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. 

The GOP are Not Serious People

 

During a discussion about whether to ban TikTok, Nikki Haley called Vivek Ramaswamy "scum" in the third Republican debate on Wednesday, as the two presidential candidates once again went at each other repeatedly and fiercely on the debate stage. pic.twitter.com/lWXqHM7xAt

— CBS News (@CBSNews) November 9, 2023

You know, I only like one thing about Nikki Haley, and it is her palpable dislike of Vivek Ramaswamy because: Girl, same.  He's a smug know-nothing jerkface who says outrageous things trying to provoke a moment when he is way out of his depth but finds himself in an environment where people hear sizzle and think "steak"--not "flash in the pan."

She just isn't much better, she's only been at it longer, and that is the feeling I get about the 2024 GOP field. And Trump has been at making up shit and getting applauded for it longest and is best at it, and wasn't even arsed to be there so, DERP! He won. By sheer default. As in, he didn't show up, but, um, neither did anyone else there. Chris Christie attacked him--but from a little place called "too little too late." And while Nikki Haley said Trump wasn't right for this time, she never really articulated why or let us know if there was some PRESSING REASON for his not being right. And we all probably know she'd vote for him--right? 

As for Trump, the twice impeached and four-times indicted one-term wonder, he said his friend Lil' Kim the Rocketman, who sent him "love letters" was responsible for over a billion people. 

Trump, confused: Kim Jong Un leads 1.4 billion people

(North Korea has a population of 26 million) pic.twitter.com/yJua4sbG7m

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) November 9, 2023

He's maybe thinking of President Xi of China? But who knows, when this is a guy who thinks Hannibal Lecter loves him?  (Hannibal Lecter, can you believe? We're hearing more and more good things. A man of excellent taste.)

TWGB: The Apple of Putin's Eye

 

There might be some residual gasps in the collective politics-viewing audience at the idea that Trump doesn't want to do any debates but get over yourselves--Trump never did. I remember when he ran a weird veterans' charity telethon thingie that ultimately resulted in a settlement regarding his fake charity, just for the purpose of dodging a primary debate in 2016. (His kids were even sentenced to "how not to rip people off" school.) He never changes. And in his circumstances, why debate? How awkward would it get, after all, him with the two impeachments and four so far indictments and 91 charges? 

He of all people knows he has the right to remain silent. (But can he?)

So of course he has to give something in return to focus your weary eyes on himself, so he's sat with Fox News has-been Tucker Carlson for what will certainly not be just an hour or so of indulgent ball-stroking. I'm sure the taint will be involved. (Oh, my goodness! Was I scatalogically minimizing Carlson's professionalism? Fuck no. Everyone knows paying attention to the taint is essential good whoring practices.)

Where was I? Oh, anyway, Trump says the weirdest things in the friendliest of interviews--like when he just recently told us he was the apple of Putin's eye, and that's why he'd be able to finagle the deal to end the war in Ukraine. 

Marjorie Taylor Greene Has a Future at Fox News (UPDATED)

 

Listen to this mother, who lost two children to fentanyl poisoning, tell the truth about both of her son’s murders because of the Biden administrations refusal to secure our border and stop the Cartel’s from murdering Americans everyday by Chinese fentanyl. pic.twitter.com/HRD5SX0Td8

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) February 28, 2023

The Tweet has context added at the bottom, that the bereaved woman that MTG is exploiting lost her sons in 2020, before Joe Biden became president. So obviously, it must have been some other president's policies that were wholly inadequate. This would be obvious to you, discerning Reader of this blog--it isn't necessarily to Marge's target audience.

She even played my favorite game, so often seen on the RNC and GOP official Twitter accounts, of pretending that border patrol encounters with migrants and seizures of smuggled drugs somehow mean that the border is not being protected. How does that even work?

"Not talking" Never Occurs to Him

Trump tells Duterte of two U.S. nuclear subs in Korean waters: NYT https://t.co/1Q5g238lWP pic.twitter.com/o2BE3nZqTH

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) May 24, 2017

Yesterday, hearing of President Trump's phone call with Philippine President Duterte, the obvious jarring note was Trump's praise of Duterte's "War on Drugs" stance, which includes severe human rights abuses, including murder. And yet, he's also sharing sensitive information when it isn't clear that he has any strategic need to. It's as if it never occurs to him not to say whatever he's thinking about--and yes:

Trump told Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte Washington had "a lot of firepower over there", according to the New York Times, which quoted a transcript of an April 29 call between the two.

"We have two submarines — the best in the world. We have two nuclear submarines, not that we want to use them at all," the newspaper quoted Trump as telling Duterte, based on the transcript.

Trump's comments take the tone of a person who can't resist bragging about his "firepower" ("the best in the world'). It's like the fool has no filter--and that is definitely not a feature, but a bug.

Drone on, you crazy diamond.

I don't know why the reporting on Texas Governor Rick Perry's complaint regarding the insufficiency of the Obama Administration's border security misses an important detail--but it sure seems to.

See it is pretty interesting that Governor Perry wants there to be drones at the US/Mexico border, and it's very true that he's been saying so since 2010. In fact, it was a thing he mentioned a handful of times when he was running in the 2012 presidential primary.  But the thing of it is--we have drones at the border. We have had them. Since 2010.  We've been increasing the use of them, too.

Now, it is true that we use them pretty much for surveillance and not as a "deterrent", but I'm not sure what Perry is saying we should be doing that's different. They are Predator drones. They are the same equipment we've been icing terrorists with. I guess we could have more of them.  In a small way, I know that if we used a drone to fire on a drug cartel member, I would personally probably be pretty much as tear-free as a baby shampoo ad.

But the thing of it is--we do actually have drones at the US/Mexico border. We've had them since 2010. Thus far, they haven't really been a deterrent, as such. And I tend to think that if we fired on unaccompanied minors on the Mexico side, we'd have something of an international incident, so that can't possibly the kind of deterrent Rick Perry is talking about.

I sure wish I knew what he meant. I'm not entirely sure he knows what he means, though, so that's pretty even.

Why Is Senator Aqua Buddha Trolling the War on Drugs?

There are folks who claim there's a case to be made in favor of Rand Paul from a libertarian point of view, but I have had a hard time seeing it. For one thing, "libertarian" has become one of those nebulous labels that means what the people who use it want it to mean. For another, I'm not that sure how libertarian Rand Paul actually is--and by that I don't mean whether he wants to smother Big Government so that men can breathe free(ly of coal dust and who the fuck knows what else they'd put in the air without regulations), because you know he's on board with that. I mean I wonder whether he's in love with the iron glove, babies, and here's why:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has thrown his support behind legislation that Republicans could use to force President Barack Obama to crack down on legal marijuana in states like Colorado and Washington. 

Speaking to Fox News on Thursday, the libertarian-leaning senator said he supported the Enforce the Law Act, which has been approved by the House. The legislation would allow Congress to sue the president for failing to faithfully execute laws.

Now, follow my thinking on this--we have states that are copacetic with personal use of a substance Big Daddy Government is not okay with--and Rand Paul is in favor of a law that says Big Daddy must spank. That doesn't sound so libertarian to me. So what gives?

I'd say he's buying into the narrative that President Obama is some kind of tyrant who just makes up laws as he goes along, which is basically paraphrasing what Sen. Paul says in the article. But the thing of that is--it's bogus. For one thing, part of the reason that some Republicans want to go after Obama has to do with the the idea that he's strategically trying to delay parts of the ACA for political reasons--in other words, they want to force him to implement a law they don't like and many of them want to repeal! But there's a catch--that isn't even tyrannical on his part--it's built-into the law that there will need to be leeway with repects to implementation.  It's a little like the nonsense claim that he's a tyrant because of aaaalll those executive orders that...he doesn't even have, comparable to other presidents. It sounds great to the Obama-hating base--it's just not real-world factual.