Washington Post prints bullshit

So the Washington Post has come up with a new type of newspaper article. It's not really "news," it's not an op/ed, it's just bullshit.



Post Politics

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice isn’t the only Democrat Trump won over

By Jenna Johnson August 4 at 3:00 AM



Okay, first of all, are we really going to pretend that WV Governor Jim Justice was "won over" by Il Douche? Justice was a Republican up until 2015. He refused to endorse Hillary Clinton. He was a goddamm coal company executive before entering into politics. How persuasive would Cheeto Mussolinin have had to be to "win him over?"

HUNTINGTON, W. Va. — While it is highly unusual for a sitting governor to change political parties while in office — as West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (D) announced he would do during a rally with President Trump on Thursday night — the process of crossing over was familiar to many in the crowd that night.
Kimberly Barrington, a 46-year-old stay-at-home mother of two from Virginia’s rural Wise County, voted for Democrats for years, including former president Barack Obama ahead of his first term — but as she watched him and the Democratic Party drift away from her values and priorities, she decided to vote in 2012 for Republican nominee Mitt Romney and then for Trump in 2016.

See, now a statement like that needs some examples. If you're going to say that the Democrats have "drifted away" from some set of values, you need to follow that up with at least one f'rinstance. You need to say " For instance, they used to support this position, but now they support that one instead." But of course zero examples are offered, because it's just considered a given that since the GOP has flung itself headlong into the pit of far-right insanity, the Democrats must conversely have moved towards the far left because how else to explain the gap between the two parties? It certainly can't be the result of the Republicans having fully embraced the extremist wing of their party, because that would mean that our "both sides" conventional wisdom might be incorrect!

Marty Ramsey, a 49-year-old from Kenova who maintains trains, became an independent several years ago after watching Democrats allow the government to become heavily involved in health care, implement Common Core education standards that he thinks are too liberal, reduce access to firearms and narrow the freedoms of Americans. After not voting in the 2008 and 2012 elections, Ramsey voted for Trump last year.

Okay, the correct version of this paragraph would read ". . . became an independent several years ago after being convinced by the FOX/Limbaugh/Breitbart cabal that Democrats were reducing access to firearms and narrowing the freedoms of Americans, even though neither of those claims is remotely true." Like seriously, name one piece of gun-control legislation signed by Barack Obama. Name one way in which Americans' freedoms have been "narrowed" in the last 8 years. And don't say the freedom to have a shitty catastrophic healthcare plan that doesn't cover anything, or the freedom to be denied health insurance at all because of pre-existing conditions. 

You know when your freedoms got narrowed? When a Republican House, a Republican Senate and George W. Bush created the PATRIOT Act. And sure, the Dems did a lousy job of being an opposition party, but is that any reason to vote for an orange-skinned baboon with diminishing cognitive skills? 

“I think it’s a sign of the times,” said Jose Gonzalez, a 37-year-old project manager at a local steel plant and former Democrat who lives across the river in Kentucky and voted for Trump after his first pick for president, Bernie Sanders, lost the Democratic primary. “On paper, I had to register as a Republican. But I have to say, I’m somewhere in the middle ... The Democratic Party used to look out for the downtrodden, but more and more working people are going for Republicans.”

And at this point, one might feel obligated to point out that, while the Democrats - especially "blue dog" Dems like West Virginia's Joe Manchin - have done a pretty poor job of looking out for the downtrodden, switching loyalty to a party made up of the down- trodders is not likely to be helpful.  I mean, sure the Dems have been reluctant to fight for a liveable minimum wage (with some notable exceptions), but the Republicans argue over whether to reduce it or eliminate it all together. And yes, Obamacare is fairly weak sauce compared to the Canadian-style single payer system we should have by now, but how is it better top vote for the party that wants to throw millions off of insurance so that they can give tax cuts to millionaires? Some analysis along these lines might improve your story more than just printing pull-quotes from people who were stupid enough to be conned by the two-bit charlatan in the bad combover.

Happy Jerry Day

Or I guess I should say "Bittersweet Jerry Day," as Jerry is no longer among us. But thank God he left us a treasure trove of wonderful wonderful music.

















The late great Jerry Garcia would have been 75 years old today.

This can't be real, can it?

I watched this a bunch of times and I was sure it was a joke. I thought it must be from Last Week Tonight or Full Frontal. Maybe SNL or Colbert?

But no, this seems to be a real thing.






When I saw the veteran's name was 'Warholic," I thought"okay, that settles it.This is satire. No one really has that last name that would be a term fora person addicted to war, right?"
Wrong.

Spotlight: Frank Warholic, Commander of the Montville VFW Post 5481

Frank Warholic, retiring VFW Post 5481 commander, proudly stands in front of the M60 Vietnam era army tank and memorial wall that honors township residents who served their country. An expansion of the area is in progress.

