The Joy Offensive

Since Kamala Harris picked Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate for the 2024 Presidential election (all without dealing with the silly little detail of getting actual delegates through the primary process), the Left and the media (but I repeat myself) have been working overtime to fluff up the ticket like it was on a porn set. Not that I know anything about that, mind you…

The result has been glowing reviews, lots of money being raised, and social media abuzz with talk of joy surrounding the ticket. Polls that showed Harris less popular than an STD have flipped, leaving the Trump/Vance ticket to scratch their heads in amazement. Either that or they need Head and Shoulders. Regardless, it’s the political equivalent of Lazarus being raised from the dead.

On the surface, it’s a mystery. How could a Vice President known more for word salads and failed initiatives than success get the upper hand on a former President known more for word salads and odd initiatives, but still can count successes on both hands? It starts with the framing of the Harris/Walz ticket. And for that, we can thank the Walzster. He had the bright idea of calling the Trump/Vance ticket “weird” which caught on like wildfire. Then again, TikTok videos catch on like wildfire, too, so it’s not exactly a high bar.

If you missed my tepid take on the “weird” controversy, I got your hookup. Although I have panned the notion, I can’t argue with the results. It’s become a Leftist squawking point and a clear point of irritation for Trump/Vance, which takes attention away from the issues, thanks in part to the media.

But that’s only the first part of the equation. Although Trump and Vance have been refuting the allegations they are “weird,” Harris/Walz have taken a step into another phase of the campaign: reimagining their ticket as the ticket of joy. Since being chosen, Walz has been seen as more of a father or grandfather figure, and Harris has been emphasizing how she represents hope and joy.

Hmmm…hope as a campaign platform. Nah, it would never work!

Harris has also tapped into the youth culture by adopting a “brat summer” approach. For those of you who don’t know what that means, be glad you’re uninformed because it’s just as stupid as it sounds. But, again, the results speak for themselves at least for now. Whether the young people inspired by the Harris/Walz joy offensive get inspired to vote is still in question, but I’m sure there’s a Kinko’s in Washington, DC, already working on printing up prefilled ballots for Harris/Walz.

So with all this joy and positivity going around, there can’t be a down side, can there? As your resident cynical curmudgeon, I can say there is, and it’s pretty easy to spot if you’re paying attention.

Which means Leftists are completely in the dark about it.

The first thing to point out about the joy offensive is it’s based on nothing. No policy statements, no real interviews or press conferences, not even an updated campaign website with policy positions (but more than a few ways you can donate to the campaign). Which, if you really think about it, is pretty on-brand for Kamala Harris, but that’s not important right now.

Now, compare the joy the Harris/Walz/media narrative spins to what’s actually going on right now. If you listen to the squawking heads like perpetually-wrong-but-never-in-doubt Paul Krugman, everything is fine and you’re just too dumb to realize it. (And, yes, that’s really what they’re suggesting/saying.) Yet, if you go to where the people really are, things aren’t good. Inflation is higher than Willie Nelson in Amsterdam on 4/20, goods and services are more expensive, and you need a third mortgage to get a tank of gas, mainly because you used your second mortgage to get groceries for the week. No amount of joy is going to make any of this go away, but by God, Harris/Walz is gonna try!

And there’s a good chance they may succeed, at least for now. But try paying your mortgage with joy. Just let me know what happens after the foreclosure sale.

The great irony of this approach is it’s policies like the ones Harris/Walz have advocated that has caused the pain. Appealing to people’s desire to be happy is designed to get people to ignore that little fact. Who cares if Harris was the Border Czar in spite of the media saying otherwise? Who cares if Walz made it okay to take away parents’ children if they didn’t want to mutilate the children if little Timmy feels like little Tammy for a hot minute? Who cares if the COVID lockdowns caused more problems than they allegedly solved? Just be happy, dammit!

I can’t deny there are times when we need diversions from the flaming dumpster fire that is America 2024. Video games, movies, writing semi-well-received blogs with marginal humor, those are all ways to tune out the world and plug in to your inner peace. Your mileage may vary, but the point’s the same. We shouldn’t expect politicians to provide us joy. Unless, of course, your joy comes from spending billions of dollars you don’t have on stuff that doesn’t work. That’s retail therapy on steroids, kids.

More to the point, if you think government has the ability to bring you the joy you seek in life, you’ve already succumbed to the trap. The more a government can “give” you, the less likely you are to find it yourselves. And that’s by design. Leftists believe Big Daddy Government is the sole provider of all things good, nice, and, well, joyous. The more Leftists get you to believe that, the more likely you are to support them, which helps them perpetuate their power and money bases.

And the less likely anything really positive will get done. After all, government isn’t in the problem-solving businesses because a problem solved is a revenue and power source lost. But as long as they get you to believe the Left will fix things if given enough time, money, and power, they don’t care!

I’ll be interested to see how long the Harris/Walz joy offensive will work and if it will evolve or get tossed aside once Trump/Vance start landing rhetorical punches. At some point, Harris/Walz is going to have to stop talking about joy and start talking about policy, and that time is coming soon. With a matter of weeks left before Election Day, the joy offensive is going to have to give way to substance.

And no amount of joy can hold back the hands of time.

Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week

In the aftermath of President Brick Tamland’s horrible debate performance, Leftists and the media (is there an echo in here?) have been stuck between a rock and a hard place. At least Bill Clinton isn’t involved or else it would be between a rock and a hard-on. Anyway, media types find themselves on the horns of a dilemma: continue to carry water for the Left, or actually do some reporting to confirm what we’ve been seeing for, oh, the past several years.

The latest victim, if you can call him that, of this dilemma is George Stephanopoulos, former White House Communications Director under the aforementioned Commander in Briefs and current lapdog…I mean journalist for ABC News. His crime? Answering a question about whether President Tamland could serve another four years. This got Georgie Boy in some hot water with his bosses, who demanded he clarify what he said and apologize for…and I’m not making this up…jeopardizing his and the network’s objectivity.

I’ll let you stop laughing before I continue.

