George Carlin - It's A BIG Club & You Ain't In It!

You know, before Trump introduced a meme coin in the middle of the night that was rolled out with no fanfare and is like 80% held by "insiders" (that means everyone else is a hind tit investor and are entirely not getting maximum value from this shiny thing in the event of a big old cash out event), there was a well-attended crypto gala, and Trump and his people gave all the signs of really digging what the crypto bros have been laying down. Yeah. Strategic reserve Sure. Brave new currencies. 

But on the whole, Trump did what he does--it's a potential scam? Fine.  He and his will eat. 

If you are sweating in the bit mines looking for legitimacy for your popup non-accepted currency of the week, he just pantsed you. It looks to me like a short-term con vehicle for raising funds in a hurry, not to be mistaken for his crypto long con. But what does this have to do with George Carlin?

TWGB: Gonna Do Really Well

 

Trump thinks he has a little secret. And he must, you know--because what his campaign did at this Madison Square Garden rally was truly alienating and foul.  This rally wasn't intended to win hearts and minds in a blue state, it was a several hours' long hate rally, and this was only going to be ugly, because Trump, the Actual Candidate, is Ugly. If he had dreams of MSG being his coronation--no. 

What was promised here was slaughter and dehumanization. Puerto Rico was called an island of trash. Jokes about Black people carving watermelons was supposedly "humor". The Vice-President, a former US Senator and former state AG, was treated like a low-IQ mutt by people who associated IQ with race in the grossest, most late 19th century way. All Democrats were deemed the "enemy within". 

Because I am a person who tries to be logical, it seemed to me absurd that the Trump campaign would use its final push to just be the open enemy of decency that this shitshow was. It obviously isn't about winning votes--

It's about whipping up so much rage from Trump true loyalists that they are ready to do great violence. It's about keeping them raging and stimulated and certain that Trump is in peril from the murderous "them" and obvious "witch hunters" who seem to think, based on all the evidence, that Trump is likely to have committed crimes, to be determined by a rigorous legal process. 

I repeat, it seems to me they do not want votes, but violence, because they don't think they can get those votes. 

They can therefore not get votes and fight the world, then. Fuck all of them for this racist, murderous shit show where they let us know who they are. But there is no wishing them anything but failure from here. 

JD Vance is a Bother of a Father

 

Vance: I’m surprised we made it this whole time without anyone really complaining. Maybe I can trade you my kids, you could knock some sense into them pic.twitter.com/HYHstj0dWI

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 12, 2024

Knock some sense into his kids?

My parents are from good old working-class stock with fathers that worked in manufacturing. My dad climbed utility poles, and my mom very briefly was a nurse before she had me. Maybe they got whupped themselves occasionally growing up, but that wasn't even their regular reality. And they never, not ever, whupped me or my brother. We learned sense from my parents because they demonstrated sense. They taught us how to ask questions respectfully and when to stay quiet and learn with our eyes. They asked us what we thought when we were wrong so they understood how to help us get right. 

JD Vance has a lot to say about who should have kids. Man, it isn't like my brother and me are fucked up if we never had them--I think it would be worse if we had kids and somehow didn't recognize we were fucking them up because of some extremely unfortunate hang-ups. 

Kamala Harris, For the People

 

As she began her speech to accept the nomination of the Democratic party, Kamla Harris thanked the audience--a lot. One social media commenter, perhaps a bit confused by the concepts of both gratitude and subtlety, wondered why she was saying "Thank you" quite so much, but most people understood why--

She was grateful for the applause of course, but she wanted to get down to business. The "thank yous" were a signal to the audience to stop clapping because she had a speech to do. And I loved that. Oh, I have seen people bask in well-deserved applause--it's fine. But being ready t get started and move forward was so on point for Kamala Harris.

This truly was the speech of a public servant who cares about what she does and who she does it for. Her biography let us know her dedication to getting things done, to doing them well--and not "half-assed". We learned what motivates her, what she has done, and what she will do for the people--the only client she has ever served. And she drew a contrast between herself and a certain someone who only serves himself. 

This Lady is for Turning

 

Nikki Haley once said "Underestimate me. That's always fun."

