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Showing posts from February, 2018

Wingnut Wrapup

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The idiocy is really out in force these days.  I'm guessing that, despite all the bluster, the wingnuts really know what is looming ahead for their malignant conspiracy against the country.  So here we go: Allahpundit:  "Dem Rep: Uh, No, I Don’t Want To Ban All Semiautomatic Weapons" This story is all over the wingnut world today:  Another example" Guy Benson, Town Hall:  "House Democrat: Actually, We Should Not Ban All Semi-Automatic Weapons" Benson continues, as you would expect, with one of the great Conservative lies of all time: "the constitution guarantees the right to private gun ownership" But my intention here is not to add one more drop to the ocean of words about guns and the Constitution; rather to once again point out that Republicans are so authoritarian in nature that they just cannot fathom that a Democrat would disagree for one second with the dictated party line.  This sort of capitulation to leaders is the fodder o

Indict Trump?

Just a short post to bring to your attention an article today in the Washington Post, by well know Constitutional law professor (and Conservative) Jonathan Turley, regarding the question of whether a sitting President can be indicted without being impeached, which Turley answers in the affirmative. This is the best short analysis of the subject that I have seen in any organ of the mainstream press, and I think it is well worth a read.

Pay Teachers?

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I was reading Infidel 753's link roundup for this week, an essential read for me, when I came across the following map .  It shows teacher salaries in the United States: Too tempting to resist comparing it to this one: Blue State vs. Red State Just a coincidence, I guess.

The Only Real Solution

The problem with violence in this country is not too many guns.  It is not a lack of mental health services.  It is not Democrats correctly pointing out how stupid and ignorant the Republican base is, causing Republicans to be very sad.  Here is the real problem: One of the two political parties in the United States exists solely for the purpose of further enriching two or three hundred of the richest families in America.  This is to be accomplished by, essentially, stripping all of the wealth from the remaining 340 million Americans.  In return, these rich families have committed themselves to funding whatever smear campaigns, vote thievery or any other corruption is needed to keep that party in power. Of course, no one who was not a member of those two or three hundred families would have a reason on earth to support such a program.  It became obvious forty or fifty years ago that anyone who paid attention to political reality in the United States could easily see what was happ

Wingnut Wrapup

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Yeah, I know that I am violating my New Years' resolution not to deal with wingnuts any more, but with things getting worse and worse for Trump every day, they are really having to work overtime to keep the lies flowing, so here we go: Let's just start out with a source that doesn't make it into Wingnut Wrapup that much: Mark Theissen, Washington Post:  "Democrats are crippling America’s response to Russian interference" Yes, it's Democrats, DEMOCRATS!  who are crippling America's response to Russian interference!  Because, you see, according to Mark Theissen, a "fellow" at the right wing lie factory The American Enterprise Institute, and therefore fully qualified to be published at one of the top newspapers in the country: "What it does not show is any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Quite the opposite, the indictment shows evidence of a lack of collusion." No rational human being on earth could

Tell Us Something We Didn't Know

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News just in from an article at Daily Kos.   The article quotes one in the New York Times, but I'm sorry- the New York Times isn't any more deserving of a link these days than Gateway Pundit: "A leading association of political scientists have released the data from their most recent survey and a ratings-obsessed Donald Trump is not going to be happy. They detailed their findings in the New York Times: "James Buchanan, who was at the helm as the United States careened into civil war, was dislodged from his position as our nation’s worst president by our current president, Trump. His Oval Office predecessor, Barack Obama, shot into the Top 10, up from 18th in the previous survey"  Have a nice day, asshole.  By which I mean I hope you are getting a head start on packing for prison so you will be ready if your corrupt party can't keep you out of where you belong.

Let's Just Hide from the Truth, Washington Post Style

A couple of brief excerpts from the Washington Post today. First, this remark from Paul Waldman: "Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation, and the Russia scandal in general, are driving this president around the bend, to the point where he is setting himself against not just the government he leads but also the interests of the United States of America. And everything we’ve seen up to now suggests that it will only get worse." You see, the President "setting himself against ...the interests of the United States of America" is about nothing but him being "around the bend," whatever that is supposed to mean.  Waldman doesn't dare mention the real reason for this behavior:  The Russians put him in office, and destroying the security of the United States is the price he agreed to pay for that favor.  I do not believe for a second that Waldman doesn't know this perfectly well, but he gets paid to slide our attention away from this

Fox News Comes Up With Answer to School Shooting

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Greg Gutfield, at Fox News: " Learning combat. Learning hand-to-hand combat. This works, by the way, for terror, if there’s a terror attack, and it works for school shootings." Hand to hand combat.  By means of which these people are going to take down an active shooter with an AR-15.  A really practical alternative to gun control.

