Let's make fun of Trump, bash him, etc. while we can!

[pbrower2a]

"I listened as they called my President a Muslim.
I listened as they called him and his family a pack of monkeys.
I listened as they said he wasn't born here.
I watched as they blocked every single path to progress that they could.
I saw the pictures of him as Hitler.
I watched them shut down the government and hurt the entire nation twice.
I watched them turn their backs on every opportunity to open worthwhile dialog.
I watched them say that they would not even listen to any choice for Supreme Court no matter who the nominee was.
I listened as they openly said that they will oppose him at every turn.
I watched as they did just that.
I listened.
I watched.
I paid attention.
Now, I'm being called on to be tolerant.
To move forward.
To denounce protesters.
To "Get over it."
To accept this...
I will not.
I will do my part to make sure this great American mistake becomes the embarrassing footnote of our history that it deserves to be.
I will do this as quickly as possible every chance I get.
I will do my part to limit the damage that this man can do to my country.
I will watch his every move and point out every single mistake and misdeed in a loud and proud voice.
I will let you know in a loud voice every time this man backs away from a promise he made to them.
Them. The people who voted for him.
The ones who sold their souls and prayed for him to win.
I will do this so that they never forget.
And they will hear me.
They will see it in my eyes when I look at them.
They will hear it in my voice when I talk to them.
They will know that I know who they are.
They will know that I know what they are.
Do not call for my tolerance. I've tolerated all I can.
Now it's their turn to tolerate ridicule.
Be aware, make no mistake about it, every single thing that goes wrong in our country from this day
forward is now Trump's fault just as much as they thought it was Obama's.
I find it unreasonable for them to expect from me what they were entirely unwilling to give."
Author unknown. (Copy and Paste Everywhere)

[Bob Butler 54]

(12-24-2016, 02:20 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: "I listened as they called my President a Muslim.
I listened as they called him and his family a pack of monkeys...   (Snip)

The above is based on truth and absolutely understandable.

It also illustrates just how divided and dysfunctional the country is.

While it looks inevitable that the divide is only going to get worse, for the country to become 'Great Again' we've got to grow beyond it someday.

[pbrower2a]

We liberals need to stop belittling the mass culture -- the accessible, home-spun, traditional, rustic culture that beckons people when times get hard. The avant-garde may be richer and more satisfying for educated sophisticates, but it does not fit people no longer concerned with being aligned with the cosmopolitan cultures of urban sophisticates.We might as well quit ridiculing country music whose enjoyment probably correlates strongly to support for Donald Trump.

[Eric the Green]

[Eric the Green]

(12-24-2016, 03:02 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(12-24-2016, 02:20 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: "I listened as they called my President a Muslim.
I listened as they called him and his family a pack of monkeys...   (Snip)

The above is based on truth and absolutely understandable.

It also illustrates just how divided and dysfunctional the country is.

While it looks inevitable that the divide is only going to get worse, for the country to become 'Great Again' we've got to grow beyond it someday.

Yes, if and when one side of the divide wins, a new consensus will develop around it. That's how a 4T and 1T work. I think now that this can only happen in a beneficial way if the progressive side wins.

[Eric the Green]

Our new president can't read!

[Eric the Green]

Will Beyoncé, Madonna, & Gaga steal the spotlight with Inauguration Day concert?

By Jeff Taylor · Thursday, December 22, 2016
http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2016/12/will-...y-concert/


Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich is promoting an idea on Facebook for a “freedom concert” to take place opposite Donald Trump‘s inauguration to steal the spotlight and ratings away from him, and it is starting to gain traction.

Reich, who has built a sizable social media following, in part through his “office hours” Facebook live videos, suggested the concert would make it so that “no one watches” the inauguration.

“Someone just suggested to me a televised ‘freedom concert’ to air at the same time as the inauguration — with huge celebrities like Beyoncé and Jay Z, Madonna, Katy Perry, Justin Timberlake, Gaga, Bruce Springsteen, and so on. Alec Baldwin MC’s the event, playing Trump as he does on SNL,” Reich wrote.

That would certainly grab ratings and one imagines Trump, for whom attention is everything, would be irked. He has already tweeted out his distaste for Baldwin’s impersonation of him on more than one occasion.

Reich also put forward a plan for the money raised from such an event, suggesting it go to groups opposed to Trump’s agenda, such as the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, GLAAD, the NAACP and Lambda Legal.

Numerous reports have been claiming Trump’s team has been having a difficult time getting performers for Trump’s January 20 inauguration, a claim they deny.

Washington, D.C. marching bands have not been as interested in performing as in years past.

Andrea Bocelli was expected to perform, but it has now been confirmed that he is out. While unnamed sources have claimed Bocelli pulled out over a backlash by fans, the Trump team claims it was Bocelli who approached the president-elect and that he turned him down.

A Change.org petition has been started to push for a freedom concert. At time of writing, it has nearly 25,000 signatures.

[pbrower2a]

(12-24-2016, 06:41 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Our new president can't read!

Oh. My. God!!!!!!

Functionally-illiterate people pretending to be literate have always been butts of jokes. Maybe the President-Elect is simply dyslexic.

