YES, GIVE TRUMP HIS MILITARY PARADE! Let the world see the tinpot military dictatorship which the US has become. President idiot was inspired to order his generals to parade their best hardware after attending France's Bastille Day celebration. Obviously he doesn't know the French republic is commemorating their liberation from the Ancien Regime of monarchy, theocracy and feudalism. That's when Parisienne rioters overran the fabled Bastille prison, the impregnable fortress which held political prisoners. It was the act which launched the French Revolution. Historians estimate the crowd of Sans Culottes to have numbered less than 800. Remember that next time you think the turnout at your demonstration is too small to make a difference.
Tag: Donald Trump
This repulsion driven resurgence of civic engagement is so 2002, sorry.
If we can credit the proto simian president George W. Bush with one good thing, his mediocrity did re-engage the electorate. Not enough of it, nor with satisfactory haste, but eventually Bush's misdeeds repulsed enough Americans to elect the first black president. They hoped he would jail the Bush cabal and restore peace, but that didn't happen. Instead the Bush wars carried on and Barack Obama started his own, also redoubling attacks on the American people, the middle class, immigrants, domestic jobs, Main Street, the environment, and paradoxically, the lives of black men. Equality, justice, civil society, continued to be degraded. The wave of youthful activists who saw their black Abraham Lincoln unmask himself to be a Herbert Hoover, disengaged from politics in disgust. While the widespread revulsion to Donald Trump appears to surpass record tolerance levels, in reality, the alarm and incredulity are not unfamiliar. Once again public despair is being channeled toward the voting booth, as if elections, and midterms, and the same old candidates, and the same stump speeches, will finally yield deliverance. We can hope that we're quicker studies this time round, prepared to give Donald the boot after just one term, but in truth, that was the plan with Dubya. It seemed so inconceivable that the Trumpian Bush could win a second term, that when he did, Americans felt they owed the world an apology for the error. Remember the 2004 SORRY EVERYBODY campaign? That election's democratic challenger turned out to be a ringer, which exasperated voters who were certain that anybody-but-Bush was in the bag. Midterm elections, whether they succeeded in sweeping Congress or not, provided negligible representative fortification against corporate predation. Not 2002, 2006, 2010, nor 2014. So why is the delusion so persistent? This time round, I dare not be such a killjoy to suggest Trump will not be stymied in 2018 or dislodged in 2020, but I can't see a people friendlier legislature nor any presidential replacement on the horizon that won't capitulate like John Kerry. This weekend's women's marches and protest signs were cathartic and inspiring, and the vigor always feels promising, but People, we're following the same piper! Throw the bastards out, etc! Si Se Puede! Trump Bush!
US president spills beans on shitholes where developed world goes to shit.
Citing "shithole countries" of Africa, Trump impolitely referenced where it is that developed nations go to shit. OBVIOUSLY, SHITHOLE is vulgar, derogatory and unhelpful. Used by the US president to describe dark-skinned nations, it's reprehensible and racist. But "shithole" is more than a euphemism. Literally it's a place made awful by being the dumping ground of everyone's excrement. The specific lands which Trump slandered, El Salvador, Honduras, Haiti, and all of Africa, are beautiful, scenic, and bountiful places. How could "shitholes" begin to describe them? Well, in a gold-plated toilet scale... Isn't "shithole" an appropriately condescending description of the purposefully underdeveloped and exploited African and Caribbean lands? The victims of the externalized costs of colonialism, capitalism, and now climate disaster, are what President Trump calls shithole countries. Predictably the international western press is translating shithole in its colloquial sense, not its literal, as shabby, backward, etc. --obviously to spare western readers from embarrassing themselves about their abusive relation to the third world, because there is absolutely no doubt that every culture and every language has a word (which predates plumbing) for where the community goes to shit.
Trump trolls Puerto Rico, wants storm victims to clean up the mess by hand
If President Trump is as dumb as you're sure he is, who is writing his brilliant shtick? Could the capitalist cretin in chief have projected less empathy for victims of Hurrican Maria when he responded to calls for federal disaster relief by tossing rolls of paper towels to beleaguered Puerto Ricans? These gags don't write themselves! Next Trump posed with military brass and told reporters the caption should be "the calm before the storm." Asked to explain, Trump replied "you'll see." The phrasing is cliche, but the mise-en-scene is must see TV.
