Green Eagle

Believe me, there is absolutely nothing that would be more wonderful than to have Donald Trump carry out his threat to shovel out the dirt on Hillary and Bill at the next debate.  Please, Donald, spend every moment you have on this!  Monica, Gennifer Flowers, crooked Hillary and all the rest of it- please be as laser focused on that as you were on your insane attack on Alicia Machado in the middle of last night. Do your thing!  See what happens! You know you won't alienate a single one of the violent racists that are your real base, so, to steal one of your favorite phrases, "what do you have to lose?"

Something I don't think I've seen anyone comment about, regarding Trump's verbal abuse of Alicia Machado:  He insults her appearance, and she is a Miss Universe winner, after all.  What does a woman have to look like, before this asshole is willing to concede that she looks okay? What this proves is that attacks on women by guys like Trump have absolutely nothing to do with the victims themselves, but are simply an attempt to beat them down and get them to act properly subservient.  Someone like Alicia Machado insults Trump's male identity by the mere fact of having succeeded at something, so he needs to crush her.  The same thing is going on with Hillary, and by the way, with the numerous male opponents of him too.  He just can't stand to see anyone but himself succeed, so he will do his pathetic best to beat them down.  And cultural history makes this a standard pattern among guys like Trump, where a woman is involved. A hint, Donald:  It ain't...

I've not bothered to say too much about Hillary's debate with Trump, because it is my memory that right wingers don't really get into denial of reality mode until about three days after the fact.  That's tomorrow, and we'll see what they are saying then, although, if it is any sign, I was listening to a right wing talk show while driving to work today, where they were earnestly discussing the question, "Who really won the debate?"  Because it will be classified as a Trump victory, if Trump's followers persist in their delusional thinking, despite what was displayed right in front of their faces. The right's task seems to be a little harder this time around, because thanks to Trump's clownish behavior, so many people watched the debate, and because the highlights live forever online, but I believe that wingnuts are up to any feat of denial, no matter how monumental.  So, if you have any contact with the world of reality yourself, be prepared ...

I don't have a lot of energy for this bullshit tonight, but here is how the press turns a solid Hillary win into a Trump triumph.  From a Yahoo article, already standing the truth on its head: "During the debate, Clinton responded to one long Trump answer by saying she hoped the fact-checkers were working away at what her opponent had just said. This emphasis on fact-checking fundamentally misunderstands one of the dynamics of television: It’s what people see that matters as much as what they hear. I would wager that for millions of Americans watching on Monday night, they saw a Donald Trump who dominated the debate in an exceedingly forceful manner, and in the sheer number of minutes he spoke. His voice was heard more frequently than Clinton’s. Most of the debate was broadcast in split screen, with side-by-side close-ups of the candidates. As the debate went on, Trump increased the amount of face-pulling, grimacing, and “sad” head-shaking, thereby pulling viewers’ attentio...

This interesting news about the guy in Houston that shot nine people this morning, courtesy of Daily Kos: " Law enforcement sources said that the shooter was wearing what appeared to be an antique German uniform with Swastikas on it... Investigators also combed through the shooter's apartment, where they found what appeared to be Nazi paraphernalia inside, according to a law enforcement source." Thankfully, he managed to kill none of them.  Nazis just can't shoot straight, I guess.  Doesn't bode well for them in the coming race war, does it?   I'll be interested to see how much of a role this guy's sartorial choices play in the coverage of his behavior, or if, because he is on the white guys' side, he will just be written off as a disturbed person, with no political interests.  I do notice that the neo-Nazi site VDare has the following to say: "for reasons unknown, he wore a Nazi uniform during his rampage" I guess it is just b...

I'm not really interested in talking about the debate tonight, because what happens there means nothing.  The only thing that counts is how hard the press works to make people think Trump won the debate, which he is incapable of doing, at least if the debate is about who would make a better President.  We all know perfectly well that the following character could beat Trump on those grounds: The only question is whether their greed and lust for power will overcome whatever minimal human decency they have left, and based on the past, it won't be much of a contest.  So everything worth watching about the debate will not happen until it is over.  See you then.

