Category Archives: “funny”

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

Truth vs. self-preservation

There are times when an insistence on telling the truth will cost you your head. Honesty is not always welcome, and we all know when it is best to smudge the truth a bit. A friend serves you a culinary creation that is not tasty, you compliment the consistency of the crust, smile as you point out how beautifully the greasy contents reflect a rainbow of light. You try your best to keep that look off your face as you pretend to enjoy the nasty dish, while looking for the dog to furtively offload it to.

In contrast to little lies to spare the feelings of people we care about, there are times when swallowing the truth you need to tell is like sucking down poison. If you can’t be honest with a friend, when it really counts, that person is not actually your friend. Sometimes a hideous choice will be presented to you by someone with a firm resistance to an unpleasant truth. I had a poisonous condition placed on me if I wanted to preserve my lost friendship with a group of lifelong friends, after a conflict with two friends raged in spite of all my attempts to make peace. I was told I had to admit that I was a sick, vindictive, torturing, unforgiving, venomous piece of shit who was totally to blame for all the bad feelings in this little group of old friends. Maybe then I could be forgiven for being unforgiving.

Accept responsibility for an insane conflict I hadn’t even caused?  No can do.  I found myself mostly able to refrain from sinking to their level of unreasoned anger — not to mention their uncritical embrace of a grossly counter-factual account of a simple conflict — but being called toxic (in a text) for simply being honest about a series of easy to understand events that actually took place, literally made me spit.  I was spitting out the toxin of being mercilessly treated by people I had long loved and trusted.

Gabor Maté points out that the two strongest human needs are for attachment and authenticity. Attachment comes first, as helpless babies we need to be cared for by our caretakers and, because our life literally depends on it, early on we learn to smile, cuddle, do endearing things so that our parents will become attached to us and protect us. Authenticity is the need, once we become conscious individuals, to express ourselves, have our feelings taken seriously, our needs and wants respected. These two primal human needs are often at odds and sometimes, although we shouldn’t be, in a better world than this, we will be forced to choose one or the other.

A parent starts off enchanted by their baby’s seeming adoration and complete need for them.   Conflicts arise in any parenting situation and the terrain can begin to change.  It is crucial to some parents to keep their child subservient to the parents’ needs.   Then the lifelong cycle begins — the child must always navigate the narrow, treacherous terrain between honesty and flattery, authenticity and fear of abandonment.   There are many weapons deployed in this ongoing, uneven struggle for supremacy, among parents wired this way by their own fucked up childhoods.

A parent who was traumatically shamed and humiliated as a child will always fear their child’s authenticity. Imagine a more horrifying situation for a parent than the possibility of being shamed and humiliated by their own child. If there is a conflict, this kind of parent must set the entire blame on the kid, there is no real choice for them. To admit weakness, or being wrong, or being fallible, are all direct invitations to a nightmare of shame and humiliation. It’s the goddamn baby who’s the asshole, not me!

It seems comical to state it that way, but otherwise intelligent, educated, sophisticated parents may believe that formulation to the end. I was a good parent, how it is my fault my child was born angry, contrary, needy, stubborn, vindictive? My own very smart parents, to the end of their eighty year lives, both insisted I was born hostile, senselessly fighting them about everything from the day I was born.

“One day old?” I’d ask them.

“As soon as you opened your eyes you glared at us with hostility, you challenged us. I was aware of your judgment and anger toward me from the day you came back from the hospital,” my father always insisted, and my mother would nod along, often citing an idiot pediatrician who confirmed I was having a precocious temper tantrum for absolutely no reason.

“Oh, wow. I guess I don’t remember that. No wonder you always treated me as a dangerous enemy.”

“Now you’re trying to be cute.”

“I never attempt the truly impossible.”

And around it went.

With tyrants there is always a foundational lie that must be accepted as beyond question, an article of faith that must always be pledged to. If there is no evidence to support the lie, and a mountain of evidence that it is a lie, it is that much more important that everyone publicly insist the lie is true and the so-called truth, devastating to the leader’s cause and credibility, is pure, evil, godless, pedophile commie bullshit. This clinging to the truth of demonstrable lies is a consistent tic with those who can never be wrong. If the truth is harmful, create a truth that is invincible.