The next time someone tells me they’re a federal agent
The next time someone gets in my face and presumes to shout orders at me, and when I ask by whose authority, they tell say "I'm a federal agent", I'm going to ask them: "Would that be with President Trump's federal government?" That should take some wind out of their sails.
Trump conjures COVFEFE, Kim Jong-Un coins DOTARD. Who’s the madman?
Turns out much-maligned bad guy Kim Jong-Un has upped the Western media's very best efforts to lampoon our imbecile madman-in-chief. Is North Korea's dictator an immature despotic bumbling statesman? Hardly. What happened the last time the US accused an adversary of having nuclear weapons, then make them disarm until they hadn't so much as a SCUD left? Once fully de-horned, we invade them. Rivals to US hegemony have only one option. Kim Jong-Un's.
Trump name-drops a Greek poet but can’t spell what he never read in print #covfefe
Trump torches the Paris climate half-measure, stiffs the Zionists by reneging on an illegal move of the US embassy to Jerusalem, and misattributes his media ennuit to C. P. Cavafy whose name our Illiterate-in-Chief has obviously only overheard, never read, to know his name in print. And the media doesn't recognize CAVAFY either! What's not to like?
Shh. Trump sends “armada”, doesn’t know what happened to last armada.
Call it a fleet, a flotilla, an aircraft carrier strike group, or what it is, a belligerent embarrassment of gunboat diplomacy, but to invoke the archaic "armada" is to overlook Admiral Nelson of Trafalgar Square. Trump might as well dub his flagship Titannic. Go on Trump, do it.
Trump reorders recidivist “Muslim Ban” and Denver activists redouble efforts to welcome all refugees to America.
DIA, COLORADO- So banning Muslims from six countries instead of seven is supposed to ease legal concerns about religious discrimination?
The media is public enemy number one
You may want to disagree with everything the Trump says, but I'd like to see you argue that he's wrong about the media being "the enemy of the American People." President Trump is a maniacal clown, but the Fascist corporate media is public enemy number one.
You fascist, loofah-faced, shit-gibbon!
When Donald Trump says he's gotten no calls about the Dakota Access or Keystone XL pipelines saying "Apparently they're not controversial" he's trolling you. Making taunts with easily refutted falsehoods is the definition of trolling. But two billion smartphones can play that game, you just have to be as creative as Trump's writers. However, don't underestimate Madison Avenue specialists of the lowest common denominator. I know the Donald makes it look so easy, he's insanely inane, but the selling of Cheetos and Trump bling detritus is a science. A Pennsylvanian senator is having a go, tweeting "Why don't you come after me, you fascist, loofa-faced, shit-gibbon!" --an expression coined at an Anti-Trump demonstration in Scotland. Accordingly the corporate media is offuscating the Democrat's name, Daylin Leach, likely because he's an environmentalist. Let's see if Trump bites.
Every time you say his name, he wins.
It seems fairly obvious that Donald Trump's singular obsession is hearing and seeing his name reflected back at him. He rebrands every speech, on any subject, to be about him. He's the most interesting man in his world, so long as he's the loudest. I'm guessing it ran in the family. It's no small irony that Trump's name is shared by a brass instrument which serves the same function. Trumpetting your every breath is an adolescent miscalculation I remember with embarassment. If everyone is not talking about you, you are clearly of no consequence. Trump's tweets, and where he's sitting, make it impossible to ignore him. But that is the prescription for egomaniacal centers of their own universes.
It’s always been America First
President Trump doesn't want to complicate the argument by naming multi-nationals or offshore fortunes. Instead he implicates other nationalities as having usurped 'Murcan interests. No more, he insists, "America First!" As if it hasn't always been only ever that. American policy, foreign aid and wars have only ever served American purposes, and while big capital has reaped the benefits, its nationalist cover was wrapped in the Red White and Blue. Worse than Trump knowing nothing of history is the media's eagerness to fill the vacuum with distortion. "America First" they decry, harks back to isolationist movements opposed to US entry into World War Two and before than The Great War and before that our Spanish American War of Expansion. Yeah, how about we call those isolationists what they were, pacifists and anti-imperialists?
