Category Archives: current events

Fascist scam, succinctly put

Timothy Snyder, scholar of fascism and World War Two, gives an excellent succinct description of the recipe of fascism: whip up fear of a fake problem, harness the terror to gain power, once in power proclaim you have solved the fake problem. Fascist rule, as Snyder sums it up, is based on Emotion over Reason, Will over Reason, Fear over Fact, Doom over Fact.

I haven’t been able to embed the excellent five minute video here, but there is a link below.

The new hysterical American Nazi claim pushed by Team Trump is that an all-powerful Black woman, Harris, is letting millions of perverted illegals into the country, personally performing free sex change operations on them and letting them take your job.  Once in power, Trump, (or rather, Vance — I give Trump a week, tops, before he’s whacked, by a transexual illegal gunned down after the assassination, to let the less floridly psychotic Vance take the reins of newly liberated America)  instantly, magically solves, once and forever, the hellish problem of Kamala and her indefatigable sex change/job stealing machine.

In Nazi Germany, Hitler took the kernel of a real thing, several big retail stores were owned by wealthy Jews, and ran with it.  Wealthy Jews control everything, and hate Christians, and want to rape Christian women and pollute the pure blood of Aryans to destroy Germany forever.  Hmmmm, sounds about right to terrified Germans freaked out by runaway inflation, wheeling wheelbarrows of cash to the bakery to buy a loaf of bread.  It has to be the damned Jews, right?  Hitler alone can fix it, and he did his damnedest.  It took him a decade, but, by God, he built the Final Solution, didn’t he?

Timothy Snyder, with an excellent short explanation of how these fuckers operate.

Legitimate political discourse, USA! USA!!! style

In a country where a deadly riot conducted by followers of an enraged candidate who lost an election that wasn’t close, lied about losing and sent a mob of patriotic martyrs to overturn the will of the voters, an estimated 50% of likely voters appear to believe that this riot was not a riot at all but “legitimate political discourse.” That was the phrase Ronna Romney McDaniel, head of the MAGA Republican National Committee parroted to describe the direct, frontal assault on democracy, with very fine people on both sides. the finest people.

“We had no guns,” claimed their madly riffing candidate the other day, lying, as is his reflex, “only they had guns”. The “they” in question was law enforcement. Ha ha ha! Isn’t that hitlerious? “Arnold Palmer, gigantic cock, I shouldn’t say this, but mine is only slightly bigger. I know, I know!”

Belief is all that matters in the United States of advertising, and if you truly believe it, you have every right to act righteously on that belief. The triumph of American Exceptionalism right there, boys and girls.

You claim my God is imaginary? Blasphemy! That gives me the right to put you to death. God sez so!!!

Shawn McCreesh summed up this “vicious and absurd” election beautifully in the New York Times today. He sets the scene the Troll-in-Chief whipped up outside his quick McDonald’s photo op in swing state Pennsylvania:

The parking lot throbbed with hatred, fear and neighbor’s suspicion of neighbor. It became a microcosm of this year’s election, vicious and absurd. There was shouting about Project 2025 and the Jan. 6 riot. Transgender youth and vaccines. Tariffs and abortion. Fascism and communism. Mr. Trump’s supporters wore T-shirts that said “I’m voting for the convicted felon.” The other side yelled, “Lock him up.” One person wore an orange prison jumpsuit and a mask of Mr. Trump’s face.

This is what the mood is like in a swing state, 16 days before an election. Sixteen days before this election. Nearly a decade into the Trump-era of politics, the language is apocalyptic. Social media has supercharged the crude negativity.