Anyway, the Left is now concerned with appearing objective after spending decades not giving one tenth of one shit about it. Say, might that be because they’re covering up the fact they’ve been slobbering over President Tamland’s every move until he screwed the pound, let alone the pooch? Naaaaaaaaah!

So, let’s take a deep dive into objectivity and why the Left sucks at it.

objectivity

What the Left thinks it means – balanced reporting of the facts without emotion, which means not feeding the narrative of the Right

What it really means – balanced reporting of the facts without consideration of ideology

Back when I was young and stupid, I wanted to get into the journalism field. Not for the money because, well, there isn’t any in journalism, but because I wanted to be someone who could uncover the hidden truth. And as I went along in my studies, I grew more and more enamored with the romanticized ideal of what a reporter should be.

Then, I got to graduate school and heard an editor from a local paper say it was impossible for reporters to be objective. To say it blew my mind at the time would be an understatement. After years of having objectivity pounded into my young brain, here was someone in the journalism field telling me it was all bullshit (a position this person held years after the initial proclamation).

It was also around this time that a certain popular Democrat President started to wow people in the press, which made it easier to get them to slob on Slick Willie’s knob.

And I hope to all that’s holy it was only figuratively.

Granted, the press wasn’t completely objective in the 1980s. They made subtle (and not-so-subtle) jabs at Ronald Reagan during his tenure. Ironic, given how the press is covering President Tamland, but that’s a blog post for another time. Once the media threw up its collective hands and said “objectivity is impossible,” the blending of political ideologies and hard news was complete.

And journalism went in the shitter.

Then, with the advent of “reporters” like Taylor Lorenz, the shitter is the highest modern journalism can aspire to be.

Fortunately for the media, people let them slide because they still retained at least some credibility from being seen as legitimate news sources. No matter how much they shit on Republicans, conservatives, or anyone who isn’t them, people tended to give the press the benefit of the doubt. Anyone who disagreed with the idea these DNC stenographers were calling balls and strikes was written off as a partisan crank. Even when the alleged crank was an insider.

And guess who came along to fuck it all up. Donald Fucking Trump.

Trump made it possible for people to rip on the lack of objectivity in the media, not to mention the out-and-out partisan lying. From that point on, the Left couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting someone who was calling out their bullshit. Oh, and pissing off PETA.

The problem the media face right now can be traced back to when they decided objectivity was impossible. By choosing sides, they started eroding the veneer of honesty previous generations built, but at least they got to hang out at all the cool kids’ parties. Because that’s far more important than not being lapdogs to people you agree with politically.

By the way Leftists and media folks (there’s that echo again), that was a joke. Much like Taylor Lorenz’s reporting only intentionally funny.

What isn’t so funny is the implications of how media silence or out and out denial of President Tamland’s deteriorating mental condition. The larger scale implications are easy enough to pick out and bad enough as it is (a cardboard cutout of the President would be better suited mentally to be President), but from a journalistic standpoint, it’s pretty bad. If these journalists who are supposed to be reporting the news knew about this and stayed silent, their credibility should be fucked more than a porno star. This is a legitimate news story, but apparently our intellectual betters thought it might worry us too much to think our President has the mental capacity of a turnip, so they kept it to themselves.

At least, that’s the explanation that would make more sense than their sudden realization President Tamland is on the intellectual downside of a hill on the world’s tallest roller coaster and plummeting rapidly. Their feigned surprise only worsens the issue, an issue that would never have happened if they had been…objective.

The thing is objectivity isn’t as impossible as the Left and the media (I must be writing this from the bottom of the Grand Canyon) make it out to be. Yes, we all have biases and perspectives we bring into any situation, but objectivity doesn’t require you to not have them. It requires us to overcome them to provide as many sides of an event as possible. Of course, Leftists have made this impossible in recent years by taking the attitude no one outside of their intellectual gangbang has a valid point of view, so all they hear is what everyone else in their bubble hears: Leftist squawking points. That’s all well and good if you’re at a political rally, but it’s shitty when you’re in the news business.

The sad part is I’m not sure the media are ready to have a conversation about the place objectivity has in modern journalism because newsrooms have become mini political rallies of a sort. There are still a handful of reporters out there calling balls and strikes, but they’re few and far between compared to the multitude of dimwitted half-baked bloggers or social media “influencers” who call themselves reporters. The fact ABC News made George Stephanopoulos retract his statement (made while he was off the clock, by the way) shows how far down this rabbit hole we’ve gone. What ABC News did under the guise of maintaining objectivity is bullshit incarnate. If they were really concerned about objectivity, they would have been out front with the President Tamland story before everyone else, given it a fair treatment, and let the chips fall where they may. You know, like journalists used to do?

But something tells me ABC News was more concerned about getting invited to dinner parties and keeping access to the President than in telling the truth.

Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week

After a particularly disastrous performance in any venture, there are usually two groups of people: ones who reflect, retool, and try again, and ones who point fingers trying to find a scapegoat. This past week, CNN got a load of people from the Left doing the latter after their debate between President Brick Tamland and Donald Trump.

Well, unless you want to go with the idea Donald Trump zapped the President with an energy weapon that made him look like, well, himself.

And this Leftist dumbfuck wasn’t the only one. Leftists all over the Social Media Network Formerly Known as Twitter came up with any number of excuses, but the general consensus was CNN fucked President Tamland.

And now we’re going to see why that is quite possibly the shittiest take ever.

CNN

What the Left thinks it means – a cable news network who is in the back pocket of Donald Trump

What it really means – a once and hopefully no longer DNC stenographer

I know I’ve gone over some of this stuff before, so I’ll keep it brief. When CNN first went on the air, it was a media marvel. A 24 hour news channel that you could tune in to any time of the day or night and get caught up on the day’s events. It was novel and changes the face of news forever.

Over time, though, the novelty wore off and they had to start generating buzz (and revenue) somehow. And, let’s face it, Bernard Shaw Is My Daddy t-shirts weren’t exactly flying off the shelves. Then, the first Gulf War came about and CNN got a whole new set of eyes on it. And with those eyes came a feeling of invincibility. No one else could do what they did as well as they could do it. They were Kings and Queens of the Mountain.