Dear Trump: the arc of moral history does not bend toward your man-cave
Donald Trump's inauguration presents a timely opportunity to hammer at his crass misogyny. Slogan-wise, THE ARC OF HISTORY BENDS TOWARD EQUALITY gets my vote for spot-on feminist rejoinder. I also like HELL HATH NO FURY, YOU SORRY ILLITERATE! The latter has a better chance of becoming true. The women's march planned on Day One of Trump's presidency already confirms Shakespeare's adage. So what about MLK's truism, about the arc of the moral universe being long but bending towards justice? That's the consolation that keeps liberals from despairing as they encounter endless setbacks. Is it true? The inevitability of progress is inexcusibly Western-centric. If you measure your arc with indigenous cultures at the baseline, the moral universe trips at monotheism and never recovers. Measured from the customary Dawn of Civ, Trump's election as mankind's exemplar ideal, now leader of the free world, is surely the most abrupt signpost to the contrary. We're tracing the arc of a handbasket.
F U and the horseshit you rode in on
Barack Obama is an impressive speaker and a figurehead to make you proud --if you're not listening or paying attention to what he's doing. How sickening the fawning over his last addresses and his supposed legacy. Obama was the antithesis of Dubya, now Trump. Obama was probably the world's most palatable politician in recent memory, but what he said and did was no less nauseating. And damnable. I can sympathize with onlookers mourning the loss of America's gloss coat. Trump is the ugly face that is Obama unmasked. The king is dead, long live the ugly disreputable can't-bear-to-listen-to-him king. Frankly, it wasn't long into his doublespeak that I couldn't stand listening to President Obama either.
Pick Sarah Palin to head VA, Ammon Bundy to lead National Park Service
While the president-elect is making cabinet appointments, careful to pick the best fox for every hen house, hopefully he won't miss the obvious best choices. British Petrolium CEO to insure water quality at the EPA.
Finally a president too smart for daily intelligence briefings
Is makes a funny headline: "Donald Trump says he doesn't need daily intelligence briefing, says he's smart enough already." Haha. What Trump may really be saying is that he knows enough not to be made to listen to what the CIA dictates to be his world view. The presidency is probably enough of a bubble without the added insulation of daily briefings from spooks giving you their unsubstantiated take on Yellow Cake, WMDs, which regime is using chemical weapons BESIDES US, and whose neodemocracy needs an infusion of covert activity.
American voters want to make America great again. So let’s.
Yes America was never great for Native Americans, or slaves, or those without property. Indeed capitalism is ony great for those with capital. But I think the pride behind American Exceptionalism comes from more than nostalgia about 1950s prosperity as our mendatious corporate media would have Americans believe. And while its full privileges are enjoyed only by Anglo monied Americans, the promise of "America" as a land of justice, freedom and equality is not just an international delusion, it's a universal hope.
Whether you’re an America idiot or not, Trump is the candidate you deserve.
It's easy to say Donald Trump is the presidential candidate America had coming. The traditional exceptionalist xenophobe at last has a candidate crafted in their image. You want to ban all outsiders? Donald Trump has the solutions for you. But Trump doesn't just speak to the simpletons. Trump is exactly what the doctor ordered for his critics too.
Trump shows us that sarcasm doesn’t translate over hostile media either.
Sarcasm does't work on the internet because the general comprehension level there doesn't rise above dense. Owing to the same common denominator, Poe's Law applies to the corporate media too, except the adage doesn't come up when content isn't crowdsourced. When the public has no hand in the content creation it has no reason to scrutinize a usage manual. Presidential election troll Donald Trump makes utterances everyday that pundits seize upon to discredit which are obviously sarcastic. But to recognize sarcasm as intended would mean conceding to the implicit truth at which he is digging. The US regime did birth ISIS. If both the justice department or the FBI are uninterested in investigating illegal official emails, the Russians may as well be called upon to check into them. If nuclear weapons are too big to detonate, we ought to stop producing them.