No one did, I think. Last night's turn up at the RNC to whole-heartedly endorse Trump, despite having previously called him dangerous and unfit, was more or less as expected. Ron DeSantis ate some words. Marco Rubio has eaten some words. Mike Pence endorsed Ted Cruz in 2016 and ate rather a lot. Young Vance had better develop a strong appetite for eating whatever is on his plate and asking for seconds. 

Such is the nature of a party where some attendees at the RNC are wearing sympathy bandages over their ears to match their Fearless Leader, Man of Destiny, for whom God most certainly has a plan. All criminal charges and other lawsuits, all AR-15 bullets and/or shards of Teleprompter glass, are mere devices of the devil fashioned against him.

It's a cult. She couldn't beat them, so she joined them. The modern GOP has no real convictions, other than ones a jury might decide for them. 

And so passes a "Never-Trump" hope from the world. 

Appeal to What, Now?

 

Breaking News: A second provocative flag linked to Jan. 6 was flown at a home of the Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito. https://t.co/DCnJ1drXPR pic.twitter.com/MB3JN3TapZ

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 22, 2024

Funny old thing about me, if you didn't know--I'm big on the separation of church and state. Once I realized the incompatibility of the first commandment and the first amendment, the idea that the ISA is, in any sense, a Christian or even biblically based nation flew out the window, and I realized that no person tries to present a government as divinely inspired without there being some real fuckery afoot.

Trump, a hedonist, a personification, in his way, of the deadly sins, is a "tool" in the vernacular, but has also been used by Christian Nationalists as a tool to get their feet in the door of the White House. Why? How? I suspect it's that his hands are dirty and theirs stay clean, while their agenda will fall into place under him because he simply is an authoritarian. They don't care "what's in his heart". 

He's a gift to them. A gift from heaven. He'll outlaw abortion and birth control and eradicate wokeness and restructure society back to where everyone knew their "place" in the great chain of being. Where's the catch?

This is a democracy, and most people here don't actually want that, is the catch. We were supposed to have done away with the idea of terrestrial kings who have a "divine right" to do anything. Let alone place religious tests on who participates in government or how laws should induce people to behave. The founders of the US were all too aware of European sectarianism and the dangers thereof, and were trying to manage a system that would accommodate an already diverse society.

TWGB: The Back-up Singers

 

Yesterday, when we saw J.D Vance and them come out to the courthouse to defame the judge and his daughter, I wrote a thing and deleted it and don't even recall what I said because I realized in the morning it was incomplete.  Look at these "pick me pygmies". Look on these little men. Look at these ants peeping round the legs of a great colossus who hath bestrided their world. 

Look on today's brood of vipers in matching suits looking for all the world like a pack of back-up singers for the main event, Donald Trump. Did they sing "Da woo, doodly do?" 

No, they helped Trump violate his gag order and tried to make us feel bad for poor old thin skinned and very chilly Trump, same as Tuberville and Vance and them the day before. Maybe Mr. Trump (not, "former president Trump" because fuck giving honorifics to rapists, racists, and traitors--which is this withered old full diaper of a man) can't violate a gag order himself, but what of his little friends?

He can't tell them to do that, and maybe he did:

Tommy Tuberville admits on Newsmax that "one of the reasons he went" to NYC yesterday was to "overcome this gag order" pic.twitter.com/cGCK5iAcsZ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 14, 2024

Trump is not supposed to be violating the gag order by proxy. I don't think the court is supposed to be stupid about this--do you? And I don't think harassing the Judge's family members is in regular order--it's just bullying--obstruction of justice. See, I do say Tuberville isn't very smart, but maybe is dumb, but he isn't just as dumb as you might imagine but is very possibly dumber. He was on Trump's fat-finger speed-dial on 1/6 after all.  

Maybe they don't know Micael Cohen used to be this man's back-up singer. Maybe they don't understand where this road leads. 

Maybe they think they can loan their souls to Trump and haven't sold them. Maybe they think they can get their dignity back after whatever this is.

