The pot and the kettle

These are the seven stages of Trump: mildly amusing, entertaining, bombastic, outlandish, offensive, disgusting, ludicrous.   This week he achieved the really ludicrous—he called Hillary Clinton a liar!  Now this is the guy who presented a big problem for Politifact because he has told so many outlandish lies they had difficulty determining their 2015 Lie of the Year.

Here is what the Pulitzer Prize winning fact checker said when awarding this dubious honor:

“In considering our annual Lie of the Year, we found our only real contenders were Trump’s -- his various statements also led our Readers’ Poll. But it was hard to single one out from the others. So we have rolled them into one big trophy.

To the candidate who says he’s all about winning, PolitiFact designates the many campaign misstatements of Donald Trump as our 2015 Lie of the Year.”

PolitiFact rightly deemed Hillary’s debate statement “ISIS is going to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists" as false because no evidence has emerged to support it.

I would guess that it did not earn a Pants on Fire because there is an element of reasonable assumption behind it.  It is a well-known fact, yes fact, that ISIS uses declarations of animosity towards Islam as justification to wage war on America and to recruit new jihadists.  Whether they produced a video specifically showing Trump spewing out his anti-Muslim venom or not is somewhat beside the point.  Maybe they will or maybe they already have, but Trump branding Hillary as a liar over a phantom video is almost comical.  Remember Trump insisting he saw a video of thousands in New Jersey cheering when the Twin Towers went down?   He still insists that is true but wants an apology from Clinton.  Go figure.

Right wingers have a tendency to interpret their own reality.   I recently posted a Politifact article comparing all the presidential candidates’—Republican and Democrat—truthfulness in campaign statements.  The item was entitled:  All Politicians Lie.  Some Lie More Than Others.  Ben Carson ranked the worst and, believe it or not, Bill Clinton the best.  Trump was the second biggest liar and Hillary ranked fourth among the most truthful.   (Obama ranked third most truthful.) My post drew this reaction from a right-winger friend:  “Is this truly fact or liberal opinion?”

Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous statement, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts” was actually first expressed in 1946 by American financier Bernard M. Baruch who said, “Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.” 

I suppose nothing has changed.  One person’s fact is another person’s opinion.

 Here is a link to the PolitiFact Lie of the Year item:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/dec/21/2015-lie-year-donald-trump-campaign-misstatements/

Carly says Obama eats dogs

While surfing YouTube today I came across a truly insipid, puerile posting entitled:  “Why Dogs Are Better Than Cats With Carly Fiorina.”  Yes, one of your Republican Presidential Candidates posted a video of herself worthy of any high school sophomore.  During the video, while cuddling an adorable pair of little puppys she declares, “You know, Obama ate one of your cousins.”  Really cute. According to Carly, Obama eats dogs. It is truly astonishing how far Republicans, from a Presidential candidate down to the crudest right-wing low life, will go to vilify and disparage our President.  A facebook ultra-conservative friend posted an item sliming Obama and the comments were truly disgusting.  One of the more mild ones was, “Obama is a Muslim camel humper.”  How can anyone of any political stripe condone this kind of thing?  “American values” indeed.

Climate Change and Pascal’s Wager

Whenever the subject of climate change comes up, I am reminded of “Pascal’s Wager.”   Blaise Pascal, a 17th century French philosopher, mathematician and physicist, formulated his wager addressing the question of whether or not God exists. 

Essentially it states:  It’s better to live your life as if there were a God, then die and find out there isn’t, than to live your life as if there weren’t a God, then die and find out there is.  Kind of hedging your eternal bet.

Applying Pascal’s logic to global warming and climate change:  It’s better to act now as if climate change does exist and find out years from now that it doesn’t, than to do nothing and find out years from now that it does.

At the just concluded Paris Conference on Climate Change scientists in 195 countries, including the United States, have overwhelmingly agreed that climate change is, indeed, is a fact and we must start doing something about it now.    Of course, as with everything since Obama was elected, if he supports it, the Republicans are against it.  But then, a lot of Republicans believe the universe is 6,000 years old, the earth was created in six business days and evolution is simply a theory and not a fact.  I don’t have a lot of respect for Republicans’ scientific credentials.   Evidently American Republicans don’t mind appearing stupid before the whole world.