Which made them cocky and sloppy. Over time, their on-air talent and their talent behind the scenes started letting their political biases creep into the product. And eventually, the network started being called the Clinton News Network after its mostly favorable coverage of President Bill “I Don’t Know Where My Pants Are, Why Do You Ask?” Clinton.

And if you thought CNN wanted to slob Slick Willie’s knob, watching them cover Barack “I Don’t Know Where My Balls Are, Ask Michelle” Obama would make even the most tenured sex worker look positively virginal.

Put simply, CNN is in the tank for the Left. So, it boggles the mind how the Left could even consider CNN to be on Trump’s side. Even the two moderators of the Trump-Tamland debate were on record as being critical of the former President. And in Jake Tapper’s case, that criticism was rather pointed. So, when they handled the debacle…I mean debate with a fairly even tone, I was honestly surprised.

And apparently so were the Leftists. They wanted Tapper and Dana Bash to fact check Trump on the spot instead of letting him say what he wanted. (No word yet from these same Leftists if they wanted the two to fact check Biden in the same manner, by the way.) But there’s one tiny problem with that approach: they were moderators, not fact checkers. And after the Candy Crowley debacle in 2012, I would think Leftists wouldn’t want moderators to let their masks slip that much.

This change from being a reliable Leftist media outlet to something closer to centrist is by design. Recent leadership changes within CNN signaled a move back towards the straight news reporting they were once known for while allowing for a narrower focus on prominent news stories. While still not quite as centrist as some would say CNN is, they’re at least acknowledging there’s room for improvement.

Which, of course, makes Leftists lose their collectivist shit.

The thing is it’s frightfully easy to be a Leftist media outlet. All you need to do is find a way to keep money rolling in since you’re preaching to the same choir night after night. CNN used to be able to do this, but with the advent of MSNBC on the further Left and Fox News on the Right, it found itself trying to appeal to both sides and making nobody happy.

Why, it’s almost as if alienating potential audience members is a bad fucking idea!

So, from a business standpoint, CNN moving closer to the middle is fiscally responsible. Whether people still see it as a viable news source is yet to be seen. And judging from Leftist reactions to even the slightest move to the right of Trotsky, it didn’t go over well.

This is for a couple of reasons. First, Leftists suck at basic economics. Second, they tend to look at things through an emotional lens (which helps explain the first point). And third, Leftists hate anything that removes even an iota of power from their grasp or exposes their ideology to ridicule.

Enter President Tamland’s debate performance, which is less of a disaster than a Hindenburg movie by Michael Bay written by Tommy Wiseau. Although I would pay good money for Wiseau to make a cameo just to say “Oh hi-drogen!”

You can stop booing now.

Since Leftists are less capable of admitting a mistake than The Fonz, immediately CNN became the primary reason President Tamland looks like, well, himself. Of course, the real reason Leftists attacked CNN for Tamland’s disaster is not that they went out of their way to make him look bad, but that…they noticed he looked bad and didn’t come to his defense. They tried to do some damage control after the debate by fact-checking Trump and Tamland, but the damage was done. Tamland looked frail, confused, and without mental clarity. But at least we beat Medicare, amirite?

And after weeks and weeks of denying it, CNN among others had to admit President Tamland was not firing on all cylinders. Or maybe on any cylinders, for that matter. No more “cheap fakes.” No more deep fakes. No more right wing talking points. The Emperor had no clothes, but maybe had on adult diapers.

I have my issues (or subscriptions as the case may be) with CNN, but I have to defend them here. They didn’t cause President Tamland to look bad, and that’s even with all the preparations he did prior to the debate (including going to the debate stage). He’s just that bad of a candidate this time around, and no about of finger-pointing is going to change that.

So, to any Leftists reading this, lay off CNN. It’s not their fault your side decided to run a Strom Thurmond body double in 2024. You had your chance to pick someone else, even with the knowledge he was getting as sharp as a Nerf ball on the regular. It’s your fuck-up, so enjoy the ride.

And as for CNN, welcome to what conservatives and other non-Leftists have experienced for decades! Don’t worry. We have drinks, snacks, and more open-minded people than the Left. And what’s more, we validate parking!





Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week

In case you’ve been living under a rock or on the campus of UC Berkeley, you’ve heard President Brick Tamland is old. How old? I wish I could say this is a set up to a Johnny Carson-esque joke, but I can’t. He really is old, and it shows.

Or, it would show if Leftists were honest about it. Instead of admitting President Tamland is so old he makes Strom Thurmond look like a newborn (and, to be honest, I’m not sure the President wasn’t at his baptism), they’re going with a different approach: pretending everything we’re seeing isn’t real. In fact, the Tamland Administration has come up with a new term to describe it, that being “cheap fakes.”

Given the inflation caused by the Administration, I’m surprised anything is cheap. But it’s a good jumping on point for this week’s Lexicon.

cheap fakes

What the Left thinks it means – the results of right wing media distorting videos to give the impression the President is feeble and not capable of being President

What it really means – Leftists trying to gaslight us more than Victorian times

The Left knows the President has issues, and by issues I mean subscriptions. He mumbles incoherently like he’s taking diction lessons from Ozzy Osbourne. He loses track of where he is in speeches, even reading directly off the teleprompter when it was more instructional. He freezes in the middle of sentences and stares blankly into space. He wanders off and has to have others help him get to where he’s supposed to go. He’s even fallen up stairs. Not down, up!

But Orange Man Bad, amirite?

No matter what video evidence there is (and how many videos show the same deteriorating conditions), the Left has an answer. They provide statements from numerous sources, including Republicans, saying President Tamland is as mentally sharp as ever. They compare the President’s mental ability to Donald Trump’s. And now, they’re saying it’s all fake.

It’s at this point I’m throwing the brown bullshit flag. It’s one thing to have it happened once in a while. We all get old and occasionally forgetful. It’s another thing altogether to dismiss multiple televised and live instances to consider it to be a total right wing conspiracy with altered footage, distorted camera angles, and selective still shots to make President Tamland look bad. He’s doing that well enough all on his own, so he doesn’t need the Right’s help.

