Month: May 2020

FREAK OUT FRIDAY – MAY 29. 2020

We all know that Trump has no understanding whatsoever of the Constitution, the document that he falsely swore to uphold three and a half years ago in front of a far smaller audience than Barack Obama drew for his inauguration.  Since then he has sworn that the emoluments clause is “phony,” has falsely claimed that Article II gives him the power to do “whatever (he) wants,” and swore that he is going to do whatever he can to narrow the freedoms that the First Amendment provides.

And this week he has renewed his assault on freedom of speech, continuing his angle that has been parroted by dictators historically:  that the free press is the enemy.  We’ve already seen him open fire on his beloved Fox News when the right wing swinging news channel dared to criticize him.  Now, however, he has opened fire on the forum that enables him to talk directly to millions of followers:  Twitter. 

Basically Twitter dared to treat him in the same way that they would treat someone else who was violating their terms of service.  Indeed, if he’d been anyone else, they likely would have blocked his account and banned him from Twitter ages ago for his incessant lies, his name calling and his threats.   They flagged one of his false tweets about voter fraud, linking it to articles from reputable sources, and naturally Trump went ballistic.  He falsely declared that linking his tweets to news sources was the same as censorship, and unlike his sluggish nonresponse to the virus, he immediately swung into action and signed an executive order that targeted Section 230 which affords Twitter protection against law suits.  So basically he screwed himself, because all he did was give Twitter MORE incentive to carefully patrol tweets and make sure they don’t violate the terms of service since their protection would be minimized or eliminated.  If they’re worried they can be sued for libel, they will naturally delete any lies that Trump posts.  That whole nonsense about a non-existent cold case against Joe Scarborough?  Gone.  His baseless claims that Biden is mentally impaired?  History.  His contention that Obama committed the greatest fraud in political history?  Adios.  Through his own actions, he is removing any incentive that Twitter has to allow him to do whatever he wants.

His latest endeavor was this morning, when he swore he was going to send the army into Minneapolis, declaring that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”  Because when White supremacists run over a helpless protestor, there are very good people on both sides.  When armed idiots waving the Confederate flag show up in droves, shut down the government and threaten the Democratic political leaders, Trump applauds them.  But the moment blacks begin to riot, he’s ready to begin shooting them down.

It should be noted that if I did a tweet that said, “I can’t stand Trump blowing his own horn.  When the tooting starts, the shooting starts,” not only would Twitter delete it, but I’d likely be visited by the Secret Service.  A threat is a threat.

I suppose I should address the whole rioting thing, because naturally right wingers are loudly declaring that liberals are perfectly okay with people rioting and stealing while we strenuously objected to armed white people showing up and shutting down the government.  And it does seem that rioting and looting is an expected reaction associated with people of color.  For instance, when the verdict of O.J. Simpson was going to be handed down, Los Angeles police were bracing themselves for rioting from blacks if he was found guilty.  When he was declared not guilty, there was zero concern that angry whites would storm the streets.  Which they didn’t.   They just sat there, puzzled, while blacks cheered that they had for once gotten “white man’s justice.”

I’m not okay with rioting and theft.  But I understand it.  The attitude is likely that if they break into a Target and steal some televisions, well, the Target will repair the damage and insurance companies will reimburse them the loss.  And of course they’re right.  They do it because it satisfies their anger and their desire to strike back at the white-run system that doesn’t give the slightest of dámņš about black life.  “You take our lives, so we’ll take your stuff.”  Meanwhile, whenever they attempted to protest in a non-violent method—whether it was taking a knee at a football game or assembling in protest with no weapons—they were greeted with condemnation.  If you’re going to despise them no matter what they do, they figure they might as well hurt whites in the only place that matters:  the pocket book.  

Meanwhile a dark skinned CNN reporter was arrested while a white skinned CNN reporter wasn’t.  If that doesn’t underscore the pure difference in how whites and blacks are treated, nothing will.

And yet Trump, who has historically supported white supremacists and registered no complaints about whites killing blacks before, suddenly decides that the death of George Floyd—killed by a white cop—is outrageous and should be condemned, that the rioters are dishonoring him, and let’s shoot them.  The leader of the free world wants to shoot some citizens while he simultaneously rages against Twitter for daring to take the slightest step in holding him to the same rules they hold everyone else.

The words “I can’t even” have never seemed more appropriate.

Oh, and he is changing an environmental rule from the Obama administration so hunters in Alaska can now go into the dens of bears and killed their cubs.  

Just in time for Eric and Don Jr. to go hunting, I suppose.

