TWGB: It's Raining Shoes!

 

It certainly has been a minute, hasn't it? So, what brings me out of self-imposed blogging exile, if not something very relevant to my obsessions? Is it that the POTUS's favorite she-pimp seems to be getting favorable treatment, with the expectation of more of the same? Well sure, that's pretty heinous, given what she has done, and you would certainly be right to wonder why, but there's of course more, because this is TrumpWorld--and of course, there are emails, lots of them, indicating Trump knew about the girls. 

I don't think any mature rational person, knowing what we know about Trump and women (and girls) who isn't pretty sure how well he knew either--it was not a well-kept secret.

But if you know me by now, you know all roads go back to Moscow. Or really, anywhere kompromat on this scuzzy, flabby-brained bag of crapulence can damage this country's national security. Because fine, MAGA does not give a tiny, constipated shit for women and girls--understood. From "Moses Mike" Johnson to the lowest Q-creep, they can pretend to moralize all they want, but at the end of the day, they can, will and do compromise their morality for the sake of politics. 

But Epstein was letting the Russians know what of course they already knew--how to handle Trump. Epstein was talking with the Russians and people in Trump's circle at a period of time that is MIGHTY inconvenient. 

Makes you wonder, doesn't it? I don't want to wonder, though--we need to see what else in in these Epstein files, and not whatever version has been redacted to death (so we have heard). The American people deserve the truth. 

(As for me, I'm still writing--I'm doing my usual November poetry challenge. )

TWGB: Putting us on the Map

 

You know, maybe Trump can't end Russia's war in Ukraine with a phone call, or bring the hostages home from Gaza, or really do anything at all in the Middle East except make things worse, and maybe he won't bring down grocery prices and it's a whole lot to think he'll do much about fuel prices, but maybe he and his magic Sharpie can change the map! 

The Gulf of Mexico was the Gulf of Mexico, before there was a USA. If we have a national security issue regarding Greenland, well, we have had an air base there since 1943--Pituffik, formerly known as Thule. (Does he think it went away because the name changed? He seems to have a problem with accepting that military bases can change their name but still exist. His sense of object permanence is fleeting.) 

Oh, They'll Get in Line

 

I can recall finally understanding what "elitism" meant to anti-intellectual MAGAs, and basically, it was them being told they were wrong or cruel and being made to feel bad by...anybody. It wasn't about class or education status--it was the idea that someone out there was gonna tell you you wasn't exactly as good as them. So there! 

So, in the H-1B visa debate that is roiling TrumpWorld, Vivek Ramaswamy seems to have been part of the mild fracas happening on X by letting US (White) Americans know they culturally weren't producing well qualified tech job applicants because they didn't rise and grind the way Asian kids do. Too many jocks and prom queens and peaking in high school. MAGA was fine with "pull your pants up and take care of your kids" lectures directed at Black Americans, but if you tell them that their four touchdowns in a single game for Polk High School doesn't qualify them for more than selling shoes, they are going to get Big Mad. 

And we already know where white supremacist Laura Loomer was on this one:

As the Worm Turns...

 

TrumpWorld has gained the endorsement of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. For what it's worth.

It's the endorsement of a conspiracy theorist who staged an accident for a dead bear cub, but not before posing with his hand in it's mouth, a man who allows it is possible there may be multiple claims of sexual harassment of assault against him, who had a brain worm because maybe he does eat roadkill--but vaccines are bad kids! and who is basically disowned by his family and his former party. 

TrumpWorld thinks this is a big "get". Or at least, they are advertising as one. 

This is what they mean by "winning." 

It was always a ratfuck. Bob Kennedy was always a rodent dildo. 

RFK Jr. and the Parasites

 

Although "brain worms" has become an amusing internet slang for someone whose cognition is more compost than mentos, I want to take the idea of brain worms very seriously. We just don't know what we might inhale or ingest from a swimming hole, a neti pot, or undercooked fish or pork. The risk to your health is real from a parasitic infection. 

