9 X 2024: Fact avoidance

Trump will not now participate in any debate or interview that might involve fact checking. Trump shares this annoyance at fact checking will every old fart whose inebriated pontificating is interrupted by a correction based on fact. Trump’s distress at fact checking goes far back. I recall that during the 2016 campaign his mouthpieces were claiming that fact checking is inherently aggressive and hostile. 

Now he’s claiming that VP Harris’ 60 Minute interview was the result of massive cutting and splicing and alteration to make Harris seem more lucid and presidential. But, of course, Trump can only be made to appear at all lucid and presidential when he is limited to sound bites uninterrupted by any truth.

I think that in Trump’s case the policy must be to replace intolerant and aggressive fact checkings with guaranteed “lie tolerant” settings of the Fox News variety.

1 X 2024: Image of Trump “in poor taste”???

 saw a picture of a silly statue of Trump that bore this caption: “A 43-foot-tall nude effigy of Donald Trump erected near Las Vegas, Nevada September 28, 2024. Conservatives have decried the sculpture as being in poor taste.”

Between the nude statue and Donald Trump and Conservatives, which is in bad taste?

28 IX 2024: Trumpian tick-tok

Donald Trump has announced a new franchise that will sell wrist watches with Trumpian name and symbols that range in price from $499 for Trumpites of modest means up to $100,000 for truly enthusiastic devotees.

These watches, vulgarized rip-offs of over-priced watches, are the latest manifestation of one of Trump’s fundamental problems. Trump has for most of his life affected membership in the monied + high-fashioned + impenetrably tasteful elite, and has invariably been rejected. And his latest business venture is yet another failure to achieve his heart’s desire.

Would anyone with any social and aesthetic self-respect want to be seen flashing one of these expensive grotesqueries that embody lack of taste and gullibility?

23 IX 2024: Israel invites violence

I do not mean the following as any kind of apology for Israel’s enemies, but the fact remains that much of the physical, psychological, and political harm suffered by Israel is self-inflicted as a consequence of its aggressive and, at times, criminal behavior. Israel’s indifference to non-Jewish human life is becoming more and more evident as it continues its efforts towards colonization and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and on the West Bank. Israel continues to sow the wind and act aggrieved when it must reap the whirlwind. The United States, indeed, the Western world generally have been Israel’s woefully naive accomplices, and Israel refuses to cooperate with them while demanding their assistance. There is no end to all of this in sight. However, some terrible cataclysm seems inevitable.

15 IX 2024: President J.D. Vance?

I am surprised that more sources are not remarking on the fact that, in the event of a Trump victory, J.D. Vance would be, as the saying goes, “one heartbeat away from the presidency.”

Vance is the Junior Demagogue. He has shown himself to be as energetic a liar as Trump and, it may be, even more angry and full of threats than Trump.

1 IX 2024: Mass murder, mass deportation

It is difficult to keep track of the number of non-combatants the Israelis have killed in Gaza and the West Bank. The news highlights their success in killing one or another leader of the forces opposed to them, but it is hard to keep track of the number of Palestinians they kill in the process.

If I had the real figures, perhaps I could figure out how many civilians they kill while pursuing and killing one enemy. Maybe I could work out a ratio, e.g., 20:1, i.e., twenty civilian Palestinians for one Hamas leader. Really, I think that 20 is too low a number, but I’ve no idea how high the number would be in reality, 30, 50, 100, 200, etc.

The Israelis are trying to delude themselves and the world into thinking that the Israeli forces are only trying to destroy Israel’s sworn enemies and all the rest who are destroyed are regrettable collateral damage. I can’t believe this. Israel’s policy is to displace Palestinians, whatever it takes, even if it means killing them. Well, God gave the land to the Israelis.

It makes me think of the American West and the erasure of the Indians. The whites confined them in ever shrinking reservations, to make way for “settlers” and in the hope that the Indians would simply die off on the reservations and become extinct. Sometimes a few Indians went off the reservation on a raid and white people were killed, and in response came mass murders and mass deportations. What is our excuse for this barbaric behavior? Manifest Destiny! God has taken the land away from the Indians and given it to US.

30 VIII 2024: Professional liar back on scene

I encountered this headline online: “EXPLOSIVE Interview Sparks Legal Trouble For MAGA Liar.” It made me somewhat curious, since “MAGA Liar” is not a proper, but a common noun, i.e., it describes most of the leading people in the so-called MAGA movement. It turned out that the liar in question was Corey Lewandowski — a former Trump flunky, long ago variously discredited. But as is the case for so many Trumpists, Corey’s shame is his gain. It seems he has been rehabilitated, if that is the correct term for it, and made a leader of some part of the Trump-Vance campaign. Scum rising to the top.

28 VIII 2024: Israel’s state-sponsored terror

Headline on Fox News today: “Israel launches major West Bank counterterror operation that kills 9 militants, IDF says.”

There is some truth to this, i.e., “Israel … kills.”

But Israel launching a counterterror operation is almost absurd, because most of Israel’s operations are terror.

25 VIII 2024: Kennedy Jr’s endorsement

As if we needed reminding, R. Kennedy’s endorsement of Donald Trump shows us again what a little shit he really is. He is a sun-baked ne’er-do-well whose craving for public notice matches that of his new hero Trump. He, like Trump, is also a magnet for crazies and their conspiracy theories, so I suppose Bobby is Made for MAGA. 

Why is this bum still haunting the fringes of American public life. He too, like Trump, exploits the naivete and cupidity of the media that leads them to give free publicity to any famous name, even if the famous person is a scoundrel.