March links

A few quaint events of interest happened in March before the virus hit.

Before the primaries ended. A stroll down memory lane with the winners and losers from a debate.  Biden won the South Carolina primary, won most of Super Tuesday, and won again the following Tuesday. Everyone other than Sanders dropped out.

Russian interference charges dropped. I'm not sure if it's real or a pretext--good reasons to believe either way. It probably never would have gone to trial.

Watch him end his career. ...and on to a well-deserved retirement. Chris Matthews of MSNBC won't believe a woman candidate about sexual harassment. Dumb move. 'I just don't believe it' doesn't fly anymore because it's generally very believable.

Rift in the left. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is actually trying to be more pragmatic than the garden variety far leftist.

Trolls can be controlled online. Not a March item, but something dear to me and my dislike of trolls. Reddit managed to greatly reduce trolling. A confession of someone who was addicted to trolling and wised up on  his own.

Everything else is covid-related.

Image; cbsnews.com

Short: Lesson on being gracious

From CBS news, here's a hand-written note from George H.W. Bush to Bill Clinton:

Image: cbsnews.com

Trump tumbles?

Is it really possible to predict what will trip a candidate who's gotten away with saying this about Mexicans?

"They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

Or one who's increased his stature by disrespecting John McCain for having been captured?

But, finally, this week Trump seemed to be dropping. Carly Fiorina put him in this place by pointing out that we hear him loud and clear when he spews his outrageous blather. The specific topic was her face (not generally a national issue), but it's true of everything he says. His own words are his clearest reflection. They should be his strength or his undoing, and Fiorina let them stand starkly. That's the best way to argue against him when he's blatantly being a horse's ass--just let his words stand.

This week Trump didn't correct a person at a town hall meeting who said Obama was a Muslim and not born in the US. Trump's been pandering to this type of person for over 5 years, so it's no wonder that someone said it at one of his own gatherings. However, Trump made a poor contrast to John McCain, who corrected a women back in 2008 who made a similar hateful and/or ignorant statement. Trump, who's supposed to be the big, brave alpha-man, was shown up by the past actions of John McCain.

Then Trump made it worse by tweeting that he wasn't "morally obligated" to defend Obama. No, he isn't morally obligated. However, Trump would be wise not to use the words 'moral' or 'obligated' because they are a reminder that Trump isn't moral and doesn't honor his obligations. That's why he's been married and divorced several times over, and declared bankruptcy rather than pay from his own billionaire pockets. Not to mention that Trump feels no moral obligation to the truth. reality, or humility.

Today, Trump is declaring that he has Muslim friends. That's got similar optics to saying that some of his best friends are black.

But as I wrote at the top of this post, can we actually predict when Trump's unending blather will hurt him? Maybe it's unsafe to predict, but this week's polls show that Trump has fallen considerably. He had 32% support, and is now down to 24%.

Better late than never.

Image: 123rf.com

Extra. There's still no shortage of blather. Carson says Muslims are unfit to be president.

 

Short: What's in a (nasty) name?

I hate a particular kind of name-calling where you make a nasty play on a person's name. As my rules for commenters says "Insults such as libtard, Obummer, Repug, wingnut, and moonbat are not welcome."

From what I've seen, conservatives tend to be worse in this sort of behavior. Some positively relish coming up with new concoctions on the name Obama. I'm pretty sure it's a major pastime for Limbaugh.

Now there's a new one: cuckservative.

It definitely sounds nasty, but the sound is just the beginning. A cuckservative is a conservative who stupidly isn't on board with ... (how should I phrase this?) ... 'white interests.'

Here's a mostly clean version of the viewpoint. Here's a very raunchy version. Beware before you click.

Image: theoccidentalobserver.net

Extras. This reminds me of Derbyshire and dark enlightenment. More etymology, if you're not repulsed enough already. I've got a strong stomach and training with bodily fluids. That's my excuse.

Short: Interesting discipline for internet threats

I assume that most people have heard that female game reviewers are intimidated by male gamers. This being electronic and internet-related, of course the gamers are amazingly uncivil. The insult of choice is to threaten to rape the female reviewer.