The House Comes Tumbling Down

While the country is mesmerized with the latest right wing terror attack, and a story of another newly revealed Trump affair, this seems to be getting just about no coverage. There is, for example, currently not one word about it on the Washington Post website, nor at the New York Times website.   From a CNBC story: "Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office said Friday that a grand jury indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities for alleged interference in the 2016 presidential elections, during which they boosted the candidacy of Donald Trump. The indictment says that the defendants by early to mid-2016 were "supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump ... and disparaging Hillary Clinton." The indictment said "the organization," known as the Internet Research Agency LLC, "sought, in part, to conduct what it called 'information warfare against the United States of America' through fictitious U.S. p

Wingnut Wrapup- Florida School Shooting Edition

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This is an unusual edition of Wingnut Wrapup, so let me explain:  Within a couple of hours of the Florida school shooting today, in which 17 were killed, Gateway Pundit, one of the most malignant right wing websites in existence, published a post claiming that Nikolas DeJesus Cruz, the shooter, was a registered Democrat and lover of Islam.  This turned out almost immediately to be a total lie, based on some of the shoddiest journalism ever seen.  So, Gateway Pundit just changed the entire post to hide their depraved indifference to the truth.  Unfortunately, they did not also purge the comments section of this post, which quickly amassed hundreds of comments.  What is below is a random sampling of those comments; for every one I list here, there are dozens more just as malignant.  Normally, I do not include remarks from comment sections in Wingnut Wrapup, because, honestly, they just make too easy pickings.  But I think I will make an exception today, because it is important to see jus

Wingnut Wrapup

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Man, it's been a busy few days in wingnut world.  You can always tell when they are so worried about what they have been up to that they need to be extra generous with the lies. Let's just start out with a shout out to Fox News, which is now pushing the line that the reason that so many Trump administration officials can't get security clearances is not that they are all crooks with ties to a foreign dictator, but that...wait for it...it's all Obama's fault, for making the security check process just too darned hard.  I BLAME OBAMA!!!  What else did you expect? And on we go: Kurt Schlichter, Town Hall:  "Principles, Schminciples - Lynch Mobs Are Cool If They Derail Trump" The "Lynch mobs" in question are not, of course, real mobs, but anyone who questions the miserable way Trump is behaving as President.  See, any criticism from a Democrat is automatically illegitimate, and therefore: "They babble on, endlessly, about “principles

Humor from the Trump Administration

Ha ha.  News tonight that Rachel Brand, the number three person at the Justice Department, and the person who would have the power to end the Mueller investigation if Trump gets his way and fires Rod Rosenstein, has just resigned to take a job at Wal-Mart.   Wal-Mart!  Ms. Brand says it was an offer she couldn't refuse- leaving what was about to become one of the most powerful positions in Washington, to go to work for a discount store. With Ms. Brand gone, the next person in line to be in charge of Mueller is a former clerk to Antonin Scalia, who was approved with every Democrat except one voting against him. Boy, wouldn't you like to know how many millions the billionaire owners of Wal-Mart, strong supporters of Trump, had to offer her to get her out of there?  And  what was explained to her about how long her life expectancy was if she refused to quit? And this sort of thing is just fine with every Republican on earth.  This is not democracy, it is dictatorship; utte

A Little Information About the Great Crash of 1929

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Wall Street on October 29, 1929 I'll tell you something that I always believed until I started reading about the 1920's and 1930's, and it has to do with "Black Tuesday."  That was October 29, 1929, the day we were taught that the stock market crashed, precipitating the Great Depression, the greatest economic collapse in human history and a direct cause of World War II.  Isn't that what you, like me, were taught in school (if the subject was even mentioned?)  Even at the time, this account loomed large: This is a subject which it might be profitable to examine, given that the Dow Jones average, which closed at 26,616 just a week ago, closed yesterday at 23,860, a loss of just over 10% in a week.  Yes, it was up a little today, but is that reason for comfort, or on the other hand, was the recent decline a reason for great concern? I think it will be useful to examine exactly what did happen in 1929 and subsequent years.  Here is a chart of the Dow Jon

Hypocrisy indeed

From the Washington Post today: "Rand Paul’s warning about the GOP’s deficit hypocrisy reverberates" What of course never reverberated at the Washington Post or anywhere else in the mainstream media was liberals writing almost every day since at least the Reagan administration about the same thing. No, it only counts if a Republican says it, thirty years too late, and way too weakly to accomplish anything.  Liberals being right about this (as about virtually every other thing they say) means nothing, because liberals just don't get a place at the journalistic table, even such an allegedly liberal one as the Washington Post. So we go on with people endlessly repeating that Republicans are "fiscally conservative," that Paul Ryan is a serious policy wonk instead of a criminal leading the theft of our nation's resources, that Mitch McConnell is really trying to do the right thing for the country, that Donald Trump is right on the verge of "turning

A Little Bet

So, "President" Trump claims he wants to hold his military parade on Veterans' day, November 11.  I've got $10 that says that as soon as he manages to get this parade to happen, he is going to discover that Veterans' day is not a good time for it, so he will move it up a week or so, to make it happen just before the election, when it can form the centerpiece of a belligerent campaign of jingoistic propaganda, the likes of which the United States has never seen.  Any takers?