The Packers Won! Recount The Score!

 

The Green Bay Packers clearly won last night! Never in the history of the NFL has there been a more egregious example of fraud and cheating than Sunday afternoon's game against the Indianapolis Colts.

The Packers led 28-14 at halftime, and only a colossal effort on the part of the corrupt officials, under the pay of the Democrats Colts - could have turned around such a clear win into a close loss.

Midway through the fourth quarter, running back Aaron Jones was blatantly face-masked so badly that his head snapped back and his entire lower body went ahead of his helmet! Yet this did not result in any call by the Chinese NFL officials, who should have granted the Packers 15 yards and a first down! Instead, the Packers had to go for it on fourth down, and the ball was turned over on downs.

Lastly, one of the defining plays took place with only 1 minute and 36 seconds left in the game, when quarterback Philip Rivers was hit by Za'Darius Smith, lost his grip on the football before he threw, and the Packers recovered the fumble for a touchdown! But the corrupt officials couldn't see on the review that Rivers had clearly lost his grip on the ball! The Packers should have won that game 35 to 31! The only way that outcome could have been changed was by the Colts cheating!

Fans need to demand that the NFL do a recount of the points! They need to make sure that the NFL hears their voice! The entire integrity of the entire game hangs in the balance!

Okay, reality time.

If that sounds like sour grapes, if that seems like a biased fan refusing to come to grips with a clear loss, you're not wrong. The Packers may have been hosed on a couple of calls, and yes, the officials should be held to account for missing a blatant face mask which could have permanently injured one of the finest running backs in the league. But the officials also missed a false start penalty on the Packers late in the fourth quarter as well. They also missed an off-sides penalty on Za'Darius Smith. A whole bevy of penalties against the Colts gave the ball back to the Packers late, allowing them to score a field goal, tie the game, and send it into overtime. But the Packers have no one but themselves to blame for turning over the ball four times, including a botched snap in the first quarter, and a fumble by Marques Valdes-Scantling at the end which gave the ball back to the Colts in overtime, sealing the loss.

Trump fumbled as well. He made plenty of unforced errors, and we all know it. And in the end, there were just plain old-fashioned more people who wanted him gone than wanted him to stay. Pure and simple.

It's over. Quit whining. You're old enough to change your own, damn diaper.

Eric

*

When Cults Die

 

Will the Right Wing Media Cult die?

By now, it should. There is a riptide of evidence that their vote fraud claims, which they've been shrieking at the top of their lungs for weeks now, are thunderingly, crashingly, false.

It's a little bit like 1941, when the Jehovah's Witnesses claimed that the end of the world would take place. The date came, and went, and people realize that the end of the world hadn't happened.

Oops.

It happened again in 1975. The Jehovah's Witnesses again claimed the end of the world was at hand, and it didn't happen.

They claimed afterwards that the apocalypse happened "spiritually." (There's more to it than that, but I won't go into it.)

As a result, many people left the JW's forever. But interestingly, some remained in. In spite of overwhelming proof to the contrary! There are still Jehovah's Witnesses today, existing on the periphery of religion to feast upon the gullible.

Cults are remarkably hardy. In the case of the Seekers, a UFO cult which existed in the 1950's, it proved remarkably difficult to kill. The cult was led by a woman named Dorothy Martin, a.k.a. Sister Thedra, who said that the world was ending, and that Aliens would come and rescue the faithful on December 21st, 1954. Unbeknownst to them, a social psychologist named Leon Festinger had infiltrated the cult in order to study the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance. December 21st came and went, and many of the cult members were disillusioned. But Sister Thedra re-positioned the date to be Christmas Eve instead. A majority of the followers actually went along with this! But then Christmas Eve came and went, and still no Alien Rapture. More cult members left. But then, Sister Thedra proclaimed that the Apocalypse had been averted due to the strength of their faith. Remarkably, a significant number went along with this too! They were as exuberant as they had ever been, and even more fervent than before!

The cult didn't die until this remnant minority died off.

The frightening truth about cults is that they rarely die outright, unless its followers do. In most cases where a cult dies, they usually take nearly all the followers with it. In the 1970's, cult leader Jim Jones took all his followers to Bolivia in South America, and there made them all drink poisoned fruit juice. He preached, and his followers fervently believed, that a nuclear holocaust was eminent, and that by 1978 it would take place. Better to die fast than endure all that! It was errantly reported by at least one newspaper that Jones and his followers drank poisoned Kool-Aid. This is literally where we get the expression "drink the Kool-Aid" from.

The cult died when Jones and nearly all his followers did.

Suicide is one of the only oddly effective ways a cult can die. The Heaven's Gate cult killed itself off in 1997 with the arrival of comet Hale Bopp. In Kanungu, Uganda, The Movement For The Restoration Of The Ten Commandments Of God (MRTCG) persuaded some 300 members to commit suicide by self immolation or poison, including 73 children. The Order of the Solar Temples saw some 74 of its own members commit suicide between 1994 and 1997 in Switzerland, Canada and France.

It's no secret that cults usually die if their followers do. The Essenes, who are credited with writing the Dead Sea Scrolls, were celibate, and so died off because there were few children to carry on their creeds of faith. The Desert Fathers were an early group of Christian ascetics who died off for the same reason. The Shakers were a group of Quakers who also practiced celibacy. There are almost no Shakers left today. Only two Shakers were left in the entire world as of 2017.

And what of the Right Wing Media Cult? Will it go the way of the Seekers, with most of its followers dropping off?

I'm convinced that some of it may. After blasting utter falsehoods regarding election fraud for weeks, even months (if one includes the false claims prior to the election), it should be quite clear that the people who preached these lies are false preachers. Like the Seekers, and like the Jehovah's Witnesses, some of the flock should peel off, walk away, and never return. Hannity, Limbaugh, Ingram, Levin, and especially Art Jones should all have their careers utterly ruined. Or at least ended on any network with the word "news" in the title. But even if this wonderful outcome were to happen, people just don't change in light of irrefutable evidence easily! Like the Seekers, or the JW's, some will try to find any rationalization they can get their hands on to convince themselves that they weren't absolute suckers for five whole years - at minimum.

They will find some other false preacher. Some new Limbaugh or Hannity will come along to fill the void.

It's a little bit like when James Randi debunked Peter Popoff back in the 80's. People wrote to James Randi afterward, saying something like, "Thank you so much for exposing that awful Peter Popoff, Mr. Randi. You'll be happy to know I'm giving my money to Jerry Falwell now." To which Randi would say, "They're just bound and determined to throw their money away on something!"

This is the ultimate off-ramp! It is a chance for the extremism to be exiled from the Republican Party at long last, for Fox News to regain its integrity, and for sanity to be returned to our media, and our governing process.

And if not, then our only hope is to await the Technological Singularity and hope the robots will save us.

Eric

*

Wayne County Madness

 

Last night, two minor-ranking Republicans tried to cancel the votes of an entire state.

Wayne County, which includes the City of Detroit, MI, was to have its votes certified by a bipartisan, four-person panel, comprised of two Republicans and two Democrats.

Despite zero evidence of voting irregularities, the two Republicans, Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, voted not to certify, deadlocking the vote at 2 - 2.

The outcry was instantaneous. On the Trumpian side, the delusionists seized this moment as some sort of confirmation of their moon-bat conspiracy theories regarding vote fraud. On the reality side, residents of Detroit were outraged that their entire voice in democracy could somehow be potentially wiped out by two, lone idiots.

Now, the likelihood that this vote would have actually negated Detroit's voice was slim, at best. Had the deadlock held, it would have gone to other legislative channels, and the certification would have taken place that way, unless Republicans found a way to thwart that process too. But the fact that the first step towards such an outcome was even taken is breathtaking!

Fortunately, those two repented. The board reconvened, the vote was taken, and the vote for Wayne County was certified by a vote of 4 - 0. Sanity prevailed.

But what a goddamned jolt!

