Halloween Dance Party!

Oh, shut up John Boehner!

You know, I really figured we'd heard the last of John Boehner. What reason could anyone have to ever interview him or put him on camera or ask his opinion about anything? He was gone. We were rid of him. And no matter how much everyone despises Paul Ryan, no one wants him back. B

But for some reason, some Politico reporter felt like it was a good idea to help Boehner rehabilitate his image and put the blame for America's current political state on, well, pretty much everyone except John Boehner.

Boehner worries about the deepening fissures in American society. But he sees Trump as more of a symptom than the cause of what is a longer arc of social and ideological alienation, fueled by talk radio and Fox News on the right and MSNBC and social media on the left.

 

No. Do not do that. Do not pretend that MSNBC is somehow the left-wing analogue to FOX. Do a good portion of MSNBC programs come from a "liberal" point of view? Sure. But you can not compare them to FOX. Sure, Rachel Maddow and, um, I can't think of any other MSNBC hosts, but Maddow et al definitely approach the news from a center-left perspective. But MSNBC also begins their broadcasting day with what, like 5 hours of former Gincrichista Republican Joe Scarborough who, despite his current personal beef with Il Douche, has always always always approached every story from a right-wing perspective.


Contrast that with the parallel alternative-fact universe that FOX has constructed, where truth means nothing, facts are optional and advancing the agenda overrides any concerns about ethics, morals or common decency. What parallel is there at MSNBC for the conspiracy-therory-mongering  that goes on daily at FOX? Who has MSNBC had on their programs that compares to the king and queen of birtherism Orly Taitz and Cheeto Mussolini? How long after everyone had seen President Obama's actual legal official birth certificate did they keep trotting those two out to pretend that it had yet to be seen? And how much airtime does MSNBC devote to anything remotely similar to the bullshit you hear every day on FOX about every already-debunked theory from Fast & Furious to Uranium One? They are not similar networks, there is no comparison, stop spreading this bullshit!

“People thought in ’09, ’10, ’11, that the country couldn’t be divided more. And you go back to Obama’s campaign in 2008, you know, he was talking about the divide and healing the country and all of that. And some would argue on the right that he did more to divide the country than to unite it. I kind of reject that notion.”

 Wow! really? You're really going to admit that it was not President Barack "bend over backwards to compromise" Obama who was responsible for dividing the country? You're actually going to admit that this lies at the doorstep of the right? Well, I'm impressed!

Why is that? “Because it wasn’t him!” Boehner replies. “It was modern-day media, and social media, that kept pushing people further right and further left.

 

 Yes, the Dems got pushed so far to the left that they nominated the epitome of middling moderate incremental centrism, Hillary Rodham Clinton. They totally went just as far left as conservatives die when they nominated an unqualified unintelligent malignant narcissist with fascistic tendencies and a history of racism and misogyny to be their David Duke-endorsed standard bearer.

He continues: “I always liked Rush [Limbaugh]. When I went to Palm Beach I would always meet with Rush and we’d go play golf. But you know, who was that right-wing guy, [Mark] Levin? He went really crazy right and got a big audience, and he dragged [Sean] Hannity to the dark side. He dragged Rush to the dark side. 

 

 What the fuck? Are you seriously going to sit there and pretend that there was a time when Limbaugh and Hannity were NOT huge right-wing assholes? Dragged them to the dark side? That's like saying that when Ted Bundy arrived in Hell, he really  had a bad influence on Satan. Satan used to be a cool guy, but he's really gotten kinda dark lately.

 

 What happened to you, man? You used to be cool.

And these guys—I used to talk to them all the time. And suddenly they’re beating the living shit out of me.” Boehner, seated in his favorite recliner, lights another cigarette.

Ooooohhhh, now I get it. The difference isn't they used to be decent human beings then they turned into dicks. The difference is they used to be dicks to OTHER people, then they turned on you. Now it makes sense.

“I had a conversation with Hannity, probably about the beginning of 2015. I called him and said, ‘Listen, you’re nuts.’ We had this really blunt conversation. Things were better for a few months, and then it got back to being the same-old, same-old. Because I wasn’t going to be a right-wing idiot.”

Oh, no. Not you. Not a right-wing idiot.



You know, just because you can find guys who are nuttier doesn't mean you're not a nut. Just because there are guys who are righter-wing and idioticer doesn't mean you aren't a right-wing idiot. I mean, it's like just because there are guys out there who are bigger drunks than you doesn't make you not a drunk. Just because you were willing to allow the government to function, just because you were willing to settle for getting 90% of what you want, doesn't mean you're not a right-wing idiot. It just means the Freedom Caucus is baboon-ass crazy.

