Does Trump Even Want to Appeal to Suburban Voters?
From Iron Knee at Political Irony:
It seems like the Republicans were indeed blowing smoke when they claimed they had internal polls showing that impeachment was increasing Donald Trump’s popularity. Because the only polls that actually matter are the ones that happen on an election day, like the one yesterday.
On Monday, the day before the election, Trump held a rally in Kentucky in support of the current Republican governor, Matt Bevin. Trump even begged the attendees to vote for Bevin, saying “You can’t let that happen to me!” because it would mean “Trump suffered the greatest defeat in the history of the world.” After all, in 2016 Trump won Kentucky by a huge 30 points.
This isn’t Christianity—at least, not if we’re going to listen to Jesus.
Where Jesus implored Christians to love and to care for and to show hospitality to their neighbors—this drives people to fear them and have contempt for them and send them back and wall them off.
Where Jesus directed Christians to pray and to give in quiet and secret—this is a shameless, staged photo op to engender applause.
Where Jesus told Christians that they would be defined by the way in which they lavishly love humanity—this is a malicious assault on nearly all of it.
Where Jesus directed Christians to live humbly and take the lowest place—this is arrogance and boasting and self-promotion.
Where Jesus fed multitudes and healed sick without asking for repayment—this is healthcare repeals and canceled school lunch programs and “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps disdain for the needy.
B. Bunny Violating Sacred Gun Rights
From The Onion:
“Time and time again, we have seen this radical agitator seeking to curtail the Second Amendment rights of Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam by twisting their lawfully purchased firearms into a big bow,” said CEO Wayne LaPierre, telling reporters that the Looney Tunes star’s history of contorting even low-capacity firearms such as shotguns was depriving everyday citizens of their freedoms and earning him the lobby’s lowest rating.
Stick to sports. Pay no attention to the money behind the curtain. Pay no attention to what that money does to a program, what it does to the people running the program, what it does to the community surrounding it. Wait for a scandal, then confine yourself to the specific people caught up in it. Ignore the money that bred those conditions in the first place.
While you’re there, ignore every city whose taxpayers have been soaked by professional teams whose wealthy owners would rather have someone else pay for new stadiums. Ignore the fact that professional sports is a big business run by raving socialists. Don’t desecrate that taxpayer-funded field with your political gestures. But don’t forget to enjoy the color guards and military flyovers!
Deadspin, a site we rarely read because we have no interest in sports, approached sports with that attitude, sports in society, sports as part of a larger whole, an integrated whole, at least in our culture. You cannot look at sports without seeing the rest. You cannot help seeing how sports affect the rest, and how the rest affects sports. And you cannot help writing about what you see, how you see it. That’s what writers are supposed to do. Writers don’t stick to sports because sports don’t stick to sports. Hey, you hear how the President of the United States got roundly booed at a prominent sports event? Again?
The chart to the right shows what Trump has tweeted about. Most of the tweets were attacks on people or organizations that made him mad.
Note the tweets at the bottom of the chart. 16 times he has tweeted that he is everyone’s favorite president. That shows that he lives in his own bubble of alternate reality. No respectable poll has shown at any time since he was sworn in that a majority liked him as a person, thought he was doing a good job, or considered him to be honest and trustworthy.
It’s pretty clear, in reading articles about how Trump gripes about the press being unfair, that to Trump, being “fair” to him is covering Trump like a slavish toady, an all-in bootlicker.
His definition of fairness is no more evolved than that of a toddler who has just learned the word.
Stories that only have six words. Are they truly a ‘Narrative Genre’? David Fishelov, believes that they maybe. He’s a professor of comparative literature. At the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. See his essay on the subject. ‘The Poetics of Six-Word Stories’
But why so much obstruction? For what? Why? What is Trump hiding with all the vehemence he reserves for his net worth and the real story of his vital statistics?
The polls and the boos and the news show that something is changing in how Trump is viewed. But for now, he stays the same: in denial, and thinking he is a beloved leader who can survive his multiple scandals by changing address or brazening them out. I don’t expect a lot from Trump. I expect a lot from us all, in voting, finally saying the best, most brutal kiss-off “Goodbye” to him. The final, most raucous, boos.
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a move that raised eyebrows in the nation’s capital, Donald Trump on Saturday secured a note from a podiatrist exempting him from impeachment.
The note, written by Trump’s personal podiatrist, Dr. Harland Dorrinson, said that the strain of undergoing impeachment could “catastrophically inflame” a foot malady that has bedevilled Trump since the nineteen-sixties.
The concussive violence of football, the long term damage to players, was never in the national consciousness in those days. Back when I was a kid, such thoughts never intruded. We had no idea.
There is something about football crowds. I’m not sure exactly what it is. But if most of us were blindfolded and put into the middle of a crowd at a professional game, we’d be able to tell if it was football or some other sport. The raucousness of the crowd, maybe? The yelling of the vendors? The play-by-play enthusiasm? Hard to say what the rhythm is, exactly, but it is unmistakable.
The Redskins vs Eagles game at Franklin Field in Philadelphia had been billed as a big deal. The stadium itself seemed like the setting for it. It was the oldest stadium in the country. The Eagles had been there only a few years.
By the time the coin was tossed that Sunday, there were over 60,000 fans in the stadium. But, on that Sunday, you would not have recognized the sound as happening during a football event. In fact, there was an eerie silence during the entire game. Continue reading “No Booing, No Cheers: Seven Silent Stadiums”
