Why are we not hearing about how compromised Trump is? Half a $billion in debt to New York; almost $100 million to E Jean Carroll; negotiations for hotels in Moscow, Israel; $10 million from Egypt...
The Bible was the original disinformation in the Western world, which the rational mind had to struggle against for centuries. Thomas Jefferson has a bunch of opinions on that ;)
If I believed that some people could control the weather I would be afraid to vote against them. Yeah, they can also make an asteroid land on your house. They can cause an earthquake on your property.
It isn’t such a remarkable stretch if you believe the Bible about the plagues that befell Pharaoh for not listening to Moses. If you believe the truth of the great flood.
The lesson should be not to mess with people that powerful, instead of getting them more angry. Just ask Pharaoh.
Except the idea of God's wrath expressed through weather kind of went out with Ben Franklin's kite and key. Even Bible literalists concede that the Age of Miracles is long passed.
I still wouldn’t piss off “they” who can control the weather. The snowstorms that hit Iowa during the caucuses were also blamed on “they”. You would have thought these believers learned by now.
It used to be not so long ago that plagues and weather catastrophes were God's revenge against immoral behavior. Except as long ago as Voltaire, people kept noting that God tended to thwack the righteous at least as hard. Whoopsie. It's one thing when the AIDS virus hits gay men almost exclusively. That's God's handiwork. Quite another when the covid virus hits red state Republicans the hardest for refusing to wear masks. That's Bill Gates ;)
So the same people who don't believe in climate change (which might be God's revenge for industrial pollution) now believe that weather can not only be controlled, but can be micro-targeted according to voting behavior. Which kind of renders the whole idea of God being active in modern human affairs kind of colossally silly.
Good piece, Rick! Two things that occurred to me while listening:
1. Those were not mere test kits sent to Putin, as test kits were not available anywhere yet. What was sent were state of the art central lab testing equipment made by Abbott, at a time when we ourselves were scrambling to get a handle on the magnitude of the pandemic.
2. This is quibbling I admit, but re. Twitter I am of opposing view and won’t call X by its old name since it is now a bastardized monster of its former self, and does feel like it’s a proper self-own pornographic rating. It should be differentiated from Twitter—Elon deserves no credit for Twitter’s (former) success. I do like Xitter though (pronounced Shitter) 😅
Yeah I've been wondering about that. It seems to me that the news reports have been very sloppy in general about this. I initially saw testing equipment, and then subsequent stories were test kits.
I did see news reports that called it testing kits, which I thought was probably inaccurate. I'm fairly sure I saw that not just here, but in news reports.
Both of those two are accurate and absolutely brilliant. I haven't listened or read much of Richardson, but the few times I have, I find her to be amazing.
This reminds me of pre-internet days when "believers" got their conspiracy fixes from the National Enquirer and other tabloids on a rack in the checkout lines at the supermarket. It was always fun to read the latest headlines blaring across the front of them and wonder who in the world would actually purchase them. The fact that such garbage is magnified by widespread dissemination online, then spoken as gospel by the likes of MTG, etc , is what makes it so much more dangerous now than it was 30-40 years ago, sad to say.
For snickering-at-the-rubes purposes, even better than the National Enquirer was its sister publication, printed in black and white and run off the old Enquirer presses after they went to color, the Weekly World News. The home of Bat Boy and Hillary Clinton having an affair with a space alien ;). I'll always cherish the memory of their "opinion columnist" Ed Anger, whose _My America_ column always started off "I'm pig-biting mad" and had sentimental references to his granddaughter, his "li'l cupcake Sara Lee." I mean, it was farcical in the 70s and 80s but Ed Anger, that Archie Bunker with a Southern accent, actually became the template for an untold number of wingnut opinionators who were only marginally _less_ a perpetually drunken Fleet Street refugee straight out of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities. I used to collect The Weekly World News ;)
That whole tabloid Mafia was located in Florida and were all expat Brits from Fleet Street.