For some time now, I've been railing against the Right Wing Media Cult. And there is little doubt that this cult, which is just as divorced from reality as creationism, flat-earthers, holocaust deniers and those who believe the moon landing was faked, has saturated nearly the entire Republican establishment.

So much so that two individuals felt their opinion should outweigh that of an entire city.

If you don't believe that this was the result of cult-driven delusion, I invite you to examine these pictures, taken from the Facebook page of William Hartmann, one of the two Republicans to initially vote against certification. These images are from 2010, and they come courtesy of Del Quentin Wilber, who took the liberty of looking them up and posting them to Twitter. His post was later echoed by The Bulwark. You can read Del's original post here. You can also find William Hartmann's Facebook page here.

Remember: The following shit came from a guy who actually managed to get himself onto a vote certification board for an entire city!

On his Facebook page, Hartmann has posted THIS high-class stuff:

Yeah. THIS guy. The guy who posted stuff like THIS. HE was one of four people in charge!

This is what we're up against. Stupidity THIS flagrant.

I'd say something like "God help us," except the Right Wing Media Cult has taken over Christianity, too.

Eric

*

20 Vote Fraud LIES!

 

There are so many claims of voter fraud out there that they are hard to keep track of. So far, just about all of them are completely false. But that hasn't stopped the Right-Wing Media Cult from spreading them all over the place like the Coronavirus. It is institutionalized lying on a grand scale! Josef Goebbels would be proud! 

Now, it's laughable that Republicans, of all people, would dare complain about voter fraud. After decades of gerrymandering, requiring nearly-impossible-to-get voter I.D.s, and even deliberately undermining the Post Office, Democrats would be entirely within their rights to say, "Serves you, right! Welcome to OUR world!" But they have not done this. They won fair and square, and Republican claims to the contrary are nothing but sour grapes.

Sour grapes - but from a fucking LARGE vineyard!

Here's my own non-comprehensive list of cases of fake voter fraud which have been initially reported as true, but turned out to be complete horseshit.

1) Tucker Carlson reported on Thursday, November 12 that James Blalock of Covington, Georgia had cast a vote in the 2020 election, even though he died in 2006. But when the story was checked, it turned out that the vote had been cast by Blalock's widow, who was still very much alive and whose ballot and signature clearly said "Mrs." on it! Tucker Carlson was forced to issue a retraction on Friday the 13th (appropriate) and John Oliver blasted him for it in the season-ending finale of his show last Sunday. If any one of us had fucked up that badly at our jobs, we would have been fired. But Tucker Carlson, it seems, is getting promoted. Apparently, at Fox News, like in Hollywood, you "fail up."

2) It was claimed via social media that a 118 year-old man named William Bradley of Wayne County, Michigan, who passed away in 1984, cast a ballot in the 2020 election. Turns out, It was William Bradley, Sr. who passed away in 1984. William Bradley, Jr., who lives at the same home and address as his deceased father, was the one who cast the ballot, and legally.

3) As I reported on this blog when I debunked Sean Hannity, Michigan GOP Chairwoman Laura Cox claimed that ballots were counted in Entram County for Democrats that were meant for Republicans, causing a 6,000 vote swing in Democrats' favor. This, according to her, was due to a 'tabulating software glitch,' She then claimed that 47 counties use this same software. But Michigan's Secretary of State swiftly debunked this, pointing out that it was a human error which led to the miscount, and that the error was caught and corrected, just like the system is supposed to do. The correction, which benefited Trump, was a shining example of the system working well. But in the upside-down world of Conservative Cult Media, it's somehow proof of fraud.

4) Wild claims were made by many on social media that Sharpie markers were distributed in Republican districts in Arizona, causing those votes to be thrown out because the tabulating machines couldn't read that type of pen. But Maricopa County officials debunked this, assuring people that all votes would be counted regardless of what type of pen was used. This was later re-confirmed by the Arizona Secretary of State.

5) A man named Matt Mackowiak spotted a change in the reported Michigan State tabulation which showed roughly 130,000 votes added for Joe Biden, and none for Donald Trump. He called this into question with a post on Twitter, and it went viral. Now, it's not unusual for huge chunks of votes to come in from one county all at once, but Mackowiak and others wondered why this block went 100% for Joe Biden. The answer to that is simple: That was an error, and it got reversed off right away. When Mackowiak learned about this, he retracted his claim. But that hasn't stopped the RRM Cult from re-posting the original Tweet, sans any correction.

6) It's been commonly claimed that Wisconsin had more votes cast than there are registered voters in the State. A man named Mike Cowdry Tweeted that there are only 3,129,000 registered voters, and yet 3,239,920 people voted. But Cowdry's figure of 3,129,000 is an out of date figure from 2018. The current figure as of November 1, 2020 is 3,684,726! And besides, Wisconsin is a same-day registration state! People who are not registered to vote may register right there at the polling station. So any claims about more people voting than registered are completely baseless! Mike Cowdry's Tweet has been taken down, but that hasn't stopped people from re-sharing a screen shot of the Tweet anyway.

7) Video of Delaware County, Pennsylvania ballot-counters has been shared with the false claim that the poll workers were taking blank ballots, marking them as "received," then filling in the ballots themselves. But as the Delaware County officials themselves pointed out, they were only taking damaged ballots and filling out replacements. This is normal procedure, and if it were fraud of this kind, the pollsters would be silly to do so when they clearly knew they were on a live-stream camera!

8) A viral video supposedly shows poll workers stuffing ballots in Flint, Michigan. But as the Associated Press pointed out, that video actually showed Russian workers! The video clearly shows Russian iconography, and all the poll workers are white! You'd think poll workers in Flint, Michigan would be black! Seriously, if someone is going to lie, at least one should TRY and make the lie hold water!

9) Video claims to show a list of deceased Michigan voters via Michigan's Voter Information Center as having voted in the 2020 election. But as numerous news sources have discovered, those voters are very much alive, and reporters have found them and interviewed them!

10) Right-wing commentator Steven Crowder (remember him?) shared a grainy video of a man unloading something out of a white van, placing it onto a red wagon and lugging it inside Detroit’s TCF Center. He claimed it was potentially ballots for Joe Biden. “This only creates MORE questions about votes and ballot security concerns in Michigan,” Crowder tweeted. Social media users and conservative websites quickly seized on the video, calling it “highly suspicious.” But it turned out to be video of a photographer who worked for the local news station WXYZ-TV. He was using the wagon to carry his heavy camera equipment.

11) A wild claim went out that 40,000 absentee ballots were rejected in DeKalb County, Georgia. Turns out, only 201 ballots were rejected, and every single one of those voters were notified beforehand. DeKalb County officials notified the press via Twitter itself.

12) A popular tweet on Nov. 14 declared, “Biden Campaign Staffer, Dallas Jones was arrested for Voter Fra_d. Accused of harvesting thousands of ball_ts and voting under names of homeless, elderly, dead people. MSM is suppressing the story.” Except that Dallas Jones has been making media appearances, TODAY, very much NOT ARRESTED. FactCheck.org and Snopes have both interviewed him! The photograph of him supposedly being "arrested" turned out to be a photo of Cuba Gooding, Jr!

13) One of the crazier claims is that a supercomputer was used to switch votes from Trump to Biden. Sydney Powell, a former attorney for Michael Flynn, espoused it on Fox Business back on November 6th, saying that ballots were changed using the "Hammer" program and a software program called "Scorecard." Which computer? He doesn't say. Any verification on "Hammer" or "Scorecard?" Nope. The claim comes from dude named Denis Montgomery, who has a history of making crazy, bogus claims.

