…I’ll be honest…there were several problems with this post
…on the one hand anytime I get a bit of a lull in offloading all those links the list I’m pulling them from gets a little out of hand…but another probem is that I suck at .gifs…& I haven’t gotten over that interview
…in fairness looking around I am clearly not alone in that regard…but here’s the thing…I feel for this Jonathan Swan guy…because in defter hands than mine the whole car crash (or at least all the bits that focus on his reaction) would provide a virtual gold-mine of .gif potential…some of them I think I’d pay to see…on a big screen…projected directly in front of mr let’s-hold-the-briefing-by-the-helicopter every time he speaks in public from now clear through to January
…but that interview deserves a good bit of scrutiny…not least the section where they discuss “what it looks like” if the election result is contested by a sitting president
…in which at one point the pampered pompous permatanned pustule spluttered something about the inevitable wrangling of the result through the courts meaning the result could be “two months […] many months later”
“lots of things will happen during that period of time…especially when you have tight margins…lots of things can happen”
…I could go on but there’s a lot to get into that isn’t how much better this post would be if I had any kind of game in the .gif department
https://mashable.com/article/twitter-temporarily-bans-donald-trump/
…well…more precisely
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/05/tech/twitter-trump-restrict/index.html
…sorry…there really should be more to this
…but I may be laughing too hard to type
…meanwhile…which Jonathan Swan are you today?
I didn’t watch this demoralizing spectacle entirely (demoralizing for me as a US citizen living through this in America itself) but I did see the segment about The Charts. The Charts. Look At The Charts.
I was, oddly enough, reminded of the frozen strawberries scene in The Caine Mutiny. I wonder if Jonathan Swan has ever seen it? Probably, it’s a cinema classic.
I couldn’t force myself to watch the whole thing, either. I can’t stand the sound of Trump’s voice — that whining, nasal, incoherent jabber just hits me like nails on a chalkboard. I read a bunch of synopses and fact-checks, so I’m familiar with what he said. I just can’t listen to him say it.
I can’t stand to watch more than a few seconds of that fuckwit. Whenever there is something especially noteworthy in the news, I’ll just go for a transcript. (Just now reminded of that transcript from a while back where it was just a couple scattered words, with multiple “intelligible”s in betwixt. 🙂 )
…I know what you mean…but sometimes the transcript is too much for me in a different way…you kind of need the video to see where his brain misfires & where he loops back around to the things he’s trying to remember to say…or it just reads like he’s puch drunk & the lack of medical intervention (or at least someone in his corner throwing in the towel) seems unbelievable?
I’d be a Jonathan Swan not shown – face in hands, sobbing. They are openly planning on stealing the election. And I don’t know what, if anything, we can do about it.
Of course they are. Everything points in that direction, but considering the simmering rage due to the Corona Virus response clusterfuck, that would only lead to violence.
Also, the irony being that if Trump actually handled the pandemic with some competence and compassion then he would actually be stomping the shit out of Joe Biden and there would be no need to steal an election but GOPers gotta GOPer.
It’s possible, at least at this point. Stealing the election would require a close vote on election day, with millions of uncounted mail-in ballots. Trump could *possibly* declare victory and then move to invalidate the uncounted mail-in ballots. Good analysis here: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/election-night-mail-in-voting-sabotage.html
This seems to be the plan right now. Trump is laying the groundwork to invalidate the ballots by gutting the postal service and sowing doubt about mail-in voting. The problem with that is that, in true Trumpian fashion, he’s shooting himself in the dick, again. Old people rely heavily on mail-in, so he’s gutting his own support. He’s trying to reverse course here in Florida, but it’s too late, I suspect. Plus once he gets a ‘message’ in his damaged brain, he can’t seem to change course and modify it consistently. It’s also a bit uncertain as to how willing Republicans will be to go along with this, but I’d say more than 80% would fall in line.