I mean, Ed Anger wanted to pave over "that stupid rainforest," bring back flogging and give teachers stun guns, which is pretty damn close to Trump's actual platform, ROTFL
I first learned about trump sending COVID test kits through Heather Cox Richardson’s “ Letters to Americans “. I usually read these letters in the wee hours of the day because I rarely sleep beyond 5 am, even though I’m retired and I have no reason to get up so early. When I read about this cruel, insane act by trump, I think my blood instantly ran cold. While it seems he just can’t go lower with his lies and rants and actions, this one really shook me. My husband, myself and our friends did not see our families during COVID. We did everything we could to stay safe and not die!!! We’re in our 70’s and we knew we were vulnerable. To learn now that our then president ( I hate calling him our president, but he was at the time), to think that he actually knew the truth but all along downplayed the virus and even stooped so low to send kits to our enemy, words do not describe the anger I feel toward him and his corrupt administration. Will he ever be held accountable? I have my doubts. He is despicable low life, truly a traitor. God please do not allow him to ever sit behind the Resolute Desk ever again.
actually, there might be a positive side to this whole MAGA conspiracy lunacy: I believe elections are won or lost in the middle 5% of sane, non-partisan voters, and all this Trump/MAGA lunacy must be driving them to Kamala. I mean, Trump has now raised nuttiness to an insane and dangerous level, and those suburban housewives may not like the high cost of groceries, but they're not gonna hand the government over to these lunatics. Trump's painting himself into a corner with a sign saying Totally Insane. That's not gonna win over the sane 5% in the middle.
Hey Rick. What if the despicable behavior of trump is a smokescreen for more evil shit going on in the background and therefore lesser well known? His deadly craziness obscures their deadly serious machinations like a sideshow?
Trump has ordered all his campaign surrogates to distance themselves from P25. He has enough political horse sense to realize that P25 is poison; this is of a piece with his recent beyond ludicrous claim that he'll be the "protector of women."
All Trump cares about regarding P25 is all that unlimited executive power it'll give him. But nobody has to know about it until he has it and it's too late.
Right you are, but I was also thinking about ex- and active-duty military and law enforcement teaming up with white nationalists for a show or shows of force.
This scenario was actually wargamed out by the government (they made a film about it) but I'm less worried. The locus of mischief this time isn't going to be general public protest, it's going to happen in the state capitols by rogue GOP politicians.
I was on a protective service detail a couple years ago when a guy on our shift started talking to me about joining this thing they had going, called "oath keepers".
Talked really big about the Constitution, blah blah blah. I'd never heard of it.
Lots of people from Blackwater, Triple Canopy, CACI; they liked shooting Iraqi civilians.
It'd be nice if the people who talked all big about the Constitution actually read it once in a while. Contrary to popular wingnut misinformation, nowhere within the Constitution, nor within any amendment, authorizes the use of force against the government. Sitting around in a motel across the river with a massive firearms arsenal in trunks and suitcases waiting for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act is nothing remotely like a Constitutionally sanctioned remedy for anything.
Their lies kill people. Then, when it is too late they are begging for help. There has to be a way to “out” these awful Congresspeople to their constituents.
Conman. Liar. Abuser. Cheater. Adulterer. Thief. Fraud. Grifter. Inciter of violence. Like putin, for whom there cannot be enough dead bodies to satisfy his lust for power, so too the former "president". His first, and let it be his only term, was an unmitigated disaster for the United States as well as for nations striving for just governance rooted in democratic values. The republican party is fully and totally dead, ground under the jackboots of the wacko caucus now called "freedom". (The McConnell led gop senate might have spared the nation had they had the balls to vote to convict in the 2nd impeachment.) They couldn't make the tea strong enough to hide their poison so they had to spike what they've been serving up by hijacking the word freedom. In their definition "freedom" means saying and doing whatever the hell l they want while everyone else sits back passively ( as in russia) and lets them do it...whatever it might be in the moment. The goal is that eventually the 30% will grow to at least a small majority. Here's my question. When will this person and ALL his enablers finally receive the most truthful description of their actions? I speak of the charge of treason and traitor. That is how I see this particular hurricane swirling around on land in our midst. It was and is fed by indiscriminate partisanship for the purpose of power for one's self, one's particular crime family. There are times I feel as though we're living within the borders of a gang war. The orange cheato may not even be the "godfather" in fact but he's the one our eyes see out front. It's the crowd behind the curtain that need to be fully revealed. May djt lose and lose bigly, but the days after the election, and longer I think, will finally determine if democracy and a modicum of decency have prevailed.
Why are we not hearing about how compromised Trump is? Half a $billion in debt to New York; almost $100 million to E Jean Carroll; negotiations for hotels in Moscow, Israel; $10 million from Egypt...
Tina Luna- let me offer this
Let’s call a piece of shit, a piece of shit…
you are an esteemed member of the steaming pile.
Excellent EITR this week. Thanks Rick.
Disinformation is gonna be with us for a while.
The Bible was the original disinformation in the Western world, which the rational mind had to struggle against for centuries. Thomas Jefferson has a bunch of opinions on that ;)
I’m afraid that if Trump wins what he is lying will be what he does. He will not send FEMA to my blue community. He will confiscate my property.
