Shorter Bret Stephens

I just followed Bret’s own link. What are we doing here? https://t.co/vUoxKZFYDI pic.twitter.com/iyd2UvNcqp

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) August 30, 2019

It appears that once Stephens has picked up a thing, he will not easily lay it down. It is, at this point, a tripling down on the Streisand Effect, an epic self-corncobbing, and also, something, something, Godwin's Law.

So, after the internet traditions, I can only give you, shorter Bret Stephens:

And the New York Times was apparently fine with it (their editorial section has seen worse), but we'll be talking about it at the blogger ethics panel for sure.

This Steve Bannon Picture has been bothering me...

I don't really believe in body-snarking against people, especially on the subject of fatness, because I am not a small person and have had my own struggles with weight, but the picture of Steve Bannon, above, has been the subject of some Twitter snark, and I get it--the guy is not healthy-looking, or a particularly great representative of a fit human animal. This is what makes punchlines like "Sean got fatter" sort of weird, and some have latched onto it as a kind of answer to white supremacy in general, like saying "This is genetic superiority? This?"

I think it seems bad especially because there's this weird bulge on the left. I note it mostly because it is roughly the same size and shape and placement where you'd expect a liver to be:

And that sort of matches the jokes people tell about Bannon as looking like a great huge drunk.  But that's massively unfair. Lots of people have bad skin and lots of people have drinking issues--I drink, myself, rather more than I would always like at times. And this does not make someone "bad people"--you can be fat and have bad skin and even drink a shitload, and that doesn't make you a bad person. I am a little fat and drink a bit and am not a Nazi. But it is very probable that Bannon is, in fact, an actual bad person based on his personal history and editorial output.

In short, you just don't know from a picture what a person is about, even a grossly unflattering one.  You should judge them based on what they do.

And for all we know, he might just have an alien in his guts.

And how would you answer that, SJW cuckflakes? You can't. Long story short, Steve Bannon is a Nazi who looks terrible, but it could just be he has an alien in his liver. I don't know why I'm shitposting my own blog like this. I blame the culture.

Pravderp

To be working in the Trump White House? Eventually, sure

I don't know how it can be true, but Melissa McCarthy's over-the-top representation of Press Secretary Spicer's occasionally bombastic style on SNL sort of makes me look forward to tuning in to the real thing. I feel like he's settling down so far as questions are kind of ordinary and procedural about the President's schedule and ordinary things, and those exchanges even show a little humor.

Still some howling moments though. 

Questions regarding whether certain internal loyalty requirements or micromanagement are slowing the staffing of key WH positions was met with a claim that the Trump Administrations was "ahead of the curve". That was pretty much true--in November and December. But it seems like it is lagging now, and not because of Senate delays. The relationship with Mexico was described as "phenomenal"--I guess "awkward" is definitely a phenomenon when one country decides to deport people to another country even if they aren't from there. Spicer also spoke positively about the task force VP Pence will be heading to look into the non-existent voter fraud. Which is happening eventually because we won't have an agency that does that.  Shame, too, because people who know there wasn't actually any voter fraud are asking for receipts (and they don't exist). Are they going to look for proof that the vocal people at town halls are getting paid next?

The narrative presented at these press briefings does look a bit different from objective reality. I've been mentally thinking of labelling it "Pravderp". You  know, part Pravda, the state-run paper that did what I guess RT does now, for the Soviet state. And "derp", because I don't know that our actual journos really buy into it. After all, the media were mostly trained at some point to know when to smell a rat, and dissembling right in front of them is bound to awaken even the most ossified nasal passages to the whiff of rodent scat.

Anyhow, it's my portmanteau, and I think I shall stick with it.

Field Vexillology: Don King

I don't believe I ever noticed this before, but 85 year old boxing promoter Don King really loves flags. I mean he adores them. I never saw someone carrying so many different flags on so many occasions. This is a dude who loves flags.  I don't even think a whole lot about his support of Donald Trump at all. I mean, if you are riding with Trump, of course you get to hold more flags, because Trump certainly seems to hold assorted allegiances (maybe). I can't hold the man's passion for flags against him, though. Like his passion for airbrushed distressed denim--it is a bold choice, but no doubt a deeply personal and well-considered one.