14) In a press conference on Nov. 9, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany accused Pennsylvania’s Democratic secretary of the commonwealth, Kathy Boockvar, the top election official in the state, of using ballot curing as a way to “tip the scales of an election to functionally favor the Democrat Party.” But it wasn’t only Democratic counties that “cured” ballots, as opposed to Republican ones that didn’t. The "curing" happened along county lines, not party lines. All counties got the same guidance the night before the election instructing them to notify political parties and update the ballot-tracking online system about ballot errors, thus allowing voters to cast a provisional ballot on Election Day. Some counties notified voters, and some didn’t. In the “red counties” cited in one Republican lawsuit, however, Biden outperformed Trump in the mail-in ballot vote, often by considerable margins. By not allowing voters to cure ballots, those counties were more likely to hurt Democratic voters than Republicans. So if anything, "ballot curing" in Pennsylvania actually hurt Biden more than Trump!

15) Trump re-Tweeted an anonymous post on a pro-Trump message board which claimed that Dominion Voting Systems switched millions of votes from him to Biden. The post came originally from the ultra right-wing source, Gateway Pundit. After Trump's re-Tweet, the claim was picked up and echoed by Lilia Fifield of OANN. But the claim has zero evidence. 

16) A postal worker in Erie, Pennsylvania, claimed that his superiors were backdating postmarks on ballots. Then he flip-flopped and told federal investigators that he didn’t actually know that. Then he went back to his original position. We have only his unreliable word for it.

17) There is a faulty claim being circulated that Joe Biden received nearly 100,000 votes in Georgia through ballots that only included selections for president. The though is that this is suspicious because why would someone vote for president and not fill out the rest of the ballot? But there are plenty of people who do that, because they know about who's running for president, but don't follow politics enough to know about anyone else. It's sad, but true.The Nov. 12 totals for Georgia show
4,992,420 votes counted in the presidential race, and only 4,945,792 votes counted in the Senate race between Republican Sen. David Perdue and Ossoff. That’s a difference of 46,628 total votes, which is almost half of what’s being alleged in the viral posts. So maybe there's a grain of truth to this one, but there's nothing to indicate fraud.

18) I debunked this one back on November 11th. The Nevada Republican Party sent a criminal referral to the Attorney General Bill Barr regarding 3,062 cases of alleged voter fraud. The votes appeared to have been cast by people who no longer live in Nevada. The voters were identified by cross-checking voter registration names and addresses with the national change-of-address database. But most of those names were of servicemen serving overseas! And Nevada law allows for people who moved less than 30 days prior to the election to vote.

19) A conservative group claims that more than 21,000 registered voters in Pennsylvania are dead. But this same group failed to convince a federal judge in October that its list was accurate. Also, Biden was leading Trump by over 45,000 votes when this claim was initially made. So even if true (which it isn't) it wouldn't change the outcome of Pennsylvania's Electoral College votes.

20) A viral video from Project Veritas suggests that U.S. Postal Service employees backdated ballots in Michigan. The claim is unproven, but, even if true, no ballots in the state are accepted after Nov. 3, regardless of the postmark! So the falsehood of the claim is laid bare. No such directive from the Michigan Post Office would have existed. It is 100% proof that "Project Veritas" is nothing of the short. It is more like "Project Vociferation."

It's time to tell it like it is. The institutionalized LYING has gone on long enough! News organizations which allow a pundit to knowingly spread falsehood on the air must be STRIPPED of the title "News" from their label! They can go on spewing bullshit, but no longer with the disguise of "News" shrouding them.

There must be consequences to this level of unabashed fraud! Yes, there is a sort of voter fraud, but it comes in the form of misinformation regarding the vote and its integrity. Surely, there must be some laws which already cover this. But if there aren't, we need to write some.

Enough with the bullshit, already!

Eric

*

Trump's Proven Racism

 

My previous post about Kaylee McEnany prompted some responses, one of which was to answer back my point about how Kaylee always rattles off the same list of Trump's anti-racist remarks whenever she is confronted with Trump's obvious dog-whistle racism. This particular response came in the form of another YouTube video which cobbles together all (or nearly all) of the times Trump has decried racism or racists - a total of 17 times according to the video.

I'm no chicken, so here's the video for you to see yourself, right here.

Indeed, the video does show Trump denouncing racism quite a number of times. But immediately, I noticed two things:

1) Just about all of these took place back in 2016, when he was trying desperately to win, and nobody expected he would win, even him. During that period, Trump decried racism occasionally, because he had no choice. But after he was elected, it seems as though he simply said, "Fuck it!" And only decried racism after that point if he absolutely had to. (More on that, later.)

2) A huge portion of these denunciations were not of racism as a whole, but of one racist in particular, David Duke. It's relatively easy to denounce one person who also happens to be a failed politician. It's a little more difficult to denounce something that alienates a major element of your base when you're trying to win over the moderate center. 

Take away the David Duke comments, and Trump's denouncements are slashed from 17 down to 9. 

If we add up all the times Trump has denounced racism after 2016, the list drops down to 2. 

Include the post-2016 incidents not listed in this video, and you get 4 at the most, including the first "debate" with Joe Biden, in which he said, "sure, I will" when asked if he would denounce white supremacists, but then didn't! He then turned around and said of the Proud Boyz, "Stand back and stand by." Now, the Proud Boyz are fascist, not racist, but that doesn't earn Trump any extra points in my book! I do very much think that "stand back and stand by" completely wipes out "sure, I will." Trump fans might wish to count that one, but I'm not willing to grant that kind of latitude. No way!

The following day, when Trump was asked why he didn't denounce white supremacy, he responded, "I've always denounced any form of that."

Of that! He can't even bring himself to say it. He has to play the pronoun game. No, fuck that shit. That one doesn't count, either.

That brings the total post-2016 number down to 3. Just three. And these are the three McEnany quotes the most in her press briefings. 

I'd like to take a good look at those three. But first, it's helpful to note the many times Trump has said racist shit before and after this point.

1) Trump took out a full page ad in the New York Times calling for the execution of the "Central Park Five." Those five young black men turned out to be innocent.

2) According to the 1991 book by John O'Donnell called "Trumped," Donald once said "laziness is a trait in blacks."

3) Trump spent years promoting the "birtherism" conspiracy theory regarding Barack Obama. There is very little which could be more racist than that.

4) How can we ever forget Trump's comments when he first began his 2016 campaign?  “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best…They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

5) Followed by his next big racist hit, "We're going to build a wall!" An anti-Latino platform if we ever heard it! "And Mexico is going to pay for it!" Of course, no wall was built aside of some wall segments being re-built, and Mexico didn't pay for jack shit!

6) Who could forget Trump's rally in June of 2016 when he pointed at one, lone black supporter and said, "Look at my African American over there."

6) Trump called the 1619 project "ideological poison" and that teaching it was a "form of child abuse in the truest sense of those words."

7) Trump referred to immigrants coming into California, "You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals."

8) Trump referred to the nations of El Salvador, Haiti and certain African nations as "shithole countries."

9) An ad the Trump campaign ran during the 2018 midterms was so racist even Fox News refused to air it.

10) In October 2019, Trump described his impeachment probe as a "lynching." He was utterly insensitive as to that word or its implications.

11) In May of 2020, Trump Tweeted, "When the looting starts, the shooting starts." An old racist phrase dating back to the days of segregation in the Deep South.

12) He used phrases like "China virus" and "kung flu."

13) Referring to the four congresswomen known as "The Squad," Trump said they should "go back to the crime infested places from which they came." This, even though three of those four came from the U.S.

14) He referred to Senator Elizabeth Warren as "Pocahontas."

15) Regarding the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, NC, Trump said there were "very fine people on both sides."

16) Trump retweeted a video of a supporter yelling "white power!" He deleted it, but the fact that he shared it at all speaks volumes.

17) Trump tweeted that low income housing would "invade the neighborhood" of suburban  housewives.

18) The number of racist tweets and re-tweets Trump has made over the last five years are too numerous to count.

19) Trump NEVER apologized for ANY of the items above! Not once!

Now, after that recap, we can finally take a good look at the three, measly examples that McEnany continually cites in her press conferences:

August 2019, "In one voice our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy."

