Sadly, No!

Now I don’t know, or more accurately can’t remember if the title of this piece has been employed in this Venue or not, but it has a long and enduring history of use among Bloggers of a Liberal bent, because the wonder that we know now as Heather Digby Parton, has always been among the most articulate and cogent commentators on Politics during my time on the Internet.

I remember fondly of the day I found out that this Digby person was a girl, pardon me, a Woman! I remember that for me it was in the comments at the Eschaton, where the discovery was met with surprise, and if possible even more respect, for nobody weighing in on the subject had thought for a moment about the sex of the person whose writing we all respected, but if pressed admitted an assumption that she was a he! I believe my own response was some variation of “Digby is a Girl?!?!? Awesome!!!

The idea that someone had been capable of writing reams of political opinion with intelligence wit and flair, and being so damn good at it and with such grace and charm was for some of us, Ok I will speak only for myself, for me astonishing in a way that excited and bothered me…Why did I assume that Digby was a man? Because it was the picture of the person sitting in front of the keyboard that I had in mind at the time, I am sure there are a number of reasons, but I was bothered, just a little bit, and simultaneously overjoyed to find out otherwise…

Preamble over, let us examine the beatings: And in this case she titles the piece: “What he said”

The New York Times Charles Blow that is

And begins with a quote from his piece:

Trumpian language is a thing unto itself: some manner of sophistry peppered with superlatives. It is a way of speech that defies the Reed-Kellogg sentence diagram. It is a jumble of incomplete thoughts stitched together with arrogance and ignorance. America is suffering under the tyranny of gibberish spouted by the lord of his faithful 46 percent.

For a Sophist who peppers his writing with superlative hyperbole™, I can’t but sit in awe of that sentence, nor wait to find out what the hell a Reed-Kellogg sentence diagram is, (though it suddenly occurs to me that he might be talking about something I last saw on the blackboard of a middle school English class) But to me that is like the rhetorical shiv that slips into the back of the target in a dark alley on an early morning which leaves its victim stumbling home, then lurching to a collapse on the porch in front of his door; ultimately choking to death on the blood pooling in his lungs. I mean I have just managed to use twice the words to say half as much. But then I am writing this not for the Times, but for a Liberal Snark Concern of questionable repute! He continues:

Trump’s employment of reduced rhetoric is not without precedent and is in fact a well-documented tool of history’s strongmen

And anyone who has spent any amount of time reading, writing, or otherwise attempting to process the unprecedented events of last fall may have come across a few references here and there to Mussolini or Twit-ler in various liberal haunts still extant and teeming with righteous indignation over the aforementioned circumvention of Democracy…And once again in some of those spaces and here as well, we are treated to prideful puffer-y and the Triumphal pounding of Chests as A strongman arrives to clean up the mess created by the Darkness, that Up-Jumped Uppity who presided over a peaceful eight years (mostly anyway) and managed to provide Millions with access to Health Care, they would not have managed to obtain under the previous implementation: A system not designed to secure the benefits of health, when life and liberty itself, might depend on them, but to extract rents under threat of suffering!

But Herr twitler™ is gonna remove that yoke, that burden of security from the shoulders of the man working overtime, in order to provide tax relief to parties that sneeze money when they encounter a bit too much pollen. In other words he is gonna do what all plutocrats do and take care of his own, who in his mind and their own, own it all and should suffer no burden, save occasionally having to put up with over eager assistance from the hired help. And for the vast numbers of those of us unwashed in the blood of grace those are burdons that not only would we fail to understand, but ones that we could in no fashion ever presume to undertake with the requisite grace or aplomb…

And she finishes:

It’s Orwellian, but I think we are having a hard time grappling with that because we assumed that an Orwellian world would spring from someone or a group of someones who planned it with ruthless efficiency. I don’t think it ever occurred to us that it would come about because our institutions would bend to a perceived necessity of propping up a celebrity imbecile and we’d all be sitting at home watching it happen on TV.

