Sunday Facepalm: Guns & Death Edition.

Image credit: STILLFX.

The NRA is all fired up by Donny’s sucking up. They really didn’t expect the Tiny Tyrant to win, and hadn’t planned on having a new target, as they were completely focused on Clinton. They’ve had to do a bit of scrambling to identify a new enemy, and as the Tiny Tyrant is doing such a good job of shoving his head up the NRA arse, they’re supporting him in the ‘enemy’ department.

But with President Trump’s win — unexpected even for many here at the NRA’s annual meeting — the group had to reorient itself around a new target able to drive just as much anger in its millions of members.

ISIS or other international threats may have been easy marks. But judging by the rhetoric used by NRA leaders and President Trump in Atlanta this week, the gun lobby has set its sights elsewhere: the media.

“It’s up to us to speak up against the three most dangerous voices in America: academic elites, political elites, and media elites. These are America’s greatest domestic threats” LaPierre told thousands of NRA members on Friday at the group’s Leadership Forum, explaining that the media is trying to destroy Trump and his administration.

When do we get to talk about dangerously obsessed gun fondler elites? I’d like to have that discussion.

“Leftists media elites deliberately deceive and spin and twist the truth to grow their anti-American agenda,” he said. Later he asked: “When did the media stop being journalists and start becoming PR flacks for the destruction of our country?”

Taking it a step further, LaPierre told his members that the job of the NRA is to give “the media the big fat black eye it so often richly deserves.” Dana Loesch, a conservative media personality and NRA spokesperson, later used similarly incendiary language in a video segment, saying gun owners need to “fight this violence of lies with a clenched fist of truth.” And Chris Cox, the group’s chief lobbyist, claimed that the media “drew their knives from the very beginning” and led a “vicious” attack against Trump.

The line drew huge applause from the audience, and a mention of CNN later in the event led NRA members to take to their feet chanting “CNN sucks.”

Oh great, the aging white dudes think they are playing war. Did they not get the memo that guns are passé? Donny has nukes!

The NRA spent more than $30 million last year to elect Trump — more than three times the amount it spent on Mitt Romney’s campaign — and the investment paid off. Speaking on Friday as the first sitting president to address the NRA in over three decades, Trump confirmed his commitment to upholding the group’s agenda.

When it comes to attacking the press, the NRA appears ready to do Trump’s bidding. And its members are ready to fall in line.

[…]

With similar thinking coming from the Trump administration in Washington, that kind of language could translate into policy when it comes to freedom of the press. Chief of Staff Reince Priebus told ABC News Sunday that the president is open to considering changing the constitution so that he could sue journalists for unfavorable coverage.

Well, didn’t take the Tiny Tyrant long to focus on the merits of fascism once again. Speaking of, the Tiny Tyrant is all a gush over his new bestest buddy ever, Rodrigo Duterte. Donny really, truly admires Duterte’s war on drugs. Yeah, we’re very fucked here.

Full stories at Think Progress: NRA, Duterte, Suing Journalists.

Caving On The Wall and Other Sundry Items.

Tucker Viemeister.

The Tiny Tyrant has backed off on the “fund my wall or else” threats, now saying it can wait until September. Think Progress has the full story.

In the meantime, in spite of the Tiny Toddlin’ Tyrant’s tweets about destroying healthcare, the ACA is becoming more and more popular. Rather funny how it took Trump to make people realize that the ACA is a good thing.  Raw Story has the full article.

Politico has an exposé on the white house fake war on fake news. It’s quite enlightening! Recommended Reading.

And, Amnesty International has compiled 100 human rights violations committed by the Tiny Tyrant in these first not-quite-100 days. A good illumination of just how much damage has been done in regard to human rights in a very short amount of time. Think Progress has the full story.

And then, there’s the trouble with Flynn. – Aaaaaand, the white house didn’t hire Flynn, oh no, no, no, nope, we didn’t!

OH FFS.

This is unbelievably infuriating, but I’ll leave you to discover your own outrage here, as it’s another work day, and I must work, rather than try to figure out what the fuck to say about the latest idiocy from the regime.

President Donald Trump won’t be attending this year’s White House Press Correspondents’ Dinner, but quietly invited some of his favorite news outlets for a small, private reception Monday ahead of the annual event. The group features some of the farthest right and most nationally recognized conservative media outlets and hosts, while networks such as CNN and MSNBC—which the president has repeatedly condemned throughout his first 100 days for reporting on his approval ratings—were left off the guest list.

Instead, the networks and publications invited to the soiree include sites such as Breitbart and The Daily Caller, often accused of Trump propaganda and fake news during the 2016 election season, as well as headlines like “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy” and “Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?”

The event was called to honor right-leaning outlets after “they were neglected the last eight years,” Sean Spicer said in an interview Monday.

Neglected? Right. They are nothing more than tabloids, with zero credibility, they just make shit up. Oh, yes, right up Trump’s backside, then.

