Well, all this is interesting to me, anyway, and that's what matters here. The Internet is a terrible thing for someone like me, who finds almost everything interesting.
Note that the interview subjects here didn't realize that this was a satire. They didn't recognize comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.
These gun nuts - these Republican politicians! - were actually serious about arming three- and four-year-olds. "Highly-trained preschoolers"? Really?
This is just an excerpt from the show. According to TPM, "Other politicians not shown in the Showtime clip, including former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, former Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore and former Maricopa County Sheriff (and presidential pardon recipient) Joe Arpaio, all report having been duped by Baron-Cohen."
Are we Americans just too dumb to maintain a functioning democracy? I was astonished at George W. Bush, but we followed that up with... Donald Trump???
And the Republican Party is right behind him on everything. Make no mistake, some Republicans try to establish a fall-back position, in case Trump finally crashes and burns. But there's a reason why Trump is a Republican. This is the GOP, these days.
This is the GOP after fifty years of their "Southern strategy" of deliberately wooing white racists. This is the GOP after decades of attacking education as a way of getting the ignorant to support tax cuts for the rich in every situation. This is the GOP after wooing the craziest of the crazies, just for their money and their votes.
Often, liberal Americans aren't very smart, either - not even smart enough to vote, in many cases. Liberals are still faith-based and stupidly prone to conspiracy theories - even those pushed by Vladimir Putin and the Republican Party.
Are we Americans just too dumb to maintain our democracy? No, I haven't given up - and I won't give up - but I'm really beginning to wonder.
Given the political climate these days - even worse than it was during the Bush administration, which I'd thought would be impossible - you might need this.
And you probably need it now - or,... well, before now, really - because some of these steps are going to require a great deal of advanced planning (the first two steps, for example).
Note that Noah Lugeons co-hosts the Scathing Atheist, God Awful Movies, Skepticrat, and Citation Needed podcasts - all highly recommended. You can find them on many different podcast platforms. (Note that you do need a fairly high tolerance for both profanity and dick jokes. They're not exactly safe for work.)
I had to post this. But then, I always post these, don't I? Laugh or cringe - and you'll likely do both - these are the kinds of things powerful people should be hearing.
Oh, sure, afterwards we always hear how mean the comedian has been. These are some of the most powerful people in the country! And yes, I mean the media figures, too, not just the politicians. Michelle Wolf isn't punching down here.
When Donald Trump makes fun of a disabled reporter or attacks a Gold Star family, what makes him and his supporters off-limits? Wolf didn't just poke fun at Republicans, either - although since they control all three branches of our federal government, plus most states, do you really think that would even be an issue if she had?
Again, Michelle Wolf was punching up, not down, here. Like last year, Donald Trump was too much of a coward to even attend the event. Well, that's exactly why we need comedians like this. Powerful people - and again, I'm including the most powerful people in the media - need to have their feet held to the fire.
I'm actually impressed that the White House Correspondents' Association keeps doing this. So far, they don't seem to be chickening out and choosing 'safe' comedians, either. Stephen Colbert in 2006? Seth Meyers in 2011? (That's the one that really pissed off Trump.) Cecily Strong, Larry Wilmore, Hasan Minhaj, and now Michelle Wolf?
Donald Trump chickens out. Republican congressional leaders chicken out, too. I'm even... slightly impressed by Sarah HuckaSanders just for showing up, although it pains me to say that. Although, since she works for Trump, maybe she had no choice about it?
When was the last time a television show was this desperate to get rid of their guest, when the guest was President of the United States?
It's just insane, isn't it? Trump watches Fox & Friends religiously, then tweets everything he hears on Fox. In many respects, Fox News is running our government. But even Fox had reached its limit here!
What have we done to our country? Well, I have to laugh, or I'll cry. Luckily, Seth Meyers had fun with this, too:
I can't even comment about this stuff anymore. And this damage won't end when the Trump presidency ends, or even when Democrats regain political power briefly ("briefly," because if liberals vote in one election, they'll probably decide that they've done enough voting, huh?).
This damage will last for years and years. (Heck, Neil Gorsuch will probably remain on the Supreme Court for the next four decades!) All because Americans couldn't be bothered to get off the couch and actually vote.
Well, we can't change the past. But we can change the future, if we're smart enough and determined enough to never quit trying. Are we?