We all know that for our conservative politicians the interests of Exxon-Mobil and the Koch brothers take precedence over science.  And it is hard to whip up enthusiasm among the public since nearly everybody living today will be dead before any catastrophic events take place unless, of course, you live on an island in the middle of the ocean or are a polar bear.

The Republican are always complaining about Obama not showing leadership and that America must be the world leader.  Evidently that only applies to starting wars, invading other countries, telling others what government system they should have and “bombing the hell out of them.”  However, when it comes to something constructive like climate change the Republicans seem willing to concede that leadership to China.

There are also other conceivable benefits to addressing climate change.  Just as space research produced a considerable number of technological advancements benefiting the public overall, research into renewable energy and other energy saving measures—like battery developments—could provide many benefits not directly associated with climate change.

So the issue is not whether global warming is real or not but how effective the fossil fuel industry and their Republican political puppets will be to insure today’s profits no matter how many islands may sink or polar bears may die in the future.

Dumb and Dumber

Just when you think Donald Trump makes the most stupid, preposterous remark, another Republican presidential candidate tries to top it.

"Now listen, here’s the simple and undeniable fact. The overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats.”  That’s what Ted Cruz told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt when commenting on the shooting at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic.  According to Cruz, Democrats “fight to give the right to vote to convicted felons. Why? Because the Democrats know convicted felons tend to vote Democrat."

Of course, Cruz hits a double target with this one.  You know what color the Republican base associates with violent felons?  Wink, wink.  So in one swipe, Cruz whips up the Republican hate base by playing both the fear and race cards.  Can you imagine the damage a released violent criminal, you know “those people,” can inflict by voting? 

I doubt very much that the white man who killed three people at the Colorado clinic is a Democrat.  More likely he is an Evangelical Christian Republican.

Bonus Cruz stupid remark:  "Last I checked we don't have a rubber shortage in America. When I was in college we had a machine in the bathroom, you put 50 cents in and voila! So yes, anyone who wants contraceptives can access them, but it's an utterly made-up nonsense issue." — Ted Cruz in Iowa responding to Democrats' assertion that Republicans are against contraception (Source: Time)

John Kasich’s supremely dumb idea

Just when you think Republican presidential candidates have run out of really dumb ideas, one of them comes up with an idea that is colossally stupid.  In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris, Ohio Governor John Kasich has proposed creating a new federal agency to promote Judeo-Christian values around the world.  You probably find that preposterous so go back and read it again.

Yes, a Republican is proposing to form a new government agency which is not exactly in line with the “small government” Gospel According to St. Ronald.  You will recall Ted Cruz, during the Republican debate, bragged that he would completely eliminate five agencies (although he could only remember four of them)—the IRS, Department of Commerce, Department of Energy and HUD, which put him in the lead for Republican dumb ideas.

But now Kasich really hit the top of the dumb-o-meter with the “purpose” of his new agency.   As he told NBC News, he wants to establish our Judeo-Christian values as the standard for the entire world.  "We need to beam messages around the world" about the freedoms Americans enjoy he said. “It means freedom, it means opportunity, it means respect for women, it means freedom to gather, it means so many things.”  Now I am not exactly sure how those things, for example “freedom to gather,” or “respect for women” are examples of Judeo-Christian values but Republicans have never impressed me with their grasp of logical, rational thought.

According to Kasich the new agency would promote our Jewish-Christian-based belief system to four regions of the world: China, Iran, Russia and the Middle East.  (Note for Governor Kasich: China has a rather well establish religious tradition dating before the Judeo/Christian--Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism; the Middle East actually includes Iran and is predominantly Muslim; and Russia’s major religion is Russian Orthodox Christian.)

By the way, the Republicans collectively added another dumb idea by insisting that America only accept Christian Syrian refugees.  If you really wanted to find the ideal way of pissing off ISIS and all the radical Muslim terrorists in the world and stirring up more religious hatred and disdain for America, Kasich and his Republican cronies have found it.  The Chinese might react, “Confucius say, Americans full of shit,” the Russians could say “Who needs your Pope anyway,” and you can almost see the ISIS recruiting posters, “Americans hate Islam, they want to impose Christianity on us! Kill Americans!” 