That's him! He's a real person.

I also thought the bit about how the bear loves to go to the golf course was a shot at Trump's frequent taxpayer-funded golfing weekends, but apparently this whole thing is real.

Satire is dead.

Well that was quick!

New White House Communications director Anthony Scaramucci is already crashing and burning faster than. . .what crashes and burns really fast? A Valu-Jet flight?

Anyway, he's had this job for, what, about a week? And he's already imploding.

Incoming White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci gave a lengthy interview to CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Thursday in which he angrily lashed out at whoever leaked his financial disclosure form, despite the fact that the form was never meant to be a secret.

See, normally this is the sort of thing that would happen towards the end of your tenure, when you're about to resign to "spend more time with your family." You don't expect a new member of the administration to walk in, ask which desk is his, and pick a public fight with Reince Priebus.

During the interview, Scaramucci fumed about the ways that seemingly everything that occurs inside the White House — from his dinner with Sean Hannity Wednesday night to his financial disclosure form — leaks out almost instantly to the media.
“What I’m upset about is the process — and the junk pool, the dirty pool — in terms of the way this stuff is being done,” Scaramucci said. “I can’t have a couple of friends up from Fox & Friends, and Sean Hannity, who’s one of my closest friends, to dinner with the president and his first lady without it being leaked in seven minutes.”

Why, it's as if a public figure can't have dinner with 3 other public figures, one of whom is probably the most famous/infamous/notorious person in the world, without the public somehow finding out!
Also, fuck you, you're not supposed to be meeting with faux-journalists to coordinate messaging with them.

Scaramucci then said that, when it comes to leaks, “the fish stinks from the head down.” Despite this, however, he said that President Donald Trump was not responsible for any of the leaks that occur from within the White House.
“I can tell you two fish that don’t stink,” he told Cuomo. “And that’s me and the president.” 

I don't even have a joke here. What could I possibly say that would be funnier than that last statement?

Scaramucci then went on to discuss his relationship with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, whom he had initially seemed to blame for the leaking of his financial disclosure form. Scaramucci insisted that he still saw Priebus as a “brother,” but noted that “some brothers are rough on each other.”
“Some brothers are like Cain and Abel,” Scaramucci said, referring to the story in the Bible about a man who murdered his own brother out of jealousy. “I don’t know if this is reparable or not, that’s up to the president.”

Oh my God! YOU JUST GOT THERE! How do you have an arch-frenemy already?  Your differences are already irreconcilable? You guys are on the same team!

This would be like when Kevin Durant joined the Warriors if he had said "I'm happy to be here, I look forward to competing for a championship, and by the way, fuck Steph Curry! What a dick, am I right?"

Except that there's no way that you are the Kevin Durant of Comm. Directors and no way that Reince is the Steph Curry of whatever it is that he does.You're more like the Cherokee parks and Chris Washburn of DC 

And then, if that wasn't train-wrecky enough:

Scaramucci goes on vulgar attack against own communications team, calls Priebus ‘paranoid schizophrenic’  

Anthony Scaramucci went on the offensive Wednesday night calling White House adversary Reince Priebus “schizophrenic” and threatening to fire his entire communications staff.

He hurled invective at supposed leakers within the administration after New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza tweeted, citing “a senior White House Official,” that Scaramucci was having dinner at the White House with President Trump, the First Lady, Sean Hannity, and former Fox News executive Bill Shine.

The tweets prompted a furious Scaramucci to call Lizza — and go on a tirade against administration officials whom he believes are responsible for leaking information about the dinner, and also his publicly available financial disclosures.

You'd think you'd be so embarrassed after claiming that "leaking" your financial disclosures was a "felony" and then having to be told that no, this is publicly available information, that you'd just shut up about the whole thing for a while, but that is not the way things work in Drumpfland!

Scaramucci threatened to fire his staff when Lizza refused to reveal his source.“What I’m going to do is, I will eliminate everyone in the comms team and we’ll start over,” he said.“O.K., I’m going to fire every one of them, and then you haven’t protected anybody, so the entire place will be fired over the next two weeks,” he continued, after he failed to persuade Lizza to speak up.

No! Not Sarah Huckabee Sanders!
Not Kellyanne!

Scaramucci disclosed that he believed Priebus was worried about the dinner because he hadn’t been invited.
“Reince is a f--king paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” Scaramucci said.
He imitated Priebus, saying, “’Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the f--king thing and see if I can c--k-block these people the way I c--k-blocked Scaramucci for six months.’”

Wait. Do you think that's why you weren't comm director for the first 6 months of the administration? That Reince was "cock-blocking" you? Because otherwise, why would anyone not want an even-tempered level-headed fella like yourself running their communications strategy?



So calling the guy who is technically your boss a "fucking paranoid schizophrenic" and a "cock-blocker." Pretty crazy right?
Oh, but wait. It gets better.