And I won't reduce this blog post to scoffing at RDK, Jr,. (Rodent Dildo Kennedy, Jr.) to making fun of what might have occurred in his brain, what with the brain worms, the mercury poisoning, or the lasting effects of heroin abuse. And whether any of that contributed to his behavior regarding the suicide of his former wife. After all, it was his excuse for why he couldn't figure out how to pay his ex-wife's alimony, because his brain worms prevented him from stable work and all. And it could have very probably been through his own, miserable, small, licentious and shitty actions that his ex-wife lost her sanity and life from his pure selfish bullshit. That part might not have been due to brain worms but being an actual piece of shit as a human. 

But we are supposed to believe he can be president? Shouldn't he take a cognitive test, like Donald Trump has done, to let us know if he can tell what hands represent on a clock or which animal is a giraffe? Because admitting that cognitive effects can result from a brain worm infection and taking it seriously definitely means--taking that seriously. 

And if RDK Jr has a cognitive problem that prevents him from understanding that he is in fact, a rodent dildo, we can, of course, feel a bit bad about that. We can acknowledge the evidence is very clear to people with eyes in their head, and no worms whatsoever. Maybe the worm ate the exact part of his brain that would have let him understand that he is a spoiler that would help undermine democracy.

It also alienates him from most of his family. That has to be excruciating. (Still his quixotic run persists.)  Maybe that's why he spouts Russian propaganda and undermines acknowledged science. 

I can be moved to terrible pity. But I fear the result of people who continue to take him seriously. This revelation would be a glorious opportunity for him to recognize why he does not, in fact, need to run for president. He should spend more time with whatever family he has that can still stand him. 

Nostalgia and Nepotism

 

During the Super Bowl, RFK Jr's Super PAC aired an ad that put his face over that of his uncle. Just as they disapprove of RFK Jr's candidacy, several of his family members came out to note the ghoulishness and appropriation of the ad. As for the man himself, he's very sorry to for his family being hurt by the ad, and had nothing to do with it at all, at all, but here is is: his pinned Tweet. (Or it was as of the time of this blogging.) 

There are some genuinely silly things contained in all this: the 1960s, which this ad is a callback to, is 60 years ago. I don't personally have any nostalgia for it and that goes for a lot of younger voters. He doesn't seem to stand for the values of his honored and passed near-relations and is derided by his currently-living near-relations, so if he's running on nostalgia or nepotism, it seems like he had two strikes against him. 

But somehow the millionaires and billionaires who fund this campaign believe that this is the way to frame their old and strange boy. Where the youthful brothers' Kennedy gave us hope and a new frontier, in the 1960s, this addled Boomer is going to unite the country--with people like Mike Flynn and Steve Bannon.

Yeah. I'll pass.

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. 

This RFK, Jr. Person Might Be Going Places. (Updated)

 

RFK Jr's campaign is off to a great start

*cue Curb music* pic.twitter.com/JMyKF3pvNA

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 9, 2023

I sure as hell don't know where those places are, but he is assuredly going. I don't know if he ripped ass on this video, but it sounded like someone sure did. I like his declaring independence because he sure is. And I also love that the GOP got big mad the anti-Biden trap they laid is on them.  So Democrats mostly don't need to care, because the crazy is just going to expose itself. 

I love it when a Flynn/Bannon production does stupidly awry. 

UPDATED: Dennis Kucinich has left the campaign and has been replaced by Kennedy's daughter-in-law.  Some speculation exists that RFK Jr. was too nutty for Kucinich, but that hardly feels right. I think probably has a lot more to do with Kennedy's switch from being a Democratic chaos agent to a freelance chaos agent. Also, Kucinich has long been a critic of Israel, and despite having said anti-Semitic things, RFK JR. is pro-Israel, so maybe recent events brought things to a head. 

