Author: Burr Deming

 
Trump urges Proud Boys and other white militia groups to stand back but stand by…

… because, I’ll tell you what, somebody has to do something about the left.

Listening to the designated moderator try so hard to … well … moderate:
Here’s a thought.

Rather than a continuous pleading with the President to abide by the rules he had agreed to follow…

How about simply controlling the mic?
Only turn on the microphone of each candidate when it’s that candidate’s turn to speak.

New tax leaks reveal Donald Trump’s financial genius. In a few short years he achieved financial history.

Beginning in 2012, Trump controlled companies became the first American corporations to qualify for food stamps.

Shamelessly stolen from Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:

I’m Joe Biden and I approve this message. pic.twitter.com/TuRZXPE5xK

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 20, 2020

• Iron Knee at Political Irony provides a minute and a half of inspiration, reviewing the career of RBG. Video is from the Lincoln Project.
   
• JoAnn Williams defends Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s legacy on reproductive rights.
   
• Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson goes for the sort of balanced approach that afflicts much of the mainstream.
   
  Seems Republican Senator Ron Johnson is a hypocrite. He insisted in 2016 that President Obama had no right to have his SCOTUS nominee considered in an election year. But now Johnson insists that Trump has that right.
   
  However, we have to hit both sides, right? So Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin is also a hypocrite. In 2016, she thought Obama’s nominee should be considered. But now, for some unprincipled reason, she thinks both presidents should be treated comparably. Goose and gander.
   
  In defense of James, he usually does much better than this.
   
• At The Onion, mainstream media also maintains a balanced approach, as CNN demands to know why Biden has not yet come up with his own plan to trigger nationwide violence.
   
• You know what part of world history Trump rallies bring to mind, right? PZ Myers takes a look at the the rhetorical content coming from the podium, the part about the importance of good genes.
   
  On that good genes front, I do find myself occasionally correcting friends who criticize my president for hating immigrants. It’s only some immigrants.
   
• Sarah Cooper allows my president a moment of serious denial in a clip sponsored by World War Zero:
   

  One insightful comment: Sometimes even comedy isn’t funny anymore.

Continue reading “RBG RIP, Reproductive Rights, Nazi Genes, Hypocrisy, Climate D-d-d-denial”

• At The Moderate Voice, Jonathan Entin mourns the loss yesterday of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and points to a distinguished career that began well before her time on the Supreme Court.
   
• tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors has the shortest post on Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It speaks to me.
   
• nojo seems to have enjoyed one of Bill Murray’s better movies. Me too. I’ve watched Groundhog Day a few times. nojo applies the script to the Trump presidency.
   
• Jonathan Bernstein watches political town hall programs. No accounting for taste. Voters at these events aren’t much for gotcha questions or dialogue about process. No tricks. Mostly basic questions about practical policies. Predictable. Easy to breeze through. Both candidates had their chance. Biden cleared the basics with ease. So why did Trump have trouble?
   
• In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson explores my president’s venture outside the Fox cocoon, as he submits to questions from ordinary, non-screened, voters. No, he doesn’t implode, but it goes surprisingly unwell.
   
• How could this have happened? Andy Borowitz reports as Trump accuses Biden of using performance enhancing books.

Continue reading “RBG, Groundhog Term, Town Hall, Blame Biden, Herds, Disgruntles”

• News Corpse provides thoughtful insight contrasting how we saw the world, and how the world saw us, before and after 9/11/2001, then applies that to this season’s decisions.
   
• Bob Woodward documents each moment as Trump says troops who were killed are losers and those who weren’t are suckers. Woodward has the recordings. Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit documents that Trump cares even less about the heroes who risked everything responding to the 9/11 attacks 19 years ago. She has the receipts.
   
  I’m old so I get confused. Does he think of those first responders as losers or suckers?
   
• In Scotties Toy Box, my president didn’t tell us that the pandemic was real and that it was dangerous, only because he didn’t want to cause a panic. Scottie, for some reason, seems a bit skeptical. Damn liberal Trump Derangement, no doubt.
   
• Frances Langum watches Fox News so you and I don’t have to go into therapy. This week the line is: There is nothing wrong with Trump trying to keep the nation from pandemic panic, just like in 9/11/2001, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani kept everyone calm.
   
