No More Excuses

In case you've been wondering all summer how a smart, accomplished candidate like Hillary Clinton could possibly lose against a comic-book villain with a mystery pelt stitched to the top of his head, this is how it happens. Coupled with the fact that the polls continue to get more and more worrisome, maybe it's time to get crackin' a little harder on this thing.

Look, we all get that nothing in this is fair. It's unfair that HFC is running neck-and-neck against this certifiable moron in the first place. It's unfair that the media refs hold them to completely different standards on everything. He's allowed to talk shit about anything and anyone with no consequences, she's forced to quickly apologize for supposedly insulting a group of people who richly deserve much worse. She has to contend with cheap rumor-mongering about her health, while he -- a fat, jowly seventy-year-old man -- gets away with a doctor's note that could have been forged by your average fifth-grader. Oh, but he's going on "Doctor" Oz this week to sift through his stool, so there's that.

Curbing Their Enthusiasm

This is how you end up losing to spoiled morons who aren't even smart enough to photoshop their fakes properly:

Hillary Clinton expressed "regret" Saturday for comments in which she said "half" of Donald Trump's supporters are "deplorables," meaning people who are racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic.

"Last night I was 'grossly generalistic,' and that's never a good idea. I regret saying 'half' -- that was wrong," Clinton said in a statement in which she also vowed to call out "bigotry" in Trump's campaign.

Jesus Fucking Christ. What has been Drumpf's defining characteristic, not just during his scampaign, but his entire adult life? Never admit error, never give an inch, no matter how small or stupid or inconsequential, or blatantly obvious a lie it is. If anything, double down. His retard flock have no idea what he stands for -- even Drumpf has no idea what he stands for, as that changes day to day, sentence to sentence but they love him for that. They will follow him over a cliff, while he tells them it's not a cliff.

Curbing Their Enthusiasm

This is how you end up losing to spoiled morons who aren't even smart enough to photoshop their fakes properly:

Hillary Clinton expressed "regret" Saturday for comments in which she said "half" of Donald Trump's supporters are "deplorables," meaning people who are racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic.

"Last night I was 'grossly generalistic,' and that's never a good idea. I regret saying 'half' -- that was wrong," Clinton said in a statement in which she also vowed to call out "bigotry" in Trump's campaign.

Jesus Fucking Christ. What has been Drumpf's defining characteristic, not just during his scampaign, but his entire adult life? Never admit error, never give an inch, no matter how small or stupid or inconsequential, or blatantly obvious a lie it is. If anything, double down. His retard flock have no idea what he stands for -- even Drumpf has no idea what he stands for, as that changes day to day, sentence to sentence but they love him for that. They will follow him over a cliff, while he tells them it's not a cliff.

Pogo Was an Optimist

We can chicken-egg this until the end of time, if we want to avoid the cold, hard, truth, but there it is all the same:  if the media (in the aggregate) suck, if they're incomplete or unfair in their coverage comparing the two candidates, it's because we (in the aggregate) suck, because we're willing to put up with such a low bar.

You can jabber on about Gish Gallops and Bradley Effects and such like until you're blue in the face. But none of it changes the fact that there are enough morons bringing and keeping Drumpf in contention, enough bozos to read only the "news" they already agree with.

The problem is that there are too many people out there who live in absolute certitude, who know just as surely as they know they have an imaginary sky-buddy looking out for their destitute little hamster lives, that they already know everything that is worth knowing. There is nothing new for them to learn, especially if it's something that would exculpate HFC, or conversely might add to the already impossibly high stack of shit that constitutes Clownstick's lies, his shit business record, his unethical use of money from his bullshit "Human Fund" foundation that he doesn't even donate any of his own money to.

Philly Cheese Stank, Day 4: All In

Let's take a rare break from the usual "bitter cynic" character, and give credit where credit is due:  Hillary crushed it. Really. Good politicians are good salespeople at heart, and the candidate speech at a nominating convention is as high stakes as it gets when it comes to sales pitches.

And she made a very effective sales pitch that stands well on its own, but looks even better when stacked up against Ragey McPocalypse's hour-plus of screaming at his audience about the Mad Max charnel house outside the RNC arena. HFC also did that very effectively, used Drumpf's own crazed rhetoric and inexcusable self-regard to paint him as an unreliable goofball with the temperament of a dopey teenager whose mom has to pull the hardened masturbation socks out from under his bed and crack them before throwing them into the laundry.

Depending on how the media decide to frame the speech, and which money quotes they push, this could easily mark the point where people decide to vote for Hillary, rather than merely against Drumpfski and his Russian overseers. She emphasized her genuine working-class roots; her actual track record fighting for the disadvantaged, well before she or her husband got into politics; her support and advocacy for 9/11 victims, survivors, and first responders; the idea that America is a team, and that we should pull together. These also proved effective in establishing a positive, can-do contrast to Drumpf's Thunderdome boilerplate.

HFC's speech was really just the icing on what proved to be a solid lineup, including a four-star general surrounded by over three dozen veterans and officers, and the immigrant parents of Muslim Army Captain Humayun Khan, who died in 2005 when a suicide bomber attacked his post in Iraq. National defense became an issue in this evening's proceedings, culminating in Clinton's detailed proposal to defeat ISIS, as well as a blistering reproach of Drumpf's brazen claims that he knows more about ISIS than the generals.