I thought it would be instructive to look at how Al Gore was treated by the mainstream press in the 2000 campaign, and particularly in the first debate.  You can find a lot of information about this inglorious episode in our history online, but I am going to quote at some length from a 2007 article at Vanity Fair which collects in one place a lot of what you need to know. The 2000 election is very important because, as we are facing today, the country had to make a choice between a highly competent and informed Democrat, and a ludicrous, ignorant jerk on the Republican side.  It is important to understand how the press rigged that election so that the country had to face the worst eight years of leadership in its history. A sample from this rather long article: "In 2000, we would get stories where if Gore walked in and said the room was gray we'd be beaten up because in fact the room was an off-white. They would get stories about how George Bush's wing tips looked ...

I'm not even going to bother mentioning his name.  He just committed one of the most craven acts in the history of American politics, and revealed himself for all time (to the two or three dozen people who hadn't figured this out yet) to be as morally bankrupt a human being as anyone in existence. Well, enough about that, right?

Let's just start out with this remarkable revelation about our history from a county Trump chairman from Ohio: “I don’t think there was any racism until Obama got elected. We never had problems like this ... Now, with the people with the guns, and shooting up neighborhoods, and not being responsible citizens, that’s a big change, and I think that’s the philosophy that Obama has perpetuated on America.” Before Obama, it was all about inviting black people to our picnics. And let's not leave this prediction of the future out: Omirosa Manigault, Trump's "Director of African American Outreach":   “Every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump. It’s everyone who’s ever doubted Donald, who ever disagreed, who ever challenged him. It is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe.”   The most powerful man IN THE UNIVERSE, do you hear me?!!?!?!! Just the way every critic, everyone who challenged Obama ...

This is just something I have been thinking about.  I can't say I have much confidence in its validity, but it makes sense to me today, so I will just shoot my mouth off about it. The Republican party, for about a hundred years (Let's say from the time of Taft or Teddy Roosevelt up until the Bushes) was really dominated by a few very rich families.  Either their choices, or their actual relatives, were the ruling members of the party, and its selections for high office.  That worked out pretty well, although a couple of low-class outsiders like Nixon and Reagan managed to weasel their way into the White House, but by the 21st century, the party had sort of run out of traditional families like that.  The last sort of mainline old style Conservative to run for President was McCain, the son of a right wing admiral; after that, the party was out of ammo, as witnessed by the endless run of charlatans who have sought their Presidential nomination since then.  So, th...

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This news just in: "New York Times Editor Vows To Call Out Trump When He Blatantly Lies"

Green Eagle's ongoing, random collection demonstrating what it means to think like a Conservative. Dedicated today to Donald Trump, who had this to say: “Our African-American communities are absolutely in the worst shape that they’ve ever been in before. Ever, ever, ever.” Ever, ever, ever!  Even when they were slaves, I guess.  And the rest ain't pretty either.  For a start, they won't ever give it up: Guy Benson, Town Hall:  "Wow: Apparent 'Smoking Gun' Evidence Uncovered on Hillary's Email Deletion Scheme" I'm not going to even begin to explain to you what this "smoking gun" evidence is, since the account in Guy's article is so incomprehensible that it's obvious that, once again, they've got nothing, but basically it involves a question from a tech guy to Hillary's office asking if e-mails that were about to be made public should have the private e-mail addresses of correspondents removed before they became ...

We learn this about the guy who has been arrested for the idiotic New York pressure cooker bombings: "A naturalized US citizen of Afghan descent, Ahmad Khan Rahami, has been arrested in New Jersey after a shootout with police. He was identified on surveillance video placing the bombs in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, and his fingerprints were found on the pressure cooker bomb that did not explode. Ahmad was found apparently passed out in the doorway of a bar." Passed out in the doorway of a bar.  Great Muslim there.  Something is really wrong with this story, I think.  Oh well,  I guess it's an excuse to post a song from someone else who was found passed out in the doorway of a bar: "Jimmy Reed here tonight," I asked the bartender.   "Was here, but they through playing"   "I'd just like to meet him.  I'd just like to see him."   "You just did."   "How's that," I asked.   "When you ...

