Today's Tweet

Da Donald's social media squad decided to try a Twitter Interview, and (as happens pretty much every fucking time) they got some questions that were prob'ly not quite what they were looking for.  This one's the best I've seen so far:

Is it true that if you say Donald Trump 3 times in the bathroom mirror, the hair in the drain will rise up to shout racial slurs? #AskTrump

— P a t r i c k (@ruinedbyreality) September 21, 2015

I'm gonna make a radical assumption here, and say there's prob'ly a coupla job openings at the Trump campaign right about now.

Wherefore, Repubs?

There's no Republican Party anymore.  There's just a string of independent contract franchisees, looking for the opportunity to make a tidy commission on helping their billionaire sugar daddies take their pound of flesh.

These guys know a coupla important things about USAmerica Inc.

First, they know this joint's net worth is something like $124 Trillion.

One Hundred-Twenty-Four. Trillion. Dollars

Second, they know the hard part is done; we're convinced we have the requisite imaginary disease(s)...

• Immigrants-Gone-Wild
• FEMA Camps and Gun-Grabbers
• Muslims hiding under our beds waiting for a chance to kill us and rape our house pets
• Scary Black People
• Foreign Competition
• etc etc etc

...so all they have to do is look for a chance to sell us the miracle cure; the make-believe crutches - and some snake oil to take the edge off tomorrow morning when we get that nagging feeling that this is the same old shit - zealotry dressed up to look like common sense - and that we fall for it every fuckin' time.

This isn't an election - it's not even a hostile takeover - it's a leveraged buyout to be staged during the run-up to the Stockholders' Meeting next November.  And guess who's gonna end up holding the bag when it's done?

These people have no soul and no honor.

Is We Learnin'?

Some of us just never get tired of being played for suckers.

Police charged 45-year-old Scott Lattin with making a false report after arresting him at his home in Whitney, Texas. While the suspect denied the accusation during a brief on-camera interview, his arrest warrant stated that he admitted to damaging the truck for “insurance reasons.”

Lattin organized the fundraiser after claiming last week that vandals spray-painted “Black Lives Matter” across his truck as well as “F*ck the police” because he had decorated the vehicle with the phrase “Police Lives Matter” in support of Harris County Deputy Darren Goforth, who was shot and killed at a gas station last month. Both authorities and conservatives have attempted to connect Goforth’s death with the movement, seemingly without any evidence.

Hey - It's Sunday

Beats goin' to church.

Go, Bernie

Try to look past the very simple and very obvious fact that Mark Halperin is an Authoritarian Corporate Propagandist trying to pass himself off as a Political Journalist.

We didn't just get into this mess yesterday, so we're prob'ly not gonna be able to fix it all by tomorrow.

But more specifically - on the usual crap that "conservatives" are always tossing around about "Balanced Budget From Day One", here's your line, Bernie:  "While you can definitely spend your way to oblivion, you can't save your way back to prosperity."  

But while we're working on getting The System back up and running, we have to get a coupla things thru our thick skulls.

First and foremost - stop giving these guys the benefit of the doubt. 

--It's not like Halperin doesn't know what makes the economy work.  

--And it's not like Jeb isn't aware of the fact that Supply Side is bullshit.  

--We have to stop thinking Ted Cruz is trying to practice some good old fashioned democratic self-governance, but he's just not very good at it; or that we simply disagree on the questions of how we should go about moving towards that more perfect union.

I look at what the GOP has been doing for 30+ years, and I get a very bad feeling very deep in my gut.

hat tip = Democratic Underground

Is Our Voters Learnin'?

hat tip = FB buddy DCR

Today's Pix

Today's Connection

Like the man said - follow the money.

I wonder if nice fat campaign contributions from the Healthcare Sector to (largely) Repub politicians...

...together with this little info-nugget...

...might have anything at all to do with the drive to kill Planned Parenthood.

And like Molly said - ya gotta have the balls to drink their liquor and bed their women and take their money, and then vote against them anyway.

Here ya go guys - take two of these and call your pollsters in the morning.

Today's FB Looney

I could be reading this wrong (yeah, that happens), but this looks a whole lot like "We need to create a society of superior victimizers instead."(?)