PAD

It would be easy to focus on Trump because, as always, not a week passes where he doesn’t say or do something stupid.  This week he threatened two states because their Democratic leaders were endeavoring to make sure that people could vote by mail, threatening to try and withhold financial support because of their attempts to encourage election fraud. This despite the fact that election fraud is not an issue and absentee voting doesn’t tend to favor either Democrats or Republicans.  Basically he’s renewing his whole quid pro quo, threatening to keep help out of the hands of people who need it unless those people knuckle under to his demands.  And why not?  The GOP covered his ášš in January, so he believes he can do whatever he wants with impunity.

Which, so far, he can.  Inspectors General threaten to ride herd on him?  Fire them.  People testified before Congress over his actions or reported their concerns to their superiors?  They’re gone.  Walk around in public without wearing the face mask that his own people are saying should be a part of one’s apparel in pubic?  Screw that:  the press would take delight in depicting him wearing one, so why not risk being exposed or infecting others?

Because with Trump, it’s all about weakness.  He doesn’t want to appear weak in any way, shape or form, because to be weak is to be a loser, and he absolutely cannot ever lose.  Ever.  This is so much a part of his persona that he literally could not say that the tests he’s taken for the Coronavirus were negative, because to him, a negative test was a failure, and failure is a loss.  So he actually said, “I tested positively towards negative.”  This yutz actually has the nerve to claim that BIDEN can’t speak properly when his own twisted psychology prevents him from saying, “I tested negative.”  Meanwhile he continues to attack journalists, especially female ones, who have the nerve to ask him actual questions about his contradictions and vagueness.  Indeed, for some reason he’s started talking like Yoda:  “A rude question that is.”  I know he’s been accused of being a Russian puppet, but it was never intended to be a literal charge.

But you know what?  Screw Trump.  I feel like talking briefly about his followers.  

They are the ones whom experts have been describing as being members of a death cult.  Although they claim that the left wing is viewing the pandemic through the haze of partisanship, this is actually a classic example of something Trump does all the time:  Accuse the opposition of something that you yourself are doing.  Because the fact of the matter is that it’s the Trumpies whose perceptions are being governed entirely through the haze of cult membership and tribal partisanship.  They condemn Democratic governors for the unspeakable crime of worrying about citizens’ health and obeying the advisories of medical experts and epidemiologists while lauding GOP governors who place the economy above health concerns.  Meanwhile evangelical intellectuals are loudly proclaiming that it’s silly to elevate fear of death over spiritual concerns and that people should be ready to die if it will serve the greater good, i.e., the economy and attending services so they can donate to the churches.  

And the reason I say their opinions are tribal is because we all know that if Hillary Clinton were President and she were saying the exact same things that Trump was—that the country should reopen, that doctors’ advice should be ignored—the Democrats would be appalled and the right wing’s heads would be exploding.  They’d be demanding she be impeached and loudly declaring, “That’s what happens when you put a Democrat in charge!”  But no, instead they line up behind Trump, endorse his talking points no matter how stupid they are, and oh, do they hate Democrats.  Indeed, that’s really why they love Trump:  Because they believe he irritates the left, and it’s all about aggravating the left.  Nothing else matters.

So allow me to address their perceptions, their lies, their distortions:

We wanted to be proven wrong about Trump.  We really did.

We wanted our concerns to be groundless, our worries to be misplaced.  We wanted to believe he would grow into the job, that the whole racist, brainless thing was an act to get elected.  That he would rise to the challenges of the position.  That he would protect us, and would protect the United States’ position as leader of the free world.  That he could grow to be the man we needed.

We wanted our fears that, if confronted with a genuine threat to American health and safety, he would rise to the challenge.  

Why?  

Because WE LIVE HERE, you dûmbáššëš.  Our fates are tied in with yours, and we do not benefit from friends and family members dying, jobs disappearing, and businesses go bankrupt.  

We are not so obsessed with Trump losing that we’re happy that over 100,000 people are going to be dead by June 1, that the economy has crashed, that the entire country is spiraling down the drain.  Hëll, my daughter was supposed to attend a BTS concert tomorrow; that’s not happening.  Who knows if it ever is.  No one knows anything.  We’re living on suppositions, guesses and speculation, and we’re no more comfortable than you are.  The difference between us is, our opinions are not shaped by cult like devotion, and yours are.  You can and do hate us with all your souls, and by and large, we don’t return that hate.  We just feel sorry for you and shake our heads, wondering if there is anything that can shake your faith.  Apparently the only thing that can is if you die from the Coronavirus.  

Which you’re very likely to do as you hold your idiotic protests and ignore basic safety measures, strutting around with your guns to prove how tough you are.  You’ll infect each other because the virus doesn’t give a dámņ what your political affiliations are.  It’ll just make you sick and possibly kill you.  

To quote your leader:  Sad.