In case you have never seen him, here is the infamous Alex Jones, the king of right wing conspiracy nuts, and one of the main influences on Donald Trump.  I bring you this courtesy of Digby, and  urgently hope you will watch as much as you can take.  The mixture of hatred and out and out madness is truly frightening. This is what the country is buying into.

Now that ISIS has made it really clear who they want to lead the United States, what can Patriots! do except give them the apocalyptic war that they want, and that they will never get from Hillary? So, Mr. Trump, be my guest and use this to display to the world who you are really working alongside: No need to thank me, really.  I'm just doing my part.

Helpfully accompanied by a few illustrations I feel called upon to state openly where I think this country is going.  First, I want to say that my views since the Reagan administration have essentially been consistent, although only the few people who have known me that long could attest to my having held to this belief as long as I have.  I say this not to gloat, but to assure you that what I have to predict here is not the product of a recent depression brought on by the success of Trump, but of decades of careful observation of what is happening to the United States. Trump may, even likely will, lose the election, but it makes no difference in the long run.  The truth is, Trump is an anomaly, a consequence of a miscalculation on the part of the Republican elite, which spent decades, and billions of dollars, building an electoral base that was motivated by greed, hatred and a lust for violence; without at the same time building in quite enough authoritarian passivit...

Trump is the only one who shares the Islamists' hunger for a world-wide apocalypse.  Hillary will never give them the massive mass slaughter they are hoping and (literally) praying for.  Trump will.  And sad to say, a very large proportion of his followers have the same love of hatred and violence that members of ISIS or Al Qaida do.  They are working hand in glove with the Islamists to make this a reality.

After all the ranting I have done, I fear that I have still not made it clear what is going on with the mainstream press in this country; something which is still shown by the endless comments attributing the problem to, at worst, an attempt to maximize press profits by obscuring the difference between the candidates. In fact, the people that own the press today do not give one damn about the money which they can make from their newspapers and TV news establishments.  Here is what they are really up to:  According to calculations done by Thomas Piketty and his associates, the United States is on a track to have the most unequal division of wealth in the known history of the world, by 2030.  The amount of money which this will move to the rich from the rest of us is so huge that the profits or losses of the corporate press are absolutely infinitesimal in comparison.  The press in this country exists today not to make money on its own, but solely to propagandize the ...

So, once again, Green Eagle has to explain what should be obvious to everyone in the country.  No, of course Trump never believed his birther bullshit.  No, he doesn't believe half of what he says at this point.  Here is what he is up to:  He knows that if he does or says something outrageous every single day, the press will jump from one outrage to the next, totally abandoning even a pretext of covering Hillary and her issue-oriented campaign.  Trump knows that nothing he does, no matter how abominable, will alienate a single one of the miserable excuses for human beings in this country who have decided that his hatred and violence are just what the country needs.  But to reach 50%, Hillary must at least let undecided voters see who she is and what she is proposing to do as President.  Trump has found a perfect way to prevent that from happening.  Of course, to get away with it, he needs the complicity of the press, but that is obviously not a pr...

And today's example of utter cluelessness comes from Kerry Eleved, writing at Daily Kos, which we normally count on to be an island of sanity in this insane country, but which doesn't seem to be coming through this time around.  Let's check out a bit of it: "View from the Left: The media's birther awakening... Donald Trump had Hillary Clinton on the ropes. She called people deplorable, got sick, and hadn't prioritized the media. Then he uttered a single sentence. "President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period." That, my friends, is the beginning of a new day." On what planet?  Because if this idiot thinks one more embarrassment added to the hundreds that the Republican party has heaped on the press for decades, is going to change things, he really is living in a fantasy land.  The "new day" will pretty much be literally a single day, until Trump utters some other sickening smear, and off they will go, leavi...

