Sorry, Lying is not a Superpower

 

For more than half a century, the major party candidates for president have sat down with 60 Minutes. This year, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump accepted our invitation. Unfortunately, last week Trump canceled. https://t.co/7t5jr5nyFJ pic.twitter.com/VDJDDNYFab

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) October 8, 2024

Trump is the only candidate in half a century (my lifetime!) who cancelled like a little bitch. The good journalists of 60 Minutes are not Blog-Standard so they don't call him a little bitch. But you know what?

I feel like it was implied. 

Let's talk about Trump and lying--he does do that. He calls the press "liars" because they fact-check him and he can't handle the truth because he is, in fact, a little bitch.  He wants people to think he is being persecuted by the lying press so people don't trust the media and only hear what comes out of his lying mouth. It has worked on people situated in the Fox News Mushroom Farm because they are used to being kept in the dark and fed shit. They have been told to sneer at the elite liberal media apparatus and see fact-checking as a dirty trick. 

But I just want to direct your attention to something Trump said in a very friendly interview with Hugh Hewitt. Sure, he said a lot that suggested that he thought melanated people coming across our border were more genetically murdery--which is some really wild and racist stuff. But he also implied that Kamala Harris wasn't intelligent because she couldn't tell complicated lies. 

Trump to Hugh Hewitt on Kamala Harris: "She doesn't lie in a complicated way because her mind doesn't work that way. She's not a smart person. She's a low IQ individual ... She's a stupid person. We can't have a stupid person as our president." pic.twitter.com/7RPRErqk7O

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 7, 2024

Vice-President Harris not lying is somehow a bad thing? Like, lying is good? 

Trump Fans and the Book of Marks

 

So, word on the street is, Truth Social is basically Facebook for fools and you can roast all the pigeons you want there all day every day. 

Gizmodo submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FTC for consumer complaints about Truth Social filed in the past two years. The complaints to the federal agency include some stories from people who’ve been banned from the site (unjustly, they claim) and others who say they got signed up for mailing lists they never wanted to be on in the first place. But the complaints about scams are the most shocking, if only because there are such large sums of money involved. And we’re publishing a sample of the full, unedited complaints below.

 

One person who says they lost $170,000 explained they were initially scammed on a different site but met someone on Truth Social who claimed they could help get their money back. That turned out to be a scam as well. But more often, the victims are first contacted on Truth Social before being told to take the conversation somewhere else, like WhatsApp. Truth Social seems to be a target-rich environment for people who are easy to con.

Nailed It!

 

A Trump statue of made up of nails and Trump’s Butler rally pic.twitter.com/tdy05dL3uX

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) October 5, 2024

The triumphal return of Trump to Butler, Pa, the scene of his would-be assassination, is best understood through kitsch. Everything about him is. He is a Lord of Misrule, and  his feast days are necessarily cringe. They feature things like a description of how he died. 

Yep, he died. The songless Joe Hill of the owner class entirely died at Butler, PA. 

Witkoff: That is the kind of leader he is. The kind we needed now more than ever. The kind that came here today even though he lost his own life on this stage. But he wasn't going to be deterred. pic.twitter.com/xmFGcDGnI6

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 5, 2024

Miraculously, he was shot in the head and the bullet struck exactly nothing that Trump ever used or needed. Halllujah and maranatha! 

This is Not Helping Anyone

There is quite a lot of stupidity on the internet, these days and there's just something about a human tragedy--like a hurricane, to bring out both the best--and the goddamn worst in some people. I guess pictures like the above might seem harmless enough (this was apparently made in response to some AI slop accompanying plaintive disinformation trying to outrage farm folks into believing and possibly acting on the idea that no one is getting assistance after Hurricane Helene). 

It would be great if people had any common sense and just--didn't do that. The same goes for pick-me pygmies who insist that their wife's cousin's ex-husband, a retired brigadier general from the Idaho Coast Guard, went down in his crop duster to deliver a pallet of Diet Mountain Dew but was called a racist and sent home--who knows what motivates people like this?

