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:

Welcome to the TrumpWorld Kakistocracy

 

Did you know that being a deer in the headlights "Me and My Shadow" fig leaf for El Cofeve might get you a berth as head of Homeland Security? Yep. Kristi "We Also Kill Dogs" Noem has gotten a little promise from the ship of state she chose to barnacle on. I guess it is something she promises beyond supporting Trump in his momentary "Swaycation" from a rally where he momentarily found himself beyond words. I'm trying not to think it's because she put a half roll of quarters in his front pockets and offered to make change. 

You know, if right wing fuck for brains want to pretend Kamala Harris slept her way to the top, there is no end to the fucktacular permutations amongst RW personalities permissible--especially if they have already demonstrated being down like a clown. I presume Marco Rubio's exceptional capacity for supine boneless nuggetry has enhanced his likelihood for being chosen for Secretary of State. I can also foresee his being eventually "You're Fired'd" after giving up a guaranteed lifetime Senate seat. Compared to the other Sec of State possibilities he seems like the least worst--so there has to be a catch. 

The Weird Problem

 

Some conservatives are pushing back on claims that JD Vance and Donald Trump and maybe a lot of other Republicans are "weird"--but I'm sorry, it is what it is. I get that Republicans have put a lot of stock in saying they represent "Real America (TM)" and the cosmopolitan Big City Lefty Liberal Arugula-Eaters with Their Fancy Brown Mustard and Priuses and pronouns are oddball hippie Comsymps or whatever, But right off the bat, deciding lettuce, Grey Poupon and parts of speech are weird--is weird.

Being really mad at the Olympics because you were told Christianity was being insulted when the opening show had nothing to do with Christianity and demanding others agree with you--is weird.

Smashing coffee makers or shooting cases of Bud Lite because a talk show host told you to be mad is weird. 

Pretending to be a party of small government but wanting to track women's menses, stop them from travelling, or wanting to take inventory of people's pee parts before they can use a public restroom, is weird.

Wanting women to carry dead fetuses is weird, and ghoulish. 

The Freedom to do What, Nikki Haley?

 

Asked what caused the Civil War, Nikki Haley refuses to mention slavery: “What do you want me to say about slavery? Next question.” pic.twitter.com/cEMW3Cn9ku

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) December 28, 2023

It shouldn't have been considered a trick question, but we know that for Nikki Haley, it kind of is. Here's the exchange:

Q: What was the cause of the United States Civil War?

 Haley: Well, don’t come with an easy question or anything. I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run. The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do. What do you think the cause of the Civil War was? 

Q: I’m not running for president. I wanted to hear you view on the cause of the Civil War. 

Haley: I mean, I think it always comes down to the role of government. We need to have capitalism, we need to have economic freedom, we need to make sure that we do all things so that individuals have the liberties, so that they can have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way. 

Q: Thank you. In the year 2023, it's astonishing to me that you'd answer that question without mentioning the word “slavery.”

 Haley: What do you want me to say about slavery?

Q: You've answered my question. Thank you.

 Haley: Next question.

The freedom to do what? The articles of secession of South Carolina and all the other Confederate states make it clear--to hold other people in slavery, which is not freedom for the people held in slavery. The proponents of slavery certainly considered it an issue of economic interest, to their mind perhaps, "economic freedom". But enslaved individuals certainly had no right to "be anything they want to be."

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.)

Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?

 

(A post also to be known as "Republicans in Disarray.) 

I don't know why I'm leading with the story that a resolution from Matt Gaetz drafted September 15th was found under a baby changing table in the restroom underneath the House floor.  I guess it's because of my astonishment that we didn't hear about such a resolution like, Friday. And who left it behind? Maybe Gaetz himself, setting up the changing table with a couple parallel o' grams of Bolivian Borax to chase away the Floridian palmetto bugs in his high-rise skull? I know Gaetz was opposed to McCarthy even being Speaker like he was a new stepdad threatening to be the boss of him. 

And of such drama is the current House GOP currently made. They can't pass a resolution on Pentagon spending. None of them know what they want. They want to cut the spending. They want to fund border defense. They want to strengthen the defense but maybe not fund aid to Ukraine (the Moscow Marge Caucus, I guess you'd call it). Kevin McCarthy can't count votes and he doesn't count in uniting his troops. And I seriously don't know who is supposed to be Speaker for the GOP if McCarthy isn't. Scalise? Maybe they don't want nobody to be the Boss of Them. 

They just want to shut down the government for no good reason and impeach the Democratic president for no good reason the year before the presidential election? Is that so wrong?

(YES?)

What it means is they can't govern. But take heart!

Um, Trump is the leader of their party and a hapless fuckwit, also, too. It seems like, while in my heart of hearts I wanted Trump's document investigation to reveal selling secrets or something very dire, the bare reality is Trump just apparently took boxes of paper to save trees, because clearly, there were clean bits you could still use. All of this lovely notepaper for grocery lists and whatnot--says a Mar-a-Lago employee. 

And the material is back in the hands of the government to review with his peculiar Sharpie handed seismic handwriting and all. He also obstructed justice by telling his secretary she didn't know anything about the boxes she saw, just like nobody was supposed to know about all the boxes. Of all the stupid, stupid things. 