campaign notebook

Maybe this social media blasted country really is mad and stupid enough to allow Trump, Bannon, Musk, Giuliani, Kerik, Flynn, Ginni Thomas, Peter Thiel, Miriam Adelson, JD Vance and random Hitler fans to establish massive righteous concentration camps in the name of Jesus Christ and intoxicatingly unfettered predatory capitalism. I hate to say it, and I’ll probably be saying it through broken jaws on the train to camp, but this country will deserve it if violent xenophobia, racism, misogyny, homophobia, lust for tax breaks and other forms of bullying stupidity tilt this unaccountably close election to triumphant American Nazis, based purely on advertising stoked rage.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press uncritically retailed three Trump whoppers in a one minute and nineteen second account of Orange Manhood’s Mickey D trolling exercise in Feasterville, Pennsylvania the other day. The compulsive liar, wearing an apron like a real minimum wage worker, spat out three juicy ones in seconds in this beautiful, free Trump campaign ad. “She never worked at McDonald’s,” (she did) “McDonald’s just confirmed that again, by the way” (the corporate giant, taking a principled moral stance, declined to comment. again) “in other words, she’s Lying Kamala.” (don’t you mean Lyin’ Ted, you demented fascist?)

We fight, we fight like hell.

and if you don’t fight like hell, we’re not going to have a country anymore.

Roy Cohn, a truly grotesque incarnation of human evil, a vicious homophobe who was promiscuous with young men, a corrupt lawyer disbarred, finally, as he was dying of AIDS, had three rules he taught young Donald:

Attack, attack, attack. Admit nothing, deny everything. No matter what happens, you claim victory and never admit defeat.

Sound familiar?

Fitness for office — not an issue for MAGA

Fitness for any powerful office is based on competence, experience, character, intelligence, the capacity to reason and a measured temperament. Fitness for office should be a prerequisite for anyone who exercises power over others (as it is for active US military commanders), particularly those in control of the deadly force of a nation. Fitness and judicial temperament are particularly vital for a judge, someone who must fairly weigh facts in light of law and precedent. It applies as well to anyone bound to faithfully carry out the law.

Someone who is always aggrieved, angry, competitive, spiteful, vengeful, untruthful, entitled, grandiose, impulsive, given the power to appoint people to positions of power, will always choose people with these same attributes. Case in point:

Donald Trump’s inability or unwillingness to distinguish fact from fiction, wanton disregard for the rule of law, intolerance of perspectives different from his own, rageful responses to criticism, lack of impulse control and sweeping condemnations of entire populations rendered him temperamentally unsuitable to be in command of the nuclear arsenal.                                                                             

— Dr. Nanette Gartrell from The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump

Outside of Trump gastroenterologist Dr. Harold Bornstein’s 2016 claim that “Donald Trump will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency” and a one page letter released by a loyal White House doctor, Ronny Jackson, (whose name Trump got wrong in bragging about the letter), a man demoted by the Navy for various infractions including being drunk on duty, bullying subordinates and dispensing pills like Pez, a loyalist who is now a MAGA Congressman, we know nothing of the Orange Temper Tantrum’s health, physical or mental.   We do know a lot about his readily observable behavior, which is as predictable and unalterable as anything in the universe.

Dr. Judith Herman sums up the mix nicely as “grandiose, belligerent and unpredictable behavior” — unpredictable only as to the full extent of his impulsiveness.

An insecure, grandiose braggart who makes all his school records, tax records, medical records and conversations with Vladimir Putin top secret, who insists everyone around him sign NDAs, while sharing actual top secret government documents with undisclosed persons, after leaving office, certainly has nothing to hide.

If asked a question about what happened on Election Day 2020, or on January 6, 2021, it’s not hard to predict the answer of Trump’s VP pick, chosen by Trump for this Trump-like characteristics. His answer will be an angry demand for the questioner to answer an unrelated question. He will do this over and over, challenging the poser of a legitimate question in the manner of a hectoring bully. Is anyone surprised Trump’s VP pick responds with anger whenever he’s “fact-checked”?

Of course, the whole conversation about fitness for duty is a nakedly partisan issue raised only by rabidly Marxist, Communist, Fascist, Democratic, Egalitarian cuck types like yours’ truly. Forget I mentioned it, or I will send the National Guard to your house to take care of you, if you know what I mean, while you resist arrest, cuck.