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!

Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto

I know. It's, like, meme-ready. But you know, for one thing, if someone waves to you, you wave back. If someone bows, you bow back.  I've been known to shake hands with very polite dogs and it doesn't mean anything but "Howdy".

And also, when the machines rise to supplant us, you would be foolish to think such gestures would be forgotten. They remember everything.

Tricksy Coppinses Stole His Precious!

Donald Trump seems to be kind of mad at Buzzfeed's McKay Coppins for, if I am understanding this foofaraw properly, letting it out of the bag that he, Donald Trump, is a troll.

Was Donald Trump under the impression that most people did not already know this and had known this in fact for years? 

Look, he pretends that he will run for office. He pretends he's investigating the president's birth certificate.

He tilts at windmills, for crying out loud.

Does he think the current Buzzfeed article, by referring to his pretend campaigning as "fake", would really make a difference in how the public views him? Or is any attention good attention? 

Publicity--there's the precious. Don't worry, The Donald. We get you. I know my opinion hasn't changed.

In Putin's Russia, Games Play You

I'm not much for watching sports in general for whatever reason, but I am a known watcher of clusterfuckery, and of that, Sochi thus far promises to be chock-full. I get it, of course, that Russia basically had to create a humongous infrastructure to accommodate games of an Olympic scale, but the missing bits are pretty surprising--and things like missing manholes covers are outright hazardous (ditto "dangerous face water").

It makes you think--how sad would it be for an athlete to train and work hard to make it to the Olympic Games, and then wipe out on a bit of sidewalk that terminated abruptly or get dropped by a broken elevator?  Woof, what a mess.

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.

The Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear Looked like a Blast.

A big crowd had a fun time with great entertainment and silliness and a message to actually think and act rationally and not hate and fear other people, but try to recognize that we are all just bozos on this Spaceship Earth, so our best bet is to have fun, hang on, and be a little bit less douche-y all the time. Which, for an event by comedians for an audience of campaign-ad weary news-exhausted folks, maybe somewhat liberal-skewing, was entirely timely and completely meaningful.

I didn't go down, because my vacation time didn't work out and that would be more than a day trip for me, but my TV-viewing time did, because I caught a lot of it on my parents' cable when I made my weekly visit (I also catch Bill Maher on "On Demand" at their house. It's a family affair. Every week we listen to jokes and riff ourselves about the issues of the day. Saturday with my parents/political-comedy time is like my sabbath. When Maher is off we just have CNN in the background. Cable for us die hard TVA enthusiasts is temple for the irreligious. We bond, we have a common altar. Our sacrament is snack food and snarking on what happens on-screen. And it is really neat to me that I have parents--and my brother, who is occasionally about, where we just actually hold forth about what political figures are doing and what legislation is going on and what bs is in the news. My folks are cable junkies, I'm a reporter from Left Blogistan. They aren't really online--(They just about know I do this thing where I talk about politics and my life and have a silly pseudonym)--but they also often have really sharp insights themselves and I wish they blogged, too. Because they are some very sane people. But I would be remiss if I left out Jon Stewart's closing message:



That was something sane and touching and meaningful all at once. And there were a lot of people there, and they were very diverse.... Did I mention that?

Now that's Old Spice--

H/T to PZ, but seriously, things rugose and eldritch and tentacular are what I am all about, myself:



Now there's a god who....at least smells alright?

Sue Lowden believes we are living in an episode of "Little House on the Prarie".

Sue Lowden is the GOP candidate running against Sen. Reid in NV. She hankers after a simpler time without all those complicated health care plans and such.

Or so I gather from see the following:

"Let's change the system and talk about what the possibilities are. I'm telling you that this works. You know, before we all started having health care, in the olden days, our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor. They would say I'll paint your house," she said. "[That's] what people would do to get health care with their doctors. Doctors are very sympathetic people."

Do tell. I present then, the Sue Lowden health care card:



Just think, you'll never have trouble finding it in your wallet!