This one sounds good, at first. But this statement took place after two mass shootings happened, one in El Paso, Texas, and the other one in Dayton, Ohio. The El Paso shooter posted a manifesto online which was filled with racist hatred. Oh yeah, AND unwavering support for Donald Trump! After that, if Trump didn't issue a statement condemning racism and hatred, he was toast. So, left with no choice, he read it off the teleprompter. He never singled out the shooter by name and condemned his actions.

April of 2019, "We have no tolerance for those who disrupt this peace and we condemn all hate and violence, especially in our places of worship."

This statement was made on the "National Day of Prayer," but fell short of outright condemning racism. The phrase, "all hate and violence," sounds like it covers all the bases, but given this president's  history, that's not enough. McEnany might like to include it in the list she rattles off during press briefings, but it simply doesn't count.

In August of 2017, 'Racism is evil and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups."

McEnany's quote from 2017 is precisely when Trump infamously said that there was bad behavior "on both sides." The part where he said racism was evil was read off a statement prepared in advance by a staff member. But when speaking off the cuff, and from the heart, he equated neo-Nazis with their protesters! That, as we all should know by now, is complete bullshit!

And this ties into what I pointed out earlier: Trump has only ever decried racism when he absolutely has to - such as when his back was against the wall in 2016, or when some major atrocity forced him to make a statement. And when he made a racist or dog-whistle remark, he never retracted it, never apologized for it, and never acknowledged that it was a wrong thing to say in the first place! Trump's supporters try to claim that those instances where Trump decried racism are when he showed his true colors, but I think we can all see that Trump's true colors were actually shown when he uttered racist remarks!

And THIS is why the KKK, and the neo-Nazis, and David Duke love him! They can read the tea leaves! The Right-Wing Media Cult, apparently, cannot.

So that's the best Trump supporters can come up with, eh? 

Let's put this one to bed once and for all: Trump IS the most racist president we've ever had!

And what's more, we knew so all along.

 

Eric

*

The Inanity of Kaylee McEnany

 

Kaylee McEnany is slick, I'll give her that. But she's also one of the most poised and erudite liars on the planet.

This has made her something of a hero among those in the Right Wing Media Cult. They like seeing her do battle with the press gaggle, as if somehow doing battle with the press was the White House Press Secretary's job. Under Trump, the Press Secretary's role has gone from spin-doctoring (Spicer), to outright lies (Huckabee-Sanders), to no dissemination of information at all (2018-2019), and finally outright hostility to the entire press corps (McEnany). And this devolution of both professionalism and morality may make the Cult believe she is the ultimate warrior, but she is also the ultimate liar.

Someone I was "debating" with on Facebook turned me on to the topic. I already debunked McEnany in my blog post from October 6, when I dragged Jay Weber down for believing that McEnany's retorts were at all accurate. But clearly, based on my interactions with this particular Facebook dude, she needed taking down further. 

I asked this guy, "Can you cite one example of when she [McEnany] says something which proves 'the media' (as if she weren't a member of such) should not be trusted?" He came back at me with three YouTube links of McEnany doing battle with the White House Press Corps. 

I'll bet he actually thought he achieved something by sending me these links. All he really did was give me a sample to dissect and debunk.

I'll use McEnany's press conference from July 1st 2020. The other two are interesting, but the July one is the juiciest. She went off on a screed regarding CHAZ in Seattle, and condemned "autonomous zones." But it was the questions she took afterward where she really gave out the bullshit.

When she was asked about the Russian bounties on American troops, she responded with, "Make no mistake that this administration has acted tough on Russia, always makes the decision that makes the best decision for our troops, like killing general Soleimani, who killed 600 American troops, maimed thousands of others, and Al Baghdadi. We always act in the best interest of our troops, but this is unverified still as of this moment."

What the HELL does the Iranian general Soleimani and the Caliph of ISIS Al Baghdadi have to do with Russia? Not a damn thing, of course. McEnany is using the only examples of where she thinks the president has acted to protect American troops, except killing Soleimani was largely seen by the international community as a capital crime - a violation of Iraq's national sovereignty, and a deliberate attack upon Iran, which many people saw at the time as a potential "wag the dog" type of scenario. THAT'S acting in the best interest of our troops? By potentially starting another politically-based war? And the killing of Al Baghdadi, while good, is an uncomfortable reminder that the U.S. then bailed on our Kurdish allies, going back on our word and jeopardizing our troops yet again! And that's the BEST McEnany had to offer on the subject; two irrelevant examples which illustrate that Trump doesn't know what the FUCK he's doing!

One of her very next questions was even more revealing. It came from someone she called on named "Josh," which I take to be Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post.

Josh: "Kaylee, why does the president call Black Lives Matter a 'symbol of hate?'"

McEnany: "Well, what the president was noting is that, uh that symbol, um, when you look at some of the things chanted by Black Lives Matter, like 'pigs in a blanket fry 'em like bacon,' um, that's not an acceptable phrase to paint on our streets. Look, he agrees that all black lives matter, including that of Officer David Dorn, Patrick Underwood, two officers whose lives were tragically taken amid these riots. All black lives do matter, he agrees with that sentiment, but what he doesn't agree with is an organization that chants, 'pigs in a blanket fry 'em like bacon' about our police officers, our valiant heroes, who are out on the streets protecting us every day."

Bullshit! McEnany is repeating a chant that was done once, and only once, way, way back in 2015 at a protest in St. Paul, Minnesota. Yes, it was a BLM protest, and yes, some of them did chant 'pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon.' But the chant was never adopted by BLM as a whole, never repeated since, and never used at all during the protests of 2020 which followed the killing of George Floyd.

It is NOT an official chant. It was NEVER an official chant.

That hasn't stopped it from being repeated on Fox News, in McEnany's press briefings, and just about everywhere else in the Right Wing Media Cult for most of 2020. It was even repeated by Trump during his first "debate" with Joe Biden.

This is typical of how the RWM Cult tries to spin things relating to BLM or anything else liberals rightly stand for. They take one, outlier example, and repeat it so often they make it seem like everyone in the movement is saying it all the time.

No, it wasn't cool that anyone chanted it in the first place back in 2015. They also made the mistake of allowing themselves to be filmed so that YouTube repeated the incident over and over for years. But the phrase was NEVER repeated. BLM showed discipline and resolve by never repeating that mistake again.

Not that the Right Wing Media Cult would ever notice.

Josh: "Americans of all races have protested in all 50 states, uh, around that phrase, 'black lives matter,' and the president is here, calling it a 'symbol of hate?'"

McEnany: "He's talking about the organization. Um, I would note to you that the greater New York BLM president has said, 'If this country doesn't give us what we want, that we will burn down the system, and I could be speaking literally.' I'd call that a pretty hateful statement."

Josh: "But Kaylee, we're not talking about the organization. In his Tweet, he says the words. He says the words, 'black lives matter.'"

McEnany: "What's the name of the organization, again?"

Josh: "Black Lives Matter."

McEnany: "Thank you. You just answered my question."

But you didn't answer his, Kaylee! As it turns out, Josh was absolutely right! Trump was not criticizing the organization (and if he were, that would be just as bad). He was, in fact, criticizing the words themselves. He was criticizing them being painted on New York's Fifth Avenue. See for yourself:

And again, we see the same referral to the "fry 'em like bacon" remark that Trump undoubtedly picked up from Right Wing Cult Media, and then gave it to McEnany to regurgitate back to the public as if she'd somehow scored a point on the media.

The Press corps, it should be noted, is used to this sort of shit from McEnany, and so they've debunked this many times. But rarely do these retorts make their way into the Conservative Media echo-chamber.

She was then asked about the president's remarks on coronavirus by "Ben" (Ben Tracy of CBS?)

Ben: "Regarding Coronavirus, earlier today the president said, 'I think that at some point that's going to just disappear, I hope.' Is hoping that it will disappear the president's strategy at this point?"

McEnany: "No, the president's confident that it will disappear. He's confident that he's put together a revolutionary, first-class team that is going to break through bureaucracy and get us a vaccine. He's confident that that will lead us to a place where we won't have Covid on our hands, and there's very pleasing news from Pfizer and BioIntech..."