The Right has often attacked President Obama for using a Teleprompter, but at least one must admit that he has had some editorial control over what goes on it. So he doesn't want to miss a critical detail or subject. I can imagine what sort of advice President Obama can give on how to use a Teleprompter... and why it is appropriate to use one. But if someone is functionally illiterate it is as fruitless for him to use a Teleprompter as it is for a penniless fellow to use a credit card.

I have consistently noticed that people do not speak better than the material that they read.

[Eric the Green]

[Bob Butler 54]

(12-25-2016, 02:08 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(12-24-2016, 06:41 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Our new president can't read!

Oh. My. God!!!!!!

Functionally-illiterate people pretending to be literate have always been butts of jokes. Maybe the President-Elect is simply dyslexic.

The Right has often attacked President Obama for using a Teleprompter, but at least one must admit that he has had some editorial control over what goes on it. So he doesn't want to miss a critical detail or subject. I can imagine what sort of advice President Obama can give on how to use a Teleprompter... and why it is appropriate to use one. But if someone is functionally illiterate it is as fruitless for him to use a Teleprompter as it is for a penniless fellow to use a credit card.

I have consistently noticed that people do not speak better than the material that they read.

The Democrats are in need of a new leader.  Someone has to step forward and demand that Trump read his long form birth certificate.

[Eric the Green]

[Eric the Green]

What? Our new Mars-age emperor has no clothes?

[Eric the Green]

It's your duty to laugh at Donald Trump
By Rob Crilly
Updated 9:06 AM ET, Mon December 26, 2016
http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/26/opinions/l...index.html

Crilly: Time and time again he has shown himself vulnerable to mockery
Rob Crilly is a British journalist living in New York. He was The Telegraph's Afghanistan and Pakistan correspondent and was previously the East Africa correspondent for The Times of London. The opinions in this article are those of the author.


Trump has built his brand in cartoonish fashion. He is his own caricature. Responding to that with ridicule is not un-American.

(CNN)There was a time in the 1980s when I took a decision to be miserable. Four million people were unemployed across Britain, miners and factory workers were being told they were a part of history, and a selfish form of right-wing politics embodied by Margaret Thatcher had taken hold of my country.

To smile it seemed, to my 16-year-old self, was a form of complicity. To have fun was to collaborate with the enemy. To enjoy myself seemed to be to cash in on capitalism and to feed on the misfortune of those weaker than myself.
Which is roughly where a swath of well-meaning America seems to be after Donald Trump's election win.

As a result, there are now a number of socially acceptable ways to respond to his shock elevation. Most seem to involve the first four stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining and depression. I sense it will take some time yet for the fifth stage, "acceptance", to become respectable in polite society.

You have heard the stories by now, the tears on the subway and the post-it notes of angst left in public places.

One thing is certain: This is no laughing matter, a sentiment my teenage activist soul would recognize.

Trump, as commander of one of the world's biggest nuclear arsenals, could destroy the world overnight or -- by refusing to recognize the reality of climate change -- he could do it at a slower pace.

Not funny.

And yet my teenage self would tell you none of it does any good: Pouting is a good look for only a certain type of model. Dye your hair black and you run the risk of headaches on sunny days. None of it brought the Thatcher years to a sudden end. In the case of Trump, it is self-defeating too.

Time and time again he has shown himself vulnerable to mockery. Humor is Kryptonite to his thin-skinned existence.

He is utterly impervious to the usual weapons of politics. Try to wound him with shame or embarrass him with public scrutiny and you may as well try to sink a duck by pouring a jug of H2O over its rear end.

Remember the small issue of his taxes?

But we all know the size of his hands. Graydon Carter's long-running feud with the "short-fingered vulgarian", as he so pithily put it, recently resurfaced in the pages of Vanity Fair, where a waiter at the Trump Grill was quoted discussing the size of his bosses' digits. Inevitably, the orange-haired bloviator responded with a humorless tirade on Twitter.

Trump's sensitivity is easily understood when you realize he is on a desperate quest to be taken seriously. Just remember the face he pulled when he sat beside Barack Obama in the Oval Office on that Thursday after an election. It was the sort of face a three-year-old exhibits when they really, really want you know they are concentrating. Or when they are trying to squeeze out a number two.

This is what got the whole charade started.

One theory has it that his political career -- or car crash, depending on your point of view -- began with that famous roasting he received during the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner. Barack Obama riffed on Trump's leading position in the "birther" movement.

"Now, I know that he's taken some flak lately, but no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald," he said. "And that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter — like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?"

In the video clip, Trump stares straight ahead, lips pursed, much as you might during an awkward medical procedure conducted by a doctor whispering all the while into your ear that you are an idiot.

Running for president was all about winning revenge and respect.

The baton has since been taken up by "Saturday Night Live" in the form of a bewigged Alex Baldwin, whose small-mouthed performances have again provoked outpourings of abuse from the President-elect.

So forget the people who tell you Trump is too bad for laughter, too dangerous for mirth -- that it ignores the real danger he poses to minorities or world peace.