Unqualified Shitheadery

 

Vivek Ramaswamy says he'll pardon Donald Trump "Because that will help reunite the country,”

Vivek Ramaswamy will never be president.
(Video: ABC News) pic.twitter.com/IkIXLXHkRN

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) September 3, 2023

Yeah, no. The idea that pardoning Trump would "unite the country" is dumb as hell. It already assumes that most people want him to be pardoned, and I don't think they do. He lost the 2020 elections and the upcoming trials are not going to be pretty for him. But if most people did, and there was nothing absurdly, obscenely wrong with any of Trump's activities:

Why is your stupid ass running against him in the Republican primary, then? And the same question goes for the fools who raised their hand to say they would vote for Trump, if he was the 2024 primary winner, and was also convicted of any of his 91 charges.  Once again--what is the play? Are they praying for a meteor strike? Do they think the King of the Hermit Kingdon of Mar-A-Lago is going to stroke out on a gilded toilet passing a big greasy hamberder very conveniently in March 2024 or thereabouts?

For that matter, when Tucker Carlson darkly suggests that Trump is likely to be the recipient of a hit, aren't we all pretty well aware it would benefit his would-be Republican successors far more than it would Democrats? 

Nothing New Under the Florida Sun

 

Ryan Christopher Palmeter, the white gunman who shot and killed three Black people at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida was a 21-year-old who bought his guns legally and had no criminal history, local law enforcement said https://t.co/iXp0cIgwMo

— Reuters (@Reuters) August 28, 2023

The oft-repeated social media line is that Ron Desantis is coming back to Florida to address a tragedy that he doesn't want students to learn about the origins of in class. It's true, though. The slaying of 3 Dollar General patrons due to a racially-motivated murder spree, happened near to the anniversary of a race riot where white people went crazy in response to a lunch counter civil rights protest.* Like the Parkland shooter of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas HS, this young man painted swastikas on his rifle. It was meant to send a domestic terrorist message. 

We Hate Coups, Don't We?

 

So, this was the day I was supposed to talk about the Republican GOP primary debate, but it got overshadowed--not by Trump and Tucker Carlson's little thing, because Trump is a mental case and just recounts the same stories, so Tucker Carlson just looks like he's shepherding Grampy through his one-sided and possibly delusional reminiscences, but by news earlier in the day regarding the slow art of vengeance wrought on the coup-plotter in Russia: Yevgeny Prigozhin.  

No tears here from yours truly, because while Putin was clearly looking for a coup, Prigozhin was nonetheless the guy driving the US election interference that got us Trump.  And that's obviously not something I love. He was a dirty merc war criming SOB. And while it isn't exactly corroborated, this looks like a cowboy job from Putin. A two-months to the day sentence to let us know where it came from, through straight up explosion. It's out there reverberating and sending a message to people who were still in the field for Wagner. 

What else would we suppose is up with that? The DNA says Prigozhin is dead, and so is his very-Nazi looking associate, who looks like he can't even be dead because he was started in a mad scientists' lab. 

So um. Russia showed what can happen to people whose reach got beyond the grasp of an actual strongman. It's worse than a little old surrender to the jailhouse, right? They might not be able to do all the things they used to (lunar landings, invasions), but there's one thing they still are fine at. 

And we just had a debate where a whole US party failed to clean up after the obvious coup guy they should have had in their sights. 

Just saying. 

Feeling Petty About Ramaswamy

 

What Vivek Ramaswamy said last night regarding his quotes to the Atlantic about 9/11 compared with the audio that disproves his claim that he was misquoted. pic.twitter.com/FXNJjRovJ8

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) August 23, 2023

So anyway, last night, our lad was like "Caitlin, Caitlin, Caitlin" about being called out for being a regular humbug.  Just a total condescending, deflecting, argumentative self-justifier. He went on to call her a "petulant teenager" for calling him out when she had performed a act of journalism on him.  Which is fun and sexist and totally for the bros and everything, but I think I know what he reminded me of:

He could stand to grow up a little if he wants to do this politics thing. Maybe he could try not even thinking he should start from the top. Maybe run for mayor of Uphisass City. Population, himself.

Also speaking about his being a CEO did you know he was getting sued?  I think the Trump Handbook says you are supposed to claim "election interference" as a defense, but I don't know if that is a real thing. 

Vivek Ramaswamy is Running for Guy with a Book, Or Something

I never heard of Ramaswamy before he decided he was going to run for president, and for a little while there, I kept forgetting who he was. And then I would be like, "Oh yeah! That tech capitalist dude running in the 2024 primary." And then I'd go back to ignoring his existence. That time felt good. But I'm tired of looking at him, now.

See, the GOP is going through some things. Their obvious front-runner for 2024, Donald Trump, is under four going on umpteen indictments for infinity counts, and that feels like a guy who, at what a judge just recently described (Kaplan, in a rejection of a frivolous suit re: his sexual assault of E. Jean Carroll) an "advanced age", might not exactly prosper in a grueling campaign schedule that includes all of his various criminal trials and a campaign fundraising effort that is largely going to legal fees leaving who knows what over for actual campaign stuff. 

Their former number two, previously believed to be formidable challenger Ron DeSantis, turns out to be an awkward and unlikeable stiff whose culture war machinations work well enough in the Free People's Republic of Floridastan, but look fucking quaint and actually shambolic among people who give a shit about politicians who, well, look like they actually give a shit. Ron looks like a man who gives a shit about running for president and has no idea why. It's the killer resume item that prepares him for nothing at all, in the same way Trump wanted to be president to check something off of a bucket list. Neither of them seem to give a fuck about what actually happens to people or making life better for anyone. It's "checking grievances" and "power for power's sake" all the way.