This is almost painful to listen to after seeing the catastrophic failures which resulted later on. The president himself got covid, no thanks to his "revolutionary, first-class team," to say nothing of the many members of his staff, and the many members of Mile Pence's staff who got Covid-19 themselves, even though they are supposedly on the pandemic response team!

Ben: "Dr. Fauci says we are heading towards 100,000 cases per day. So why does the president have evidence that it would just disappear? His statement with the vaccine that it's just disappearing?"

McEnany: "One thing that I would note with regard to cases, we're aware that there are embers in the country, we're aware that there are places with rising cases and that's why Dr. Burkes is on the ground and others, we're continually assessing that. But one thing I would note is just that when you do test more people you do identify more cases. And that is rapidly ongoing. We're testing more than a half a million people per day. To give you an example, on April 6th, really the height of the pandemic, we were doing 151.525 tests. Um, one day, you know, Thursday is the number I have here, we conducted 637,587 tests. So when you have a more than five-fold increase in tests, you have a greater identification of cases."

Holy shit! She was actually using that old, stupid rationality of "If there weren't so many tests, there wouldn't be so many cases!" What a crock! Why, at this point, didn't someone in the White House Press Office not jump out and tackle her off the podium and drag her away before she said something even more stupid?!

Later on, McEnany is asked, "The president has come under criticism this week for statements that he's has made that his detractors say are 'dog whistles' to a certain segment of his base that he is trying to gin up for his reelection. Those comments include 'Kung flu,' or 'heritage' while talking about Confederate statues, and most recently they include the video, that I know you discussed in here the other day, but the video of a supporter of his using the term 'white power.' So why hasn't the president denounced that video, and called that a hateful statement?"

McEnany: "The president took down that video. That deletion speaks strongly. What I would note, the president has repeatedly condemned hate. August of 2019, 'In one voice our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America.' On April of 2019, 'We have no tolerance for those who disrupt this peace and we condemn all hate and violence, especially in our places of worship.' August 2018 'I condemn all types of racism.' He's repeatedly done this..."

"But why hasn't he denounced that specific video and said that that is hateful language that was used in it?"

McEnany: "He deleted it. The deletion speaks for itself. His repeated condemnations of hate speak for themselves, and uh, this is a president who has repeatedly condemned hate and repeatedly encouraged.. for us all to come together."

Holy shit! The deletion speaks for itself?! BULLSHIT! You know what would speak for itself? Not putting the fucking racist video up on Twitter in the first place!!!

And whenever Kaylee is confronted with Trump's obvious racism, she always gives this standard dodge: She rattles off the same-old list of condemnations that Trump read off of a teleprompter, and even those are questionable. Trump does just fine when reading off of a teleprompter, but when he needs to condemn racism from the heart, he just can't bring himself to do it! McEnany's quote from 2017 is precisely when Trump infamously said that there was bad behavior in Charlottesville "on both sides." So much for that one! Trump's quote from 2019 was when he was goaded into finally making that statement by a mass shooting at a Walmart in Texas by a white supremacist who happened to be a big fan of Trump! Trump has had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into making anti-racist statements. And then McEnany dares to collect all those rare occasions and read them off to any reporter who dares raise a more recent example of Trump being a racist shithead!

Some of us were actually paying attention back then, Kaylee!

The Right Wing Media Cult, of which McEnany is a member, apparently wasn't.

Eric

*

The Strange World of Sean "Upside-Down" Hannity

 

Few people lie so well, first to himself, and then to others, quite so thoroughly as Sean Hannity. Rush Limbaugh may have pioneered the Right Wing Media Cult, but Hannity perfected the art, and all the other conservative windbags out there pretty much orbit his gravity well.

Since Wednesday, November 4th, Hannity, and indeed much of the rest of conservative media, will not stop talking about one thing: FRAUD! They are absolutely convinced that the ass-kicking Trump received at the polls is fake, and they are determined to back that up with whatever false narrative they can manufacture.

Take this gem which Hannity talked about on Friday, November 6th, on his podcast:

"I'm citing law. If we can look at the laws in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, for example, and many of them are very much the same, and that is, 'Partisan observers may observe at polling locations, and may still until time of the counting of the votes is complete.' Hang on a minute, didn't we see, and don't we have evidence, of poll workers papering over windows so that people can't look in? Yeah. Don't we have videos now of poll watchers being thrown out and then a lot of people clapping? Yeah, we have that too."

Did you see it? If not, let me highlight: Hannity cites law (he doesn't say which, because he doesn't want you to research which state he's citing) which says "Partisan observers may observe AT polling locations." Notice that this law (whichever mysterious one it may be) doesn't say observers may observe IN polling locations! Yet this obvious error in interpretation is completely ignored by Hannity. In his Bizarroland universe, poll workers who refuse to have their already-stressful-enough-jobs constantly interrupted by "poll watchers" who want to subject them to endless proctological examinations are somehow being un-American. And when such disruptive people are finally thrown out of the room, as well they should be, Hannity thinks this is somehow a HUGE outrage!

Now that's some seriously deluded bullshit.

But Hannity is just getting warmed up! He cites a case of a Michigan county clerk discovering a "computer glitch" which tabulated 6,000 votes for Biden instead of Trump. He cites this video (without bothering to name it, or who the person is speaking - shoddy work!). The person speaking is Michigan GOP Chairwoman Laura Cox, and she complains loudly:

"If all this wasn't enough, in Entram County, ballots were counted for Democrats that were meant for Republicans, causing a 6,000 vote swing against our candidates. The county clerk came forward and said, 'tabulating software glitched, and caused a miscalculation of the votes.' Since then, we have now discovered that 47 counties use this same software in the same capacity. [Groans and grumbles are heard from numerous Republicans in the room.] Antrim County had to hand count all of the ballots, and these counties that use the software need to closely examine their results for similar discrepancies. The people of Michigan deserve a transparent and open process.” [Applause.]

And here Sean says, "I mean, aren't you as shocked as I am that this could happen in the United States of America?"

What shocks me, Sean, is that you could lie about this so thoroughly. Fact checkers quickly jumped all over this one, and debunked it immediately.

What actually happened was due to human error. A county clerk did not update the software that counts the physical results and which posts unofficial results online. So, when the unofficial election results online didn’t match the physical count, election officials stopped using the software in the county and manually updated the site. The Michigan Department of State later said, “the software did not cause a misallocation of votes; it was a result of user human error.”

In other words, the vote counters did their jobs, double-checked their results, fixed it, and fixed it in a way which benefitted Donald Trump. They did their jobs well!

And their reward was to have their error-catching success spun into a fake scandal meant to call the entire vote-tallying process into question.

So Hannity, and Kaylee McEnany who retweeted it, and the entire conservative media complex who repeated this, all colossally fucked up. If you and I were to have made a mistake this huge, we would be fired from our jobs!

Why does Hannity still have a job?

And all this is just ONE of the many falsehoods Hannity spews for two and a half hours every single working day. He continues on his 11/6 podcast:

"Nevada Republican Party announced that they sent a criminal referral to the Attorney General Bill Barr. 'Our lawyers just sent a criminal referral to AG Barr regarding at least 3,062 instances of voter fraud,' Nevada Republican Party wrote. 'We expect the number to grow substantially. Thousands of individuals have been identified who appear to have violated the law by casting ballots after they moved from Nevada. Washington Post reported the party's lawyers sent Barr a list of the voters, identified by cross-checking voter registration names and addresses with the national change-of-address database.' Uh, do you think anybody in the media cares? Do you think Big Tech cares? Or are they gonna ban people from hearing that, too?"

Yeah, except Politifact debunked that one the day before!

Turns out, if you moved out of Clark County (which is the county in Nevada in question) within 30 days of the election, you can still vote legally. Furthermore, many of the names on the list were of servicemen serving overseas! How dare soldiers in Afghanistan cast a ballot while serving their country!

