Tag Archives: palin

Here Are Your Highlights of Today’s Trump Press Meltdown

by LuisMGITinfw Posted on February 16, 2017

Mother Jones

Donald Trump went full Sarah Palin today at his press conference. It was glorious. I think you have to watch it to really get the full effect, but here are a few highlights.

First off, the word of the day is mess:

To be honest, I inherited a mess. It’s a mess. At home and abroad, a mess….I just want to let you know, I inherited a mess….ISIS has spread like cancer — another mess I inherited….And you look at Schumer and the mess that he’s got over there and they have nothing going.

Fact check: Delusional. Trump inherited an economy in pretty good shape. Crime has steadily decreased over the past decade. ISIS is losing ground and close to defeat. Illegal immigration has been stable for many years. Test scores for schoolkids are up. Fewer than a dozen American soldiers have died in combat in the past year. Obamacare has cut the number of people without health insurance almost in half. The budget deficit is down to 3 percent of GDP. After years of stagnation, wages are finally starting to go up. Unemployment and inflation are both low.

I put it out before the American people, got 306 electoral college votes….270 which you need, that was laughable. We got 306 because people came out and voted like they’ve never seen before so that’s the way it goes. I guess it was the biggest electoral college win since Ronald Reagan.

Fact check: Also delusionial. He got 304 electoral votes, and Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, and Obama all did better.

We’ve begun preparing to repeal and replace Obamacare….I know you can say, oh, Obamacare. I mean, they fill up our rallies with people that you wonder how they get there, but they are not the Republican people our that representatives are representing.

Fact check: Plausible! Trump and the Republicans in Congress probably do think they represent only Republicans.

The leaks are real. You’re the one that wrote about them and reported them, I mean the leaks are real. You know what they said, you saw it and the leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake because so much of the news is fake.

Fact check: Huh?

If the information coming from those leaks is real, then how can the stories be fake?

The reporting is fake. Look, look…You know what it is? Here’s the thing. The public isn’t — you know, they read newspapers, they see television, they watch. They don’t know if it’s true or false because they’re not involved. I’m involved. I’ve been involved with this stuff all my life. But I’m involved. So I know when you’re telling the truth or when you’re not. I just see many, many untruthful things.

Fact check: True. Trump almost certainly does see many, many untruthful things.

I mean, I watch CNN, it’s so much anger and hatred and just the hatred. I don’t watch it any more….Well, you look at your show that goes on at 10 o’clock in the evening. You just take a look at that show. That is a constant hit….Now, I will say this. I watch it. I see it. I’m amazed by it.

Fact check: Schrödinger’s cat. Trump both watches and doesn’t watch CNN.

We had Hillary Clinton try and do a reset. We had Hillary Clinton give Russia 20 percent of the uranium in our country. You know what uranium is, right? This thing called nuclear weapons like lots of things are done with uranium including some bad things.

Fact check: Half true. No, Hillary Clinton didn’t give Russia any uranium. (She was one of many who approved a deal for the Russian atomic energy agency to buy a Canadian company that controls 20 percent of the US uranium reserves. But none of it can exported outside the US.) However, it is true that bad things can be done with uranium.

QUESTION: Let’s talk about some serious issues that have come up in the last week that you have had to deal with as president of the United States. You mentioned the vessel — the spy vessel off the coast of the United States.

TRUMP: Not good.

QUESTION: There was a ballistic missile test that many interpret as a violation of an agreement between the two countries; and a Russian plane buzzed a U.S. destroyer.

TRUMP: Not good.

….QUESTION: So when you say they’re not good, do you mean that they are…

TRUMP: Who did I say is not good?

QUESTION: No, I read off the three things that have recently happened. Each one of them you said they’re not good.

TRUMP: No, it’s not good, but they happened.

QUESTION: But do they damage the relationship? Do they undermine…

TRUMP: They all happened recently.

Fact check: True. These are all things that happened recently.

