Fox News Cancels Caravan 'Crisis,' Re-Declares War On Jim Acosta And Sharks And Happy Holidays And ...
These guys are shameless
Good news, everyone! Carol's lake house in Minnesota has checked in "safe" on Facebook from that awful caravan crisis, which unlike what conservatives think about climate change was definitely man-made. You probably recall the story about the Marie Antoinette of Minnesota whom Donald Trump had scared even more shades of white about an invading army of hostile poor people. This "caravan of migrants" would not stop until it reached a state that is only habitable for human life for about two weeks in May. Then would come the raping and pillaging in an undetermined order until even innocent lake houses were "occupied."
Mr. Trump's dystopian imagery has clearly left an impression with some. Carol Shields, 75, a Republican in northern Minnesota, said she was afraid that migrant gangs could take over people's summer lake homes in the state.
"What's to stop them?" said Ms. Shields, a retired accountant. "We have a lot of people who live on lakes in the summer and winter someplace else. When they come back in the spring, their house would be occupied."
What's to stop "them"? Absolutely nothing ... that isn't, say, a midterm election that happened Tuesday! The caravan probably packed it in on Wednesday, because what's the point? All eligible voters have been terrified. Turns out the caravan didn't contain gang members after all but just the electoral version of the creatures from Monsters, Inc. who live on fear.
David Brooks Tries On Steve King's Hood, But Like *Moderately* And Whatnot
What's with this guy?
David Brooks, member of the Mediocre White Men Society (his uncle was on the board), is concerned that America is becoming a chocolate city. Brooks scribbled out his scary thoughts in yesterday's New York Times.
Here's the central challenge of our age: Over the next few decades, America will become a majority-minority country. It is hard to think of other major nations, down through history, that have managed such a transition and still held together.
Let's "kick the ballistics" here: "Majority-minority country" is a white supremacist concept. How are the current minorities still "minorities" if we suddenly outnumber what was once the "majority"? I remember an interview with Steven Tyler back in 1998 when he described himself as an "18 year old with 32 years experience!" This is a similarly pathetic denial of reality and the ongoing march of time except also really racist.
'Four More Years!' Trump Rallygoers As Stupid As Trump
And look! Some fair and balanced friends happened to show up!
Donald Trump wrapped up his reelection campaign Monday night with yet another big crazypants rally, this time in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Before you put on your fedora and correct us that Trump was campaigning for the midterm elections, and ostensibly in support of Republican US Senate candidate Josh Hawley, you'd better have a chat with Trump's crowd, who kept chanting "Four more years! Four more years!" We don't know what happens to him in '22, but then, neither do they.
In addition to Hawley -- who was mostly an afterthought, as are most beneficiaries of Trump's campaign appearances -- the rally featured Lee Greenwood performing a medley of his patriotic hit, Rush Limbaugh spouting lies, Sean Hannity onstage campaigning for Trump less than 12 hours after saying he'd do no such thing, and White House employees Ivanka Trump, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Kellyanne Conway illegally at a campaign appearance, because what is the Hatch Act anyway?
Well, yes, Trump HAD promised that morning that anyone violating federal election law would be "subject to the Maximum Criminal Penalties," but he meant illegal immigrants voting, not his own staff.
Jeff Sessions Finally Steps In To Uphold Civil Rights Act By Stopping Minorities From Voting
Bet you absolutely saw that one coming!
Finally, an Election Eve story to gladden your embittered hearts! Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III has an important reminder for you as you prepare to vote: The Department of Justice is committed to upholding what's left of the Voting Rights Act, and will do its part by monitoring the vote carefully in a lot of minority voting districts and making sure nobody's doing in-person voter fraud. Did the DOJ announce it will look at any number of places where Republicans are suppressing minority votes? Aw, hell no, why would they do that?
Here's Jeff Sessions writing his very important election eve note for the only guy who matters, who plans to fire his ass anyway after the election:
Jake Tapper Cuts Ronna Romney McDaniel's Sh*t
And that's how you do it, Sunday shows!
Hello Wonks! Welcome to a Before-Election Sunday Show Rundown! All the network Sunday shows featured new panel designs for their Election Night extravaganzas. From the subtle:
Oh, what a lovely brunch.
to an "Apple Store 4th of July":
Facebook in human form
to a gawdy "Holy shit, someone's overcompensating for something"!
ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!!!
But today's we'll mainly focus on RNC Chairwoman and secret Romney, Ronna
Romney McDaniel. Appearing on "CNN's State of the Union with Jake Tapper," McDaniel was making just one of her many Sunday show stops to put a bow on the Republican message going into this Tuesday's elections. What she didn't expect was Tapper channeling a honey badger and creating the most excruciating nine minutes of McDaniel's weekend.