But the Left’s response to people noticing President Tamland is shakier than Rosie O’Donnell eating Jello on the San Andreas Fault during a 7.8 earthquake is a tell. As you’ve seen in previous Lexicon entries, the Left has no problem doing what they’re accusing the Right of doing. Fuck, Media Matters has made a tidy career of doing just that. Then, there’s documentarian/all-you-can-eat-buffet enthusiast Michael Moore, a reliable Leftist liar.

And don’t get me started on the Left’s “very fine people on both sides” lie.

The Left has no problem lying when it suits them, so when they call actual video footage of President Tamland acting like a broken down animatronic robot from the Hall of Presidents a cheap fake, it’s pure drive in movie level projection, baby!

That’s not to say the right-leaning news organizations aren’t prone to distortion when it suits a narrative, mind you. Fox News has seen legal repercussions from lying, as has Alex Jones. And, for what it’s worth, I don’t trust either of them (although the video of an Alex Jones rant turned into a folk song is pretty funny). But it’s Hank Johnson opinions on Guam levels of stupid to say the Right is on par with the Left when it comes to distorting the truth. Dishonesty against political opponents is the coin of their realm.

Oh, and being absolute fucking idiots.

And they’re being absolute fucking idiots here. Instead of saying “Yeah, President Tamland is a PR disaster that shits himself on the regular, but he’s the best candidate we have,” the Left will continue to blame right wing disinformation and expect us to either cower in fear or question what we clearly see time after time after time.

What they don’t expect is for people across the ideological spectrum to see President Tamland’s decline and express concern he may be too old and incapable of being President. It’s getting harder and harder for the Tamland Administration and its lapdog media sources to tell us what we clearly see isn’t what we’re seeing and there’s a perfectly rational explanation for everything. They haven’t come up with this rational explanation, mind you, but they insist there is one.

Of course, this wouldn’t be a Leftist Lexicon entry without exposing at least some Leftist hypocrisy. Back in the mid-to-late 80s there was another President who was accused of being in cognitive decline while in office. That man was Ronald Reagan. Media outlets at the time questioned his mental acuity and there is some debate as to whether Reagan had Alzheimer’s Disease while in the White House. At that time, more than a few of the Leftists now saying President Tamland isn’t experiencing any decline in his faculties were suggesting Reagan was incompetent. They’ll deny it, of course, but it happened. I was fucking there. And they continue to do it.

But when it’s one of theirs (or two if you count Dianne Feinstein), such concerns are brushed aside. All for political gain.

Fuck that shit! We are seeing a man who shouldn’t be running a lemonade stand let alone have access to the nuclear codes getting worse and worse at a job that has physical and mental strains attached to it. And the worst part is I can’t even be mad at President Tamland for it. He’s being used by others as a figurehead while the real shitty work is being done behind the scenes when it’s not being done in his pants. This is elder abuse, but with global implications.

And the people using President Tamland as a meat-shield don’t care. They care about us noticing his mental decline repeatedly and deciding he should be home, not in the White House. And that’s utterly fucked up when you think about it.

So, save me the “cheap fakes” bullshit. Not only is a stupid turn of a phrase, but it reveals how little you really think of the President as a human being. The more you run interference for the guy, the worse it gets for you.

But look at the bright side. After this Administration gets tossed out on its asses and all the bullshit gets exposed, they will always have a seat on any panel on MSNBC.


Extremist Makeover – Media Matters Edition

Recently, Media Matters for America had to let go of a number of employees because inflation made Uncle George’s checks not stretch as far as they used to. At least they can still stretch the truth as good as they ever could!

As often happens with any layoffs, there needs to be a look inward to see what went wrong and how to improve. Since we’re dealing with Media Matters here, it’s unlikely they’ll do it or if they do they’ll blame those evil right wing liars. However, as an outsider, I’m willing to give them my thoughts and I won’t even expect a paycheck from Uncle George for it!

Let’s deal with the elephant…or donkey in this case in the room: Media Matters is a joke. And I’m not talking a good one. I’m talking Hannah Gadsby doing a knock knock joke on a double bill with Dane Cook bad. So bad, Carlos Mencia and Amy Schumer refuse to steal it.

A lot of that stems from the fact your perception of the world is similar to almost every other so-called fact-checker out there: Republicans always lie even when they’re telling the truth, and Democrats never lie even when they’re using the truth like a moist towelette at a rib joint. Media Matters may not have been the first to do this, but they were certainly the most well-heeled in doing it. And now, everybody and their grandmother is a fact-checker and with a similar track record of failure.

Put simply, fact-checking Republicans is stale, and in the post-COVID world where the people on the same side as Media Matters were caught wrong, lying, or worst yet ignoring the rules they set for everyone else, kinda pointless. If I wanted slanted fact checks with a restraining order against interacting with reality, I’d watch MSNBC. Of course, I’d also be a raging alcoholic because I’d be watching MSNBC, but that’s not the point.

The point is Media Matters needs rebranding. If you’re not going to turn away Uncle George’s money, at least you could lean into the humorous aspects of your fact checks. Granted, this humor is unintentional, so why not make it intentional? There is always room for more parody news sites, and when your only other competition is The Babylon Bee and The Onion, you have an opportunity here. You probably won’t topple the Bee because, well, they’re funny, but you can take a chunk out of The Onion’s readership by being funnier than the past few seasons of “Saturday Night Live.”

And that’s not even that high of a bar when you think about it.

Replace some of your hard-as-a-Nerf-bat-hitting researchers with comedy writers. I mean, Leftists keep telling us how much funnier they are than Conservatives, so let’s see their chops. Hire Jon Stewart and some of his old “Daily Show” writers. At worst, you’ll fail, but you’ll still be somewhat funny in the process.

Now, I’m sure the hardcore Media Matters suckers…I mean Soros trust fund recipients…I mean employees will balk at not only my characterization of their work, but also my proposed solution. After all, in the decades they’ve been in existence, they’ve done a solid 10-15 minutes of good work. You know, give or take an hour. To you I say this: you’re the problem. You take this crusade of exposing right wing lies so seriously it’s clouding your judgments. The reality of the situation is you’re only appealing to a core demographic who are inclined to agree with you.