Project 2025 and the plan for POTUS 47

The blueprint for a fully fascistic US political system, known as Project 2025, the Charles Koch network’s latest Mandate for Leadership, is designed for any fascist organization Charles Koch and his billionaire “libertarian” friends can get into the Oval Office. Trump is the useful figurehead for these insane, determined bastards and his popularity has served their extremely unpopular cause very well, even if the brainy engineers of American fascism despise him for being so stupid.

Do you think Peter Thiel [1], the far-right billionaire who made JD Vance a millionaire and then spent $15,000,000 to get Vance into the Senate, would hesitate one second to take out a hit on Trump and put his handpicked boy in charge of the Unitary Executive and a fully compliant civil service? Hah. Do you think Elon Musk would have a second thought? Not a chance, the obscenely wealthy weirdo claims to believe that colonizing Mars is an existential necessity for mankind.

The only problem these American Nazis have at the moment is that while Trump short-circuits daily, like a sweaty robot whose A1 programming has been corrupted, they need him on the ballot for November 5. Vance gets almost no votes if Trump is suddenly defenestrated, poisoned or shot before the election. Trump’s dominant pal Vladimir Putin would shed no tears having a more intelligent useful idiot in the White House than his formerly useful buddy The Orange Polyp.

Thiel, Musk, Koch, Mercer, Mellon, Adelson and company (Forbes top twenty-five list here) have to ride the Orange Ass to the finish line, propelled by a wave of disinformation, if they’re going to defeat the majoritarian tyrants who decide American elections (most of the time, anyway).

I wonder what odds Las Vegas is putting on Trump to survive from stealing the 2024 election (God forbid) to Inauguration Day. I’m not a betting man, but I’d put some money on his handlers arranging for something other than Trump’s inauguration. Their ruthless type never has any hesitation to do exactly what must be done so that they can do as they please, as God, Jesus Christ and the Supreme Court have ordained they may always do.

Vance is as much of a “transactional” opportunist and liar as Trump, and not nearly as fucking stupid. Who would you rather have represent your interests, if you had almost all the money in the world and lived in a country where other people’s rights, sickeningly, also had to be considered sometimes?

[1]

Like Thiel, Vance has spoken extensively about the need to destroy the U.S. government, but while Thiel emphasizes the potential of a technological future unencumbered by democratic baggage, Vance emphasizes what he sees as the decadence of today’s America and the need to address that decadence by purging the government of secular leaders. A 2019 convert to right-wing Catholicism, Vance said he was attracted to the religion in part because he wanted to see the Republican Party use the government to work for what he considers the common good by imposing laws that would enforce his version of morality.  source

What a surprise . . . he’s joined the team with Leonard Leo, Clarence Thomas, Kavanaugh, Alito, Roberts, Bill Barr and company.   I’ve got to figure out how to get in touch with the Pope!  He’s got to excommunicate a couple of these guys, as an example to the rest of these fascistic “conservative”  “Christian” psychos. Jesus Himself demands no less.

Attack, deny, lie, declare victory when you lose

The corporate media, a machine to normalize the psychopathy of the powerful, it seems lately, is routinely nonchalant about things that should have the citizens in an uproar. At the time, during the Mueller investigation, there was almost nothing in the news about this game changing “fuck you” from a sitting president. I had to read Trump’s interrogatory answers myself to learn that he had flatly refused to answer Robert Mueller’s final, most incriminating, question.

A Republican Assistant Attorney General appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller (witch hunter number one) after Trump fired FBI director James Comey for insufficient loyalty when he would not drop an investigation into crimes committed by former Trump national security advisor General Michael “Q-Anon” Flynn. As part of his investigation into the Trump campaign’s many ties with Putin, Mueller wanted to ask Trump questions in person. Trump publicly bragged that he would sit down with that witch hunting traitor fuck any time, that he had no fear and nothing to hide.

It turns out he had plenty to hide and feared a “perjury trap” and so his lawyers negotiated an alternative, he’d answer written questions under oath. His lawyers wrote evasive answers throughout (which he bragged about writing himself) and then, for the final question, a compound question involving Flynn and others at the heart of the 140 documented acts of collusion (not indictable criminal conspiracy, since much evidence had been destroyed and witnesses dummied up) with Putin, Trump wrote . . .

