No Surrender: Donald Trump Wants the Republicans to Go Fuck Themselves...Slowly

Never got to this earlier, and could save it for the inevitable link-dump, but I do quite love this picture of Donald Trump having signed one of the bullshit pledges to the RNC (was the extra copy in case he didn't like the way his signature looked on the first try ?).  The make-me-look-smarter reading-glasses à la Rick Perry...the appropriate distance down his nose...The green tint that may or may not be an accident of white-balance...The unreadable savage blur of a signature coinciding with the almost Comic Sans. of his 'print' writing...The insane, 'I'm-not-balding' dead-animal-on-my-head comb-forward...And then...that look...

This is not the look of capitulation, Rand.  (Here, I'll sign ya shitty little piece o' paper...if, it'll make y'feel better...)  This is the look of a privileged and pampered sixty-nine-year-old teahadist maniac getting to live out a childhood fantasy at the expense of probably the entire world as his aging brain melts.  And we, in the media, the blogosphere, and social media, celebrate this lunacy at the possible expense of the survival of our own species

<Checks name of this blog>  Oh yeah...we're all fucked anyway !  Go for it Donnie ! Wha'the'hell ?!!

Occam's Razor

A few words on ole' Donnie Boy.  Earlier on this blog, I alluded to certain conspiracy-theories about Trump's candidacy.

But, the more I see and hear Mister Trump, something I have hitherto studiously avoided, since, oh, the 'eighties or so, the more I'm convinced that Trump is not just appealing to your crazy older relatives & in-laws, who marinate their brains in a steady intake of Fox News, Drudge, and AM talk-radio...Rather, he is them.  He is that crazy uncle who will start ranting on at the dinnertable about Saul Alinsky & Rules for Radicals, and then get angry and frustrated that everyone else is 'pretending' not to have a clue what the fuck he's talking about.

The difference is that your crazy uncle will likely end up in a mental institution, homeless, shooting up a movie-theatre, or, more likely, dead of an aneurysm, after angrily shouting at the 'Muslim interloper' on the teevee-set one time too many.  He doesn't have the self-confidence, the hubris, or, more importantly, the money and contacts to run for president.  Trump does.

Think about it.  An eccentric nearly seventy-year-old white man, who, never mind the right-wing media-bubble, factor as that is, has spent his whole life in a bubble of his own making, hobnobbing with only the richest*, the most famous, coming otherwise into contact only with the most expertly craven bootlickers and yes-men.  A man who stamps his name in massive capital letters on every property he touches, who refers to himself in the third person, who exaggerates his own wealth and accomplishments.  And who stokes publicly for years a fantasy about his running for president.  Only to end up here at the tail-end of 'the worst presidency ever', with apparently apocalyptic consequences if good decent-minded white folk can't take back the White House from the perverts and communists who have infiltrated it...to, er, make America great again, as it were.

If you were naïve enough to believe the ridiculous hyperbolic crap that come out of the likes of Fox News, if you heard the Republican base crying out for a messiah, and if you were Donald Trump, why wouldn't you run for president ?  He can afford it.  His ego is seemingly untouchable, and allows him to easily spin any loss as a victory, even to himself.  And if there were ever a time in a man's life, assuming Trump considers himself mortal, for a true legacy-moment, going on threescore years and ten is about it.  The man has nothing to lose.

Nothing.  Trump goes bankrupt, he wins.  Trump helps elect Hillary Clinton, he wins.  Trump destroys the GOP for generations, he wins.  Trump brings on the coming of the Antichrist, he wins.  Trump invites an alien invasion of Earth, he wins.  Trump always wins...even when he loses.

And the man would seem to be as utterly deluded as the right-wing Tea Partiers whose votes he would court.  Outside of the conspiracy-theories, it's the only thing that makes sense.  He just is that crazy.  Which, if he takes this all the way, could just be America's salvation.