What can we do? Well, if Biden wins in a landslide, none of this will work. The best thing is to mask up, wear your gloves, take your sanitizer or whatever, and go vote *in person*. Second best is to get your mail-in ballot in well before the deadline.
We did mail in for the primary. In addition to mailing it in you could take it directly to the County Clerks office, as well as a drop box downtown. If we have mail in for the Nov election I’ll take it to the County Clerks office. I don’t know if that’s an option everywhere.
One encouraging sign is that turnout was up significantly in the Michigan primary, including mailed ballots. Democratic turnout was up, including Detroit. Essentially all votes were counted within 12 hours of polls closing, so it wasn’t a repeat of NY state elections.
“Every level” as in SCOTUS
That dude is fucking creepy! Exactly what I expect every slimeball mega church preacher to look like. I guess if you are stupid enough to drink the Kool-aid of mega churches you are stupid enough to buy this argument.
I mean…this is what I keep coming back to. Every Trump plan to steal the election depends on him both squashing a huge section of Democrats while not losing any Republicans at the same time. It seems impossible that he can manage to pull something like that off.
By repeatedly talking about how mail-in voting is a sham, all he’s doing is making Republican voters, who already don’t trust mail-in ballots, even less likely to file them. But rather that encouraging them to go to the polls, it will just make it all the more likely that they just won’t vote at all. Part of the problem with convincing the other side that there’s no way you can lose is that the voters will eventually take your word for it. (See also: 2016).
Its’s the same backwards logic that Trump is applying with demanding Joe Biden repeatedly debate him. Trump has repeatedly insisted that Biden is a doddering, muttering old fool who can’t coherently speak. And he’s probably not even wrong about that! The problem is that Trump is also a doddering, muttering old fool. And while Biden can hide some of his rougher edges with his weird old grandpa charm and can speak relatively eloquently for a longer period (even if he gaffes during those moments), Trump can’t even pretend to have a plan for a second term.
Trump’s only attack has been to insist that Biden is mentally unfit, and his Fox News and conservative surrogates keep driving that point home. If Biden shows up and can manage to walk and chew gum for like, five entire minutes, that entire argument becomes invalidated, while highlighting Trump’s comparative failures to have anything remotely considering a plan for literally fucking anything.
Trump’s trumpiness just keeps getting in the way. And as Manchu said, all Trump had to do to guarantee a second term would be to at least pretend to have some sort of competence on the virus and something like compassion. That’s it! If Trump appears to be even the least bit competent, Joe is in trouble, we’re all fighting about how bad a candidate he is compared to the people we wanted to vote for, and he surfs into a second term the same way Dubya did versus John Kerry.
Instead, they seemed to decide that they had to steal the election first, and have been working back from that conclusion to make it work.
I really, REALLY want you to be right.
I’m usually a 6 or a 12.
Also, when Rip had me look at this post I promised to drop some news in the comments for him because he felt he was falling down on the job (with this excellent and funny post)…
WaPo has a slider to see the before and after of the blast in Beirut.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/08/05/beirut-explosions-satellite-images-destruction/?arc404=true
Update from Fauci:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/06/health/us-coronavirus-thursday/index.html
Follow the money…
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/05/deutsche-bank-donald-trump-financial-records-new-york
Falling down on the job? Not the person who wrote this!
“the pampered pompous permatanned pustule”
…I thank you for the kind words about the not-so-kind ones
and some happy news…
https://sirota.substack.com/p/news-trump-rule-aims-to-protect-big
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xg8743/floridas-governor-just-admitted-the-state-unemployment-system-sucks-on-purpose
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/m7jxpb/welp-the-gop-now-has-16-qanon-linked-candidates-on-the-november-ballot
I keep telling people to watch the documentary, Idiocracy. Nobody believed me that it was a documentary but now I get no arguments. I’m going back to bed!
“I keep telling people to watch the documentary, Idiocracy. Nobody believed me that it was a documentary but now I get no arguments.”
