Free Speech, Responsibility, and a Caution

 

I take potshots at VP JD Vance, as is my right as an American, and I do so only with a little guilt that he's a barrel of fish--a target-rich environment. All the same, something about him irritates me right in the patriotism.  I have described him as being if chewing on tin foil with a mouthful of fillings was a person, and I am not backing down from that. 

Take today as an example--he weighed in on Margaret Brennan asking Secretary of State Marco Rubio (a man chained in a dungeon of his own making, performing Trump's foreign policy while I guarantee you knowing better at any instance) if there was anything amiss in Vance's Munich speech regarding the "enemy within" and meeting with AfD where "free speech" led to the Holocaust. 

I' m going to help everyone out by stipulating that the Nazis were not big fans of free speech. They banned books, you know. "Un-German" books regarding different races, people who were considered deviant, people who were liberal or Communist. They would have really hated DEI. 

Feels Soft and Squishy

 

This is just a quick observation, but there's some overlap between the people who insist on men being manly men and mewling babies who are a-scareded of WWIII with Russia. Charlie Kirk isn't talking to Russian people in the above screencap (do they care who he is?) or even to Putin--he's telling his followers that what Russia is doing (invading Ukraine, threatening to go further, sabotage against European energy/communication infrastructure) is not their problem. People who want to do anything about that are the problem.

The question isn't "Do American people want war with Russia?" Of course not. The question is "Did the Cold War actually end?' and maybe not. The next question is, "What is Russia actually doing to us?"

Well, a campaign of disinformation, election interference, paying western-based influencers to spread RU propaganda, weakening our long-established ties with our allies...and the actual heroes in Europe--the people physically defending their own homeland with bravery and ingenuity, are somehow being treated as if they are "prolonging a war" by not rolling over for a genocide.

We had a great generation in this country that despised the idea of a genocide in Europe, who appreciated the fight for freedom and democracy. On the right, I see genocide-deniers and people who want to see we are not even a democracy.  I don't care for propagandists who have no moral convictions to even bother having the courage of, except possibly for culture war (a distraction, and a dangerous one that divides our country and weakens it). 

This sort of thing feels very weak and squishy to me 

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. 

When It Isn't Worth It

 

Mitt Romney said he was stepping aside to make room for the next generation. But here’s the real reason he isn’t running for re-election — and it’s a sad one…

Romney feels he no longer fits in the Republican party and he is physically afraid of his party’s base. pic.twitter.com/OvRprw9LIF

— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) September 14, 2023

I'm not going to be misty-eyed over what the Republican party has lost or make over-effusive praise of Mitt Romney because both things would be both highly disingenuous and out of character for me. I don't think it can escape one that in the course of his 2012 presidential campaign and in trying to maintain ties with the GOP's newly-crowned leader in 2016, Romney wasn't above the kinds of comments and sacrifices of his dignity that we associate with the Trump era of politics. If anything, his realization that Trump was a disaster that his party was all too willing to follow seems too late because Trump isn't that new--his is just the most-recent incarnation of where the party has been headed for the entirety of Romney's career. 

Of course, it's easy to view Romney as one of the "good ones" and appreciate his intelligent and dishy commentary on the perfidy, fakeness and fears of his Senate colleagues, but the reason he seems like such a stand-out is precisely because the GOP has become so bad that criticism of his own party and its members and taking a stand in favor of facts as if it were his job have become acts of courage and never should have been. Such behavior should have been commonplace. More members of his party could have tried it over the years and simply...never did.

What we've experienced instead over the years from right-wing media and Republican politicians alike is an extremism, ideation of violence and oppositionalism for its own sake from the conservative wing because a kind of positive feedback loop has existed that exacerbated the inherent paranoid tendencies extant on the right for ages. 

So, when Romney (or John McCain or Liz Cheney) buck that trend, even marginally, they earn some liberal admiration--and the enmity of their party. I can't like Mitt Romney more than a true MAGA might hate him for being insufficiently loyal. 

Being physically afraid of one's base is a horrific thought. There's something to be said too, for what one might have to lose of oneself to be the person who doesn't have to be afraid of or in opposition to that mass of armed maniacs. It seems that it requires a kind of moral lobotomy. When a Mitt Romney looks with disdain on the younger characters of this scene, the J. D. Vance's and Josh Hawley's, maybe it's with some recognition and rue:

It isn't worth it.

