like the in-joke name for the advertising side of it. 

That wasn't the least bit of the Trump web-advertising dollar (or ruble), it looks like. One of the most fascinating things about trying to figure out what happened during the 2016 campaign has been to just look at social media. Like, Facebook and Twitter posts and ads. The stuff that was all over the place, and we might not have necessarily thought was weird because, like fish, we only get aware of the "water" once we're out of it. 

Imagine ads calling Trump our "only viable option", implying somehow that Trump was seeing a reality that no one else did. (The ads at the link are revolting and push specifically racist buttons. They were intended to incite racially-motivated responses.) Or ads that specifically highlighted racial tension regarding Black Lives Matter demonstrations, aimed at denigrating the movement as threatening and violent. Imagine Russian-sponsored ads that basically touted "Anyone but Hillary Clinton".  Imagine stories and ads pushed to indicate Muslim support of Clinton at an exactly wrong time. 

This is the level of highly button-pushing and divisive rhetoric that we experienced during that campaign last year. It was dangerous, because it didn't just influence elections--it incited people to violence. It incited people to feel more concretely satisfied about either being just a bit white supremacist, or maybe way too liberal for a neoliberal hack like Clinton. This Russian-funded campaign told people it was great to be appalled at people agitating against police brutality and for equal treatment under the law. (Speak up--are you pro-police brutality and actually against equal treatment under the law? Inquiring minds want to know. Because if you also think police brutality is terrible and everybody should get the same treatment under the law, which is what the Constitution says--hey great! Abandon the fucking anti-BLM or anti-antifa shit. Hate acts of violence against people--but don't smear people for their ideals. We are Americans together, just trying to live up to the Constitutional ideals and not actually being overt racists and shit. If you love the Constitution and the Republic constituted by it for which our flag actually stands, you might even consider taking a knee understanding that we are Americans by grace of our founding documents and the ideals contained therein, and not necessarily by place of birth or parentage or ethnicity or even religion--and we all deserve the fundamental protections found in that Constitution our president swore to defend. Even if I swear he doesn't understand it. )

Now, we know Russia paid for these kinds of ads.  What we aren't sure about is the level of coordination between the Trump Campaign and their Russian "assist." Some of what we know is pretty well-researched by investigators and is liable to lead to indictments, soonish, for Paul Manafort.  (He's also nearly up for a public Senate Judiciary hearing--this would be a good day for me to C-Span and not chill when it goes down.)We know Roger Stone Twitter-bragged about backchannels to WikiLeaks. Now, he's going to pretend he doesn't know anything? 

I don't know what this all leads to. I know IRS is now in the mix. Mueller, unlike the rest of us, has Trump's and others' tax returns. That might be interesting. 

And then there's Jeff Sessions, who might be just as under threat of getting the sack as Bob Mueller, just saying some stuff about how the Trump Russia investigation is trying to nail people for completely everyday stuff. Does he mean like perjuring oneself at a confirmation hearing kinds of normal things? Like meeting with Russian "diplomats" and not mentioning or actually averting one did not even do so even if it wasn't even the specific question asked? 

Anyhow, this TrumpWorld Grab-Bag business still looks like it's going somewhere.  And I begin to think about how the principal figures have behaved (like the private email business) and mentally conclude that they might just all be mad men. Angry. Or Insane. Choose your adjective.

Oh Fine, Pepsi, I'll Go

Yeah. Pepsi has me linking to the ad but I don't even mind, because I survived the cola wars of the 1980's and I sleep like a baby. All my readers need to know is I only drink water, tea, and booze. That's it. I couldn't tell you the last time I had a Pepsi product or even Coke and Jack. So, I have nothing to say about what this ad has to do with Pepsi. This is a New Generation Pepsi-type ad. (Not to be confused with a "New Power Generation".) Trying to say one's flavored, carbonated beverage is hip with the kids is nothing new--I mean, talk about Dr. Pepper trying to co-opt everybody:



But I think that the cultural signifying here went beyond Coca-Cola signifying levels:



Because, although we don't know if the protest that Kendall Jenner, rich white lady, co-opts, is about Black Lives matter or is just a pussy hat riot or some other thing that a multi-cultural group of millennials might be protesting about, conspicuously including an Asian cellist male and an hijabi photographer, we do know that it is meaningful that this model sheds her blonde wig to reveal she is brunette and woke as all hell (and gives her blonde wig to a black lady). So woke she marches right to the middle of things to give a soda to a police officer. To symbolize--"He looked thirsty-m'kay?"

Huh?

Even the intro to Watchmen made more sense:

The handing of a soda to a policeman only makes sense if, somehow, there was a law against cops drinking soda. Otherwise, I feel like we are lacking the context that makes a brunette model giving a soda to a police officer the solution to anything--but then again, giving the world a Coke probably wouldn't have done anything either forty+ years ago. I think giving the world a few gin and tonics might be great--especially if it included me--but beverage choices pretty much aren't sufficient politics in the face of all the shit we deal with. See Temperance Movement, for context. This isn't worse than all the attempts to link flavored carbonated beverages to youth movements before. This is just weirdly obvious in a particularly media-savvy age. But I guess that's no reason not to drink Pepsi if that's the sort of thing you like.

These Candies Leave a Bad Taste

This image says it all. Let's end the politically correct agenda that doesn't put America first. #trump2016 pic.twitter.com/9fHwog7ssN

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) September 19, 2016

So, Donald Trump, Jr. posted the above message on Twitter, and I don't think he'll delete it because it was exactly the message the Trump Campaign was putting out today regarding the acts of alleged terrorist Ahmed Rahami--who was not Syrian, nor a refugee, and who was found asleep in a doorway by police. (My priceless Tweet: "I woke up in a Linden doorway, the policeman knew my name," has been absurdly ignored, and I am miffed.) What can one even say? The alt-right version, no less simplistic, usually uses M&M's. So it's not original, in just the way it isn't insightful or clever. But it does have the Trump/Pence logo going for it. Which inspires me, because of course it does.

UPDATE: People trying to flee are dying before our actual eyes. And this privileged peckerwood wants to compare them to poisoned candy? Fuck him, his Daddy, their party and the alt-right.

UPDATE 9/28: He seems to have deleted the picture so here:

The internet doesn't actually forget, even if it loses some graphic integrity.

Working People Like Who?

So there's an ad where the Trump Campaign is trying to imply that Hillary Clinton derided so many people with her "deplorable comments":



But this might not be the greatest argument when juxtaposed with some enthusiastic Trump supporters:




Inviting people to identify with the "Make my burrito, bitch" guy might not actually work out. Trump rallies have gained notoriety for what can happen at them. Some of these people may just be working people--but they are also working at being horrible people. Deplorable, even.

The Trump campaign is making the argument that there isn't any difference between the white supremacists and sexists and homophobes that Clinton actually called deplorable, and the rest of those fine working folks out there. All I know is, saying that the people she called "deplorable" are "like you" says an awful lot about who they think "you" are.

Is Donald Trump's Brain #Frozen?

So, I screen-capped this amazing Tweet, because, you know, Trump has deleted Tweets before, but there is something sort of astonishingly disingenuous or maybe deliberately obtuse in not realizing that symbols have meanings in context. A Disney sticker book with a burst design that is a six-pointed star is not the same context as a politician with a background of hundred dollar bills and the word "corrupt", and neither are in the same context as a sheriff's star. His campaign seems loath to admit that they picked up the original image from an apparent alt-right user--as if it's some odd, hard-to-find secret that this is the audience his campaign has been actively courting! But no matter--Twitter is all over it, and Twitter does not forget.

It's very strange for someone to still be calling attention to what might charitably be called a "gaffe" several days later. If you want the "dishonest media" to stop talking about a thing, wouldn't you try to shut up about the thing?

