The Security Briefings Aren't Working

So Mister Man tweeted this on Friday:

Setting aside the typos for a second, consider the frightening actuality that Drumpfski is now receiving security briefings as a nominee. I guess we're all just supposed to hope he doesn't tweet everything, or stay up late texting it all to Putin.

Anyhoo, with that in mind, he said this in regard to recent examples of Russian aggression:

“He’s not going into Ukraine, okay,” Trump said on ABC’s “This Week” of Russian President Vladi­mir Putin. “He’s not gonna go into Ukraine, alright? You can mark it down. You can put it down.”

Trump then appeared to contradict himself when George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC’s “This Week,” responded that “he’s already there, isn’t he?”

“Okay, well, he’s there in a certain way,” Mr. Trump replied.

Did he not hear the news about Putin annexing the Crimean peninsula two years ago? Have the security briefings he's received so far not gotten to Eurasia yet? Oh wait, I forgot, he knows more about ISIS than the generals do, so it makes sense that he would know more about the rest of the world as well.

When this is all said and done, we need to make sure that all of this -- the ignorance, the incompetence, the unearned sense of self-regard -- gets hung around the collective necks of the temper-tantwum cultists and their wittle feewings. They need to be shamed back under their rocks.

Master Baited

Following up from yesterday's Drumpfski gaffe du jour, it appears that maybe Mister Man finally picked a fight with someone willing to fight back. After Drumpfski's remarks in response to Khizr Khan's scathing DNC speech, both Khans took to the media to repudiate his bitter nonsense. Mr. Khan wins the round with what should become a defining phrase:

"He is a black soul, and this is totally unfit for the leadership of this country," Khan said. "The love and affection that we have received affirms that our grief -- that our experience in this country has been correct and positive. The world is receiving us like we have never seen. They have seen the blackness of his character, of his soul."

....

"Two things are absolutely necessary in any leader or any person who aspires, wishes, to be a leader. That is moral compass and second is empathy," Khan said.

Khan called on House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to withdraw their support for Trump.

"It is a moral obligation -- history will not forgive them," he said. "This election will pass, but history will be written. The lack of moral courage with remain a burden on their souls."

He said those GOP leaders have a "moral, ethical obligation to not worry about the votes but repudiate him; withdraw the support. If they do not, I will continue to speak."

[emphasis added]

Clownstick, of course, couldn't resist the urge to respond:

There's no need to parse this, but what the hell, let's do it anyway with a little recap. The Khans' DNC speech was meant to counter Drumpfski's consistent bashing of immigrant and Muslims by providing themselves as an example of a Muslim immigrant family that had moved here for opportunity, found it, became successful, and had a son who wanted to give something back in return, and gave his life for his country.

The Khans had a valid bonus point by correctly indicating that Drumpfski has never sacrificed anything at all for anyone, much less for his country, in comparison to the Khans' sacrifice, which they clearly will bear for the rest of their lives. And the Khans have never contested the rightness or wrongness of the Iraq War, so even if Drumpfski were being truthful about always being in opposition to that war, it was never the point.

Drumpfski responds by essentially proving the Khans' point for them, by weirdly comparing the extra hours he's put into his businesses to a family who lost their son in combat in terms of similar levels of sacrifice, and then by Muslim-baiting the Khans by implying that Ghazala Khan did not speak during the DNC speech because her husband wouldn't let her.

Again, this man is morally and intellectually incompetent, and proves it nearly every day in some way or other. He can't help himself; his vainglorious self-image prevents him from having some common sense. All he had to do was say he appreciated the Khan family's sacrifice for their adopted country, that he was not out to get all Muslims nor hard-working American Muslims like the Khans, and leave it at that.

But that would have been too easy, and required a bit of humility and empathy, two character traits that he would have to look up in the dictionary. All anyone has to do to glean psychological insight of the man is to look at his history; he's been nothing if not consistent.

It's hard to count on anything undoing Drumpfski's run. He's already withstood many issues and situations of his own making that would have doomed most other candidates. But this one may cost him, especially with conservatives and military veterans, and even just people who take this sort of slanderous conduct seriously. It would be the ultimate irony if the final straw came from a Muslim immigrant who also happens to be an immigration lawyer.

Сделать Россию великой Снова

I have nothing snarky to say. I am seriously wondering what more this asshole must do to convince even the most die-hard retards that he is not on their side at all. It's nice to try to be a tough guy and tear everything down, but at some point a grown-up has to come in and make shit run. This election is a decision exactly along such a line; anyone voting Drumpfski and then Googling the next day "who is trump" or "how do we vote" needs to put a fucking gun in their mouth and pull the trigger.

And Another Thing

I'm pretty sure I've made this point previously, but it's certainly one that's been at the forefront of my small brain for the past few months -- how the fuck is it that someone whose catch-phrase is "You're fired!" becomes the guy who will bring the jobs back? This is a form of logic that veers on the spectrum between ""perverted" and "insane."

At any rate, it should be pointed out that Diamond Joe Biden made that very point in his speech last Wednesday, among other points. It needed to be made; I'm amazed that no one made it, say, a full year ago.

This is not a small thing. Getting fired from a job is usually a traumatic deal. It can be up there with a death in the family, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the fired worker and their household. It encompasses the ability of someone to provide for their family. But Americans in particular are also conditioned to equate what they are with what they do, conflating career with identity.

