TWGB: Mike Lee is Storming the Cockpit

 

I'm so old I remember when Mike Lee wasn't gonna support Trump, but there has been a whole lot of water under that bridge between 2016 and now, including Mike Lee helping with the fake electors plot, but why even go there? Senator Mike Lee has endorsed Donald Trump. Wholeheartedly.  Why is that?

He added, “And so, whether you agree with him on every point or not, if you are not content with the status quo — the status quo of lawlessness, of putting America last — it’s time to get behind Donald Trump, and I wholeheartedly endorse Donald J. Trump in his bid for the presidency in 2024.”

Wait a minute--lawlessness? Let me check this out--the former president who wants the Supreme Court to decide he had infinite hall pass on crimes while president is the remedy to lawlessness? The guy who said he wants the economy to fail while Biden is in office because it helps his election puts America first?   

The rapist, racist business fraud, who took classified documents and incited a riot on 1/6--is supposed to be the not-chaos guy? Prithee, how, sway? 

Although, how is that any different from what Gov. Chris Sununu has said? He would support Trump as the nominee even if he's convicted of crimes.  Because even Trump--proven criminal, but a Republican, is better than a Democrat of any kind whatsoever. 

RFK Jr. and the Interesting Answer (F*cktons of UPDATES)

 

Great example of a friendly interview eliciting an illuminating answer. RFK Jr’s ideological ally, Sherri “Covid vaccines make you a magnet” Tenpenny, challenged him on his “I’m not anti-vaxx” line. RFK says he doesn’t know of any “safe” vaccines & his kids are vaccine injured. pic.twitter.com/2vPcLsuHba

— Brandy Zadrozny (@BrandyZadrozny) June 28, 2023

So much for the "He's not anti-vaxx" argument. It's a case of automated rolling goalposts. An argument like "Oh, I just think they all need to be tested against a placebo" sounds great, unless you realize most are. Double-blind tests against a control are pretty standard. But when our guy claims that vaccine research led to AIDS and the Spanish Flu. we're in bark at the moon territory.  

Some might say it's not news that RFK Jr. has been promoted by Steve Bannon, but it is important to know he's backed with MAGA money.  Again, folks--this is a ratfuck, and for some reason, the MAGAs have decided RFK Jr. is their chosen tin-foil wrapped rodent dildo.

But is the rodent dildo made of cream cheese? See, when he decides to speak with the Liberty Mommies, that's sketchy as all hell. For Democrats.

But what I want to know is, does Donald Trump have the stones to debate him? I mean, if the Democrats are sure not to back RFK Jr. because he's got the wrong opinions on Ukraine and Russia, science* in general, etc.--maybe he could seek acceptance elsewhere?

TWGB: The Laptop Conundrum

 

Somehow, someway, we went in the Trump saga from "But her emails" to a story about how someone scanned a classified document onto a laptop and also had a thumb drive and well, that had to be turned over the feds because if it looks bad, I guess it could be bad. Why is Trumpworld so messy?

I mean, it's not like that entirely looks like docs were being prepped to be shared from a device that was not, conveniently, Trump's own. Or does it? Maybe it exactly looks like someone scanned a document because they had a reason to, because why else was it there?

Why? 

The curiosity of what Trump was doing with the documents he had and how they were handled should very well overshadow what docs were found in President's Biden's or VP Pence's possession, because both of these public servants figured out how to respond--thoroughly transparently, even giving the FBI range over their homes. Trump was not this transparent, and needed a warrant served on his premises. 

More than that, he fought to keep documents and had one of his lawyers draft a document that another lawyer signed attesting that all docs had been handed over when they had not been. Both lawyers, Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, have now been called before Jack Smith's grand jury.  And good for them, really. Shriving is good for the soul.

Brazil

 There was certainly some telegraphy that something like this might occur, although it's a bit surprising that it's two years two days after the US's own attempted autogolpe and sometime after the Lula government has already been sworn in.  But now that a scene very familiar to us in the US has emerged in Brazil, it becomes apparent that some of our national figures share some blame. 

