25 VII 2023: Bad ass Barbie

I read that various right wing voices are denouncing the new Barbie movie. Some claim that it has every sign of being WOKE, others denounce Barbie for being shot through with TRANS-GENDER propaganda. Some of the right’s intelligentsia, Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Mike Gallagher, are shaken by the movie’s pro-Chinese tendencies, and, of course, the Bimbos for Liberty detect in it plenty of just-below-the-surface FEMINISM. There are even right-wingers who are complaining that Ken is not as much of a man as he’s supposed to be.

What a crowd of desperate scavengers! They are frustrated muckrakers who are here combing through cotton candy looking for something to piss them off.


		


	



			
				



	

		
19 VII 2023: How do you stain a stain?
	


	
	

	

A good piece of analysis on CNN by Stephen Collinson bears a curious title, “Why a third indictment of Trump could be such a profound stain on his legacy.” I find this confusing because I don’t think that Trump will leave a legacy. He is more likely to leave an unpaid bill for all of us to pick up. In addition, if we should imagine a Trump legacy, it is very hard to imagine anything staining one vast, dark, and deep stain, a stain on Trump, on the Republican Party, on American democracy, on all conservatives who have remained silent. Any stain to be left by a third or fourth or fifth indictment will be invisible against the stain that is already there.

		


	



			
				



	

		
30 VI 2023: Supreme Court, doing what it’s paid to do
	


	
	

	

I think we’ve seen only the first moves of the current Supreme Court towards the restoration of white male supremacy in the United States. We know that a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Deceit, collusion, and corruption have become not merely acceptable, but even expected in the Republican Party. Should we be surprised if the Court they have cobbled together is at all different. The majority of justices were encouraged to lie about their real thinking and real purpose in the course of their confirmation hearings in what was a complete breakdown of our judicial system. 

		


	



			
				



	

		
24 VI 2023: What is Lauren Boebert doing in Washington?
	


	
	

	

Lauren Boebert told Sean Hannity: “Sean, I did not put my life on pause and leave my four boys and my now grandson to come here and just get in spats with people,” and she said “Marjorie is not my enemy.”





There are a couple of falsehoods in her statement. Ms Boebert came to D.C. for the very purpose of getting into spats with people. Getting into spats is what she does best. She enjoys spats. And spats get her a lot of attention, Lauren’s raison d’être.





For that reason Marjorie is her enemy, for Marjorie is the other Republican bimbo on the make. And Marjorie is a challenge. She is smarter and more articulate than Lauren, and her blonde hair gives her a great advantage.





I think Lauren should give up this fight she cannot win, go home to Colorado, and figure out why her 17-year-old son impregnated a girl. Her other boys probably require some attention as well.

		


	



			
				



	

		
8 – VI – 2023: Can he be an innocent man?
	


	
	

	

Trump is running a tv spot in which, amidst a hail of lies, he laments the enormity of his having been indicted. He claims repeatedly “I am an innocent man.” 





But anyone who has not been asleep for the past 50+ years has to ask “Of what at all could Trump be innocent?” It is hard to think of an evil that Trump, whose whole life has been an amoral fraud, has not done or abetted.





However, even a sexual predator, even a thief and con-man, even a traitor to his friends and to the country he has been exploiting might claim innocence on the basis of an insanity plea. Let him come forward, declare his responsibility for the crimes of which he has and shall be charged, but also maintain that he had no control over his own behavior, that he was driven to a life of crime by irresistible inner compulsions.





He would not have to fake this.

		


	



			
				



	

		
16 V 2023: Harrumphs, and damned little more
	


	
	

	

In Blazing Saddles we witness a meeting of Governor William J. Le Petomane and his cabinet. At one point the Governor, in view of the possibility that they may lose their “phony-baloney jobs,” leads a chorus of harrumphs around the table to show how seriously he and his cabinet members are taking the crisis.





Fast forward to our Republican Congress and its many meaningless investigations. They too are harrumphing, just acting out being vigilant and deeply concerned as part of the camouflage show they are always presenting to distract the nation from the virtual crimes committed by big money. The Republicans in Congress are not there to make things happen, they are there to prevent anything happening that might diminish the earnings of the hyper-wealthy persons and corporations that put them and sustain them in the cushiest job one could imagine.

		


	



			
				



	

		
11 V 2023: Truth in advertising enforceable on Trump?
	


	
	

	

CNN made fools of themselves and did the country a grave disservice by allowing Trump to spiel his lies on prime time television. Did CNN think he would say and do anything different from his usual m.o? They knowingly gave free advertising to a habitual liar. 