Yet this is the underpinning logic for the Drumpfkins -- he's a great bidnessman, we've seen it on teevee. It's a baffling assumption, that someone whose main skill is pretending to fire people that don't actually work for them has superior insight on how to run the world's largest economy.

There are so many reasons that Drumpfski is unqualified for the office that he seeks. But the biggest one is not that he's a rude, thin-skinned, narcissistic man-baby -- it's that he's fucking incompetent.

Counterfactual

It is official protocol after the party conventions that once the nominees are officially declared, they get intelligence briefings. I am envious of the folks that get to sit in on those things; that must be fucking amazing. The things you don't know, as well as the things you thought you knew.

Anyhoo, apparently there may or may not have been a verbal revelation by Herr Clownstick regarding a piece of foreign policy info he could only have received in the context of a classified briefing. For now, that allegation is not founded, although the bottom line seems to be that either he said what he supposedly said, or he didn't.

Doesn't matter for our purposes. What I propose here is that we engage in a simple thought exercise-slash-movie pitch-slash-novel:  Say you have a toxic, moronic person running for President. Say you know he's going to lose because he's a blowhard asshole whom only borderline retards would vote for, but you still have to give him something in terms of policy briefings. What if you just made stuff up to conform with Candidate Asshole's truncated view of the world?

A Day in the Life

Seriously, this is probably the only time I'll ever do something like this, but leave it to a couple of Juicers to accurately capture how Donald Drumpfski's day went for him:

Yes, apparently Junior went to the inaptly-named Philadelphia, Mississippi, to stump for dear ol' dad. Thanks to the wondrous bounty of the internets, there's no need to dig far nor wide to glean the ugly details of this particular gaping butthole of the universe, and its racial signifiers. All Drumpfski figures is that it worked for Saint Reagan (PBUH), so it must still work, nearly forty years later.

Who knows, it might still work after all. But the bottom line here is that the Democrats should immediately recognize that candidates' children are no longer off limits when they adults and acting as surrogates. They are fair game. And it's about time Uday and Qusay became the hunted, instead of trying to pretend to be big men murdering endangered species.

I am not remotely joking when I say that I sincerely hope that on their next attempt at penis enhancement, their guns jam and the both of them get trampled or torn to bits by their next target.

Disengage

I'll give David Frum some small benefit of the doubt -- he's certainly traveled far from his "Axis of Evil" bafflegab a decade ago, providing the rhetorical buttress for the fanciful arguments of a feckless doofus. Frum has been front-and-center in his dismay at all things Drumpfski, probably because, like fellow columnist Bobo Brooks, his vanilla sensibilities are rankled by Cheetolini's voluble rampages. It is the form, more than the content, that chafes Frum's suburbanite mores.

So it makes sense that someone with Frum's aesthetic would adopt the rhetorical trope of "let's find out what makes these folks tick, so's we can talk to them in a language they can understand," which is condescending to begin with, but let's set that aside for the moment.

But as always, the weakness of that trope ignores our prime maxim at this here jernt:  It is impossible to deal rationally with irrational people. We may not like to hear that, but like gravity and death, it is true and inevitable. It is, as they say, what it is.

Chickenhawk Takes Bait

So George Snuffleupagus' entry in the Sunday follies tomorrow will be a pre-taped interview with Donald Fredovich Drumpfski, in which the latter takes his usual scattershot aim at the DNC speech of Khizr Khan, a Muslim lawyer who emigrated from Afghanistan decades ago and raised a family, including three sons -- one of whom, Army Captain Hamayun Khan, was killed in Iraq by a suicide car bomber at a guard post.

During his DNC speech, Mr. Khan spoke about the very real sacrifices he and his family had given in service to this country, comparing it with Drumpfski. So of course Drumpfski, as is his wont, responds with his usual tone-deafness:

"Who wrote that? Did Hillary's script writers write it?" Trump said in an interview with with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos that will air Sunday. "I think I've made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard."

Khizr Khan, whose son Army Capt. Humayun Khan died in Baghdad in 2004, delivered one of the most powerful speeches of the Democratic National Convention. With his wife Ghazala at his side, Khan repeatedly blasted Trump's immigration proposals -- specifically those aimed at barring Muslims -- and said the billionaire businessman has "sacrificed nothing and no one."

Trump, in the ABC interview, said in response, "I've created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures. I've had tremendous success. I think I've done a lot."

This is both the tragedy and beauty of this vile man -- he listens to nothing and no one. Mr. Khan's comments go whizzing right past him for the same reason that Hillary Clinton's comments do. Drumpfski understands nothing unless it pertains directly to him and his lifelong branding efforts. Working "very, very hard" is not a "sacrifice" the same way that losing your son in combat is. This should not even have to be explained to anyone, but clearly Drumpfski does not understand this obvious distinction.

But while Drumpfski is on the subject of how his "sacrifices" of supposed 80-hour weeks and such like created "tens of thousands" of jobs, let's also take a moment and consider the many jobs and small businesses that were sacrificed on the altar of Drumpfski's preening avarice, how they went broke while he made millions declaring bankruptcy.

He's a thief, a fraud, a soulless prick, without even the minimum amount of introspection it would take to see the gulf of difference between the extra hours he put in ripping off people and slapping his name on other people's buildings, and a family who came from elsewhere to give the ultimate sacrifice for this country.

