"We're having some fun here tonight..."

"Some fun" isn't what you call Donald Trump's nasty and unfunny speech at last night's Al Smith dinner. He can't seem to resist aiming low. He doesn't realize how off-putting and bitter it seems.

Donald Trump is in Five-Star Health--Luxurious!

 

 

The Trump campaign was mighty pleased to be able to produce certification of their candidate's complete and total fitness, from an absence of any cancer diagnoses to a history absent any notorious addictions like alcohol or tobacco. His blood pressure is on target. His prostate is so clean you could eat off it. As far as these things go, his health revelation is almost too specific. Has Trump gone down a pant-size? Should we expect him to be seeing his tailor soon? (It's overdue, dear. I'm just saying.)

 

Some fun might be had with the question of just who is this doctor anyway, who seems to have written or at least, signed off on, a letter that has pretty much the kind of cadence and grandiosity we've come to know and appreciate from the Trump campaign itself. The more madcap thing is that Trump's campaign advertised this certification of the candidate's physical fitness by referencing the father of Dr. Harold Bornstein, who has been deceased the last five years and presumably left practice a decade or more before, since Harold Bornstein has been his actual physician, if the above letter is correct, for decades. If they were relying on Trump's recollection for their announcement, it seems Trump is in perfect health, except for not remembering names very well.

 

 (Except, aren't we told he also has a brilliant memory? And a very high IQ!)

 

Vladimir Putin wrestles tigers. Kim Jong-Il plays a mean game of basketball. Trump is a miracle of health. Why not?

Here there be Trolls

Congressional Republicans--they are different, you know? Going back to the Truman Administration at least (no, actually, longer than that), pols have thought it might be kind of nice for Americans to have some kind of affordable access to medical coverage so they didn't die of easily treatable maladies. It was just this thing, you know? We thought our fellow citizens were worthwhile human beings and that maybe they shouldn't be bankrupted in the pursuit of bodily well-being and not being dead.

Maybe not everyone got the message that our fellow citizens are worthwhile human beings who shouldn't be bankrupted in the pursuit of bodily well-being. What strikes me as exceptionally tasteless, though, are the folks who have decided that the decades-long work to cover most Americans' health care was a source of amusement. Like the goofy galoot pictured above, who himself follows in the vein of Asclepius.

Well, sort of. He was a doctor, but somewhere along the way, he decided that science was Satan, and I guess the whole "taking care of the sick and suffering" thing became hilarious. You know he doesn't really care because this is how he talks about Obamacare during an EPA hearing (I know, right? Like is global warming even a thing? So boring!):

Broun: Let me ask you one more question because my time’s running out. Are you signed up for Obamacare? 

McCarthy: No I am not. 

Broun: Why not? 

McCarthy: Well because I’m lucky enough as a federal government [employee] that I have health care available to mewhich I’ve signed up for. In a few years, when that’s not the case, I’ll be happy to have other available health care opportunities… 

Broun: Well the president says health care opportunities is much better than forcing most federal employees into Obamacare and obviously if you are not signing up you don’t think it is. Mr. Chairman I’ve run out of time, I yield back.

D'ya get it? Didja see the wicked burn? If you have a really great employer-provided healthcare plan, shouldn't you want to do the thing that wasn't even supposed to be a fix for you because you already have a good thing because what the fuck is Paul Broun fucking kidding us?

Climate Monday: Louis C.K. Animated--If God Came Back

This is brilliant, especially when you stop and think that there seems to be a link between the denialists and the theocrats:




Via Huffington Post.

Rick Santorum Aborts Presidential Campaign

Via Funny or Die --

Rick Santorum Aborts Presidential Campaign from Ashley Judd      

The Fox Mushroom Farm

My dad introduced me to a funny expression once. He came home from a meeting at work and said "They treated us like a mushroom farm. They kept us in the dark and fed us shit."  It tickled me, so I remembered it, and I sure have experienced that feeling. So when I read this over at Media Matters, I decided to re-christen the FOX News Network: The Mushroom Farm.

Because it makes me laugh, is why.That their viewers are real people fed a diet of nonsense, misinformation, and blood pressure-raising theatrics? Well, that doesn't make me laugh. But hey: Mushroom Farm. Tea Parties?
 Attack of the Mushroom People.  

For the love of Meatballs....

I finally got to watch all of Real Time and thought the show was pretty good--I tend to like it a little better when the panel skews liberal, for some reason....

Anyway, and I'm just free-associating, here:

Meatballs? Reminds me of why I never became a celibate!

If she dabbled into everything, I wonder how she would have done on the Pew religious knowledge quiz.


Hare Krishnas? They aren't even in airports anymore? Where did she come across any?


If she likes meatballs, maybe she should consider the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

And so on. The thing is, even if she seems like she's a little "reality-challenged", she always comes off as being nice*. I kid, but I don't mean any harm. Well....To her campaign, a little.

And as to the Hare Krishnas themselves, I don't mean to belittle the venerabily of the scriptures from which the teachings come--this is a group we associate with hippies, but their roots are deep in Indian culture, going back to the Bhagavad-Gita, which even if it isn't 5,000 years old is really. really old. Gilgamesh-old. They get a pop culture bum rap by being associated with hippie culture--and that would be the weirdest part for me for imagining conservative Christine falling in with them.


Edit to add: Also, did I see Richard Dawkins and S.E. Cupp were going to be at the next show? This is too awesome! One of the atheists occasionally considered too disrespectful of religion, and a conservative faithiest of few years and as yet untested sense. I'm a Dawkins fan from way back. This has my interest. With Maher moderating, I think this could be enjoyable.

*Second edit to add, "nice in a religiously bigoted homophobe-way, too."