Bass-ackwards

GOP Philosphy:

Never Regulate: Guns, Polluters, Dictators

Always Regulate: Sneakers, News, Lady Parts

hat tip = @bobcesca_go

In The Age Of Poe

A twitter user calling himself Richard Tator (Dick Tator - get it?) put up a silly tweet:

DISGUSTING#USWNT star Alex Morgan pretends to smoke marijuana after scoring a goal

3 out of 10 Americans are addicted to marijuana and this is an absolute inexcusable act by this broad pic.twitter.com/s1cf687Txa

— Richard Tator (@RealDickTator) July 2, 2019

I think it's a safe bet that he was trying to get in on the massive slagging Piers Morgan got when he said he was looking forward to seeing "his lionesses" beat the US women's World Cup team because Megan Rapinoe dissed 45*, but he seems to have dropped himself in the shit by not recognizing how deep we are in the morass of unreality and competing narratives.

Poe's Law: without a clear indicator of the author's intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the parodied views.

So people swarmed him - apparently thinking he wasn't just being cheeky - and I'm left to wonder if they took him seriously or if maybe some of them were "going along with it" thinking they were being awesomely ironic. 

But then again maybe some of them just wanted us to think they weren't fooled when they really were, and so they were only pretending to be shocked when they were actually arch villain conservatives in disguise trying to get us to think they were on our side when they were really infiltrating our ranks and just trying to stir us up to keep us distracted, and this shit is making my fucking head hurt.

So maybe it's all part of the plan. 

Or maybe not.

Q-Anon And JFK Jr

And no fucking kidding - these jagoffs are taking this shit seriously.

WaPo:

JFK Jr. didn’t die! He runs QAnon! And he’s No. 1 Trump fan, omg!!!
Now that everyone knows about QAnon — now that, ahem, a certain national newspaper has published at least a dozen articles about QAnon in the span of four days — we need to ask why not everyone is convinced the conspiracy theory is true.

Maybe it’s because QAnon is too true. Like, there’s just too much truth crammed into a single conspiracy theory alleging that President Trump is secretly waging war on an evil cabal of liberals who rig the elections, and run the CIA, and abduct children, and hid all the UFOs, and killed Princess Diana, and did Hurricane Katrina, and invented vampirism, and … [consults QAnon guide …]

(it's not really possible to follow it, but here's their "map" in case you wanna - whatever)

Some highlights:

⚡⚡ John F. Kennedy Jr. faked his death and joined Trump’s secret evil-fighting organization, where he writes 4chan posts under the pseudonym “Q”⚡⚡

⚡⚡ Liberals killed President Kennedy! ⚡⚡

⚡⚡ Then Kennedy Jr. was killed to make way for Hillary Clinton’s political career! ⚡⚡

And it just goes on and on and on.

PolitiFact

No, John F. Kennedy Jr. didn’t tout a Donald Trump presidency in George magazine

Conspiracy theories about the assassination of former president John F. Kennedy abound, but the 2010s have ushered in a new wave of claims, like one that President Donald Trump says a daily prayer to the old commander-in-chief. Other allegations center on Kennedy’s son, John F. Kennedy Jr. He died in a plane crash in July 1999. Depending on the source, though, he either faked his death or was killed to clear Hillary Clinton’s political path. And — according to an April 1 Facebook post — he once praised Trump as a formidable presidential candidate.

"If my dear friend Donald Trump ever decided to sacrifice his fabulous billionaire lifestyle to become president he would be an unstoppable force for ultimate justice that Democrats and Republicans alike would celebrate," reads the text above a photo of Trump and Kennedy posted to Facebook on April 1. The quote is attributed to Kennedy and includes a citation: George magazine, June 1999.

Today's GIF

With plenty of our own shit to deal with, it can be hard to stay open to what else is going on out in the world.

We've got brothers and sisters in the streets of Hong Kong protesting the kind of Daddy State takeover that we're trying to get people to understand is happening right here in USAmerica Inc.

Ka-Blooie

One guy fucks up and rush hour goes to shit for everybody.

The Chase

One reason why I'm more of a cat guy than a dog guy.

John Last Night

John Oliver

In spite of losing millions of manufacturing jobs over the last 25 years, we make more stuff here at USAmerica Inc than ever before.

The problem is that the labor force has been shut out of the benefits of the dramatic increases in productivity, and we can't get government to do anything that might help average workers adapt to an economy that changes so fast they have practically no chance to keep up.

I don't know what to do about it, but I do know that the corporate bosses are lying to us through their armies of lobbying firms and coin-operated politicians.

We don' get a fix on any of this until we can count on having a reasoned discussion about it, and we can't have that discussion until we figure out how to make the big money stop skewing the data.

Propaganda works.

Donate if you can - make it better

Today's Beau

14 characteristics

10 stages

And here we are.

Today's Hashtag

#UnwantedIvanka

Ivanka Trump horned in on the G-20 and the French government went so far as to post one particularly awkward interaction.

Ivanka Trump appears to be trying to get involved in a talk among Macron, May, Trudeau and Lagarde (IMF head).
The video is released by French Presidential palace. pic.twitter.com/TJ0LULCzyQ

— Parham Ghobadi (@ParhamGhobadi) June 29, 2019

And my twitter folk responded with all their usual appropriate awesomeness.

There's a big bunch of them out there and plenty of the ones I didn't capture are pretty amazing too.

Wondering

These "freak" storms are not freak storms anymore.

This is what the smart folk have been telling us will happen for at least the last 30 years.

So I'm wondering when we might reasonably expect the Press Poodles to catch up.

WaPo:

Freak summer hailstorm buries Mexican city under five feet of ice

It’s summer in Guadalajara, one of Mexico’s most populous towns, which made what happened there over the weekend all the more surprising.

Sunday morning, residents woke to their roads, yards and even cars buried under more than three feet of icy slush from a freak hailstorm that had blanketed the city.

On Twitter, Jalisco Gov. Enrique Alfaro said Civil Protection personnel quickly began cleanup, digging vehicles out from beneath the sea of hail and pumping out floodwaters once it had started to melt.

“I’ve never seen such scenes in Guadalajara,” Alfaro told AFP.

“Then we ask ourselves if climate change is real. These are never-before-seen natural phenomenons,” he said. “It’s incredible.”

In some places, the hail was up to five feet deep, AFP reported.