SuperBowl Ad, Trump Assaults, CNN, Drag, Shootings, Thoughts & Prayers

The best SuperBowl ad I can recall came at us in 2008.

(Note: Apologies to whomever. I do not recall from where I stole this.)

  • I dimly remember reading of 1984 efforts by the Mondale campaign to fact-check Ronald Reagan. They composed an ad playing the Reagan Morning in America commercial, complete with panoramic visuals and cheerful music. Words appeared on screen exposing each Reagan claim as a lie, even as it was spoken.
     
    A survey of focus audiences showed that Reagan was even more popular after they saw the fact-check. What registered more than the words were the inspiring visuals and music.
     
    The music equivalent in the CNN sponsored Trump rally was the cheering, applauding on-camera audience. Fact checkers from dozens of sources are reduced to parsing out and refuting the rapid-fire Trump lies.
     
    As I see it, the televised audience will continue to rule.
     
    My question:
  • Humorist Dave Columbo explains the absolute worst thing about the CNN/Trump Town Rally: Is there a trap door under the couch?
     
  • Dave Dubya sees Trump as the logical consequence of a strain of moral decline and willful ignorance.
     
  • MadMikesAmerica sees three factors that make mr Trump a very possible 2024 horror story and four factors that could save our nation from the horror.
     
  • Comedian and occasional Trump impersonator Sarah Cooper was interviewed just before the 2020 election. A lot of it had to do with Please‑Go‑Vote!! I had missed it.
     
    But Women’s Wear Daily brings it back.
     
  • At The Moderate Voice Robert Coutinho is amazed at an anti-discrimination law just signed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
     
    Well, nobody wants discrimination in banking, right?
     
    Except this law prohibits discrimination against for-profit prisons, guns, porn, bad agriculture, dirty energy, or extractive industry, which some banks think of as a bad risk on the face of it.
     
  • Frances Langum chronicles the cautionary story of a Texas legislator who hates drag queens, but likes sex with teenage interns he has plied with liquor.
     
    Three words for this fellow:
       Statue
       Tory
       Rape
     
    Turns out the poor fellow has finally been expelled from the state legislature.
     

     
  • PZ Myers says the expelled legislator is not a nice man.
     
    Key statutory rape defense:
    …the complaints should be dismissed because the behavior occurred in Slaton’s Austin residence, not the workplace.
     
    Key translation:
    Right. Rape is perfectly fine if you do it in the home you share with your wife and young child.
     
  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit suggests a new ethical rule for at least of few fellow gun owners. As a gun owner herself, she finds even her shopping habits affected by gun violence.
     
  • YellowDog Granny has a few thoughts about health, religion, and mostly doing nothing about mass shootings.
     
  • Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged considers conservative reactions to the rising level of mass shootings, and has a thought about those thoughts and prayers.
     
    I also have a thought:

     
  • Disaffected and it Feels So Good notes that after post-shooting thoughts & prayers have died down, Republicans are remarkably unsympathetic about dead children and are flat out hostile toward survivors.
     
  • Night before last, the official COVID-19 public health emergency ended. In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson explains the impact on your health and everything else.
     
  • I suppose there are many ways to measure basic social fairness. Infidel753 finds a ratio, two hundred and eighty eight to one, that puts us on a level with France during the reign of Louis XVI.
     
  • The late arch conservative William F. Buckley once described the inability of those who dwell on the extreme political fringes to make ideological distinctions. His prime example was from the left, of course.
     
    According to Buckley, a few days after Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated a leftist college paper published a photo of Kennedy lying on the hotel hallway floor. A picture of the head of a pig was superimposed over that of the dying Senator. (nice)
     
    Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara seems to believe that those who want government to go beyond protection against physical coercion are secret Stalinists, dishonestly hiding their true intent.
     
    His target this week is President Biden, who does not subscribe to the libertarian ideal of extremely restricted government. So the President’s concept of freedom is the path to slavery.
     
    Key logic:
    You can get a feel for where Biden is going when he explains what “basic freedoms” he has in mind: “The freedom for women to make their own health-care decisions, the freedom for our children to be safe from gun violence, the freedom to vote and have your vote counted. For seniors to live with dignity, and to give every American the freedom that comes with a fair shot at building a good life.”
     
    Note Biden’s disingenuousness. Our semi-socialized health care system denies our freedom to choose the medicines we use, of pharmaceutical companies to bring drugs to market without FDA approval, the freedom to opt out of Medicare taxes.
     
    I dunno. The phrase promote the general Welfare comes to mind.
     
