Author: Burr Deming

.@realDonaldTrump has a loyalty problem. pic.twitter.com/BcuBMCptUP

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) July 7, 2020

The outermost fringes of American right-wing militancy has something in common with early Christianity. They rely on codes.

Neo-Nazis are in a position to understand the below-ground messaging of my president and his supporters.

Continue reading “Trump and the Code of 1488”

• Frances Langum examines the Senator’s options as she watches Lindsey Graham wriggle around his blind support of all things Trump. Options? Seems there are none.
   
• So the evidence grows daily that Putin really did put a death bounty on the heads of American troops. My president insists it’s all a hoax, but more details come out to substantiate the kill payments. In Hackwhackers yet another detail: a key contact is identified, an Afghan middleman who helped make sure the right bounties were delivered after killings were verified.
   
• Cato’s Julian Sanchez observes the Trump-Putin-Bounty scandal and asks an obvious question. If Trump didn’t know about reports that Russians had put a bounty on the lives of American soldiers, and that’s why he did nothing about it, why has he done nothing since the rest of us began reading about it?
   
• In Scotties Toy Box, the third cartoon down makes the same point. The other graphics are worth extending the visit.
   
• In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson detects a pattern. Trump apologists are saying the president was not aware of the Russian bounty for the killing of each US soldier and was not aware earlier of the corona virus. Trump doesn’t like to read, so it won’t matter what’s found in the presidential daily briefings. Especial!y since…
   
  …everything that went wrong was all because of inadequate briefings by a negligent CIA analyst. The analyst downplayed the pandemic in January. Then, in February, she neglected to mention the Russian bounty at all. So my president had no responsibility for anything, right?
   
• Andy Borowitz summarizes the scattered confetti of desperate excuses put out by Trump defenders for my president’s ignorance: Trump did not read the bounty briefs because he was busy not reading the coronavirus briefs.

Continue reading “Graham Cracked, Bounty, Trump Briefs, Campaign, Texas Power, Technocrazy”

• This is real. News Corpse details three separate studies that link watching Fox News with dying from COVID-19.
   
• Oh wow! This is a few seconds of impressive drama. Nan’s Notebook turns a boring graph into a rapid month and day race between COVID-19 and other illnesses. COVID-19 starts way behind. Guess who wins bigly?
   
• Here in Missouri, our governor feels no guilt about the spike in COVID-19 deaths while he refused to take steps against the pandemic. Iron Knee at Political Irony listens to Governor Mike Parson compare coronavirus deaths to car fatalities. After all, he doesn’t feel guilty at every accident. Political Irony performs vivisection on that logic and leaves it in quivering pieces.
   
• nojo watches my neighborhood as, down the street (okay, couple miles) from where I live, police cover a Black Lives Matter slogan with blue paint, and describes a deeper problem than Mr. Trump. nojo is right about that.
   
  However, local reports by the usually reliable St. Louis Post Dispatch have the repainting ordered and conducted by the City Department of Streets, who required police to stand by. There were a handful of arrests after the third repainting, which I find more satiric than does my loved one:
   
  We paint, they paint. We paint, they paint. We paint, police come. Hey Wait, it was our turn! Protests are supposed to be provocative, after all.
   
  Peaceful violation of the law, with the expectation of arrest, strikes me as respectful of the rule of law. That tradition traces back to Henry David Thoreau, continues with Mohandas K. Gandhi, and becomes iconic in the segregated south with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King.
   
• Scotties Toy Box, in one brief sentence, explains what joins bigotry and a flag to produce irony.
   
• I’m unsure of the year. All I know is it was before I was 7. I do know I was a little kid when I first heard a neighbor insist he was not racist because he had black friends. Now that that’s passé, Frances Langum finds another bit of logic. Right wing folk prove they are not racist when they gather with friends and talk about something else.

Continue reading “Fox Kills, COVID Kills, Tremble Glass, Trump on the Bounty, BadBarr, Aw Hell”

 
Remember that Trump ad showing my President marching to his Church’n’Bible photo op?
The one complete with dramatic, triumphant music?
The one they took down when they discovered voters didn’t like it?

Try this, after Saturday’s tepid Tulsa rally.

From The Lincoln Project:

– More –
 

Sarah Cooper Explains How to Lincoln:

• You want to change things? You need to vote, right?
  Jonathan Bernstein says voting is essential but it won’t work, at least not alone. You need to take it to the street: protests, activists, donations, reporters, and more.
   
• Back when he was in office, Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker pushed through a law that would cut health and retirement benefits for public employees and substantially reduce their right to collectively bargain. Fairly typical anti-union conservatism.
   
  Police unions were exempted. It was not an oversight. Busting police unions was not what conservatives had in mind.
   
  Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson says it’s time to expand the law and apply it to police. Bust them unions. They stand in the way of reform. You know – – like conservatives have always said about all unions.
   
• Since Aunt Jemima has gone the way of all syrup, the pressure is now on another brand. Ant Farmer’s Almanac finds that the parent company of Uncle Ben’s Rice will replace the current face on the box. The thought is that Ben Affleck is somebody’s uncle. Uncle Ben Affleck’s Rice.
   