JAKE TURX, A REPORTER FOR A SMALL ULTRA-ORTHODOX JEWISH PUBLICATION: Despite what some of my colleagues may have been reporting, I haven’t seen anybody in my community accuse either yourself or anyone on your staff of being anti-Semitic. We understand that you have Jewish grandchildren. You are their zaidy. However, what we are concerned about, and what we haven’t really heard being addressed, is an uptick in anti-Semitism and how the government is planning to take care of it… There has been a report out that 48 bomb threats have been made against Jewish centers all across the country in the last couple of weeks. There are people who are committing anti-Semitic acts or threatening to…

TRUMP: he said he was gonna ask a very simple, easy question. And it’s not, its not, not — not a simple question, not a fair question. OK sit down, I understand the rest of your question.

So here’s the story, folks. Number one, I am the least anti- Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life. Number two, racism, the least racist person….See, he lied about — he was gonna get up and ask a very straight, simple question, so you know, welcome to the world of the media. But let me just tell you something, that I hate the charge, I find it repulsive.

I hate even the question because people that know me and you heard the prime minister, you heard Ben Netanyahu yesterday, did you hear him, Bibi? He said, I’ve known Donald Trump for a long time and then he said, forget it. So you should take that instead of having to get up and ask a very insulting question like that.

Fact check: Incoherent. Turx explicitly tried to assure Trump that nobody thought he was anti-Semitic, but Trump’s skin is so thin that he immediately decided Turx was calling him a racist and an anti-Semite. I wonder why?

By the way, the entire point of this press conference seemed to be directed at one thing: accusing the press of being horrible and dishonest. This came up in nearly every Trump answer. This is a great strategy for shoring up his base, of course. As near as I can tell, conservatives all thought this dumpster fire of a press conference was a terrific performance.

View this article – 

Here Are Your Highlights of Today’s Trump Press Meltdown

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here Are Your Highlights of Today’s Trump Press Meltdown

The United States Just Canceled an Arms Deal With Saudi Arabia

by NormanCombs79 Posted on December 13, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The Obama administration has canceled an arms deal with Saudi Arabia amid growing concerns about the high civilian death toll from the kingdom’s air campaign in Yemen. “We continue to have concerns about the conflict in Yemen and how it has been waged, most especially the air campaign,” a State Department official told Mother Jones in an email. The blocked sale reportedly involves precision-guided munitions built by the American defense contractor Raytheon.

Saudi Arabia has been repeatedly criticized for committing potential war crimes in its war against the Houthi rebels who ousted the Saudi-backed government of President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi in January 2015. Throughout the nearly two-year-long conflict, the Saudis have used American and British weapons, including banned cluster bombs. The United States has also provided refueling missions and intelligence. Saudi airstrikes have hit weddings, funerals, hospitals, schools, markets, and places of worship, killing hundreds of civilians.

Between 2009 and 2015, the Obama administration inked more than $100 billion worth of arms deals with Riyadh. Just last week, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced the approval of yet another deal, worth $3.5 billion, for Chinook helicopters and related equipment, training, and support.

Yet today’s announcement may be a sign of the Obama administration’s growing discomfort with the war. In May, it canceled the sale of US-made cluster bombs. In September, the Senate held its first debate to question the decision to continue supplying the Saudis. “There is a US imprint on every civilian death inside Yemen, which is radicalizing the people of Yemen against the United States,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said at the time. “There really is no way this bombing campaign could happen without United States participation.”

The State Department official, who asked not to be named, said the United States is exploring how to refocus training the Saudi air force to address its targeting practices. The official also stated that the State Department, the Pentagon, and other agencies are reviewing current policy “to ensure that our limited support for the Saudi-led Coalition is consistent with our foreign policy goals and values.” A senior administration official told AFP that “US security cooperation is not a blank check.”

President-elect Donald Trump has not outlined his policy on Yemen. However, during a January campaign rally with Sarah Palin, he suggested that Iran is destabilizing Yemen and seeks to take over Saudi Arabia:

Now they’re going into Yemen. And if you look at Yemen, take a look, they’re going to get Syria, they’re going to get Yemen, unless—trust me, a lot of good things are going to happen if I get in, but let’s leave it the way it is. They get Syria. They get Yemen. Now, they didn’t want Yemen, but did you ever see the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia? They want Saudi Arabia.