Trump doesn't pay back loans. He inflates his value of course and then?  Hopes banks are willing to negotiate for pennies on the dollar. This is what Michael Cohen was talking about--negotiating invoices of all kinds. These political wannabees are auditioning to play Celebrity Political Apprentice, but don't realize what portion of their credibility as a political figure or just a human being they are ceding to a racist, rapist, fraudulent, highly suspect and damaged fuck of a human. 

Michael Johnson played this game, and I sort of wish MTG would put another MTV up for debate just for the real fuckery of it, so Dems can agree that this man is utter trash serving no one but himself. 

TWGB: Trump The Bible Salesman

 

Donald Trump, who is very broke, is selling Bibles just a minute after whatever this was. This is not someone basking in the luxury of the "pump" phase of his obvious "pump and dump" stock. This is a guy realizing he needs to shore up his most bought-in peeps. The religious Right. So he is out there selling the Lord via his book.

He goes back to this well when it is convenient. Sometimes we all do. But some go back to address their faith, and he goes there to address why he thinks he was chosen, while no one in the real world would believe any such thing. 

As Goes Ohio? Kansas? Arizona?

 

If Nikki Haley, who dropped out weeks ago, is pulling 20% in the GOP primary against Trump in Ohio--this is a worrisome thing for him. Here's what I'm thinking--it's well-educated and female voters who realize that Trump is an appalling person. Some of these people will end up voting for Biden. Some will stay home. But this is an issue that Trump actually CAN'T address. 

What do I mean by that? Take the E. Jean Carroll defamation suit. He counter-sued and lost, because what in the hell is the difference between assaulting someone digitally vs. with a penis? He's going back in against ABC and George Stephanopoulos because Nancy Mace kind of made him do it.  So we are now going to be talking about Trump's being a rapist and Trump INVITED it. 

We are going to go back to the Ukraine issue in the first impeachment because Trump invited that, too. We are going to se him condition Jewishness as it relates to Zionism, for a degree of Zionism that truly is anti-Palestinian. We are going to question what he REALLY wants done at the border because he stopped the border deal. We are going to question whether he understands foreign policy because after all--Russia is being expansionist, dare I say, imperialistic? And there's stupid tyrant fanboy Trump, wanting to be recognized by the Big Kids Dictator Club. 

TWGB: Aiding and Abetting

 

Trump salutes as the J6 Choir song plays pic.twitter.com/383RCt4TOT

— Acyn (@Acyn) March 16, 2024

Trump really loves his 1/6 convicted felons as if they were his very own co-conspirators, doesn't he? Some observers of today's Trump rally speech got exercised over his use of the term "bloodbath" as in, if he is not elected this year, there will be a bloodbath. Don't be stupid--this was just his usual hyperbole. It's his continued defense and support of his last bloodbath, where something like 140 law enforcement officers were pounded mercilessly by his little fan club, we should be looking at. 

It's a pity-looking at Trump's rallies these days is a little like returning to the scene of a crime where Father Time is stealing what insurers cannot replace and bankers cannot lend, and which, like any Trump property, might have been severely over-valued anyway--his fragile little mind. He thinks renaming Fort Bragg is somehow a repudiation of US successes, not a repudiation of Confederate failures. 

They Know it Isn't a Choice

Nikki Haley suspended her campaign following Super Tuesday, where she won Vermont and continued to demonstrate that the Trump campaign does have a 10-30% problem with Trump-averse Republicans. In her speech, in which she didn't exactly endorse Trump, she nevertheless said she hoped that Trump "earned" her voters. 

Anyone want to figure out what that means? If part of Haley's case was that Trump was the wrong man for the moment, or that his previous term in office displayed his unfitness, or that a racist, sexist, multiply-indicted adjudicated rapist was a threat to this country and a shameful person to have as her party's leader, it would be clear that he did not have the ability to earn their vote. But her case was merely a numerical one: maybe voters would prefer Haley because she was normal. She never fully addressed his freakishness.

As it was, as a member of Trump's administration she was a poor standard-bearer for that claim having already done spade-work to "normalize" him, and as a Republican who campaigned for Herschel Walker by suggesting that Sen. Warnock be deported, or who said she wanted to be Rev. John Hagee when she grew up, or who botched a simple question about the Civil War out of a sense of shameless pandering, she only magnified the degree to which, these days, to be a GOP candidate is, in some respects, to be a freak. 