For a reminder of Trump's background, pre-Apprentice, do yourself a favour and go watch Trump: What's the Deal?** (Don't be put off by the cheesy music by Queen in the opening credits.).  It's a pretty good window into the origins of and the person that is one Donald J Trump.


* In case you were wondering whether there were consequences to living in such a bubble generally: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/28/rich-people-surrounded-by-other-rich-people-think-america-is-richer-than-it-really-is/

** Also on YT, here.

The Spectator: The transatlantic flirtation behind Ukip’s sudden meltdown

I have no idea the degree to which, or if any of this is true, but it was long clear that Breitbart was in the bag for UKIP, probably as much if not more so than the Express.

What’s happened to poor Ukip? Not so long ago, they seemed unstoppable. They were revolting on the right, terrifying the left and shaking up Westminster. The established parties tried sneering at them, smearing them, even copying them. Nothing worked. Then came the general election, the centre held, and Ukip seemed to fall apart. Farage failed to win his target seat in South Thanet, the focus of his whole campaign. He resigned, then farcically unresigned, three days later.

...

Here’s the strange thing, though: the election was not a disaster for Ukip. It was a triumph. They won 3.9 million votes — 3 million more than in 2010, and 1.5 million more than the Liberal Democrats. If that rate of growth, or anything like it, were to continue, by 2020 Nigel Farage could well be prime minister. So why has the party sabotaged itself?

To begin to understand, it helps to cross the Atlantic and meet Stephen Bannon, executive chairman of a mysteriously rich right-wing website called Breitbart....

The company Bannon runs is one of a large number of media organisations that exploit what Richard Hofstadter called the ‘paranoid style’ in US politics. Breitbart specialises in stoking up Middle American rage at big government and the liberal elite. Its founder, Andrew Breitbart, was a charismatic muckraker who worked with Matt Drudge, author of the Drudge Report and probably the most influential right-winger of the internet age. Breitbart’s site was generating huge amounts of online traffic when suddenly, at the age of 43, he dropped dead. (The coroner said heart failure; some of Breitbart’s keenest admirers say that he was poisoned by Barack Obama’s secret agents, which says something about them.) People expected Breitbart’s website to die with him but, under Bannon’s stewardship, it just got bigger. It is today a profitable company — though its press office refuses to say where the profit comes from.

The rise of Breitbart on the new media scene chimed nicely with the rise of the Tea Party, the amorphous movement within American conservatism that rose to prominence after the election of Barack Obama and the financial crash. Breitbart became essential reading for embittered American right-wingers, of whom there is no shortage.

...

A spokesman for Breitbart insisted that the London office was not established to support any political party. Nevertheless, it didn’t take long for Breitbart London to become a Ukip cheerleader....

Breitbart staff were alarmed at the lack of editorial independence. ‘We effectively became the Ukip comms office,’ says one employee. ‘Any criticism of the sainted Farage was completely banned,’ says another. It’s understood that Delingpole and Kassam fell out over the site’s pro-Ukip line.

...

British politicians are easily seduced by American money and power, and it seems Farage, for all his anti-elitism, was no exception. In The Purple Revolution, he positively gushes about his four days in September in the land of the free. He describes a friendly meeting with Rupert Murdoch (‘We are both outsiders who despise the establishment’), an equally amicable encounter with presidential hopeful Rand Paul (‘my political doppelgänger’) and a dinner, hosted by Breitbart in their Washington office overlooking Capitol Hill, in which he sat next to Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a Tea Party darling, and the popular talk-radio host Laura Ingraham.

It must have felt like the beginnings of a special relationship. By learning from American experts, Farage believed he could turn Ukip into a more professional outfit. Kassam and Richardson put him in touch with strategists and activists who specialised in ‘micro-campaigning’ and social media. At the same time, Breitbart and the Tea Party’s leadership saw in Farage a man with whom they could do business — a conservative quite unlike David Cameron, who had spent so long toadying up to Obama. Moreover, the Americans wanted to learn from Ukip how a new party could rattle the established order — since the Tea Party, for all its noise, had never broken out on its own, or caused any meaningful shift in the Grand Old Party.