"I'll get to the person who leaked that to you," Scaramucci told The New Yorker reporter. "Reince Priebus — if you want to leak something — he'll be asked to resign very shortly."

Oh my God, he's been in position, what ;like three days? He's not even done with employee orientation and he's already gunning for the chief of staff?

Oh, but wait. It gets better.

Scaramucci launched attacks on other adversaries, too, including Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon, saying, “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own c--k.”

Oh, but wait. It gets better.

“Why don’t you honor the job? You remember Joe Paterno? What would he say? Act like you’ve been there before,” Scaramucci said during a phone interview. “Act with honor and dignity and respect, and hold the confidence of the presidency in his office. Why don’t we do that?”

Honor, dignity and respect? Joe Paterno? The man who enabled more child rapes than any non-pope?

America keeps getting crazier.

Just when you think things can't get any more insane. . .

GOP House Science Chair: Melting Arctic Sea Ice A Win For The Earth

Okay, so if you're keeping score at home, the right-wing idiot response to the very real threat of global warming has moved from:

No it isn't!
to
Scientists are always wrong, they used to say we were headed for another ice age!
to
Well, the jury's still out
to
Maybe it's real, but it's not man-made!
to
Actually, the earth is cooling.
to
Humans can't control the weather
to
There's nothing in the Bible about global warming
to
Hey, there was a big snowstorm in January. I guess we can stop worrying about "global warming!"
to
Al Gore flies on airplanes
to
Global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.
to
Global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the Weather Channel
to
Scientists are lying about global warming so they can get their greedy hands on all that sweet, sweet grant money
to
Um, climate always changes, the earth warms and cools. It's cyclical.
to
But the economy!
and now finally,
But think of all the benefits of global warming!
(And I wish I was making some of these up. I am not. You can google them if you want to be depressed about the stupidity of the human race)

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), noted climate change denier and chair of the House Science Committee, on Monday penned an eyebrow-raising op-ed that argued there are “benefits” to a changing climate.

“The benefits of a changing climate are often ignored and under-researched. Our climate is too complex and the consequences of misguided policies too harsh to discount the positive effects of carbon enrichment,” 

Carbon enrichment? That's not a thing.That's the worst attempt at weasely double-speak spin I've ever heard. That's like saying Socrates probably got a lot of benefits from hemlock enrichment.
And what consequences of environmental policy do you think would be so "harsh?" Like Oh my God, what if we ended up with a bunch of solar panels on rooftops all over America?

Or what if there were a whole bunch of electric cars all over the place?

And what if it turns out that global warming is a hoax and we end up cleaning up the air for nothing?
That's way more scary than the consequences of doing nothing. If we do nothing, what's the worst that could happen? So Florida disappears under water. Who needs 'em? And so what if we can't grow grain in the Great Plains anymore because it's a parched desert? We'll probably be growing oranges in New Hampshire, so it'll all even out! Plus, if we do nothing, then we get all these neato benefits that might possibly happen but we don't know about them because no one is researching them, just like how nobody is studying all the good that might come from an Island of Dr. Moreau-type scenario!

Come on! How cool would this be?

I think we owe it to ourselves to blithely do nothing and see what happens, just in case it's good!

Smith acknowledged that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing and argued that it would help plant growth and farming. He also posited that sea ice melting in the Arctic would open up new shipping routes, spinning ice melt as a positive change for the Earth.

Yeah, new shipping routes! Exactly what we need in the 21st Century! Then we'll corner the market on spices from India and sail back to Queen Isabella's court loaded down with Jamaican rum!
Think about how great this could be. For instance, there would be a terrific new shipping lane right where Miami used to be!

“The use of fossil fuels and the byproducts of carbon enrichment play a large role in advancing the quality of human life by increasing food production to feed our growing population, stimulating the economy, and alleviating poverty,” 

Okay, you have NOOOOO science background at all. Nor are you any kind of expert in agriculture. You have a law degree and a bachelor's in "American Studies," whatever that is. You have no idea what you're talking about. You're like some dumb kid in a 5th-grade science class hearing that plants breathe carbon dioxide and coming to the conclusion that if we just produced more CO2, we'd have more plants. That's not how it works. Carbon in the atmosphere traps heat which fucks up the whole climate. I don't exactly understand it either, but I don't have to. That's why we have scientists. Just listen to the scientists, accept that they know more about this than you do, and follow their recommendations.  You wouldn't take legal advice from a climatologist, why should we take climatological advice from a lawyer? Especially a stupid one?

How about we deal with the facts in front of us and not waste time spinning elaborate scenarios in which somehow disaster ends up having some sort of net positive? You don't say well, maybe my house burning down seems bad on the surface, but what if it turns out that when we start digging for a new foundation maybe we strike gold? Sure, that's remotely possible, but you're better off putting out the god damn fire.