The Nikki Haley Case

 

Trump says moderate Republicans are no longer welcome in the GOP: We are 100 percent MAGA now pic.twitter.com/Q2mvgGAR0x

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) March 3, 2024

Although Kristin Welker is in some ways, Chuck Todd but different, in addition to her idiotic claim this morning that Trump "allegedly" tried to overturn the 2020 election as if he didn't do it on live tv, she managed to tease out of Nikki Haley an admission of sorts that she might not support Trump for president despite the loyalty pledge the GOP imposed on its candidates. 

This is something I wanted to hear, not because I support Nikki Haley, but because I need to see Republicans walk away from Trump because our national security and national sanity depends on it. 

Trump said he didn't want Nikki Haley people to sign on to his campaign. They were "permanently barred." What is that supposed to mean? Is that like when Kari Lake said she didn't need the "McCain Republicans", lost her election, and then got so groveling she nearly begged Meghan McCain to not treat her like the dirt that she is? 

I feel like he gave her all the off ramp she needed to never do his business again. 

CPAC and Dean Phillips--a Blogger's Dilemma

 

NEW: Dean Phillips told The Daily Beast that he doesn't remember receiving a max campaign donation from conservative financier Harlan Crow, but allowed that it was possible he solicited it personally. Me w/@JakeLahut https://t.co/7TTweHRhPR

— Roger Sollenberger (@SollenbergerRC) October 27, 2023

It used to be, I would enjoy (for my obviously not-healthy form of enjoyment) posting about CPAC, which is a thing that for me, culminated with this post here about how AFPAC and CPAC were like twinsies, and calcified with the realization that CPAC had gotten freaky as fuck all on its own. This little rightwing shindig is no longer what it was. And that's why instead of blogging about it at all, I'm blogging about Dean Phillips, because his candidacy is weirder, and therefore, more interesting to me. 

CPAC just has open Nazis running about, now. Matt Schlapp is a multiply-accused homosexual sex pest. People associated with CPAC just flat out say democracy is dead. It is now what they always played at--fascism for Chiclet heads. 

The candidacy of Dean Phillips is also weird, but in a different way: I don't know that Dean Phillips was always an op, but the robocall thing in New Hampshire is serious op energy. 

An Uncomfortable Win

 

Fox: About a quarter of Republicans are saying they will never vote for Donald Trump pic.twitter.com/ssxqi3Lsov

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) February 25, 2024

I said a few weeks ago that what would be more interesting to me than the Democratic SC results would be how the GOP open primary turned out. South Carolina is pretty Trumpy, but a 40% showing for his opponent says something--and not because it's her home state.  She was always going to lose this primary, the question was:

By how much and what does it say about the electorate? 

Trump should have romped if we were just going by high-school educated, evangelical white voters. Women voters didn't elevate Haley. She's at 40%, not like, 15%, because of Independent voters (not really, appreciably, crossover-voting Democrats). 

TWGB: Running Interference

 

It's a funny old thing that Trump wants to scream "ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!!" with respects to his two lawsuits today. They are both actually election interference lawsuits, in that Trump took extralegal efforts to interfere with what happened in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. 

In the so-called "hush money" case that Trump lost his motion to dismiss today, the case really has to do with using his business funds fraudulently to cover up information that would tend to prejudice voters against him: that he had intimate relations with an actor in the porn industry while his third wife had just given birth. This kind of secrecy and coverup is a part of Trump operations in general: he has long been an avid user of employee NDA's (which were, as constructed, not a valid truth-quashing mechanism for political campaigns or White House administrations) , and used his friendship with National Enquirer exec David Pecker to "catch and kill" negative stories. 