Another Cracked video. But I haven't posted anything in a long time, and these just get better and better (as reality here in America just gets more and more depressing).
This is great, isn't it? I'm glad they ended on a high note. Only 38% of Americans realize that the Civil War was fought over slavery? Just 38%?Really?
Damn it, I'm depressed again. I should have quit while I was ahead.
What has happened to my country? It's the 21st Century, yet we've got anti-vaxxers, global warming deniers, creationists who reject the very foundation of modern biology, and all manner of unscientific idiocy.
I know that Donald Trump is president, but are we all eager to return to the Dark Ages?
PS. I'm sorry I haven't been posting. But it's not going to get any better. Everything is just too depressing these days.
Pardon my French, but we Americans so completely fucked ourselves - and everyone else on Earth - last November!
And yes, if you were eligible to vote, but you didn't - or you voted, but not for Democratic candidates - this is your fault. If you can't accept that, if you're not willing to even recognize your mistakes, you'll keep making them.
All the bullshit rationalizations in the world won't change a thing. You have to do something. And, among other things, that means you have to vote, in every election. You have to make the effort, because when you don't, this is what continues to happen to us.
Funny, isn't it? Of course, the biggest 'scandal' in the eight years of Barack Obama was that he's black.
And this even minimizes the differences, given that Obama's 'scandals' took place over eight years. Trump has only been in office four months! (Yeah, it feels like so much longer, doesn't it?)
As a roundup of the Trump administration, this is depressing as hell, isn't it? Very funny - and with a great label for these scandals ("Stupid Watergate") - but fundamentally depressing.
We did this to ourselves, and there's no easy way to get out of it now. Stupid Watergate is happening because stupid Americans gave him the election - not just those who voted Republican, but everyone (far more than those who actually voted for Trump) who couldn't be bothered to vote at all.
As you've no-doubt heard, former FBI Director Robert Mueller has been appointed as special counsel investigating the Trump campaign's ties to Russia.
He was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who then notified Donald Trump one-half hour before it was announced in the news media. Trump doesn't seem very happy about any of this.
The whole thing's a mess, and it's still critically important that Congress investigate publicly. After all, the criminal investigation by Mueller will be secretive by necessity. And there's a lot we citizens need to know that might not reach the level of an actual crime (or, at least, a crime with enough evidence to prosecute).
But, as I noted Tuesday, it's just been one scandal after another. Every day, there's something new. And I thought it was funny - though not at all surprising - how Fox News has been desperate to defend this Republican president.
I wanted to point out this article in The Atlantic, too. It's another list of the past ten days of scandals - similar to, but slightly different from, the list I posted Tuesday.
The whole thing is worth a read, it really is. But what's it all mean? Here are a few widely-scattered excerpts:
It is difficult to assess the relative danger of each of these stories, because in any normal administration any of them could consume weeks if not months of attention as the press and politicians ferreted out each loose end. In this case, each seems to be supplanted by a new self-inflicted casualty within hours. ...
Time and again, Trump’s errors have been dismissed—even, incredibly, by his own aides and defenders—as the work of a man who simply has no idea what he’s doing. He doesn’t understand the gravity of Flynn’s duplicity. He didn’t think firing James Comey would be a big deal. He didn’t intend to make a liar of his vice president; it just slipped out! Even in the case of the classified information, National-Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, while refusing to state that what Trump shared was classified, said the president wouldn’t have known its status either way. These repeated lapses, taken together, create a case that Trump is simply not up to the job of the presidency. ...
The president does not help his own case. While it is fashionable to compare Trump to Nixon—a comparison Trump recently seems to be courting, from his hobnobbing with Henry Kissinger to his “tapes” threat—Nixon was a far more careful, strategic operator. His lies took time, and secret tapes, to unspool. Trump, however, keeps confirming his critics’ suspicions to the entire world. When the White House insisted Trump had not fired Comey over the Russia probe, Trump said he had. When the White House rebutted the classified-info disclosure, Trump implicitly admitted it, tweeting that he had an “absolute right” to do so. Where Nixon insisted he was not a crook, Trump boasts of his crookedness 140 characters at a time. ...
