Friday Stuff

In light of all of the nonsense from Cleveland this week, I thought I would provide this as a palate cleanser of sorts.

Now that the convention idiocy is over and the “party of Lincoln” has proclaimed Donald Trump as its standard-bearer, Republicans all over the place are saying, “oh, Trump doesn’t represent me…how in Heaven’s name did we get to the point where he is our nominee for President,” clutching their metaphorical pearls all the while and looking for their also-metaphorical fainting couch.

(In a similar vein, I give you this today from the eternally wretched Christine Flowers, concocting yet another unintentionally hilarious diatribe which is truly all we can expect from philly.com’s conservative quota hire columnist.)

Do you want to know how you got to the point where “Fergus Laing” is actually your nominee for president, Republicans? Do you want to know who is really to blame?

Try looking in the goddamn mirror!

Every time you demonize and ridicule someone without any basis in actual fact, or at least without any evidence that will stand up to what you might call “the cold light of day”…every time you demonize and ridicule someone merely because they belong to a particular race, gender, or other demographic that takes issue with what you might call your political point of view…every time you repeat baseless charges over and over and over again against your opposition when they have been thoroughly or utterly disproven or, perhaps, not even proven to begin with…every time you demonize a political member of the opposition for all of the reasons I noted previously in this paragraph without any provable, corroborated facts or evidence…every time you demagogue against those who are most vulnerable in our society, again without facts or evidence…every time you demagogue against someone trying to address the most vital issues we face, such as matters of war and peace, the economy (and, as a part of that, issues pertaining to what you might call economic and social justice), and the future survivability of this planet (and, in the process, argue with proven principles of math, science, and, pretty much, plain common sense)…when you do any or all of that, do you know what you also do?

You perpetuate the forces that ultimately gave us Donald J. Trump as the Republican Party nominee for President of the United States, that’s what you do.

So spare me your pitiable mea culpas, because, now, it is up to Democrats to try and clean up the mess you created but, not surprisingly, couldn’t find the political will to fix yourselves.

Now for some videos – and it looks like, based on this, Laura Ingraham gave away the game, as they say…



…and yeah, it sounds like Bill Maher captured what went on in Cleveland this week pretty well (here)…



…and I thought this was some great perspective on “The Donald” from filmmaker Ken Burns, speaking with Christiane Amanpour (and of course, the inevitable wingnut outrage followed here)…



…and our neighbors to the north are paying attention (as is the rest of the world, as noted here – dear Lord)…



…also, I cannot possibly imagine why Fix Noise didn’t want their viewers to see this (here – removing my tongue from my cheek)…

…and it seems like Republicans can’t get through a week, or even days sometimes, without infringing on a musician’s work without getting permission, which, in this case, I’m sure they’d never get anyway (I think the following tune, were it to be allowed by the estate, would be more appropriate).