Pussy

Looks like Drumpfski is combing through his excuse rolodex to rationalize his unwillingness to debate HFC. Maybe he needs to get Putin's permission. Looks like another bullshit veterans' fundraiser is in the offing.

Temperamental Fool

Well, it's good to see that borderline personality Drumpfski has been playing nice all this time, holding back out of decorum I guess. No more Mister Nice Guy, you crooked bitch, I'm comin' for ya!

If anyone ever wanted a real-life mashup of A Face in the Crowd and The Night of the Hunter, looks like you got your wish.

Good to Know

Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ, either Mike Pence is dumber than a box of rocks, or he assumes that his voters are. Chances are, the truth is both. Just for that, I hope the entire Democratic Party digs deep, doubles down, and hits these fucking morons with every cheap shot and schoolyard name they can think of. Al Franken could help out there.

What a fucking asshole, as in "Fucking Asshole Mike Pence." How's that for name-calling, Fucko?

Size Matters

Let's talk about music (rock and metal music, anyway), especially the media on which it's produced now. This is a point I've made pretty consistently over the years, more so since things have shifted so drastically to a la carte digital -- the traditional cycle of a 50-60-minute album, usually containing at least 25% "filler" tracks, supported by a tour of 9-12 months in duration, is (or should be) dead and buried. The only reason it persists is because most bands (that is, bands who are not at The Top, whatever that means these days) spend at least some of their touring season at festivals, where the costs are more scalable and the crowds are much larger (even though you're competing against dozens of other bands for their attention).

The paradigm shift of the past decade in particular points (at least to me) in the direction of shorter, tighter "album" sets, supported by shorter tours, peppered with "special" releases of one or two "bonus" tracks in the middle of the season.

No Release

Hey, if we're keeping Leslie Van Houten behind bars for the rest of her life, the least we can do is keep this old bastard locked up until he's a moldering corpse no one would take the time to piss on, right? Blanton escaped justice for nearly forty years, remorseless for his actions, for murdering four little girls for some demented lie. He needs to know that he will never breathe air as a free man again.

And yet, if he lives long enough, it's entirely possible that Thomas Blanton might conceivably be released. Prisons have been undergoing drastic demographic shifts, with larger numbers of elderly inmates, that the prisons obviously are not equipped to care for. So "compassionate release" has become more and more commonplace, understandably so in some cases.

Generally speaking, symbolism is one of the more useless things in our benighted material plane, the idea that something is rendered somehow more important or meaningful simply by what it supposedly "means" to certain people or groups. But it must be noted that while there has always been a consistent undercurrent of racist, insurrectionist, and "white power" movements (ably chronicled by my old sparring buddy from the forum days long ago, Dave Neiwert), these groups and individuals have found themselves "empowered" by the rise of Herr Drumpfski.

Semper Lie

It makes perfect sense that a gaggle of inbred chickenhawks would have no idea what a Blue Star Service pin looks like or stands for. Why would they? This is the same brand of professional retard that bravely tries to whitesplain how well slaves were treated. It's all of a piece -- they can't even play a simple game of "gotcha" without stepping on their dicks.

This is what the party of Lincoln has fallen to. Sad!

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.

Concern Trollski Is Concerned

At what point have we all had enough of this lying cocksucker? I mean, seriously. This guy lies like most of us draw breath. Everything out of his mouth is a fucking lie, and as a topper, he invites the Russian FSB to continue hacking the email servers of American political figures.

Of course Putin likes Drumpf. Why wouldn't he? Not as a friend, mind you, but as a pigeon, someone whose bottomless hole of need and ego make him susceptible to even the lamest attempts at flattery. No, Donald, Putin never called you a genius -- you called you a genius.

Because that's what you are:  a whiny, lying, petulant man-baby, with tremendously small hands (the smallest hands, believe me, nobody's hands are smaller), small dick, and even smaller brain. Because you're a piece of shit who wants to wreck this country, and so Putin -- who actually is an intelligent adult -- sees in your pathetic psyche an easy opening to continue his espionage against this country. Good job, asshole. If we give you a pity trophy, will you just go the fuck away already? Everyone's a winner!

Maybe someone should hack Fuckface Von Clownstick's servers and release his fucking tax returns for him. In the meantime, fuck everyone who is continuing to support this lying, treasonous bastard.

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.

Philly Cheese Stank, Day 1: The Stankening

You'd think the horse-race media would at least shake up their own narrative, but that would give them too much credit. Just as last week's crapfest began with floor fighting among remaining holdouts, so the Dems' attempt at levity began with trying to tame the hostile Bernie bros. By the end of the night, things seemed to have calmed down, and by the end of the week the butt-hurt will be mostly forgotten, except with people who were probably never going to vote for HFC anyway, but look for it to be an underlying theme of commentary all week.

It was probably a good idea to get Warren and Sanders done on opening night, because despite both players' move toward comity, the fact is their central theses revolve around the theme of dire inequality and disparity. They are correct, of course, but such an argument comes directly at the expense of the structural integrity of the current and future leaders of the actual Democratic Party.

Freudian Slip

Okay, sorry to crack wise about what is clearly a tragedy, but the headline typo does point in the direction of the absurd:

Who knows? Maybe it was an angry elf.

