GAMESTOP, WUT?

January 29, 2021 kdez1011

A thing happened this week that was not about Donald Trump, or Pastel QAnon, or the Capitol rioters’ arrests (although these things were also in the news.) It was not about how the GOP is finally facing up to the toxic nature of their Trumpist strategy and, after an internal reckoning, are turning back into a normal political party, haha, never going to happen.

No, I speak of the GAMESTOP MEME WAR that broke out when a bunch of guys on a sub-Reddit called r/WallStreetBets decided to all collectively invest in this one particular stock.

It just screams VALUE, right?

GameStop is a boring little chain store situated at that half-empty strip mall near you, the one you never go to. (Unless it has a mysteriously excellent dim-sum/Thai takeout place, like they do.) GameStop’s “business model” is to be a brick-and-mortar store that sells game cartridges and accessories for your X-box or whatever. Since gamers now stream everything online, or play on Steam or Origin, GameStop is basically BlockBuster in 2009: obsolete and sliding towards irrelevance and failure. Its stock was bobbing along at about $5/share, until this bunch of randos on Reddit decided to buy it – then this happened:

 

                                            To. The. Moon.

It worked so well that GME became a wonder of the financial world in just a few days. On January 26, Tuesday of this week, @EricBalchunas pointed out that GME was the most traded stock in the world: $20B worth of shares changed hands. That’s BILLION, with a “B.”

                                                        LOL

HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE??

The Redditers made this collective decision to buy GME while the shares were being heavily shorted by hedge funds. This meant that, along with driving up the price for their own profit, they could crash a few hedge funds: basically take all of Gordon Gekko’s money. This plan appeals to literally everyone who is not Gordon Gekko, because EFF THAT GUY, amirite?

                                               

                                                Cartoonishly evil

Now stick with me while I try to explain “shorting” a stock. Investors will “short” a stock they think is weak, meaning that they are betting the price will go DOWN. This is the opposite of the usual “buy low, sell high” move.

 

                        Naked shorting, not as sexy as it sounds.

The riskiest (but cheapest!) way to short a stock is to borrow stocks from a broker, sell them on the market, wait for the price to fall, and then buy the same stocks on the cheap, return the stocks to the broker, and so cash in on your gamble. The hedge funds had done this with GameStop stocks to the tune of tens of billions. This arrangement is called “naked short-selling” (pictured above) and, importantly, the arrangement has a time limit.

ENTER ROBINHOOD AND THE REDDITERS

The Redditers knew the hedge funds were shorting GameStop to the tune of BILLIONS of dollars because the funds publish that info, don’t ask me why. About half the members of r/WallStreetBets (which had 2.2 million members on Monday and now has 6.3 million) decided collectively to use their various chosen stock-trading apps, such as RobinHood, to beat the hedge funds at their own game. By radically driving up the price in a very short time, the Redditers hope to cash out at the top and make a TON of money. That money will come out of the hedge funds’ pockets, because they will be forced to buy the stock at the current high price in order to return the GME stocks to their broker. Melvin Capital, for example, has to return the stock TO-DAY! Sad trombone, Melvin Capital!

Wah-wah-waaah

It may be that Melvin Capital and other hedge funds are striking new deals with their creditors to avoid disaster. The big boys tend to protect their network: the RobinHood app that Redditers used suddenly cut off their customers ability to buy GME stock but allowed selling, which was an attempt to force the Redditers to quit. Turns out that RobinHood’s biggest customer is Citadel, which is also invested in Melvin Capital, surprise! The Redditers were up-in-arms immediately, threatening a class-action lawsuit; and if you are eligible to join in, well, there’s an app for that! Here’s Vlad Tenev, CEO of RobinHood, on Thursday, explaining how his app is great, and he is a super-responsible business person, even though he doesn’t have quite enough money to run his company right now, blah, blah, blah….

 Number one app! Culturally relevant!

WHAT NOW?

At close of business on Friday we are still waiting to see what will happen to the hedge funds holding all that stock — GME’s closing price was $325. They are now doing “after-hours” trading, which I do not understand. Still, whatever happens to these particular hedge funds and these particular stocks, things will not be the same from now on. It’s become crystal clear that the game is rigged in favor of the Richie-Riches in very concrete, dollars-and-cents ways that preclude ordinary people having any faith in the stock market whatsoever. George W. Bush never got to privatize social security and force working people into the stock market, and for that may we be truly thankful.