The very same ones who supported the attempted coup here. Like Steve Bannon and Matthew Tyrmand. But also Ali Alexander.  And Charlie Kirk has the big-headed, little-faced nerve to ask:

AHAHHAHAH!  Because Ray Epps also doesn't have anything to do with 1/6 other than being another Trump fan who ended up in situ, who got made the subject of an idiotic conspiracy theory that he was a mastermind and a Fed who caused the whole thing by just being some guy who was there, and yeah. It doesn't make sense, and the 1/6 committee has transcripts of his testimony for people who are into that kind of thing. 

I think there have been other people in and around Brazil recently who might be more interesting to look at. We can ask ourselves what Jair Bolsonaro's son was doing January of 2021 in the US--and possibly come up with the answer: taking notes. Obviously--I blame Bannon as an instigator within a worldwide push for more autocratic, fascist or fascist-leaning governments. 

Bolsonaro supporters attacking federal buildings in Brasilia. National Congress and the Planalto Palace, the seat of executive power, both broken into. Images of shattered windows and ransacked workspaces, all painfully reminiscent of Jan. 6. pic.twitter.com/esvFYE0HcC

— Alejandro Alvarez (@aletweetsnews) January 8, 2023

There are differences between what happened in the US and what is happening now in Brazil. Lula is already inaugurated, and the buildings invaded by rioters were mostly empty. They are vandals, not people disrupting an actual significant event allied to the change of power. They are too late, and the response to them is swift. They are being arrested straightaway. 

But I want my readers cognizant that there is a global push towards more right-wing governments, and the US has recently been involved in this--see Venezuela.   (Really--take a look. It might make certain claims about the 2020 "stolen" election in the US make more and less sense.)

It's interesting of course, that Jair Bolsonaro himself is in Florida at the moment. I don't think this riot is supposed to be successful, just demonstrative of the destructive ability of rumor and political fuckery. It's a warning to take seriously. And I believe that the success of any crackdown will also be used as propaganda, just the way Trump is using "Ashli Babbitt" as a martyr figure in his re-telling of the disgraceful activity of 1/6. 

Fascism has a lot to do with grievance and the sense of persecution. I think one will see these themes in the follow-up to this. 

UPDATE: It doesn't escape notice that some of the signs are in English and have "We want the Source Code" and "#BrazilWasStolen" and "#BrazilianSpring"--this keeps alive the idea of some voting machine irregularity and is intended for an international (probably specifically a US) audience.

Trumpism is Exactly What You Think It Is

 

On the same day it is reported that he received limited immunity to testify in the documents case against Trump, Kash Patel calls for defunding the FBI and DOJ. pic.twitter.com/BQ7mbeV4FJ

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) November 3, 2022

Defund the federal police? So much for law and order! 

Kash Patel is a TrunpWorld creature.  He won't be a very forthcoming witness against Trump. and will likely test the limits of his limited immunity based on the things his toady-ass won't say. 

So what else do we know about TrumpWorld--besides they settled over abusing protesters?  Because the voir dire process kept showing that regular folks hated Trump so much they couldn't sit on a jury. Because they hated him. So much. 

In other TrumpWorld exploits, we see Kari Lake, Qanon flake, campaigning with Bannon. 

The historical references were flying in Arizona on Tuesday night:

Gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake (R) introduces former Trump adviser Steve Bannon as "a modern-day George Washington." pic.twitter.com/Z8Al3yuLxG

— The Recount (@therecount) November 2, 2022

Yuck. The only reason she has her lane is because she can stupidly, smoothly, blandly in a deep mature woman voice tell people maybe Trump won and maybe Democrats eat babies. She is a polished turd who is lying her playing for time ass off. Fuck her entire turd polished face and camera lens.  But more than that fuck Bannon for scraping bottom like this. If you want to be a general of a movement, pick better lieutenants who aren't gobbling imbeciles. 