Back home, Ukip staff quickly got fed up with what they called the ‘Tea Party tendency’ and Farage’s ‘mad love affair’ with the American right. In February, Farage annoyed his followers by missing the first day of Ukip’s spring conference in Margate because he was giving a speech to a half-empty room at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. ‘The party was seething and baffled,’ says one insider. ‘It was a major moment for Ukip and the leader wasn’t there.’

There were also growing concerns about a change in Ukip’s ‘messaging’. Farage is said to have developed a ‘shock and awe’ strategy, which involved making deliberately outrageous statements to arouse the ire of the despised political and media class. For instance, in a television debate, Farage suggested that the NHS should not treat foreigners with Aids. That prompted fury from politically correct commentators, as expected, but it also disturbed quite a few natural conservatives. ‘Shock and awful,’ said a senior Ukip source.

In an interview with Trevor Phillips, Farage also referred to a ‘fifth column’ of Muslims in this country — which led to rumours that, rather than running an election campaign, he was aiming for a well-paid gig on Fox News.

...

Ukip seemed to be waging an American-style culture war — but the British didn’t appear to be interested. From October to election day, the party’s standing in the polls fell from 18 to 13 per cent. The dip can’t all be pinned on Ukip’s drift towards Tea Party politics, but a number of Kippers feel that Farage’s infatuation with America distracted him from his mission at a crucial moment, and unbalanced the delicate ecosystem that had allowed the party to flourish.

Which might explain why, after the election, Ukip’s leadership turned on itself so viciously....

I never imagined they were so explicitly inter-connected however.

Poor, Poor Baby

Aw, whaddashame....

Truly, the end-times are upon us.

View image | gettyimages.com

My favorite Irish Republican

Oh, look, we've got mail:

Uh...Gerry Adams ?  The Omagh bombers ?  The geniuses that helped bring about the redevelopment in the Arndale area of Manchester ?  The would-be assassins of Thatcher in Brighton ?  The dicks that brought about the closure of the rotating restaurant at the top of the Post Office Tower ?  The would-be bombers of Canary Wharf ?  Miscellaneous murderers of a few thousand people in Northern Ireland ?  Wait, wait...you are referring to the IRA, right ?.....

Oh, you mean the radical bomb-throwing extremist fuckers in the US Republican party.  Nah, mate...I don't hold with yer actual terrorists, like...  Who d'you take me for ?  Peter King ?

American Theocracy Now

Exhibits A & B for those who may think fears of the US of A turning into a theocracy are overstated:

Via little green footballs, 57% of Republicans support establishing Christianity as the national religion.

Via Jon Green of AmericaBlog: Unelectable Atheists: U.S. States That Prohibit Godless Americans From Holding Public Office

I'm not surprised...at all...at the sentiment, but maybe...at little...that the fundamentalist bastards in so many states tried to write this shit into law.

So what, requiring belief in a god or Supreme Being, is not a religious test ?  Depending on one's definition of religion, maybe.

Bankrupt the US just a little bit more and the Tea Party can take over as a parallel ISIS.

Sleater-Kinney: Combat Rock

Since when is scepticism un-American ?

Not sure how I'd have got through the Bush years without the likes of Sleater-Kinney.  But then, what to say of the years since, in the inter-regnum till Uncle Barry hands the reins over to Hill' ?  It's one's thing to feel justifiable outrage when you think there's an alternative; another entirely when there's demonstrably nothing of the sort, when there is (as there has been most of my life), nothing but shit, slightly shittier, and shit-on-a-stick...  In 2016, America will elect as president either a) the most right-wing Fascistic Democratic politician, or b) a lunatic-fringe Tea-Party Republican who makes the most right-wing Democrat look like fucking Gandhi or Jesus.  This is representative of the totality of the options for most Americans.  And the options for most Britons are scarcely better.  Fuck us all.