Whenever I mention Idiocracy, I seem to get swamped by people who are of the opinion that, Because i love that movie, I MUST be in support of Eugenics, and am probably also therefore some type of Nazi!😉😆🤣
I mean YES, I can 100% see where they are coming from, on the “This Movie has Eugenics in it!”….
But those folks ALSO don’t seem to have actually WATCHED the movie, because they got so worried about that “the eugenics part!!!” at the beginning.
Because *if* they did watch the movie, they’d see that there’s A LOT more there…
Yes, the main theme is about dumb people, doing DUMB things, and creating *more dumb people,* leading to a total collapse (literally, in the cases of “The great Garbage heap collapses of ___”!) of society as a whole.
But it’s much MORE about the willfully selling off & buying out of our society by corporatism, and the decline & dismantling of education, and the way elites feed the masses with bad food, and bad “entertainment,” and literally POISON them sometimes (or at least their food supply!) in order to have their way with the economy…
And how Populism is a BAD thing for civil society, AND-and how it also doesn’t take TOO much to get folks to see that if you’re on their side & truly want BETTER for them, because they deserve such as human beings, one can do A LOT of good in the world–and you DON’T have to be “some kind of genius or something” to do a LOT of good.
I mean YEAAAAAH, it’s a TERRIBLE, trashily-fun movie!!
Bot the world gets saved by a LITERALLY average-Joe,** whose ENTIRE pre-future time is spent doing as little as he can!–dude is a TOTAL Gen-X slacker stereotype!😆😂🤣
That average, 100% CLUELESS sometimes (See, the early scenes where Maya Rudolph’s character is talking about the character “Upgrayedd,” and Joe is thinking she’s meaning “Upgrade”), white-dude Joe, actually has just enough smarts, to keep people from doing REALLY dumb & detrimental things, and HE SAVES THEM.
The AVERAGE, NOT-that-smart guy, saves their whole country!
Now, there are TONS of really problematic characters, tropes, and stereotypes in the movie– I definitely won’t deny THAT, at all.💖
But, to me, the “But it’s EUGENICS!!!” arguments remind me a LOT, of the “But, it’s Anti-Catholic!!!!” arguments about ANOTHER favorite movie of mine (as a fully-lapsed Catholic!😉), Dogma…
Dogma, at it’s core, is a movie about losing, and then RE-finding one’s faith…
It’s fucked up & SUPER-offensive, to many folks who 1. Aren’t Catholic & never have been, 2. Who ARE Catholic, but who have never REALLY taken the lessons of their Confirmation (if they’ve been confirmed!), and the questioning of, AND THEN *CONFIRMATION OF THAT FAITH* as seriously as it ought to have been taken, and 3. The folks who believe that *the trappings, rituals, and symbols* of an organized religion are equal in status & stature to the *God* of that religion, or the teaching of that religion’s faith tenets.
But, to a LAPSED Catholic, who has SEEN all the terrible & evil things which have been allowed to be done to the flock–The Marian Laundries in places like Ireland, the habitual & century(plus!)-long sexual predation of innocents who had no power by the powerful in the priesthood (and the CONSTANT moving & reshuffling of predator Priests, Brothers, Monsignors, Bishops, and others, to new groups of prey!), the abuse by both Priests AND nuns in schools for “the poor & disadvantaged” (see ALSO, the “Indian School” colonization & abuse, and the hoarding of literal treasures & $$$ over the centuries!)…
There are literally THOUSANDS of years of abuses of both power & people (AND FUNDS, TOO!), by “The Holy Mother Church”… and it takes A LOT of cognitive dissonance to ignore that…
So Dogma, the movie, becomes an allegory.
About the corruption, and the deceptions, and the true EVILS, done by the powerful, in the name of “God”, as they consolidate their own powers…
But then, we meet the guy who was THERE, with the dude so many folks claim to be followers of… and we learn about Jesus, and God–and who they REALLY are.