Be true to yourself, painful as that may sometimes be. It will rarely come down to having your head literally cut off. I am living proof of that (so far).

MAGA influencer of the week

She traveled with Donald “People don’t leave my rallies” (think roach motel) Trump to his most excellent September 10th debate in Philadephia, a debate he won, he said, like 98 to 2, and then on his September 11th rounds. Her overt racism, proud “white nationalist” self-identification and penchant for lying and promoting wild, unfounded conspiracy theories provoked Trump sychophant Lindsey Graham to urge Donald to distance himself from her. She fired back, questioning coy bachelor Graham’s sexual preference. Klan Mom Marjorie Taylor Greene criticized her racism as too extreme and appalling even for Greene (wow!), and Trump’s companion’s response was to remind the world of Greene’s extramarital affair and compare her to a “hooker” (arguably not unfair, but still).

Meet 31 year-old Laura Loomer.

The NY Times described her this way:

A far-right activist known for her endless stream of sexist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-Muslim and occasionally antisemitic social media posts and public stunts, Ms. Loomer has made a name for herself over the past decade by unabashedly claiming 9/11 was “an inside job,” calling Islam “a cancer,” accusing Ron DeSantis’s wife of exaggerating breast cancer and claiming that President Biden was behind the attempt to assassinate Mr. Trump in July. source

Wikipedia:

Loomer continued to advocate for the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump in 2024, telling The Washington Post, “I’m happy to dedicate all my time to helping Trump, because if Trump doesn’t get back in, I don’t have anything.”[54] Loomer was brought as a guest by Trump to Philadelphia where he engaged in the September 10 presidential debate with opponent Kamala Harris.[55] The following day, Loomer attended events alongside Trump commemorating the September 11 attacks. Loomer had previously endorsed claims that 9/11 “was an inside job.”[56] According to anonymous sources on the Trump campaign, Loomer reportedly influenced Trump to publicly endorse various false conspiracy theories, including the claim that Kamala Harris hid her black heritage and the claim that Haitian immigrants were eating other people’s household pets in Ohio. Loomer also posted a tweet referencing stereotypes of Indians, saying that if Harris, who is half-Indian, were elected President “the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center.” Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right member of the United States House of Representatives, condemned this remark as “appalling and extremely racist.”[57]

As part of a promotional deal for the pet food brand Pawsitive on her Rumble channel, Loomer filmed herself eating dog food.[58]

. . . Early life and education

Loomer and her two brothers were raised in Arizona.[21] She attended Mount Holyoke College, leaving after one semester; she said she felt targeted for being conservative.[22] She transferred to Barry University in Miami Shores, Florida, and graduated in 2015 with a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism.[22][23] Loomer is Jewish.[24][25]

Oy! No, not Jewish, please, for the love of Jesus…

Sly handmaiden of fascism

The Grey Lady, inscrutably, specializes in inventive headlines that frame issues to favor an increasingly deranged and desperate American Nazi’s candidacy. Look at the big challenge facing Kamala Harris at the upcoming debate with Donald, as framed by the NY Times. Oh, my!

As the Times idiotically frames it, Harris seemingly has to distance herself from the “unpopular” Biden while seeming to support the remarkable range of good policies she and the shockingly successful Joe Biden administration put into law during three short years.

You see, the headline suggests, if she criticizes the unpopular Biden — she takes a grave political risk. At the same time, if she supports him and their record of achievement 100% — apparently that’s an equally perilous position.

She’s on a greasy tightrope, suggests the NY Times, with a highly motivated Trump, jaws open, sharp teeth glistening, well-honed playbook in his back pocket, poised for a fatal pounce if she takes one misstep in this supremely delicate balancing act.

For a much smarter take on the upcoming “debate”, here’s my mother’s favorite, Frank Bruni. The sections below his fine opinion piece are like a cool drink on a hot day.

Rhetorical question: when did the NY Times become the fucking Völkischer Beobachter?

