They’ll still vote for him

Don’t expect the über-patriotic worshippers of Donald Trump to have any second thoughts about voting for him after this unsurprising revelation:

When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.

Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.

They won’t care. They’ll call it “fake news”, or worse, they’ll declare that they agree that gosh, they sure don’t want to see wounded veterans in their militaristic parades.

You know what wounds a democracy? Seeing demonstrably incompetent leaders, day after day, wrecking the country.

You know what undermines a democracy? A fawning press that makes excuses for bad leadership.

But what absolutely kills a democracy is when you lose all trust and confidence in your fellow citizens. My county is going to vote overwhelmingly for a dishonest, treacherous criminal in the next election, and that’s on them.

Oh boy. Here’s Trump’s response to military criticism.

Shut down everything!

This is just the tackiest pseudoscientific ménage à trois ever, someone turn off the soap opera

Perhaps you’ve forgotten, but the Discovery Institute, that spider hole of bad science and pseudo-scientific religious apologetics, is actually just another conservative think-tank that milks rich capitalists for funding. The DI was founded by George Gilder and Bruce Chapman — Phil Johnson was just the charismatic Christian babbler who was the front — and from the beginning, it was really all about promoting conservative values, supply-side economics, and Republican politics. The creationism was the attention-getting garnish on the story, but just one side. They also have a wing that focuses on policy issues in the Pacific Northwest, the Discovery Institute Center on Wealth and Poverty. Aren’t you cheered to know that they’re going to take the same insight and detailed appreciation of knowledge that they brought to biology, and have been focusing it on economics?

Recently their representative made an appearance on Tucker Carlson (oh god the idiocy is converging) to opine on the protests in Seattle and Portland. OK, the topic is definitely within their geographic remit, but no, a far-right arch-capitalist money-grubbing institution crusted with a patina of religiosity is not the authority we need right now, even if Fox News thinks so.

But the real amusement here is to see who else is jumping in bed with them: Quillette!

Yep, the Institute of Advanced Craniometry, Phrenology, and Evolutionary Psychology, AKA Quillette, is absolutely jubilant about joining forces with the Discovery Institute’s “Kill the Poor” department to find common cause with Fox News and the poor little rich boy, Tucker Carlson. Really, I’m not at all surprised. In this hell year, it’s exactly the right little touch of flavor to enhance the whole experience.

A marvel of bias in the guise of objectivity

I could learn to hate journalism, I really could. This is an abomination of the craft.

I mean, we’re all just objects in space, shifting meaninglessly in time. You can’t really demonstrate causality or even any kind of connection at all between multiple events. Two people died, bullets came out of a gun, an editor emitted words, the sun rises and sets, everything is meaningless.

You know Abby Johnson is a liar, right?

Johnson spoke at the Republican National Convention, which is no surprise, given that all the speakers had the prerequisite of being a liar and fraud in order to get a slot. I first dug into her history when her life “story” was told in the Christian propaganda film, Unplanned.

It’s good to get a reminder, though. Go read this update from Texas Monthly posted last year. She lied about Planned Parenthood, she lied about the abortion that she claimed motivated her to leave the organization. The truth is that she’s a venal fraud who saw an opportunity for a scandal that would profit her greatly, and has now put her on the national stage.

Is it too much to hope that hitching her star to the criminal grifter Trump will finally bring her down?

Is Ben Shapiro’s 15 minutes almost over?

I hope so.

All he has as a talent is the ability to talk really fast without thinking.

The inevitable news about Steve Bannon

He’s been arrested for fraud. Is anyone surprised?

Federal prosecutors in New York on Thursday unsealed criminal charges against Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, and three other men they alleged defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors using an online crowdfunding campaign that was advertised as raising money to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico.

In a news release, prosecutors said Bannon and another organizer of the campaign, Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage, claimed that they would not take any compensation as part of the campaign, called “We Build The Wall,” but that was a lie. Bannon, prosecutors alleged, received more than $1 million through a non-profit he controlled, and Kolfage received more than $350,000.

I think the president and his cronies face the same prospects after the election. The whole kit and kaboodle ought to be arrested now for a lifetime of grift, but somehow, it’s not happening.

Manifesting a vision of hell

I’ve been skipping the Democratic National Convention altogether, since I know exactly how it’s going to turn out, making it a farcical charade, and they’re also bringing on a few people who would do nothing but diminish what little fervor I have for supporting the Democrats at all — so have you seen anything interesting or worthwhile? Any substantive policy discussions, or is it just a long-winded coronation?

Unfortunately, I think the Republican National Convention is going to be far more entertaining, like a reality TV show about passengers on a train hauling full used septic tanks chugging towards a toxic chemical plant fire. I’m almost tempted to tune in.

The Aristocrats!