In other words, Hannity should have been able to fact-check this in plenty of time before he went on the air with it! Instead, he didn't bother to fact check it, and just threw it up.

Do you think anybody in the Right Wing Media Cult cares? Do you think Fox News cares? Or are they going to ignore fact-checking that too?

A week later, Hannity is still unrepentant over his colossal fuck-ups. And again, on yesterday's podcast, he continues to do his job so poorly that he allowed his podcasting co-host, Lynda McLaughlin, to utter this unbelievable falsehood on his show:

Sean: "For example, I said, the reason wear - chose earlier to wear a mask is cause I won't wanna, only... if I ever had this thing [Covid-19], I would never want to give it to grandma or grandpa."

Lynda: "Right. But the World Health Organization maintains their stand that the masks that we're all wearing does nothing to prevent the transmission of anything."

Sean: "No, now, listen. I know that - listen, they got everything wrong. Everybody, you know, it's amazing how, every model, evry - everything."

Lynda: "No, they actually got that right. They maintained that. They never changed that."

BULLSHIT! Lynda is referring to an instance way, way back on March 31, when the W.H.O. did stick to its guns regarding masks - at first. But on June 8, 2020, it reversed its stance and recommended everyone wear a mask!

Five MONTHS later, McLaughlin still doesn't have that straight! She stuck with that story, even when Hannity, who intrinsically knew it was wrong, tried at first to raise an objection. Then, distracted by other subject matter, he dropped it. The misinformation got put out there, uncorrected, on Hannity's own show.

Hannity later cited an instance in Anson County, North Carolina, where the husband of a Democratic candidate was seen escorting people into the polling area and assisting them - to the point of even filling out one of the ballots himself with the voter looking on from behind with his hands in his pockets!

Now, I'll grant that this video looks pretty bad. But three things: 1) The video only captures several people being assisted in this way. That's hardly massive voter fraud, if it even IS voter fraud, because... 2) The husband, John Montgomery, was entirely within his rights within the law to assist people with registered disabilities, such as legal blindness. It isn't clear yet whether those assisted had such disabilities, but until we know for sure, Hannity doesn't have much of a case. And finally 3), the Democrat candidate, Dannie Montgomery, was only running for Register of Deeds - which is not exactly a huge office with a big turnout impact.

And this teeny-tiny little example is the best that Hannity can offer.

Later that same podcast, Hannity doubled-down on the same Entram County, Michigan story I just debunked above. The same story he presented on his podcast one week earlier! What new evidence did he present? Only affidavits! No actual evidence, no actual proof!

Hannity keeps repeating the same instances over and over, even after they've been debunked repeatedly! This indicates just how desperate he is to make it seem like there's any voter fraud going on at all!

Even a cursory analysis of anything Hannity puts on the air these days reveals similar lies, easy to debunk, obvious to detect.

If Hannity had a real job, he would be filing for unemployment, and hoping the government doesn't screw him out of his stimulus check because they prioritized a Supreme Court Justice instead!

Eric

*

Poll Dancing

 

The polls were wrong this election cycle. Even more wrong than they seemed to be in 2016. What people like me want to know is: fucking why? How in heaven or hell could the election have been this close?

Who screwed over America?

Let's qualify things first. The polls got it pretty much spot on with Joe Biden's numbers. Real Clear Politics had an average for Biden of 51.2%. The final result was 50.8. That's not bad; only 0.4% off. The real problem, though, comes from the numbers in support of Trump. RCP ended its average with Trump at only 44%, which is pretty much where Trump's approval rating has hovered for four, solid years.

On election day, that somehow spiked up to 47.4%! And because early returns skewed Republican due to Democrats relying on mail-in and absentee balloting, it appeared, for one horrifying night, as though Trump had somehow pulled off a second miracle.

By Wednesday morning, it looked better. Biden took the lead in Wisconsin, then Michigan, and by Thursday, Pennsylvania. The leads he had built in Arizona and Nevada held, and it began to look like it was over for Trump. When Biden took over Trump's lead in Georgia, it was clear it was over.

Something Trump, and his followers, still can't come to grips with.

We should count ourselves lucky that Trump's loss came slowly. If it had come swiftly, Trumpers might have taken to the streets. They already did in Pennsylvania and Arizona, chanting contradictory messages of "Count the vote!" in Arizona, and "Stop the count!" in Pennsylvania. This hypocrisy seems lost on them, but it's fun to point it out, anyway. The slow, slow, grind allowed Trumpers to realize it was over. (For those who could accept it was over. Many still don't accept it. The stark-naked proof of their failure is too much for them to handle.)

Now, over a week later, we are starting to get results on the demographics of the vote, and two things are becoming clear: 1) People either lied to or ignored the pollsters. 2) The pollsters didn't adequately adjust for this.

The polls that got it surprisingly right turned out to be Rasmussen and Trafalgar. Rasmussen has been skewed to the Right for so long that it has been easy to dismiss their numbers as outliers. But they had Biden at 49%, and Trump at 48%. That was a good bit closer to the actual total of 51.2% to 47.4%! Trafalgar didn't have any national numbers, but in swing states, they got the numbers almost exactly right. They called Florida for Trump at 47% for Biden, and 49% for Trump. That was almost exactly right, with the final Florida numbers being 47.8% for Biden and 51.2% for Trump.

Somebody LIED. It was almost as if Trump had a million extra votes stashed away in his sock drawer.

People were clearly supporting Trump in secret. I got a glimpse of this when, on October 28, I received a text-poll which asked the following:

"What best describes your support for President Trump? A) I support him and I need a yard sign and bumper sticker. B) I support him and am willing to volunteer for the campaign. C) I support him but would rather remain anonymous. D) None of these apply to me."

At the time, I re-posted this to Facebook and said, "Really? 'Remain anonymous' is one of the options?! On an official Trump campaign text! Wow! Now that's desperate! For those of you too chicken to support Trump openly, ask yourself why, and change your mind accordingly!"

But in retrospect, this anonymous support was a real thing!

When Robert Cahaly of the Trafalgar group was interviewed on CNN, he came off as a bit of a crackpot, and I didn't take him seriously. But he did say one thing which nagged at the back of my mind, because it made sense. He said that only polls which allowed the respondents to remain anonymous could be accurate, because those who support Trump in secret would not respond otherwise.

I'll be damned. For all Cahaly's questionable methods, he turned out to be exactly right about that.

So who lied? Who DID screw over America?

Well, obviously EVERYONE who dared vote for Trump, who was a candidate who was never worth taking seriously in the first place. I'm still stunned that Trump ever got one, single vote. He was dumber than Bush, more abusive than Weinstein, and, as his tax returns finally showed, poorer than dirt! However, all that aside, some voters inadvertently or intentionally threw off the polls. Who were they? What was the key demographic? What segment of the vote pulled a bait-and-switch on everybody?

I used an article from The Financial Times to help with this. Here's my analysis:

1) SENIORS. Poll after poll showed that Trump was losing big among people 65 or older. It made sense for so many reasons, not the least of which was the fact that many of them were being killed off by Trump's obvious mishandling of the Coronavirus pandemic. People expected that Trump would lose seniors by double-digits. But in the end, the seniors came back around for some strange reason. Trump won seniors 51% to 48%. And while that may be better than how Hillary Clinton did in 2016, when she lost seniors 53% to 44%, it is still not the repudiation that pre-election polls suggested it would be. Maybe they fell for the bullshit Hunter Biden laptop story, or perhaps they have just been conditioned to assume the worst about Democrats for so long that they fell back on old habits. I personally think it's a little bit of both. CERTAINLY, Trump-supporting seniors were among the ones who gave up answering the phone if a pollster called!

