Another One Bites the Dust?

 

Some people might think there's a real problem with Pete Hegseth's SecDef nomination once the whistleblower stories about getting kicked out of vet organizations for being a rape-y, drunken peculator start flying and the word starts trickling that he's always drunk at Fox News and the thing where he's an open Islamophobe and Christian Nationalist and you know, how his own mom deplored his serial adultery and abuse of women. 

I think it's really bad when the Trump transition starts floating "Tater Tot Ron" DeSantis as a possible replacement. 

But you never know. After all, if you want to get out there and show you aren't a problem person, just a hard-drinkin' man's man and a hard-lovin' ladies' man and also, you ARE SO completely competent to do a big boy job, you can always go on the propaganda network you work for and have your mom explain it. 

(Don't laugh. Elon Musk's mom tell folks they are just jealous of her smart boy all the time, and no one picks on him anymore. ) 

Stupid or Bad Faith?

 

Rampell: Do you know that there actually was bipartisan legislation intended to to increase our fentanyl detection technologies at the border. And trump killed it.

Jennings: You keep fighting these old battles. Donald Trump won.. Mexico has to do something.

Rampell: They have… pic.twitter.com/szaKgKSuGI

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 27, 2024

This is why I think cable news is basically worthless: someone like Scott Jennings (it could be so many other GOP mouthpieces, though) will argue something that is either based in sheer ignorance (possible) or they HAVE TO know better than, but this is the GOP line and their "job" is to defend it. The networks can argue that they are doing this for "balance"--but that's not what it is. They are airing out a position that is basically absurd with no penalty for either lying or being as dumb as a stump.

I used to go back and forth with myself about this kind of representation, especially at the top of the Bush years. Is it ignorance, is it lying, and what's worse?

And the answer is: what does it matter? If a position is completely detached from facts, it just is bad. Donald Trump winning an election doesn't change the facts of what is happening at the at the border with Mexico any more than George W. Bush winning affected whether invading Iraq over WMD's (dumb--or lying?) was a good idea. 

TrumpWorld Kakistocracy 2: Trolling?

 

In a timeline where Fox News personality Pete Hegseth could be SecDef, sure, why not float former Democratic Rep. Tulsi "Russia's Girlfriend" Gabbard for DNI and now-former GOP Rep. Matt "Hookers'n'blow" Gaetz to be Attorney General.

Senator John Fetterman suggests that the choice of Gaetz as "god-tier kind of trolling" on Trump's part, and while this is not wrong, I regretfully have to confess that I think just because it's trolling doesn't mean that he can't get in. I mean, my first thought was "stalking horse". That's the art of the deal, right? You throw out a name like Matt Gaetz, and then when he's cast aside, literally every other choice seems more sane. 

But that's assuming Trump is playing by regular rules, and I don't. I think the idea that he's considering wild stuff like adjourning congress and recess-appointing people is not really out of the question if he really does see Trump 2.0 as his revenge tour. 

TWGB: Fox and the Sour Grapes

 

Media needs to play this clip for GOP candidates and say NOW YOU HAVE HEARD IT--and get them to respond. Because he is using people's names. Real damn people. https://t.co/wGtl0QjSpS

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) October 16, 2024

What would you call the shade Trump painted himself for this? Terror Cotta? The "enemy within"--which Trump has suggested siccing the military on, includes (Democratic) US Congress members. It probably also includes former GOP US Congress members like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. It likely includes certain former White House personnel--his own former White House. IT includes people like Gen. Mark Milley.  And this "enemies list" is not about people who lied about him--oh no. They did something far worse.

They told the truth.  Trump has never been a fan of transparency--even though we can see through him. Russian interference was real and the Trump campaign had multiple Russian contacts, and the perfect phone call wasn't perfect. It was extortionate. 

So, how does Fox News, who was sued by Dominion not so long ago and settled for a really amazing amount of money for lying about the 2020 election, in the person of one Brett Baier, presumed serious interviewer, use this information--that Trump considers various prominent American public servants fair game for being rounded up by the military and punished for being the "enemy within"? 

He whitewashes it to try and make the Democratic 2024 Presidential candidate look like she's being extra. 

No, really. 

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? 

The Russia Campaign Reminds Me--

 

This is what Tenet Media was broadcasting for Putin in the U.S. They support Elon Musk, Trump, RFK Jr, and violent protests. 1/ pic.twitter.com/s3C2BPCZl6

— Karen Piper (@PiperK) September 8, 2024

If you take a look at the topics above, you'll note among other things--misogyny.  This was a key part of the 2014 "Gamergate" dry run and a big part of the attacks on Hillary Clinton. It's why my ears perked up at the allegation that gamers were part of the Russian disinfo targeting for the 2024 election. (And minorities--that voter suppression technique that was used pretty well in 2016, both by Brad Parscale for Trump as he admitted and by the Internet Research Agency on "parallel tracks".) 