And with his sharpie he will send the storm my way (this last was a joke).
If I believed that some people could control the weather I would be afraid to vote against them. Yeah, they can also make an asteroid land on your house. They can cause an earthquake on your property.
It isn’t such a remarkable stretch if you believe the Bible about the plagues that befell Pharaoh for not listening to Moses. If you believe the truth of the great flood.
The lesson should be not to mess with people that powerful, instead of getting them more angry. Just ask Pharaoh.
Except the idea of God's wrath expressed through weather kind of went out with Ben Franklin's kite and key. Even Bible literalists concede that the Age of Miracles is long passed.
I still wouldn’t piss off “they” who can control the weather. The snowstorms that hit Iowa during the caucuses were also blamed on “they”. You would have thought these believers learned by now.
It used to be not so long ago that plagues and weather catastrophes were God's revenge against immoral behavior. Except as long ago as Voltaire, people kept noting that God tended to thwack the righteous at least as hard. Whoopsie. It's one thing when the AIDS virus hits gay men almost exclusively. That's God's handiwork. Quite another when the covid virus hits red state Republicans the hardest for refusing to wear masks. That's Bill Gates ;)
So the same people who don't believe in climate change (which might be God's revenge for industrial pollution) now believe that weather can not only be controlled, but can be micro-targeted according to voting behavior. Which kind of renders the whole idea of God being active in modern human affairs kind of colossally silly.
But don't tell them that ;)
Good piece, Rick! Two things that occurred to me while listening:
1. Those were not mere test kits sent to Putin, as test kits were not available anywhere yet. What was sent were state of the art central lab testing equipment made by Abbott, at a time when we ourselves were scrambling to get a handle on the magnitude of the pandemic.
2. This is quibbling I admit, but re. Twitter I am of opposing view and won’t call X by its old name since it is now a bastardized monster of its former self, and does feel like it’s a proper self-own pornographic rating. It should be differentiated from Twitter—Elon deserves no credit for Twitter’s (former) success. I do like Xitter though (pronounced Shitter) 😅
Yeah I've been wondering about that. It seems to me that the news reports have been very sloppy in general about this. I initially saw testing equipment, and then subsequent stories were test kits.
I did see news reports that called it testing kits, which I thought was probably inaccurate. I'm fairly sure I saw that not just here, but in news reports.
I think I heard lab equip from Rachel Maddow, and again on Healther Cox Richardson’s always excellent, accurate, and bite-sized podcast.
Both of those two are accurate and absolutely brilliant. I haven't listened or read much of Richardson, but the few times I have, I find her to be amazing.
There is no "deep state"...yet. That's what Project 2025 is for.
This reminds me of pre-internet days when "believers" got their conspiracy fixes from the National Enquirer and other tabloids on a rack in the checkout lines at the supermarket. It was always fun to read the latest headlines blaring across the front of them and wonder who in the world would actually purchase them. The fact that such garbage is magnified by widespread dissemination online, then spoken as gospel by the likes of MTG, etc , is what makes it so much more dangerous now than it was 30-40 years ago, sad to say.
For snickering-at-the-rubes purposes, even better than the National Enquirer was its sister publication, printed in black and white and run off the old Enquirer presses after they went to color, the Weekly World News. The home of Bat Boy and Hillary Clinton having an affair with a space alien ;). I'll always cherish the memory of their "opinion columnist" Ed Anger, whose _My America_ column always started off "I'm pig-biting mad" and had sentimental references to his granddaughter, his "li'l cupcake Sara Lee." I mean, it was farcical in the 70s and 80s but Ed Anger, that Archie Bunker with a Southern accent, actually became the template for an untold number of wingnut opinionators who were only marginally _less_ a perpetually drunken Fleet Street refugee straight out of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities. I used to collect The Weekly World News ;)
That whole tabloid Mafia was located in Florida and were all expat Brits from Fleet Street.
I mean, Ed Anger wanted to pave over "that stupid rainforest," bring back flogging and give teachers stun guns, which is pretty damn close to Trump's actual platform, ROTFL
😂
I first learned about trump sending COVID test kits through Heather Cox Richardson’s “ Letters to Americans “. I usually read these letters in the wee hours of the day because I rarely sleep beyond 5 am, even though I’m retired and I have no reason to get up so early. When I read about this cruel, insane act by trump, I think my blood instantly ran cold. While it seems he just can’t go lower with his lies and rants and actions, this one really shook me. My husband, myself and our friends did not see our families during COVID. We did everything we could to stay safe and not die!!! We’re in our 70’s and we knew we were vulnerable. To learn now that our then president ( I hate calling him our president, but he was at the time), to think that he actually knew the truth but all along downplayed the virus and even stooped so low to send kits to our enemy, words do not describe the anger I feel toward him and his corrupt administration. Will he ever be held accountable? I have my doubts. He is despicable low life, truly a traitor. God please do not allow him to ever sit behind the Resolute Desk ever again.