  • This week, Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo of Rewire News Group get into what they describe as clownery and corruption at the Supreme Court.
     

     
    You may prefer a complete transcript or a podcast form.
     
  • tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors knows about SCOTUS corruption and the everyone-does-it-defense excuse, and has the perfect response.
     
  • Ant Farmer’s Almanac has the best headline as George Santos enters a plea.
     
    My reaction:
  • Andy Borowitz reports as George Santos pleads nonexistent.
     
    Key plea:
    Your honor, I stand before you, a fictitious character
     
  • Nan’s Notebook speculates that, for many of us, belief in God serves as comfort in hard times. Belief in ourselves and our own abilities is just too scary so we go to a fictional supernatural being.
     
    I have one close relative who often speaks to me very slowly as she explains that my sheeplike faith comes from my own personal inadequacies. She is greatly loved.
     
  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz has a warning for those of us in the Christian family:

  • Scotties Playtime finds that Christian Nationalists are increasingly embracing the fact that they are, in fact, Christian Nationalists.
     
    Key quote:
    …we want Christians to be writing the laws of the land
     
  • In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, former pastor, current atheist Bruce considers recent accusations that he is a demon possessed deceiver who was never a real Christian. He suggests the underlying theology is one reason Christian attendance is rapidly declining.
     
  • Mona Van Duyn became United States Poet Laureate in 1992.
    SilverAppleQueen goes back 50 years to find a wonderful ode to a narcissist who dropped her, and how she coped.
     
  • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life gets personal, applying available data to his own experiences to see autism as a sort of super power.
     
  • Author John Scalzi has finally gotten to his mid-fifties and reflects on what it all means. The bus test, physical annoyances, and so on.
     
    Key conclusion:
    But overall? Again, life is good. I like, on my birthday, reflecting that it is so.
     
    My reaction: Damn kid!
     
  • In Happiness Between Tails da-AL sees the process of writing a novel as a struggle between discouragement and passion.
     
    She hosts author Chris Hall, who describes how she wrote her most recent novel, Song of the Sea Goddess about environmental destruction in South Africa, her adopted home.
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil finds a 10 year old rant about the way slovenly Southerners talk (that would be Southern England) and a series of videos semi-mocking how Southerners talk (that would be the southern part of the US).
     
    Note:
    The rant is hilariously prissy. The videos range from kinda sorta prissy to just hilarious.
     
    My favorite is an analysis of an interview by Stephen Colbert of Matthew McConaughey.
     
    Key judgment:
    Pretentious mush-mouthed phonies from the git-go.
     
    Well, yeah. There is that.
     
  • For those of us who did not devote the time to watch, the Vagabond Scholar provides a blow-by-blow of the Oscars.
     
    With minor exceptions, he liked it. A lot.
     
    Key verdict:
    All in all, it was one of the more enjoyable Oscar ceremonies of recent years. I like seeing good work recognized and people whose work I like getting awards.
     
    My review of the review: An enjoyable read.
     
  • @whiskeywhistle98 wants to run into Target for just one thing!
     
  • Clickbait satirist Reductress offers advice on how to handle the roommate who refuses to help clean because he once combined bleach and a ammonia and accidentally created mustard gas.
     
  • The Savanna Bananas know how to help their pitcher get a strike.
     

– Podcasts –
 

4 thoughts on “SuperBowl Ad, Trump Assaults, CNN, Drag, Shootings, Thoughts & Prayers”

  1. That “most significant event”: it’s a sign of how shortsighted we Americans are, that we chose 9/11, an event that …. well, it was tiny, and the only reason it had a large impact, was that we chose to overreact in a bad way. Whereas the one we ought to have picked, was the election of TFG to the Presidency, and the near-destruction of our Republic. And hell, the fat lady hasn’t sang on that, either. Ah, well.

  3. Laugh or be disgusted all you want, but the Trump town hall achieved his purpose (and apparently CNN’s too) perfectly. The day before this event, Trump was found guilty of sexual assault, the most bestial crime ever committed by an American President. That event alone should have forever barred him from occupying any position of trust in our government. This clown show gave the mainstream press a perfect excuse to absolutely forget about his rape (let’s call it what it really was) and just move on as though it meant nothing. The Washington Post, for example, had totally banished a crime which, outside of murder, is just about the worst thing any human can do, from its pages by the day after the “town hall.” Donald Trump: mission accomplished.

  4. the audi commercial could just as easily be for throat lozenges lol – & who knew spirit of harlem globetrotters would take on baseball! great post, Burr. the only thing trump was good for was to make us enjoy all the more the days he’s not in office…

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