Link: 

The United States Just Canceled an Arms Deal With Saudi Arabia

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The United States Just Canceled an Arms Deal With Saudi Arabia

Here’s Evidence Steve Bannon Joined a Facebook Group That Posts Racist Rants and Obama Death Threats

by UlrikeCohn89764 Posted on November 18, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Stephen Bannon, whom Donald Trump tapped as his chief strategist in the White House, has come under fire for his self-admitted promotion of the alt-right, a haven of white nationalists, when he was head of far-right Breitbart News. His defenders have insisted Bannon is no racist or anti-Semite. But Mother Jones has uncovered another clue about Bannon’s political personality: Bannon joined a conservative Facebook group that has featured racist and extreme material. This material includes posts urging a military coup against President Barack Obama, featuring an image of the president dressed as an SS officer, celebrating the Confederate flag, highlighting a photoshopped picture of Obama with watermelons, praising a police officer who called Obama a “F*cking Nigger,” and calling for Obama to be “executed as a traitor.”

This Facebook group is for an outfit called Vigilant Patriots, which claims its goals are defending and upholding the Constitution and preserving “our history and culture.” As of Friday morning, it listed nearly 3,600 members, including Stephen Bannon, who apparently joined the group seven years ago.

Vigilant Patriots is a collection of right-wing Facebookers, including members who hail militias and decry Muslims, immigration, progressives, sellout Republicans, and the president with hateful, violent, and racist rhetoric. It has an active Twitter feed that is virulently anti-Islam. Its website does not seem to be functioning currently.

Bannon has not engaged in much public activity on Facebook. He is listed as a member of 31 groups, most of them conservative, with several comprising supporters of Sarah Palin. (Bannon once made a gushy documentary about the tea party star.) A search of Facebook turned up only a handful of posts attributed to Bannon, none on the Vigilant Patriots page.

With Facebook, there is always the chance an account could be a spoof or phony. But the Facebook account attributed to Bannon—the one that joined the Vigilant Patriots group—does appear to be legitimate. The Facebook page for the Breitbart radio show that Bannon once hosted contains a post from Matthew Boyle, a Breitbart editor, that linked to Bannon using this particular Facebook account. The Facebook page for Bannon’s Palin documentary also linked to this Facebook account for Bannon. And a private and official Facebook group for media professionals lists Bannon as a member using this Facebook account. Bannon had to be added to this group by a Facebook staffer. (Facebook would not confirm whether this account belongs to Bannon.)

This Bannon Facebook page joined a group that has provided a platform for extremism and racism. The Vigilant Patriots page on Facebook pushes a vicious mix of agitprop and conspiracy theory. It has published calls to arrest, impeach, and execute Obama. A 2012 post declared that Obama must be arrested as a “terrorist” for “Treason, Espionage, Sedition and Fraud” and derided him as “an Illegal Commander-in-Chief.” A long anti-Obama rant from a member in 2011 called for hanging the “traitor.” A different member referred to Obama as “the muzzie usurping lying POS traitor.” (“Muzzie” is a derogatory term for a Muslim.) A group member in 2013 said Obama “must be tried, convicted, and executed as a traitor.” One member railed, Obama “still occupies the office because white members of Congress are too afraid of being branded racist to file Articles of Impeachment against him. It’s time to stop the charade. He is destroying America. Black, White, Green, Brown, or Purple, the man is a traitor. IMPEACHMENT NOW!”

One Vigilant Patriot offered this critique of Obama:

America is in danger of a complete take-over by the Muslim Brotherhood. Our military and governmental resources have been subverted to benefit the cause of Islamic Jihad…As RADICAL as that sounds, an Islamic take-over is the ONLY fact that snaps all of the puzzle pieces together and makes sense of the last 25 years of American History. Barrack Obama is a Muslim Brotherhood TRAITOR to America. He stands convicted in the eyes of all true American Patriots.

A group participant claimed that Obama wants to “enforce Marshall sic law” to stay in the White House.” And one post contended that US troops were purposefully bringing back Ebola from Africa.

There’s a lot of hate among the Vigilant Patriots. A participant assailed Obamacare as “totalitarian socialist” and claimed that Rahm Emanuel, an Obama aide who became mayor of Chicago, had “justified mistrust of Jews by the KKK.” Another proposed putting the “criminal news media into prison” (with Obama and Hillary Clinton). One post suggested adopting the Confederate flag as a symbol of resistance. Another declared that the Koran is a “declaration of war on you, your family, your friends, all you hold dear.”