The following is found on the Federal Trade Commission’s Truth in Advertising website: “When the Federal Trade Commission finds a case of fraud perpetrated on consumers, the agency files actions in federal district court for immediate and permanent orders to stop scams; prevent fraudsters from perpetrating scams in the future; freeze their assets; and get compensation for victims. When consumers see or hear an advertisement, whether it’s on the Internet, radio or television, or anywhere else, federal law says that ad must be truthful, not misleading, and, when appropriate, backed by scientific evidence.”





The DOJ has failed to hold Trump accountable for his lies. I guess they don’t think lying in politics is real lying. But the F.T.C. promises to come down hard on lying in advertising. Maybe they are the ones who should prosecute the Archliar.

		


	



			
				



	

		
9 V 2023: Greatest bitch hunt of all time
	


	
	

	

The jury in the E. Jean Carroll case has found against Mr. Trump : please pay $5M.





Trumpy is, as one might expect, more pissed off than anyone has ever been before, and has declared the finding of the Court to be a “continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time.” I don’t know if Trumpy is right about “greatest … of all time,” but he shouldn’t call it a witch hunt, because it is more like a bitch hunt.

		


	



			
				



	

		
6 V 2023: Honesty demanded from all
	


	
	

	

I am so accustomed to cascades of evasion, distortion, misinformation, and out-and-out lies from Republicans that I’d come to assume that deceit was a reactionary métier. But features of the glacial removal from office of St. Louis CA Kim Gardner have shown that the left has its offenders, if on a far smaller scale.





I don’t know that it’s right to describe Ms Gardner as “soft on crime,” but her behavior has been what one might expect from a black politician playing to a majority urban black community that is, let’s face it, a semi-criminal culture. It’s within that community that shootings take place routinely day and night. It’s there that a very large number of people have family members, relatives, and friends who have done time, are doing time, or are likely to do time, and this situation, though surely not welcomed, is obviously tolerated. If you want to pick up a lot of votes in this community, you had better not come down hard on crime, but should displace responsibility to other elements of society and portray the criminals, the criminalized community, and oneself as victims. This is just the way things are now, and we must hope for better.





However, Ms Gardner is not only soft on crime, but soft on herself. Throughout her tenure the prosecutor’s office has been dysfunctional. Her complete screw-up has drawn a lot of criticism, criticism that she attacks as being racist in origin and at bottom all about her. Now, it’s possible that people dislike you because of what you are (race, religion, social class, etc.), and it’s easy to claim that this is the case when, in fact, they dislike you because of who you are. Paranoia loves to bask in the imagined approval of all, but it may also enjoy being the focus of universal antagonism.





Pop-psychologizing is unfair. But even so I have to wonder if the sources of Ms Gardner’s abrasiveness, apparently utter lack of organizational ability, and martyr complex lie not in the circumstances in which she finds herself, but in her psychological makeup. 





The situation is not helped by the hype that has attended Ms Gardner’s time as prosecutor, culminating in Mr. Adolphus Pruitt, head of the local NAACP, hailing Gardner’s downfall as “a modern-day lynching.” Oh, come on, Adolphus! It has not been helped by the prolonged silence of other black politicians who until quite recently have avoided any criticism of Ms Gardner. Is it an unwritten rule among black politicians never to criticize other blacks however deserved the criticism and however much the public needs to hear it?





It will take a long time for the office of the prosecutor to recover from Ms Gardner’s virtual sabotage, and it will take a long time for black St. Louis to recover lost credibility.

		


	



			
				



	

		
4 V 2023: Rockets’ red glare over Kremlin and “My God how the money rolls in!”
	


	
	

	

I read of a Kremlin reaction to the very peculiar drone “attack”: “Russia reserves the right to take countermeasures, wherever and whenever it deems appropriate.” When has Russia ever cared about whether it has the right to do anything. They are never concerned with what is equitable, but with what they think they can get away with.





Russia is charging Ukraine and the U.S. with connivance in this melodramatic “attack.” They might as well charge the Illuminati, Jews, and Freemasons as well – the Kremlin’s dramaturgy is so naive that nothing they claim will convince anyone.





I see reports of additional ways in which right-wing money has been rolling in to Justice Thomas. Does he accept the cash because he feels entitled to it as a member of disadvantaged minority or because he thinks receiving supplementary funds is a prerogative of the Supreme Court?