Boehner believes Americans are ill-informed because of their retreat into media echo chambers, one of two incurable causes of the country’s polarization. Another is inextricably related: the unwillingness of lawmakers to collaborate across the aisle, for fear of recriminations from the base. Boehner says the fact he and Obama golfed together only once—and agreed that it was usually better for him to sneak into the White House—speaks to how the two parties punish compromise

No. The "two parties" don't punish compromise. ONE party does that. The party whose network brought a washed-up brain-damaged drunkard of a country singer on to compare your round of golf with Obama to "Netanyahu golfing with Hitler." There is ONE party that is infested with loony billionaires who will fund primary challengers to any member who dares think of compromise. You know this.

You know how I know you know this?

Boehner often felt more welcome among Democrats than he did within his own party. When he made his retirement announcement, he told me, Obama called him and said, “Boehner, you can’t do this, man. I’m gonna miss you.” Biden feels the same way. “The only way we’re going to get this back together again,” he says, “is with some more John Boehners.”

So I don't know where you get off pretending that both parties are equally polarizing or disdainful of compromise or whatever.

The starkest divide in recent Washington has been between longtime pols like Boehner and Biden who yearn for a more amicable time, and newcomers who view the bitter acrimony of the Bush and Obama years as normal. The fever might have broken in 2016, Boehner says. But the parties chose the two most polarizing nominees in modern history.

For fuck sake!

I mean. . . one candidate bragged about committing sexual assault. One candidate said that Mexicans are rapists and criminals. One candidate promised to commit war crimes.One candidate urged violence at his rallies.  And somehow the other candidate, the epitome of moderation, is somehow equally polarizing? I mean, yes, there are a lot of people who hate Hillary Rodham Clinton. I am not one of them, but I know a lot of people do. Mainly because conservatives have spent the past 25 y years demonizing her at every turn. And the press has been all too eager to pile on. ( The Clinton Rules)
So ONE party nominated the most polarizing figure imaginable, and that same party has spent years painting the other candidate as polarizing, even though she is the poster girl for middling moderates. And we're supposed to pretend that both parties are guilty of polarization?

Good News!

Good News! Someone has finally figured out how to end the problem of sexual harassment!

All we have to do is kick all the trans people out of the military, see, and then. . . wait. That can't be right, can it?

Tony Perkins: Men harass women because there are trans people in the military

Hmm, sounds a bit fishy, but if the star of Psycho and Fear Strikes Out thinks that. . . oh, wait. It's the other one, isn't it. The actual psycho,

Perkins appeared on “Washington Watch” on Tuesday, commenting on a USA Today report about a two-star army general who had been fired for sending inappropriate texts to the wife of another soldier. While he disavowed the behavior, he blamed the presence of LGBT service members in the armed forces as a reason for the general having a weakened moral code. 

Ooh, way to go Washingto Week! What a get! Was David Duke not available? Or Dylan Roof? I mean, as long as we're going to have hate-mongers on as guests, why not just invite Donald Sterling to debate Mel Gibson?

“I think this is wrong, but who says it’s wrong? The military code of conduct? True, but that also said that homosexuality is wrong, but that prohibition is no longer being enforced. In fact, people are punished for not celebrating homosexuality,” Perkins said. “Same was true of transgenderism.”

Perkins continued, “That’s where the moral confusion comes from. People think, ‘Well, maybe I can get away with it because they can get away with that. That’s acceptable today, maybe I can do this.” He added, “When we deny there is a moral law and a moral lawgiver, it leads to confusion and chaos, and we’ve seen this increasingly within the ranks of our nation’s military.”

Oh my God! Why hadn't anyone ever thought of this before? All we have to do is go back to those halcyon days before the ban on LGBT soldiers was lifted and then presto! No more sexual harassment, no more sexual assault, no more. . .

Oh, wait.

But, surely prior to the end of DADT, surely there were no . . .

God damn it!


Okay, well this is good news anyway - Michele Bachmann has finally put to rest the age-old question of whether the Bible is true!

Michele Bachmann: Every archeological find in history proves the bible is true

Speaking at the Value Voters Summit this Friday, former Minnesota GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann spent almost her entire time at the podium preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, even calling on attendees of the political conference to accept Jesus as their lord and savior.

“You know the remarkable thing — when you read the bible, every archeology find that’s ever come forward has only proved the authenticity of the bible.”

Well, that settles it! I mean, when you look at these archeological finds . .

Just as it's written in the Book of, um, Pharaohs?