Fool's Gold

One problem with sociologists and poli-sci wonks trying to explain various "phenomena" is that it lets idiots off the hook, absolves them for accepting responsibility for being gullible:

But Brendan Nyhan, professor in the department of government at Dartmouth College, says that expecting the average voter to walk around with a head full of statistics is unreasonable.

"I'm sympathetic to people who don't know the facts, I think they're being let down by the media and politicians," he says. "I don't expect people to follow the latest crime statistics.

"People are drawing what are unfortunately reasonable inferences from the information they're hearing and seeing which unfortunately exaggerates the prevalence of crime and crime statistics."

Well, that's on them, then, isn't it? I don't think anyone expects anyone outside the world of academics and professional statisticians to be instantly conversant with arcane numbers and esoteric data. The expectation is:  This person is running for the leadership of your country, and they presented this as fact. Is it true, is there an informational source that I can check on The Google in 60-90 seconds? It doesn't matter if Drumpf or HFC says it, it can and should be checked out. Jesus H. Christ, people, this is not that fucking difficult.

In the Garden of Unforced Errors

The ability of these people to fuck the proverbial dog at any given moment continues to astound. I don't think it will affect anything, just give the horse-race media something to yammer about during this week's convention. Still, whatever happened to "don't do stupid shit"? This is how you end up polling neck-and-neck against a cartoon character.

Our Man In Moscow

Some people say that Donald Drumpf is in the pocket of Vladimir Putin. I saw it on the internet, so it must be true. This was a website that, frankly, in many respects, should be very respected.

I also saw where Uday J. Drumpf, Junior protested that his Russian hacker friends -- I'm not going to say that they're in cahoots, but it's there on the internet, so, you know, very respected -- couldn't possibly be behind the coincidental release of internal Democratic National Committee documents. Besides, Uday says he doesn't know who G. Grigorievich Lidsky could possibly be, so that should settle it. Big league.

Don't Wet the Bed Just Yet

Michael Moore was on one of Bill Maher's post-convention episodes the other night, postulating that he thinks Drumpf will win. Moore has followed that up with a post on his website, enumerating five specific reasons, which I'd like to rebut point-by-point.

Moore is correct that Drumpf could win, of course -- there are just enough stupid people in this country, who have no use for facts, who vote out of spite and foolishness and ginned-up nonsense. Anything can happen, and usually does. But let's take a look at Moore's reasoning.

Occupying Force

Yet another cop who needs to do the right thing right now, resign his post and go to vocational school. There is no excuse for this. They're goddamned lucky that their bumbling didn't kill anyone.

Charles Kinsey, the caretaker who was shot while lying prostrate, should not have had to splay himself out in the roadway in the first place. He did nothing wrong. Maybe it was just two dudes sitting in the fucking road, are we drawing our guns right away for that now too? I hope he sues the fuck out of them.

The North Miami Police Department said it had received a 911 call of a man threatening to commit suicide with a gun pointed at his head. "At some point during the on-scene negotiation" with the two men, one of the officers fired, striking Kinsey, police said.

....

John Rivera, the president of the Dade County Police Benevolent Association, said Thursday afternoon that the officers "saw the white male almost on top of Mr. Kinsey, who had his hands up and who had his knees up, and to the officers, it looked like the white male was about to shoot Mr. Kinsey," Rivera said. "The officers all thought the individual had a firearm, not a toy truck."

Rivera said the officer "was trying to save the life of Mr. Kinsey and feels horrible that his aim missed and struck Mr. Kinsey."

This smells like an industrial fuckton of bush-league ass-covering. For starters, is this how they always respond to 911 suicide calls? Hopefully the media checks out the supposed call in question; chances are the facts won't jibe. Probably a completely different call.

And when the cops do arrive on the scene, ready for action, Kinsey flops on his back, arms up (something, incidentally, it wouldn't even occur to most white people to do, especially when you're just a caretaker trying to help your autistic patient), and explains the situation to the cops, and they still shoot -- and hit the "wrong" person. Way to defuse the fucking situation there, Deputy Fife.

Police in this country need to be retrained, top to bottom, front to back. I'm not getting into the "black lives" aspect of it at all; the problem here is that the level of force that used to be a last resort is now the first and only option. Don't bother assessing the scene an extra second, just react instantly, shoot to kill, and if you fuck up, THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS, YOU GUYS.

No other western country has law enforcement like this. Only banana republics have paramilitaries. This has to stop.

Go Duck Yourself

As I've said before, I watched Dork Dynasty once, just to see what the fuss was all about, and literally felt stupider by the end of the episode. I have no idea if the show is still airing -- and if it is, what sort of galoot is still watching it, and why. Whatever the case, Phil and Willie Robertson have parlayed their pop-culture notoriety into their avocation of injecting their regressive views into the political and religious arenas.

During the RNC last week, Willie Robertson found himself in the human centipede of D-listers, explaining as only a cosplay hillbilly millionaire could about how the "elites" don't know how to talk to "real people". That latter is one of the most tedious conceits imaginable -- that simply being working-class makes one more "real" or "legitimate". In many cases it does, but not always, and there is no shortage of supposedly regular people who are completely preposterous examples of humanity.

Willie Robertson and his family have made enormous sums of money exploiting the class anxieties of dopes and peons whose only respite is to convince themselves that smart people really aren't any smarter than anyone else, that study and expertise and analysis mean nothing, that Jebus is watching, even if he hasn't made them happy and wealthy and successful yet.