But when agencies like FEMA, local officials, and the American Red Cross have to fight misinformation as well as do their jobs--that isn't helping anybody.

When elected officials share this kind of thing--it's embarrassing for them, for the most part. When absolute weirdoes like Marjorie Taylor Greene insist there's a mysterious "them" with a weather machine attempting a land grab or election interference, or whatever she's on about, it is dangerous and unfit. It certainly doesn't help that the billionaire owner of a certain social media outfit is happy to distribute false talking points. 

Tina Peters and the TrumpWorld View

 

Former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters was sentenced today to nine years in prison for trying to hack voting machines in order to "prove" voter fraud, and I think what the judge had to say in her case really said a lot about TrumpWorld:

“You are no hero,” state District Court Judge Matthew Barrett told Peters. “You’re a charlatan who used and is still using your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again.”

“Your lies are well documented, and these convictions are serious. I’m convinced you’d do it all over again if you could,” Barrett told the 68-year-old former Mesa County clerk, who was accused of using another person’s security badge to allow someone else to gain access to her county’s election system.

 She's a hero in her own mind. Just like Mike Lindell, who has gone broke, is a hero in his own mind. Like Rudy Giuliani, broke (allegedly) and disbarred, must believe. The Big Lies of TrumpWorld, and what they would do to "prove" them, give them mission: a sense of purpose, but also--attention. 

TWGB: Resorting to Crimes

 

Former President Donald Trump "resorted to crimes" to attempt to stay in office after losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, federal prosecutors allege in a newly unsealed court filing released Wednesday.

In the filing submitted by special counsel Jack Smith,… pic.twitter.com/lr2ut8tFn2

— PBS News (@NewsHour) October 2, 2024

You know, it seems like it was just yesterday that current Trump running mate JD Vance was trying to focus on the future instead of discussing whether Trump lost the 2020 election, and I love that for him. Corey Lewandowski was also stuck in the same groove when asked--unable to admit His Nibs lost in 2020. 

Judge Chutkan has done the world a favor by airing out Jack Smith's brief regarding how the Trump Team, with reckless disregard for the truth, democracy, the Constitution, public safety or any other damn thing, resorted to crimes in an attempt to defraud the American people regarding our presidential election. Trump and his people did everything they could to delay his reckoning regarding January 6th, but he can't actually delay people being forewarned and forearmed--he lied about one election, and he is just bound and determined to lie about this one. 

What Trump tried to do in 2020 was election interference. This right here right now, is letting you know what he does and plans to try again. Disenfranchising people in swing states, by fraudulently messing with our votes, is something I take very personally. He says bad things happen in Philadelphia, and I may be a bad thing happening in Philadelphia myself, but I am a very legitimate voter and you DON'T try to throw out my vote without me taking it very personally.  

My feminist foremamas didn't hit picket lines and get forcefed in prison for me to not get pissed when someone tried to first of all steal my vote and then use it to support anti-woman policies like banning abortion, birth control, or any other thing that liberates me and my sisters. And I fucking mean as a White lady to correct the past by supporting the right to vote and the right of having the votes counted of the Black and Brown people Trump (and the Republican party) want to exclude.

The VP Debate was Kind of Demure, Very Mindful

 

Moderator: Just to clarify, Springfield’s Haitian migrants have legal status

Vance: The rules were you guys weren't going to fact check pic.twitter.com/zo5W3i9HIt

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 2, 2024

That right there? Was the most contentious the VP debate practically became. Because JD Vance stewed that he got called on the one very Big Lie thing he contributed to, because he can't understand why it is terribly wrong, bad and hurtful, and why he really did need to be checked on that very particular thing. Because he can't accept that the death threats and the bomb threats and the disruption of a whole town's active life can be marked down to his propaganda. 

Is he naïve? Does he not get that there are real-world consequences that follow from such lies, and that people with a conscience would avoid them? 

This debate didn't clue me anymore in on who Vance is, but he does remind me, oleaginously, of those old margarine commercials--it's not nice to fool Mother Nature.