Mother Jones sent a Trump spokeswoman and Trump’s presidential transition team a request for comment and a series of questions. The questions included the following: Did Bannon create this Facebook account? Does he personally control the account? Why did he apparently join the Vigilant Patriots group? Does he agree with the views expressed on this Facebook page? Does Donald Trump believe it would be appropriate for his senior staff to associate with a group that promotes racist material and death threats directed against Obama? The Trump spokeswoman and the transition team did not respond.

Bannon appears to have been rubbing Facebook elbows with racists and haters. On Thursday morning, Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager, said Bannon “treats everyone kindly” and “has the ear and trust” of Trump. For those claiming Bannon is getting a bum rap on the white nationalist issue, this Facebook connection between Bannon and the Vigilant Patriots will not make their work any easier.

Here is a sample of the content posted on the Vigilant Patriots Facebook page:

â&#128;&#139;

Continue reading here – 

Here’s Evidence Steve Bannon Joined a Facebook Group That Posts Racist Rants and Obama Death Threats

Posted in Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s Evidence Steve Bannon Joined a Facebook Group That Posts Racist Rants and Obama Death Threats

Quote of the Day: "Suck It Up, Cupcake"

by NZXSunnysaq Posted on May 28, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Oh FFS:

Really? Sarah Palin is still front-page news? Seriously? On the other hand, I have to admit that she’s hard to resist:

Palin said Obama’s visit suggested that the president believes that “the greatest generation was perpetuating the evil of World War II.”…The tea party heroine said Trump would be a president “who knows how to win.”

“You mess with our freedom,” she said, “we’ll put a boot in your ass. It’s the American way.” At that, the crowd chanted, “USA! USA! USA!”

Palin was the warm-up act at Trump’s large rally, speaking on stage before the candidate arrived in San Diego. She took issue with Obama’s statement overseas this week that other world leaders have been “rattled” by the rise of Trump. “Rattled, are they now?” Palin said….She pointed out that the yellow Gadsden flag flown at tea party rallies depicts a rattlesnake “coiled, prepared, ready to strike.”

“So, yeah, rattlin’ – it’s a good thing,” she said.

….Turning to look at the television cameras and journalists on the press riser, Palin lambasted the “sheep in the media.” “Their head is still a-spinnin’,” she said. “Do you know how thoroughly distrusted you are, mainstream media? … He is now we the people’s nominee, so suck it up, cupcake!”

Oh well. At least it’s Saturday. Maybe no one will notice that I caved in and wrote about this.

View original – 

Quote of the Day: "Suck It Up, Cupcake"

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Quote of the Day: "Suck It Up, Cupcake"

Jimmy Kimmel takes on Sarah Palin. And wins.

by MuhammadStillman Posted on May 3, 2016

Jimmy Kimmel takes on Sarah Palin. And wins.

By on May 3, 2016Share

In between stumping for Donald Trump and raving about the media on Facebook, Sarah Palin has a new gig: promoting Climate Hustle, a climate change conspiracy film by noted tool of the fossil fuel industry Marc Morano. Really, it’s perfect for her.

Jimmy Kimmel, unimpressed with Palin’s new mission, took her to task during his show Monday night.

“I have a theory,” Kimmel said. “I think maybe Sarah Palin wants global warming. It’s cold in Alaska. It would be welcome up there. But, the idea that she knows more than 97 percent of scientists is offensive and dangerous. No matter what Sarah Palin and these geniuses she surrounds herself with try to tell you, climate change is not a liberal-versus-conservative thing.”

Hopefully Palin was watching, and maybe even learned a little something. Check out the full video above, and believe us, it’s worth it.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get Grist in your inbox

Read this article: 

Jimmy Kimmel takes on Sarah Palin. And wins.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Jimmy Kimmel takes on Sarah Palin. And wins.

Things Donald Trump Will Do In His Second Year

by LoisShillito Posted on February 13, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

A non-exhaustive list:

Make tomatoes great again.
Rename Denali to Mt. Trump.
Forbid stupid homeowner association rules.
Fix Windows once and for all.
Eliminate ex-president Obama’s Secret Service detail.
Annex Cuba.
Build a permanent moon base as favor to Newt Gingrich. Also: lots of new zoos.
Send Atrios to a reeducation camp until his attitude improves.
Build a beautiful new Strategic Petroleum Reserve to handle all the oil he’s going to take from ISIS.
Nationalize Twitter.
Present Sarah Palin with a Kennedy Center Honor for the Performing Arts.
Invent really good artificial sugar and fat substitutes.
Declare war on Denmark, just to piss off Bernie Sanders.

