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I’m a Swiftie now!

Monday, February 5, 2024

I just realized that I have not weighed in on what appears to be the most important issue of the day, so I want to make my position clear:

  1. I am positively glad that Taylor Swift won another Grammy even though, so far as I know, I’ve never heard one of her songs. I’m even thinking about checking up on her music one of these days, if I can stop listening to stuff from the sixties and seventies for a while.
  2. I’m rooting hard for the Kansas City Chiefs to win the Super Bowl even though in past years I have prided myself on being among the last to know who won said Super Bowl, which is an indication of how much I care about football generally.
  3. I’m positively in awe of the fact that Taylor Swift has been secretly carrying on psy-op operations for years and has managed to keep it under wraps until just recently. Also, I have to reluctantly hand it to the folks at Fox that did the uncovering. It must have taken a lot of hard working journalism to do it, and who ever heard of the people at Fox committing journalism!

I know these positions are controversial, but I feel I owe it to my readers (if they exist) to be upfront about these things.

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Billionaires against truth

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Not for a minute do I believe that the billionaires attempting to destroy higher education in this country are truly concerned about anti-Semitism. It’s merely the hook that has been given to them as the result of the war in Gaza. The point is to remodel higher education to turn it into a tool for reinforcing their hold on our political system. What’s truth got to with it, anyway? Right?

Some of the professors at UPenn are fighting back against the push by a billionaire alumni to destroy that institution. After he succeeded in forcing the college president out, he “sent a four-page email to university trustees titled “Moving Forward,” which many professors interpreted as a blueprint for a more conservative campus.” You know…every school should be like Hillsdale.

One of the protesting professors put it succinctly:

Some professors at the university say the attack on Penn is part of a conservative effort, begun by governors such as Ron DeSantis of Florida, to overhaul American higher education — an effort that is now spreading to dozens of universities, including Penn, Harvard, and Columbia University, which are now under investigation by the federal government over reports of antisemitism.

“This is an anti-democratic attack unfolding, not just at Penn, but all across the country, including at public universities in Florida, in Texas, Ohio, and beyond,” said Offner, the president of the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, a professional faculty organization.

Penn, she said, had become “ground zero of a coordinated national assault on higher education, an assault organized by billionaires, lobbying organizations, and politicians who would like to control what can be studied and taught in the United States.”

It would be nice to see some Democratic politicians coming to the defense of these institutions.

Filed in Creeping Totalitarianism, Education | | Comments (0)

God sure works in mysterious ways

Monday, January 29, 2024

Here in the New London area lots of people are wondering why God chose to demolish a beautiful stone church that has graced downtown New London since the middle of the nineteenth century rather than, say, a den of iniquity somewhere. But, as they say, he works in mysterious ways. The incident in New London is nowhere near as mysterious, though, as God’s decision to fleece some of his worshippers in Colorado.

I first learned about this on the Onion, where it seemed too crazy to be true, but would the New York Times lie? Mislead, sure, but not outright lie:

A pastor in Denver who said that God told him to sell cryptocurrency that could not be cashed is facing civil charges, along with his wife, for marketing a digital coin that prosecutors said was “practically worthless” and using the proceeds to support a “lavish lifestyle.”

The pastor, Eligio Regalado, and his wife, Kaitlyn Regalado, were charged on Thursday in a civil complaint filed in Denver District Court by the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, the Colorado Division of Securities said in a statement. The agency said that the couple created, marketed and sold a cryptocurrency that they called INDXcoin through a cryptocurrency exchange, which they also ran.

But you can’t blame the guy for taking the money and running! God told him to, as he explained in a video:

Mr. Regalado said that because of problems with the cryptocurrency exchange, investors could not take their money out.

Mr. Regalado also said in the video that he went into the cryptocurrency business because “the Lord” told him to. He said that God had once come to him a dream and asked him to do so, and he accepted that he and his wife spent the funds in “a home remodel that the Lord told us to do.”