Ask the former hosts of Air America how that turned out. Provided you can catch them during their break from asking people if they want fries with their burgers. Spoiler Alert: it doesn’t work unless your core audience is willing to part with their hard-earned money to buy the stuff you advertise. That’s where Air America failed, even with some well-heeled donors including Uncle George. If your target demographic is so poor they can’t afford to pay attention, you are in a money pit.

At some point, you will be there, if you aren’t already. Media Matters is a sinking ship, no longer the cutting edge of Leftist thought and research. Granted, it was more like a dull butter spreader than a cutting edge, but you get the point. You’re obsolete. So, you can either stay obsolete or make changes that will keep your brand viable. The choice is yours, but in either case I will laugh, whether it’s with you or at you.

So, win-win, I guess?

Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week

In a post-COVID world where the world went nuttier than elephant shit, I thought nothing could shock me. Today, I was shocked by CNN of all things.

You see, Anderson Cooper admitted Michael Cohen, a witness in the ongoing show railroading…I mean trial of former President Donald Trump, may have lied in his testimony. I’ll give you a moment to pick your jaws off the floor.

After years of holding the former President accountable for every statement that could be construed as untrue, it seems the Left seems to have lost its taste for finding the truth. Of course, I’m sure that’s just a complete coincidence, though. I mean, you would have to be complete assholes to demand the truth from only one side of the political aisle!

Oh, wait…

lying

What the Left thinks it means – something the Right does to advance their agenda

What it really means – something both sides do to advance their agendas

To borrow a phrase from some former President whose name escapes me at the moment, “Let me be clear.” Both sides of the aisle lie. In fact, lying is the coin of the realm in Washington. Where the Left and the Right differ, at least to me, is only the Left swings back and forth between demanding the truth and excusing the lies.

And one way the Left loves to lie is through the use of “fact-checkers.” The Washington Post claimed Trump made over 30,000 “false or misleading” claims. Of course, they don’t come out and show their math because, well, it’s fact-checked, so it has to be true, right?

Well, that depends on what the definition of false or misleading claims is. I got that from a different former President whose name escapes me at the moment. Turns out the fact checkers were stretching the truth on what they considered false or misleading. Why, it’s almost like these self-important assholes had a Paul Bunyan-sized axe to grind!

And this can be seen by watching the utter lack of fact-checking done for the current Administration under President Brick Tamland. First off, there’s the President, who recently told 15 lies in a 17 minute interview with CNN. And if you can figure out what Vice President Kamala Harris says, she doesn’t have a notarized tongue either. Just ask Willie Brown.

Then, we get to White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. To put it bluntly, she is as trustworthy as Hunter Biden’s accountability buddy. And when she gets caught in a lie, she doesn’t take it well. In fact, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy has proven to be Jean-Pierre’s version of Jim Acosta. I’m sorry. That is insulting. For that horrible and utterly demeaning comparison, I apologize to you, Mr. Doocy.

Anyway, the Left’s on-again/off-again love of the truth is hypocritical, yet utterly amusing. I mean, how can you legitimately take Leftists seriously when their commitment to the truth is as spotty as dial-up Internet? The problem is there are people out there either willing to swallow the bullshit or not informed enough to see through the lies, which encourages Leftists to continue to lie. And when they can’t lie their way out of a situation, they’ll gaslight you. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, gaslighting is lying, but a lot meaner.

So, this is where we come in. The fact the Left lies with such ease and without consequence makes it a lot harder to reach people, but it’s worth it. Expose the lies and have backup from multiple sources. Know your shit, and be unafraid to express it.

Yes, this is going to get you in trouble with the Left, but let’s be honest. Most Leftists are as dangerous as a Nerf marshmallow. And those who are dangerous tend to be dumber than the plot of a Michael Bay movie, so the likelihood of running into a Leftist badass is less than finding Hunter Biden not doing drugs. Still, you have to weigh your options and pick your battles accordingly. Remember, your goal isn’t to convince a Leftist to change his/her/its mind, but to convince a non-Leftist that you’re not full of shit.

And given how Leftists are trying to push the idea the economy is just fine in spite of having to take out a third mortgage to get a cup of Mostly Okay, But Possibly Inedible Raman (spelled differently because it’s a cheap knockoff of Mostly Okay, But Possibly Inedible Ramen), it may not be as hard as you think.

Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week

With springtime finally here (check local listings for the springtime in your area), college campuses (or would that be campusi?) are abuzz with activity. Sure, some are preparing for finals, dissertations, and summer internships, but many are taking the nice weather to…protest a war half a world away.

Yes, from sea to shining sea, student activists are rising up to show support to Palestine in its war against those evil mean nasty no-good Israelis. And Leftists are eating it up, or at least they’re trying to have it catered because “humanitarian aid” or some such bullshit. The Leftists of yesterday are enjoying the Leftists of today as the latter group does its best to LARP as the former.

But one of these things is not like the other. And none of these things belong on a college campus. Let’s delve into the wonderful world of protests.

protests

What the Left thinks it means – demonstrations designed to raise awareness and initiate desired social change

What it really means – college students being assholes

The right to protest is solidified in the First Amendment in a few different ways, namely the right to free speech, the right to peaceably assemble, and the right to redress grievances. All of these aren’t bad in and of themselves. After all, if I didn’t have a First Amendment right, I wouldn’t be able to provide you with at least semi-intelligent blog posts on a regular basis.

You can stop typing your letters to have the First Amendment repealed, thank you very much.

Anyway, protests are a good test of how strong our commitment to the First Amendment is. At their core, they’re designed to challenge our way of thinking and consider an alternative. At least, that was before it became fashionable to start taking over campus buildings in the name of whatever cause is hip at the time. During the 60s and early 70s, it was America’s involvement in Vietnam. During my college years, it was America’s involvement in Iraq during Operation Desert Shield/Operation Desert Storm. At the turn of the 21st Century, it was America’s involvement in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries following 9/11. And in each one of these, there is an argument to be made about the protesters being on the right side of the issue. Granted, some arguments are dumber than others, but you get the idea.