Blame quotient: 62%

2) HISPANIC MALES. More than one analyst pointed out that Cuban-Americans in Florida were receptive to Trump's anti-Socialism message. The Republicans successfully equated Biden with Castro (!) and the Democrats just didn't answer that effectively. But nationally, it went deeper. Pure, unbridled machismo favored Trump to the more elderly-seeming Biden, and so many Hispanic males went with the "strong horse." Democrats took the Hispanic vote for granted, assuming that blatantly racist statements about Hispanics being rapists or building a wall to keep Hispanics out would guarantee a a near 100% vote for Biden by the Latinx community. It DIDN'T! Democrats lost Florida, and potentially much, much more! In the future, Democrats are going to have to work harder to win and keep the Hispanic vote! They should follow in the tradition of Teddy Kennedy, who never took their vote for granted, and even sang "Mi Guadalajara" to them in his last campaign.

Blame quotient:10%

3) WHITE WOMEN. Trump lost a little bit of ground with white women in comparison to 2016, but not much. And the polls leading up to the election suggested that Trump was losing white women by a significant margin. Instead, Trump won white women by about 52%. He lost college-educated white women by about 55-45, but won the non-college-educated white female vote 60-40. That still fell shy of the expected blowout the pre-election polls indicated.

Blame quotient: 10%

4) THE AFFLUENT. Trump gained big ground among people who made $100,000.00 per year or more. These were the "boat flotillas," comprised entirely of only those people wealthy enough to afford a fucking boat in the first place (and somehow the "liberal" media missed that point).

Blame quotient: 8%

5) EVANGELICALS. There is really no data regarding Evangelical Christians just yet, and I don't expect Trump gained much ground here, because the Christian media was pulling for Trump from the very beginning - contrary to all of Jesus' principles. But Evangelicals are especially Apocalyptic. They would be the most likely to drop off the grid, ignore their cell phones, and only listen to Christian media. Such people are especially difficult to poll, especially in difficult times.

Blame quotient: 6%

6) AFRICAN-AMERICAN MALES. The Candace Owens effect is real! The pitch made to African Americans, that the cities are "controlled" by Democrats, and that only strong police support can rebuild the inner cities, has had an impact. Trump only won 8% of the black vote in 2016. In 2020, he won only 12%, and that still isn't much, but that's still way better than he did last time! Nearly all Trump's gains came from young, black men.

Blame quotient: 4%

Here's who ISN'T as much to blame this time: White people! Trump actually lost ground with white voters by a few percent. He did still win them as a demographic group, but overall, he didn't do as well with them in 2020 as he did in 2016.

In a way, there is some hope. The surprising number of people who secretly supported Trump also indicates that there were a surprising number of people who were ashamed to be seen supporting Trump. As well they should be! That's not much of a positive, but it's something, at least.

Let's hope it's enough to build upon.

Eric

*

My Parler Account: A Review

 

When I heard that many conservatives were fleeing Facebook for Parler, I thought: "Now this is something I'm just going to have to check out!"

So far, it's definitely a trip. Hazard, that is.

I have never seen a cesspool of disinformation and bullshit quite this extensive. And I've been to creationist museums!

When you sign up, you are asked for more detailed information, but really all you need is an email address and phone number. Since I was sock-puppeting, I used my old email account and a tertiary phone number. You need to enter a "capcha" string of characters to prove you aren't a computer. Your phone number is then pinged with a special code you have to enter in so that the system knows you're real - pretty standard stuff. Then you have to choose your own handle and moniker, assuming you don't want the same ones as your email address. I didn't, so I altered them.

Immediately I was offered options on who to connect with - nearly all of them conservative media personalities. I found no friends I knew from Facebook, even the conservative ones. I went with Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Dinesh D'Sousa and Tucker Carlson, since that's all I could find whom I knew, or even heard of. Rush Limbaugh apparently got beaten to his own name, and like Trump on Twitter (@TheRealDonaldTrump) Limbaugh's moniker is @RushLimbaughOfficial. (Ha!) I tried to find Mark Belling and Vicky McKenna, but neither of them seemed to have an account just yet.

It's really a bad copy of Twitter, without the character limits. But also without much ease of navigation. You can scroll, and search - and that's about it. Bo-ring! As for connections, you can try to find people, but unless they've used their real name, it's downright impossible. This is a VERY anonymous format. Apparently, everyone here wears a mask - and probably refuses to wear a mask to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in the outside world.

And what is found here in the way of content? In a word: FRAUD! It's pretty much all about election fraud, all the time in this upside-down world.

Trying to find a few local people to connect with, I tried searching for usernames, but found nothing solid. So, I tried searching by hashtags, which Parler allows you to do. Under #Milwaukee, I found an article posted (the term here is "Parley") by a woman named Margaret Menge from something called "insidesources.com." (Never heard of it. In fact, I found lots of links to lots of "news" outlets which I'd never heard of before. It's mostly off-the-beaten-path fringe shit, here.) Margaret's article, titled, "Hold It: Wisconsin's Vote Just Doesn't Look Right," states that the increase in voter turnout is nowhere near in line with the increase in population in various places in Milwaukee or Madison. As examples, she cites population numbers in Wauwatosa, and expresses incredulity that Biden increased his vote total by 28% from Obama's totals there when it had only grown at a rate of less than 0.5% per year in terms of population. She cites other similar examples with West Allis, Whitefish Bay, River Hills and Glendale. She concludes from this that the voting totals simply can't have been that high, unless artificially inflated. But apparently Margaret had forgotten (or perhaps, never learned) that only about 60% of eligible voters ever truly participate in an election, even in a presidential election year. In 2020 so far, the estimate is that 65% of eligible voters participated, and that number is still climbing! That leaves plenty of room to make up for the discrepancy Margaret cites. Lots of people who didn't normally vote decided to this time around - because they were that pissed off!

Another "article" is cited by a woman named "Jill," which purports to have a Democrat operative confessing that "We've been rigging elections for 50 years!" There is a link at the bottom of the picture, but not so fast! Because the link is shown in a .jpg image, meaning that you can't click on it and get taken to the article! To even TRY to read it, you have to write out the incredibly long URL and re-type it into your browser. So, just to fuck with it, I did exactly that! Here's the "article" right here: https://thenewamerican.com/democrat-operative-admits-we-ve-been-rigging-elections-for-50-years/  The actual video, it turns out, is from the 2016 campaign, and was meant to attack the Hillary Clinton campaign, not the Joe Biden one! Furthermore, the headline was bait-and-switch from the actual "confession" of the "operative." His actual quote was, "You know what, we've been bussing people in for 50 years to deal with you assholes, and we're not about to stop now!"

Did you get that? Not "rigging elections." "Bussing people in!" This hatchet piece actually thinks that bussing people to the polls is somehow "election fraud." Because heaven forbid people without a car get to vote regarding issues pertaining to public transportation!

Looking further, I found that "Jill" had posted lots of other articles in exactly the same way: .jpg only, making it extra difficult to check the link and actually read the article.

Just read the headline, sheeple. Don't do any follow-up research.

But that one's not even my favorite. Someone named "PoiZnus" posted, "Run this up the flagpole!!! Top Election Chief of #Milwaukee CAUGHT on camera illegally tabulating 169,000 mail in ballots." If you follow the link, you get taken here. No, seriously, check the video out! 

And what do you see in the video? You see a woman going to the vote tabulation machine, AND DOING HER JOB JUST FINE AND LEGALLY! What illegality is this woman supposed to have been caught doing?!

It's fake outrage! The reader is meant to see the headline with a link and assume the rest!

The purpose of these postings is not to disseminate truth, but rather to fool people into believing that proof of fraud on the part of the Biden campaign is rampant and everywhere. But scratch past the surface, and follow the links just a bit, and you'll find it's all smoke and mirrors! These links to "evidence" contain nothing of the kind!

That won't stop the people who sign into Parler from believing that all these links are genuine, and that all this "evidence" is true. 

Frequently seen is an image of a pair of vote-tabulation curves, showing Biden's surge at the end with mail-in ballots, seeming to make a letter "F." Naturally, the letters "R-A-U-D" were added to this, and the image has become viral on this relatively new platform. (See headline image on this blog post.)

Inside this new bubble, fake news has been taken to a whole new level. Pure, fucking, evil.