But it turns out that he may have misunderstood what God was telling him, as did the investors who took God’s word:

About nine months ago, Mr. Regalado said, the undertaking “started falling apart,” adding that he didn’t know what he was doing.
“One of two things have happened,” Mr. Regalado said, “One: Either I misheard God and every one of you who prayed and came in, you as well, or two: God is still not done with this project and he’s going to do a new thing.”

So, everyone is at fault for the scam, as his “investors” didn’t quite understand what God was telling them to do. Or, alternatively, God lacks the ability to communicate clearly, which, when you think of it, has been a problem for him, given how often Evangelicals tell us that this or that weather event is God’s way of condemning homosexuals, even when he chooses to inflict the storm on a red state. I mean, who knows, maybe God was sending a message to the church in New London that he didn’t like the way they were feeding those homeless bums instead of collecting money to give to the rich.

But not to worry, the Lord will provide:

Mr. Regalado said that he still hoped that investors could get their money back, and that he believed “God is going to work a miracle in the financial sector.”

By the way, besides the home improvement, he and his wife also pocketed about another million dollars, which I’m sure the Lord has now rendered safe from the prying hands of the law.

Cryptocurrency, in my humble opinion, is pretty much a scam overall, but you have to wonder why anyone would have put their money down in this particular scam. You also have to wonder if there’s a single one of those Regalado fleeced that didn’t vote for Donald Trump. I’m sure they’re all still ripe for picking.

UPDATE: Well, it turns out that God did choose to demolish the church in New London. I had reserved judgment on the “Engaging Heaven” church, which bought the building from the Congregationalists that had owned it previously, since I read that they, at least, fed homeless people, but it turns out that, as you’d expect, they’re a bunch of grifters. The City of New London is footing the bill for the cleanup, because the insurance Engaging Heaven was supposed to have (it was required by their mortgage) doesn’t appear to exist. But have no fear, according to their grifter minister, who claims to work miracles (don’t they all?):

Meanwhile, Engaging Heaven is fundraising, which the church does a lot of, off the disaster.
A slick video with soaring music on a gofundme page from Engaging Heaven suggests the church collapse was God’s work.
“What if he wants to use this collapse to showcase the rebuilding of the church in our day like never before,” the video narrator says.

Filed in Grifters | | Comments (1)

Grifters Gotta Grift

Thursday, January 25, 2024

Couldn’t resist passing this along. It truly is the case than on multiple levels the Republican Party is just a massive grift. After all, the business plan is to get Fox-addled minds to cast votes against their best interest so the Republicans can deliver for their real constituency, the selfish rich, by sucking money from those at the bottom and sending it up to the top. So it stands to reason that part of that process will also involve separating the marks from their money:

Turning Point USA’s America Fest, held at the Phoenix Convention Center from Dec. 16 to Dec. 19, was a who’s who of conservative TV and internet personalities, interspersed with a smattering of failed candidates and elected officials: Donald Trump Jr., Tucker Carlson, Kari Lake, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Steve Bannon, Glenn Beck, Mike Lindell, ex-Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Vivek Ramaswamy, Dr. Ben Carson, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Trump lawyer Alina Habba all graced the stage. But a big chunk of the cash that produced the pre-holiday pow-wow came from two outfits that allegedly swindled the very voters and activists these figures purported to champion.

The event’s sole “Diamond Sponsor”—reflecting the highest level of support—was Fisher Capital, a precious metals dealer that regulators charged in April 2023 with tricking conservative senior citizens into liquidating their retirement accounts and using the cash to buy gold and silver coins at “grossly inflated prices,” with the enterprise falsely warning its victims that the Federal Reserve or Obama-era regulations would soon sever access to their savings. In the rank directly below Fisher Capital was the New Federal State of China, an organization co-founded by Bannon and indicted Chinese financier Guo Wengui.

Just weeks after America Fest wrapped, federal prosecutors identified this group, ostensibly a shadow government seeking to replace the current regime in Beijing, as part of Guo’s alleged criminal conspiracy to deceive his supporters in the Chinese dissident community into investing in a spurious cryptocurrency venture—one which the Justice Department claims in fact funded Guo’s lavish lifestyle.