So what about twits like Bolduc in NH?

NEW: Don Bolduc- only to @NBCNews says the school he accused of using litter boxes for children who identify as animals needs to "prove" the claim wrong.
He tells me a parent and a student told him it was happening and he is "not backing down." pic.twitter.com/s7CLx09uu2

— Ryan Nobles (@ryanobles) November 2, 2022

Even Joe Rogan relented on this stupidity.  Does Trumpism literally mean sticking with any lie, no matter how dumb? Being a conspiracy dumbass for yucks? Being someone no one should take seriously? 

I mean, maybe? 

After all, TrumpWorld's Michigan candidate is all about the blood libel. That is obviously some signifying bullshit. 

These aren't good candidates for office, they aren't reality-accepting people, they don't have real-world plans. but they are loyal to Trump. And they also live in a completely batshit alternate universe. Which also is sketchy and sometime extremely bigoted. 

If you wanted a good overview of Trumpism--you don't need to look any further than who he inspires.

TWGB: The Call Came From Inside the White House

 

So here's a funny thing--the batshit idea that dead Hugo Chavez elected Joe Biden from beyond the grave by being backdoor-hacked into the Dominion voting machines is apparently a whole thing once authorized under the White House auspices. Like, Pete Navarro, the dude who openly admitted to the Green Bay Sweep plan, was the boss of the office where someone, somehow, determined that maybe foreigners could be fucking with the election. 

Wow. 

That feels convenient. 

It's almost like someone used the office of the presidency to construct a narrative where the election was invalid because they already knew they would not win outright, and wanted to create a distraction that would arouse partisans to their fabricated cause.

The idea was so weird that they couldn't decide who to consider the plausible author of it.

And this thing was apparently worked on before the election, but wasn't used to halt the election or create an amendment to how it was carried out, just to provide a cloak of fuckery when Trump ultimately lost.

He was always going to lose based on the polls, but I guess hope springs eternal in the mind of the true-believer? 

Long story short: I guess Trump used the office of the presidency to also create a basis for the lie that the voting machines were wrong, just in the same way he encouraged lawyers to create a narrative for invalidating the vote, and ultimately, put into play a narrative where Pence would have a justification to  follow the Eastman plan. Trump and his supporters seem to be anathema to the concept of democracy. 

Trump needs to be held accountable for any violations of the law, but I don't know how to correct the culture that was so willing to overthrow democracy for the sake of this ignorant and arrogant person. He is and was a dumbass and hardly a person I would sacrifice any principle for. 

I guess many Republicans felt differently. 

One People and One True Church?

 

So, bear with me, because Mike Flynn has spared you from my explaining why Mark Thiessen,* who employs Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason to mean something along the lines of "music critics hate music" and fumbles around his actual Golden Rule refinements to create a general code of ethics (a categorical imperative) to imply that one of the most influential philosophers of the 18th century actually meant objective reality is bullshit so just make shit up as you go along to satisfy your needs--which might describe how Thiessen became a torture apologist, but doesn't really sort out how people experiencing actual privations came to identify the source of their privations and, by means of historical review, call them out. 

But I can switch off from the obvious bad faith train of somehow MSM-published and wildly intellectually bankrupt Thiessen, the Ed Gein of anti-intellectual elites: he dresses up in the skin of intellectualism to mock it. After all, we have people willing to actually burn heresies in the form of books--a bonfire of the vanities, if you will. Why use words at all, if fire will do? Look at the willingness of so-called conservatives to burn books. This is not just because of the backlash at education because of anti-CRT astroturfing, but also because they are concerned with children being exposed to LGBT characters and history. But it has been said that where people would burn books, they would burn people. 

So what does this have to do with Mike Flynn? Mike Flynn, recently suggested that the US should exist under one God. Presumably the Christian God. What does that even mean for non-Christians in MAGAland? Mike Flynn wants Christian soldiers for his version of the future of America. Which is an America in which the 1stAmendment means nothing and military law is always around the corner.