He Can't Help Himself

He's a fucking liar who lies about fucking everything. Sad!

Donald Trump boasted that the Republican National Convention hall was so “packed” during his prime time address that people were even selling convention tickets on eBay.

“Those seats were selling for a lot of money on eBay. They were going for big numbers,” he said on Friday morning.

But a POLITICO search of convention tickets sold on eBay, found that no tickets were actually sold.

What a sad, pathetic old man he is. Clearly the years of hair spray have soaked his cerebellum. Let's get Crazy Grampa the care he needs before he plows the family Buick through the wall of the supermarket. Probably should get him some diapers as well.

Violent Tendencies

Yes, the sooner these silly negroes understand that everyone really is treated equally, and that their "concerns" are simply the manufactured anxieties of the faggot librul media, the better of we'll all be.

Inspiration

Call it the Von Clownstick Effect:  perennial white-power candidate and convicted felon David Duke has thrown his hood in the ring one more blessed time, against eight other candidates in his own party. Keep up the good work, Loozyanna!

(Extra points for the WaPo photos of KKK scumbags from TN and MD in the first link. There are plenty just like them in LA, and they'll be voting for Duke. Fuck these doughy, pasty, drug-addled losers right in their loser blowholes. God hates you, fucktards. It literally brings me joy to know that most of these cocksuckers will die younger than they should, destitute and clueless as to how their dismal view of the world contributed to their miserable lives and early demises. I know, I'm mean.)

It would be surprising if Duke actually won, but stranger things have happened, obviously. Anything's possible. This quote is just money, though:

“I believe it’s time we start talking about the reality of terrorism linked to Black radicals,” Duke tweeted July 17 after the news broke about the police shootings in Baton Rouge. “How is this any different than ISIS?”

Now, your average meathead ofay Drumpf supporter reads that and goes, "Yeeaahhh!,"and then punches his wife for no reason. Anyone with two or more brain cells to rub together would flip the proverbial script and ask how at all it is similar to ISIS? I mean, you have to squint awful hard to find an equivalence between two black veterans, both of whom appear to have been either clinically insane or suffering from severe PTSD, going on shooting rampages against law enforcement officers, and a jihadi death cult run by de-Baathified officers from Saddam's old army, murdering anyone and anything that gets in their way.

But that's what makes them morons -- they don't squint at this shit, they don't think at all about any of it. Everything is visceral, reactive, lizard-brain. You want to know what makes the Drumpfkins tick, reread the above quote and consider the sort of mouth-breather that would nod their head at such nonsense. That's where we're at.

I don't know how the Dems reach out to such cretins; I don't want them to reach out to them. Fortunately they shouldn't have to. Clownstick has heightened the differences so that they should be clear as day. All the HFC show-runners have to do is mobilize the base and keep the unforced errors at zero. Start with forcing Drumpf to formally repudiate Duke.

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".]

In Logo Parentis

You may have seen the logo for the just-finished Republican National Convention, featuring an elephant trumpeting along the neck of a guitar (although the wise bet would be that the most popular musical instrument in that arena is the accordion), like so:

Of the four nights, I don't think I watched more than ten minutes per night, with the exception of Hair Fuhrer's dirge last night. I can't sit and watch these things, and don't plan to watch more than the bare minimum of the DNC next week either -- like the State of the Union, it's easier to just read the high points later, than to try to keep up between spontaneous chanting and eruptions of applause. I hate that shit.

But after all the reading, and the consistent pattern of "flaming hellscape" rhetoric, culminating in Deadbeat Donald's jeremiad of cherry-picked nonsense, the conclusion is inescapable that a more appropriate logo would have been to have the elephant with a gun in its mouth, ready to splatter its brains out the back of its head.

Who knows, if I get bored enough this coming week (we have a ten-day heat wave hitting the NorCal area, starting tomorrow), I may fire up GIMP and do some graphics work, maybe put up a bumper sticker or button on CafePress. I've been thinking about doing a fundraiser, but I don't want donations, I want to create something that will give people something fun, something to talk about and share with others.

I have some other ideas in this area that will be coming out very soon, as this campaign season really gets rolling. Life hands you this much stupid, might as well make some stupid-ade. Stay tuned.

Cleveland Steamer, Day 4: Make America Dump Again

It's finally over -- and the real nightmare is likely just beginning. Hair Fuhrer went into an epic stemwinder, prolonged by the arena cult's incessant chanting and stopping him with their applause and adulation. Then they lined up at the side of the stage, and took turns coming up and sucking his wee, shriveled old-man cock.

Ein volk, ein Reich, ein Drumpf.

Okay, I made up those last bits, but not by much. This is a cult of personality -- and of anti-personality. They are motivated by an inordinate love for Drumpf, and an equally inordinate hate for HFC. They have no sense of logic or proportion for either.

Drumpf's speech, which was actually semi-competent since he did himself a favor and used a teleprompter, fixated mostly on "law and order" and "safety". This has to be the single biggest gathering of nervous, cringing ninnies ever. It's a fucking wonder they screwed up the courage to come to The Cleve and gather in the arena.

Broken Hearts Are For Assholes

Continuing with the all-Drumpf-all-the-time theme....