TWGB: The Bride at Every Wedding

 

The highlighting of the above screenshot is courtesy this Tweet from Ben Collins, wondering what exactly Trump is doing here. But I'm the idiot who does TrumpWorld Grab-bags, so I know. He's too clever for us, is Trump. He can't scarper. He won't go scuttling away in the dead of night--why no! he's too famous for that! He won't go abseiling down the wall of the tower he will, Rapunzel-like, be held in. Not even if you gave him enough cable.

He's thinking about it though. Does he think Daddy Vladdy has an extraction team ready to escort him to a well-appointed dacha? Because it isn't 55 years ago, and Russia can't even invade neighbors or land spacecraft on the moon like they used to. They tie up loose ends a very different way now. (He's 90. I mean nothing by this. Of course, I don't. Also...) 

What Trump is saying is "poor, poor, pitiful me" because he is far too rich and famous to disappear and that's just an incredible burden. He's too recognizable--what is he to do, shave his head? Wear sweats? Quel dommage, mais no. Even so, he's known from Jibib to Atlantis.  

Maybe Kushner has an in with the Saudis. I understand they can make people disappear. 

Am I being unnecessarily dark? Sigh. I am cutting up the revelations of the soul-baring of a narcissist who wants you to identify with his plight. Usually, it's only in banana republics a former leader needs to fear coming to justice for a planned coup. Usually, it's only in banana republics a leader plans one. He is, as Francis Albert (who didn't care for him, BTW) sang, doing it his way. And oh! the melodrama! 

Kennedy, Caviezel, and the Conspiracy Theories

 

I was prepared to just dedicate a little space to the "surprise" movie of the summer, a little action picture (I guess it's action?) starring Jim Caviezel (whose work on "Person of Interest" was quite all right) and which is just a bit controversial. You know, in the way that the movie is at least thematically related to Qanon, and Jim Caviezel is a big old Q-Krazy. As in, when he promotes the movie, he adds a dollop of adenochrome discussion which is a descendant of the gnarly old anti-Semitic blood libel, which itself can be traced back to "the Jews killed Jesus".

So of course it's being promoted to Christian groups and conservatives with a "pay it forward' scheme that seems to be plumping its box office totals, in rather the way mass book-buys aid conservatives on the best-seller lists. 

Now, as for me, I don't like to criticize art I haven't sampled and don't mean to yuck anyone's yum over wanting to see the movie--which may very well be worth it at the price! I'm just naturally skeptical over something that might very well be soft-peddling hard bullshit that misrepresents human trafficking and how to combat it. It also strikes me as really odd that just as focus has come upon the real-life group formed by Tim Ballard who inspired the movie--he's checking out for a while. That may or may not be anything sketchy. 

But I'd hate to see anyone fall unawares into any of the Qanon-related "rabbit-holes".  Or decide to freelance to combat human trafficking because they think they are "helping".

(I do have to say that this "raising awareness" of human trafficking with a look of earnestness reminds me a bit of the "Kony 2012" viral video from nearly a dozen years ago. I recall one of the makers of that video was briefly checked into a health clinic or something in the surrounding attention. And some very cringe music videos surfaced.) 

TWGB: Trump Doesn't Have to Be Explicit

 

It seems that people are wondering why the story that an armed man who participated in the 1/6 insurrection was arrested in Barack Obama's neighborhood after wandering about a school while armed and oh! the important thing--after Trump posted former president Obama's address to his Truth Social (which no one is flocking to in the pending demise of Twitter, and which has already accrued some insider trading trouble) isn't given more attention. 

I don't exactly know this for a fact, but it feels like the media have trained themselves to ignore that Trump is always crowdsourcing violence. He has been from the very beginning. The wouldbe gunman, Taylor Taranto, said he chose the school because it was close to the home of Rep. Jamie Raskin. Ponder that. 

It doesn't take some wild leap to recall Cesar Sayoc, who sent improvised pipe bomb-like things to the journalists and political figures he believed to be on Trump's hitlist. Or maybe this reminds you of the Pelosi home invasion. Or because this violent individual was also a part of the 1/6 insurrection, it can't help but remind you of those fools for Trump, doing his dirty work. 