Yeah, He's Pretty Much on the Nose

 

our dive into the social media accounts of Allen, TX killer Mauricio Garcia. online, Garcia shared content from far-right extremists. he also signed up for a major incel forum before the attack. me with @MichaelEHayden, @MeganSquire0, and rachel janik. https://t.co/efjAEXQtz5

— hannah gais (@hannahgais) May 9, 2023

So, like, this is me being on Twitter instead of having a healthy middle-aged lady social life, but I notice that Andy Ngo and folks of that nature like the proprietor of the Twitter bar where I hang out and drink and poast think that Garcia's bio is a little too on the nose. Like in "total false flag exactly proving all the shitlib points" kinds of on the nose. I don't know. I'm just saying, the SOB's massive Nazi tattoos really feel like a weird degree of commitment to a bit if the guy wasn't a whole Nazi admirer. 

I'm going with--this guy is a whole ass Nazi. Yep, also entirely buying the incel angle and the Libs of TikTok and Tim Pool follows. Not sure what the problem is--so, just asking questions:

Are the deplorables mad that a person who expresses admiration for Dr. Mengele is a mass killer because I have some seriously bad news for them about Dr. Mengele?

Are they mad he makes their movement look bad as in now we know what their movement is?

Were they kind of hoping it was supposed to be a mass murder attributable to a POC and therefore one they could pin on libs?

Are we supposed to believe Libs of TikTok, and for that matter, cats like Walsh and Knowles, aren't encouraging stochastic terrorism when people like this exist, who are willing to do horrific shit because of what they sopped up online? How much exposure, clicks and likes and homicidal-oriented followers, should equal legal exposure?

Remember when MTG thought Texiera was a whistleblower and not a whole ass Nazi also too? Why is she always up for defending Nazis? Inquiring minds want to know. 

I wish right wingers wouldn't leap to their own defense so quickly before they tried to figure out why their side keeps being these guys. 

UPDATE: You know, this is the kind of guy who was at the 1/6 insurrection.  I mean, this was the kind of guy.  Aaaaanndd the type of girl.

Are we still confused by what we are dealing with? 

Fox, Untucked

 

You know, the sweetest thing about Tucker Carlson getting the axe was he didn't even seem to know he was on the block. He closed out Friday's show clearly expecting to be back on Monday, and apparently only found out he was going, going, gone ten minutes before Fox News officially announced it. So as far as the mutual agreement to part ways goes, it sounds like Fox wanted him to depart and Tucker Calrson wasn't starting it with the security taking his shit out of the building. 

So what makes a huuuuugggge cable media company part with their most recognizable figure? Oh, let me count the ways--wait a minute, how about I don't, but just suggest that the ledger, even if it suggested losing Carlson was a big loss, was nothing compared to his potential liability. The Dominion settlement was a big hit, the Smartmatic one promises to be even bigger, Carlson's former booker is suing, and Ray Epps already sent a cease and desist letter. 

Newt Gingrich is Saying What Republicans Think

 

I was just mentioning that Newt Gingrich is a huge part of the reason why you have to treat Republicans as potentially hostile, but Jonathan Chait explained Gingrich's influence on today's GOP more fully in response to Newt explaining to a fish-jawed Bartiromo that in the event of Republicans taking the House back, the January 6th Committee would be going to jail.

Jail? Is investigating a presidential administration's response and responsibilities regarding a terror attack (because the riot that day was, indeed, domestic terror), then why did nothing happen to House Benghazi investigators? Could it be that no random statute exists preventing Congress from investigating matters of government that concerns them? 

Gingrich knows that. He's also just trying to inflame public opinion against the committee and try to stop them from continuing their duty because he's partisan trash. He's creating that old "permission structure".  Republicans can have their riots, whether of the Brooks Brothers kind or the more army/navy surplus style one, but Democrats are barred from complaint. Democrats should be locked up.  Hillary Clinton, Ilhan Omar, Gretchen Whitmer, any of them.

But in lieu of jailing people for assisting the January 6th Committee, there is possibly, firing them: 

The top staff investigator on the House committee scrutinizing the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has been fired by the state’s new Republican attorney general from his position as the top lawyer for the University of Virginia, from which he was on leave while working on the congressional inquiry. 

The office of the Virginia attorney general, Jason S. Miyares, said the firing of the investigator, Timothy J. Heaphy, was not related to the Jan. 6 investigation, but the move prompted an outcry from Democrats in the state, who accused him of taking the highly unusual action as a partisan move to further former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to undermine the committee’s work.

See, Virginia just came under new management, and now they are clearly doing things differently there.  Like, banning mask mandates (even though masks apparently help!) and setting up a hotline to snitch on teachers who might be teaching thoughtcrimes.  So why wouldn't the Virginia AG get rid of a troublesome lawyer? It's probably what Ron DeSantis would have done in his fiefdom state. DeSantis has created a climate of fear, and it really shows. 

Republicans talk a fun game about free speech, but hate being talked about. They still want to be McCarthyites and treat dissenters (even Republicans who disagree with them, who are RINOS) as somehow "un-American".  

I won't call Republicans un-American, though. Staging coups and voter suppression are as American as Red Scares and cherry pie. I am just saying they are wrong and there is never any good reason to support Republicans ever. Their policies are bad and their tactics are bad, and I can't even chicken and egg which part came first. 

This isn't a case of Newt Gingrich losing it--this is who he is and what he represents.  And others of his party in the "comment section" of life say worse all the time. 

The Driest Eye

 I'm obviously not the intended audience for Kyle Rittenhouse's time on the stand, because in my universe, I would never have entertained the idea that putting him on the stand would necessarily elicit sympathy, so it would have been best avoided. But it certainly happened, and somehow, news stories got written with "burst into tears" or the like in them. 

But I don't see any tears here. He looks like he swallowed a hot chip the wrong way. He looks like he tried for a snot bubble and it came up dry. He even looked over to see if anyone was responding to his "breakdown". And I feel very mean for saying this, and you know what? My eyes are dry, too. 

This kid was in a state that was not his, with a gun he had no right to carry, claiming he was offering medical aid which he wasn't qualified to render, in a place where he knew there was physical conflict which meant possible physical threat, but was scared even though carrying that gun. He chose all the things that put him in this circumstance, and his heavily and genuinely weeping mother helped.

The judge appears to be in Rittenhouse's corner. The farce was capped off by us hearing the ringtone of "God Bless the USA". And he also might have been doing some holiday catalog shopping during the trial. That's how much this guy seems to have already decided how the case should go. He doesn't see the people Rittenhouse slew as "victims"--they are the wrong kind of people to be calling "victims". Implying some people are, well. You know. Fine to kill. 

I wish this opinion was a bit more rare, but I see Supreme Court Justice Alito wondering why people shouldn't be armed on the "crime-ridden" city subways, because obviously, shit is just looking to go down in these big cities. Whoa.  We got us a Bernie Goetz fan here. A guy who doesn't miss an opportunity to watch "Death Wish" am I right? (This is a whole part and parcel of our national gun-toting religion.)

See, my problem with this scenario is when the so-called "law and order" people start waxing heroic about vigilantism and extrajudicial violence, when they are supposed to uphold the Constitution which is actually very much about due process and not--that sort of thing. This is why I wonder with a sinking heart how the nearly all-white jury will look at the killers of Ahmaud Arbery. Will they suppose this was a case of a fouled-up citizens arrest? Once again, we have people, with guns, making decisions they had no authority to make, that even duly constituted authorities can get entirely and regrettably wrong. 

I mean, consider this: in a political system built on a framework holding the innocence of the accused as a value until proven guilty, the fatal result of the Charlottesville free-for-all is that "poor" James Fields' fault lay in being the first to ram a car into protesters before elected officials tried to legalize such a thing. Regardless of those people's rights to do....anything at all, Express their First Amendment rights to speak freely or peaceably assemble.  

And so we get to the conservative/fascist problem: the idea that the the law protects some, but the others can have order. At any price. When do we universally acknowledge the price of order is too high if it comes with violent oppression and valorizes privileged lawlessness? 

Not a minute too soon, if you asked me. 

Things Fall Apart

 

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and the Orlando Utilities Commission are addressing the media about a “unprecedented event” that they say needs immediate community assistance. More on the ask on @fox35orlando pic.twitter.com/6zdwdGxFvJ

— Dave Puglisi (@DavePuglisiTV) August 20, 2021

The self-reliance myth that some people tout, the fierce independence of a pig sliding on ice, the notion that people can choose not to vaccinate or mask because "It doesn't affect anybody but me" melts like butter in a hot skillet once you recognize that we are all out here competing for resources and some people have ensured that those resources are going to go towards the management (with possible dwindling utility) of a preventable disaster instead of just maintaining a functioning modern society. By the time we have people falling on the floor because they are too sick to stand, even a "free" treatment is more costly than the free vaccine and the cheap masks that could have prevented things coming to this point.

Any person in government who doesn't understand that things tend to fall apart without maintenance, and that pressures like a pandemic fill up ICU's, close schools, and kill citizens and should be addressed with firmness early on, is lacking basic common sense, let alone the leadership and knowledge to perform. And this isn't to pick on poor ol' Ron- Greg Abbot and Tate Reeves and others haven't been much better. But keep in mind this foolish and disastrous course isn't a bug of unfit individuals who have risen to high office--its a feature of conservative thought. 

Leaders like DeSantis don't necessarily see the problem, and will gaslight and bully reporters and dissemble publicly because you are the problem if you see the problem. And there it is. Leaving people like mayors and other officials trying very very hard to stop things from falling apart faster than they should be.

 

Later, Hater

Let's take a moment to consider the man that he was:

Rush Limbaugh was given the Medal of Freedom at the State of the Union last night. Here's a bit on who he is.

Viewer discretion is advised. pic.twitter.com/rWYbfnDThl

— Media Matters (@mmfa) February 5, 2020

Before anyone chides me for celebrating the man's death, let's get this stright, I'm deploring the work that he did. The man that his mourners are calling a pioneer of conservative talk radio was a divisive bigot, a misogynist, a homophobe, an man who literally screamed that a fellow human being was a slut for hours because she believed that birth control should be treated as any other necessary health care.

It may be true that he blazed a path for others, as Father Coughlin or Joe Pyne could have been said to have blazed one for himself--but I would argue that was never a good thing. He lowered the discourse and called it entertainment in the way an abuser knocks someone around and then says they were kidding. He fought against "political correctness"--a made-up term that means when people try to apply some standards of decency to people who have stepped out of bounds, by being hyper-political and seldom correct. 

Anyway, he normalized the kind of rhetoric that made Trump sound so reasonable--it could be said that generations of conservatives had received a Limbaughtomy and their frontal cortexes never worked quite right again. 

I'm not grave-dancing--he hasn't been buried yet. But in a small and nasty way, the tone of my blog probably honors him better than the megadittoes of people who should be asked which inflammatory statements they think furthered conservative thought and ideals, and that's more than he deserves.

He Heard It

President Trump and first lady Melania Trump paid their respects to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a crowd booed and chanted "Vote him out." https://t.co/M7m7kEIBg7 pic.twitter.com/tWYfyKIdIF

— CNN (@CNN) September 24, 2020

Trump can maintain that he barely heard whatever the folks in front of the court were chanting, but I simply trust and believe he heard, and he will continue to hear it. (Awake and also dreaming.) I think he was there to maintain the appearance that he can perform respectability, but the people who most admired Justice Ginsburg's work are also the people who most likely recognize that Trump is, in many ways, the antithesis of what she had stood for. She stood for equality under the law; he supports the law for some and mere order for others. (This is more particularly stated by Frank Wilhoit in The Travesty of Liberalism: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect...") He can pay empty respects as easily as make empty promises, but he remains who he is.

Being people who appreciate the rule of law and the importance of democracy, what was chanted there was not "Lock him up!", but "Vote him out!"--which has a meaningful difference. Trump's crowd wants vengeance for unspecified wrongs while liberals will settle for remediation of wrongs very well understood. I'm a poor liberal and I also want him to spend his post-presidency in court on the other side of the bench and looking up until his neck hurts.

I don't think he leaves his bubble often, or he would know he'd get a cold shoulder there. I understand that White House staff bottleneck information so that he doesn't become the recipient of too much bad news. I can't imagine what it must feel like to understand that one's presence brings down the tone of a funeral, but I'd have to understand that as a normal person. And I can't fathom how that registers with Donald Trump.

I know he heard it. How that registers with him, I don't know.

Who Let All These White Supremacists in Here?

Tucker Carlson announced tonight that he's taking a 'pre-planned vacation' just days after it was revealed that one of his top writers, Blake Neff, had posted racist and misogynist remarks on an online forum. https://t.co/uDKqqOnBxL

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 14, 2020

So, when I heard that there was a serious issue with one of Tucker Carlson's staff writers posting pseudonymously racist and misogynist trash, my first thought was "Since when do non-competes include hobbies?" But anyway, Carlson made clear that he did not think those statements Neff made on his off-time had anything to do with his show, damnit, but also, how dare you pious mammajammas destroy this young innocent boy who just had things to say?

Now, I am hardly blameless on yon internets myself. I'm a sweary little fuck and have not refrained from the occasional name-calling. But I've tried to be antiracist, antihomophobic, anti-disablist and pro-feminist in my language because those are my real-life ideals. I'm for punching up and punching Nazis. And I never make it about my IRL. And here's how our badly-used young man did his business:

Just this week, the writer, Blake Neff, responded to a thread started by another user in 2018 with the subject line, "Would u let a JET BLACK congo n****er do lasik eye surgery on u for 50% off?" Neff wrote, "I wouldn't get LASIK from an Asian for free, so no." (The subject line was not censored on the forum.) On June 5, Neff wrote, "Black doods staying inside playing Call of Duty is probably one of the biggest factors keeping crime down." On June 24, Neff commented, "Honestly given how tired black people always claim to be, maybe the real crisis is their lack of sleep." On June 26, Neff wrote that the only people who care about changing the name of the NFL's Washington Redskins are "white libs and their university-'educated' pets."

And over the course of five years, Neff has maintained a lengthy thread in which he has derided a woman and posted information about her dating life that has invited other users to mock her and invade her privacy. There has at times also been overlap between some material he posted or saw on the forum and Carlson's show.

So, the man used language that everyone ought to know is inappropriate in most IRL spaces, over five years discussed an actual real human being's personal life, and did carry that kind of material into his job-space. All really poor decisions, backed with the kind of privilege that comes from knowing that you might just get a pass if someone with a little credit will just hold off the horde with the magic words: cancel culture. But I'm gonna be that one and say, Tucker Carlson is a bad judge of who should and shouldn't be cancelled, because goddamn, the white supremacists with whom he has worked. It's like he has a little soft-spot for them, it really is, like the fontanelle never fused in his dolichocephalous little Aryan head.

Anyways, Tucker Carlson, for the moment, is going to be sleeping with the fishes enjoying an entirely previously planned trout-fishing vacation, where he can think about exactly what he's doing at FOX News and how he can keep it more on the down-low, thanks.

But I think we all get what he's about, right?

Let Us Prey

Right-wing pastor Rodney Howard-Browne is not about to cancel church or prevent congregants from shaking hands because they are not a bunch of "pansies." pic.twitter.com/C36kBIEWqF

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) March 15, 2020

I'm not sure if this bravado is more like snake handling, poison-gargling, or just a bit of fire-walking, but I'm also thinking that the pastor doesn't entirely know what it's more like, himself, he just knows it feels good, so he's doing it.

There's comfort, after all, in believing one's community and faith is bigger than something like germ theory, or the advice that "liberal media" gives:

“One pastor said half of his church is ready to lick the floor, to prove there’s no actual virus,” an Arkansas pastor told me. “In your more politically conservative regions, closing is not interpreted as caring for you. It’s interpreted as liberalism.”

Liberalism, science, being a "pansy"--it's all the same thing.

Stephens' Paradox

"Ashkenazi Jews might have a marginal advantage over their gentile peers when it comes to thinking better. Where their advantage more often lies is in thinking different," says Bret Stephens. https://t.co/XQngBOMqmQ

— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) December 28, 2019

The point of Brett Stephen's controversial (on Twitter, at any rate, which is where I live, more or less) opinion piece seems to be that it is the cultural rigor of Ashkenazi Jews with respects to argumentation, defending one's opinions, and double-checking one's assumptions that accounts for the intellectual success of the group--it doesn't really rest on any pure race theory nonsense that Stephens has actually linked to. Which kind of makes it hard to fathom, then, why he linked to it. The inclusion of the race theory nonsense actually weakens his thesis which is that there is a learned cultural skill that certain Jews have that has enabled them to be survivors and deep thinkers.

But what he's saying makes sense if you consider his representation of the argumentative intellectual as an exemplar--he's decrying the closing of the American mind, I think. He's taking in the occasion of anti-Semitism to warn us that people of minority intellectual viewpoints are also marginalized, too.

I don't know what this para is for:

At its best, the American university can still be a place of relentless intellectual challenge rather than ideological conformity and social groupthink. At its best, the United States can still be the country that respects, and sometimes rewards, all manner of heresies that outrage polite society and contradict established belief. At its best, the West can honor the principle of racial, religious and ethnic pluralism not as a grudging accommodation to strangers but as an affirmation of its own diverse identity. In that sense, what makes Jews special is that they aren’t. They are representational.

I think rewarding heresies is how we got the birther Trump, a climate science denier and all-around stooge. "Outraging polite society" isn't a kind of breaking down of a paradigm, a kind of busting of self satisfied gatekeeping. It is just asking for the right to offend regardless of the rightness of one's reasons. And I don't even think that right is what the argumentation and intellectual rigor of Stephen's mishpocha had been about. It's the right to offend that makes atrocities eventually spoken out loud slip into action.

The time was not ripe for this particular opinion because the time never is. There is a good argument for scientific paradigmatic explosion, but this seems to be about creating space for what is, sadly, old news, paradigms already exploded. But I don't even think this is the argument he's trying on, here. It really seems just like he's saying "let a certain kind of conservatism be what it is because some people are threatened anywhere".

Well, actually, all arguments are subject to rigorous criticism as a part of a healthy intellectual tradition, right? So I think I will continue to find it correct to brook argument with conservative ideas that are beat and broke regardless of whether the person delivering them is from whatever tradition at all. It's the least I can do to honor the best of that culture. And I also deplore the monsters that attack people of any faith or ethnicity for that artifact of their existence. Wrong is wrong.

From Christianity Today

From Christianity Today’s editor in chief https://t.co/NVdQjg4odC

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) December 19, 2019

I think the argumentation here is good, but I admit, I am not a part of this culture, so I don't know how influential Christianity Today is with evangelicals in general. I understand Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell, Jr. have already slammed it (but they are so associated with Trump that stands to be expected). As I understand it, this magazine probably isn't that influential with the more fundamentalist Trump supporter. It also strikes me that, as with the arguments of Never-Trumpers, this will fall into the category of heresy referred to as "elitism", which I have after years of struggle finally got into my dense leftist head to means, for conservatives, being morally scolded by anyone whose convictions one does not entirely share.

I also wonder a bit about an idea I have come across that some evangelicals may be a bit impatient for Trump to give way to President Pence. I'm a little more comfortable with my opinion on that--if Trump felt threatened that he was being shoved aside for a more palatable candidate, he'd bring Pence down with him because Pence appears to have been in the loop regarding the Ukraine scheme. I don't think Trump planned Pence's involvement strategically as a hedge--he just gets people involved in this business to prove loyalty because that's how he works--like the pitch that defileth.

UPDATE: Rest assured, Trump is having no more to do with this publication (snerk).

A "far left magazine"!


UPDATE 2: You think he's still mad, tho?

No president has done what he's done for religion, ever! The damned nerve! He's the American Constantine!

So, In Other Words, a Trump Rally?

Tourists say they thought the “Straight Pride Parade” in Boston was a Trump rally #WCVB pic.twitter.com/n3YdXjK9sG

— John Atwater (@AtwaterWCVB) August 31, 2019

It's no real big shock to see a big-ass Trump float urging people to vote for Cheeto Christ and "Build the Wall", because GASP! this freak show was really not about being straight, because people who are okay with their straight selves don't really need to take anything away from people who are currently, this minute, here in the US, still being told they can be discriminated against because somebody's God doesn't like them. That's not a pride parade, assholes, that's an end zone dance over people's lives, and yes, we did get to see some of that choreography during this hatenanny.

But, by and large, this was a not-so-friendly, mostly white supremacist thing, as the organizer of a similar (also sparsely attended) event in Modesto basically gave away in Freudian fashion, accidently calling it a "totally peaceful racist group." And so it was with the Boston event, thus, the appearance of chuds dressed as "Honkler" :

TWGB: She's a Real Pistol and He's a Son of a Gun

The new pleading from Maria Butina in the Trump/Russia, changing her admission of guilt from "not guilty" to "guilty", with the potential of a cooperation agreement, is apt to be down-played and misunderstood, and I definitely understand why. Butina was apparently very good at making friends and influencing people and a catalog of Google images with her and numerous different people in the Republican milieu  is uncomfortable extensive....to conservatives. Among people she has met with--Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal. Meh. Donald Trump, Jr. 

Wait a minute. Donald Trump, Jr.? It sort of seems that Maria Butina's status as an agent of Russia falls somewhere between Anna Chapman (who her handler indicates she may have "upstaged") and Natalya Veselnitskaya. I don't think it's far-fetched to consider her status as "spy"--she apparently successfully and intentionally infiltrated a known very conservative-oriented social political group with the intent of coming into the orbit of prominent political figures. Making kissy-faces at NRA politics has been a big part of the Republican party for yonks. 

And of course, people meet people and have all kinds of interesting international contacts all the time. But there is reason to believe Russian money got funneled through the NRA to the Republican party, and that the NRA illegally coordinated with the Trump campaign. A very worrisome thing is that the first introduction we have to Maria Butina regarding the 2016 GOP race is in 2015.   Meaning Russia already, before the primary had taken off in earnest, had an interest in Trump (which could have developed in 2013, or 2011, or thirty years ago--this is how far back Trump has had Russian involvement in his affairs).

And yet, Trump wants to allege that somehow, the connections are only being drawn to himself and Russia because he won the 2016 election. Not even close. The timeline on the investigation into the DNC hack started well before Trump ever won. But in the meanwhile, at least 16 Trump associates have been found to have been contacted by Russia, which is more than the "zero" he once claimed, and certainly his very own family's contacts should have been known to him. Not in the least because his family and immediate associates are a terribly chatty lot.

I mean, is it even coincidental that potential front-running AG pick, William Barr, who has written such favorable things about Trump's defense and delusions was previously contacted by Trump prior to his pick for AG as a possible attorney for Trump's defense? (Which would be a very good reason, were he to take the job as AG, to promise to recuse, that sort of thing being very ethically troubling. But I think he's a throwback nutter in several ways, so who knows what he'd do?)

In the also "funny, but that likely merits a recusal" vein, Jared Kushner (last seen bucking up Prince MbS from the "just killed a guy and got caught" doldrums) had met with acting AG Matt "Hot Tub Time Machine Bigfoot DNA Big Dick Toilets" Whitaker, and presumably sipped tea and didn't mention at all the shit he was liable to be indicted for. Because why would that even come up. right?

And this is why people like Nick "Silver Spoons looking got $50 million from consulting and shit MF" Ayers does not even want to be WH COS, even if that would be a really cherry thing to put on the old resume in one's mid-thirties. But the job is poison, now. Being a Trump-wrangler is not worth it, even with hazard pay. Even Mark Meadows has too much sense (as of last I checked).

I have said it before, but it stays current: This looks bad because it is bad. The Trump Administration has to throw lies after other lies are proved to be wrong, because the truth is not good. Other members of the GOP defend this for reason I can not fathom at this point, unless there is also leverage against them (real or imagined).

But the overall picture: not good. And among the potential casualties, the NRA now wonders if they are not able to survive, and are cutting things like NRATV "talent".

To which I say: "Good".

CPAC is Just Such a Sell-out Anymore, Man

It's like, there was a day when CPAC seemed like a fringe festival where conservatives could really let their freak-flag fly and you could see Log Cabin Republicans play cornhole in the parking lot with Tony Perkins and stuff, but those days just seem like bygones.  I dunno. I mean, when the US President and Vice-President show up--that's pretty mainstream. When Nigel Farage (who for some reason keeps coming up in the Trump/Russia thing)  and Marion LePen get thrown up on stage to represent their particular type of nationalist movements (fascism!) it starts to lose that unique loosey-goosey uniquely American flavor of bigotry I've gotten used to from the CPAC folks. 

It is, of course, a thrill to have Wayne LaPierre of the NRA pretend that the Democrats are basically the same as European socialists and also want to take all the guns and melt them into roach clips.  I mean, that's the hit of the true crazy that makes CPAC such a rare brew. Having Dana Loesch indict the mainstream media for loving to see crying white mothers after an episode of gun violence for the sake of ratings was sheer vicious hate-watching--of course she wonders where the crying black mothers are (I guess she missed the BLM movement?) and fails to consider that maybe the NRA doesn't mind that part of the response to these episodes is also an uptick in gun sales and a flurry of activity from their paid-for congresscritters, so maybe they profit a bit from mothers' tears, too. 

It doesn't surprise me that a comment at the Ronald Reagan dinner Friday evening specifically addressed former RNC chairman Michael Steele by race. One could definitely point to shortcomings during Steel's tenure in terms of RNC party spending, but I think Steele genuinely tried to depict the GOP as still a "Big Tent" (a Reaganesque, if you will) party, even as the Tea Party movement and conservative media continued to show that the party was whiter, older, very straight and Christian and uptight. 

This party is Trump's now. The current RNC chair changed her name for this president. He is extolled as a great Christian by the theocrats, and no amount of money paid to porn stars or Playmates will disabuse them of that idee fixe. That he is uninformed and patently corrupt can't bother them (they are much the same, thanks). But how boring it all seems when the lurid, racist, theocratic, misogynist, gun-humping and ethno-nationalist stuff is all front page, rather than marginal thinking! Even the hate against journalism isn't anything you wouldn't have heard the good folks at Fox News say night after night. 