Kasich did not offer a name for his new government agency so I would like to propose one that would reflect the Republican presidential candidate’s foreign policy idea, Department of Offending Foes of the United States or, for short, DOOFUS.

Now I am coming out

Since Bruce Jenner declared he was born a girl and Rachel Dolezal, President of the Spokane NAACP chapter, stated she was born black even though her parents are white, it is now acceptable to reveal you were actually born something people think you weren’t.   So I can finally come out and tell you that I was born a genius.

I realize, of course, some people might use other terms to describe me such as “wise guy” or “smart ass,” but I prefer “genius.”   For example I recognized immediately that the eight Benghazi hearings mounted by the Republicans were a trumped up (excuse the pun) excuse to make Hillary Clinton look bad for blatantly political reasons.

If you are a genius you understand that the Republicans have no new ideas about anything so the best they can do is generate endless, meaningless politically motivated attacks, shut down the government, refuse to raise the debt ceiling or vote over 50 times to repeal a law they don’t like without proposing a valid alternative just because they hate Obama.  It takes a genius to recognize that kind of stupidity.

Getting back to the Benghazi hearings, Chairman Gowdy insists that his committee must get to the “bottom of this” so that measures can be taken to ensure that it never happens again.  Now any genius would assume that the C.I.A., the military, the state department and all government agencies involved in the event would have immediately investigated and analyzed what happened and looked for ways to ensure it never happens again and have already taken necessary actions.  They would not wait around two years for Gowdy’s commission to tell them what to do.  But Gowdy never served in the military so he has no idea what happens during unpredictable, fast moving, rapidly changing situations happening half-way around the world nor how to deal with them.

Another demonstration of my genius is that after the horrible, tragic mass killings in the NC church, Jeb Bush declared he was not sure it was a “hate crime.”   As a genius, I knew immediately that it was.  Of course, nobody ever considered either of the Bush brothers as a genius anyway.

Republicans have also been pushing for more restrictive voter registration laws which they claim are specifically intended to reduce voter fraud.    Since there is no evidence that voter fraud is a problem and the Republican laws are specifically intended to restrict voters who typically vote Democratic, it obviously takes a genius to see that this is just another Republican political con job.  Actually, if we were a real democracy, we would encourage voter turnout--which is not that great in America--but that’s too subtle for Republicans to understand.

Now that I have finally come out and revealed that I am a genius, I will be offering, as a public service, my assessments on all the dumb stuff we can expect from the Republicans for the next year and a half until the Presidential elections.

The Pope and Kim Davis

Now that the pageantry, adulation and hoopla over the Pope’s visit have dropped off the news cycle radar, we learn the inconvenient truth that Francis and his church still endorse bigotry against gays and the idea that his god’s law supersedes civil law.

How else can you interpret his secret meeting (revealed after his departure) with an obscure Kentucky county clerk, an elected official who gained national attention by breaking the law because her god (and the Pope’s) hates homosexuals?

Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, an advocacy group for gay Catholics was quoted in the New York Times as saying: “The news that Pope Francis met privately in Washington, D.C., with Kim Davis throws a wet blanket on the good will that the pontiff had garnered during his U.S. visit last week.” He’s absolutely right although I might have used a less gentle term than “wet blanket.”

I was almost beginning to buy into that “good will” idea but then, as Yogi said, it was “déjà vu all over again.”  Oh, by the way, wasn’t Francis quoted as saying about gays, “Who am I to judge?”  Evidently, the Pope considers an Evangelical county clerk eminently more capable than he is of judging gays.

 According to news reports, Francis told Davis to “stay strong,” and, “Thank you for your courage.”  That sounds to me like a pretty emphatic endorsement of her denying gay marriage licenses.

Some pundits have opined that after tossing some barbs at conservatives with his views on climate change, capitalism, poverty and immigration in his televised speeches and declarations, he decided to sneak through the backdoor of a secret meeting with Ms. Davis to toss the Evangelicals and the social conservative right a little bone to pick on.

Whatever.   

You’ve probably heard the term “Papal Bull”--an official document or proclamation issued by the Pope.  I have a new definition in mind.