Now one of these reviewers has a great response. She contacts the mothers of these internet thugs, and let's them know what their little darlings have written. I hope it's not too late for these gamers to change--most are 10-15 years old. Let's hope this works.

Image: g4tv.com

Goodbye to civility

Conor Friedersdorf at Atlantic has been admonishing other conservatives to watch what they say, and he's getting dissed as a nag, scold, damp squib, etc. I wish he'd be successful, but frankly I think civility is a goner. Some people will practice it, but it isn't generally practiced or expected. So I'm going to try writing a post where I'm totally unrestrained, and I say whatever I want in the harshest terms I feel like using. Maybe this will be fun.

One area where civility that is really a waste is giving the benefit of the doubt to politicians and their shills. Conor had a 10 or 12 volley twitter fight with someone from Breitbart, who finally tweeted:

"I guess it's all worth it if you have a handy cudgel to use against the dread left."

What a fucking waste of time. Of course someone from Breitbart or Fox or DNC is going to use anything imaginable as a cudgel to beat the other side. It doesn't take 12 tweets to figure that out, and 12 tweets is no guarantee that the pundit or shill or whoever is going to admit he's an opportunistic dick. We already know that, so why would we waste time on it?

Ridiculous talking points

I am so fucking tired of the talking points phenomenon. People who repeat them and write them endlessly on the web really should be choking on the stench as they type because it's the same as puking out pieces of cadavers. You don't win any independents with stupidity like that, and you only confirm the biases of the committed on both sides. If I could, I would make anyone mouthing a talking point (right or left) submit to a lie-detector test and make them confess that it's a ridiculous talking point. And I would video it. Maybe start my own channel on youtube.

 Image: crimemuseum.org

The prizes for media bias go to...
The biggest prize for lying belongs to Fox News, for advertising itself every second of every day as "Fair and Balanced" when they are completely in the tank for conservatives. Fox, you really think you'll going to lose credibility if you start calling yourself "conservative news" and change the tag line to "The other side you really need to hear?" Come on, you have the barest credibility anyhow, which is why the Obama administration could threaten to ban your reporters due your network constantly launching attacks on their officials in fall 2009.Yeah, I remember that.

 Image: sicklycat.com

Other prizes are for the mainstream media for pretending it's neutral just because it's not nearly as bad as Fox. If the mainstream media was so neutral, why is there so much space for Fox and conservative talk radio? The obvious answer, if you think about it or watch this media, is that it's riddled with a low to moderate level of liberal bias. A prime example is talking about social problems and social programs without talking about certain favorite conservative issues like personal responsibility and taxpayer costs. Of course we need a conservative media if that hardly ever happens in MSM. That kind of coverage should be right in those articles and reports, not something that only gets consideration in budget reporting. My credit card bill soars if I don't watch how much everything costs. There's a huge multiplier when government acts that way. (This is why I hate idiot bleeding heart liberals and the endless social programs they would create and how they would raise my taxes over and over. I lived through it in New York state, so I'm speaking from experience. I definitely have compassion fatigue. It's real, and it happens when we're asked to do too much. I feel no guilt about it. It's called not being a saint, something I shit-sure am not.)

Fucking Stupid Campaigns
As I've complained before, the presidential campaign coverage is focusing on miniscule, unimportant shit like misleading statistics about women's job losses, Ann Romney's spending habits, and ... (I've already forgotten what yesterday's stupidity was). This is partly the media's fault, but also the campaigns' because they send out their shills and surrogates to repeat this crap on TV.

In the meantime, we know what the important issues are: the size of government, the size of our debt, what programs we really want and what we don't what, how much it costs, tax reform, how much can we afford to spent on policing this unruly world, and trying to stay out of unnecessary, deadly, and expensive foreign messes.

Come on people. We know that what's important. So stop wasting all this bandwidth on other fucking shit.

Your reactions
So, was this too much? Should I return to civility, practice it and defend it, or give up? I'd like feedback, civil or not.

Photo: blogs.courant.com