We should be happy with the scraps that our betters choose to pass on to us and we should strive to embrace, when our end comes, our dear leader: “And we loved Big Brother”

/shudders

I saw this earlier last evening and thought that I must share it with you all for it is brilliant, hilarious and poignant all at the same time. And if for no other reason It is now going to be in a location easily found from now on…Enjoy

“Another night up and down, up and down, up and down, like a literal elevator in here…”

Failing with tremendous aplomb to allow Circe the goddess of dreams Mythology to take control of the ship and take her out for a, hell, a three hour tour, would be appreciated at this point…And whip up some tiresome entertainment leaving me spent and ready for sleep when I disembarked….But for some reason I suck, am out of favor with the gods, or who knows, currently under some Odyssey or somesuch so here we are.

Among the shit racing through my mind chiefly among them looms like a poorly fitted suit crumpled up in the chair in the corner that I see in a flash out of the corner of my eye upon waking with a shock and realize that it is a pile of my clothes, and that I am alone in bed, and that a quick check with the hand indicates that I do indeed still have a full head of curly hair, and that I am not a shirtless, balding, bespectacled, short, fat guy, from queens, just a very tired opposite of all that, dude in recovery from a shitload of trauma with an unstoppable train of gears spinning a’skull…

I wouldn’t call ’em Trumpmares exactly, because to be honest, the continued bucket footing and clomping around in arguably the least presidential fashion in the course of history still has its charms, and so far the bucket brigade that followed him into congress are led by two morrass-ons more concerned currently, with their legacy, than with burning the place to the ground…I would imagine that some phones have been burning up in certain district offices about taking away grannies healthcare, and that they are feeling the heat that that wily negro had baked into the system when he did that most Hitlarian thing in the history of the misuse of Hitler metaphors, and gave everybody, and the poors included, a chance to enjoy that modicum of security that health care as a right provides…You know, the same one enjoyed by every other civilized nation on this Planet of Earth!

So that Wily Wabbit has Elmer Trump bucket footing through the wood with loaded shotgun preceded by the cloud of woodland fowl this horror alights in front of him giving bugs enough warning to provide time to set up staging, a stage itself for the denouement, sell tickets and pack the house, because he knows that everybody loves seeing Elmer be-sooted after he has managed, once again to shoot himself in the face and destroy yet another gun at the same time.

So far this one is the best of the bunch, though there was a momentary thread that had one in which Trump was George Costanza’s younger brother, but I could not bring that one to shore, nor find a good image of Fudd with destroyed gun, but I am sure you know what I am talking about…
…

I caught a bit of the head moving its mouth on my teebee screen this morning and there is just something about it that captures my attention…In some ways and on some days I just cant look away, but then he is one of them, well heeled, republican, and wholly without merit or taste, he manages to bestride the world like the underpants gnome hiding in the underwear of a child wearing a costume of a Collossus, the person to whom I refer is one Jeffrey Lord: Behold, his magnificence.

Yeah that guy.

The one once spotted usually means its time for that Seinfeld rerun or any other dvd that might already be in the player. And I will leave you with this to bask in!

And also I would like to move from steerage to the top of the page a comment that in its own way, something, something, from commenter *sad* who shares “If it works then it’s not stupid.”

And I realize that I cant argue with that, for I fail the subterranean acumen required to even cypher the meaning, let alone a stick of length that would allow me to properly and safely probe it without fear of blowback….

I thought that the title would be difficult to type, and then I thought it might be difficult to look at, but then realized that I have finally come to terms with the result of the selection past and must embrace an even more horrifying reality than the previous one which would keep me up at night. The idea that we might have to deal with preznit MoneyBooBoo™ for the foreseeable future, while praying that the Republicons™ got their brand protecting-impeachment-related, activities under way, leading of course, to a charming Blue eyed dreamy, Black-haired minx™* to be installed in the White-House has not been among the most comforting scenarios to contemplate, but did seem like the best possible case scenario only if it meant that I would not have to look old pursed-lipped, pussy grabber, in the face, nor listen to that shit-marsh be called President on my teebee screen…

As soon as the election was finished and that it quickly became clear that there were irregularities discovered that seemed to lack precedence and managed to uniquely favor on candidate over the other, I had my doubts. It may be that I am simply a partisan hack, or it may be that I am  a Historian and remember paying rapt attention to the TV screen as it was well past my bedtime awaiting the results of the 1972 election with my parents, whose anxiety was palpable…I was in second grade at the time and one of two McGovern Voters in the mock election held in our class, the other guy, was my best bud at the time…I believe that I delivered my first speech in front of class in favor of McGovern…It was for whom my parents were voting, not necessarily an act of honor or independence.