Trump is really great at using funds. sometimes fraudulently, to cover up things. Some say he used Trump Foundation money to pay to Florida prosecutor Pam Bondi's political campaign org to stop an investigation into Trump University, (I dunno if it happened that way, but the results are the results.) Trump sued Tim O'Brien for pointing out Trump's numbers never did add up because he hated to be called out on what we could have should have known about his businesses. Was it worth it to give some of us a glimpse into what we learned later when his 2005 taxes were exposed--he's been drawing down his liability from a mega loss in 1995? (He still was benefiting from losses when his last six years got opened up later on.) He mightily fought to keep that tax data unknown. Because he was doing crimes. 

TWGB: Raining Bad Pennies

 

This post is brought to by Bell's Theorem, karma and the tendency of criminals to return to the scene of the crime. If this opening sentence doesn't make sense, wait for it. I've been waiting for the NY civil trial decision and the immunity thing like all of you guys. The waiting is either the hardest part as Petty proclaimed, or the special sauce as hedonists everywhere have discovered to their throbbing surprise and delight. 

Discovering that Trump's data protection suit against Christopher Steele was rejected was a fun thing to trip over on a Thursday morning. There's no good reason to have brought that case, and no good reason to file it when it got filed except--as a warning that Trump will try to sue you eventually if you say mean things about him ever? I don't know UK law, but this was rejected for statute of limitations, which really feels to me like he didn't want the suit, just the message the making the suit sends. And his campaign paid for the pleasure of a lolsuit. (Level Law--the firm--it's in his FEC reports. Donors are paying for the pleasure of Trump satisfying his grudges.)

Trump's predicament is dumb. What if there were a suit that had to deal with the data in the dossier, which would be rehashing shit that could have come up in 2016--NOW?! Me? I think there were a LOT OF THINGS we could have discussed about Trump in 2016 that we didn't. And now it's 2024, there's SO MUCH MORE. 

Trump Is Enjoying His Primary Win in a Normal Way

Trump: You can’t let people get away with bullshit. And when I watched her in the fancy dress that probably wasn’t so fancy pic.twitter.com/OFvJwbNLq2

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 24, 2024

Was it a little too close? I think it's funny that Trump had to trash, of all things, Nikki Haley's clothes. MEOW! How catty! He also threatened her a little bit, saying:  

Addressing a crowded hotel ballroom in Nashua, he gave Haley a dark warning: “Just a little note to Nikki. She’s not going to win. But if she did, she would be under investigation by those people in 15 minutes, and I could tell you five reasons why already.

“Not big reasons, little stuff that she doesn’t want to talk about, that she will be under investigation within minutes, and so would Ron [DeSantis] have been, but he decided to get out.”

"By those people"--hm? And he could tell you five reasons why! Is he saying he has some dirt on his former UN Ambassador that just might get loose? The skulking little extortionist, Trump!  He's clearly a bit bothered, don't you think?

For her part, she says she's staying in until Super Tuesday, which means going through a likely more depressing loss in her home state of South Carolina--but I think I can see why she's taking the gamble. Trump isn't inevitable, and he might even know it. He's showing clear signs of accelerating wear, and who will be left?  He's threatening her, when like an out-of-control manbaby he can't seem to stop going on rants about E. Jean Carroll--in the midst of his defamation trial? The man is a demented liar!

The trick is--after depicting him as demented liar (which was, let's be honest, always a fair description of Trump), coming back around to endorse him in the event he keeps winning without a major blow-up will be...fraught. 

In other news, President Biden won NH via write-in vote and didn't campaign there at all, at all. 

Meatball Ron, Cooked

 

Ron DeSantis dropped out of the 2024 GOP Best of the Worst contest with a fake Winston Churchill quote and endorsed Donald Trump roughly a week after saying:

“You can be the most worthless Republican in America,” DeSantis said on Sunday ahead of the Iowa caucuses. “But if you kiss the ring, he’ll say you’re wonderful.”

And things had been going so well since...I don't think they ever were. 

DeSantis was, for some people the Great Not-Trump Hope, and I have no real idea why; sure, he's younger and supposedly sharper, but he ran for governor of Florida specifically as a Trump sycophant, and it's kind of hard to make that kind of volte face politically. He was never a happy warrior--I chose the above gif to demonstrate a man who smiles like someone was jabbing his voodoo doll in the mouth. He came off like a robot with someone still learning how to operate the switches at the control. He hated the press and so did his campaign, and fuck it, that's just stupid.

