Sarcasm by Trump

So, yesterday, Trump went on a Twitter spinout over the reporters who won "Noble" prizes (not Pulitzers) on the basis of covering him and "Russia, Russia, Russia" (which I cannot help but hear in Jan Brady's "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia" voice). Of course, he would have meant "Nobel" (the prize he feels very slighted about not getting when Obama has one, which likely steams him as much as not having an Emmy). Then he posted this:

which tends to reinforce the idea that Trump not only does not understand how sarcasm works, but is also prickly enough to, use the excuse of sarcasm to play "I meant to do that!" when he has obviously goofed. 

For an example of actual sarcasm by Trump, there is possibly this recent entry, where it sounds like Trump is saying "I love everybody". 

😳😳😳 pic.twitter.com/FQowQCtIct

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 27, 2020

See? That would be sarcasm. When someone says something we all know obviously isn't true.

Thus ends the lesson.

Eating Babies is Not Okay

President Trump attacked Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez after a speaker at her town hall went on a bizarre rant about how eating babies is the only solution to the climate crisis.

Turns out, the stunt was staged by a pro-Trump conspiracy group.https://t.co/24aaLyVlxL

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) October 4, 2019

There's several shades of fucking whacko going on here, not the least because RW media seemed to have taken this episode to infer the environmental lefties are just fine with the idea of people eating babies. Like, what? People pretty naturally go quiet when someone around them says really screwed up things because you never know when they might set off a batshit bomb and get some on you. That silence definitely does not signify consent to a program involving soylent green infant formula--made from real infants!

LaRouchies are a bit of a weird group, and their claim that their anti-environmentalism hoax is a take-off on Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal sits a bit poorly with me. The 1729 proposal was intended as a dig at the exploiters who already took so much from impoverished people that what was left but blood? The anti-environmentalists' take doesn't point a finger at exploitation, so much as revel in it. It seems to exist in a cosmos where human life isn't already considered cheap by those who continue to pollute our planet.

But there's also something darker, there. The anti-choice right wing has recently made up and promoted a terrific lie regarding the compassionate care of neonates with poor survival prognoses, referring to it as a form of abortion. This kind of lie holds within it echoes of the monstrous "baby parts" hoax that influenced the mass shooter Robert Dear. (This has blossomed into aspects of the anti-vax movement, which alleges that vaccines are bad because they contain baby parts, and the even funkier idea that baby parts are used in food additives.)

But for the folding of the satirical concept of eating babies lifted from Swift and whipped into frothing nightmare fuel, you've got your guano-brains du jour, Q-Anon, serving up heaping helpings of adrenochrome. This is, apparently, the scared-child sauce that elite liberals have been drinking to stay looking so amazeballs and vigorous. It's basically Pizzagate with a vampire twist, and has its origins in one of the oldest and most bigoted conspiracy theories (which has killed countless innocent people) on the books--the Blood Libel.

It's batshit with a pedigree. Call the group you wish to destroy "child murderers"--say they eat babies--and watch it excite the part of the brain that wants to, quite rightly, desperately protect their young. Unleash the meme on people who already dislike this group. Watch as the people exposed to said unfounded slander decide that the claim is too grave to further investigate and action must be taken at once.

I'm not sure how this sort of bullshit is supposed to still be working in 2019, but here we are. As for me, I think eating human babies is horrendous. They have no muscle tone and their diets are grotesquely bland. The meat is fatty and without flavor. Children are best eaten at about the age of ten. They have active bodies and are not yet pubescent. Puberty hormones makes the meat far too gamy and unpleasant. And yes, I am joking. Who even owns such large cookware these days? It's nonsense, and the people who push these things in all seriousness should be laughed into obscurity.

These Press Conferences are Getting Interesting

Interesting is not always better. But less pages in a bill makes it better and less coverage is more, so what do I know?

"No More Baby Parts."

If the "mainstream media" is to be believed, Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooter, Robert Dear, said "No more baby parts," when he was finally taken into custody after his violent rampage.  But, why, whatever could he have meant by that, do you suppose? Maybe he was just down to the clinic to borrow a cup of baby parts and found they were all out?  Maybe he was building a Frankenstein-esque creature and got peeved at the glut of juvenile bits on the market? Maybe he was misheard and was unhappy with "A. B. parts."