Quick question about polling

I think this is a nice illustration of the bullshit of current polling numbers, numbers heavily relied on by corporate media in its amoral, anything for more clicks, bettors’ guide to the horse race coverage of presidential sweepstakes.

I’m reading a piece by Robert Reich, a very smart guy with informed opinions and good arguments to back them up. He calls the piece Trump’s Woman Problem and it outlines how women should tip the election to Harris/Walz. Women vote in higher numbers than men, Reich points out:

There are 3 million more women in America than men. And they almost always vote in larger numbers than men. In 2020, 74 percent of adult U.S. women said they voted, vs. 71 percent of men.

That split has held true for more than 40 years — in every presidential election beginning in 1980, according to the Center for American Women and Politics.

There’s also a big split in voter registration: 89 million women told census surveyors they were registered in 2020, vs. 79 million men.

Fair enough. Then Quinnipiac tells us this:

A Quinnipiac Poll in mid-August found a similar gender chasm among likely voters in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania: Women backed Harris 54 percent to 41 percent, while men went for Trump, 49 percent to 42 percent. (Overall, Harris was up 48 percent to 45 percent.)

Women vote in higher numbers, they favor Harris by 13%. Men vote in lower numbers, they favor Trump by 7%. How does that average out to a 3% “overall” lead for Harris?

All an American can do is leave a comment, here’s mine:

Anyone else see a problem with these polling numbers?

Women are the majority of Americans, 89 million women were registered to vote in 2020, vs. 79 million men, and they consistently vote in higher numbers. Then this puzzler from Quinnipiac, after reporting that Harris is up 13% among women and Trump leads by 7% among men, and Robert Reich, who is brilliant, has no comment? How does the spread of 13% of a larger group for Harris and 7% for a smaller contingent for Trump come out to only a 3 point lead for Harris?

A Quinnipiac Poll in mid-August found a similar gender chasm among likely voters in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania: Women backed Harris 54 percent to 41 percent, while men went for Trump, 49 percent to 42 percent. (Overall, Harris was up 48 percent to 45 percent.)

This nonsensical math underscores the horrific fact that we are not presently living in a moment where ordinary rationality seems to apply. Discussing things based on agreed upon facts, seen in the light of Reason, seems to have gone the way of ethics, decency, fairness and self-respect. The virally infectious nature of intolerance, hatred and rage leaves anyone not ruled by those things puzzled as to how we arrived at this ominous place.

I feel a sense of futility as the comment I was urged to make immediately disappears under hundreds of more popular comments, and the discussion of those comments. This is the future we are now living in, boys and girls. Ask Quinnipiac, they’ll tell you the same thing.

Corporate media loves a strong man with a good story

Forget that psychologically those who pose as strong men are always the weakest of men. As far as a compelling story for the public to click on, as pure drama, the persecuted underdog who prevails and becomes leader of the Free world is a good story.

Sidebar, and not unrelated. Years ago, during the worst stress of my horrifying years working in the courts, I felt my aggravation rising one night and was afraid I was having a heart attack. I walked 3/4 of a mile to the closest emergency room, which should probably have told me all I needed to know about whether I was having a heart attack or not.

After a long wait they checked me in, I was feeling much better by then, and I heard the doctor tell his colleague that I was a good story. I thought this was good news and when the doctor returned I told her I was going home.

She cautioned me against it, advised an overnight in the hospital and said that if I wanted to leave I had to sign a document saying I was leaving the hospital against medical advice. I said  “you just said I was a good story.”  She explained that when ER docs are talking about a suspected heart attack, a good story is a man your age, your basic shape, and exhibiting the agitated aggravation that you have been exhibiting since you came in. “It makes you a good story to have a heart attack, in other words.“

Fuck me blind, I thought, as I signed myself out against medical advice and later came back to check in. It left me pondering the flexibility of the phrase “a good story.” Horrifying, sickening stories are also good stories, to fans of those genres.