On Name Recognition and RFK Jr.

 

Hey, just want to add for the benefit of the RFK Jr. Curious that he's always talking in front of crowds that include antivax neo-Nazis now. He doesn't care that his crowd includes neo-Nazis. He's doing lil-bitty labor schtick but he hasn't the least fucking clue. https://t.co/wRe311tlEb

— Vixen Strangely (@VixenStrangely) May 23, 2023

A certain nepobaby running (at the behest of Steve Bannon and Mike Flynn, because why not?) in the 2024 Democratic primary has insinuated the CIA might kill him.  Me? I think who you hang with matters.  And if you're an anti-vaxx dipshit who hangs with white supremacists, yeah, I have a huge problem with you. But I doubt that the CIA would need to bother, because this man is a danger to himself and others, but not in the way that gets you un-alived by spooks. 

Even though he's a fountain of Russian propaganda about US officials doing bioweapons. He thinks psychiatric drugs are the reason for mass shootings. 

He was certainly named for his father, but other than my belief his mother was an honest woman, I'd be hard-pressed to see either his father's intelligence oR compassion anywhere in this privileged puffed-up twit. I guess what I'm trying to say is--

He's not offbeat or contrarian or beating his own drum or whatever. He's an idiot. He's an idiot with name recognition because he got named for his dad. It really isn't deeper than that. And that he might get any penetration based on the name recognition from his ancestral betters, gone these many decades, is a thing shocking to contemplate.

And yet, can we doubt that if a certain former president were not part of a successful reality show for several years, he might not have done so well electorally?

(Read my Twitter thread. It has links.)

TWGB: The Target

 

We're on pins and needles, aren't we? I mean, news has come out that Trump's lawyers have received a letter that he's a target in the documents' investigation, and we also hear that the grand jury is considering charges for Trump under the Espionage Act and for obstruction.  We also are finding out that Mark Meadows has accepted a plea to some federal crimes in exchange for his testimony against Trump, which overlaps both the Espionage case and the 1/6 investigation--which has the bonus of so much admissible stuff against so many people he was texting with, like a whole lot of people. 

For what it's worth, even if the Espionage Act stuff (Two grand juries? with Jay Bratt whose deal is Espionage Act? Hmm!) seems like the real damaging stuff (I think it's bad, because it certainly looks bad), I'm not overlooking the possibility that Trump also eventually sees some heat from the 1/6 stuff, especially regarding the gathering of R. Congress people and talking to assorted goons to that fell purpose. (I consider Flynn a goon. Some people wouldn't but that just attributes to his success at creative goonery.) Steve Bannon has been subpoenaed in that matter. 

Am I confident that we're going to see some indictments in these things as early as this week?  Hell if I know. I know in the short term, based on what I see on the MAGA comments on Twitter, if it happens some folks are gonna be shirt-ripping mad, and then their mommas are gonna be mad they ripped their shirts. 

Fox Learns No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

 

Steve Bannon seemed pretty disgusted with Fox News when he spoke at CPAC. He said:

"You've disrespected Donald J. Trump long enough," Bannon, who hosts a popular right-wing podcast, said of Murdoch in remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference, which was heavily attended by Trump-loyal Republicans.

"Murdoch, you’ve deemed Trump’s not going to be president," Bannon added at the close of his fiery speech. "Well, we’ve deemed that you’re not going to have a network. Because we’re going to fight you every step of the way."

You can tell Fox News doesn't even respect its viewers, he also said: just read the depositions.

Funny thing about that, though. I mean, if you read the depositions, they show that no, Fox News doesn't respect their viewers--they are terrified of them. That's why they continued to promote election rigging conspiracy theories even though they knew there was no basis for them. For his part, Steven Bannon also promotes election rigging conspiracies on his podcast, but that's not because he's afraid of his audience--it's because, even if he doesn't dress like it, he has some self-respect. He is a professional propagandist.  