“They’re an important medium to communicate to a massively growing number of Americans who, frankly, have grown tired of mainstream media’s coverage,” Spicer said. “We’ve definitely done our fair share of meetings with mainstream reporters. Once in a while it’s important to appreciate the folks who have really covered the president fairly and covered a lot of issues ignored by mainstream media.”

Making shit up out of whole cloth equals fairness now, does it? Christ. I don’t just want out of this country anymore, I want off this planet. One with no Trumps at all. You can read the full article at Raw Story.

Oh look, it actually gets worse! A Fox and Friends anchor has been declared the new U.S. State Deparment spokeswoman [sic].

“Heather’s media experience and long interest in international affairs will be invaluable as she conveys the administration’s foreign policy priorities to the American people and the world,” the statement said.

Uh huh. Fuckety fuck fuck. That’s all I got.

“I Don’t Watch Them!”

Jim Cooke/FMG.

Just the other day, Unpresident Trump insisted that he simply does not watch mainstream media anymore, no, not ever. He doesn’t watch anything which is negative. Naturally, that statement is belied by his frequent morphs into Mr. Tweet, ranting about this, that, and the other negative something as seen or read on mainstream media. He’s running away to a ‘campaign rally’ in order to avoid the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, but does anyone think the Tiny Tyrant won’t be obsessing over every remark anyway?

It would seem that the Tiny Tyrant’s staff was unaware of his insistence that he does not watch, no, not ever, not anymore, as they have said that it’s extremely difficult to curb his excessive reliance on television. They also said he ‘hate watches’ in the evening, going over all the negative stuff, which outside of Fox, is pretty much everything everywhere.

“When I see it’s such false reporting and such bad reporting and false reporting that I’ve developed an ability that I never thought I had,” Trump insisted. “I don’t watch things that are unpleasant. I just don’t watch them.”

“I don’t watch CNN anymore. I don’t watch MSNBC anymore. I don’t watch [negative] things, and I never thought I had that ability. I always thought I’d watch.”

Contrary to this statement:

Trump turns on cable news immediately upon arising each morning and spends the day checking in via a television in the White House dining room. However, once the president goes upstairs at the end of the day, aides lose their ability to monitor and moderate the president’s intake.

“Once he goes upstairs, there’s no managing him,” one adviser told the Post.

“Sometimes, at night, he hate-watches cable shows critical of him, while chatting on the phone with friends, said someone familiar with the president’s routine — a quirk a senior official jokingly called ‘multi-teching.’” the Post said.

[…]

Foreign leaders are urging their diplomats to go on U.S. television when they visit the country so as to catch Trump’s attention. Trump has insisted that he wouldn’t dream of firing Press Secretary Sean Spicer — even after his gaffe comparing Hitler favorably to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

“I’m not firing Sean Spicer,” said Trump. “That guy gets great ratings. Everyone tunes in.”

There we are again – “great ratings”. That’s all this unstable, stupid asshole cares about. He thinks of himself and everyone around him as being on a television reality show. And if the world is going to hell in a handbasket, eh, who cares? Ratings! Things going bad again? Oh, have Spicer say something stupid about Hitler.

Via Raw Story, one and two.

The Problem With Trump: Part IV.

Los Angeles Times.

Los Angeles Times.

Part IV of the LA Times’ The Problem With Trump is up: Trump’s War on Journalism.

…This may seem like bizarre behavior from a man who consumes the news in print and on television so voraciously and who is in many ways a product of the media. He comes from reality TV, from talk radio with Howard Stern, from the gossip pages of the New York City tabloids, for whose columnists he was both a regular subject and a regular source.

But Trump’s strategy is pretty clear: By branding reporters as liars, he apparently hopes to discredit, disrupt or bully into silence anyone who challenges his version of reality. By undermining trust in news organizations and delegitimizing journalism and muddling the facts so that Americans no longer know who to believe, he can deny and distract and help push his administration’s far-fetched storyline.

It’s a cynical strategy, with some creepy overtones. For instance, when he calls journalists “enemies of the people,” Trump (whether he knows it or not) echoes Josef Stalin and other despots.

Click on over for the full article. A Must Read.

The Problem With Trump.

Los Angeles Times.

Los Angeles Times.

The LA Times has a searing series on all the ways the Tiny Tyrant is problematic. Part I is Our Dishonest President. * Part II is Why Trump Lies. * Part III is Trump’s Authoritarian Vision. Part IV will be published on Wednesday.

These are a must read. Clear, concise, and chilling with condemnatory truth.

In a matter of weeks, President Trump has taken dozens of real-life steps that, if they are not reversed, will rip families apart, foul rivers and pollute the air, intensify the calamitous effects of climate change and profoundly weaken the system of American public education for all.

His attempt to de-insure millions of people who had finally received healthcare coverage and, along the way, enact a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich has been put on hold for the moment. But he is proceeding with his efforts to defang the government’s regulatory agencies and bloat the Pentagon’s budget even as he supposedly retreats from the global stage.