This entire piece by Lawrence O’Donnell is excellent, contrasting corporate media’s lap dog acquiescence to (and normalizing of) Trump’s outrageous incoherence while it snarls contemptuously at Biden’s press secretary in pursuit of a fanciful story that Biden is a senile vegetable with a team of lying neurologists on call.   He notes that the story about the lying neurologist and Biden’s senility were never reported on because it turns out there was absolutely no story there.  But the press snarled and yelled over each other as the press secretary patiently and truthfully fielded as many of their shouted questions as she could get to.

He points out that mass media is giving Trump the same primadonna treatment it gave him in 2016.  Airing a rambling, lie-filled “press conference” live from Mara-Lago where he answered not a single question, and was asked no follow-up to anything. O’Donnell  compared this fawning coverage to the complete news blackout on Kamala Harris, at the same moment addressing the UAW live, and in between he showed the press repeatedly challenging Biden, who answered each question, and screaming at Biden’s press secretary about unfounded allegations of the cover up of his unfounded  neurological decline. 

The din in the White House press room and the aggressiveness of the screamed out challenges in stark contrast to the glazed silence that meets everything that pours out of corporate meal ticket Donald Trump’s mouth.

O’Donnell, in spite of his brilliance, doesn’t seem to realize who he works for, I guess, but his point is very important and the clip well worth your time.

Your medical files speak the truth

Dr. D. talked me out of the biopsy my urologist had sent me to have. He’d looked over my medical records and told me he was confused about why I’d been sent for a biopsy. He said if he was me, and I just had a clean MRI, and my PSA had been steady for years, that he would put off having a biopsy of his prostate unless there was clear indication that one might be diagnostically helpful.

Since there was no indication that a biopsy was immediately necessary, the doctor told me, and since at my age any prostate cancer is going to be slow growing, there is no reason not to put it off until there is a clear indication of the need to do a biopsy.

Then he described the pain of the procedure and week of discomfort that is the normal after a needle biopsy takes twelve slices of your prostate, through your anus.   He convinced me there was no medical urgency to the biopsy, I thanked him and left without having the needles delicately inserted up my ass. 

The next time I saw my long-time urologist he immediately asked me why I didn’t have the biopsy. I told him the doctor he sent me to had talked me out of it.  I described our conversation. He pointed at his computer screen and read from my medical notes: “patient refused.”

Of course that’s what my medical record at the corporate hospital said. Phrasing it that way was the prudent, liability-avoiding way to notate our conversation. It was not false that I’d declined, or refused, the biopsy, though misleading. The medical record, after all, never lies. Put it on the witness stand, if it comes to it, and it will always say exactly the same thing.

The bit of self-protecting wording is also a nice snapshot of the essence of corporate narcissism.   The corporate bottom line, and only line, so ruled by the Supreme Court while creating this “person” out of legal fiction and political calculation, is profit and avoiding accountability/loss, after all.

What kind of person is a corporation, if not a single-minded, predatory psychopath?

Still, nice of Dr. D. to spare me the unnecessary hassle of that prostate biopsy. I sure hope he was right and I didn’t make a mistake refusing the treatment he was offering and ready to provide.

One trick turds

If someone needs to always be right, prevail in every transaction, never be at fault for anything, they will always resort to the same trick. If they can’t prove themselves right by some kind of evidence, or if they’ve obviously come out on the short end of some deal, or it is ridiculous to claim they played no part in the fatal conflict they are blaming the other person for 100%, they default to lying.

Their reply is always the same: an indignant, confused, confusing stream of nonsense, messy word salad, constantly shifting, contradictory stories, incoherent and liberally spiced with nice, juicy lies. Because the main thing, the only thing, is not to lose, never, NEVER, to be a loser, and if the truth hurts your case (which it often will), fuck the fucking truth, anything goes, the ends always justify the means, winning is the only thing.

So our former president has one move, it is the same one every time. From a baseline of stream of consciousness non sequiturs, it moves to grievance, talk of revenge, retribution, terrible crimes being committed against him by satanically evil fucks, persecution, the need to round up people at gun point and put them in camps, because they are drug dealers, from prisons and insane asylums, rapists, killers, vermin, blood poisoners.