There is a Reason Kari Lake Lost

 

"There's not a darn reason we should've lost" -- Kari Lake comes close to admitting defeat pic.twitter.com/ek12xUjENy

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 24, 2023

But a recent news story tells us exactly what happened: she did it to herself.  

But according to the Republic, Lake’s loss boils down to the fact that she alienated vast swaths of her fellow Republicans, pointing to a recent analysis of the public voting records to identify the “disaffected voters” who support the majority of candidates from one political party but cast a vote for the opposing party in a specific race.

“The numbers show that while Lake claims she lost because of printer problems or other issues in Maricopa County,” wrote the Republic’s Mary Jo Pitzl, “she could have won had she not turned off voters in the state’s most populous county who backed a host of other Republican candidates”:

Or long story short:

Kari Lake Lost Because Nearly 40,000 Maricopa County Voters Cast Ballots for Other GOP Candidates, But Not Her

Because maybe she needed the "John McCain Republicans" she was so hot to deride.  Maybe she made it too easy for Katie Hobbs to turn down a debate by acting exactly like the radical that Hobbs wanted to depict her as. And maybe focusing on the last election--2020--cost her 2022 because she wasn't focused on winning, but what to do if she lost. 

And bizarrely, she's still in denial-land. She's still trying to appeal her loss. Her Twitter feed and that of her "War Room" share random data points that don't prove any coordinated fraud, and she sits and bitches about her loss with people like Bannon who shouldn't be touched with a twenty-foot pole and supports Mike Lindell (!?) for RNC chair. Or Harmeet Dhillon. Depending on the day you ask. Anyone but whoever let her lose. But she ran a campaign that doubled down on stupid and is now setting herself up to look like an election denialist kook if she runs for anything else. 

And I say "Good". Better we all understand who we are dealing with so that Ruben Gallego kicks her narrow ass if she runs for Senate. And maybe she is just taking a very dishonest page from her hero, Donald Trump's, book regarding the profitability of crying "rigged". It's a pretty decent dollar--that fake indignation dollar. 

It would be lovely not to ever hear from this crank again. 

This Man was NSA Under Trump

 

Michael Flynn today gave his assessment of Ukraine: “Russia has achieved all of their objectives, and they’re now exposing .. bio labs that have been in there sponsored by the US. The guy that just showed up to speak to our Congress in a sweatsuit should’ve been thrown out.” pic.twitter.com/4RMYZcDgif

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) January 2, 2023

I'm pretty sure Russia's objective was not to have what they thought was going to be a three-day's war turn into over 300 days, nor lose over 100,000 personnel in the process, nor be down to getting their missiles from Iran and ammunition from North Korea, Nor be facing severe economic uncertainty as their falling currency value leaves them between the inflation and interest rates so steep already pressed (or is it--press-ganged?) people are still unable to make ends meet. 

But Flynn is like a faithful little cobbler's elf clinging to his last, isn't he? I mean: bio-labs! Are we all this stupid? This is a guy who told us they were putting vaccines in salad dressing. So, he's out here giving off a Russian derivative of the busted Iraq biolabs thing the US was putting on to play up a casus belli for the Iraq invasion nearly 20 years ago? 

Is his opinion of all our intelligence that low--or is it just him? 

TrumpWorld Isn't About Democracy: UPDATED

 

Chaos Agent Steve Bannon on Bolsonaro’s loss: “He cannot concede. Screw Biden, screw the State Department, screw the CIA. F*ck em.” pic.twitter.com/1uHXZbxx9P

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) October 31, 2022

Here's Scruffy McBedbugSores announcing that he really feels like Bolsonaro needs to not concede a lawful election, because surprise of all surprises! He isn't a fan of elections that don't turn out the way he wants. So much like the 2020 elections in the US where he thought Trump should just declare victory.  Damn the consent of the governed--because one side will most assuredly be more aggressive. And he assumes it's the RW side. The macho guys. The fascists. And why does it even matter to Bannon, who doesn't live there? 