(From The Daily Beast via Crooks and Liars)

I don’t feel sorry at all for the victims, and I doubt that many of them will learn from the experience.

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New Hampshire speaks

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

…and now everyone can argue about what they said.

I think it’s fair to say that reactions to yesterday’s vote are all over the map, often depending on the spin one wants to put on things. Trump won, though I understand that in terms of delegates to the convention, he came away with a small majority.

Count me among those who are looking on the bright side, at least to a certain extent.

I do think it’s fair to say that there are a lot of Republican voters who want to see the last of Trump. These are people who haven’t yet come to terms with the fact that the Republican Party they inherited from their parents is now the American Nazi Party. They were confronted with a menu of alternate choices none of which were very tasty, but a large percentage of them went for the only choice left after all the others dropped out. I think it’s fair to say that those folks didn’t vote for Haley because they like her, most of them voted for her because they want to see the end of Donald Trump. I think the folks mentioned here are fairly representative of a large chunk of the Republican electorate, at least in the states that have not converted to full on fascism. I think we can expect to see similar results in most of the states that hold primaries. It appears that Trump, who had another of his meltdowns last night actually understands it that way, despite his dementia.

The question is, what will those voters do in November. They can swallow hard and vote for Trump, stay home, or vote for a third party candidate. I’m guessing that it will be a combination of the latter two options, either one of which is good news for Biden, as these are votes that went for Trump the last time around. The chances of such an outcome can only increase when he is convicted of treason. It will be interesting, by the way, to see how the Republican convention plays out as they nominate a man who can be there only because he’s out on bail.

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For Republicans, Trump’s Dementia may be a plus

Saturday, January 20, 2024

It is becoming increasingly clear that the very stable genius may not be stable or a genius, and may in fact be slipping (or should that be “plunging”) into dementia. He recently blamed Nikki Haley for failing to do something about the attackers on January 6th, clearly mixing her up with Nancy Pelosi. This is one of many times that he has made similar slips, so it’s no longer possible for a rational person to make excuses for him, but who ever said Republicans were rational? And of course, lurking in the background is the question of why either Nikki or Nancy should have done anything to stop the people he has consistently labeled patriots and/or hostages, all of whom are deserving of pardons.

Yet, according to many Republicans, it is Joe Biden who suffers from dementia, though he shows no signs of it. This is, it goes almost without saying, just another example of Republicans accusing Democrats of something that applies to them. Despite the undoubted fact of Trump’s dementia, they are all on board with nominating and electing a criminal whose best defense would probably be a claim of diminished mental capacity.

But the Republican establishment may be looking on the bright side. Remember that from Trump’s point of view, being president is all about satisfying his ego. He doesn’t care about policy whatsoever. He has adopted right wing talking points simply because, as an accomplished grifter, he realizes that they are what sell to the easy marks. When he was president, it’s unlikely that he had much to do with the nuts and bolts of running the things the Republican establishment cares about. As a for instance, I’d say it’s fairly clear that he had absolutely nothing to do with his court picks, from the lowliest District Court Judge to the Supreme Court. That was up to the Federalist Society. The same was true on multiple fronts, though there may have been one or two times when he insisted on having something his way that the establishment didn’t like.

But imagine how easy it would be for them if he goes full on into dementia. He will simply do whatever he is told. All they have to do is keep him in the White House and put a pen in his hand once in a while and tell him to sign on the line. He’ll do what he’s told, because that’s how folks with dementia tend to behave. Of course, they’ll throw in some stuff to massage his ego, but he’ll essentially be their puppet, so things will be better for them than they were in his first term.