If fake news was like cocaine before, Parler is the equivalent of crack!

Eric

*

The Price Of Unity

 

Biden has a message of reconciliation. It's time to put away the hate and divisiveness and come together as a nation to build a better world for ourselves and our children. It's a great message.

And I thoroughly disagree with it.

I've shocked more than one Trump voter with that statement. When they've posted something on social media to the effect of, "Now that we have a new president, let's all be friends again," my answer is plain and simple:

Aw, HELL, no!

After four years of the most hate-filled, derisive and irrational verbal abuse, you think you can just come back to the circle and sing "kumbaya" with us? Think again!

It comes as a surprise to some of these Trump voters. One person even called it "a slap to the face." But it shouldn't be a shock to anyone. Not really.

Forgiveness, you see, is healthy, and not just a Christian thing. It's good for all of us to forgive. But in order for someone to receive forgiveness, regardless of one's religion, that person must show some remorse for his sins.

No remorse? No penitence? No forgiveness!

That may sound harsh, and it is, but tough love is necessary. Especially now. I cannot back down from insisting upon this one, central point:

Trump was NEVER an option!

In a sane world, he would have been laughed off the table. Especially by Republicans! He was everything we warned people he would be, and worse. A narcissistic, petulant, racist, misogynistic, man-baby. A charlatan. A bully. A pauper disguised as a rich man. 

And we knew all this way, way back when Trump was becoming a Fox News media darling by pushing the lies about Barack Obama's birth certificate! Six bankruptcies! A whole string of failed products! Appearances in porno films! Refusal to release taxes! This man couldn't even draw a profit from a casino! The Pentagon was literally afraid to give him intelligence briefings or hand him the nuclear codes!

This should have been kindergarten-level simple!

Meanwhile, in Trumpland, it was often acknowledged how bad Trump was. "But we'd rather have that than socialism!"

As if reality didn't dictate that 50 "socialists" (whatever that means anymore) weren't preferable to one Donald J. Trump. But the Right Wing Media Cult situated things so that "Demon-rats" and "Libtards" were automatically worse, no matter what.

It has been so bad that there are literally people who believe the Democrats are running a Satanic pedophile ring! Who believe the "lame-stream media" is the enemy of the people! Who were protesting against public safety measures, during a pandemic, while armed! People literally wanted trump just to "make liberals cry!" as if that were somehow a justifiable motive!

Trump literally tried to subvert the voting process. ON VIDEO. He spread conspiracy theories to make people believe certain votes were fraudulent, without evidence. He falsely claimed victory before the vote was completed. He STILL refuses to concede defeat!

We lucked out that Trump turned out to be an imbecile. If he had the intelligence level of, let's say, Vladimir Putin? There would be no United States of America anymore. It would be the Fourth Reich.

So, if after all that, you want to simply pretend it never happened and be all friendly? Fuck you! You can take your message of reconciliation and shove it up your ass! Until you repent of Trump, and Trumpism, you can go straight to hell! And take your Q Anon bullshit with you when you do!

And I understand how rioting and looting has damaged our own brand on the Left as well. Such actions played right into the hands of the Right Wing Media Cult, and gave them extra ammunition to demonize liberals. But seriously, when you impoverish people for generations, when you fuck up a pandemic response and render them all unemployed, eventually they lash out. No, that doesn't justify it, but perhaps that makes it more understandable.

And, for the record, let's knock that looting shit off forever! It really hurt us this election!

If you want unity, friendship, and a United States of America, the price is the complete and unconditional excommunication of Donald Trump.

I really don't think that's too high a price to pay.

Eric

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Trump Must Go To Jail

  

Listening to the reaction of the Right Wing Media Cult, I've come to realize that only one thing will heal our nation:

Jail time for Donald John Trump.

There are a string of lawsuits facing Trump once he leaves office, willingly or not. Robert Mueller has already testified that if Trump weren't President, that he could be charged with obstruction. And all that is before we get to Trump's violation of the Hatch Act, his refusal to fully separate himself of his private holdings, and his ongoing lawsuits over his tax returns.

Meanwhile, Trumpists are refusing to face reality that his guy lost; that there are simply, plainly, more people that hate Trump than love him.

But they've been in denial about him for five years. Why start accepting reality now?

Last Friday night, Sean Hannity cited numerous examples of "observers" being denied access to the vote count, and concluded from this that there has been massive voter fraud going on. Now, it is axiomatic that when the vote-counting authorities have been pre-determined, any additional "observers," no matter how official-seeming, are outside their official authority, and allowing them in to "observe" would be hugely disruptive. So naturally, Hannity has loads of footage of such people getting turned away. This means such "observers" have zero evidence of voter fraud, but that doesn't stop Hannity. Because, he says, not being able to see the process means that there must be fraud going on, right?

It's an old fallacy. I can't see into the box, therefore the box MUST contain X. Because why else would I be denied access to see inside of it?

Obviously there are space aliens inside Area 51. Otherwise why won't the Army let us in?

Meanwhile, Mark Belling is his usual, lying self on Thursday's afternoon show:

"What, you think Democrats will stop cheating? I mean even if he could magically do the thi... I just do not see a scenario where - if he needs Pennsylvania, they'll give him Pennsylvania. In other words, if Trump loses Arizona and he loses North Carolina it's possible they won't screw him on Pennsylvania. But if Pennsylvania is needed by Biden I just think that they'll... they're going to do it. They will literally... They'll commit the crimes right in front of everybody because they don't care what's going to happen. This is the same city that the Black Panthers in '08 stood at the election doors with guns stopping republicans from voting! And not one of them went to jail over that! So why wouldn't they... I jus... I - I just don't know how you stop the cheating..."

Belling is referring to one incident in November of 2008 where only two members of the New Black Panther party stood outside of only one polling station in Philadelphia. One of the two men was armed, but with a billy club, not a gun. The two men shouted racial slurs at whites going in to vote, but no one was prevented from entering. After a lengthy court hearing in 2010, the charges were dismissed. But the fact that Belling mis-remembers the whole story is telling. In the game of conservative talk-radio telephone, the incident became ALL the Black Panthers, they were all armed, and with guns, not one dude with a club.

And even THAT misses the point! Because Belling thinks that an incident in 2008 has any bearing on what's going on in Philadelphia TODAY!

This is known as presumption of guilt based on prior record, and every courtroom knows it's a logical fallacy.

Media Matters for America has reported on how the negative feedback loop between Lame-Duck President Trump and Fox News is leading to more and more claims of fraud - without evidence.

The only "evidence" they have is that they were not allowed to go in and disrupt the process.

In the coming weeks and months, there will be numerous lawsuits and recounts. They will fail. Let them. It will provide ample evidence that their claims of voter fraud are wrong.

If it looks like a lame duck, and it waddles like a lame duck, and it quacks like a lame duck, it's probably a lame duck.

But even that won't stop them. The underlying delusions that made Donald Trump president in the first place will still be there, with institutional support from the Right Wing Media Cult.

The only way to break that, at least a little bit, is for people to see Donald Trump in an orange jump suit.

Hell, it's his color, anyway.

No, it won't end the delusions overnight. It won't even appear to slow them down, at first. But sooner or later, people will say, "Hey, all this time these guys, Limbaugh, Hannity, Belling and Fox News, they were all arguing in defense of Donald Trump, and look what a crook HE turned out to be? Why do these clowns still have a job?"

And then, finally, it will fall.

If Trump manages to stay out of jail, which I doubt, he will likely be the Republican candidate in 2024, and once again, we will have to stomp this down, disbelieve the polls, and try to win this thing by three touchdowns instead of the two we tried to win by during this year's election.

And after two failed elections in a row, Trumpism will finally be dead.

But it will be so very much easier if Trump goes to jail now.

The Republican Party needs a hard reset. Turn the whole party off, fire everybody, then turn it back on again and start fresh.

But that, of course, won't happen.

Seeing Trump in jail is the next best thing. And it will bring at least some Republicans back to sanity.

Eric

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