TWGB: This Polished Coprolite

 

So, Monday I found myself thinking about Trump wanting and accepting Purple Hearts even though his probably fake bone spurs prevented him from actually serving our country when young when Trump stood in front of a backdrop of ruin and disaster and human tragedy--and accepted a french fry pin for doing a dopey photo op in a swing state from someone who for some reason decided that the way to handle Trump is to go the "Dear Leader" juche approach. Trump, while there, having disrupted relief efforts, defended his lies about FEMA that already resulted in the arrest of a man who threatened violence. 

It's really, really hard to imagine a shittier human being--but just watch! He gets shittier!

He since went on to say, in all sincerity to a person asking about what he would do regarding education that he would end the gender re-assignment surgeries that absolutely are not happening in schools. You can't get Tylenol in a public school without a permission slip. Teachers are buying crayons and construction paper out of pocket. And this deeply disturbed person thinks hours-long surgeries are being given out for free to minors? With no parental consent? And he said it all to demonize schools, teachers, trans kids. To spread hate as fertilizer for his own benefit.

It's beneath contempt to think that anyone takes this seriously. It's "children who identify as cats use litter boxes at school" level stupid. Anyone with a modicum of critical thought would understand why you don't say something that weird and wrong out loud where thinking people could hear--

TWGB: Occupied America

 

Trump seems to be closing in on the finish line by wallowing in increasingly "blood and soil" fascist, anti-immigrant rhetoric, so I want to point out that there is a kind of irony that he wants to pretend there is an "occupied America." This depends upon a Pizzagate-level bit of idiocy--that a whole town could be occupied by a gang and it wouldn't be front-page news. Just like there could supposedly be a rash of pet-murders and it wouldn't be a major thing if it were actually true. And just like the mayor of Springfield had to come out and debunk Trump/Vance lies, the mayor of Aurora had to do the same. 

"Occupation" is an interesting term. I can think of, for example, the Bundy ranch militia occupation, which had checkpoints and everything. But you know what I really think about? MAGA occupation of the public sphere in terroristic ways. Like way FEMA operations in North Carolina were recently disrupted by a local RW militia. One man has since been arrested. 

You want to know who has also been threatened? Meteorologists. That's insane. But they are getting threats for talking about climate change. As opposed to, I guess, talking about weather machines in the possession of Zionist Communist multi billionaires, or whatever the stupid conspiracy theory is today. 

You could well ask, as former President Obama thoughtfully asked--"When did this become okay?" This is certainly not how it used to be. We didn't, for example, think of a riot at the Capitol as Speaker Mike Johnson recently stupidly put it, part of the election process. Maybe we could have once counted on responsible adults calling out Italian satellites, Venezuelan voting machines, German servers, Chinese thermostats and the like as being deadass stupid. 

Who Are You Going to Listen To?

 

Several hours before this tweet, North Carolina was declared a federal major disaster, which means @FEMA will rush federal aid to 25+ affected counties and reimburse local governments + nonprofits for restoring facilities and infrastructure.

👉🏻 https://t.co/NkRaj6EJ73 https://t.co/JLeTgiYzyq

— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) September 29, 2024

Well, uh, let's hear it for a fact-check from Frank Luntz, because open-faced lying to struggling people is, my God, why do we have to explain this?  Completely wrong and unnecessarily divisive and totally unhelpful. 

And also, what Trump is stunting about right now. He did a little photo-op in Valdosta and lied behind a tiny brick wall someone had to stop everything and make for His Nibs. And he had an emotional support evangelical by his side to sanctify his lying. Who prayed for HIM and his election because of course. 

People have died. Some of the survivors have lost everything they had. They have family photo albums and keepsake Bibles and all kinds of records of their life they can't get back. They are going to be homeless for a while. And Trump shows up in his MAGA hat like this was a campaign event. Costing local security. Taking away resources from search and rescue or whatever else for his hot minute criticizing the Biden Administration for--what they already are doing. 

What they ARE ALREADY DOING. 

You Know They Knew About Mark Robinson

 

Trump: We have to cherish Mark Robinson. You have to cherish him. He’s like a fine wine. He's an outstanding person. I've gotten to know him so well pic.twitter.com/ffkjfi56X8

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 19, 2024

This man's public comments were already a damn disaster: let's take us to before women were voting? Some people need killing?  His household has been sued by Girl Scouts and massively screwed up daycare . He said heinous things about civil rights. And we knew he was on the downlow and sleazy but we didn't know how downlow and sleazy. 

And now we have a very good idea what this man was about, and it was calling himself a "Black Nazi" and being down with golden showers and porn regarding the trans people he would oppress or even persecute right now. I don't know much, but I know one thing, Mark Robinson isn't too diverse to the NC GOP. They are, as a popular song once had it, standing by their man. 

A Day With No Surprises

Trump warns against U.S. accepting Bahamian refugees who survived Hurricane Dorian

Trump: “I don’t want to allow people that weren’t supposed to be in the Bahamas to come into the (U.S.) — including some very bad people & very bad gang members.” https://t.co/fqnnxFkijd

— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) September 9, 2019

It's not that today was a slow news day, mind you, that I found it to be day with no surprises. If Trump tries to justify not letting Bahamian refugees into this country because he thinks there might be some "very bad people", why, how is that a surprise when he's used the same justifications for barring migration from Central and South America and banning Muslims? It might seem shockingly racist and xenophobic, in addition to being mind-blowingly cruel, but surprising?

Nope.

News has been broken regarding the Scottish airport that has been used recently by US flight crews who went on to berth at his Turnberry property. "NOTHING TO DO WITH ME" Trump Tweeted--which pretty much is the sort of denial I have come to take to be equal to an admission. By "nothing to do with", Trump means nothing more than, he didn't book them in himself. The Air Force and Congress will be examining this further.