If I had to bet, I’d say he’ll lose the election even if he’s not yet in jail. But that presupposes that the Republicans can’t find a way to steal it that the Supreme Court will then certify as just fine. They are in complete agreement with his point of view that if you can’t win an election you should steal it, so if they’re successful in enough places we will have him back and be well on our way to a fascist state. He is, after all, not the only fascist in the Republican ranks. He is, in fact, merely the instrument the fascists have embraced to complete their takeover. It is not necessary for him to be cognitively competent for them to achieve that goal.

Addendum: In my last post I put up a notice to the effect that comments were working again. I said you can leave a comment and the site will show that there is a comment on the post. However, the comments don’t appear under the post. You have to click the link in the footer below the post that says you can read the comments at the “RSS feed”. It worked for me when I did a test comment, but I’m informed by a reader that he got an error message when he tried. If anyone else out there gets the same message I’d appreciate an email to that effect, as one of these days I’ll call my hosting service and see if they can fix it.

Filed in The Very Stable Genius | | Comments (0)

If they accuse others you know they’re doing it themselves

Saturday, January 13, 2024

I am certainly not the first to make the observation encapsulated in the title of this post. If a Republican accuses a Democrat, or Democrats generally, of certain behaviors, it is almost a given that said Republican is doing those things. I thought I’d pass the latest one along, as it is happening in our neighboring state:

Vivek Ramaswarmy found election fraud! But it was in the most unlikely place – on the nomination papers his own staff submitted to local authorities in Rhode Island. The Daily Beast had bombshell reporting showing that numerous dead voters were listed on paperwork submitted to confirm that Vivek could make it onto the Republican Presidential Primary.

Ramaswarmy, besides being a typical Republican in this respect, is emblematic of another trend among Republican politicians. Trump epitomizes it, but he didn’t start it. Ramaswarmy is a con artist from first to last. It’s how he made his fortune, and it’s how he’s running his campaign.

There was a time, believe it or not, which was not so very long ago, that a con artist, including a clone of Donald Trump, would have had little success as a politician. But the brains of a substantial number of voters have been pulverized by Fox News, and they are now ready to believe anything. The internet isn’t helping, as people drift from somewhat decent information sources (e.g., newspapers and Uncle Walter type newscasts) to conspiracy sites that tell them what Fox has trained them to believe they want to hear.

UPDATE: I sort of have comments working again. You can leave a comment and the site will show that there is a comment on the post. However, the comments don’t appear under the post. You have to click the link in the footer below the post that says you can read the comments at the “RSS feed”. I’m going to put this update on the next few posts I write, just to let people know. Assuming, of course, that anyone is reading this.

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Shocking news: Trump refuses to lie! Or does he?

Tuesday, January 9, 2024

I was truly shocked when I read this. Never before, in his entire life, has Donald Trump refused to lie, but he just did!

President Joe Biden’s campaign knocked former President Donald Trump on the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack for refusing to sign an Illinois loyalty oath that says he won’t advocate to overthrow the government. 

The WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times reported Saturday that Trump did not voluntarily sign the loyalty oath this year when he and his campaign registered for the primary ballot in Illinois. The former president signed the oath in 2016 and 2020.

Candidates who sign the oath – including Biden and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis – attest that they “do not directly or indirectly teach or advocate the overthrow of the government of the United States or of this state or any unlawful change in the form of the governments thereof by force or any unlawful means.”

You have to give credit where credit is due. Trump could have done the convenient thing, because after all, as Hamlet said, “It’s as easy as lying”, something that has always come particularly easy for Trump. But the guy whose lawyers just told a court that it’s alright for a president to murder his political opponents apparently wants us to know that he’s got some principles, and he’s not going to lie about his plans to overthrow the government if given the chance.

But wait, maybe he’s playing some kind of eleven dimensional chess. Try to follow me: Maybe he figures that if he signed the statement, everyone would assume he was lying in doing so, because he always lies, and therefore, if he refused to sign it, we would assume that he is signaling that he isn’t going to overthrow the government because he hasn’t said that he won’t, because if he did say that he won’t, we’d assume he was lying. In fact, we’d know that he’s lying. So, maybe in his mind, he’s being really crafty, by lying by refusing to lie.