Donald Trump today, talking about Vladimir Putin: “Well, look, I don’t know him, and I know nothing about him, really. I just think if we got along with Russia, that’s not a bad thing,” Trump said. “The Democrats try to say I like him somehow. I don’t like him. I don’t dislike him. I don’t have any feelings one way or the other. And it’s not going to matter what he says about me. If he says good things or bad things about me, I’m going to make great deals for our country.” He added,  “They make it like he’s my best friend, I don’t know him.” Okay then, delete all memories of anything else he just might have said at some time in the distant past. Will a thing like this become a greater issue than Hillary coughing?  Of course not.  I mean, who doesn't want a compulsive liar in the White House? And just to add to the atrocity, here's something else Trump had to say today: “I think they should take the guns away from Hillary’s bodyguards. Let’s see what happens ...

I want to quote from one of my posts from June: "I must warn people of a phenomenon that I have observed for numerous elections now, but which I have never seen mentioned by a single other person, left or right.  It has been customary for the press to have a brief period before the conventions when they make a feint of presenting some kind of modestly honest coverage of the candidates, before shifting back to their unrelenting support of the Republican, no matter what an incompetent, lying con man he clearly is.  This is done so that, in later years, this can be cited as some sort of proof that the press was even-handed.  In fact, this period represents the point at which committed, politically involved people have virtually all made their choices, and politically uninvolved, low information voters are still tuned out.  It is a safe time to pretend to be fair, before getting back to their flacking for the party of the rich; do not delude yourself into thinking th...

Today's example, Josh Marshall, at Talking Points Memo, summing up the point he is trying to make in this rambling apologia for the press: "Mainstream media journalists simply lack the tool set to deal with a candidate like Trump." They don't?  As far as I can tell, the only "tool set" they require is some minimal respect for the truth, and an ability to feel a bit of outrage at the thought of collaborating in the effort to put a lying, racist bully in charge of the country.  And that is a tool set which every marginally decent person on earth has. There, Josh.  I managed to make my point in just a couple of sentences, not two thousand words.  And it has the virtue of being true, instead of being another weak attempt to deny what is really going on.  The mainstream press is owned by Republicans, and it exists to push Republican candidates and Republican schemes.  It hires people who are willing to do that by any means necessary.  The world is f...

Ever wonder why they have been so careful to see to it that this guy never gets another chance to appear on national broadcast news? Put the whole story in one place like this, and you had better keep your hands off the news, buddy.

Note:  I have pretty much ignored the literally hundreds of lunatic posts about Hillary's health I've seen in the last couple of days.  I hope that's okay with you.  Well, maybe a couple snuck in, but trust me, I could fill ten Wingnut Wrapups with these stories, if I really wanted to bore you to death. And let's just start with Conservatives putting it right out there: Jonathan F. Keiler, American Thinker:  "Unlike Obama, Putin Is a Patriot" I'm sure Stalin and Hitler were patriots too, in your opinion, Jonathan. Matt Vespa, Town Hall:  " Mike Pence Releases 10 Years Of Tax Returns" That is an occasion worthy of celebration on the right, apparently.  Sort of makes you wonder, huh? Cortney O'Brien, Town Hall:  "Clinton Supporter Says Hilary Could Learn Something From Trump's School Choice Plan" Clinton Supporter!  All for Trump's plan!  I wonder who that brave Clinton Supporter might be? "The America...

Boy, this is boring. As Daily Kos  reports today, in what has come to be an every day story: "Fact is, the New York Times is going a step beyond false balance, giving blanket coverage to relatively minor Clinton issues while virtually ignoring major Trump ones. And then public editor Liz Spayd has the nerve to trot out and argue that calls for the newspaper to report semi-fairly are illegitimate and overly ideological." Yeah, what else is new?  To tediously repeat my endless mantra, which I have been saying for a good two decades now:  The Democrats could wipe the Republican party off the face of the earth without hardly trying.  What they cannot do is beat the Republicans and the press working together.  That is what has given us Ronald Reagan and the two Bushes, and which almost gave us McCain and Romney.  And rather than show an ounce of shame for their behavior, the press is working harder than ever to both smear Hillary with a pack of lies, and ...