And things get MESSY (Literally!–heads explode!😉), but they also get cleaned up, because even after EVERYTHING that happened, the message we’re left with is all about love, and that all we REALLY need to do, is to follow *that ONE, big, rule*–Love One Another.
As a lapsed catholic, who was SO burned out on the Church–Much like Smith was at one point, I saw ALL the flaws, I GET–and adore(!)–all the in-jokes*** and I also saw the protesting before the film’s debut for what–in many cases–it was.
A challenge to the idea that The Church is infallible. And the understanding that, for MANY people, even just the IDEA of challenging that supposed “infallibility” makes THEM extremely uncomfortable…
Because then, many of them would need to think harder, and go deeper.
And lots of folks simply want the easy ritual, and to go observe *that* once a week, and then forget it the rest of the week, than to need to do any sort of heavy work & true internal examination…
And many folks would rather have a terrible, but known, certainty or capital-B “Belief”, than to just have “an Idea,” because ideas can be challenged, and challenging, and occasionally be proven *wrong,* and in need of change…😉💖
(**even his NAME is Joe, ffs!😉😆🤣),
***even the *tiny* things like how at the beginning of the movie, when Bethany is sitting in that early Mass scene, the priest says, “Please stand for the Recession of Faith”… in the the REAL words of a Mass, the priests back then said, “Please stand for the Profession of Faith”
Recession *perfectly* fits the character & the goings-on-around-her, but it’s one of those *tiny* little puns & Catholic in-jokes (like the Blessing of the Cardinal’s Driver, and the loophole of the plenary indulgences that Loki & Bartleby find), that one only knows *if* they grew up Catholic, and really learned about and QUESTIONED that Catholicism😉
As another lapsed catholic I agree.
…would ye be familiar at all wit a show ’bout a fella by the name o’ Father Ted?
…if not…I’m thinking you’d likely enjoy it an awful lot
Not to get all ‘cancel culture’ on ya, but I believe that Graham Linehan of Father Ted fame has recently been banned from Twitter for being anti trans-rights.
Description
Graham Linehan is an Irish sitcom writer. He created or co-created the sitcoms Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd. He has also written for Count Arthur Strong, Brass Eye and The Fast Show. Linehan is a vocal critic of transgender rights activism.
…that’s a damn shame…I never much liked Count Arthur Strong & I can see how the way Brass Eye worked could have been the product of some potentially questionable thinking but it was pretty good when it was good (the “it’s WAR” segment & the like) along with being fairly astute
…& Father Ted somewhat knowingly trod a fine line that I’d argue it mostly managed to…but Black Books…gotta be honest…I’d be hard pressed to swear off ever watching that again
I’ve heard of it but never watched it.
…well, Ted is a priest on a remote place called Craggy Island where he’s basically been sent in disgrace after blowing a bunch of church money in (iirc) Vegas
…& this is approximately how protesting Dogma would have looked, by way of a taste?
I have too many links open in my phone, apparently, and keep losing my reply, when I toggle back & forth… so i’ma reply in 2 parts,
1. Yes, it WAS apparently a bit like that😉
Link to Smith talking about it, on a tour;
And 2. Here’s the link, to the AV Club’s writeup on it😉
https://news.avclub.com/back-in-1999-kevin-smith-joined-the-protests-against-h-1798246714
Somehow, I’ve never heard that story before, so thanks for sharing it.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of those movies since they came out, maybe I’ll try to give them a re-watch if I ever make it through my Hulu/Netflix backlog, just to see how they hold up…
I’d heard the stories of him protesting the movie, WELL before i ever got to see it.😉
But once I saw it, I looooved it (because I caught that there were so many little in-jokes–from the basics like Loki’s name, to the ones I’ve mentioned, and so many more–current roommie & I i STILL call McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches “Egg-a-Mooby-Muffins”😉
I don’t really re-watch the others (I mean, I’ll TOTALLY watch ’em if I catch them.on TV somewhere.. but I don’t *actively* seek ’em out…😉), but I DO re-watch Dogma on occasion, just because the cast was SO loaded, snd so good at what they did.
