RETURN OF PENNYFARTHING: Rudy fears 'mentally incompetent' president who lies all the time, and he's not talking about Trump

Oh no, his brain is melting!  God forbid we let mentally incompetent people out into the wild.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

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Thursday November 04, 2021 · 5:46 PM MDT

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Oh, my gourd! Really? Rudy Giuliani is going to assess another human being’s probity and mental competence? Rudy Fiddle-Drawers Giuliani? The guy who sounds like a beef tenderloin who mysteriously came to life 20 minutes ago?

That Rudy?

Okay, so Rudes appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room Thursday to talk about … things. One item on the agenda was President Biden’s denial of a Wall Street Journal report claiming the administration was considering giving victims of Donald Trump’s cruel family-separation policy $450,000 settlements. Whether the report is accurate or not is almost beside the point ... given Giuliani’s absurd reaction to it.  

Jesus Sideburns-Dribblin’ Christ, let’s just roll the fucking clip, eh?

BANNON: “Does [Biden] look at you with a straight face and lie, or is that just he’s not in control of his government? Is it door No. 1 or door No. 2?”

GIULIANI: “Well, he’s certainly capable of looking at you with a straight face and lying. We caught him in, what, 100 lies? ‘I never met any Ukrainians’ and we got all those pictures all over the place and text messages, and he was spending more time with Ukrainians than Ukrainians do. He lied about his connections with China. He lied about being involved and not getting any money. So he lies. But here’s the possibilities given the present state of his mental capacities. He could be lying, he could have forgotten, or they may not have told him. Any one of those three things—and you and I don’t know having been in the White House, particularly you, you know White Houses are organized in very different ways. And I have a hard time conceiving of how his White House is organized. Who talks to him? Who gives him information? I think he’s lying. … That’s a pure guess from looking at his face. But he also could be not informed or forgotten—or maybe conveniently forgotten. Who knows with this guy? The simple fact is, this is one of the most dangerous points in our history. We have a mental incompetent sitting next to a button that could destroy the world.”

Where to start?

Okay, so Ghouls thinks he’s caught Biden in 100 lies? Well, he might want to check out the dubious record of his ocher overlord—because 100 lies would constitute a tiny fraction (actually .32%) of Trump’s presidential tally. 

And Biden is mentally incompetent? How does Giuliani know this? Is it because Biden never bragged about passing a test that doctors only administer to people they suspect of having dementia? Or is it because Biden never thought of using nukes to divert hurricanes? Or of injecting disinfectant to cure COVID-19?

I mean, shit. I was afraid of Donald Trump sitting next to his fucking Diet Coke button. That shit was evidently seeping through his blood-brain barrier on the reg. His cerebral cortex must have been a Purple Slurpee toward the end there. I’m just relieved he never nuked Rosie O’Donnell’s house. Because you know he wanted to.

How do you keep Rudy from lying?  Just cut off his mouth.

What are voters most dissatisfied with? Civiqs asked, and here's their top 10 list of concerns

Kerry Eleveld for Daily Kos

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Thursday November 04, 2021 · 7:50 AM MDT

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This month's Daily Kos/Civiqs poll was another deliberate effort to home in on why voters seem generally dissatisfied with President Joe Biden and Democrats right now. Not only are Biden's approval ratings eight points underwater, but Democrats took a political hit Tuesday with heavy losses in Virginia and an uncomfortably close win in New Jersey.

Readers of this site often fill my comment section with questions about why people are unhappy with President Biden. Everyone has their own suspicions, but here’s some data that can help get us closer to the truth of what is leaving voters most disgruntled.

What emerged overall was a lot of dissatisfaction on both sides of the aisle. Asked whether their quality of life now is better than it was at the beginning of this year (when Biden took office), just 20% of registered voters said it was better now while 44% said it was worse now and 33% said it’s about the same. Additionally, of the 16 policy issues Civiqs asked about, voters expressed dissatisfaction of 50% or higher on fully 10 items.

Perhaps surprisingly, issues that often resonate—such as housing, employment, and crime—were relatively low on the list of concerns. The same was true of how voters felt about the state of the COVID-19 pandemic in their local area: Just 36% counted themselves dissatisfied with the situation while 38% said they were satisfied and 22% said they were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied. 

What jumped out on the dissatisfaction scale were financial and inflationary issues related to the price of gas and household goods, personal savings, and the wealth gap “between the rich and everyone else.” Race relations and the quality of local education also registered high on voters’ list of concerns.