And while DeSantis is a big deal in Florida because he's got a rubber stamp legislature enabling him (to do so much culture war shit, all leading him up to fucking off the campaign trail right before New Hampshire), he really looks small when you pull in. And I'm not just talking about the high-heel boots and pudding fingers, the weird darting tongue thing he does when he's stressed out like some wary lizard, or the way he stands like he just washed his arms and can't do a thing with them. 

For a while there, he was flying high, but all good things must come to an end--and even really ugly misbegotten things like the DeSantis campaign. 

So, Iowa Picked the Rapist with 91 Felony counts?

 

I don't especially enjoy the primary season because the idea of caucuses themselves are dense and dumb to me--what the whole fuck is going on with those? People are dropping votes randomly into paper bags and empty popcorn buckets. Who knows who is showing up? (I see no ID's in the deep freeze, they don't need these when the voters are all Y.T.'s.) 

And then there's Iowa itself--an entire state that feels like a FOX news set-up in a rural PA diner no more than ten miles from the nearest militia training site. What gets me is the state gets these political creatures camping out among them, speechifying at them, trying to shake hands with them for at least six months out of the year, and when the inevitable man/woman-in the street interviews take place, they just say the most normie, uninformed things. Like, one guy was hung up on where Vivek Ramaswamy was from because of 9/11. There were no Hindu people with Indian ancestry having anything to do with that. And if he was concerned, how about looking up anything at all ever? Candidates do townhalls, have debates, have featured articles in newspapers and magazines and there's FUCKING WIKIPEDIA and some dolt allowed to vote doesn't know where this man's people are from. OR who did 9/11. 

One young lady said she was just thinking about Jesus and how he died for our sins, and wasn't that why Trump was going through all these trials? No, damn it, I want to yell--you weren't thinking that; Trump and every asshole warming up the crowds for him told you that and it somehow drilled its way into the thing you pick out sandwich fixin's with. Being in trouble for defaming one of his rape/assault/harassment victims has NOTHING to do with you. He stole government docs belonging to the US Gov't which is basically all of us, and that is a crime against you. The insurrection was a crime against our government. Also against you. 

How in the hell did about half the caucus goers decide the guy who has been determined to be a rapist and a fraud, is twice-impeached, and had a whole bathroom's worth of White House docs, PLUS, horked out of his Florida home is still somehow fit to be president?

The Plant and the Plantation

 

In a clean-up attempt earlier today that cleaned up exactly nothing, Nikki Haley complained that she was set up by the question she had indicated was an easy one, and that the questioner was clearly "a plant":

"Yes, I know it was about slavery," she added. "I'm from the South, of course, you know it's about slavery."

Along with defending her answer, Haley also pointed blame at the man behind the question, accusing him of working for the opposing major political party.

"(He) was definitely a Democrat plant. That's why I said 'What does it mean to you?' And if you notice, he didn't answer anything," Haley said. "We see these guys when they come in, we know what they're doing."

It's really such weak horseshit, because if she saw him coming and knew what he was doing, she could have answered the question correctly.  It doesn't matter if the person asking the question is a Democrat supporter, a CNN reporter, a debate moderator, a space invader, Joe Biden himself or the Grand Wizard of the KKK: the answer would be the same. The questioner could be anyone at all, and their answer doesn't affect the one Haley needed to give. 

She wasn't jammed up by a sabotage. She did it herself.

But wait, she gets worse:

Wow. Nikki Haley goes full MAGA, says she would pardon Trump if he were convicted of a crime in a court of law.

She says it’s not in “the best interest of our country to have an 80-year-old man sitting in jail.” pic.twitter.com/cpoAWLXMBz

— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) December 29, 2023

She would pardon Trump. But she doesn't clearly think she'd be in that position, because she also won't rule out serving as his VP. This is because she lacks moral clarity. She's spread thin trying to cover all the GOP bases. 

But all I'm saying is: this is the conundrum for the entire party. Every last member. Where do you stand on the truth? Where do you stand on the undermining of our republic? What does law and order mean to you?