How can you deny the veracity of the Biblical  accounts once you've seen visible proof like this:

They're right out of St Paul's first letter to the Mandarins!

Hmm, okay. Maybe that's not quite the news I was expecting. But this is sure to be good news - Mike Pence has figured out how to fix America's taxes and stuff.

Pence to billionaires: Use your “stature” to make employees support a tax hike on themselves

By Alison R. Parker   |

Pence offered sycophantic praise to the wealthy business owners and donors in the room, thanking them for “what [they] do every day to renew the promise of America” and insisting that their “generosity has made a difference all across America.”

Yes, renewing America by sending factory jobs to China, tech jobs to India, and the profits to the Caymans! 

"We need you to reach out, use your voice. Use the stature that you enjoy in your communities and your state and all across this country to share the opportunity that we have with this tax relief legislation. You talk to your employees, talk to your suppliers, your fellow business leaders to get them on board. And of course, we need you to talk to your elected officials about just how important this moment is in the life of this nation. Tell everyone you can that America needs this tax cut, and America needs it now."

I mean, sure it's probably not legal to try to influence your employees politically, but why should that matter? The important thing is that the very richest among us are still having to pay some taxes and this is our chance to put an end to that injustice! Will it increase the deficit? The deficit that we spent the years 1992-2000 and 2008-2016 in a petulant tizzy about? Oh my yes! But on the other hand. . . um. . . You know. . . America needs it? And by America I, of course, mean the donor class.  Will it help ordinary Americans?

Okay, but this story is undoubtedly a complete positive with no downside. Facebook is taking steps to address the problem of "Fake News."

Facebook said it would started working with fact-checking websites such as Snopes and PolitiFact in the US last December, who follow a code of principles approved by the US’s Poynter Institute, a journalism school. Facebook users can flag stories they think are false, which Facebook then circulates to these partners (it pays them for the service). If fact-checkers find it to be false, users who subsequently try to share the story on Facebook see a warning telling them it has been disputed.

See? Nothing bad! Only good. Only good news in this story, Facebook is doing the responsible thing and letting people know when they are sharing bullshit as actual news stories. So that's that and no need to read any further!

Well, maybe just one more sentence.

In its newest attempt to stem the flood of fake news and conspiracy theories online, Facebook plans to sign up a conservative US magazine, the Weekly Standard, as a fact-checking partner, according to several people briefed on talks between the two companies.

Oh well. Sorry. I guess everything is still terrible.

This thing is a Senator?

Look at this thing.







This is not a senator. This is a cartoon character. And this was the most flattering picture I could find.


 


And I know, you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but in the case of Senator Bill Cassidy, looks are NOT deceiving. Because when he speaks, he reveals himself to be the exact person that his heavy-browed, cloudy-eyed cro-magnon appearance would suggest he is.

Republican senator takes being a Trump apologist to new heights

Cassidy says Trump’s lack of policy knowledge doesn’t matter because FDR didn’t know about paper money.

Really?
The fact that the President of these United States doesn't know shit about what he's doing is aky, because this ignorant lunkhead thinks FDR didn't understand money?





This dunce actually has the nerve to go on television and say that it's perfectly fine for the most powerful person in the US to have no clue what he's doing because FDR and Eisenhower delegated? Because FDR didn't personally write the law that took us off the gold standard, this dim-witted dunderhead thinks he didn't read it and understand it before signing it into law? The mind boggles!


Here's the actual quote:

“FDR, as best as I can tell, had no kind of involvement at all in our conversion to the paper currency. You know, we’re going away from the gold standard and we’re now gonna do the do the ‘full faith and credit’ of the Federal Reserve behind a paper bill. As best I can tell, it was brought to him fait accompli and he signed off. That’s a pretty significant change in our economic history, which as best as I understand was not anything he was intimately involved with. It was some fellow playing the guitar at home and the thought occurred to him. And I don’t mean to minimize it. That’s just the way the guy unwound. I think different presidents have different ways of governing. We just have to respect that.”

I can't count the number of times this dullard says "as best I understand" or "best as I can tell" in this interview.  He is "reading" a biography of FDR and as best as he understands it, FDR just signed something his guitarist thought up on a whim. So, in other word, you didn't understand whatever it is you think you read about FDR.

Then Mika asks him about the President's constant. compulsive lying. I mean, she doesn't phrase it that way, but that's what she's asking about. And this blockheaded dullard comes up with "well, the President speaks in hyperbole. . ."

That's not what we're talking about!