Don't Boo, Vote! Wonkagenda For Mon., Nov. 5, 2018
Trump makes the midterms about scary brown people, and Republicans have a white nationalist problem. Your morning news brief!
Morning Wonketariat! Here's some of the things we may be talking about today.
NRA Just A Bunch Of Broke-Ass Scrubs, Too Bad
Truly, Sadly, Deeply Weak Poop
Sad news: the National Rifle Association spent bajillons of dollars getting Donald Trump elected -- like, maybe even a lot of money that wasn't from Russia -- and now its spending is down sharply on political campaigning for the midterms. SO SAD! Bloomberg News reports the group even "borrowed against life insurance policies on top executives and took out a loan from its philanthropic arm" -- which normally covers the NRA Fund to Yell At Bloggers About Magazines and Clips, You Morans.
Despite Trump's Slasher-Flick Attacks, Obamacare Still Undead!
Happy Open-Enrollmentween!
Open Enrollment for 2019 coverage under Obamacare starts today, and despite all the Trump administration's attempts to kill it, the Affordable Care Act just keeps chugging along. Thanks to the constant efforts to undermine the program (and especially the Supreme Court's decision to let states opt out of Medicaid expansion), the ACA isn't covering as many people as it could have, but there's some definite good news to be found this year. For one thing, Obamacare is still alive and kicking, and most Americans have a far more positive opinion of it than of, say, the Big Fat Tax Cut for Rich Fuckwads. For another, thanks both to the ACA's built-in mechanisms to contain consumer costs, most people who qualify for premium subsidies are still able to find affordable insurance, and after a couple years of uncertainty, insurers are actually finding the marketplace plans still bringing in decent, steady business. So hooray, and make sure you update your coverage if you don't have insurance through work!
SPOOKY. Wonkagenda For Wed., Oct. 31, 2018
Squirrel Hill mourns and chases Trump out of town, Steve King is in big trouble, and the Proud Boys get banned. Your morning news brief.
Morning Wonketariat! Here's some of the things we may be talking about today.
George Soros Is A Goddamn HERO
And it's time we started saying so!
Huddle up, kids! I'm about to tell you Uncle George Soros's One Weird Trick for making money. READY?
Figure out the difference between reality and the BS people believe because they want it to be true, and bet the spread. You can call it arbitrage, or use his own "Theory of Reflexivity" terminology, but that's basically it. George Soros didn't invent it, and he sure as hell didn't make the laws that allow it, but he did use them and his own prodigious intellect to make billions betting against the British pound in 1992. For which he was labeled "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England." Welcome to being a Jew in the modern world -- play the game by rules you didn't set up, then get called a cheater when you win.
Yes, this is less worse than African Americans having to work twice as hard to get half as far. But we are not in competition for world's most oppressed minority. It's not a zero-sum game, and we all need to lift each other up. Indeed, George Soros spent tens of billions of dollars lifting up poor people across the globe and promoting democracy. And that's why Republicans hate him. Because in their screwed-up worldview, a man who put up $35 million to secure matching federal funds to get every poor kid in New York City $200 for school supplies is an existential threat to the American way of life. Very Christian!
And he did flee the Nazis, by the way. Trump's bigoted base happily swallows lies peddled by Fox and the wingnut demimonde that Soros was a collaborator who led Jewish deportees to their deaths, or even that he was an SS officer. In fact, he was a 14-year-old Jewish boy in Hungary, using false papers claiming to be a Christian child, who fled to England, started out hawking souvenirs, and wound up with a master's degree from the London School of Economics. He became the most successful hedge fund manager in history, and went on to donate at least $20 billion to making the world a fairer place through various pro-democracy and pro-Democratic efforts. Which is philanthropy and political activism when your side does it, but is nefarious fifth-column stuff when the donor is on the other side. And so much the better if he's an un-photogenic Jew with an accent!
North Carolina Lt. Gov. DOES NOT Want You To Vote Fraud, GOP! But Here's Instructions Anyway!
Let him take you by the hand and show you the way!
North Carolina's Lt. Governor Dan Forest has released a video showing step-by-step how to commit voter fraud in North Carolina. Forest says it's so simple that even a Mexican caravan could steal an election. And it's all because the state doesn't have voter ID laws. So much for democracy!
"Committing voter fraud is easy in our state," says a smiling Forest looking into a camera as he lays out his three-step plan to steal an election. According to Forest, "First do your prep work and wait until the polls close on the last day of early voting." Then you need to go the state website and look for people who've voted once in the last four election cycles. These are people who Forest calls "lazy voters." Then cross reference that with people who've already voted during early voting period. Simply highlight all those "lazy voters" who didn't already vote -- those are the people you're going to impersonate. Finally, amass an army of people willing to run around to polling places all across the state on Election Day.
"It's that simple," Forest concludes, "and all because North Carolina doesn't require a photo voter ID."