These are immensely dangerous developments which threaten to weaken this country’s moral standing in the world, imperil the planet and reverse years of slow but steady gains by marginalized or impoverished Americans. But, chilling as they are, these radically wrongheaded policy choices are not, in fact, the most frightening aspect of the Trump presidency.

What is most worrisome about Trump is Trump himself. He is a man so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind self-regard, so untethered to reality that it is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation. His obsession with his own fame, wealth and success, his determination to vanquish enemies real and imagined, his craving for adulation — these traits were, of course, at the very heart of his scorched-earth outsider campaign; indeed, some of them helped get him elected. But in a real presidency in which he wields unimaginable power, they are nothing short of disastrous.

Highly Recommended, go read!

Beyond the Edge.

BEYOND the EDGE – NTM 006 from Teun van der Zalm on Vimeo.

In the second quarter of 2015, I began to research an new project; “What lies beyond the edge of the Observable Universe?”. I began an experiment to visualize this through our universal language: Mathematics. In this series I continue my search for new nebula forms, using particles controlled by physics and noise. They are fully designed to work in a 3d engine.

Directed and Designed by Teun van der Zalm

salmonick-atelier.com/

Called It!

ClipArtBest.

ClipArtBest.

A couple of days ago, I noted in comments that the Tiny Tyrant would be heaping blame on Ryan, and everyone else for the failed Fuck You Care Plan. Oh, the initial statements were along the lines of “no, no, I like Paul Ryan, did a good job” and “no, I don’t blame the freedom caucus, they’re my friends”, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before Mr. Tweet took over and started rage blaming.

Democrats are smiling in D.C. that the Freedom Caucus, with the help of Club For Growth and Heritage, have saved Planned Parenthood & Ocare!

Watch @JudgeJeanine on @FoxNews tonight at 9:00 P.M.

Pirro opened her show by calling for the resignation of Ryan for not getting the replacement health care plan voted upon and passed.

“How could you possibly misjudge this,” Pirro said addressing Ryan. “I certainly have not spoken to the president about any of this, but I can only imagine that he and his aides took on healthcare because they believed you had his back, and you didn’t! They didn’t even test the waters.”

Pirro added that Ryan has “gotta go.”

The full story on that one here.

That’s not all from Mr. Tweet though, who was called out in no uncertain terms by Rep. Ted Lieu, who said the Tiny Tyrant was a truly evil man, and the Representative is right.

ObamaCare will explode and we will all get together and piece together a great healthcare plan for THE PEOPLE. Do not worry!

People aren’t worried, you fucking idiot, they are relieved they still have healthcare. This is not a situation where you hope and hope and hope millions upon millions of people get fucked over, and then you can just “get together” with your corrupt, filthy rich cronies, and “piece together” a sop to toss on top of already screwed over people. FFS. At this point, I think THE PEOPLE are those over a certain income line, but it doesn’t include all us peons down here. Rep. Lieu responded:

“President” @realDonaldTrump: You truly are an evil man. Your job is to help Americans. Not intentionally try to destroy their lives.

Mr. “President”: Art II of Constitution requires you to faithfully execute laws passed by Congress. Subverting #Obamacare violates your Oath.

That full story here.

SlayTV.

Slay

Screengrab.

Enter SlayTV.

Slay was founded by Sean Torrington, a former Goldman Sachs project manager, and his husband Terry; after Torrington lost his job in 2010 , he decided to follow his passion for filmmaking by creating some YouTube web series based on the lives of black and brown LGBTQ people. They then created an app to curate content from Youtube and the web onto one platform. And Slay has been growing ever since.

SlayTV officially launches on May 15 online, on iOS and Android devices, as well as on Roku, Apple AirPlay, Google Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV, and other services.

Torrington hopes to empower content creators to become “sustainable entrepreneurs” who generate their own revenue. “Slay is not only digital TV, it is a production company and an ad agency,” he tells Out. “We will build campaigns around content on our network to get it branded.”

That content includes a wide variety of programs in various formats, for and by queer people of color, such as: the docu-series Other Boys NYC, a 50-part series exploring narratives of queer and transgender men of color; No Shade, inspired by Torrington’s coming-of-age in New York; and the romantic sitcom Love @ First Night, based loosely on Sean and Terry’s relationship.

Out has a nice introduction video. SlayTV. SlayTV on youtube. Great content, wonderful people, go explore!

Pants On Fire: Fact Check Time!

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In the Tiny Tyrant’s latest interview, he once again went straight back to the past, resurrected old lies, and brought out a couple new ones. Politifact has the fact check, and the truth.

Confronted by his most flagrant falsehoods, President Donald Trump finally faced the question of why he makes so many unsubstantiated claims.

“What have I said that is wrong?” Trump asked.

Trump said his instinct is usually right, and he usually finds evidence supporting his claims that the media and his critics ignore — even as he continued to cite nonexistent evidence.

Here are some of Trump’s most egregious claims from the interview with TIME Washington Bureau Chief Michael Scherer on March 22. Many of the statements are things we’ve debunked again and again.

Fact-checking Trump’s TIME interview on truths and falsehoods.