The truth is that Trump has built his brand in cartoonish fashion. The strange hair, the catchphrases and made-for-TV life make him a character in his own life story. He is his own caricature.

Responding to that with ridicule is not un-American. It is not demeaning to the office of the President -- for there is only one person in all of this who is demeaning the office of the President. It is not flippant, as humorless New York liberals tell me.

Humor -- of the generous, belly-rumbling sort -- is something to unite around as a symbol of resistance.

It is not a sign that you have given up, that you are complacent or one of the winners. When you remember that all Trump craves is to be taken seriously, it turns out that laughing is your duty.

[pbrower2a]

if we Americans can mock an evil or nutty ruler overseas (Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, the Ayatollah Khomeini) or close to home (depending on where one is in the country -- Fidel Castro), then can we mock our own nutty ruler? Of course!

There wasn't that much to mock about Barack Obama... but there is with Donald Trump.

And we must.


When his conflicting promises get bad results -- basically that he must betray one promise top achieve another -- then we have grist for parody. His vulgarity? How many people do you know who have gold-plated toilets? Of course a little gold paint on a commode can make some fitting prop for caricature. His pettiness? That makes him a brittle target for parody.  

Life could get very nasty with ethnic and religious bigots and with economic extremists. We must laugh at it; if we don't then we will go nuts or angry.  Got a copy of The Great Dictator? It's a good time to dust it off.

We liberals will need to challenge any bad behavior on his part as early as possible. The Republicans gave Barack Obama no leeway -- and neither should we give leeway to Donald Trump to transform America into a nightmare.



Miss me (George III) now? It won't be long!

[David Horn]

(12-24-2016, 03:02 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(12-24-2016, 02:20 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: "I listened as they called my President a Muslim.
I listened as they called him and his family a pack of monkeys...   (Snip)

The above is based on truth and absolutely understandable.

It also illustrates just how divided and dysfunctional the country is.

While it looks inevitable that the divide is only going to get worse, for the country to become 'Great Again' we've got to grow beyond it someday.

The real question is the strategic one.  If there is no response, will this embolden bad behavior by the GOP -- even beyond the bad behavior they have already shown?  This is arguable both ways: respond in kind or follow a better path.  I suspect that the hardline will prevail.  BHO said it himself: McConnell's plan to obstruct went just as planned.  Should that be rewarded with cooperation now?  The courts alone have over 100 openings, including one seat on the SCOTUS ... all that were denied to BHO during his 8 years. 

Under the circumstances, healing will take a while.

[pbrower2a]

(12-24-2016, 06:35 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(12-24-2016, 03:02 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(12-24-2016, 02:20 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: "I listened as they called my President a Muslim.
I listened as they called him and his family a pack of monkeys...   (Snip)

The above is based on truth and absolutely understandable.

It also illustrates just how divided and dysfunctional the country is.

While it looks inevitable that the divide is only going to get worse, for the country to become 'Great Again' we've got to grow beyond it someday.

Yes, if and when one side of the divide wins, a new consensus will develop around it. That's how a 4T and 1T work. I think now that this can only happen in a beneficial way if the progressive side wins.

...and if the fascist side wins, as it did in Spain in the last completed Crisis...


America becomes the sort of place where smart people use their 'solid' middle-school educations (who needs a high-school diploma to do most jobs, anyway?) to get a job, save some money, and take the first opportunity to emigrate? The one thing that America will be, like Franco's Spain or Salazar's Portugal, a place for cheap holidays. The best job will for most young people will be working in some resort hotel that offers plenty of opportunity to meet and greet single foreigners, turn on the charm, and maybe seduce the foreigner -- a 'prince' or 'princess' who will take one away from the barracks-like housing, the 60-hour workweek, the brutal boss, and being trim because one is underfed.

"My family has a dairy farm in Brazil" or "I am a barber in Berlin" will be more enticing than "I am an engineer in Louisville, Kentucky". America will have a brain drain anyway, as people find that a high standard of learning is no longer appreciated in a country in which playing dumb is good for survival. One must be stupid, masochistic, or super-rich to believe in a political order that has a new form of feudalism and pushes one of the most mind-trashing religions (Protestant fundamentalism)  to have ever existed. Pie-in-the-Sky-When-You-Die, but only then, for if you eat any of the precious pie you might be beaten or imprisoned. Happiness is only for the elites.

Yes, I assume the worst with the contemporary Right. It has shown its moral bankruptcy, its contempt for reason, and its potential for destructiveness of everything that makes human life potentially enjoyable. So you work sixty hours a week and get to watch a sporting event as a reward -- on television.

[Eric the Green]

[pbrower2a]

Spoof invitation to the upcoming Inauguration:




Note the word choice in the first line!

[Warren Dew]

(12-29-2016, 08:40 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

Right now, no billionaires pay taxes.  I'm just hoping battle lines are drawn so that Trump will start taxing the financial billionaires, which are mostly left leaning, even if productive billionaires such as himself still don't pay taxes.

[Eric the Green]

Ha ha. Billionaires are extreme right wing, and Trump is in no way "productive" lol

He's not going to tax his fellow ruling-class members. I wouldn't bet on it.