But the single biggest concern was the state of democracy in America, with 88% saying they were dissatisfied with it.

Below is the top 10 list of voters’ grievances, followed by partisan crosstabs. For each item, voters were asked whether they were satisfied, dissatisfied, neither, or not affected by it.

List of voters’ top concerns (via Civiqs)

	Total (dissatisfied/satisfied)	DEmocrat (dissatisfied/satisfied)	Republican (dissatisfied/satisfied)	Independent (dissatisfied/satisfied)
State of Democracy	88%, 5%	86%, 7%	90%, 3%	89%, 4%
Gas prices	78%, 5%	59%, 9%	97%, 2%	80%, 3%
Price of Household goods	75%, 11%	57%, 21%	92%, 3%	78%, 8%
Race Relations	63%, 11%	79%, 6%	50%, 14%	57%, 14%
Personal Savings	59%, 23%	56%, 28%	60%, 22%	60%, 18%
Wealth Gap	58%, 10%	91%, 2%	20%, 21%	57%, 8%
Quality of local education	58%, 16%	42%, 26%	71%, 9%	64%, 13%
price of health care	57%, 21%	59%, 24%	54%, 22%	58%, 16%
Freedom to live as one pleases	51%, 34%	26%, 56%	73%, 17%	59%, 26%
Local Infrastructure	50%, 30%	59%, 26%	38%, 36%	49%, 30%

Places of real partisan agreement included dissatisfaction with the state of democracy, personal savings, and the price of health care. (Note: This is not to say that Democrats, Republicans, and independents agree on what’s ailing our democracy, just that it’s a key area of dissatisfaction for all three groups.)

Republicans top three concerns were gas prices, the price of household goods, and the state of American democracy—all registering at 90% dissatisfaction or above.

Democrats top three concerns were the wealth gap (91%), the state of democracy (86%), and race relations (79%).

Independents’ top concerns were the state of democracy (89%), gas prices (80%), and the price of household goods (78%).

ALDOUS J. PENNYFARTHING STRIKES AGAIN: Fox News freaks viewers out with fire hose of piffling nonsense, because fear is all the GOP has

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

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Wednesday November 03, 2021 · 12:41 PM MDT

 

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The entire raison d’être of the Republican Party is now to scare white people into voting for them so they can continue to wield power (on behalf of billionaires, of course) with the backing of a craven minority of the U.S. population.

Indeed, the only problems conservatives seem interested in solving are ones that clearly do not exist. A killer virus is on the rampage and the planet is overheating like Donald Trump’s toilet seat on the McRib’s annual rerelease date? Meh. Oh, but wait! Here’s a new buzzword that sounds super scary! We’ve thoroughly focus-grouped this, so we know it will fill every hog-shit lagoon in Iowa with white people’s blazing hot fear-diarrhea. (By the way, I’m a white native Midwesterner, so I don’t want to hear it. Come at me, bro!)

We’re less than a year out from a former Republican pr*sident’s attempt to overthrow a free and fair election, and since that date, Republicans have been furiously flushing that off-the-charts outrage down the memory hole while elevating utter nonsense. And based on Tuesday night’s results in Virginia, it worked like a charm—because too many of the people who grew up in lily-white redoubts (like the one that briefly succored me before spitting me out) fall for stupid shit like the following.

Exhibit 1: The biggest problem in Florida right now is not rampant death. It’s kids getting cranky over wearing masks. Pfft. Wake the fuck up, cuck

Wednesday on Fox & Friends—which is what the Algonquin Round Table would have looked like if they’d all written for the Walmart Sunday circular instead of The New Yorker—Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis trotted out a little girl who doesn’t like wearing masks in school. Uh-huh. I hated being served creamed corn during hot lunch and I couldn’t even get an audience with the principal. But I guess the world has changed.

Anyway, the student is a second-grader in Palm Beach County named Fiona Lashells, and she was suspended for 36 days for not wearing a mask. Her mother, who is in no way influencing her, told Tampa’s The Free Press that Fiona “has been steadfast in her unwavering decision to not back down to tyranny and lunacy, vowing to do everything she can for every child going through these lawless mandates.” 

Yeah, sure she did. Ever thus to sensible public health measures, huh? Per Crooks and Liars:

When the cameras cued on DeSantis and the child, the governor prompted her and said, "Go ahead." ...

Fiona on cue said, "I'm not wearing a mask because you touch it, and you have germs on your hand, and then you put it on your face and breath all the germs."