The current crop of protesters, though…I’m just not feeling it. The best way I can describe it is college students are upset Israel is taking military action against people who killed a bunch of people and kidnapped others. Oh, and America and different colleges and universities across the country support Israel and/or take money from them. Obviously, this must be addressed! After all, we don’t want Israel to think they can actually defend themselves against people who want Jews exterminated, right?

This notion stems from the Left’s love of the underdogs, or at least politically expedient underdogs. You don’t see Leftists taking over campus buildings to protest the lack of white members of the Congressional Black Caucus, but you will see them expressing unwavering support for Palestinians, Ukrainians, and anyone else who is trying to fight the good fight against a bigger, more powerful enemy.

Oh, and just so happens to fit into a neat Leftist narrative. Palestinians are dying by the gajillions, guys! And those poor Ukrainians are having to fight a war with only toothpicks, some half-used bottles of Elmer’s Glue, and the occasional rubber band! It’s only moral to show their support for these brave fighters who only want a better life for themselves.

And, you know, kill enough of the enemy so they can take stuff.

So, to show their solidarity with the people actually doing the fighting, college students are…staying as far away from the front lines as possible and creating their own mini versions of the CHAZ/CHOP in Portland. But instead of being able to sustain themselves, these brave moral souls are making demands for everything from food to banana-free zones to building materials.

That’s right, kids. They’re holding private property hostage.

And to no one’s surprise, college and university administrators let it go until there’s enough pressure on them to do something. And do something they did! Some cancelled the rest of the semester. Some decided to go virtual for the rest of the semester. And a few grew some balls and brought in law enforcement to take down the encampments or suspended students involved in the protests.

It’s clear to me who the masterminds behind the current movement are: fucking idiots.

Seriously, it’s been bandied about that your fiend…I mean friend and mine, Uncle George Soros, is behind the current crop of campus uprisings. Of course, fact checkers have already tried to debunk it, so that tells me he’s definitely involved at some level. Maybe not directly, but his talon-like fingers are in there somehow because, well, he’s George Fucking Soros!

To be fair to the fact checkers, there are layers upon layers upon layers to the way Uncle George funds Leftist sinkholes…I mean projects. But in most cases, the money gets wasted because he’s relying on people who are fucking idiots to do his bidding.

Like…the student protesters! See! It all connects!

While the previously aforementioned protests tended to be more on the peaceful (and less destructive) side, the current group of protesters have been taught in the ways of BLM and Antifa, which sets up an interesting parallel with a couple of figures from the 60s protests, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. At the start of the civil rights movement of the time, the two figures took diametrically opposite stances on how to advance the cause. King sought peaceful non-compliance, while Malcolm X sought more direct action, up to and including violence. Today’s protesters seem much more aligned with the Malcolm X approach of “by any means necessary” and are more than willing to shed blood to bring about change.

Not their blood, mind you. That would be insane! Now, someone else’s blood, that’s perfectly fine to fuck with.

The problem with this approach, however, comes in the form of criminal activities. At the very least, any protester who takes over a campus building and stays there beyond a reasonable request to vacate is guilty of trespassing. Not a serious crime, but a crime nonetheless. Then, there’s destruction of public property, graffiti, discrimination against pro-Israeli students through the use of wristbands, terroristic threats, and many other possible crimes that, if prosecuted, would land more than a few of the protesters in the Big House for a long time.

Therein lies the question: will they be prosecuted? Given how Leftists enjoy letting criminals run free, there’s a good chance most of them will get off with a slap on the wrist and a mark on their permanent record, which by now has been converted to a downloadable file on iTunes. And while a whiff of a criminal record might be enough to make potential employers run away from these idiots, there are some who are willing to hire them.

Yeah. Ask Bud Light and Planet Fitness how capitulating to the Left worked for them. Spoiler Alert: it tanked their companies so much Michael Dukakis was seen riding in them.

It’s the disregard for the law that separates the previous protests from the current crop. Sure, you had some criminal activity with some of the earlier protests I mentioned, but not nearly to the levels we’re currently seeing. And a lot less whining. It’s hard to be seen as a true revolutionary when you’re begging the educational entity you’re protesting for food so you can continue to protest the same educational entity.

Kinda makes you reconsider forgiving college debt, doesn’t it?

Regardless of where you stand on the war in Gaza, the fact remains the protesters are their own worst enemies, but they’re also doubling as President Brick Tamland’s worst enemies if MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough is any indication. More importantly, though, these protests show how far the Left has fallen as an engine for change. For all the positive press they’re getting from Leftists in the media, the needle isn’t moving in Palestine’s favor. If anything, they’re turning off more people than they’re gaining because they’re going about it the wrong way and looking like assholes in the process. Try getting people who are barely making ends meet to get on your side by blocking roadways with stupid marches which prevent them from going to or coming from work.

And even with the backdrop of academia, it’s hard for me to not laugh at the sheer absurdity of the protests themselves. I mean, will a Palestinian child be saved if Hippie McBonghit holes up in one of the administration buildings? Nope! Will there be a ceasefire if more students threaten Jewish students to the point they can’t even attend class without being accosted? No. Will the Palestinians be able to get a foothold in Gaza if the University of Southern Dumbfuckistan decides to divest itself from any Israeli sources of income? Oooh, sor-ray.

No matter what they do, the protesters are fighting a battle so delusional and futile Don Quixote is telling them to knock it off. But those of us outside the Leftist bubble have time on our side. The recent crop of protesters from Occupy Wall Street to the current dipshits aren’t ready for shit to go sideways. Once the current semester ends and there are fewer people to annoy, what will they do? They’re attention whores, and they will be deprived of the one thing they need more than anything: people paying attention to them. If these protests go further into summer (which I honestly doubt), they will have to deal with summer weather conditions, including heat, humidity, thunderstorms, tornadoes, and so on. Hell, a lot of the BLM protests broke up when the temperature dropped. And these marshmallow warriors don’t appear to be any different.