Team Trump Knows 'Caravan' Lies Are Lies, But They're Such POPULAR Lies
Panic is always good for some votes!
In your "Jesus Christ these People" news today, there's word from the Daily Beast that Donald Trump's White House staff and other Republicans know he's completely full of shit when he lies about that caravan of asylum seekers in southern Mexico, but hey, that's the base-enervating narrative du jour, so they're all good with it. Never mind that the caravan is a thousand miles from the US border or weeks away from arriving, or that a previous large caravan in April had largely dispersed by the time a few hundred migrants sought legal asylum at legal border crossings -- and especially, let's please ignore that the US and Mexican actions against those migrants posed a real danger to the migrants, not the other way around. It gets the proles worked up and enthusiastic about voting, so let the lies rage on!
Of course Trump is lying. When has that ever mattered to TrumpWorld?
"It doesn't matter if it's 100 percent accurate," a senior Trump administration official told The Daily Beast. "This is the play."
Trump is doing his best to revive immigrant panics of years past. Remember how in 2014, ISIS was smuggling terrorists into Texas delis, and those terrorists stood around and let people take pictures of them wearing authentic ISIS uniforms? Totally happened!
White House Releases Freshman Essay 'The Socialism, It Is STINKY And BAD'
Wanna read something REALLY stupid???
The White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) isn't usually the sort of crowd you'd assume sounds like Sean Hannity on a bender, but that's only because previous presidents made the mistake of hiring bland grey economists who focused on boring economic stuff, not the perils of the USA suddenly putting Lenin and Mao in charge of national policy, which could totally happen, according to a new 72-page report by Donald Trump's CEA. Titled "The Opportunity Costs of Socialism," the report warns America that while no members of the US political establishment are advocating we adopt collectivized farming, the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, or Hugo Chavez's nationalization of the oil industry, there are definitely some Democrats who'd like Medicare for All, so let's take a look at why Lenin, Stalin, and Mao were total cucks, OK? Also, even more modest socialist-lite systems like those in Scandinavia are bad, because have you seen how expensive owning a pickup truck in Finland is?
We are literally not making this up. The report actually says that. It's like a bunch of frat bros snorted Heritage Foundation white papers and turned in a term paper, only with fewer misspellings. In fact, we can say in all honesty that this is one of the most neatly typed, correctly spelled John Birch Society pamphlets we've ever read. On that measure at least, it's WAY better than a lot of White House output. These economists definitely take pride in their work, because capitalism encourages quality.
Lest you insist we're joking, let's look at this excerpt from pp. 7-8, which proves the links between Marx, Mao, and two Democrats in the US Senate because ALL use the term "exploitation":
Cory Booker Doing Class Warfare, OH NOOOOOO
Help all American-born kids by reinstating the Estate Tax? How is that fair?
Senator Cory Booker, not one to be left behind while Kamala Harris is scaring Sean Hannity with talk of universal basic income, has his own plan for doing class war in America: How about we return the inheritance tax to its 2009 level and use the money to give every single child born in America a savings account, so all kids will come into some wealth when they become adults? The plan would be indexed to family income, so the poorer you are, the more money would be added annually up to the age of 18. And while he's at it, Booker would make sure the accounts could only be used for life-making-better things like education or buying a home, for instance. So, sorry, nobody could just cash out and buy a fur sink, an electric dog polisher, or a gasoline-powered turtleneck sweater, not to mention dumb stuff like investment-grade Beanie Babies or Jon McNaughton paintings.
Nationalist Trump. Wonkagenda For Wed., Oct. 24, 2018
Khashoggi murder a 'bad concept'; Trump wills a 'middle class' tax cut; and Ecuador real sick of Assange's shit. Your morning news brief!
Morning Wonketariat! Here's some of the things we may be talking about today.
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Nancy Pelosi Said A Bad Again! (No She Didn't)
You can lead Republicans to context but you can't make them think.
Donald Trump has once again castigated the media for dividing America with all its fake reporting and partisan bias, so it seems like a good opportunity to look at a specific example. Mind you, it's from Trump supporters, so it may not be what the Great Man had in mind, but it's a humdinger for sure. You see, about two weeks ago, Nancy Pelosi sat down for a chat with economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, and during a discussion of climate change and the economic impact of addressing it, Pelosi said, yes, certainly, any action to rescue the ecosphere from global warming would have some costs -- which she described as "collateral damage" -- to some people, but pursuing change is worth it nonetheless. True of anything government does, right?
Gee, would you have ever guessed rightwing media have decided Pelosi was actually calling for violence against anyone who dares oppose the murderous Democrat agenda? Nobody could have seen THAT coming! And yesterday, the second-ranked Republican in the US Senate, John Cornyn, passed on that purely bullshit spin and complained that people "across the political spectrum" need to speak more temperately and carefully. Maybe Senator John Cornyn should follow that advice.