But this is not his way, as a rambling speech earlier this evening showed. He doesn't let anything go--he just keeps counting his grievances on his little stubby fingers.

In other news, his campaign released some kind of dishonest figures about how much money they raised because they had to fluff it up with one week in May, making the correct June total something like $51 million, of which about $3.8 million was self-financing--which falls very short of Clinton's $68 million in fundraising. There's no ad tv ad-buys this past month. And Joni Ernst and Bob Corker have both said "Thanks, but no thanks" to VP vetting--I guess because both would still like careers in the years to come. I'm a bit bullish on Gingrich, but I have mad 90's nostalgia.

Otherwise the dumpster fire is giving off excellent heat, why do you ask?

Distilled Essence of Trump

The title here is a bit harsh, but not inaccurate. The Trump campaign's first ad says pretty much all the things Donald Trump has already been saying, even if they are kind of absurd. I think that's probably the point. Things like "cut the head off of ISIS and take their oil" sound great until you realize the this isn't ISIS' oil--they seized it from Iraq and Syria and it should go back to whoever it belonged to. A wall is nice, but won't stop people coming by boat or plane. Banning Muslims from immigrating is just...un-American.

But other than that...it should be very effective for people who like that sort of thing.

Jeb Bush and Exclamation Point to Part Ways

The candidate and his punctuation mark in happier times.

On word that a split had occurred between 2016 Presidential candidate Jeb Bush and the iconic exclamation point that served in not one, but two campaign logos, the crack political team at Strangely Blogged  sought to set the story straight. Now, we don't actually have the kind of access to check this with Jeb(punctuation mark to be named later), but our editor is on pretty good terms with Exclamation Point, who graciously gave us a short interview. (Exclamation Point steers away from interrogatives, but have you ever interviewed Question Mark? A riddle wrapped in an enigma.)

VS: Exclamation Point, thanks for the interview. Now, we've had news that Jeb Bush is abandoning his previous campaign logo...

EP: No! Not at all! First, call me EP--look, this was a very amicable split, and I don't feel like this logo was "abandoned" in the least. As you know, Jeb Bush and I worked together back in '94.

VS: When he failed to unseat incumbent FL Gov. Lawton Chiles.

EP: Right, right. Well, we lost that one, but it was a good fight, and if there were any hard feelings, he wouldn't used me again this time around--but to be honest, the split is mutual.

VS: You parted with Jeb Bush?

EP: Well, when Bush said that he hated being a front-runner, I realized I had better start putting out some feelers. Because he hasn't been one...

VS: So, what's ahead for you, EP?

EP: Well, there is literally always work for a punctuation mark in this business. Everybody gets work. Parentheses. Semi-colons. Ellipses... You know, Pound Sign used to do a little phone work, but when she changed her name to Hashtag, she reinvented herself for the internet age.

VS: Bush has been trying to make something work with Hashtag.

EP: Yeah. She's popular. (Distractedly.) And of course Ben Carson is looking to shake things up--so there could be a place for an Exclamation Point in there.

VS: So, no hard feelings then?

EP: Not at all. And you know, there's always the private sector for me--I mean, whenever a fast food chain wants to convince customers that their salads are just as tasty and filling as their double patty bacon cheeseburger--who do they call?

VS: You?

EP: I make up in the appearance of sincerity what I lack in honesty! Say, you don't have Ted Cruz's number?

VS: Sorry, no. Thanks, EP.

After following three letters for much of this campaign, it looks like Exclamation Point still has plenty to say!

Trump Supporter Susan DeLemus is Amaaaaazing

So the lady above who circa 2009 was entirely savvy about NH political business for the Republican party--turns out to have been the same lady who as a Trump supporter, maintained she never had anything to do with politics until just now. She has believed for some time that Barack Obama is not an American because she thinks birth certificates are wacky novelty items any schmendrick can get from a gumball machine. But you can't discount the running for office stuff she did before she was a birther who supported Trump. And her husband lighting off to support Cliven Bundy is just so much whatever. Looks like a lot of attention-seeking to me, but I'm cynical.

She makes up in "true belief" what she lacks in sincerity, though.

Been Spending Most Our Lives in A GOP Grifters' Paradise

I'm trying to get how a rap radio ad became a thing for the Carson campaign. Part of me wants to believe Austerity Mascot, sorry, Aspiring Mogul, just decided to write a song for Dr. Carson because he likes what the guy has to say as a rare bear among conservatives.
Why can't "Carson" rhyme with "awesome" in a world where struggle rhymes with trouble? Never mind. We'll fill in the lacunae with jazz flute and some Carson riffing. It'll sound like music.

But there's just this part of me feeling like some strategist was wondering what the kids these days liked and someone else said "the rap music" and that that's how we got here.

I'm just saying motivational speaking isn't necessarily enhanced when someone drops a beat behind it.

But after all, the Carson Campaign is so miles more professional than what the Founding Fathers had, and they managed, right?  Which is how we even ended up on the moon.  Because we don't need aliens if we have God. And I don't know how all of that is motivational speech, but maybe they could add a little more cowbell?

Kids love cowbell. It's a fever.

Grandstand for Brand Rand!

Senator Rand Paul of KY and also a presidential candidate, has expressed an intention to filibuster the bargain struck between House leadership and the White House to raise the debt ceiling, referring to the bill as "a steaming pile of legislation", which must have been the most dire words he could come up with for it. This would not be the first time he has used the filibuster--he did so at the confirmation of John Brennan as CIA Director over drones (John Brennan became CIA Director, we still use drones) and over the NSA surveillance program. "Stand with Rand" is a great slogan because of the rhyming.

I get it, but why filibuster this particular deal? Part of me thinks, well, he's in a tough primary and just wants to announce a filibuster before that ratbastard Ted Cruz comes up with it. But it also strikes me as a way to get back to Brand Rand. See, he's trying to take himself seriously in this presidential primary, and that might be part of the problem. If he tries to veer too middle of the road, he loses all his hipster cred. Staying weird and being anti-establishment reinforces Brand Rand.

Whoa! You might be thinking, but how does this help his actual electability?  Well, I dunno. See, he's running for Senate and President. Now, a reasonable person might ask if it shows good "optics" for a candidate for president to show that he doesn't believe in bipartisan compromise, and it might actually be terrible optics to contribute to continued Congressional dysfunction. But as a fundraising gimmick for selling "Stand with Rand" swag? Da bomb.

You know, he gets prickly when people point out that his made-up quotes or plagiarism devalue his ideological output. Deep down, I don't think he wants to be president. He wants to be a blogger and make dope money at it. Pshhh. He is dreaming. I blog 'cause I love, and money don't mean a thing.


(Update: It was 19 minutes.)

Ben Carson is Out of the Box and Brand New

So, the above is Ben Carson's ad making the case that he is not, actually, a person "in the box" of people who are political insiders, but is a person "outside of the box" who is going to have new ideas because--look ma! no box. If Ben Carson were a cat, he'd be in a box, because, let the record show, cats love boxes. But he is not a cat, cats can't run for president, and humans who are citizens and over the age of 35 can.

Vote for Ben Carson--he's a guy, and he is not in a box, because if he were more box-proximate, then he'd be a totally unelectable cat, amievennearlycorrectaboutthisthing?

People are starting to wonder if he even knows what he is talking about. (He doesn't.) His policy seems to be made up on the fly and needs details filled in--as if he made up his mind to run for president first and then thought he might come up with schemes of how to do it later. He's raising scads of money, but it's getting plowed right back to fundraising for the most part, like it was a campaign that existed basically to make money, not to strategize.

It sort of looks like he's propped up with a kind of buck-raking scheme. I dunno. I've felt the same kind of way about Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich's campaign structures--they aren't actually solid.

I don't know when the Carson bubble bursts. But I feel like these current polls are definitely a bubble.

Hillary Clinton Seizes the Day

Here's the deal--a lot of us folks who were pretty politically concerned back in the 1990's remember the Whitewater nonsense. The Hunting of the President and the full court press to take down the Clintons--both of them, was a very real and concerted effort, and the stupid media hacks who liked having stories spoon-fed to them by "high-level insiders" and "anonymous sources" was a very real thing. Hillary Clinton was a target of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy then, because she was deeply involved in the attempt to pass a universal health care bill. A fuckton of money went into discouraging universal health care--there were these obnoxious ads: The Harry and Louise ads, that basically said: Health care is complicated, and you damn dumb folks wouldn't understand the Hillary Clinton plan if you lived to be a hundred and there would probably be some kind of changes, so you should be against it.

They didn't just have to kill Hillarycare, they had to hit her with dark speculations about the suicide of Vince Foster and the go-nowhere Whitewater thing. It was prolonged and tedious and seedy and ultimately, they found out that Bill Clinton was kind of a womanizer. Wow. We knew that before he got elected in 1992.

Seeing that then, there was no doubt about what the Benghazi hearings were about now. They can go all bloody shirt "What about the families of the four dead Americans?" but after three years, the likelihood that Libyan terrorists did it and there wasn't any kind of advance warning nor a lot of room for the various agencies to coordinate a timely response to do anything, simply remains. Unfortunate. But there it is. If they want to pimp these deaths any further, they might as well just slap what ever questions haven't been asked and answered on a brief list and wrap it up.

Photo Analysis II: Spot the Mistake

A minor Photoshop error created some speculation that Jeb Bush's head was 'Shopped onto an African-American person's body for the graphic on a recent mailer, but that's not what happened, exactly.  The picture is all Jeb, it's only that the artist failed to correct the coloring of his left hand, which was in shadow in the original picture.  It's a little sloppy, but not really some kind of disastrous goof.

Actually, my impression is that the somewhat less-excusable goof is asking "Why Jeb?" It invites the answer: "Yeah, why him, anyway?" The speculation that Bush is not at all a Happy Warrior only makes this question a little more obvious. He keeps saying things that suggest his head isn't in the game.

As for the "toothy grin" I've given the candidate--well, I do kid. But his expression does seem at times that of a man whose family has vetoed his preferred vacation plans, and is doing his gosh-darndest to give the impression that he's having a great time. Just great. Stop asking, why don't you?

Rubio Doctrine: More of a List, Really

Josh Marshall points out that naming a doctrine after oneself isn't actually the done thing, but I think it would be also fitting to say that naming a short list of buzz words a "doctrine" is also going a bit far. Sarah Palin could fit it on her palm. Rick Perry could probably remember it all by himself.

What I think is interesting is that it actually is a way of putting the "three legs" of the "conservative stool" in one convenient place: 1) the defense hawks, 2) the deficit hawks, and 3) the values voters.  Rubio's doctrine is simple: he's a conservative.

Marco Rubio's Logo, Though...

Okay. The 2016 Presidential election is still at the "people announcing that they are running stage", so there really isn't that much to get excited about, but I am astonished at how "meta" the logo design criticism can be. I know I just snarked on Clinton's "hospital parking" logo, and I've mentioned Rand Paul's fiery torch. (I wonder if any candidate has considered working a pitchfork into their logo--Senator Santorum, I bet it would play well in Iowa! One campaign idea, free of charge!)

But what does Rubio's logo say? That there is an "I" in Marco Rubio, and the contiguous 48 states are its dot? And are we that keen to remind folks of PNAC? Also, after fifteen years in, is the century all that new? (Although he is the youngest candidate in the running--is Rubio all that new, either?)

Would saying "Don't quit your day job," just be mean of me? (I kid. But just a little.)