In the course of the last year, I've tried to balance the criticism of Drumpf with hopefully equal measures of criticism for his flock. If anything, they collectively are well due for a larger amount of contempt. As Rebecca Traister points out, a sui generis piece of shit like Drumpf doesn't just happen in a vacuum. Part of it, as always, is the ongoing addlement of large swathes of people who have marinated in "reality" teevee dipshittery for the past decade or so. They can no longer think straight, pure and simple.

But a more pernicious idea that must be confronted is the notion that Drumpf has taken over the party against its collective will. This is nonsense. Given its increasingly aggressive and fact-resistant rhetoric over the last couple decades, it was due for a toxic fuckhead to jump in and start driving the short bus. Someone with built-in name recognition just made the takeover that much easier.

News of the Whirled

Holy fucking shit:

During a 45-minute conversation, [Drumpf] explicitly raised new questions about his commitment to automatically defend NATO allies if they are attacked, saying he would first look at their contributions to the alliance. Mr. Trump re-emphasized the hard-line nationalist approach that has marked his improbable candidacy, describing how he would force allies to shoulder defense costs that the United States has borne for decades, cancel longstanding treaties he views as unfavorable, and redefine what it means to be a partner of the United States.

He said the rest of the world would learn to adjust to his approach. “I would prefer to be able to continue” existing agreements, he said, but only if allies stopped taking advantage of what he called an era of American largess that was no longer affordable.

Giving a preview of his address to the convention on Thursday night, he said that he would press the theme of “America First,” his rallying cry for the past four months, and that he was prepared to scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada if he could not negotiate radically better terms.

He even called into question whether, as president, he would automatically extend the security guarantees that give the 28 members of NATO the assurance that the full force of the United States military has their back.

To the extent that he has discussed foreign policy at all, Drumpf has repeatedly leaned on his distaste for allied countries "free-riding" on organizational responsibilities and participation. Obama has mentioned his annoyance with this issue as well, as (for example) NATO requires each member nation to spend a minimum 2% of GDP, yet only five member nations (US, UK, France, Greece, Turkey) comply. Of course, since Drumpf doesn't read anything but Page Six and the Enquirer, he wouldn't know that he and Obama actually agree on a very important point, albeit with different results in what should be done about the issue.

So yeah, a lot of these countries are free-riding, but you know what? We keep bases and troops and missiles and nuclear warheads in many of them. We keep troops in South Korea and Okinawa (for which, contrary to yet another of Drumpf's countless lies, Korea and Japan do foot some of the bill) in order to preserve the balance of power (in other words, to guarantee we still call the shots) in the region.

The other thing to keep in mind is that if everyone paid their fair share, they would also expect to have more say in the overall strategy, and rightly so. Sometimes those interests don't align perfectly with our interests. But they paid their share, right? So some of this extra dough on our part is insurance against potential headaches. Part of getting to be the big dog means paying the extra freight.

For someone so obsessed with wealth and its seedier trappings, Drumpf seems completely ignorant of the concept of checkbook diplomacy.

This may actually be the most telling part of the article:

Mr. Trump repeatedly defined American global interests almost purely in economic terms. Its roles as a peacekeeper, as a provider of a nuclear deterrent against adversaries like North Korea, as an advocate of human rights and as a guarantor of allies’ borders were each quickly reduced to questions of economic benefit to the United States.

After enduring over three decades of this fucking asshole's self-regard in the national media, I have to say this encapsulates the core value I identified with Donald Trump way back in 1984, when I first heard of him:  virtually all of his relationships are purely transactional. This does not necessarily mean that he doesn't genuinely like anyone -- I believe he loves his kids, and probably even likes his current wife -- but it is clear that he mostly calibrates his regard for other humans based on the value they provide him and his all-important brand. Hell, Chris Christie and Mike Pence can tell you that.

More and more Drumpf is proving to be a pathologically sick -- as in mentally ill, seriously -- individual, a person whose inner demons, bizarre temperament, and sheer lack of impulse control should automatically disqualify him from any position of actual responsibility. Despite his and his sons' pathetic attempts to cast him as a friend of the working-class dog, Drumpf knows nothing of the world outside of the fancy hotels he jounces to and from, and he certainly has no clue about the longstanding alliances, relationships, arrangements, and histories that underpin the foreign policy of the United States of America.

He was obviously never qualified for any position of governmental power, but after this, it's debatable whether he should be in charge of anything more complicated than a banana stand.
 

Cleveland Steamer, Day 3: The Derpening

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Cleveland Steamer, Day 2: Double Down

Watching the "establishment" GOP hacks half-heartedly try to convince their audience that their golem has merit, between the junior golems' mythologizing of their dear ol' duddad, is nothing short of priceless. Aside from Uday and Marla, Jr., the only one who really seemed to be having fun with this was (of all people) Chris Christie, who of course led the Volkssturm in their nightly Dolchstoßlegende hate chant. Might as well; Fatboy surrendered what was left of his soul months ago. He's literally beneath contempt at this point, simply too low of a worm to bother with.

These people are freaks, fixated on a target created by their fevered imaginations. They will parse every single thing HFC ever did or said via email, whether or not it was classified when she sent it, the ramifications of using a NIPR (unsecured private server) over a SIPR (secured gov't server). Ask them about the 22 million emails that went missing from Cheney regime private server, to cover their tracks over firing eight US attorneys in their movement to politicize the federal prosecutorial system, and their heads will explode as they fumble for a response.