But I, for one, hope they prove me wrong. After all, it’s hard to find good comedy these days.

Extremist Makeover: WHCD Edition

The White House Correspondent’s Dinner was this past weekend (check local listings for the weekend in your area), and from what I’ve heard, it was boring and lame. You know, like the current “Saturday Night Live”? Considering this year’s “Nerd Prom” was hosted by current SNL cast member Colin Jost, it’s not surprising.

Although I’ve never been invited to the WHCD (my invites keep getting lost in the mail, I suspect), I want to help make them better. The most obvious, yet less funny solution is to nuke the site from orbit because it’s the only way to be sure. (20 points if you get that reference.) However, I’m not just looking for the easy way out. I want to give it an honest go. But just know I haven’t taken the nuclear option of the table.

The problem with the current WHCD is it’s toothless when Democrats are in power and ruthless when Republicans are in power. There are a lot of reasons for this, not the least of which being many modern comedians are Left-leaning, while many actual comedians are neutral or slightly Right-leaning. This is because actual comedians don’t feel the need to be a cheerleader for one side or the other since…now take notes, kids…it eliminates a good chunk of the audience and the material. No matter how dim-witted and oafish one side’s political leaders are, it’s almost a guarantee you will find similar dim-witted and oafish types on the other.

Why, it’s almost as if politicians aren’t the best and brightest people in our midst!

Anyway, the best way to add some spice to the WHCD is to find hosts who can skillfully filet both sides with a rapier wit. That excludes most current comedians and all current SNL members, but it opens up the door for actual entertainment for a change. Imagine if Donald Trump gets reelected (a realistic possibility given the current economy is a tire fire without the smell) and someone like Frank Caliendo hosts the WHCD with the best Trump impression ever. (Sorry, Alec Baldwin, but your Trump sucks more than Stormy Daniels working a champagne room for extra money.)

Or, on the other side, let’s say Kamala Harris wins in 2028 (regrettably, just as realistic a possibility given the current Left is obsessed with race and gender more than, you know, actual competency). Someone like Dennis Miller would be the perfect host in that situation, although someone might have to explain his jokes to the current Vice President. Maybe she would need a Venn Diagram.

Typically, I’m not the type to lay down hard and fast rules, but I do think there should be some quality control standards in place to choose future WHCD hosts. Here’s what the boys and girls in the Research Department came up with.

– If your sense of humor can be described as intelligent knock-knock jokes, you’re out.

– If your comedy hero is Hannah Gadsby, hard pass.

– If you have more cats than jokes, noooooope.

– If you’re more worried about safe spaces than punchlines, hit the bricks!

– If all your WHCD jokes sound like they’re from an open mic night at the Chuckle Hut, thank you, but we are going in a different direction.

– If you don’t mind whose oxen you gore (or whose gore you oxen), we might just have a place for you.

Personally, I would like to see the WHCD be more like a Dean Martin Comedy Roast, but with more alcohol. Back then, roasters could be much more relaxed and really lay into each other with good humor. And, most importantly, no hurt fee-fees. You have to be able to take a joke as well as you can tell one.

And that includes the politicians and the reporters. One of my biggest gripes with the WHCD is how seriously everyone takes themselves. Look, you’re a couple of steps below used car salesmen, the IRS, and a proctologist with big, cold fingers. Your self-importance isn’t earned and is actually worthy of more mockery than praise. I mean, you guys have Brian Stelter in your ranks. And, no, that’s not a good thing. Heck, you could do a set on MSNBC and not run out of jokes.

But enough about the hosts.

There are some of you out there who might think the White House Correspondent’s Dinner is beyond repair, and you’re not wrong. But, I think if it could be tweaked here and there, it might be salvageable.

If not, there’s always the nuke.



Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week

There’s a relatively recent concept in media called “The Streisand Effect.” In short, whenever an entity tries to hide or distract from a major fuck up and it gets caught, it brings more attention to what the entity was trying to hide.

Guess who got a crash course in the Streisand Effect this week. If you guessed National Public Radio, you win…absolutely nothing, but you still got it right so there’s that!

It started with a piece written by long-time NPR staffer Uri Berliner where he laid out how NPR went from liberal-yet-respectable to batshit-insane due in part to the election of Donald Trump. After a week or so of NPR doing its best to disparage Berliner’s opinion (and in some cases the man himself) and to pretend nothing was wrong, NPR suspended Berliner and eventually he resigned.

But not before NPR got dragged into the spotlight for being partisan assholes.

And not before they earned a spot in the Lexicon.

National Public Radio

What the Left thinks it means – a trusted source of high quality journalism falsely accused of partisanship

What it really means – a publicly funded Leftist PR firm

That’s right, kids. We pay for the Leftist propaganda to the tune of almost $128 million through its parent entity, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, for fiscal year 2024. Granted, it’s not much in the grand scheme of things both on the federal budget and percentage of NPR’s annual budget fronts, but it’s not insignificant.

Especially when this allegedly non-partisan group donates heavily to Democrats. Or at least as heavily as they can with the budget they have, which is still pretty extensive.

Maybe it’s me, but I’m thinking a news network shouldn’t be funding any political figures and still claim to be fair and honest. Something about a potential conflict of interest. And by “potential” I mean “huge fucking.”

When I started listening to NPR in the late 90s (since it was the only radio station I could pick up in the office building where I was working), I found it interesting and unique. They were covered stories from perspectives the mainstream news media didn’t and more in-depth. But even then, I knew there was a bias because I learned how to root it out. Now, I can turn on NPR at any time of the day and predict what angle they’re going to take or how they will frame a story. They really don’t even try to hide it anymore.

And therein lies the problem. No matter how accurate an NPR story is, it will always be subject to doubt because of the leadership’s political leanings. Depending on who’s listening, that’s going to either create an echo chamber that leads to the logical fallacy the kids like to call Appeal to Authority. After all, if NPR is so consistently accurate (check local listings for the level of accuracy), it must mean they’re right about whatever they cover.

Except, of course, when they’re not.