The co-host agreed, "That's right."

Yup, that totally checks out. Let’s be afraid of the fake oppression of 7 year olds, not a virus that’s killed nearly 60,000 Floridians. We’ve got our priorities sorted out, that’s for sure.

The video, if you really want to see it, is at the above link.

Exhibit 2: Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican (duh), is warning parents that Biden could send them to Guantanamo Bay if they keep protesting at school board meetings

(This fake controversy is a response to a Department of Justice memo intended to address violence and violent threats toward teachers and school board members.)

BRNOVICH: Just because parents are exercising their First Amendment rights to speak out against critical race theory or even vaccine mandates does not make them domestic terrorists, and if we allow the Biden administration to continue this, God forbid, you’re going to end up with Mom and Pop at Gitmo. Think about how outrageous that is, Harris, to think about.

HARRIS FAULKNER (HOST): That is outrageous. Could that really happen?

No, Harris. It couldn’t really happen. But really nice journalamism there. Just aces. If there’s a Pulitzer Prize for weakest follow-up question, you’re a lock.

Exhibit 3: Greg Gutfeld, whose Fox News “comedy” show is to comedy what the Exxon Valdez was to ducks, thinks we’re teaching white kids that they’re “bad.” Because … well, isn’t it fucking obvious?

Reported via Media Matters for America:

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): So the—while the media and the Democrats were focused on microaggressions, parents were experiencing macroaggressions through education. Politics is a tug of war, as you know, between the people who go too far and the people who don't go far enough. Right now, it's the leftists that are realizing how far they've gone and they need—somebody needs to pull them back in.

And you see that how that they've turned, you know, the police into defunding and demoralizing the police and now you have this CRT stuff and you know, being white at birth is bad. So, they're the one that have gone too far. It's now time for the Republicans to pull that back in.

I’ve been white my whole life, and I never thought being white at birth was bad. Being white kind of sucks now sometimes because I get tired of apologizing for my relatives. But, no. The messages I grew up with did not lead me to believe I was “bad.” Quite the opposite. I got loads of unearned merit for no discernible reason. And so I guess at the very first sign that that dynamic might be changing, I should freak the fuck out. But I don’t—because I choose not to be a frightened, delicate little snowflake who can’t bear to see traditionally marginalized people make strides. That doesn’t make me extraordinary in any way, of course. It just makes me not an asshole. That’s a very, very low bar. 

So, yeah, this is what Fox News does. While one party tries to deliver meaningful change to hundreds of millions of Americans through President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan, the other is busy freaking out its core constituency so billionaires can keep their loot.

I’d say they should be ashamed of themselves, but you have to have shame to begin with for that to mean anything.

CARTOON FOR AZ VOTERS: Sold Out!

 

laloalcaraz

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Tuesday October 26, 2021 · 5:44 PM MDT

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Ahead of Virginia results, Republicans declare another supposedly 'stolen' election

 

A vote for Republicans is a vote against democracy, brought to you by this guy who still calls the shots for Moscow Mitch and his merry band of thieves committed to robbing the poor to give to the rich.

Kerry Eleveld

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Tuesday November 02, 2021 · 11:08 AM MDT

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Even before the polls opened in Virginia on Tuesday, Republican pundits lined up to assure their base that any election resulting in a Democratic victory was supposedly "stolen."

This is now their go-to play in advance of every election—especially consequential ones with a national audience. Sure, Republicans haven't won the popular vote in a presidential contest since 2004 (as GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger notes). And now more than ever, they relish catering to their base voters to the exclusion of absolutely everyone else.

So even as Republicans place their bets on a 50-minus-1 strategy in most elections, they groom their base to believe their views have majority support and they are the victims of disenfranchisement—which couldn’t be further from the truth.

Witness former GOP speaker and now fringe conspiracist Newt Gingrich on Fox News Monday when asked whether a close finish in Virginia's gubernatorial race could signal good things for Republicans.

"First of all, if it's really tight, they'll steal it," Gingrich responded, referring to Democrats. "So you can't afford to have a really tight election. You have to win by a big enough margin that they can't steal it."

Gingrich, once a supposed thought leader in the GOP, is nothing more than a conspiracy theory trash talker now. Desperate to stay relevant, Gingrich is just regurgitating fringe talking points fashioned by coup-inciter Donald Trump and indictee-turned-pardon-recipient Steve Bannon.