. . . Nothing. . .

The thought that we are twenty odd days out from an election in which these unaccountable criminals, grifters and violent extremists may well be able to pull off the crime they attempted in 2020, stealing a “rigged” election by chicanery, brazen lies and violence, sickens me to my heart. If this fascist coup comes about, on my way to prison, or worse, I will be cursing the fucking New York Times. How hard is it not to be a well-respected equivocating mouthpiece for Nazis?

Four years ago today, a grim, fact-based reminder of what these Nazis will do on day one

We don’t have to wonder what Trump would do to enemies he truly hates, or needs others to hate, or can make a dollar on, or whatever (or Rosie O’Donnell). He has done it. This report of deadly government vengeance is from four years ago today.

As for fascist-adjacent, lawyerly perverter of the teachings of Jesus, Trump gunsel Bagpiper Bill Barr, suddenly a reluctantly Trump-supporting voice of reason who energetically helped a vengeful fascist until it would have put him in jeopardy as a criminal co-conspirator, fuck that fucking puto and the whores he rode in on.

Retribution is Trump’s mantra for his enemies

Dangerously insane moron

“Unless Trump wins and we get rid of the mountain of smothering regulations (that have nothing to do with safety!), humanity will never reach Mars,” Mr. Musk wrote this month in a post that has gained nearly 18 million views. “This is existential.”

Online, Mr. Musk has painted a dark picture of what would happen if Mr. Trump lost, a circumstance that could hurt Mr. Musk personally. In an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, he acknowledged “trashing Kamala nonstop” and being all in for Mr. Trump.

If Mr. Trump loses, he joked, “how long do you think my prison sentence is going to be?”

Source

Cartoon villain
One is smart, the other nyet

The Grey Lady, late to the party and weak

It was big news across the nonauthoritarian-leaning side of the internet the other day when the NY Times finally published an article about the many signs of Trump’s seeming mental decline (not to mention his blooming psychopathy) and his apparent unfitness for office, headlined:

Trump’s Speeches, Increasingly Angry and Rambling, Reignite the Question of Age

With the passage of time, the 78-year-old former president’s speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past, according to a review of his public appearances over the years.

Fair enough, as far as they go in their detailed chronicle of his more and more demented statements as he campaigns to become president again, presumably by a combination of voter suppression, a surgically precise, razor-thin Electoral College win, strategic support from a corrupt and incompetent postmaster general, various MAGA election officials, MAGA state legislatures and MAGA state courts, his friends in Congress, The Heritage Foundation, The Federalist Society, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Robert Mercer, Ginni Thomas, General Flynn, Q, X, a corrupt 6-3 MAGA Supreme Court and, in a pinch, an army of angry low flying monkeys desperate to avenge the Confederacy’s inglorious military loss in 1865. 

The Grey Lady steers gracefully clear of violating anything like the sacred Goldwater Rule (no public comment on elected official’s dangerousness by mental health experts unless the elected psychopath in question agrees to be publicly psychoanalyzed) [1]. It quotes several who know the Republican candidate well and appear to think he’s just fine.

The Grey Lady also does not comment directly about how increasingly insane his rantings are. They simply provide many examples so an intelligent reader can draw the inference, if they so choose, that the man who says these things is dangerously insane, rather than a serious world leader for this perilous moment in human history. The Grey Lady seems to tastefully avoid (she’s nothing if not tasteful) the most hateful and violence-inspiring things trump constantly spews. Then she muses:

The former president has not been hobbled politically by his age as much as Mr. Biden was, in part because the incumbent comes across as physically frail while Mr. Trump still exudes energy. But his campaign has refused to release medical records, instead simply pointing to a one-page letter released in July by his former White House doctor reporting that Mr. Trump was “doing well” after being grazed by a bullet in an assassination attempt.