By presenting adult solutions to Drumpf's childish goading, Clinton managed to build a solid, consistent case against someone who should have been laughed out of the room a full year ago. Drumpf's concern-trolling of the convention all week smacked of desperation, came off as pathetic more than anything. Let me ask you something on your cherry-picked AMA, asshole:  What the fuck is wrong with you? Seriously. I mean, the man has been a jerkoff for decades, but have you ever seen someone so pathetically needy? I've literally encountered crazy homeless guys on the sidewalk who have more fucking dignity than this phony-tough guy, who has probably never been in an actual fistfight.

Philly Cheese Stank, Day 3: Getting Traction

Some solid, powerful speeches tonight, especially from Tim Kaine and Barack Obama. Kaine's mocking of Drumpf's "believe me" schtick, as the calling card of the con-man, actually seemed more authentic because Kaine, while pleasant and smart enough, does not exactly pop off the screen. (Then again, charisma is obviously a highly subjective thing -- how people can watch or listen to toads like Gingrich or Drumpf for more than two seconds is beyond me.)

The boo-birds really need to start shutting the fuck up, like now. They may not realize that they'll be the first to hit the Clownstick re-education camps, but they will be. See, middle-aged white guys like me? I can pass easily. I've spent my life around these unrepentant goat-fuckers. I know the code. I'll hate it, but I'll get by just fine in a Clownstick presidency.

Philly Cheese Stank, Day 2: Who Farted?

Cognitive dilemmas abound so far in Philly. You have the Bernie holdouts, resplendent in their anger, vowing to never vote for the she-creature. To listen to these people, you might almost be convinced that:

• There is no difference at all between HFC and the raving clown Drumpf.
• There are no other candidates at any other level running this year.

It's too bad Drumpf has poached the Stones' You Can't Always Get What You Want, because that song would be a little too on-the-nose for the last few hard-to-herd libs. Look, we get it, she's sub-optimal, not precisely what you wanted. The young holdouts have yet to learn that is exactly and always how politics works; the old hippies and Bernouts (see what I did there?) are past the point of caring anymore, as they only have a few election cycles remaining.

Now, when your own avatar, who also is past the age for selling out, grabs you by the lapels and says, "Look, motherfucker, this is how it is. Deal with it," then maybe it's time to listen. Your movement has revolved around one person, and one person only; you have failed to endorse or explain how anything will roll down to state or local levels. Who are they endorsing for Congress, for their state legislatures, etc.? No clues, but I don't even have to ask about the HFC side. Whatever else she is, she understands the whole picture, that being president doesn't matter if you're surrounded by a bunch of mouth-breathing teabaggers who refuse to work with you. Ask Hopey-Changey how that all worked out.

This Just In

As we all assumed, HFC has picked Tim Kaine as her running mate. This might bug a few true blue pwoggies out there, but it's the safe bet. Kaine is a pro-choice Catholic from a swing state who speaks fluent Spanish, and is by all accounts a decent egg. Nothing brilliant, but nothing risky, either. Nothing's perfect, and you can bet I'm going to be carping in the coming weeks and months about how HFC's baggage has made what should be a blowout against a preposterous man-baby into a horse race. But it's a damn sight better than what the Suicide Squad has to offer.

[Update 7/23/16 1:15 PM PDT:  Jim Wright advocates eloquently for Kaine's selection. About the only thing I have a problem with is Kaine's support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but that's nowhere near a dealbreaker, especially as Drumpf gets more ignorant, incompetent, and insane by the day. The choice should be clear; you may not like HFC, but she's not incompetent or insane, and there's a real dragon to slay running against her. "More of the same" may not be inspiring, but it stands up pretty well in comparison to "unbridled catastrophe".]

Careful What You Wish For

So Feeb Director Jim Comey has finally weighed in and decided not to put his thumb on the electoral scale. There goes my dream of HFC's indictment, followed by Joe Biden running and beating Drumpf like the rented, tick-eaten mule he is, instead of this derping along with a polling lead barely above the margin of error. What the fuck exactly does Hair Fuhrer (Cheetolini? Kim Don Un? Mobutu Sese Fuckface?) have to do to lose by the margin he richly deserves?

The problem, despite the braying of the horserace corporate media, is not so much a matter of HFC's "trustworthiness" (although there's certainly an issue with that, and always has been). This imputes that we cannot know how closely her actions would align with her rhetoric, which is ridiculous. She's been playing this game for a quarter-century now, we know exactly what she'll do -- stand and fight tepidly for more gutless incrementalism, for meaningless compromises with avowed enemies who have nothing to gain and everything to lose being seen working or even cooperating with her.

Does Anyone Here Know How to Play This Game?

A couple of weeks ago, Brazil -- a giant, swampy, third-world slum masquerading as a real country -- had a ceremony to celebrate its hosting of the Summer Olympics this year. During the ceremony, a jaguar -- which had been rescued as a cub and brought up at the zoo where the ceremony was being held -- was shot dead after it got loose from its handler and attacked a soldier.

Considering that Brazil is also the country that, just two years ago while hosting the World Cup, transported materials up the Amazon for the sole purpose of building a full-size stadium just for the World Cup, that sounds about right. I assume their national anthem is played on a sad trombone.

This is the future of Olympic games in particular, if not world sporting events in general. Real countries are no longer interested in the enormous expense required to host the events; the "prestige" conferred by hosting is just not worth it for American and European municipalities and states that are already cash-strapped.