It still seems a bit boutique at times.  Ben Shapiro seems to have a weird need to bring up transfolx as if "nuh-uh" and "because I say so" are valid arguments, as if many people weren't already pretty clear that lived experiences are a unique kind of truth--but at least he addressed the idea that Trump lies. Although he did it in a speech where the audience also did a "Lock her up" chant regarding Hillary Clinton, for reasons that in 2018 I feel are some kind of psychological thing.

I can't see the humor in their parallel Bizarro universe. It has become too much a part of our shared reality to enjoy a thrill-ride though the carnival, when some of us feel we are trapped in a funhouse with malevolent clowns.

Trump Responds to Porter News

“We certainly wish him well,” President Donald Trump said of Rob Porter, the White House aide who has been accused of domestic abuse. “It’s obviously a tough time for him. He did a very good job when he was in the White House.” https://t.co/T9XclJXPuOhttps://t.co/T9XclJXPuO pic.twitter.com/O2ldQLBJOW

— POLITICO (@politico) February 9, 2018

I don't know if we could have expected anything better from Trump than wishing the best of luck to outgoing Deputy Chief of Staff Rob Porter amid allegations from three women that he is guilty of domestic assault. Trump is sure to remind us that we should not forget that Porter himself says that he is innocent, which is something we could also say of Trump with respect to the twenty or so women who allege he has harassed or assaulted them. I will also remember that Porter said that Colbie Holderness and he were arguing over a vase, and she received a black eye because the vase somehow hit her. Vases are sneaky like that.

In his public statement, it can be noted that he doesn't mention Porter's accusers, which is just as well, because in private, he apparently thinks they are lying.  This is, after all, a man who has said that women should be treated like shit. He's defended serial sexual harassers and assaulters like Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly.  There is nothing breath-taking or shocking about Trump matter-of-factly hoping that the man who beats women goes on to have a successful career because he has given us no indication by anything ever said that he thinks any other way. When it was revealed that Steve Bannon might have been violent to his former spouse, he nicknamed him "Bam Bam".

Because it's a joke. Sometimes, in his mind, men just keep women in line like that. So maybe his staffer will just go on to better things, and maybe someday find a woman he won't have to beat on. Maybe Hope Hicks can be that woman--after all, he allegedly described her (according to Fire and Fury) as the best "piece of tail" Corey Lewandowski would ever have, which is both revolting and somehow what I believe Trump actually would try to bestow on someone as a compliment).  But in the meanwhile, he is a little miffed at Hicks for not, in all this, managing to craft a message that also makes Trump look good. (Rob Porter who actually abused his wives and a girlfriend?--Great guy worked hard, really sad situation. John Kelly who seems to have known all about it and covered it up-well, you know full confidence. Woman in an awkward relationship with a man accused of being violent towards intimate partners? Totally responsible for figuring out how to not have made this into a "thing", you know? Jennie Willoughby is worried about Hicks, and frankly, so am I. )

This White House is basically soaking in misogyny. Another person working there, a speechwriter, has resigned for domestic violence allegations as well.   But this is reflective of the man at the top. These are the people he has around him for reasons. They are not good reasons.

He Watched Fox News

Wow! -Senator Mark Warner got caught having extensive contact with a lobbyist for a Russian oligarch. Warner did not want a “paper trail” on a “private” meeting (in London) he requested with Steele of fraudulent Dossier fame. All tied into Crooked Hillary.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2018

So, there was a funny old thing that happened about a minute ago, where Julian Assange tried to slide some info on Senator Warner into a Hannity parody account's DM's.  Or, like, use other channels. This struck me as so hilarious when it happened that I mentioned it sideways in a TrumpWorld Grab-Bag thingy as a sign that old Jules was going batshit. But this Warner thing has apparently filtered from the Fox News mushroom feeding trough to POTUS--and it's wrong.

Actually, Marco Rubio put the kibosh on it, to his credit. This turns out to be just as "devastating" as the bombshell texts that were supposed to show that President Obama was keeping tabs on the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails, when he was actually interested in being fully briefed about the real national security threat of Russian fiddling with our elections (a thing Trump himself apparently can't be arsed to do anything about--has WH COS Kelly talked about his lazy ass getting this situation corrected enough?)

This reminds me of a study that once showed that people who watch Fox News were actually less informed than people who watch no news at all. Trump watches Fox a whole lot, it seems.  Makes one wonder if a president of a developed nation like, well, the US, could get better information somehow. If he could be bothered to.


UPDATE: From the Washington Post: he doesn't read the daily briefing because it isn't his "style of learning".  Who knows if he gets more value from the oral briefing than from his "executive time"?