Visit source:  

Things Donald Trump Will Do In His Second Year

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Things Donald Trump Will Do In His Second Year

The Bernie vs. Hillary Fight Is Kind of Ridiculous

by BellaMaughan6 Posted on February 5, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Michigan senator Debbie Stabenow supports Hillary Clinton: “I think Bernie’s terrific as an advocate. There’s a difference between a strong community advocate and being someone who can get things done.” Martin Longman says this is an example of how nasty things are getting: “Breaking out the Sarah Palin talking points isn’t smart. Talk about how people view socialism all you want, but don’t dismiss community organizers or advocates. This isn’t a Republican campaign.”

I had to laugh at that. Nasty? I’d rate it about a 1 on the Atwater Scale. Toughen up, folks.

And speaking of this, it sure is hard to take seriously the gripes going back and forth between the Hillary and Bernie camps. Is it really the case that we can’t even agree on the following two points?

Sanders is more progressive than Clinton.
Clinton is more electable than Sanders.

I mean, come on. They’re both lefties, but Sanders is further left. The opposing arguments from the Clinton camp are laughable. Clinton is more progressive because she can get more done? Sorry. That’s ridiculous. She and Bill Clinton have always been moderate liberals, both politically and temperamentally. We have over two decades of evidence for this.

As for electability, I admire Sanders’ argument that he can drive a bigger turnout, which is good for Democrats. But it’s special pleading. The guy cops to being a socialist. He’s the most liberal member of the Senate by quite a margin (Elizabeth Warren is the only senator who’s close). He’s already promised to raise middle-class taxes. He can’t be bothered to even pretend that he cares about national security issues, which are likely to play a big role in this year’s election. He wants to spend vast amounts of money on social programs. It’s certainly true that some of this stuff might appeal to people like me, but it’s equally true that there just aren’t a lot of voters like me. Liberals have been gaining ground over the past few years, but even now only 24 percent of Americans describe themselves that way. Republicans would tear Sanders to shreds with hardly an effort, and there’s no reason to think he’d be especially skilled at fending off their attacks.

I like both Sanders and Clinton. But let’s stop kidding ourselves about what they are and aren’t. Republicans won’t be be swayed by these fantasies, and neither will voters. We might as well all accept it.

Visit link – 

The Bernie vs. Hillary Fight Is Kind of Ridiculous

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Bernie vs. Hillary Fight Is Kind of Ridiculous

Sarah Palin Just Endorsed Donald Trump—and It Was Bonkers

by PrinceToothman Posted on January 19, 2016

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin endorsed Republican front-runner Donald Trump for president on Tuesday afternoon. Palin’s daughter Bristol penned a piece earlier in the day encouraging her mother to endorse Trump over contender Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas).

The Trump campaign issued a statement announcing the endorsement and humorously turning the knife in Cruz by quoting the front-runner’s Lone Star State rival:

Palin’s endorsement is amongst the most sought after and influential amongst Republicans…She helped launch the careers of several key future leaders of the Republican Party and conservative movement. Senator Ted Cruz notes: “I would not be in the United States Senate were it not for Gov. Sarah Palin…She can pick winners.”

Trump and Palin are relatively familiar with one another. Palin interviewed Trump last August, and according to the New York Times, Palin, Trump, and his wife, Melania, all “shared a pizza in New York in June 2011.” It is unclear whether that pizza was the start of a powerful political relationship, but it is certainly fodder for what should be a quality Saturday Night Live skit this weekend.