Folks who said Dubya was “right man for the job” say Trump would be wrong
Pardon? Donald Trump would be the "most reckless American president in history" say GOP people who know what they're talking about. Trump would put our nation's security at risk they say without a hint of irony.
At Colorado Springs UCCS rally protest, Trump critics make his fans look smart.
COLORADO SPRINGS, CO- While protesting Trump's appearance at UCCS, I found myself on the worng side of the shouting match. Trump supporters were yelling "JAIL HILLARY" and their protesters were drowning them out with chants of "USA USA!" WTF. And our side was shouting "America is Already Great" but that's what you'd expect from Colorado Springs white people.
The Hillary Clinton War Machine banner seen by everyone at 2016 DNC but you.
PHILADELPHIA, PA- The second day of protest of the 2016 DNC was expected to dwarf Sunday's impressive turnout, so we hit the Monday rally determined to repeat our photo-op coup of the day before. This time our banner read “HILLARY CLINTON IS THE CANDIDATE OF THE WAR MACHINE” which we knew would ruffle more feathers. We wore costumes, me as American Cowboy Capitalist, my teammate as war victim, in a black burqa, Muslims being both targets and scapegoats of the US War on Islam. Shutters clicked wherever we went, whether our banner was unfurled or not. Professional photographers recorded our names and fellow activists gave us thumbs up and maneuvered to record us on their phones. Some posed beside us, asking companions or strangers to take their selfies. We gave interviews to Time Magazine, the New Yorker, several newspapers, and multiple foreign news outlets. We spoke about the undemocratic character of our party conventions and about Hillary being the establishment warmonger. Having drenched our clothes in Philly's 95 degree weather, we consoled ourselves that we had absolutely nailed the message. We’d learned the day before that getting a visual out before a march began was the most fruitful in reaching the media audience. Unless you're storming the Bastille, protest visuals are not for drawing people to the street. Visual messaging is for the benefit of local television viewers first, who can rush to join in, and news readers second, to give substance to the coverage. At first we found scant footage of our banner in the Sunday march, but our early morning bannering, meant be a beacon toward which people could gather, garnered a headline photo by the AP. That picture ran on AP articles across the globe, and dominatd images of "DNC protests" before the convention had even begun. We knew that press coverage would be best before the convention got started, when protests wouldn’t compete with the choreographed performances inside. But we were confident that the first day’s march, as the biggest and most anticipated, would float our antiwar message to the top. Our war-machine slogan appealed to Bernie supporters, to the Greens, and to the antiwar groups. We went out early and wherever we went we drew thumbs up, applause, fingers pointed our way, cellphones and cameras. Organizers of a Bernie-delegates press conference asked us to be their backdrop. So imagine our surprise when the day’s news images did not include our banner! Instead media photo editors chose images of Bernie Sanders supporters despondent about his betrayal. In reality, most protesters on Monday were not apprised of Bernie's formal capitulation. Protesters were upbeat and enthousiastic. The thousands of Berners who marched that day were exuberant about the prospects of their delegates prevailing in the convention. Press photogs must have known something about what their editors wanted, or the heat and exhaustion produced the compositions they needed. News stories of Monday's start of the DNC ran with images of solitary protesters, looking isolated and resigned. For our part, we're certain
Trump: Make America Eight Again
Who wrote Melania Trump’s speech?
Number one, Melania Trump did not plagiarize Michelle Obama, her speechwriter did. And that hack copied from the First Lady's. So one speechwriter plagiarized from another. More probably they cribbed from the same citizenship pledge essay. I'm surprised pundits pretend to differentiate platitudes from longitudes. Has anybody checked to see if Michelle and Melania don’t have the same speechwriter? Or it's a Dr. Carvell, Mr. Matalin dueling personality, we've seen that before. It wouldn’t take a bipolar disorder to support today’s conjoined parties. TWO, in 2016 the Bushes are rooting for the Clintons, even Karl Rove is pitching for the rival team. If bogeyman Trump wins anything, it will be the best bad actor Oscar, up against every black hat that's ever troubled WWWF fans. That no one of stature will take the podium for Trump in Cleveland suggests his polling figures are as much of a hoax as he. Why is no one complaining that election 2016 showrunners are plagiarizing from previous lesser of evils season cliffhangers?