The point of that vignette is that I have paid particular attention to presidential election year politics from a very young age, and close attention to all of it earlier than most are inclined…Which I guess makes me somewhat unusual or not, but definitely an active consumer of news (the real stuff) since then, and in a way it is kind of funny that this existential dread I feel, reminds me of the mood after Nixon won term two, that permeated the house of my childhood, as my parents had done quite a bit of work with the local democratic party that year…

So now 44 years later we have yet another, this time gilded, fox looking after the hen-house and this one might just be the ApocalyptiFox™ the one with:

“eyes like steel, cold and hard, and a shock of hair, yellow, like the fires from hell”

 

*Paul Ryan
…

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, the world’s foremost authority on, well, nothing, is* on the road in the good old USA. Aren’t you lucky, dear US-based readers! Anyhoo, the Austrian Pamela Geller has a lot to do, between giving speeches at pro-Trump rallies and briefing state politicians about life in Europe.

In addition, I explained how Chancellor Angela Merkel had recently redefined a German from a citizen to anyone living in Germany. This ensures plenty of potential voters in future elections, voters who will not vote for the opposition parties, thus keeping Angela Merkel in power to change the face of Germany even further.

The fact that you hadn’t heard about the German Chancellor magically granting the millions of non-citizens living in Germany full citizenship and voting rights [lucky me!] is surely proof that the liberal media doesn’t want you to know anything. Including how the German political system works, or the fact that if one of the ‘traditional’ parties ever were to support such a move, it sure as fuck wouldn’t be Merkel’s CDU (let alone the crazier bunch at the CSU). That doesn’t mean, of course, that Merkel didn’t say something that contained words.

„Und deshalb gibt es auch keinerlei Rechtfertigung, dass sich kleine Gruppen aus unserer Gesellschaft anmaßen, zu definieren wer das Volk ist. Das Volk ist jeder, der in diesem Lande lebt.“

So Merkel says: “…there’s no justification for small groups (i.e. the far-right Alternative for Germany and Pegida) in our society to claim the right to define who is German. German are all those who live here.”

A normal person might read this, or a similar statement made by Merkel last December, and conclude she’s calling out those who claim that you can’t be Muslim and German. It certainly isn’t true that all those who live in Germany are German citizens [not lucky me then, I guess]. And she wasn’t saying she wants to make all non-citizens into citizens. If I were into that sort of thing, I might give Merkel’s statement the shorter treatment and write “I’m not going to turn into a racist asshole.” Then again, I’m not one to long for the good old days when Germans were white Christians, but apparently going on about rich Jews conspiring to destroy ‘our’ country hasn’t yet gotten old. Sabaditsch-Wolff continues:

We don’t know for certain that Soros is behind it, although we know that his organizations are involved. (a) Some of his organizations are among those that own and operate the boats picking up migrants in the Med off the coast of Libya. (b) His organizations were discovered to have printed maps and helpful instruction sheets handed out to migrants during the great exodus of 2015.

And now for the punchline — the one essential freedom that patriotic citizens could previously enjoy with impunity and which has now been taken away:

Prison sentences are now handed out … for putting bacon on the door handle of a mosque.

Maybe they can just smash the windows instead.

* Actually, she was on the road in the good old USA. Except that before I could finish this post, I managed to dislocate and fracture my big left toe which, it turns out, is just as much fun as it sounds.

Depicted above, Mike Konrad’s idea of a trans elder.

Mike Madeupname, American Streetcorner Prophet:
Transgenderism and Cancer

So things are in an “interesting” state at the moment.

The right, filled with pestilent hatred of everything and anything different from them has awkwardly celebrated the idea of winning for the sake of winning, assuming the fascist swing of their authoritarian dear leader du jour would only thwack us filthy liberals in the jaw and teach us all a lesson about ever thinking we can be full human beings again.