Hyperbole? Hyperbole is saying "this hotel is the best, most classiest most fantastic hotel in the world." We know he uses that kind of hyperbole. We're talking about lying.

Lying. Saying something that you know good and goddamm well not to be true.

Lying like saying you have investigators in Hawaii finding out some sort of unbelievable information about Barack Obama's birth certificate.

Lying like saying there is some sort of evidence that millions of people voted illegally for Hillary Clinton.

Lying like saying you'd received a letter from the NFL asking you to re-schedule a presidential debate.

Lying like claiming that Mika Brzezinski was walking around your resort visibly bleeding from her face after plastic surgery.

Lying like making your spokesman go before the National press and claim that your sparsely-attended inauguration was actually the largest crowd in history.


These are blatant, easily-debunked LIES. These are not "hyperbole." These are not "exaggerations."  These are lies. And not even good ones. These are lies like my little brother coming down the stairs Easter morning with chocolate smeared all over his face and caliming "no, I didn't eat any candy before breakfast." Except my brother was like six and he grew up to be an adult who presumably can tell a convincing lie.

A stunned Brzezinski then pressed Cassidy on Trump’s repeated failure to tell the truth, but again Cassidy defended the president by suggesting that since the president speaks in hyperbole, it is impossible to judge whether he lies. “‘The most beautiful in the world.’  Well, what’s the most beautiful in the world?  That’s in the eye of the beholder. So the president has a manner of speaking which is easily taken as a lie, and the president would refute that. I frankly don’t focus on that, Mika.”

Oh, you don't "focus on that?" Oh well sure, why would you? Why would you waste your time wondering whether the President of the United God Damn States of America is capable of telling the truth? Why would you worry at all about whether the leader of the free world is capable of distinguishing between truth and falsehood? Why focus on whether the man with his finger on the nuclear button is a compulsive liar, or a sociopath who lies for his own twisted mysterious reasons?
Why would you stress about that little detail? I mean, it's not like you're in some position of responsibility or anything, Senator. Oh, wait.

It's Arrested Development

So this morning, I saw this on Twitter:

‘It’s a mystery’: Reporters tell MSNBC’s Ari Melber the White House refuses to say what Ivanka does https://t.co/4fkrilV6NT

— GodsMigraine (@GodsMigraine) October 17, 2017

And I thought I was being clever by responding:

They're running the country like it's the Bluth Company.
And Ivanka is GOB.

— Professor Chaos (@akaProfessorCha) October 17, 2017

Later I thought "Wait, Ivanka isn't GOB, Ivanka is Lindsey."

Then I realized, "holy shit, they ARE the Bluths!"

Now the story of a wealthy family who lost everything,
And the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together,
It's Impeached  Development.

Except, in this family, tragically there is no Micheal.

But Donald is definitely George Bluth - a corrupt real estate developer who may have committed some "light treason."

Donald has a brother that he screwed over pretty badly (although not a twin).

Under that hideous combover he's just as bald as Jeffery Tambor.

And he was honestly a pretty terrible father.

Also, another thing he has in common with George:

Including one who spoke at the convention.





So, Ivanka is definitely Lindsey Bluth - Funke

Jared Kushner is Tobias, the unsuccessful son-in-law

Don Jr. and Eric are obviously GOB and Buster

 

I can't today, I have Army!

Tiffany Trump is not on the show.



I guess that makes Melanoma Trump Lucille?

let's see.. . .

Sarah Huckabee Sanders?

Kellyanne?

And I guess that would make the American electorate. . .

This is a joke, right?

North Korea EMP attack could ‘shut down US power grid and kill 90% of Americans’

Rachael Revesz,The Independent 9 hours ago

Okay, this is a joke right?

 Experts have warned Congress that it is ignoring a newly-developed weapon from North Korea which could shut down the US power grid and kill the vast majority of Americans within a year.

Oh, "experts," eh?  Who, pray tell, are these "experts?"

William Graham, chairman of the former EMP commission and its former chief of staff, Peter Vincent Pry, warned the hearing that such an attack could “shut down the US electric power grid for an indefinite period, leading to the death within a year of up to 90 per cent of all Americans.“

Ah. Okay, so who is William Graham?

 Graham is actually a highly-educated physicist and the model for the character Ron Burgundy.
He has degrees from Cal Tech and Stanford, and maybe should be taken seriously as an expert in. . . wait, what?