Blizzard of Lies Trump Edition 2024
https://youtu.be/1y5caSY0p8g
Rick said "the world is complex"
One of the great appeals of fascism is how it provides simple solutions to complex problems.
Especially appealing to stupid gullible people, as in Fisher's Law: "Half the population is below average intelligence."
https://kamala4prez.substack.com/p/fishers-law
actually, there might be a positive side to this whole MAGA conspiracy lunacy: I believe elections are won or lost in the middle 5% of sane, non-partisan voters, and all this Trump/MAGA lunacy must be driving them to Kamala. I mean, Trump has now raised nuttiness to an insane and dangerous level, and those suburban housewives may not like the high cost of groceries, but they're not gonna hand the government over to these lunatics. Trump's painting himself into a corner with a sign saying Totally Insane. That's not gonna win over the sane 5% in the middle.
Always great
Hey Rick. What if the despicable behavior of trump is a smokescreen for more evil shit going on in the background and therefore lesser well known? His deadly craziness obscures their deadly serious machinations like a sideshow?
I buy that
The evil shit in the background is Project 2025.
it's not even in the background.
Like Hitler, he's laid it all out there, what he's gonna do.
And here's this voter saying "ooh, look at the price of butter"
Trump has ordered all his campaign surrogates to distance themselves from P25. He has enough political horse sense to realize that P25 is poison; this is of a piece with his recent beyond ludicrous claim that he'll be the "protector of women."
All Trump cares about regarding P25 is all that unlimited executive power it'll give him. But nobody has to know about it until he has it and it's too late.
Right you are, but I was also thinking about ex- and active-duty military and law enforcement teaming up with white nationalists for a show or shows of force.
This scenario was actually wargamed out by the government (they made a film about it) but I'm less worried. The locus of mischief this time isn't going to be general public protest, it's going to happen in the state capitols by rogue GOP politicians.
Yep that’s the main worry…State Courts and Election Boards.
Them-there folks are "Oathkeepers".
Stewart Rhodes would be happy to tell you all about them in his abundant free prison time.
I was on a protective service detail a couple years ago when a guy on our shift started talking to me about joining this thing they had going, called "oath keepers".
Talked really big about the Constitution, blah blah blah. I'd never heard of it.
Lots of people from Blackwater, Triple Canopy, CACI; they liked shooting Iraqi civilians.
Thanks but no.
It'd be nice if the people who talked all big about the Constitution actually read it once in a while. Contrary to popular wingnut misinformation, nowhere within the Constitution, nor within any amendment, authorizes the use of force against the government. Sitting around in a motel across the river with a massive firearms arsenal in trunks and suitcases waiting for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act is nothing remotely like a Constitutionally sanctioned remedy for anything.
Their lies kill people. Then, when it is too late they are begging for help. There has to be a way to “out” these awful Congresspeople to their constituents.
Conman. Liar. Abuser. Cheater. Adulterer. Thief. Fraud. Grifter. Inciter of violence. Like putin, for whom there cannot be enough dead bodies to satisfy his lust for power, so too the former "president". His first, and let it be his only term, was an unmitigated disaster for the United States as well as for nations striving for just governance rooted in democratic values. The republican party is fully and totally dead, ground under the jackboots of the wacko caucus now called "freedom". (The McConnell led gop senate might have spared the nation had they had the balls to vote to convict in the 2nd impeachment.) They couldn't make the tea strong enough to hide their poison so they had to spike what they've been serving up by hijacking the word freedom. In their definition "freedom" means saying and doing whatever the hell l they want while everyone else sits back passively ( as in russia) and lets them do it...whatever it might be in the moment. The goal is that eventually the 30% will grow to at least a small majority. Here's my question. When will this person and ALL his enablers finally receive the most truthful description of their actions? I speak of the charge of treason and traitor. That is how I see this particular hurricane swirling around on land in our midst. It was and is fed by indiscriminate partisanship for the purpose of power for one's self, one's particular crime family. There are times I feel as though we're living within the borders of a gang war. The orange cheato may not even be the "godfather" in fact but he's the one our eyes see out front. It's the crowd behind the curtain that need to be fully revealed. May djt lose and lose bigly, but the days after the election, and longer I think, will finally determine if democracy and a modicum of decency have prevailed.