But that’s a really hard thing to do these days. Cause it turns out nazis are actually really fucking bad at actually running a country and so we’ve got an imploding mess more and more obviously installed by a foreign power and getting less and less able to hide it that is face-planting against the sole branch of the Government that hasn’t been co-opted into the fascist state… yet.

And that has culminated in a national budget proposal which would make a first-act Dickensian villain go “hang on now, I know I said they should die and decrease the surplus population, but this is going too far”. Which, you know, when you’re a shaky fascist state who is constantly pissing off your security detail and the security organizations that protect you, it’s a real good idea to make it so poor folks have literally no means of survival and nothing to lose in fighting you. Great life lessons from King Louis XVI there.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s nothing much I can add to Steve’s excellent summary of Amber Phillips’ inane The sorry state of political discourse right now, in five Bernie Sanders tweets.

Perhaps one compromise we can offer, for the Ambers of the world, is to refer to The Donald as “President MC 900 Ft. Jesus” and let readers figure out what the fuck we mean. Still, this blog wouldn’t be what it is were it not for its unhealthy obsession with Seinfeld. That means we have to quote this from Amber’s piece:

To say someone’s lying suggests that you know they don’t believe what they’re saying. It’s possible Trump believes the allegations he’s making[.]

Remember that Amber is upset that Bernie labeled President MC 900 Ft. Jesus a liar for tweets that said the following allegations are lies:

3 to 5 million people voted illegally, and his victory was the biggest electoral college win since Reagan.

Trump lied by pushing the birther conspiracy.

Obama had the underpants gnomes someone “tapp” his phones.

Even if President MC 900 Ft. Jesus is the new George Costanza, there’s not now (and for points 1 and 2 there never was) any credible evidence that the claims/statements made are/were true. Does President Youppi believe his statements to be true? If you want to stick your neck out for The Donald and get the vapors when someone calls him a liar, you might just have to accept that the only reasonable alternative is that he is even dumber than Douglas Jay Feith. Either way, we’re pretty much fucked.

Just had to leave the CNN on in the TV room to get away from the new marketing plan for the Trump Administration, during a piece which started immediately after a puffball interview with Dubya hisownself…

Be prepared to shit your pants folks, or at least keep some nose plugs handy, because they are trolling out that old dog Terrorism again and the pitch this time is that it is home grown and that we need to be very concerned, and let daddy do what he needs to to save the family dog…And it would not surprise me if this request came with the added lure of pre-emption for added safety see, and maybe some closed in restful places where people can go for a long ; hide out in safety while the authorities comb the neighborhood for lock-boxes, secreted stashes, caches, and other un-banked valuablesTerrorists, Terror plots, random Negros, Messicans not currently employed(as in working right this minute), musicians, bloggers, and anything else the Department of Fatherland Security can slapdash on a warrant or watch-list.

It feels a little bit like I have seen this episode of a really bad sitcom before, and before I take a moment to laud what would appear a nascent intent to improve the planet by recycling; this particular operation, like its antecedent seems only designed to offload truck loads of cash from the treasury into well connected numbered Swiss bank accounts. We will keep an eye on developments while suggesting that you suit up in the bunny jammies and cower in fear until dear leader gives the all clear!

Right Side News, the estranged cousin of the poor man’s Renew America, has a post on the constitutionality of President Youppi’s Muslim Ban. I don’t want to add anything to what they write, but did want to highlight the picture that accompanies the post. It’s either a truly great piece of trolling or, quite simply, just what it looks like: des vidanges.

Speaking of trash: I would like to join much of the internet in consternation over the fact that the mere ability to honor a fallen soldier and thank his widow is all that is required to be seen as presidential. Maybe we can get Secretary De Vos to let us know whether The Donald showed proficiency or growth on Tuesday. I think it’s clear by which standard even the liberal Van Jones grades his presidents. Maybe when the next grossly unqualified person wants to become president, he can start off his first big debate by wetting himself, not being in the right city, saying something overtly racist, and pulling his dick out, begin plucking it and shout “Willy Banjo!” [link]. Showing growth should be easy enough after that.