In 2013, Graham signed an open letter to President Barack Obama calling on the president to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal. It criticized the president’s stated goal of “ridding the world of nuclear weapons,” an aspiration the letter claimed would “result in the unilateral disarmament of the U.S. nuclear deterrent.” The letter insisted that North Korea was “amassing” nuclear weapons know-how “together with other nations hostile to us and our allies—notably, Iran,” which “raises the possibility that the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons technologies will soon metastasize around the globe.”[1]
Published by the Center for Security Policy, the letter’s signatories included a host of neoconservative pundits and right-wing policy wonks, like Frank Gaffney, Thomas McInerney, James Woolsey, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, Kathleen Bailey, Paul Vallely, and Henry “Hank” Cooper.[2]

Ohhhh. Never mind. He's a nut.
When your writing gets co-signed by guys like Frank Gaffney and John Bolton, there's no need to pretend to take you seriously.

Under President George H.W. Bush, Graham was a member of the Defense Science Board and chaired the committee on the Strategic Defense Initiative—a Reagan-era missile defense project known to its critics as "Star Wars" for its exorbitant cost and fanciful ambitions.[4]

No, yeah, we got it. He's not credible.

During the Clinton administration, Graham served on two congressionally appointed panels chaired by Donald Rumsfeld. One, the Rumsfeld Missile Commission, warned that "rogue states" could attack the United States with ballistic missiles in as little as five years. The other, the Rumsfeld Space Commission, famously cautioned that the United States could face a "Space Pearl Harbor" if it did not take precautions to avoid it.

Okay, okay, he's a loonie! Got it. Thank youuuu!!!

Sheesh!

What about the other guy? This Peter Vincent Pry?

**Googles him**

Aaaaaand. . . he's a frequent guest on Jim Bakker's Armageddon and Potato Slop Hour, so there's really no need to look any further into him.

So, are weaponized EMPs a real thing? Well, yes and no. They are certainly being looked at as a way to disable enemy military equipment. And a large enough EMP could certainly knowck out power in in a city. But from everything I've been able to find on-line, EMP weapons don't really exist other than prototypes built by the US. Exploding nuclear bombs does cause EMPs, but the idea of North Korea being able to explode a large enough nuke over the US to shut down the nation's pwer grid seems incredibly implausible.

Two members of the disbanded congressional Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) commission said at a recent House Homeland Security subcommittee hearing that a nuclear EMP attack from Kim Jong Un was the “biggest threat” to the US yet it remains “unacknowledged” by the government.

More attention has been focused on the regime’s continued testing of intercontinental ballistic missiles this year, but the dictatorship also recently claimed to have tested a hydrogen bomb underground in September.

And, as we all know, the government of North Korea can totally be taken at its word. If they say they have a hydrogen bomb, you can bet they have one even if no one has seen it. You don't know this hydrogen bomb, she goes to a different school, but she's totally real.


But let's say they did. Let's say that Kim Jong Un has a hydrogen bomb that he can drop from, let's say a flying unicorn, that can knock out the electricity in every city and town in the United States from sea to shining sea. How exactly does it follow that 90 percent of Americans would end up dead?

 Former Republican representative Curt Weldon, one of the founders of the former commission, wrote in The Hill last month: "A nuclear EMP attack would destroy electronics everywhere, cause planes to crash, stop cars and rail traffic, blackout electric grids and other critical infrastructures that make modern civilization, and life itself, possible. Eventually, millions would die from starvation, disease, and societal collapse."

And walkers. Don't forget walkers!

Have you ever seen what happens when the power goes out in an American city? People run to Home Depot, buy generators, and use them to power their homes until the electricity is restored. Is the EMP going to also stop gasoline and diesel powered motors from working? And is the EMP going to fry our circuits so badly that they can never be replaced? Will the memories of every single electric engineer be wiped clean by the pulse so that no one will be capable of designing and building new power plants?
You know we used to have no electricity. Then, without using electricity because we didn't have it yet, we built things that made electricity. We made dams, we made turbines, we made coal-fired power plants. Then we strung wires from those electricity-making things to people's houses and businesses so that we could have air conditioning and television and humorous cat videos. Is there some reason we couldn't do that again?


The two former commission members added that North Korea is thought to have 60 nuclear weapons, and its intercontinental ballistic missiles could reach Denver and Chicago, and “perhaps the entire US”.

 

 This yam? Nuke! That lettuce? Nukes! Those green beans? All nukes!

 

 Look, there goes one of my nukes. Oh, you missed it. It totally just hit Denver.

Mr Graham and Mr Pry condemned the one-upmanship between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, who have called each other “rocket man” and “mentally deranged”, which has worsened tensions between the two countries.

The EMP commission was defunded under the new administration.

Wait. Trump de-funded the EMP commission?
Shit, maybe there is something to this after all.