Because of a movement against democracy, and for authoritarians, where jumped-up know-it-alls who enjoy the smell of their own gas prevail.  Bannon has opinions about what a lot of countries should do. He's playing a game of Risk where other people are doing normal folk things like voting in their self-interest. Or trying to. And he thinks he knows better.

And Bannon has been off-gassing for a long while. He should be declared a superfund site and get cleaned up by professionals. I do not understand his appeal. I do understand why Brazil was a bit fed up with Bolsonaro--he rejects the law and science, and during Covid and the fires in the Amazon was like Nero. He was for himself. That is somehow not a good thing for most people. He was exhausting. 

Like Trump lost in 2020 because he blew off Covid and was exhausting. He wanted people to rake the forests to prevent wildfires and had weird ideas about windmills. Maybe flipperheaded fucknuts have no business in elected office. Just a thought.

UPDATE: It looks like Bolsonaro is doing something a bit more responsible to Brazil's future than Trump had done.  I know folks like Ali Alexander are going to be mad, and like, ok? I know I have a strong opinion about Meloni in Italy because part of my family lives there and my husband sometimes talks about us retiring there. What's Alexander's or Bannon's strong opinion about? It seems like a demonstration that elections are just bad and wrong. I get that people vote for wrong ones sometimes--(2016 in the US, anyone?) but that doesn't mean people having the choice itself is wrong. It's the disinfo, the fuckery, the threat of violence, that make the process bad when it goes bad. It's people letting their short term grievances over things like inflation and fuel prices or propaganda against immigrants foul up their ideas about the long-term consequences of bad, corrupt, or ideologically bent leaders. 

Democracy, at its best, is the corrective solution for getting the bastards out, even at the risk of occasionally letting some bastards in. This is why, warts and all, I think it is worth preserving. And why I think the TrumpWorld strongman model, which too often elevates people who pose as strong when they are intellectually low-wattage and would necessarily attract feeble, craven, toadying jerkwagons to their retinue is so dead wrong. 

UPDATE:  Ali Alexander spells it out--a stolen election is any one whose results he doesn't like:

"Stop the Steal" organizer Ali Alexander really couldn't make it any more clear: "Any election I don't like is stolen. ... If I don't like it, it's stolen. If I like it, it's not stolen. If you win, it's stolen." pic.twitter.com/c7wH50PHzV

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) November 3, 2022

As if we did not know. 

 

 

TWGB: The Wild Card

 

This was another one of those weeks where it felt like Trump was on the verge of a comeuppance. I'm starting to hate that feeling. It's the kind of hope you feel when you think Michael Myers has been finally shivved for good just before he bounces back up again. 

Sure, he was deposed in the defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll. I note that he spewed the same comments against her, now, as a private citizen, that he did when he was president, and kind of hope that means his defense that he said what he said as a defense of himself as the holder of the officer of president goes away, now that he has said the same thing as a private citizen. I also don't see any indication that he turned over a DNA sample. It just seems to me that if the DNA sample was the thing that definitively "set him free" from her claims, he wouldn't be loath to provide it--so what's the deal? 

There was a time when this kind of scandal might have rocked a political career, and still, the mainstream media treats this man, the one-term twice-impeached self-described pussy-grabber--as a completely viable 2024 presidential candidate, even while he is under investigation for stolen government documents under the Espionage Act, his business is under investigation in a civil case in NY, his conduct related to the 1/6 insurrection attempt is under investigation by the 1/6 Committee,  and his attempt to fraudulently disrupt the Georgia vote count is under investigation by a grand jury in Georgia. 

The Far-Right in Europe is a Global Mess (UPDATED)

I don't want to think about what it means for Giorgia Meloni to break the glass ceiling of women in power in Italy when to me it sounds like the breaking of so much other terrible glass elsewhere. Perhaps a "Kristallnacht."  I do want to think about what it means when US Republicans think that she is a great example of the fight against Communism and the kind of politician we need more of, here. 