Oh. Another investigation? Must be a day ending in "y".

Taking it to the Streets and the Town Halls

The 2016 elections certainly seem to have had an effect on the populace at large--they have gone activist. The above video of UT Rep. Jason Chaffetz in all its length and glory shows people who have real concerns about what their US Representative is really representing, and who are demanding he hear them out. Chaffetz is a unique feature of the current House of Representatives. I don't much care for him, myself. And the US Representative's ever-so-very considered response to the hour plus of raucous exchange?

It was totally a Land of Thousand Fakes. He thinks the people who gave him a hard time were paid protesters instead of his actual constituents. I wonder what he'll think next time--there will be a next time.

(This is basically what some people have been trying on about the Women's March a couple weeks back. And nope--real women, real signs, real knitted hats, and really, really pissed off folks. Just try to imagine how much one would even have to pay to significantly fill out even a thousand-seat venue for a couple hours. Then imagine what it would be like to try and mobilize a protest for several hours in every state and every continent, basically. Not even doable.)

But to understand why people are getting the activist spirit, take a look at this Florida town hall:



The "death panels" lie was so widely reported that this crowd is completely wise to it. The phrase "OK children" is an appallingly insulting thing to say to people who actually do know what they are talking about. And no, I don't think these are fake protesters either. They know what the ACA is--and they know there has to be a replacement before any talk of repeal should happen--now that talk of repeal is more than just talk, but a real thing the GOP can do.

There have been marches and protests, some with a solid pedigree--like the Moral March in North Carolina, and the ever-present counter-protest to the anti-abortion "Defund Planned Parenthood" contingent.

The protest movements aren't new, but have renewed purpose.

Protest is the new normal--and it will happen way too often for anyone to believe it to be fake:

Expect it. Because  in a democracy, people feel it is right to petition their representatives for redress of grievances, and man, we are griefing.

Sometimes One Loses Anyway

I don't know if I'd go as far as saying that, faced with a loss, Gov. Pat McCrory of NC is thinking of just stealing the election. After all, if there's a low-enough margin, a recount is a fine thing (although I don't know if it would make a difference) and it seems like it wouldn't be an easy matter for the NC legislature to simply "give" the election to him. But it is interesting that he's calling his potential loss fraud. After all, during his term, North Carolina took many steps to combat "voter fraud" through a process that lead to voter suppression.

And yet he appears to be losing anyway. I think the takeaway might be that 1) Voter suppression doesn't really have anything to do with voter fraud, real or imagined and 2) Voter fraud is not the thing where people who don't vote for you get to vote.

But that's just what I think.

North Carolina Has Lost the NCAA and the NCGOP is Gonna be Mad

So, a funny thing happened. The state of North Carolina has gone out of it's way regarding bathroom bills regarding insisting people go to the potty that matches their chromosomes, not their actual life choices, and it came to pass that a major collegiate sporting organization took a little exception to that particular bit of very specific and not helpful bigotry.

Women's athletics has historically been a zone where queerness is (after no small amount of fighting, to give credit where credit is due) accepted. Think about it. It's a little stereotypical, but when you consider the history of out lesbians and transwomen, you often think of women sporting figures. Caitlyn Jenner did not participate in the Olympics in her female identity, but she is unmistakably the most famous trans athlete currently. But I grew up with the story of Renee Richards on my mind, the transwoman who just wanted to be treated as a professional woman athlete. The issue of how to treat trans athletes has been a meaningful and deep conversation in the sporting world for just the very reason of how gender-segregated sports are, how we assume basic differences in the physical abilities of different genders, and how we see hormonal "enhancement" as basically performance drugs.  In other words, the NCAA is coming to the question of what the anti-trans bathroom bill means with a whole lot of knowledge.

The above picture is the whole lot of bigoted nonsense NCGOP burbled in response. Trans folks are not any assault to me as a cis woman. Cis men were the sexual assailants at Baylor. The idea that the NCAA is politically "peacocking" is just unsurprisingly unimaginative alliteration from some uptight dope.

Assuming Trans and Queer people are by nature rapists and sexual harassers is bigotry, Kami Mueller. There is nothing correct or exculpatory for the bullshit discriminatory law NCGOP is supporting. And I think it's a laugh and a half you dumb asses want to spend taxpayer dollars to defend your deeply uninformed position, even while you bankrupt your state's economy.

You barely understand what you're doing. It genuinely shows. Please proceed to the nearest dumpster and insert yourself. Also, throw away all your sunglasses, because you will live the next 100 years of your life in shade.

It Looks Like Voter ID Laws' Days Are Numbered

Voter ID laws have now been struck down in Texas, in North Carolina, in Wisconsin, and in Kansas.  This is despite the SCOTUS ruling that struck down portions of the VRA, and in particularly the North Carolina instance, a rebuke to the opinion of SCJ Roberts that racism is over, because the North Carolina law's justification was explicitly race-based. (As a GWB nominee, should we be especially concerned that he never was a fan of voting rights? After all, that administration was famous for thinking they should get people who didn't believe in voting rights so much as voting wrongs, even if this wasn't even an actual election-swinging thing.)

Now in the case of North Carolina, the justification for the NC voter restriction was explicitly race-based. But I wouldn't be surprised if NC and Texas, particularly, tried to bring their cases to SCOTUS.

But if these state governments want to push the issue to the Supreme Court, I'm 1) perversely glad Scalia is gone, and  2) wishing a Hillary-Clinton approved justice or Obama's pick, Merrick Garland, was in place.  It just wouldn't be regular for such an important issue to come up before a 4-4 court.

UPDATE:

And some communities don't bother with voter ID laws at all and just resort to old-fashioned intimidation.