On his radio show last week, Bannon didn't just lie, he offered the polar opposite of the truth: projecting the entire sick GOP strategy onto Democrats.

“They’re Democrats. They’re going to try to steal it," Bannon told his audience according to Mother Jones. "They can’t win elections they don’t steal, right? They understand this. This is what they did in ’20. It’s time now to start calling them out.”

Trump started pounding the "steal" drum a couple months ago, when he told a right-wing radio show on Sept. 1, “You know how they cheat in elections. The Virginia governor’s election — you better watch it.”

On Monday, Trump also released a statement underscoring the notion that something untoward was afoot in Virginia.

"I am not a believer in the integrity of Virginia's elections, lots of bad things went on, and are going on," Trump wrote. "Terry McAuliffe is a low-life politician who lies, cheats, and steals," Trump added.

The GOP's constant baseless rants about stolen elections have in many ways had the desired effect. An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll this week found that nearly two-thirds of GOP voters (64%) said they don't trust elections to be fair, saying they either have very little faith in elections or no faith at all.

Overall, the poll found that 58% of respondents had either a great deal/good amount of trust in elections to be fair, including 86% of Democrats, 60% of independents, and just 34% of Republicans.

But Trump's Big Lie hasn't just stoked distrust among Republicans and GOP-leaners, it has also made them more prone to violence. In a PRRI poll also released this week, 30% of Republicans agreed that "true American patriots might have to resort to violence in order to save our country." That sentiment was particularly high among respondents who believe 2020 was "stolen" from Trump, with 39% of that cohort endorsing potential violence.

The GOP’s perpetual commitment to the baseless “steal” narrative could have some short-term upsides for Democrats, but ultimately it is serving to entirely undermine the nation’s democratic system of government.  

On the one hand, regardless of the Virginia results, Republicans are continually depressing some of their voters by incessantly stoking distrust in them. On the other hand, Trump and his henchmen are grooming his voters for violence, which is surely baked into their calculations.

"Look at all those people of color trying to vote.  Oh, we won.  Never mind."

There are no more 'dog whistles,' just blatant racism from the GOP vs. the rest of Americans

Republican Glenn Youngkin.

Dartagnan

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Monday November 01, 2021 · 6:31 PM MDRSS

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In a way, it’s good to have this finally stated. Over the past 30-odd years, we’ve been treated again and again to more than obvious attempts by the Republican Party to channel racism from their base of support. In the past these efforts were characterized by the media—often correctly—as racist “dog whistles,” in which the Republican candidate would, I guess “cleverly,” resort to “coded” terminology in order to inflame the resentments and grievances of white Americans toward their fellow citizens of a darker shade of skin.

Thanks to Donald Trump, the GOP has finally dispensed with such niceties. As Paul Waldman writing for The Washington Post points out, out-and-out racism is no longer something to be disguised in the Republican Party. In fact, it’s something to broadcast loudly and clearly, just so there’s no mistake.

With Republican Glenn Youngkin successfully turning the Virginia gubernatorial campaign into a referendum on whether White students are being cruelly forced to think about racism, Democrat Terry McAuliffe is charging that Youngkin is deploying that most underhanded of rhetorical techniques, the “dog whistle.”

He’s ending his campaign on a racist dog whistle,” McAuliffe said on “Meet the Press” this Sunday, just one of many times he and his surrogates have made that allegation.

But here’s the reality: There are no more dog whistles in American politics. And this race shows why.

The GOP of years gone by wouldn’t dare stick its hateful, racist nose out for all to see. That was the time of Ronald Reagan, with his clever allusions to “welfare queens” and government as the “enemy.” Republicans knew exactly what he was talking about, but God forbid anyone in the media could acknowledge it. There was always some sort of rhetorical escape hatch, a back door of plausible deniability: Oh no, we weren’t talking about race, how dare you accuse us of that!

That convention—always one of convenience—has now been summarily tossed out the window by the modern Republican Party. Waldman explains the transformation as an acknowledgement that Republicans really want to be racist, and not only that, they want to fly their racist flags as high as they can imagine.

As Waldman observes, the internet has played a large part in this pathway to acknowledgment by the GOP of its inherently racist underpinnings. Since it’s become “impossible to send a hidden message to anyone that will not be immediately noticed, dissected, and decoded,” Republican thinking has finally come around to the realization that hiding it is simply a waste of time.