PAD     

Trump’s hatred for Obama, the—let’s put it how he doubtlessly thinks it—uppity black guy who dared make fun of him at the annual Correspondents dinner some years back, has been obvious for ages.  First he spent years claiming that Obama wasn’t born in the United States and was thus invalid to be president (which eventually he turned around and claimed that Hillary Clinton had asserted and that he had disproven through his relentless and thorough investigation).  Then, once the antiquated Electoral college ignored the popular vote and installed him into office, he has relentlessly and methodically attempted to undo every single thing that the Obama administration achieved.

It’s an impressive list.  He withdrew from the Iranian anti-nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord.  He terminated Obama’s DACA (Dreamer) program that protected young immigrants.  He has consistently undone numerous environmental protection rules, ranging from rescinding a 2015 law to prevent fracking on public lands to overseeing a GOP tax overhaul that eliminated a ban on oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.  Currently he is suing to put an end to the Affordable Care Act, because right in the middle of a spreading pandemic is exactly the time to end medical coverage for millions of Americans.  What he is consistently doing is truly unprecedented for the office of the presidency:  He is steadily and determinedly taking as many steps as he can to hurt the people of the United States.  Physically hurt them, damage their environment, and endanger their health.  Attribute it to whatever you wish:  His basic sociopathy.  His lack of any sign of empathy.  His syphilitic reasoning.  His fundamental misogyny.  The fact that he’s bone stupid.  Whatever reason you want to choose, that’s fine.

What it comes down to is that Obama remains far more admired than Trump.  According to YouGov.com, “Barack Obama is the most popular Democrat and the most famous.  Barack Obama is described by fans as:  Intelligent, Presidential, Good Speaker, Stands up for ordinary people and A leader.”  These are not words that are ever applied to Trump, not even by his supporters.  His supporters simply excel in insulting anyone who disagrees while declaring “Trump 2020” as some sort of mantra.  Pressed to apply any of those adjectives to Trump, they will simply turn around and toss more invective.  Currently critics are busy declaring that Obama should be locked up without bothering to specify what crimes were committed during his scandal-free administration.  And let us remember that it was scandal free despite incessant GOP investigation as part of its endless endeavors to make a reality Moscow Mitch’s determination that Obama remain a one-term president.   Remember when the big deal was that he wore a tan suit?  I love those days.

When Obama left office his approval rating was around fifty-six percent and it’s only gone up since then.  Trump’s latest approval rating remains anchored at forty-nine percent, and that’s despite the fact that Americans tend to rally-round-the-flag for presidents during a time of national catastrophe.  Indeed, the only reason it remains stalled at that number is that his support is stuck on partisan lines.  It literally doesn’t matter how many people die, Trump’s base cannot admit that they screwed up and backed the wrong horse.

Yet astoundingly Trump seems to believe that his best path to reelection is by reminding us about his predecessor.  If he had any functioning brain cells, he’d realize that he needs to stoke the popular calumny that Joe Biden—whose occasional misspeaks are doubtless caused by his stammer—is mentally impaired.  Remember back when Hillary Clinton slightly stumbled and people freaked out about it?  Voters love to take any display of weakness and highlight it beyond any scope of sanity.  So if he continued taking that tack with Biden, it might influence people.

But his hatred of Obama and his need to undo his administration overshadows even common sense.  So this week he invented a brand new scandal, “Obamagate,” and since then has been desperately searching for an actual charge for it to be about.  When pressed for specifics, he was unable to produce them.  Since then the conservative media has been fabricating charges related to Michael Flynn, the man who Bill Lower-The-Barr decided not to prosecute for his admitted lying to the FBI, thus sparing Trump having to spend political capital by pardoning the person he previously fired.  Despite the fact that Obama and Biden followed completely standard intelligence procedures, they are desperately trying to pretend that the two of them did something untoward and illegal.  Trump and his idiot right wing supporters are loudly declaring that Obama and Biden should be jailed, despite the fact that they can’t actually cite a single illegal act that they committed.

You know what?  I hope Trump keeps up this angle.

Because the more he brings up Obama, the more he’s just going to remind people that things were pretty okay under his presidency.  That his administration was scandal free.  That he fought to protect the environment.  That he created the increasingly popular Obamacare, which Trump has relentlessly sworn to get rid of and replace with a non-existent far better plan.    That he didn’t spend hours on Twitter attacking anyone who pìššëd him off, and never fired back at the people who questioned everything from his religion to his status as a U.S. citizen.  That he was a man who believed in the importance of America rather than himself, and that man selected and trusted Joe Biden, so maybe we should, too.