To be fair, some of the errors they make are misspellings which can be excused. But when you dig into some of the factual errors they make, it casts a long shadow of doubt over how accurate they are. If they get the small shit wrong (like, oh I don’t know…publishing an article that originally said Donald Trump plead guilty to 34 felonies, only to have to correct it after the fact), it’s not that hard to imagine they get the big stuff wrong from time to time. No media outlet is perfect and I don’t expect it to be. But there’s a pretty big fucking difference between pleading guilty and pleading not guilty.

And imagine how many Leftists paid attention to the original flawed reporting and never bothered to check the correction or even the basic facts before tweeting (or would that be Xing) out the wrong information. That’s not a minor “oopsie,” either. That’s a letting-Hunter-Biden-run-the-DEA level fuck-up.

By the way, if anyone from the President Brick Tamland Administration is reading this (or having it read to you slowly so you don’t get confused by all the multi-syllabic words), I don’t want you to make Hunter Biden run anything, let alone the DEA. It was a joke. Move along.

What isn’t a joke is how NPR handled the situation. Let’s just say the nuclear plant operators at Chernobyl were less incompetent, and a lot less radioactive. From an optics perspective, NPR and its fellow Leftists handled the criticism poorly. Instead of making a public spectacle of how non-biased they are (while simultaneously proving how biased they were through their actions), they could and should have taken a calmer approach. Accept the observations publicly and work on ways to address any concerns behind the scenes. You know, like mature adults?

Well, expecting Leftists to behave like mature adults is like expecting a Michael Bay movie to be good: it may happen, but the odds are heavily against it. What they did was act like Leftists. No matter how benign or harsh the criticism, the reaction is always to paint the critic as evil. Not just wrong. Fucking evil. And that’s exactly what NPR did to Berliner. It wasn’t that his essay was factually wrong, but rather that it put NPR in a bad light. And much like Gollum with the One Ring, Leftist had to protect their precious.

Which, surprise surprise, amplified what Berliner said. Thus, welcome to the Streisand Effect. Population: NPR.

There’s not much that can be done right now to salvage NPR’s credibility with people outside the Leftist hivemind. Even if you remove all taxpayer funds from their budget, do a top-to-bottom mass firing, and select someone who isn’t a lunatic to run it going forward, the stigma of what they did to Uri Berliner won’t easily be forgotten or forgiven. Especially among those on the Left who see what Berliner did and are sick of the bias.

Way to shoot yourselves in the foot with a Gatling gun, NPR!

Party of Science, My Ass!

It wasn’t that long ago that politics and science were kept apart like men’s and women’s prisons. That was until Leftists decided to mix the two for the purposes of ideological advancement.

It started with global warming…ummm climate change…uhhhh climate catastrophes…or whatever the fuck they want to call it this minute. The point is climate science met someone who was willing to bring it into the limelight, but only after it became politics’ bitch. Enter Al “More Boring Than the Color Beige” Gore, a know-nothing know-it-all whose academic accomplishments were more underwhelming than my dating life. Prior to meeting my wife, of course!

Well, looks like I’m spending another night on the couch.

Anyway, Gore brought climate change into the forefront of American consciousness due in part to his book Earth in the Balance. Since I care about you and don’t want to bore you with a lengthy analysis, let me give you a summary.

Global Warming bad. Government good.

Here’s how bad it was. I had essentially a high school level knowledge of science and I was poking holes in ManBearPig’s arguments. But since he sounded like he knew what he was talking about, people believed him. And they still do even though he’s neck-and-neck with Paul Krugman on the idiot who can be the most wrong in modern American history.

But since the advent of the Internet, which Gore took credit for taking the initiative in creating it, surely we’ve become more scientifically literate, right? Not so much. And it’s usually the Left who is advancing the most unscientific bullshit. Here’s a sampling of “the Party of Science” and their greatest shits…I mean hits.

Trans women can get periods.
Trans women can get pregnant.
The COVID-19 vaccine stops the virus.
Climate change caused the recent eclipse.
Climate change affects earthquakes.
Guam could capsize.
The moon is mostly made of gases.
There are more than two genders.
Math is racist.
Science is racist.
Physics is racist.
Trans women athletes have no advantage over biological women.
Gender-affirming care is health care.
Abortion is health care.
Children can choose their gender.
Gun violence is a health care issue.
Conservatives are dumber than liberals/Leftists.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Leftists are quick to believe science is on their side…except when it isn’t. When the science proves Leftists are full of shit, Leftists pull out all sorts of excuses. The findings weren’t peer-reviewed. The study was founded by [insert name of Big Something-Or-Other]. Nobody should take these scientists seriously because they defy the established science.

And when the Left can’t use those excuses, they blackball the scientists and memory-hole their findings so no one else can know the truth.

As a fan of science, I’m disgusted by how Leftists have abused science to advance political ends. It’s gotten to the point Leftists have turned what should be an apolitical advancement of knowledge into a cult. And, really, that’s what the Left has done. Just look at this Anthony Fauci devotional candle. That kind of shit doesn’t come from a place of science. It only comes from a place of religious fervor.

And it’s not like Leftists raised incompetent or dishonest people to god-like status in recent history. I mean, aside from Robert Mueller. And Jack Smith. And Fani Willis. And Letitia James. And Adam Schiff. And Nancy Pelosi. And Barack Obama. And Michelle Obama.

On second thought, maybe they do.

By deifying science, Leftists have hindered real science by making it harder for people to accept what they’ve been told from the people Leftists say we need to trust without question. Science works best when that doubt is undercut by the actual process, a little thing the kids like to call the scientific method. As we’ve seen with climate “science” since ManBearPig’s time, the Left has flipped the script. Instead of letting the process confirm or reject the hypothesis, they’ve made it fine to start with the conclusion and work backwards so the science seems to support the conclusion.

But the thing about pseudoscience is it always gets exposed by the sunlight of actual science. All the shit the “Party of Science” told us about COVID-19 has all but been discredited to the point they’re asking for amnesty from their lies. After all, science changes over time, so we should forgive and forget, right?

Nope. Not when you’ve made science your bitch (and not in a good way).