Link:  

Sarah Palin Just Endorsed Donald Trump—and It Was Bonkers

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, green energy, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, solar, solar panels, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Sarah Palin Just Endorsed Donald Trump—and It Was Bonkers

What Does Sarah Palin Have Against the Department of Energy?

by ansonsten Posted on September 8, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Sarah Palin says she wants to eliminate the Department of Energy. This is a perennial conservative hobbyhorse, so let’s dig in a little bit. Just what does this bureaucratic tax sinkhole do, anyway? Here’s a brief summary:

Program
Cost
Comment
Nuclear weapons R&D and cleanup
$18 billion
Can’t do without this, can we?
National laboratories (Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Yucca Mountain, etc.)
$5 billion
This is mostly basic science, including accelerators, fossil/nuclear/renewable energy research, and nuclear waste disposal. I don’t think Palin has anything against this, does she?
Dams and hydro power
$0
Does Palin want to sell off all the dams we built over the past century? If not, we might as well pay for their upkeep by selling the hydro power they generate.
Energy efficiency
$3 billion
Perhaps this is what she wants to cut? Republicans hate energy efficiency.
Miscellaneous
$3 billion
Good luck finding anything of substance to get rid of here.

Hmmm. There might be some bits and pieces that Republicans object to here, but not much. So why all the hate for the Energy Department? Is it just because it was created by Jimmy Carter? Nah. Who would be childish enough to hold a grudge like that?

In any case, even Republicans agree that we need to do the vast majority of this stuff. So even if Palin managed to kill off the Department of Energy, its functions would just get disbursed to other departments. Would that make any difference? I suppose it means one less chair at cabinet meetings, but it’s hard to see the point otherwise.

One intriguing possibility, raised by Brad Plumer, is that Palin was actually thinking of the Interior Department. He makes a good case. But Palin told Jake Tapper, “I think a lot about the Department of Energy, because energy is my baby.” That being so, it seems unlikely she’d make a mistake so boneheaded. Right?

POSTSCRIPT: It’s worth noting that this is the same con behind nearly every call to eliminate the Department of ______. It sounds dynamic! It cuts the budget! It slashes red tape!

But departments don’t matter. Functions matter, and they just go somewhere else if their department is eliminated. Unless a presidential candidate is willing to specify exactly which functions they want to defund, they aren’t serious. They’re just hawking snake oil to the rubes.

View post: 

What Does Sarah Palin Have Against the Department of Energy?

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LG, Mop, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What Does Sarah Palin Have Against the Department of Energy?

Sorry, Conservatives: You Deserve Donald Trump

by ShariGottschalk Posted on September 5, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

From Jonah Goldberg, in an epic lament about the trumpenproletariat’s crush on Donald Trump and the willingness of mainstream conservatives to pander to it:

Every principle used to defend Trump is subjective, graded on a curve. Trump is like a cat trained to piss in a human toilet. It’s amazing! It’s remarkable! Yes, yes, it is: for a cat. But we don’t judge humans by the same standard.

I think this is unfair to cats who learn to piss in the toilet. At least that’s a useful skill, and at least they don’t spend all their free time bragging about it. Still, fair point.

On a related note, I continue to be impressed at the number of conservatives who are aghast not at Trump per se, but at the fact that the conservative base is so enamored of him. Most conservative support of Trump is “venting and resentment pretending to be some kind of higher argument,” Goldberg says. And then: “I am tempted to believe that Donald Trump’s biggest fans are not to be relied upon in the conservative cause.” Ya think?

But surely Goldberg understands that this is the right-wing base that he and his colleagues have built? I don’t expect any conservative writer to acknowledge this in public, but surely in the occasional dark night of the soul they understand what they’ve done? For years they’ve supported the worst know-nothing bombast of Drudge and Limbaugh, the casual reality distortion of Fox News, and the resentment-based appeals of people like Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin. And they’ve turned a blind eye to even worse: birthers, Agenda 21 lunacy, Cliven Bundy’s army, and much, much more. It was handy at the time, and helped win a few elections. But now the outrage-based mob they’ve nurtured has come back to haunt them—and unsurprisingly, it turns out not to care all that much about the debating-hall nuances of Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk. They just want to kick out the wetbacks and get back at those smug liberals who make fun of them.

Live by the sword, die by the sword. But if you want to survive, you’d better at least understand that once forged, a sword can be wielded by anyone strong enough to grab it. You might not like it when your army decides to follow, but you’re the one who taught them to follow the shiny object without worrying too much about whose hand is on the hilt, aren’t you?

Originally from: 

Sorry, Conservatives: You Deserve Donald Trump

Posted in Bragg, Casio, Citizen, FF, GE, LG, Mop, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Sorry, Conservatives: You Deserve Donald Trump