So by all means, Trump.  As the death toll tops eighty thousand…as it will be over a hundred thousand by June, and likely be over a million by the end of the year…you keep focusing on Obama.  You keep reminding us of the man who contained Ebola.  Who left you a sixty-nine page book on how to deal with a pandemic which you ignored.  Who is a far better man than you’ll ever be, and whose vice president may actually be able to start undoing the horrendous mess you’ve made of this country if he’s elected, despite your best efforts to short circuit the actual electoral process.  You keep at it.

See how much good it does you.

PAD

FREAK OUT FRIDAY – May 1, 2020

I am so freaking sick of the hypocrisy on the right that it’s making me ill.  My stomach turns as these blathering blowhards put forth their idiotic, self-contradicting opinions as if they have any worth.  I am tired of these inconsistent blowhards rallying behind Trump in order to march this country straight over a cliff.  

And boy, am I fed up with them attempting to label the left as hypocrites when they continue to kiss Trump’s butt while spewing philosophies that are in constant conflict.

And the icing on the cake is Tara Reade, a woman whose accusations are so sketchy that EVEN TRUMP isn’t getting behind it.  He shrugs, he says he doesn’t know anything about her accusations, which is absolute bull.  “I don’t know about it or about him or about her” is his default position (a close second behind “fake news!”) whenever he’s confronted with something he doesn’t want to face.  I swear, if Jared Kushner was arrested while having sex with a twelve year old, Trump would swear he doesn’t really associate with him.  

What fractures me is that the Trumpies are seizing upon Democrats’ lack of support for Reade as some sort of hypocrisy on our own side because, hey, we made a big deal out of Christine Ford and her accusations of Brett Kavanaugh.  So let me see if I’ve got this straight:  the same people who dismissed Ford out of hand are now turning around and saying that WE are hypocrites because we’re regarding Reade with suspicion.  Even though they are the ones embracing her while having rejected Ford.  

Well, hëll, let’s examine Reade, shall we?

Tara Reade claims that Biden molested her back in 1993.  Curiously, she never brought it up when he was made vice president.  That would certainly have been the time, yes?

Then again, it’s not like she repeatedly praised Biden for his attitude toward abused women.

Oh, wait.  She did.  Often.  In the intervening years she extolled Biden’s virtues while lambasting Vladimir Putin.  She did that all the way to 2018, when Biden first started making noise about running for President.  Then amazingly, she did a 180.  She proceeded to trash Biden while simultaneously extolling Putin’s manliness and virtues.  

But that’s probably coincidence.  I mean, it’s not like she’s ever done anything criminal…

Oh, wait.  She did.  Back in the 90s, she stole $1400 from a charity dedicated to helping horses.  Hëll, that would certainly make her an apt mate for Trump, since stealing from charity is kind of his thing.

Then there’s her brother, who told an interviewer that Biden had touched her shoulders in a way that made her uncomfortable…and then, several days later, texted the reporter that Biden had also shoved his finger into her vágìņá.  Because…he FORGOT that when he first did the interview?  If some guy physically manhandled your sister’s genitals and then you were later asked about that man, wouldn’t you kick off your recollection with that?  How in God’s name could he have omitted that?  That’s not just burying the lead; that’s tying a granite block to it and shoving it into the Marianas trench.  

And yet these same right wing blockheads who do not hesitate to believe that two dozen women are all lying about Trump doing everything from manhandling them to raping them…they firmly embrace Reade’s dubious claims while calling us hypocrites because any examination of her story doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

We’re the same party who gave the bum’s rush to Al Franken for doing things that wouldn’t even register on Trump’s radar of abuse, and they dare accuse us of being hypocrites? 

The Reade complaint is the absolute proof that Trump’s followers do not care about the truth, about consistency, about reality, about anything except clinging to power and lying about anyone who disagrees with them.  And I am done with it.  

I am done with these bášŧárdš destroying Democratic candidates for the presidency.  These áššhølëš took war hero John Kerry and made people believe that he was a lying coward.  These schmucks convinced the world that Al Gore claimed he invented the internet, which HE NEVER SAID.  They are the living embodiment of what Joseph Goebbels said:  “If you tell a lie big  enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

This latest outing—their blind acceptance of Trump despite his sexual predations so numerous that there’s an entire book out about it called “All the President’s Women”—while simultaneously condemning Biden for a sole accusation by a woman whose word simply cannot be trusted, is the last figurative straw.  

Slap them down, people.  I mean it.  Wherever you go on Facebook or Twitter, when you see them ranting, throw their hypocrisy in their face.  You won’t convince them; their heads are buried so far up Trump’s ášš that they’ve forgotten what fresh air smells like.  But smack them down before they convince people who just don’t know any better.  

Enough sitting around and shaking our heads and tut-tutting about how awful they are.

Time to fight back.

PAD