"An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind." - Mahatma Gandhi

But leaving the jaw-dropping defeatism aside for just a moment, maybe they're onto something - just not something they're aware of - maybe what we need to do is teach kids how to resist buying into this kinda bullshit, peddled by jagoffs who think in terms of, "Fuck your hippy Jesus - peacemakers are fags."

The Real News

The best TV is not on TV.

Today's Larry

Gotta work pretty hard to find the funny sometimes, and sometimes, it's just not there to be found.

A Few Late Friday Tunes

Richland Woman Blues --Maria Muldaur

What The Rain Will Bring --Pokey Lafarge

You Don't Know Me (cover) --Michael Grimm

Brain Damage --Roger Waters

Jesus Wept

There's always a dark and ugly side to Populism, and here's a perfect example:

hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Gotta give Trump some props though. He's doing one thing really well - he's using a sales tactic called "Isolate And Bypass".  He knows this questioner is a complete fucking moron, but Trump also knows he currently has that guy's vote and he's not gonna get anywhere without it, but he can't afford not to widen out beyond his looney-tunes base if he expects to have any chance at all once he gets past the first coupla Primaries.  So he has to deflect - "we're looking into it".  He doesn't embrace this nutball, but he doesn't alienate him either.

And he uses the Sales-y language that makes it easier for his Spinmeisters to twist it all into whatever shape is needed to continue the illusion that Trump is never ever ever wrong about anything.

Like this (via Crooks & Liars):

You may have noticed Wednesday nite, when Trump and Jeb got into it over the Florida casino thing - Jeb saying he torpedoed Trump, and Trump coming back with the standard blustery blowhard-ery, "If I'd wanted it, I woulda got it, believe me."

So what I think the Press Poodles should ask at the next "debate" is this: 

• "In your career, what have you gotten wrong - what mistakes have you made?" 

--and/or-- 

• "What 2 decisions in your professional life would you like to revisit now, and what would you do differently to improve the outcome?"

(Of course, while the Poodles may actually ask the questions, I'm betting they wouldn't think to follow up and demand a real answer after each candidate tried to make a funny out of it.) 

Anybody willing to spin some kind of Infallibility Bullshit about themselves or any of their mentors, role models or idols should never get anybody's vote for anything.

Fact Checking

FactCheck.org

The Republican presidential candidates met for their second debate on Sept. 16, this one hosted by CNN at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in California. We found they strayed from the facts on numerous issues, including:

--Donald Trump told a story linking vaccination to autism, but there’s no evidence that recommended vaccines cause autism. 

--And Sen. Rand Paul suggested that it would be safer to spread out recommended vaccines, but there’s no evidence of that, either.

--Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Trump donated to his gubernatorial campaign to get him to change his mind on casino gambling in Florida. But Trump denied he ever wanted to bring casino gambling to the state. A former lobbyist says he did.

--Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said that Hillary Clinton was “under investigation by the FBI” because she “destroyed government records.” Not true. She had the authority to delete personal emails.

--Trump said that “illegal immigration” cost “more than $200 billion a year.” We couldn’t find any support for that. Actually, it could cost taxpayers $137 billion or more to deport the 11 million immigrants in the country illegally, as Trump proposes.

--Trump again wrongly said that Mexico doesn’t have a birthright citizenship policy like the United States. It does.

--Carly Fiorina said that the Planned Parenthood videos released by an anti-abortion group showed “a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.” But that scene isn’t in any of the videos.

--Fiorina repeated familiar boasts about her time at Hewlett-Packard, saying the size of the company “doubled,” without mentioning that was due to a merger with Compaq, and she cherry-picked other statistics.

--Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said that U.S. policies to combat climate change would “do absolutely nothing.” The U.S. acting alone would have a small effect on rising temperatures and sea levels, and experts say U.S. leadership on the issue would prompt other nations to act.

--In the “happy hour” debate, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham glossed over the accompanying tax increases when he said only that Ronald Reagan and then-House Speaker Tip O’Neill “found a way to save Social Security from bankruptcy by adjusting the age of retirement from 65 to 67.”

Today's Tweet

If you melted a thousand selfie sticks into the shape of a short fat penis it would be Donald trump

— Jessi Klein (@jessirklein) September 17, 2015