As Sherlock Holmes might have said, if he were prone to using my vernacular, if every other possibility is so fucking stupid and fanciful that you'd have to be a lying bastard to propose them, you should consider the evidence staring you in the face.

And it might just sound a little self-serving if one admits that Dear was a domestic terrorist, as Gov. Mike Huckabee has, but then plays victim by saying it especially harms the pro-life folks. Does this make the anti-abortion people really look bad? Do they need much help, there? And the knee-slapper is, this is the guy who was going to use the US military to forcibly close health clinics. It's "domestic terrorism" if you are a DIY-type. If you're president, you do what you want!

Failed tech-CEO Carly Fiorina takes a slightly different tack--it's just "typical left-wing tactics" to blame anti-abortion rhetoric for violent actions.  How dare we connect those dots in chronological order! This was the candidate, mind you, who imagined a scenario that wasn't even in the highly-edited videos who had to go on to produce one yet more lurid. Which we are not supposed to find incendiary or deceitful in the least, mind you.

Now, a handful of people are just looking at this guy's criminal records and immediately dismissing him as a lunatic. Mental illness is a spectrum, charges against this miscreant were regularly dismissed, and the things he was accused of weren't necessarily out of bounds for people who are considered perfectly sane. Being antisocial or even sociopathic doesn't exclude this person from having political views. People have made note of the fact that Colorado Springs is the headquarters for Focus on the Family. The founding member, Dr. James Dobson, justified both wife-beating and animal abuse.  (Not that I'm saying Dear was influenced by Focus on the Family, at all, at all--after all, he wasn't originally from Colorado Springs. He was from North Carolina. Where Eric Rudolph was found holed up. And there's some folks to this day who consider Rudolph a folk hero. )

Tragedy, then Farce

It seems like it was only a couple months ago (it was only a couple of months ago) that I was lamenting the current GOP field and strongly suggesting that Mitt Romney had certain qualities that not any of the current challengers could even fake, up to and including the ability to fake it.

It took them two months to catch up with me, but some of the good conservative show-runners are thinking of knee-walking to Mitt and seeing if the dream is still alive.

What do you think they'll get?

This city is afraid of me...I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!"... and I'll look down and whisper "No." They had a choice, all of them. They could have followed in the footsteps of good men like my father or President Truman. Decent men who believed in a day's work for a day's pay. Instead they followed the droppings of lechers and communists and didn't realize that the trail led over a precipice until it was too late. Don't tell me they didn't have a choice. Now the whole world stands on the brink, staring down into bloody Hell, all those liberals and intellectuals and smooth-talkers... and all of a sudden nobody can think of anything to say.

Or he'd be like "If I have to, but you have to hold your fucking end up, peasants." And we'd be having something like an election I even recognize.

A Pork Couplet

He placed his member in the swine and chuckled with delight;
the roast ones aren't lively, but they never, ever bite.

(I know. For all I know the story is both sick and specious. And yet here we are.)

They Say "If You're Explaining, You're Losing,"

(h/t TPM)

but if you are explaining that you are people...what does that mean?

I don't even know. I've never doubted that Republicans were people, myself, and I even like some people I know who lean conservative. It's the party's ideas that I'm not sold on.

But I'm some kind of card-carrying "L" word, so what do I know? I'll probably think some more about this over some arugula and latte or whatever.

Enjoying My Hobby in your Lobby

It's some kind of crying shame that I haven't addressed the Hobby Lobby case when I am supposed to be a pro-reproductive rights feminist over here. I don't know where my head is at. But when I was buying yarn to crochet a cozy for a diapraghm case, I had a kind of epiphany that really only comes when you've been sniffing the Modge-Podge for a while--

Look. I think we can agree that an employment contract is not a one-way street. It never was meant to be. So, if Hobby Lobby believes it is totally in the right to make decisions regarding the reproductive health and maintenance of it's employees, in other words, making those employees' private business their store business, then it's only fair that the employees should be able to bring their private business right into the public business.

That's right, Hobby Lobby. If you all think you have a right to dictate the methods your employees use for their bedroom or kitchen floor or whatever activities, those employees should feel comfortable enjoying those activities in your store. I don't mean on the clock. Off-the clock, of course, since your company has decided to also be the boss of all off-the-clock funtimes. But let's get this clear--you wanna make the rules?

You should get to make the rules about stuff happening on the premises of your store. Sexy funtimes don't happen in your store. Until you made it about you. Now I think employees should get to use the break room, or even the return desk, to do what they like--because you guys decided their business was your business. So why shouldn't your business be where they can do their business?

Of course--no one would probably want to actually screw in your store. Not because pony beads and potholder looms aren't fucking erotic as hell, but because that is not what your store is for. Your store is for serving your customers, who for the most part don't give a good goddamn what your employees do so long as they don't screw up an order and give them exact change.  Why don't you try and be at least as tolerant as your customers? And recognize that your employees are human beings with bodies, and that the female bodies deserve to be treated by the people who have to live in them--and that isn't you, Hobby Lobby execs.

In Defense of Nut Picking

Although I feel I am a bit late to the game, because of the relative smallness of my blog and slowness of my traffic, I don't mind being late to a thing or two, if I think I still have a thing to add. So it goes with the nut picking argument, which as a snark-leaning blog, goes right to my meat and potatoes, if not my low-hanging fruit and especially fallen mangoes.

To give a quick summary of the original hypothesis--the "GOP lawmaker" configuration of lefty blogulations tends to point to extremely fringe examples of insignificant so-and-so's of the right wing that aren't necessarily impact players and aren't necessarily representative. This was countered by contentions from respected bloggers that, no, sometimes these "GOP lawmakers" who say fringe things, aren't really of the fringe, but are just crudely stating things that the party in general does represent, without saying so as crudely. In a nutshell, if you will, that's part of the reason I go a-nutpicking--when some rando from Shithouse Falls talks about whether some girls rape easily or whether birth control is for losers or whether bicycle lanes lead to world domination and the abolishment of golfing and guns, they are playing on fantasies that might just get them into office (no, I don't always think they even mean the things they say) and once in, their relative name-recognition could well grow. Next thing you know, you've got the crazy filtering upward into the US House and Senate, and once it's there, like cat pee or drunk puke, it is hard to rinse out.

I feel mean as hell pointing to Michele Bachmann as a prime example of this, but you go ahead and tell me that her upward mobility was in spite of, not because of, her nutty goodness--her "Jif-rence", if you will. Not a back-bencher at all, but the second-runner-up in the GOP 2012 Goat Rodeo was my former Senator Rick Santorum, who has a plethora of pull-quotes of unbelievable nutaliciousness. Or take, as an observation I don't make happily, the ascendancy of the deluxe mixed nuts of 2010, which included possible 2016 Goat Rodeo participant Rand Paul. Or the possible success of the nutty in the form of Paul Broun--another case where because of, not in spite of, would pertain (not according to all polls, but still). 

It is a known thing, I think, that Democrats just don't historically come out in droves for your midterm elections. There's young, minority, and women voters who might just not take the time that your mostly white and old and male (the GOP demographic trifecta) voters do. So maybe there is value in scaring the bejesus out of the otherwise not especially motivated by suggesting that the opposing party is, actually, batshit mad. Maybe they could be scared into thinking there is value in voting as if their life and ability to vote itself depended upon it. And I don't even think that is necessarily so idle a threat.

Now, I do truly wish indeed that I could count upon any Democratic candidate in any hoot or holler, even Shithouse Falls, to actually run as a Democrat and positively state a good reason for voting blue. But if pointing out the bastids is the most constructive thing I can find to do--that's my job then.

A Last Shot of Chinaco for Bartcop. RIP

Shortly after the debacle in Florida in 2000, I was basically one angry liberal. Everything the Bush Administration did seemed on purpose to piss off progressives. It was kind of a low point, but I think finding the Left Blogosphere was one good thing--and one of the very good things about the Left Blogosphere was Bartcop.

The Tequila Treehouse presented an unpretentious and informal shouting down of the BFEE and what they stood for, and was already an institution, having started back in the days when President Clinton was beset by scandal-crazed GOP conspiracy heads and a media more interested in getting viewers than getting at the truth. Those themes persisted, and Bartcop swung a mighty hammer against them with the one thing that seemed necessary and useful--humor. If you can imagine jackboots slipping on a banana peel, forever, you've got a picture of the value I find in political snark.

I think it's safe to say he didn't just influence me as a poliblogger, but probably inspired legions of us. That deserves a shot of the good stuff. He'll be much-remembered and greatly missed.

Come for the Carpetbagging, Stay for the Fishing

On the campaign stump, Liz Cheney performs "The Robot".

Sadly, it appears that the bid for US senator from Wyoming of torture apologist and nattering nabob of nepotism, Liz Cheney, may be drawing to a close.  It's really quite unfortunate that a campaign that featured a massive rift between herself and her sister and sister-in-law over the validity of their marriage, an apparent break in the friendship between Darth Former Vice-President Dick Cheney and Senator Mike Enzi,  the payment of a fine over a fraudulently-completed application for a fishing license, and the revelation that Mr. Liz Cheney was registered to vote in two, count them, two states,  (which is certainly the sort of thing that can happen if you are a resident of... wherever you say you are)--was all for naught.

But let's look for silver linings, shall we? Now that Liz Cheney has settled in the lovely state of Wyoming, she can spend time getting to know people and making herself some friends, possibly bonding over casting lines and hoisting brewskis. It might just be that she is what we would call an "acquired taste" and the good folks of Wyoming haven't had ample enough opportunity to, um, acquire a taste for her. (I know I never have.)

Now admittedly, they might never warm to her (although pitchforks and torches may be involved at some point down the line) and taking up full-time residence in Wyoming may cut into her television appearances shilling for neoconservative foreign policy ideas she learned at daddy's knee. I don't see a downside there.

(X-Posted at Rumproast.)

Just Getting this Out of My System

Okay--I have been trying to follow TX Senator Ted Cruz' various shenanigans regarding defunding Obamacare via a government shut-down or a default in a way that separates his "strategery" from his apparent personality. And I will admit defeat. I don't see what he's trying to do, here, because it looks like it won't actually defund Obamacare at all, but will cause the Republican party to shoulder the blame for whatever happens. Even if Cruz himself can walk away with the hero songs of Wingnut Valhalla resounding in his ears for trying.  

He just seems very much to me a like a lad who went crying to his ma after being picked on, who got told "Well, bunnynose, it's because you are so very special and smart, that they are jealous of you!"

And he believed it. And now thinks being picked on is all the proof of his specialness he'll ever need.

This is a nasty small thing to think and I don't even think it isn't true for a minute.

You Know, I Know Exactly Where Maureen Dowd is Coming From

(Yes, this is a fricking pile on. Yes, someone out there probably made this connection already.)

You know this op-ed?




 We've all been there, girl.

A Less Than Entirely Rigorous Defense of Megan McArdle's Column

One is tempted to pile on regarding the rather uniform left-wing condemnation of the rather stupidly-concluded piece McArdle turned in regarding the hopelessness of actually preventing another massacre such as the one in Newtown. Sure, any Johnny on the Blog with a talent for using the Googler can make noises about how gun laws were tightened in the UK after the Dunblane massacre in 1996, or note that after the Port Arthur massacre in the same year, Australia also enacted strict gun laws, with the effect of not enduring another mass killing in that time.  But I think there is value in taking McArdle seriously because of the very serious suggestion she has made regarding individual as opposed to state responsibility being used as a means of, not preventing these mass killing events, which she alleges is just too hard, but at mitigating the body counts, which we all know is a laudable goal.