In part, Trump benefits from a double standard. Because he is not a career politician and because his reputation for crassness was well-established before he ran, he received a pass for some of his actions. This is true even now. While Hillary Clinton’s careless handling of classified information was perhaps the decisive factor in her November loss, Donald Trump appears to have handled far more sensitive information far more carelessly, even if, as he says, he was within his legal rights to do so. Yet although his position is precarious he is not finished. It is much harder to remove an elected president than it is to defeat a candidate, for reasons both legal and cultural.
But the crazy thing is, none of this has stopped. Even today, TPM talks about "a small landslide of new news this morning." Yes, this morning. It's nearly impossible to keep up, isn't it?
Well, we Americans did this to ourselves, voting for an ignorant clown with a narcissistic personality disorder for president (or not bothering to vote at all, which is almost worse). And we gave control of Congress to the Republican Party, too - as we did most states (not to mention the Supreme Court).
This is a nightmare. No, it's much worse than a nightmare. At least you can wake up to escape a nightmare. We'll be living with the results of the November election for a long, long time.
I'm a skeptic. I think it makes sense to have reasons for what I believe, so I apportion my belief to the evidence. You're welcome to disagree. Please, tell me I'm wrong. I probably don't agree with anyone about everything. Why should disagreement be a problem? Check the Pages section below for series posts and links to book reviews and game posts, as well as contact info. Unfortunately, I rarely blog at all, anymore. So don't expect new posts. - Bill
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true. - Robert Wilensky
It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong - Richard Feynman
The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other. - Sir Francis Bacon
When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Speculation is perfectly all right, but if you stay there you've only founded a superstition. If you test it, you've started a science. - Hal Clement
No matter how many times a theory meets its tests successfully, there can be no certainty that it will not be overthrown by the next observation. This, then, is a cornerstone of modern natural philosophy. It makes no claim of attaining ultimate truth. In fact, the phrase "ultimate truth" becomes meaningless, because there is no way in which enough observations can be made to make truth certain and, therefore, "ultimate". - Isaac Asimov
The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion. - Treaty of Tripoli, passed unanimously by the U.S. Senate and signed by President John Adams (1797)
I don't doubt the sincerity of dowsers, but even after we've demonstrated that they can't produce results that are any better than chance they'll still go away believing in their abilities... It is like the mother whose son is caught shoplifting on tape. She wonders why someone would want to frame her child by producing a fake video. - James Randi
During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church ... imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. - Mark Twain
Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths. - Bertrand Russell
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything. - Friedrich Nietzsche
I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them. - Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.
This is not about proof. Science does not use proof. We favor evidence, and the work consists largely of the slow accumulation of evidence in support of ideas, not magically potent proofs that establish an idea as unassailable. - PZ Myers
No, people don't expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all. - President Barack Obama
The formula was very simple: build this really flexible, really open economy, tolerate creative destruction so dead capital is quickly redeployed to better ideas and companies, pour into it the most diverse, smart and energetic immigrants from every corner of the world and then stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat. - Shekhar Gupta
We are prodding, challenging, seeking contradictions or small, persistent residual errors, proposing alternative explanations, encouraging heresy. We give our highest rewards to those who convincingly disprove established beliefs. - Carl Sagan
We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins
120 million of us place the big bang 2,500 years after the Babylonians and Sumerians learned to brew beer. - Sam Harris
To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man. - Michael Servetus, burned at the stake in 1553
Democracy is not about majority rule; it is about minority rights. If there is no culture of not simply tolerating minorities, but actually treating them with equal rights, real democracy can't take root. - Thomas L. Friedman
We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us and with just as much apparent reason. - Thomas Macauley, 1830
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven into an age of unreason if we dig deep into our history and remember we are not descended from fearful men. - Edward R. Murrow
The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence. Science is simply common sense at its best - that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic. - Thomas Huxley
There is no absurdity so obvious that it cannot be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to impose it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity. - Arthur Schopenhauer
Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. ... Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society. - President Thomas Jefferson
To be elected in America, no matter from what party, the candidates have no choice but to year after year pledge to lower taxes further and further. We have become the nation of Ken and Barbie, looking good but very poor at the math. - Rack Jite
Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them. - Steve Eley
We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. - President Franklin D. Roosevelt
I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn't actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle. - Molly Ivins
In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican. - H. L. Mencken
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. - Winston Churchill
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