Flashforward to 2024, and we have Tucker Carlson, whose Putin interview and Moscow supermarket adulation were both deemed surprisingly cringey even to producers of Kremlim-inspired sludge, calling women in the US military: feces. 

Tucker Carlson is revolted by our war wounded.

He compares them to literal shit.

He will almost certainly have a position in the second Trump Administration.pic.twitter.com/5QSoyVvHjH

— Veterans For Responsible Leadership (@VetsForRL) September 8, 2024

Does the GOP Know What a Woman Is?

 

As of Saturday, JD Vance and Donald Trump were both still misgendering Imane Khelif, an Algerian boxer who was born female and was raised female. There is no good reason to believe that she either does have elevated testosterone or is chromosomally XY. She seems to just be a hard-working girl with a heck of a punch who is living her dream and representing her country in a sport she loves. 

This is why I insist transphobia is in part, misogyny. And delusional. Imagine the contortions your mind must go through to suspect the "woke" government of Algeria sending a trans boxer to the Olympics. Imagine being so careless about facts that you would say this not caring what kind of blowback falls on that young lady, who is just trying to do her best? 

She is tough, strong, muscular. Calling her "male" is saying women cannot be these things. Suddenly, people who insist on anatomy being destiny started to ask whether, like Caster Semaya, this woman might be intersex. Transphobes understand gender exists on a spectrum after all, when it suits them, but only when it comes to trying to exclude someone. They seized on this woman for no good reason other than they needed someone to "other" at the moment. 

Running to Momma Fox's Skirts

 

Trump, who is not either weird (he says) so stop saying that, doesn't like that VP Harris has made an issue of his ducking the schedules ABC debate--but today, he has a solution! He will so debate, but because he is suing ABC he will do it on Fox News, in Pennsylvania (it's a "commonwealth", don't you know!) with a whole studio audience and no factchecking. 

That's nice, but we all know what's really going on here, right?

The Harris Campaign does:

He wants to be in his safe space. He wants a little help from his friends. His little fan club might think he just challenged her to a debate, but he wants something debate-adjacent. 

I truly don't think Trump anticipated that he would have to work this time.

On the Couch with Jesse Watters

 

ive never seen him this mad before pic.twitter.com/12GdLBzVzg

— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) July 30, 2024

Look, I think it's great that Fox News wants to address this throbbingly important issue of the day, and who better than Watters to do it, but let's not get it twisted. Politics isn't beanbag, and Democrats are not like Republicans. See, Republicans have little "jokes" they want to make about Kamala Harris like she "slept her way to the top" (sexist) or that she's a "DEI hire" (sexist and racist) or that because her parents were both born elsewhere, she isn't really, really a US citizen (Birtherism 2).  Do they believe those things? Maybe, maybe not, but they are mean and dumb and they find it funny to repeat those things in all seriousness even if it's bullshit.

As for Vance and the couch thing, sure, it's bullshit and there are far more substantive things to criticize about him, like being the ideas guy for a future dystopia. But it's also fun to point out that he seems like the kind of funky little creep who waits until someone gets off the couch to go to the bathroom, has his way with the warm spot, and then lets them sit back down and wonder why the spot is still warm. 

Do I really, really believe he's that kind of guy? I dunno. I do think he backs Project 2025 and isn't lying when he says he would do for Trump what Pence wouldn't.  So, let's put it this way--we aren't sharing the sofa.  He can have the fringe. 

The Weird Problem

 

Some conservatives are pushing back on claims that JD Vance and Donald Trump and maybe a lot of other Republicans are "weird"--but I'm sorry, it is what it is. I get that Republicans have put a lot of stock in saying they represent "Real America (TM)" and the cosmopolitan Big City Lefty Liberal Arugula-Eaters with Their Fancy Brown Mustard and Priuses and pronouns are oddball hippie Comsymps or whatever, But right off the bat, deciding lettuce, Grey Poupon and parts of speech are weird--is weird.

Being really mad at the Olympics because you were told Christianity was being insulted when the opening show had nothing to do with Christianity and demanding others agree with you--is weird.

Smashing coffee makers or shooting cases of Bud Lite because a talk show host told you to be mad is weird. 