The final catalyst in this epiphany was the presidency of Donald Trump, which effectively taught Republicans that they could afford to be blatant racists without worrying about the consequences. As Waldman notes, “They wanted to be loud and unapologetic, especially when saying things that are unpopular or simply offensive.” Trump taught them that this was all A-OK. And, as Waldman points out, they’re “not going back.”

That’s because, deep down, (as Waldman implies) Republicans enjoy their racism. They like it, they feed on it, they revel in it, and they’ve felt so constrained for years about letting it all out. Waldman notes: “They think it’s clever and funny, but they aren’t trying to fool anyone.”

So it’s really just a matter of time before Republicans actually begin to act out on their beliefs. There are myriad historical consequences to racism, and we should expect Republicans will openly embrace these as well. Oppression? Lynching? Genocide? It’s all an accepted part of the platform.  And when they get tired of maligning and demonizing all the people of color, they’ll move to Jews, LGBTQ people, and others (in fact, they already are). Because that’s the way it always works.

But please. Now that it’s out in the open, spare us the smoke and mirrors routine. It’s just embarrassing. Honestly, it’s probably a good thing that we’ve dispensed with the coyness, with all the dissembling, all the mealymouthed excuses you’ve offered over the years.

Now, at least, the rest of the American people can see you for what you really are.

Resilience: The One Word Progressives Need in the Face of Trump, COVID and More

Resilience: The One Word Progressives Need in the Face of Trump, COVID and More

 

Robert Reich. (photo: Steve Russell/Toronto Star)  

  01 November 21

readersuppotednews.org 

The climate crisis, the economy, Biden’s struggle to enact his spending agenda. The list goes on. The lesson? Be strong

I often tell my students that if they strive to achieve full and meaningful lives, they should expect failures and disappointments. We learn to walk by falling down again and again. We learn to ride a bicycle by crashing into things. We learn to make good friends by being disappointed in friendship. Failure and disappointment are prerequisites to growth.

The real test of character comes after failures and disappointments. It is resilience: how easily you take failures, what you learn from them, how you bounce back.

This is a hard lesson for high-achievers used to jumping over every hoop put in front of them. It’s also a hard lesson for people who haven’t had all the support and love they might have needed when growing up. In fact, it’s a hard lesson for almost everyone in a culture such as ours, that worships success and is embarrassed by failure and is inherently impatient.

Why am I telling you this now? Because we have gone through a few very difficult years: Donald Trump’s racist nationalism and his attacks on our democracy, a painful reckoning with systemic racism, angry political divisions, a deadly pandemic accompanied by a recession, and climate hazards such as floods and wildfires.

We assumed everything would be fine again once these were behind us. But we now find ourselves in a disorienting limbo. There is no clearly demarcated “behind us”. The pandemic still lurks. The economy is still worrisome. Americans continue to be deeply angry with each other. The climate crisis still poses an existential threat. Trump and other insurrectionists have not yet been brought to justice. Democracy is still threatened.

And Biden and the Democrats have been unable to achieve the scale of change many of us wanted and expected.

If you’re not at least a bit disappointed, you’re not human. To some, it feels like America is failing.

But bear with me. I’ve learned a few things in my half-century in and around politics, and my many years teaching young people. One is that things often look worse than they really are. The media (including social media) sells subscriptions and advertising with stories that generate anger and disappointment. The same goes for the views of pundits and commentators. Pessimists always appear wiser than optimists.

Another thing I’ve learned is that expectations for a new president and administration are always much higher than they can possibly deliver. Our political system was designed to make it difficult to get much done, at least in the short run. So the elation that comes with the election of someone we admire almost inevitably gives way to disappointment.

A third thing: in addition to normal political constraints, positive social change comes painfully slowly. It can take years, decades, sometimes a century or longer for a society to become more inclusive, more just, more democratic, more aware of its shortcomings and more determined to remedy them. And such positive changes are often punctuated by lurches backward. I believe in progress because I’ve seen so much of it in my lifetime, but I’m also aware of the regressive forces that constantly threaten it. The lesson here is tenacity – playing the long game.

Which brings me back to resilience. We have been through a difficult time. We wanted and expected it to be over: challenges overcome, perpetrators brought to justice, pandemic ended, nation healed, climate saved, politics transformed. But none of it is over. The larger goals we are fighting for continue to elude us.

Yet we must continue the fight. If we allow ourselves to fall into fatalism, or wallow in disappointment, or become resigned to what is rather than what should be, we will lose the long game. The greatest enemy of positive social change is cynicism about what can be changed.