The Onion’s Year In Review: 2018

found online by hysterically laughing Raymond

 
From The Onion:

In a year where cruelty, deception, and unfettered corruption controlled all three branches of the U.S. government, The Onion’s flawless reportage and above-reproach journalism in 2018 exposed the dark underbelly of society and provided a beacon of hope that human civilization would finally and mercifully come to an end soon. Here, then, are the landmark moments of the year as reported with singular veracity by America’s Finest News Source.

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Trump’s Shutdown Is Irrational

found online by Raymond

 
From Jonathan Bernstein:

We’re now well into one of the longest government shutdowns in U.S. history. The problem this time? It has never made sense for President Donald Trump to force a shutdown over funding for his border wall. So assessing what will come next is, well, difficult. As budget maven Stan Collender puts it in his own analysis: “this is Trump; logic won’t necessarily be the guiding force.”

What Trump has been doing so far is, as political scientist Dave Hopkins points out, following the lead of the House Freedom Caucus. But Freedom Caucus radicals don’t have plans for either policy gains or public-relations wins. What they care about is proving that they’re True Conservatives by differentiating themselves from mainstream Republicans. In practice, that means finding irrational but tough-sounding tactics to endorse.

That’s this shutdown in a nutshell.

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When Did Trump Start Liking Rand Paul?

found online by Raymond

 
From Joe Hagstrom at MadMikesAmerica:

Consistency is overrated. That may be a big reason we Republicans love Trump. He is consistently inconsistent.

He speaks of love when we all know he hates Mexicans. His hatred of children is evident by his putting the notorious child hater Betsy DeVos in charge of their education. Yet he loves his daughter Ivanka so much he said he’d date her if he could.

His recent firing of General Mattis is a grand example. I actually had no idea who he was till Trump put him in charge of the Department of Defense. But I admire Trump’s reasoning. It had nothing to do with qualifications or direction. Trump liked Mattis’ nickname: Mad Dog.

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Petco Loses a Customer

found online by Raymond

 
From Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit:

I went to a local Petco to buy a bag of cat food. There was a guy at the register who was buyng a big bag of Purina-something dog food. The clerk informed the customer that, come May, Petco won’t be carrying Purina dog food because the food has too many artificial ingredients to suit the CEO’s sensibilities (my take on it).

Slick move, guys.

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Con-servatism 101

found online by Raymond

 
From Dave Dubya:

“Conservative” used to mean adhering to family and tradition, valuing personal responsibility, a work ethic, and basic human decency. Liberals share these values as well, but for the moment, let us allow them to hold their claim.

Where conservatives and liberals really diverged was in tolerance for Constitutional regulation of commerce, taxes, and the general welfare, but more critically, an aversion to change and suspicion of the new and unfamiliar.

That was the chink in their armor. Conservatism was about to be transformed into Con-servatism. All that was needed to recruit and exploit conservatives was someone to tell them who to fear and who to blame.

Anger and hate would follow.

Today’s Con-servatism is the result.

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2018 Has Been One Long Decade

found online by Raymond

 
From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:

2018 has been one long decade.

If I could sum up the past twelve months in a single word, it would be fatigue. Most of us aren’t as much sprinting to the finish line, as we are being dragged across it. We’re exhausted from the big and the distant stresses: from waking up every day for 365 days and pushing back against predatory politicians and toxic systems and corrupt legislation and human rights atrocities and Presidential Tweet tantrums and acts of treason. (Yes, that kind of sustained urgency will wear you out if your heart is working and your mind is right.)

But we’re tired from doing something else too, something far more personal.

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Manufactured Crisis At Fox: ‘Leftists Are Against The Pledge!’

found online by Raymond

 
From Frances Langum:

There’s a long tradition on Fox News of creating some sort of “attack on our values” nonsense to make it seem as if bad libruls are taking away “our” Christmas/flag/freedom/gas guzzler and “we” have to fight back!

In the middle of the Trump Shutdown it’s especially important to create outrage among the idiots still watching Fox News in the age of Trump Russia.

So here’s Pete Hegseth, impelling on-air child props to say the Pledge of Allegiance, then gets this ahole James Robbins on to explain how the left is being mean to the country and doesn’t love Murica.

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Louis CK is Attempting a Comeback

found online by Raymond

 
From PZ Myers:

And he’s getting worse, taking a big fat dump on his former fans. He’s gone full on Dennis Miller, throwing out bullying conservative crap.

He bemoans how younger people will tell him, in relation to gender identification, that he has to use specific pronouns preferred by the person. “They’re like royalty!” he said. “They tell you what to call them. ‘You should address me as they/them, because I identify as gender-neutral.’ Oh, OK. You should address me as ‘there’ because I identify as a location. And the location is your mother’s cunt.”

I listened to a chunk of it, and seeing it written down does not communicate the full awfulness of it. He affects a stereotypical ‘effeminate’ gay voice when he’s stating what those terrible young people are saying. It’s cheesy, low humor that isn’t even creative — people have been making these same stupid pronoun jokes for decades.

The closest he comes to topicality is to complain about the Parkland shooting survivors. How dare they complain about getting shot at?

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Your Right to See, Under Attack!

found online by Raymond via Mock Paper Scissors

 
From David Brin at Looking Toward the Future:

The most important advance in civil liberties in this century so far, in the U.S. and by extension the western world, was in 2013 when the Obama Administration and then five U.S. district courts ruled that citizens have a powerful right to record the actions of officials – especially police – in public. No interaction with authority is more needful of accountability than at the level of the street. Moreover, a citizenry who are accustomed to that right will apply sousveillance also upward, as I have long held and as I describe in The Transparent Society and in EARTH.

Now the U.S. Eighth District Court in Missouri has declared the exact opposite, allowing cops to seize or break your camera or arrest you, even when you are clearly not interfering.

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Poor Donald, Alone in the Big, Scary W.H. Tweeting ‘Witch Hunt Hoax’

found online by Raymond

 
From News Corpse:

The saddest story of the year has got to be the tear-jerking saga of a lonely president who is desperate and frightened about the monsters under his bed. Donald Trump is once again rage-tweeting on a Saturday morning because he has nothing better to do – no presidential stuff, no holidays with a loving family. It’s enough to make you wanna take him in your arms and throw him into a jail cell where he can weep in the warm embrace of the other members of his crime family.

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