Pretending to be a party of small government but wanting to track women's menses, stop them from travelling, or wanting to take inventory of people's pee parts before they can use a public restroom, is weird.

Wanting women to carry dead fetuses is weird, and ghoulish. 

Vance Has His Face Rubbed in It

Bret Baier reads J.D. Vance a list of things he's said about Donald Trump:

"I'm a never-Trump guy"
"I never liked him"
"Terrible candidate"
"Idiot if you voted for him"
"Might be America's Hitler"
"Might be a cynical a**hole"
"Cultural Heroin"
"Noxious"
"Reprehensible" pic.twitter.com/NVO0gRGyHZ

— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) June 19, 2024

Yeah, I can take some pleasure in watching J.D. Vance having to suck up his his own words being served back at him like lukewarm vomit from a dirty spoon, but in TrumpWorld, this hazing is probably his opportunity to demonstrate that he's had a proper "Come to Cheeto Jesus moment" and is now purified with a cleansing fire. 

It's a necessary abasement to be part of the tribe. 

To his credit, or possibly against it, depending upon what angle you are watching from, he barely flinches as he is faced with the opinions he once had before becoming a knee-walking face-bemerkin'd voice-activated pleasure-socket for the con artist formerly known as President Trump.

Lara Trump Has Caveats

 

Color me skeptical these will actually happen.

“Lara Trump Insists the Debates Her Father-in-Law Agreed to Are Fixed” https://t.co/aQTJeya5R8

— S.E. Cupp (@secupp) May 16, 2024

Very much agree--Trump will back out, and no sooner did he agree to debates than TrumpWorld is trying to plan an "out" for him. First, he tries to manufacture a Fox debate that Biden "has" to agree to:

And then right-wing commentators run with the idea that for some reason, Dana Bash and Jake Tapper are basically the Symbionese Liberation Army. But anyway, I do have to agree with Lara Trump (whose face is starting to become wildly distracting, like a funeral announcement in comic sans) that things are rigged politically against her father-in-law (who installed a family member as the head of his party so he could hork up maximum legal bill payments) because he is so wildly inappropriate and unfit for any office. 

I Love the Smell of Discovery in the Morning

 

Comer’s new talking point is that the reason his impeachment investigation is stalled is because there’s *too much evidence* 😆 pic.twitter.com/MOi09SmVka

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 30, 2024

It smells like burning whatever Comer's fucked-up old "evidence" is. And yes, I am saying "fucked up old evidence. " And Comer should know by now, it doesn't actually go anywhere. If there was too much evidence, why haven't we seen an orderly, not-debunked, probative trail of information that connects the dots from Hunter Biden doing....aw Jesus, any damn thing....and his dad somehow benefitting and quid pro quoing the fuck out of it? 

Hunter Biden, despite being depicted as unqualified for various positions he's worked in by Republicans as if he's a nepo-baby, is a lawyer. He's a good lawyer with really good lawyers. He's suing Fox News for defaming him over exactly the bullshit that the House GOP has being trying to impeach his father over. And I say "Bravo!" because here's the fun thing--Fox News seems to do the same thing for Trump the National Enquirer did--bury negative shit about Trump, and fluff absolute bullshit to denigrate his opponents. That's what happened with their Dominion and Smartmatic voter fraud lies--and until the Biden story became obvious toxic waste, that's what they were peddling to an audience well-conditioned (by them!) to believe in Democrat fuckery and excuse any obvious GOP lies. 

How shitty, busted and past its sell-by date is the Biden impeachment story? Um, Rudy Giuliani, who needs an intervention and seems to have no one in his life who is considerate enough to make it happen, is making it very clear SOMEONE should just "lean on" Zelenskyy again.  

The Superlative Mr. Trump

 

Mike Johnson wants us all to know he spent part of his extended Presidents' Day vacation having made a pilgrimage to Mar-A-Lago to get his performance review and take this very optimistic picture with a shoe salesman. Johnson posts that he and Trump will "grow the majority and save America!" 

I always wonder what they are saving America from. Or maybe it's--what are they saving America FOR? Dessert? 

Anyway, that's a nice thing to say about the future of the House, despite the House being a complete clusterfuck with GOP members retiring left and right. And it's a nice thing to say about Mr. Trump, who is, as the title above states--superlative. He's the worst president ever, as determined by a group of scholars. 

Some people were aghast at this report. You just wouldn't think that a one-term, twice-impeached, four-times indicted man who is purely self-involved could somehow be the worst--if you were out of your goddamn mind. This is a man who finally had something to say about the murder of Navalny and predictably made it all about himself, while demonstrating contempt for our legal system in a way I can only call "un-American." 