People were buzzing over an announcement yesterday by the AG for NY State that they had a major case with national implications coming out today.
Turns out it wasn’t Trump related, but certainly is big. They are accusing the NRA’s leadership of taking over $60 million for thir personal use in three years, and want the whole organization dissolved.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nra-lapierre-ny-attorney-general/2020/08/06/8e389794-d794-11ea-930e-d88518c57dcc_story.html
But who will protect guns from gun control?
And help sell out US Amercia to the Russians?
You love to see it!
Another one gets the Rona, wish he got to shake hands with Trump before he found out…
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced Thursday he has tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. DeWine was tested Thursday as part of a standard protocol as he prepared to greet President Donald Trump at the tarmac in at Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland, according to a news release from the governor’s office. He has no symptoms, and is returning to Columbus where he and Ohio First Lady Fran DeWine will be rested, the governor’s office said. He then will to his home in Cedarville where he plans to self-quarantine for 14 days. DeWine is 73, which places him a higher-risk category for coronavirus patients.Read more: https://www.cleveland.com/open/2020/08/ohio-gov-mike-dewine-tests-positive-for-coronavirus.html
Gosh, I hope he “rests in peace”.
It is what it is.
*giggle*
NGL, I legit LOL’d when I saw it was DeWine. He had such a strong start; Ohio was one of the first states to close the schools and DeWine seemed willing to get out of they way and let Amy Acton do her damn job. But he caved to his base of covidiots and let all that progress fall by the wayside.
I am JS6. Angry with a touch of “Is he really that stupid?”
…I feel like I bounce from #5 to #7 several times per paragraph when I’m reading the news…but in .gif form I feel like #1 might be an eye-roll for the ages?
…#6 is a solid pick…though I’d give the header image an honorable mention for its “that stupid?” quotient, too
subway laughter? here you go:
🙂
…it’s unfair to the man because he’s been funny in other stuff but somehow any appearance of rowan atkinson that isn’t as blackadder somehow seems like a wasted opportunity?
blackadder was utterly brilliant. I too wish he had done more blackadderrrs and less non-blackadders. have you seen his 4 maigret episodes? I feel if one can disassociate him from mr. bean he/she will like them.
…it’s an oddly divisive topic amongst relatives…a bit like john malkovich taking a turn as poirot…I thought they both did a pretty good job but several folks I’m related to couldn’t abide either
…there’s nowt so queer as folk & all that so I guess it’s one of those YMMV deals?
Honestly?
It also works REALLY well, if tge first Atkinson one was exposed to was Mr. Bean (as a high schooler), and THEN you are introduced to Black Adder when you’re in your early 20’s…
So you already know “this guy has *impeccable* timing & can say a gajillion things, without saying a WORD”
Annnnnnd then you realize how he can be even Better, with a script that has all that timing *plus* excellent dialog😉😁🤗
(And I will forever be grateful, that our high school Health Class teacher–who was also the Varsity Basketball coach–was a massive Mr. Bean fan back then, and i learned about Atkinson in *that* order!💖)
…it’s not quite reading the phone book…but
…I mean…the man is funny as hell
Agreed!
Which was why–as I explained in my comment to Earendil–i am SO glad that my first experience with his acting was as Mr. Bean, when i was in High School, and then once I was a theater geek doing Summer Stock, and a few years older, I was shown the greatness which was Black Adder😉😁🤗
What the Hell Is Going On With the Census?
Only 63% of the country has been counted, but the Census Bureau is shutting down its operation a month early.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bv8pnv/what-the-hell-is-going-on-with-the-census
It sure would be nice if Trump and friends could try not to look as corrupt as they are. It’d be a nice return to norm if all we had to deal with was normal feckless assholes.