Yo, Grey Lady, you leave out an obvious and immense part of why Biden was hobbled by fears about his age and you sell your influence short. Former president trump’s mental capacity was never written about negatively in the news section of the paper, as Joe Biden’s was, hundreds of times on the front page of the NY Times. Joe Biden’s every stutter and misstatement was amplified and questioned, his fitness for office constantly questioned, in news reports and editorials. Trump’s clear cognitive decline has been tastefully not spoken of (on the rationale that him being an inanely riffing, opinionated, fact-free asshole is not news) while the Grey Lady’s scrutiny of every Biden gaffe, stutter and misstatement was a major factor in Biden being forced to abandon his candidacy after a highly accomplished presidency.

One more, then you can go read the catalogue of trump’s idiocy yourself, at this gift link.

A 2022 study by a pair of University of Montana scholars found that Mr. Trump’s speech complexity was significantly lower than that of the average president over American history. (So was Mr. Biden’s.) The Times analysis found that Mr. Trump speaks at a fourth-grade level, lower than rivals like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who speaks at an eighth-grade level, which is roughly average for modern presidents.

It’s a tic, I suppose, to miss no opportunity to prove their unflinching fairness by once again pointing out that Biden too is, vocabulary and speech-complexity-wise, unfit for the presidency.

Are you smarter than a fourth grader? If so, read the NY Times with a critical eye for these fucking tics. The Grey Lady is all atwitch in these twitch-worthy times.

[1] OK, can’t resist one more. Note the Grey Lady’s lack of specificity, or an embedded link, in its reference to the recent conference of an anonymous group of mental health, national security and political experts whose 2017 New York Times bestseller the New York Times (in conjunction with the American Psychiatric Association,) successfully removed from public discussion during the trump presidency (and since):

Polls show that a majority of Americans believe he is too old to be president, and his critics have been trying to focus attention on that. A group of mental health, national security and political experts held a conference at the National Press Club in Washington last month on Mr. Trump’s fitness. The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group of former Republicans, regularly taunts him with ads like one calling his debate with Ms. Harris “a cognitive test” that he failed.

My first note to Dr. Bandy Lee

This was my first comment to Bandy Lee, a few days earlier. At the end is a link that explains why I think Ryan Reynolds would be a good person for her to contact (assuming he shares our concern with the unthinkable possibility of a violent madman becoming “president” again, against the will of the majority of voters).

What you have to say is so important, so crucial, to protecting our society. I learn something new from every interview you do and every article you publish.

I wish you would have your media team put out 15 to 30 second shorts that could go viral. Take one great point at a time and just present it to the camera. No undecided voter could remain undecided after hearing what you and your colleagues have to say about the clear and present dangerousness of Trump and his myrmidons.

I’ve been thinking you bury the lede when you save this for paragraph two:

At no time has mental fitness in leadership been more important. Yet, at no time have we had a presidential campaign where mental fitness has been a more precarious issue.

Keep up the good work, and please, please, create some short clips that can become memes. This is, sadly, the age of information and public relations we live in. Although it couldn’t be further from our purposes, check out this short for an example of the power of well-wielded social media: https://youtube.com/shorts/cesrZd73sQY?si=26eefs5di6eb3e9X

At another point I suggested this very compelling story I’ve heard from her, which she told in about half a minute:

Your story about the American Psychiatric Association gagging public discussion of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump might make an excellent illustrative short. 

A powerful psychopath feeling under attack, in a position to reward a US government-funded organization with a record allocation and a new $10,000,000 headquarters in DC, who then rewards them for their favor, ably put into effect by no less than the venerated/hated NY Times, gagging all experts by publicly enforcing the association’s own voluntary rule as if it was federal law.  

That story of the “inviolable” Goldwater Rule, and its always clear political intent, and how it was used to silence the experts to the advantage of the dangerous, powerful psychopath, is too good not to be shared by millions before the election.    

The story of that Trump-facilitated nationwide gag order of professionals acting out of a duty to warn of imminent danger is the perfect illustration of how this malignant type gets away with this open corruption.