Cleveland Steamer, Day 1: The Purge

I tuned into the first round of the shitshow a couple times very briefly during South Park and Full Frontal commercial breaks, but really, there's no point, is there? Who actually watches these things, much less attends them? At best, it's something to do for the elderly, like watching Lawrence Welk reruns on PBS. If anything, it mostly seems like an activity for the mentally deficient.

Which brings us to the media commentary. Because they are inept thinkers, and sincerely believe that maintaining a face of studious "objectivity" in the face of a monster is the central mission of their job, they pounced on a few dozen clearly plagiarized words. This will be their bright shiny objet du jour, and it will come at the expense of any useful reportage or analysis.

Interview with the Vampire

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Another Day In Paradise

Here we go again, this time in Baton Rouge. Three cops dead, three more injured. The conventional clickbait hot-take would be to ask ponderously, are we headed toward a civil war?, with the combatants and sides rather poorly defined.

The smart take might be to seriously consider the possibility that we are already in one, not formally declared, but underway nonetheless. One could loosely describe this ongoing series of skirmishes as between law enforcement and blacks, but that would be unfair to both of those overly generic group designations.

Yet it's impossible to ignore any longer the specter of lying and obfuscation on the part of a few (by no means all or most, he hastily disclaimed) law enforcement officers. When cops routinely treat "certain communities" like third-class citizens, when they act like an occupying force trying to pacify Fallujah, the people who live in those communities day after miserable day and put up with this dehumanizing bullshit eventually snap.

None Dare Call It Reason

As long as we're making up crimes and punishments, I call for this worthless cocksucker to be strung up in a filthy back alley, and his bug-eyed corpse to be dumped in the nearest outhouse. I mean, it's West Virginia, so you know there's a fuckin' outhouse within earshot.

Look, I'm as skeptical of HFC as the next cat, but this is ridonkulous. These crazy assholes need to beaten down, hard. No mercy. Twenty points is not enough of a spread; 99-1 would be more suitable. These knuckle-draggers must be repudiated wherever they crawl out of the woodwork. If they cannot mount a campaign of principled disagreement and proportionate response, then the gloves must come off.

I don't know if Michael Folk has noticed, but there is a climate of violence brewing across the nation right now. Cops are abusing and killing citizens, madmen are murdering cops that had nothing to do with any abuse issues, terror attacks are occurring hither and yon, and people are kind of on edge. We do not need this sort of incendiary rhetoric.

Additionally, Folk may want to review the tape of Jim Comey declining to prosecute HFC for her email issues. I can take it or leave it, but Comey is not a Dem partisan hack, by any means. If he says he saw smoke, but not fire, we're all just going to have to leave it at that and move on, especially considering that General Petraeus' issues with classified emails was much more egregious and criminal, and he walked away from it.

Not only that, but even if Comey had decided to prosecute HFC over the emails, it's not a hangin' offense. Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ, what the fuck is wrong with these people? One expects this sort of dipshit booga-booga from random YouTube or Twitter assholes, places that treat their comments section like the bathroom wall at the filthiest rest stop on I-80. But Michael Folk is a state legislator. Is it too much to ask that he behave as such? Apparently it is.

(Just a reminder:  Jim Comey was Patrick Fitzgerald's assistant prosecutor in the Scooter Libby trial. You may recall that one, where a CIA field agent was outed, endangering her life, as well as those of her field contacts. That was not a hanging offense either.)

I don't know about you, but I've had enough of these people, and their tedious bullshit. I do not seek rapport or common ground with them, when they talk like that. Fuck them, fuck their voters, fuck their families, their communities, their social clubs. Everything they touch is tainted, and must be razed to the fucking ground. I want HFC and the Democratic Party to go scorched earth on them, burn them to the ground, salt their ashes and the earth beneath them, take a healthy dump, and plow it all under.

They won't of course; the Democrats are as feckless and gutless as the Republicans are stupid and spiteful. It will be enough of a challenge to get the Dems out of their natural circular-firing-squad posture. But there's always hope.

Ramblin' Man

Let the ritual humiliation of Mike Pence begin. Couldn't happen to a nicer asshole.

Runner(heh)-Up

Now go get your fuckin' shine box.

Ass Ipsa Loquitur

If you have the stomach and patience, here's last night's Drumpf putsch in Cincy, complete with suckup / pseudo-historian Newt Gingrich introducing him. You have to see one of these to believe it, to really put it all into context. Everything you've read and heard about these things is true, the nonsense, the lies, the bloviating, the hooting and bellowing from the crowd.

For the terminally obtuse, on his two main defensive points:

• The deal with the star is not that Drumpf is anti-Semite; the deal is that the graphic originated at one of these sleazebag white supremacist outlets. And this is not the first or second or third time this has happened, that Drumpf has re-tweeted something that originated from places with names that ought to be a clue (for example, "White Genocide"). Whether it's social media dickhead Dan Scavino or Drumpf himself stumbling across these little gems, maybe take two minutes and check out where it came from. Otherwise it's just another dog whistle to the white power animals going whole-hog for Drumpf. (Not to mention that Drumpf, who holds events at his own places so that he can funnel campaign donations right back through them, is at least as corrupt as he claims HFC to be.
• Does Drumpf admire Saddam Hussein? No, of course not. (Hopefully, that is.) But again, the pattern is there. Over and over and over again, the guy professes his admiration for the ability of tyrants and despots to "get things done." Even if one accepts that Saddam was effective in rooting out real terrorists (as opposed to internal dissidents and political opponents), the direct implication Drumpf is aiming for is that the current administration is allowing ISIS to proliferate. And it's simply not true; the area of territory they control in Iraq and Syria has been cut in half. There are bombing sorties and Special Forces in-country. Unless Drumpf is proposing to simply nuke Baghdad and have done with it, civilians and all, this is a complex issue that takes some time.