Scalise on Meloni: It’s interesting to see that Europe is leading the way by throwing out Socialists with Conservatives and great bold Conservative women like Meloni and Truss. We need to bring that kind of conservatism to the United States” pic.twitter.com/Ln7XHCe24v

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 25, 2022

Does he just not know the difference? Or is it true that "David Duke without the baggage" absolutely does want fascism right here, right now?  I can't help but think he does. She supports Viktor Orban of Hungary, the focal point of CPAC and Tucker Carlson's wretched White Power Hour. 

Is she the worst? I don't pretend I know. I know me and the spouse won't be comfortable visiting the homeland with this person in charge and hope the weird vagaries of Italian politics make a new vote a thing in a pretty basic tick tock. 

We are told the right succeeds because the left fails to do more than point out that the right exists and is terrible. But the right does exist and is terrible. I don't know what the left needed to do because unless a party is in power, they can do little to demonstrate their ideals. But there is always the idea of defining their morality and highlighting the difference. 

I don't know if that is enough. 

I don't know why knowledge of history is so limited it isn't already enough. 

UPDATE: If I were Liz Truss, I would hate this comparison so much I'd go out of my way to refute it, and I rather hope she does. 

UPDATE: A further introspection into what the US rightwing (and other right-aligned folks) see in Meloni might be summed up in this meaningless, but buzzword-laden speech that seems defiant against an unknown "them" that is trying to deny people their cultural and family heritage. No one is saying Meloni can't be a woman, a Christian. an Italian, a mother. What an absurdity! Can I proclaim myself a woman, an atheist, an American, and childfree? I do. The existence of other people and their experiences don't negate my own, they start conversations. 

But what is Meloni's answer to people who are different? LGBT people fear for their families with her in a position of leadership, because she would deny them their right to be themselves, to be parents, to have their legacy and authenticity. Every right-wing claim of victimhood is a confession about what they would do to others--always. 

Trump Wants a Do-Over Because He's Not Controlling the Narrative

 

There's a reason I'm highlighting something stupid Trump has said from his FAILING! Trump Social app, which is very poor and isn't going to get better, and it's because he used to go "boom!" on Twitter, and people were there who listened to him and cared, and responded, even if he was kind of loud and stupid, and now he's only talking to the flying monkeys that his echo chamber incites. 

Anyway, in 2016, Trump has a killer idea to coordinate with Wikileaks and DNC email drops, because there really wasn't a lot of Clinton shit to be had. Wikileaks might have been a Russian op, but he didn't care. Later, during his presidency, he extorted Zelensky using already-approved foreign aid to try and get an investigation into Hunter Biden, because he wanted to dirty up his dad, Joe Biden, in the coming election. It was brazen. 

(We are getting an outline of whether or not this is how he rolled with respect to world leaders all the time.) 

Trump pretty openly was in search of shit to "get Biden" with through 2020, and it was desperately likely anything dug up that looked suspicious about either Biden was planted, or overhyped, and intended to throw the election to Trump--again. Just like the Russian disinfo campaign seems to have done in 2016. Trump was still asking for dirt in 2022. That's how desperate he is to get back into power. (Vanity Fair, in March of this year.) 

He was blatant about needing that leverage on Biden via his son to win. He really thought Hunter Biden was his ticket to re-election. It got him one impeachment. but he still thinks it is his answer to anything. Result: we have been here before. The laptop is beside the point. Whether Trump should be president or not was down to whether he was doing the job. (Through Project Veritas, the creepy right-wing hacks thought even going after Biden's daughter was a good idea, and no, it was not.) 

Who poisoned the well on the press not hyping the laptop story? Trump did by letting us know he was ready to do anything for that kind of dirt. It looked bad, and was treated as, well, suspect. 

The rightful winner based on the votes (this is how we do it) is Joe Biden. There is no do-over clause. There was no election interference, only an attempt to stop election interference in the form of the kind of disinformation Trump made apparent in 2016.  Trump can try to run for 2024, but things are a lot complicated by his history of insurrection, etc. now. And he did that to himself, too.