The stream of his steaming bullshit is remarkably consistent, even if he introduces a new character from time to time. Rosie O’Donnell was eventually replaced by Crooked Hillary, Crazy Nancy (make hammering gesture for crowd, a wink to her 85 year-old husband being attacked by a hammer wielding Trump lover) Adam Schiff, Mueller, the January 6th subcommittee and so on. He brings in new friends and soulmates like Kim Jong Un, Victor Orban, Vladimir Putin and Hannibal Lechter.

If the Provigil and Adderall have been injected into a pink buttock and are fully on board, and he is particularly focused that day, he would say, in a cogent few sentences, what he scatters across rambling stretches of his last few hundred interchangeable speeches:

“I am the victim, I suffer for you, like Jesus, and I have the wounds to prove it, trust me, trust me, I could take off my shirt and show you my gorgeous double Ds, but then they’d say I was an exhibitionist, “Trump’s a narcissist,” they would say, because they miss no opportunity to literally crucify me, think of the twenty-five years of baseless witch hunts against me, all with no evidence, all fake, like the news, like your face, unlike my beautiful, thick, luxuriant head of blonde hair that no shower gives me enough water to lather and get the soap out of. I have to take like five showers in a row, and then flush the toilet fifteen times, because the Democrats, with their Marxist fascist water pressure regulations, they want to regulate everything, they want to tell you what to do, down to flushing your own toilet, so that a simple toilet becomes useless, refuses to flush documents, no matter how small you tear them up, blah blah blah”

Coprophagous [1] corporate media laps this insane, disgusting swill up, disgustingly, and its wealthy talking heads glibly normalize it all, talking about it like this is perfectly regular, all political candidates are rambling, insane criminal maniacs, n’est-ce pas? They lie to the citizens about the normalcy of radical extremism for the profit of their executives and shareholders. Whore culture is an ugly thing when it is in the service of a Nazi-like cult, and Leonard Leo’s wet dream of a devoutly Christo-fascist America is nothing if not Nazi-ish, but, what are you going to do? Such is the base profit motive that rules our Exceptional nation.

Time to minimize exposure to the aggravating profit-driven hysteria stirring of the corporate media. If it bleeds it leads, if it’s ugly it gets clicks, if its scary it get clicks, engagement equals gigantic CEO bonuses and elegant platinum parachutes when scandal hits. Fuck corporate media.

Here’s just two things on the recent news.

One: that Supreme Court presidential immunity case means only one thing — crimes committed by a criminal president, including all efforts to cover it up and all pardons of co-conspirators, no matter how corrupt, or even if the pardons are sold outright — are protected from public view or use in litigation of any kind, without the express consent of the Supreme Court, the entity that decides what criminal behavior falls within the highly arguable scope of ‘the outer fringes of the perimeter of arguably official duties’ which enjoy a presumption of legality, even if they involve, say, political assassination.

There is only one ex-president in American history who benefits from this ruling and he is running to figurehead Project 2025. First order of business, put these 6 Leonard Leo putos back in the tiny minority they are actually part of. These privileged fucks don’t speak for the average citizen, they are bought and paid for by our most unscrupulous psychopath billionaires.

Thing Two: Whoever the Democrats wind up running in 2024 (and I’m with Bernie and AOC, Biden did a great job, he’s been able to work well with all sides, he’s got the skills, the temperament, he’s earned the right to run, and he can kick Trump’s ass, but I’ll vote for whoever the cringing weasels wind up running) should win the election by a huge margin. The trouble is the fucking Electoral College, which can be gamed by anyone with the money and power to arrange a small number of votes in select districts.

I’ve been on a mission to alert people to the danger of a MAGA megadonor/sleeper in charge of the Postal Service, somehow still, who has crippled mail service nationwide and has the power to slow delivery, or halt it altogether, based on zip code. DeJoy in position to suppress 50,000,000 votes, if needed, seems to me the reason these Nazi dickheads are seeming so overconfident about not needing to attract more than 35% of the vote.

Very important to get some action on removing the fucking Postmaster before the election starts…

[1]

(adjective) 1: Feeding on excrement “coprophagous beetles.” 2: Feeding upon dung, as certain insects.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition