Trump – Page 2 – HystericallyBored

2023-12-25

Elvis on the Throne — Right Next to St. Exlax

Elvis was very caring and compassionate for others. His love for God led him to be generous and help so many people. His faith in God played a huge role in who he was. Anytime anyone has the means to help someone in a big or small way should always do it by following his lead because Elvis led by example.

From someone named Rex Judkins on Facebook.

Once again an objective observer is left wondering what exactly Christians stand for when they adopt people like Trump and Elvis as their own. Obviously nothing like what they say they stand for. Humility. Integrity. Honesty. Self-control. Fidelity. Elvis’ selective acts of personal compassion do nothing to mitigate the corruption of his personal life, his self-indulgence, addictions, and weakness of character.

And a short note on the Monkees after a Facebook admirer lavished praise upon them:

Oh, they were obviously talented: they didn’t come from nowhere. But they were assembled, packaged and promoted by media companies in a deliberate and obvious attempt to copy the Beatles which hurt their credibility enormously. The songs were outsourced to Tin Pan Alley and the recordings were made largely with session musicians. When they did strike out on their own, their music did not impress; only Michael Nesmith was able to establish himself as a serious artist with his song-writing. The rest were trapped as teen pop idols with not much of a legacy. Nostalgia is fine but shouldn’t lead to an over-evaluation of modest talents.

2023-12-25

Misplaced Schadenfreude

I keep seeing headlines like “Democrats Keep Hoping it’s Curtains for Trump” and can’t believe them. I suppose in one sense it’s true: the Democrats keep hoping Trump will be defeated and his movement will fade away. But in terms of the 2024 election, they can’t seriously be hoping to run against Nikki Haley.

The only chance the Democrats have of winning in 2024, with Biden as their nominee for president, is if Trump is the Republican nominee. Or maybe DeSantis. But if the Republicans end up nominating Nikki Haley or Larry Hogan or Chris Christie, Biden will surely lose, by a big margin.

And the only chance Trump has of winning is if the Democratic nominee is Joe Biden. Consider Trump against Amy Klobuchar or Gretchen Witmer or Sherrod Brown or Gavin Newsom or Sheldon Whitehouse. He would probably lose by a large margin.

The most bizarre aspect of this entire scenario is that America has the two worst presidential nominees in 100 years and can’t do anything about it. What does “democracy” mean in this context? How is this a democratic “choice” when a majority of Americans want to choose from a multitude of candidates that are not the ones they are forced to choose from?

Even a majority of Democrats don’t want Biden. You would think– in a democracy– that a political party could at least chose it’s own leader. But, without exactly explaining why, the media make it clear (correctly) that no one is going to challenge the party leader if he is an incumbent. The last time someone seriously tried this– Ted Kennedy trying to unseat Jimmy Carter– the result was victory for the incumbent and then an electoral loss (to Ronald Reagan in 1979).

One cannot ignore the fact that Biden, and Trudeau, in Canada, are both convinced that they and only they can lead their parties into the next election. What astounding egos! It is mind-boggling when there is such overwhelming evidence that both of them might very well, in fact, ensure the election of the most dangerous and incompetent opposing candidates in fifty years.

2023-08-24

The First Republican Debate

Just some off-the-cuff notes:

Vivek Ramaswamy is a shrill twerp. But he’ll do well with the young segment of the Republican base who really believe the federal government can improve education by abolishing the education department. I like the fact that he thinks his first job in government should be as president. Like Reagan, on his first day on the job he’ll ask where the “War Room” is because he watched “Dr. Strangelove” once.
Pence did better than I thought he would– but it won’t help him because he torpedoed Trump on January 6 and the MAGA base will never forgive him.
Haley is aiming for the general election. She was rational, thoughtful, smart, and astute. Doomed in the primaries, but, curiously, not setting herself up for VP as I thought she would.
Christie fell flat because Trump, his main target, wasn’t there, and attacking Ramaswamy puts him in “shoot the messenger” territory. He didn’t charm or even amuse anybody.
Asa Hutchinson and Doug Burgum might as well pack up and go home.
DeSantis shut down Florida just like everyone else did at the start of the pandemic. Forget that, please. Those in the audience with short memories cheered his claim that he never did. He was probably the most brazen liar in the bunch. His abrasive style didn’t fool anybody: he’s also a nerd.
Republicans are counting on voters to not know– as they surely do– that the vast proportion of illegal drugs come right through the ports of entry in many of the millions of vehicles that cross every day, and not in the pockets of illegal migrants.
The idea of “defunding the police” has never had traction within the Democratic party but the Republican base loves to think it has.
It is absolutely stunning to me that Mike Pence, of all people, has abandoned a position on abortion he has always declared to be inviolate and now advocates a 15-week limit. Absolutely stunning, and that tells you how worried Republicans are about that issue in the upcoming election. His problem is that the state legislatures aren’t listening to him. It also reflects poorly on his sincerity as the most forward Christian in the group.
I keep reading that Tim Scott is supposed to be the sunshine candidate in this group. He was the one that sounded like ChatGPT mindlessly trotting out those stale Republican tropes about “weaponization of the Justice Department”, blah, blah, blah. I think he blew his one chance to make himself stand out.
Where was “woke”? Where was CRT? LGBQ issues? Nobody picked up DeSantis’ favorite whipping boys. Worried about the general election, gentlemen? Not much about Hunter Biden either.
Haley did Biden a favor with her very forthright endorsement of U.S. support for Zelensky and Ukraine.

I’m puzzled about where this is all heading. Trump’s lead is kind of insurmountable so conventional wisdom is that most of these candidates are lobbying for the now vacant VP nomination. Ramaswamy is going to be too toxic. Hutchinson and Burgum bring nothing to the table. Pence and Christie are obviously right out. Haley would seem well-positioned as long as she is careful about what she says about Trump. She’s a woman, a minority, and she has some appeal to independent voters and soft Democrats. Tim Scott is in the right position– sucking up to Trump enthusiastically– and he is more in the Pence mode which Trump might prefer to the sometimes electrifying Haley. Trump will not have anything to do with a candidate that might upstage him.

How does it all end? Ramaswamy picks up support in Iowa, as does Haley. Hutchinson and Burgum go home. Christie runs out of money. Pence and Scott hang in there for the first few primaries then drop out. DeSantis slowly, painfully, mercilessly fades out as primary voters discover that they just don’t like him very much. Then, if Trump really is as smart as his fans think he is, he makes Nikki Haley his running mate and she starts quietly laying the groundwork for a run in 2028. If Biden stays reasonably healthy and inflation continues to drop, Trump loses the election; Haley is president in 2028.

I’d lay equal money on Trump signing up Scott as his running mate. I don’t think that will play well and I doubt the two would have the slightest genuine rapport.

2023-03-22

Wide, Wide Awake

I keep hearing, about the banking defaults, that regulators were “asleep at the wheel”, and that’s why it happened. After hearing about Barney Frank’s role in dismembering his own regulatory legislation it has become clear that the authorities were not “asleep” at the wheel. They were actually wide, wide awake.

Frank, who helped craft the legislation imposing tighter regulations on banks after the 2008-09 crisis, was hired by– guess who– “Signature Bank” for two years for $2 million. In that role, he lobbied congress to emasculate his own “Dodds – Frank” package of regulations, which enabled Signature Bank to more than double in size with little regulatory oversight. A Republican congress passed the reforms and Trump signed it.

Nobody was asleep. They were wide, wide awake.

2023-03-15

Pope Francis’ Deficiencies

Ross Douthat writes as if there is a real core Catholic faith that is being smothered by Francis’ liberal leanings. But after decades of evangelicals proclaiming themselves to be the party of spirituality and faith and integrity and humility and all the other values derived from the example of Christ and then stampeding into the arms of the most repugnant narcissist to ever run for office, one might be forgiven for regarding Douthat’s tears about the state of the Catholic church as disingenuous as best. Thanks to this embrace of Trump, and the sexual abuse scandals, and the residential school scandals, and the Magdalene laundries scandals, and so on and so on, it is very, very hard to regard any religion as anything more than a charade, a club, an exclusive confederation of self-righteous hypocrites. I gaze at these pious individuals in wonder and ask myself, what do you really believe? Anything, other than gaining advantage for the members of your club? Francis should declare that the era of Big Church is over and leave every locality to indulge in their own preferred hypocrisies.

2022-09-07

To the “Christians” who Voted for Donald Trump

Millions of people who claim– like you– that Jesus Chris is their model, their leader, their hero— voted for and embraced Donald Trump.

Your religion obviously means absolutely nothing. Not a thing. It’s the badge of a private club you belong to that only seeks to further the material interests of its members. Nothing you ever proclaimed about virtue or sin or spirituality or loving your neighbor or blessing the meek or not casting stones– nothing!– can be even remotely connected to this crass, self-serving, pussy-grabbing, materialistic, manipulative, liar.

Say no more. Your actions have proclaimed the truth about your church and your religion. It is an empty shell.

2022-07-17

The New McCarthyism

There are two kinds of news sources prominent today. One, the older institutional part, identifies a story, sends a reporter, interviews people, acquires documents, submits to an editor, contacts the parties for possible confirmation or not, and then publishes. The other one goes to air to millions of listeners immediately with, for example, provocative claims that there is no 10-year-old girl in Ohio who was raped at 9 and was pregnant and had to go out of state to get an abortion, claiming this was all a plot by the Democrats to steal more votes. When it emerges that the story was true, they don’t apologize because … well, why don’t they? Because their listeners don’t really care about facts and information? I don’t know. It’s not just this one story: there are dozens of examples, maybe hundreds. They rarely publicly admit they got it wrong, or lied, and even more rarely apologize. They have discovered that most of their listeners don’t seem to mind; they aren’t about to change the channel.

Their listeners aren’t watching the January 6 Congressional Committee hearings, even if almost every witness has been a staunch Republican, and Trump’s own appointees to the judiciary have consistently rejected claims of a stolen election. The “Deep State” is so deep that even Trump, apparently, was fooled at times.

I don’t know how we get past polarization if people don’t listen even when their own side is telling them they are wrong. People like Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, Marco Rubio are complicit: they don’t like Trump but are frightened of standing up to him.

In the 1950’s, McCarthyism had the same dynamic. Respectable conservatives didn’t like him but were scared to call him out. Eventually, he was found to be ridiculous and people moved on. (He once accused Santa Claus of being a communist infiltrator.)

One can only hope.