  Okay, so they’re kidding. Satire. I knew it all along.
   
• Frances Langum sadly notes that simple human decency is not enough to get Mississippi to take that racist confederate symbol out of its state flag, but maybe basketball can succeed where virtue fails.

Continue reading “Voting Won’t Work, BLM, Aunt Jemima, Confederate Teaching, Juneteenth”

Trump: "I made Juneteenth very famous. It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it."

Black people have been celebrating Juneteenth since 1865, but Trump learned about it last week and now he wants to take credit.https://t.co/IBpyCXM1wt

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) June 18, 2020

Jake Sherman, Politico

TRUMP on Juneteenth to @MichaelCBender : "It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it.”

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) June 18, 2020

Michael C. Bender, Wall Street Journal

New: In Oval Office interview with @WSJ, Trump says there "probably is some" systemic racism in the US, removing Confederate names from bases would further divide the county, and claims credit for popularizing Juneteenth:https://t.co/3WUrthMx0q

More to come…

— Michael C. Bender (@MichaelCBender) June 18, 2020

Kyle Griffin, MSNBC

Trump: "I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous. It's actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it."

Aide says Trump WH put out statements on Juneteenth:

"Oh really? We put out a statement?…Ok, ok. Good."https://t.co/SCP0n3FfXe

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 18, 2020

Donald Trump (nee John Barron), White House

…of respect for this Holiday, and in observance of this important occasion and all that it represents. I have therefore decided to move our rally to Saturday, June 20th, in order to honor their requests…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2020

Barack Obama, President of the United States (retired)
(Commenting on Juneteenth prior to President Trump making it famous)

On Juneteenth, we celebrate our capacity to make real the promise of our founding, that thing inside each of us that says America is not yet finished, that compels all of us to fight for justice and equality until this country we love more closely aligns with our highest ideals. pic.twitter.com/2XAKRuRrbG

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) June 19, 2019

• I can’t quite pin down when Max’s Dad became our national Explainer-in-Chief, but here he is, telling us, compellingly, of what Police Officer Derek Chauvin reminds us as he kneels on the neck of a helpless George Floyd, and why this incident infuriates us as has no other murder in recent years.
   
• Andy Borowitz pays attention as my president puts the nation on alert for terrorists posing as peaceful 75 year olds.
   
• nojo, a blogger who qualifies as an intellectual powerhouse, suggests that when power panics, it reveals its nature. Turns out that, in many cities, police protect and serve something other than the communities they patrol.
   
• Iron Knee at Political Irony takes a look at two cities separated by the Delaware River. One defunded their police department, the other did not. Iron Knee suggests that Defund the Police is an idiotic slogan. How about we stop using it?
   
• Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit gets a bit explicit about why Defund the Police is stupid and misleading.
   
• Scotties Toy Box has a taunt for those who love “the lost cause” of the confederacy.
   
• In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce talks about his slow walk away from fundamentalist bigotry against Catholics and the role one doctor played. I can relate.
   
• PZ Myers explores a question posed by a confessed internet troll. Just because he posed opinions he did not actually hold, just to gauge the effect, does that make him a dishonest person? Professor Myers suggests the answer is obvious.
   
• The national narrative pretty much settles on Bill Barr as the genius who obeyed my president and issued the order to attack peaceful protestors. After all, he had to clear a wide path to that church photo op. So what led up to that?
   
  Let’s journey back in time for an explanation. Should we critique adults for how they behave as children? Well… not really. But sometimes early behavior at least offers some explanation. Green Eagle takes a glance at the middle school through college bully-boy history of the head of our Department of Justice. As the twig is bent, goes the old saying, so grows the tree.

Continue reading “Black Lives Matter, Confederate Statues and Flags, Bully Barr, Death Waiver”

• Wow she’s good, and this does seem fitting after the photo op. Sarah Cooper channels Donald Trump as he explains how much the Holy Bible means to him. Much too personal to mention specific verses, however. The whole thing is good. You know… love the whole thing.
   
• Iron Knee at Political Irony is a bit fed up with the White House fantasy world of small petty lies in which Trump fires people he could not have fired, and tear gas is not really tear gas.
   
• My president wants very much to crack down on Antifa. PZ Myers wants to join up but wonders if he can qualify since Antifa is a description, not a thing.
   
• In Hackwhackers, Trump needs an economic revival to ensure his election, so he throws Dr. Fauci to the side and demands that workers ignore the coronavirus and report back to work NOW.
   
• In MadMikesAmerica, Bill Formby asks if we are heading for a revolution, as in Trump losing in November and finding some way to overthrow the election.
   
• Okay, so my president threatens to use the Insurrection Act of 1807 to deploy federal forces, in effect declaring martial law. Green Eagle takes a close look at that actual law, how it was enacted in 1807, how it was changed by subsequent amendments over time, and how it can apply to current protests. But there’s the problem with that last little bit. There isn’t any legal way to use it against the protests.

Continue reading “Sarah the Bible Trumper, Petty Lies, Antifa, Revolution, Economic Virus”