I like presidents who actually like America--don't you?

You First, Assholes

 

“People are so sick of being preached at about politics from rock bands”

“Stick to what you’re good at. You’re not a political analyst. You’re probably not really well read on the issues that Americans really care about” pic.twitter.com/vnGna7jkzo

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 2, 2024

Maybe Fox News pretend analysts need to shut up--at least long enough to hear what others are saying.

Actually, successful rock bands are political analysts or at least, seize the zeitgeist and appeal to people because they enunciate feelings other people can vibe with.  Are people really sick of being preached at about politics from rock bands--or is it that something they say resonates and that's why they have a following? I mean, songs like "For What It's Worth", or "Ohio" or "Southern Man" or "Leaving on a Jet Plane" or "Eve of Destruction"--the "freedom rock " Woodstock era stuff I heard as my early lullabies, weren't any more neutral than the "Ballad of the Green Berets" was. 

Now, whether I listened to the Dead Kennedys or INXS or The Clash, I heard politics, even as a kid. I don't understand people who ever listened to the lyrics of Rage Against the Machine and never understood what the machine was. Was it a soda machine? Were they just mad they couldn't get their Barq's root beer jones on?  Of course, they were political. 

Look, one of my ear-influences is Billy Bragg. Punk as fuck. Not punk as fuck--slipping in your old age and deciding Trump is punk. Trump is The Man that fighting the power has been about since, whatever. 

And Green Day's "American Idiot" was explicitly a political album. Just like Neil Young's "Living with War."  Bob Dylan--political. Bruce Springsteen--political. Patti Smith, Bikini Kill, Hole, Pussy Riot. 

Fox News talking heads are not political analysts.  They are propagandists. Who knows what ass they pull what they say from? They aren't musical, they aren't artful, they aren't well-informed, and they say whatever the network wants. Conservatism isn't edgy when they go against the mainstream--mostly they are just counterfactual and fronting for some paymaster--the dead opposite of the punk ethos.

Or to put it in rank Gen X terms--they are sell outs. They want you to dismiss what you are hearing because "you can't handle the reality of it". But you totally could get "woke" if you listened to the lyrics around you.  Fox News "analysts" are fake and don't represent anything going on in the real world. If they want someone to stop talking about politics--instead of shutting up artists who care about the world, they could shut the hell up because they just care about payday. 

Maybe the Boomers who listen to Fox should go ahead and re-listen to that "freedom rock" I teethed on as a kid. It was politics. And a lot of it was dead-on. 

The Price of Lying

 

Rudy Giuliani has been court-ordered to pay $148 million to Ruby Freeman and Wandreya Moss in their defamation case against him. He was the only witness on his behalf and there are two important points to make:

He lied about them and admitted it. 

He provided no proof of any kind that backed up the stories he spread about them, and actually withheld requested discovery documentation. 

These women were threatened and their lives were severely disrupted by the lies Giuliani told. A quick perusal of rightwing social media features a lot of "whataboutism": "But what about what these women did?" Because they don't get the point:

The women didn't do anything. They were counting ballots--of course you move them. They want to believe Giuliani's lies and so, the lie persists for them. THAT's what's worth $148 million. Once their reputations were destroyed by a lie, there is no getting things back to how they were before. 

Because Giuliani is reprehensible, he wants to claim he was shafted by the court: 

Giuliani was unrepentant after the ruling, telling reporters outside the courthouse, “The absurdity of the number underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding,” and adding falsely that “I have not been allowed to offer one single piece of evidence in defense, of which I have a lot.”

Of course, that's untrue: he was sanctioned for NOT TURNING OVER anything. He always had shit. And if he felt like the court was not letting him be "heard" he could turn his troves of information over to the media. Which he has had plenty of time to do.  And can't. Nothing's stopping him but the lack of information that supports him in any way.

So Much for the Bentley Bomber

 

At the top of the above picture, just past the border checkpoint, you can see a car frozen in air after its driver had made some very poor speed-related decisions. This unfortunate launch of a generally land-based vehicle resulted in an explosion that Fox News, among others, wanted to term a terrorist attack. 

It wasn't, but a lot of right-wing fear-mongers jumped on the news:

Ted Cruz reposting noted journalist Benny Johnson to say his "worst fears" were confirmed is amusing to me in a way I don't think Sen. Cruz would understand. 