  So a very unpanicked Frances calmly explains a few minor differences. Like Rudy held no press conferences insisting the attack never happened, and was just a hoax. Fox News. Lord, save us from the heathens.
   
• The Onion snaps the photo as my president finds a novel way to ensure that nobody in California panics as they are engulfed by flames.
   
• At jobsanger, we learn that, in talking about dead, wounded, and healthy troops, my president didn’t mean what we think he meant.

Continue reading “9/11, How Trump Stopped COVID Panic, Fire in the sky, Disrespecting Troops”

(Posted May 3, 2011)

What sort of individual would have offered thousands of innocent people the choice of burning to death in an inferno or jumping from buildings famous for their height? At first, bin Laden denied involvement in, or even prior knowledge of, the attacks of a decade ago. But videotapes of this comic book villain were soon discovered as he gloated in the aftermath, boasting that the attacks had exceeded his expectations. He only expected the topmost floors of the towers to collapse, he said on tape to a confidant. He and cronies dined and cheered as entire buildings fell, thrilled as those killed multiplied.

Just as Japanese Americans bore the brunt after Pearl Harbor, unjustly conflated with the militarists of the Empire of Japan, so Muslims became identified by many Americans as terrorists.
Continue reading “Reflections on the Death of bin Laden”

Reprinted from Jan 23, 2009
 
In the made for television movie about the events leading to 9/11 that played over a year ago on ABC, much of the drama had to do with failure to stop Osama bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks. You can see the frustration of the military people with the terrorist mastermind in their sights, as they wait for permission from Washington to pull the trigger. You can see the uncertainty as a sweaty Clinton bureaucrat hesitates, finally letting the opportunity go by. As the television drama demonstrates, Osama lived and so thousands died on American soil. It happened almost exactly that way.

Almost.

Except it was not Clinton’s people who backed down from attacking bin Laden. It was the Bush administration. ABC had turned research for the drama over to a conservative ideologue who made the conscious decision to turn history on its head. Bill Clinton was shown as weak and clueless. President Bush was shown as unflinchingly heroic.

With the harsh memory of that administration not even beginning to fade into merciful obscurity, the distortions of loyalists begin. Viral emails, occasional television commentary, radio and print, carry a repetition of the familiar tale. President Clinton was weak, indecisive, letting bin Laden go, and leaving President Bush to face the consequence of near criminal negligence.

In fact, President Clinton was mocked during his term by Republicans who thought his focus on terrorism was obsessive.
Continue reading “President Bush Inheriting 9/11”

 

From Brooke Binkowski:

From a few months ago, but worth returning for the snark – Burr

– More –
 

• I missed this a couple months back. My president was at a roundtable talk with religious leaders about police reform. He went into a sort of trance-like ramble about weather emergencies, the pandemic, and the price of oil. When he got to healthcare he diverted into a bewildering riff on how lowering health care cost is just like real estate: thus presenting the wonderful Sarah Cooper with a great opportunity to explain how to real estate.
   
• At The Onion, a conspiracy theorist is worried his credibility will be undermined by Trump retweeting him.
   
• In Hackwhackers, the candidates’ visits to Kenosha are contrasted.
   
• In Scotties Toy Box, the inspiration to young people by President Trump is compared to the inspiration provided by President Obama.
   
• The Moderate Voice reviews the Lincoln Project television ad that threw Trump into a twitter rage. Kind of got under the ole epiderm.
   
• driftglass re-imagines the movie Jaws and discovers that the entire plot is different when the mayor is Donald Trump.
   
• Vixen Strangely, at Strangely Blogged, reviews my president’s remarks about those who died or were maimed or who suffered as prisoners of war in America’s armed forces. She recalls Trump hugging our national flag and his swearing a patriotic oath to protect our nation. She suggests that his is the kind of patriotism patriots should despise.
   
• Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit reviews the denials. The Atlantic quotes my president mocking those who wear the uniform. He angrily insists he didn’t say it. It is confirmed by The New York Times. Fake news. Associated Press finds confirms the quotes in separate sources. Another denial. And now more sources confirm with the national security correspondent for Fox News? Fox News?
   
  The latest WH spin is that, by calling dead soldiers suckers, my president was only wondering, in a sort of grateful awe, how anyone could be so heroic.
   
  Strikes me as kind of a stretch.

Continue reading “How to Real Estate, Kenosha, Inspiring Kids, Insult the Troops, Trump Jaws”