Nikki Haley Sums up the Debate

Well, exactly! And it isn't just Vivek Ramaswamy (deep down, the one everyone else would like voted off the island). The debate was just so, so dumb, you guys. It felt like it was actually a competition to play second fiddle to the clown who was telling a non-union auto parts group that they were striking for the wrong reason. And two of those guys (DeSantis and Christie) certainly wouldn't be Trump's running mate at all.

Ants. Feet. Colossus. 

What do we say when the harshest criticism against a four-time indicted man whose entire "successful" business career is determined to be a fraud is..."Donald Duck?" It's sad. 

But mostly, it just feels very, very stupid.

TWGB: Trump's Loss

 

Seems like just yesterday when Donald Trump was coming down that escalator in the iconic Trump Tower to announce his bid for the presidency, and we all heard he paid people to show up. He was already fantastically famous due to his reality tv program which depicted him as a very successful businessman, albeit with an entire fuckton of editing. The reality has always been a lot more complicated.  As in, very legally complicated. Just so, so, so complicated.  Trump was already knee-deep in litigation over Trump University--a fraud. 

Since then, he's had to pay $2 million and shut down his fraudulent Trump Organization charity, his business has been found liable for tax fraud, and now, in a summary judgment, NY AG Leticia James' bank fraud case against him has been substantially bolstered--Trump and his family loses their business, and Trump even parts with that golden escalator. 

TWGB: We're Never Leaving 2016, Right?

 

Hammered Junior interrupts Michael Flynn to riff on the allegations of his dad getting golden showers from Russian prostitutes. pic.twitter.com/2TyiLBQrW5

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 25, 2023

Heh, yes, the takeaway of the Steel Dossier is DEFINITELY the golden showers part. Jesus.  See, this is the ridiculousness of the Real Housewives of TrumpWorld that keeps me hanging on. Junior always looks like he wanders into rooms vaguely hoping someone cares enough about his ass to stage an intervention (they don't). Mike Flynn should have been x'd from a professional political campaign over fake news shit in 2016, but went on to be pardoned for lying to the FBI by the Trump Administration because my god. He's a Russian-influenced quisling practicing psyops on the US population, but he's their Russian-influenced quisling practicing psyops on the US population. 

They're bringing up the Steele Dossier because it didn't actually start the investigation into Russian interference and no one heard anything about pee tapes before Trump was already in office, but most people don't remember things linearly. It still scratches a very specific itch--the desire of Trump to exorcise the "Russia, Russia, Russia" demon with his own specific and frankly amusingly stupid counter narrative. 

Ukraine are the bad guys who helped Hillary Clinton by framing Russia and no they didn't, and despite all the obvious RIGGING! like in California, where Trump could have definitely won! um. Trump won in 2016 anyway. He had his little bullshit election fraud commission that found nothing and disbanded. Why does he need to pretend he was wronged? He had his opportunity. He fucked up COVID. He lost more jobs than like, Hoover. He got impeached twice! Why is he still here?

Why are we all still here in 2016? 

TWGB: This is Coping

 

In my last post, I talked about "cope". People use lots of different ways to form coping habits. Some reach for drugs or alcohol. Some embrace bullshit media narratives. Some dive down a conspiracy theory rabbit hole. And Trump, who eschews having interiority for being digitally anal expulsive, litters his own corner of the internet with conspiracy theories and excuses in what I have called "going boom."  He posts online in big tangles of thought to help himself--because he can't help himself. He is always trying to message "No, no, not the thing you are seeing: the thing I want you to see."

I don't know how his little fan club falls for it because it's so plaintive and obvious. Maybe they fall for his toddler-like vulnerability. I dunno. He just recently suggested his JCOS Mark Milley deserved to be put up against the firing squad for telling on him. Whether this is because he's a potential witness against Trump in one of his many upcoming trials, I can't be sure, but boy, I guess. 

No Heroes, As Far as I Know

 There's this "stan" culture thing I don't really get. When the actual Eminem video for his song, "Stan" came out, he didn't mean it to be a good thing to be a "stan"--it was scary and dangerous and terrible. Idealizing, forming a parasocial relationship with, and inappropriately engaging with and revolving one's life around some other person is self-destructive. 

Social media made it easy to get to know people and feel like you really know them.  I follow Mark Hamill, Lynda Carter, Henry Winkler, and Jon Bowman on Twitter. I can tell my 6-7 year old self I follow Luke Skywalker, Wonder Woman, the Fonz, and Bowzer from Sha Na Na on the futuristic thing called the internet and she would be really impressed. These are her heroes. The human beings are far more complex and actually, they are or seem to be pretty good folks. Their good opinions and decency IRL make me pretty happy with my early appreciation.

But I don't do heroes now that I'm grown. People in the real world are real, and they can disappoint. You can't invest in people you don't even know with ride or die fervor. That isn't being real--that's being in a whole fucking cult. (See also: Biden fans don't need flags and swag and what not.) 

I did a little thing not too long ago about Jim Caviezel and RFK, Jr. Conspiracy theories are sometimes about filling in the difference between your own worldview and the differing worldview of many others as you confront them. It's hard to incorporate different points of view. Making up neo-narratives is one way of handling the difference. 

But you have to understand it is "made-up". A lot of conspiracy theories are just a "cope"--a way of dealing with the difference between the world in your head and what's actually happening. 

Menendez Needs to Resign

 

Now, I rarely slam the hell out of Democrats, but here's one hell of an exception: Sen. Bob Menendez of NJ is busted and he needs to resign. To repeat: he is busted, used up, out of credit, persona non grata and a whole pile of bullshit. This man took the little bit of rope he got from a hung jury in his last federal case and made a noose for himself. No sympathy, no nothing. 

The man had close to a half million in cash in his home, some of it sewn into his clothes, and $100K in gold bars.  To me, that spells "BUSTED". What does that tell me? His money isn't in the bank collecting interest because if he took it to the bank, he'd get unwanted interest. And it's also a "to the mattresses" situation. It's around in the eventuality of his needing a reason to not stick around. 

I hear what Majority Leader Schumer is saying when he talks up Menendez' service and his day in court: with respect to his service, he's getting a grace period to figure out what he wants to do before the hammer comes down, so he can go out like it's his own choice. That's respectful, I get it. But if the man doesn't know it's not a "forever" pass, he's a whole idiot. Because the NJ Governor is ready to replace this fool, and he has a rich mine of good people to choose from.  And the Senate doesn't need him so much they will let him fuck around forever:

And that's what his statement is. He really wants to go with: It's because I'm a Latino, huh? 

How about that answer is what makes him seem extra guilty? 

The GOP Appeasement Caucus

 

This flag 🇺🇸 stands for the sovereignty and freedom of other democratic nations or GTFO. We stood with our allies against authoritarianism in WW2 and to not do so now is appeasement. Meathead Mike thinks isolationism is based. The reality is: it's impossible. Reality intrudes. https://t.co/Ff5tEuQm8M

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) September 22, 2023

I remember when the right wing was calling President Obama an "appeaser". They liked to do that, back in the day. They would compare someone to Neville Chamberlain. And along comes Russia, sponsor of their little Tin Godlet, Trump. And some of the biggest Trump fans are all about letting Putin and his desire for lebensraum cook. He'll only take Crimea. He'll only take Donetsk. He's just annexing Russian-speakers...

Lies. Actually, he's performing war crimes , and negotiating how he can keep any of the territory he's seized is...appeasement, politically demonstrating that if you are a celebrity, they just let you grab whatever territory you like. Deciding not to intervene is certainly some kind of moral choice, but I would not commit to it being the right one.