I’ll leave it to the reader to decide.

UPDATE: I sort of have comments working again. You can leave a comment and the site will show that there is a comment on the post. However, the comments don’t appear under the post. You have to click the link in the footer below the post that says you can read the comments at the “RSS feed”. I’m going to put this update on the next few posts I write, just to let people know. Assuming, of course, that anyone is reading this.

Filed in The Very Stable Genius | | Comments (1)

All the words are in English but…

Saturday, January 6, 2024

We’re all used to politicians, particularly the lying liars in the Republican camp, responding (I won’t use the word “answering” as that doesn’t quite describe it) to questions by spewing a word salad that not only does not answer the question, but is often incomprehensible. But politicians are hardly alone in coming up with whole sentences that make no sense, which is not good because after all, the word “sense” is embedded in the word “sentence” and the nuns at Our Lady of Sorrows always taught us that a sentence was supposed to convey a complete thought.

This morning I was perusing the Boston Globe app and came upon an article in the business section about a Boston area startup that is laying off a quarter of its staff. I can’t link to the Globe article as I couldn’t find the article on my browser, but here’s a link to the same article at another publication. Maybe I’m wrong, but it contained what appears to me the tastiest word salad ever contrived. Here’s the company spokesman:

“In 2023, Aera launched to pursue an ambitious mission to develop transformative genetic medicines by harnessing enabling delivery technologies and precision payloads,’’ spokesman Dan Budwick said in a statement. “Although Aera remains in a strong cash position today, given the current biotech funding environment, we have chosen to take steps to focus our strategy and investments on the development of our novel delivery platforms, thereby further extending our cash runway.’’

All those words are English words, and I think I could probably give a reasonable definition of each just off the top of my head. Some of the phrases even make sense if you consider them in isolation. But after reading it, you come away no more enlightened about Aera’s doings than when you started. I don’t know what the future holds for Aera, but Dan Budwick definitely has a future as a Republican politician.

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They don’t know much about history, but they still get to write it

Friday, January 5, 2024

Scott Lemieux, over at Lawyers, Guns and Money, notes that some in the media have now started to both sides the insurrection. The headline of the piece to which he links reads:

One attack, two interpretations: Biden and Trump both make the Jan. 6 riot a political rallying cry.

The text he excerpts from the article, as he says, renders the headline “a fair summary of the content”. If this becomes widespread, we can expect the media’s tune to solidify into a determined both siderism, because after all, who are they to say that attempting to overthrow the government is a bad thing or even was actually a thing. After all, some people say the rioters were just a bunch of tourists taking a look at the Capitol. Of course, other people say they were actually Antifa with one breath, while with the other breath they will assert that they were patriots trying to save the nation. After all, if you’re a Republican, the facts depend on who you happen to be lying to. Rewriting history to suit is hardly unprecedented in this country. The alternate histories of the Civil War and Reconstruction propounded by Southern historians like Claude Bowers held sway for years. If we do succumb to the fascism that Republicans are pushing, their alternate history of the Trump insurrection will hold sway for the foreseeable future.

It might be interesting if someone were to ask the other Republicans running for the presidency a question along the lines of that someone asked Nikki Haley about the Civil War. Quite obviously, no member of the press will ask such a question, or if they did, they would let the candidate in question get away with a word salad response. My guess is that just as Haley consciously avoided saying that the Civil War was about slavery, so she would, as would all of them but Christie, go to great lengths to avoid acknowledging that it was a insurrection intended to overthrow the government of the United States, an insurrection incited by the person who held the office of president of the United States.

In my diary from this date a year ago I noted that there were folks joking that if the Republicans could ever pick a Speaker of the House (the multiple votes that finally landed McCarthy his disastrous Speakership were taking place) their first order of business would be to make January 6th a national holiday. Mind you, these were jokes, but the day may not be far off when the joke will be on the rest of us.

Filed in History, Media, Propaganda | | Comments (0)