…much as KC & others have said elsewhere this is a thing that could still have some pretty pernicious side effects but if the little twittler fingers hadn’t rung the bell so loud or so early that the census was their newest focus for end-running an attempt to correct for their previous methods of adjusting the odds in their favor it likely would have been a good deal more effective…so…small mercies, I guess
…but to answer your question…a lot that shouldn’t be & not enough of what should seems to be about the size of it
i’m pretty much always #12. For example, I was typing out a few reasons only to opt out because…12.
isn’t mcconnell grooming the KY AG to take over his seat? well, the AG sued several wall street firms, including a big financial supporter to trump and mcconnel, over their handling of KY’s pensions:
BREAKING: A Major Wall Street Scandal Just Exploded In Kentucky
Law enforcement officials are targeting the billionaire who bankrolls McConnell & Trump’s political machine — the suit threatens two of the most powerful firms on Wall Street.
https://sirota.substack.com/p/a-major-wall-street-scandal-just
…now I may not know enough about the situation to find out where the GOP bit of the AG in question pops back up & takes the shine off the thing
…but that at least sounds like score one for the idea that it might be possible to give the actual law some credit despite a Republican affiliation…which I could stand to hear a little more of
I tend to quickly cycle through 2-4-5-6-and 9, before settling on 7, lately.😉
Work-wise, I’ve declared a mental-health day, because i KEPT waking up alllllllll night (just DUMB, inane, dreams about the school where I work, and the things we typically do in the week before the kids start, when we do all *our* prep stuff.
There was no Covid-stuff in the dream, it was SERIOUSLY innocent & innocuous,but I KNOW that means that at *some* level, my unconscious brain is stressing, because i woke up SO many times…
Annnd at least, now that I KNOW my subconscious is twitching all over, I can get some of the worries over into my conscious brain & start working my way through, and dismantling the unnecessary crap😉
Basically, my subconscious turns into something like Grover in the old Sesame/Little Golden Book, “The Monster at the End of This Book” and tries to build ALL sorts of blocks & barriers “to keep out the bad, scary, things!!!”
Annnnnd then I sleep like shit for a night or two, and *luckily* last night, when I got woken up in the middle of one of those “Let’s stay Safe, BLOCKADE EVERYTHING!!!” dreams, I was able to realize what had happened (and what’s happened other times, in the last couple weeks, too, finally!😉), and I can get to logic-ing & processing my way *out* of those subconscious worries.
I swear to God, though, the fire-hydrants of information (both bad, AND good!), and misinformation(!) coming at all of us lately, REALLY doesn’t help.
Because there is, I think, just too.damn.much for my brain to process & sort through, and I don’t end up with z chance to get into good, solid/deep-enough sleep to *get* rested…
Doesn’t help that every time I get stressed out, I feel like I get mildly hypochondriac-y, and THEN I worry about “Am I sick?!?, am I getting** ______ (whatever *it* may be at that time!). Obviously, it’s typically *not* the ______, but my body DOES panic, on the somewhat regular… gotta love Anxiety Disorder!😉
(**whatever it may be–back when I still had the lump in my pancreas, I questioned if it was pancreatitis, then thought, “NAAAAAH, it’s stress!” turns out, PLENTY of times, it HAD been pancreatitis!😉, buuut suffice it to say, I carry my stress in my body, pretty often!😉🤣)
…I try not to go on about the not sleeping thing because a) I’m pretty sure I fail so at least it mitigates the effect & b) short of really going on about it at a bit of length I sound to myself like I’m failing in any way to distinguish it from the general degree to which pretty much nobody I know is resting easy these days
…that said…as one perhaps more familiar than I’d like with an internal monologue that will not shut the fuck up & go to sleep in a fashion apparently impervious to compromise…& to which I seem to have lost the mute button…good luck with that & I hope you get some proper rest just as soon as can be managed
…the alternative might be handy once in a while but the returns diminish pretty swiftly in my experience?
so, you want deep sleep emmer? do what I do: go to sleep drop dead tired. tired like you hardly can get into bed. you’ll get all the deep sleep you want! just set a wakeup alarm so you don’t oversleep! 🙂