Sometimes I think to myself that conservative "news" outlets and the politicians they have a symbiotic relationship with are just cynical liars, but I also think they do believe their own bullshit. People who say things like "open borders" in all serious are like people who say "post-birth abortion"--what they fuck are they on about? It's delusional. They assumed that OF COURSE an explosion on a bridge was terrorism. Because OPEN BORDERS: is why! I think there's some people this morning who are mad their talking point got, um, exploded.

But man, I am still trying to wrap my head around who is doing terrorism in a Bentley. That is a distant Saudi prince with Jason Chaffetz's turkey in his lap kind of high-priced terrorism....

Joe Biden, Turkey Pricer

 

What in the world kind of 40-lb, free-range, organic, handfed in little silk underbritches kind of bird did this man buy? https://t.co/OLdG4G2FSj

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) November 21, 2023

You can forget what you may have read about record-low unemployment, or how inflation has leveled out and some prices are going back down. The economy still has some very troubling indicators. Such as Republicans on Fox New lying about it.  

In other news, Joe Biden is old. Have you heard?

UPDATE:  It's a good bird!

As a person who believes in responsible, sustainable carnivorism, I wholly approve of the product, but honey--that is not the $15 Butterball (or maybe less with some kind of supermarket receipt promotion) most of America is getting. It is, indeed, a free-range organic, etc. bird. It's a good bird. I bet you it tastes good, too. But it's a bougie bird. And getting a bougie bird is a CONSUMER choice--not a POTUS problem. (It reminds me of the "Thanks Obama!" memes of yore, right?) 

In other news, Biden is still old--and funny:

I saw a lot of pissing and moaning about this picture. It's a whole lot of candles. THAT'S IT. THAT's THE JOKE. I swear, you young people don't have any sense of humor. 

If you think 81 candles looks like a lot, imagine what a visual representation of 91 indictments is like. Yeesh!

Hillary Clinton and the Uncomfortable Truth

 

“So many of those extremists, those MAGA extremists, take their marching orders from Donald Trump,” @HillaryClinton tells me. “There needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members” in the GOP, she adds in our EXCLUSIVE conversation. pic.twitter.com/ImpYIBuQ5j

— Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) October 6, 2023

The right-wing is a bit up in arms with Hillary Clinton's statement that Trump's people are in a cult and need to be deprogrammed. Now, for the record, to me this is as benign a statement as calling some portion of the Trump supporters "deplorable"--he literally attracts militia folks and Klan members. If you aren't down with calling out would-be Timothy McVeigh's and the goddamn Klan as "deplorable"--I'm not sure what your standards are, but they sure as hell aren't mine. (Looking at Steve Scalise and Josh Hawley in their whole damn faces.) You either understand civil terrorism is kind of fucked up or GTFO. I'll say John Brown and Weather Underground weren't exactly doing it right--your turn? 

Anyway, Hillary Clinton is by far not the only one to notice that Trump mega-MAGA fan behavior is cultish. They signify via their unique clothing. They silo their sources of information. They believe what their cult leader says to the exclusion of what they might even see with their own eyes. Their religion, their associations, their concept of acceptable speech: all file in line with TrumpThink. 

When comedians and journalists alike do "man on the street" type interviews with MAGA, they sound like people from the Manchurian Candidate talking about Raymond Shaw.: 

“Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”

Epps

 

Ray Epps is suing Fox News for lying about him being a fed who instigated the Capitol riot because that isn't what happened at all, even if some people, even apparently some US congresspeople, seem to think this was definitely a thing. 

Is the FBI protecting Ray Epps? pic.twitter.com/t0YPNbkEs7

— Congressman Troy E. Nehls (@RepTroyNehls) July 12, 2023

(Mah gawd Texas--why do you have to do "shitkicker" so hard?)

But he was just a very committed Trump guy who has a family and is a real flesh and blood conservative, who, for whatever reason, Fox News and especially Tucker Carlson, decided to make into a scapegoat. He wasn't any different than any other person doing 1/6 stuff on 1/6, and there Fox News was, pretending he was somehow extra culpable for the melee (when didn't Fox News go really hard to pretend the machines were a problem and spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election? Basically, being more culpable than anyone but maybe Trump campaign people for what went down, based on utter bullshit? As th Dominion suit shows and the Smartmatic suit also will?)

Fox News and believers in Fox News propaganda like the representative I bothered to name have caused this guy real harm. I don't share his political views, but I don't have to in order to understand that what he has experienced is appalling. He might be culpable for his actions that day--but not responsible for anyone else's.

Trump on the other hand, and his little minions like Rudy Giuliani...they have a lot to answer for. And I hope the discovery in this case sets a lot of people straight about the wrong ideas they have absorbed.