Now, I have reason to believe that McArdle is not necessarily as well-versed in the mechanics of the high-capacity clips available to our determined mass-shooters these days, and has possibly not given thought to the physics involved in placing human bodies in the direct line of fire of that type of killing weapon with the intent of taking down a perpetrator. It is likely that our mass killer would have ample ability to amass quite a body count if several dozen persons were to rush at him owing to the likelihood that their increasing proximity to the shooter would make them so much more likely to be hit by bullets.  It is likely that blood and fallen bodies would hamper the progress of the civic-minded souls who continued their rush to stop the killer. But let's just look at this thing from a libertarian viewpoint, shall we? You or I might simply be seeing lives needlessly mowed down before a nearly tireless killing mechanism. But a libertarian might well be seeing a civic action composed of individuals fully willing to lay down their lives for the rights of the gunman to possess the weapon with which he killed them. And isn't individual rights what it's really all about? Those mangled, bloodied bodies, perhaps of schoolchildren, would really mean something if they died for a right like the right of people to pay for a thing that could only be used to smash the fuck out of bodies and then, you know, kind of have and use that thing sometimes.  Because seriously, even if you're only six years old, and still believe in Santa Claus, and sometimes want a nightlight just in case--shouldn't you die with a sense of purpose, as you might have rushing towards a gunman with the hopeless aim of stopping his killing spree in mind?

Well?

Anyhow, to follow out that kind of thinking, I've long wondered if arson is just the price we pay for such civil amenities as warmth and cooked food. And for that matter, if an arsonist goes to the trouble to actually set a fire, isn't he really the owner of that fire? I'm not sure why we have a government agency (or several) throughout the country aimed at actually controlling fires even if intentionally set--because let's be honest, we aren't ever gonna really stamp out fire? That's a thing that will still exist even if individual fires get controlled--right? And yet people will dicker with their neighbors about fire due to things like loss of life and property, so I would hope, in the interest of liberty and civic action, that Megan McArdle and those like-minded, in the presence of such a conflagration, might fling themselves upon it in the interest of snuffing it.

I leave it to my Gentle Readers to determine if I am joking.

I've neglected to mention I am co-blogging at Rumproast

And yet this is entirely true. I still don't entirely believe it myself. In fact. I was largely of the opinion that anyone who read me, already knew of Rumproast and knew I blogged there because--I did. But just on the off chance I have any actual followers who did not know--my stuff can also be found at Rumproast. Except more stuff is here.  That is all. I will X-post here for whatever I post there, but I'll still post things here...it's complicated, yo? But it seems to work pretty well.  In other words--still come here, because I post stuff I don't post there, and go there because it is still one of the best polisnark sites on the web. Which I think answers everything. 

Frank Luntz contemplates the end of bullshit, inwardly weeping.

In a meeting for the Republican Governors' Association, Frank Luntz admitted that the Occupy Wall Street movement has him "frightened to death": but being Luntz, he offered some ways for the GOP to keep right on bullshitting:

– Don’t Mention Capitalism: Luntz said that his polling research found that “The public…still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral. And if we’re seen as defenders of quote, Wall Street, end quote, we’ve got a problem.”
– Empathize With The 99 Percent Protesters: Luntz instructed attendees to tell protesters that they “get it”: “First off, here are three words for you all: ‘I get it.’ … ‘I get that you’re. I get that you’ve seen inequality. I get that you want to fix the system.”
– Don’t Say Bonus: Luntz told Republicans to re-frame the concept of the bonus payment — which bailed-out Wall Street doles out to its employees during holidays — as “pay for performance” instead.
– Don’t Mention The Middle Class Because Americans Don’t Trust Republicans To Defend It: “They cannot win if the fight is on hardworking taxpayers,” Luntz instructed the audience. “We can say we defend the ‘middle class’ and the public will say, I’m not sure about that. But defending ‘hardworking taxpayers’ and Republicans have the advantage.”
– Don’t Talk About Taxing The Rich: Luntz reminded Republicans that Americans actually do want to tax the rich, so he reccommended they instead say that the government “takes from the rich.”

I truly believe momma headlice check their babies' feet for signs of Luntz.

There is of course, another way for the Republican governors to go, such as, I dunno, listening to people and trying to govern fairly and in a way that actually isn't bullshit & buzzword based. But they don't believe they have to.

The 9%-ers.

Congressional Approval is at 9%.

Anyone have any idea why that is?