I've watched three or four of these events over the past year, drink in hand of course. And every time, I come away thinking -- wishing -- that Drumpf's cult followers could get what they wish for, and the rest of us could avoid the consequences. Much like the Brexit dopes, who are going to feel the consequences the most directly, these people should have to own every ounce of impact that this lunatic would hit them with: trade wars, actual wars, shitty business practices. This guy fucking talks up Don King and Mike Tyson about 43 minutes into this mess, and it gets worse from there.

Nothing has changed. These are truly the dumbest fucking people on the face of the planet, and they deserve everything that's coming to them. I sincerely hope they get every last drop of it.

Street Executions

I wish I had more to say on the two state-sanctioned street executions in the last forty-eight hours, but Ed and many others have pretty well covered it. Plus, res ipsa loquitur and all.

Noting that Louisiana is an open-carry state (though Alton Sterling, as a convicted felon, should still not have possessed a gun), or that Philando Castile had a concealed-carry permit and is seen on video as alerting the officer to that fact as he tried to hand over his identification, will mean nothing to the usual cops-are-always-right-even-when-they're-wrong morons. Nor will you hear a peep from the gun nuts, for obvious reasons.

It would be nice to think that the Department of Justice would crawl up the ass of every national, regional, state, and metropolitan police union and fuck them sideways on excessive use of force, but we all know that won't happen either. But whether or not it does any good, it needs to be pointed out that -- for starters -- Jared Loughner, James Holmes, Robert Dear, and Dylann Stormfront Roof were all brought in safely and alive after they had killed multiple people, forty-two people total between them.

Keep that in mind some lying piece of shit from the FOP gets in front of a mic and lectures you about how scary the job is and how they had no other choice. Bull. Fucking. Shit. Ten bucks says no one loses their job over either of these most recent civilian shootings.

This is how it is in a police state, just as it is in a true authoritarian or totalitarian state:  conformity is culturally enforced, compliance is expected and enforced, by violence if necessary, and frequently even when it isn't necessary.

[Update 7/7/16 9:27 PDT:  Well, this isn't going to help.]

Another Man's Freedom Fighter

Would it be too much trouble at all for someone, anyone in the Responsible Corporate Media to ask the once and future Kanzler von Clownstick about this weird admiration he professes for various and sundry strongmen?

More to the point, his most recent burble about how Saddam Hussein -- Saddam Fucking Hussein! -- really knew how to take care of terrorists, what precisely does he think Saddam considered a "terrorist"? This is where Clownstick's pig-blind stupidity becomes not only a thing of wonder, but a thing of danger.

This is all of a pattern, the (for now) impotent threats to shut down the nation's fourth-largest (and the national capital's largest) newspaper; the empty promise to "toughen" the nation's non-existent libel laws (libel laws, of course, vary by state, but to Mister Man that's a difference without a distinction, except States' Rights, amirite?); the refusal when asked to bear witness to Vladimir Putin's track record of murdering dissidents and journalists; the long-ago admiration for the Chinese government's role in the Tiananmen Square massacre of its own citizens; the North Korean regime's ability to run a tight ship; and now, Saddam's brutality against "terrorists".

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.

We'll Create a Cure; We Made the Disease

A couple posts back I linked to the new George Saunders exegesis of the Drumpfsters in the upcoming New Yorker, but it deserves its own reference. It makes sense to be charitable and assume that Saunders' effort was at least in part to humanize them more, make them look less like hateful morons.

And yet, afaic, it fails utterly in that regard. This is about more than the mere clash between two opposing sides with "non-intersecting data sets and myths," this is about cult behavior in the political arena, people motivated by nothing more than foolishness and lies, hatred and spite. It's not even wanting to burn the village in order to save it, but merely the pyromaniac's impulse to simply burn the motherfucker down, without worrying about who might still be in the edifice.

Fire in the Hole

Thoughts and prayers. Thoughts And Prayers. THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS YOU GUYS!

According to police, Stephen J. Brumby, 14, and his dad, William C. Brumby, 64, were practicing in a shooting lane against a wall when the accident took place.

"After firing a round, the spent shell casing struck the wall causing it to deflect and fall into the back of (the elder) Mr. Brumby's shirt. Brumby then used his right hand, which was holding the handgun, in an attempt to remove the casing. While doing so, he inadvertently pointed the firearm directly behind him and accidently fired," a police statement reads.

....

No charges have been filed.

[emphasis mine]

Nothing could have been done, you see, nothing at all. Accidents happen, right? The idea that an old dumbass using a loaded gun basically as a fucking back-scratcher is, for lack of a better word, STUPID, does not enter the discussion. It's funny how guns are the only implement where criminal negligence not only goes completely unpunished, but seems not to exist at all.

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.