As for the Redditors vs. the hedge funders, your MassMiss favors the Redditors, of course, but the best you can say about that crowd is they are 4chan with less racism. Which is not a bad thing, and I hope they win. On the other hand, I don’t feel like I have a dog in the techbros vs chads conflict so…

                                Stay on the sidelines, fam

 

  

                Or join me as Baby Yoda in this meme; that’s very safe

 

SEDITION SOUP

January 8, 2021 kdez1011 2 comments

 

Seditionist day-planner

Okay, Fam, what just happened? A failed coup just happened, is what. At first your MassMiss thought it was a sort of messy accident, caused by lies about the election results pushed relentlessly on Fox, OAN, Newsmax, FaceBook, etc. Then all Cheeto Mussolini had to do was incite his followers to “trial by combat” at the January 6 rally. Next thing you know, they stormed the Capitol building and now five people are dead.

THE LEADUP AND THE RESPONSE

But the attack on the Capitol, just at the moment Joe Biden’s election was being certified, maybe wasn’t exactly, entirely spontaneous. Not to start another conspiracy theory, but it was being planned openly, for weeks, on Parler and TheDonald.win. And the Trump administration laid the groundwork for a successful assault:

• Installation of fortified fencing around the White House June 2019
• Install Trump loyalists on Pentagon Advisory Board Dec 2020
• Bill Barr steps down, having stated that there was no election fraud Dec 2020
• DOJ is now run by Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen, who seems a bit of a nonentity
• Trump schedules a rally for Jan 6 2020
• At the rally, Trump and Giuliani and Don Jr fire up the mob
• The Capitol Police somehow forget all their training and most of their gear
• Pentagon and National Guard did not provide backup

WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY. HE IS NOT US.

The mob that stormed the capital was motivated by ignorance, racism, self-pity, and a general sense of aggrieved entitlement, relentlessly stoked over a long period of time by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and the kind of toxic conspiracy theories the John Birch Society used to spread, which are now clumped under the general heading of QAnon.

Goobers

 

The most colorful (shall we say) contingent were the out-and-out crazies. Among these are the ones that believe every government official is a Lizard Person and the QAnon devotees, like the QShaman pictured above. 

There was also a set of rather competent-looking raiders who might be active or ex- military or police officers? They were organized, agile, and equipped. Somebody put those bombs around the place and it would be nice to know if that was done by OathKeeper / militia types or by the white supremacists who have embedded themselves in law enforcement and the armed forces; both groups are for-real dangerous.

Suspiciously professional

WHO WILL SAVE US?

After foot-dragging and gear-grinding, the machinery of enforcement has set itself in motion. The FBI asks that you report anyone you recognize from selfies, news clips, TikTok videos, etc., on their “Tips” website. Here a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, Derrick Evans, who live-streamed himself invading the Capitol, gets arrested today by the FBI:

 

This lady should review her parenting skills

 Madame Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has placed her stilleto pump firmly on the brakes of the war machine, meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to prevent “an unstable president” from “ordering a nuclear strike.” We can hope that Trump won’t get up to any military shenanigans in the next couple of weeks. And Joe Biden will not be interfering if the DOJ sees fit to prosecute anyone.

But We The People should consider relying on ourselves — people need to organize and take a stand. The workers at Google and the flight attendants are doing their bit, and the rest of us should too….

My browser has a union label

Respect!

UPDATE ON ZIPTIE GUY

Jan 9 2021. Ziptie guy (labeled above as “Suspiciously Professional”) is not a menacing black-ops expert, cleverly mingling with the crowd in order to kill/kidnap Chuck Schumer. He is an unemployed bartender Eric Munchel of Tennessee who has been cosplaying and LARPing his way through a pretty pathetic life.

So he’s not a fearsome secret warrior, and that gun-thing on his hip is a taser. But he was filmed at the pricey Grand Hyatt Washington in Washington, DC where a lot of insurrectionists stayed, possibly at the expense of a wealthy supporter, possibly Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence — will update when known. In this clip Eric shares his philosophy of life, backed up by his mysterious female companion who is with him constantly, in all the pictures….

                               People are saying: is that his mom or his wife?

Along with whoever-she-is, Eric likes Tomi Lahren, the Fox News “pundit” known as The White Power Barbie….

Aww, he’s crushing on the Nazi-girl

So far there is no evidence to support the suspicion that seasoned, combat-trained, undercover operatives assisted the crowd that took the Capitol. I’m both amused and slightly dismayed by this thought: Is the enemy just a bunch of sad, deluded people being manipulated and enabled by ambitious politicians and self-serving millionaires? is it just feckless losers all the way down?

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE 

 Feb 9 2022  Turns out there were combat-trained operatives involved which is a sad commentary on the state of out military. And police and ex-police but that's not much of a surprise, is it?

 

THE BUTT-END OF 2020

December 31, 2020 kdez1011 One comment

Holiday greetings to my dear readers! Are we glad 2020 is over? Oh, yes, we are! You can read Dave Barry’s annual retrospective for a quick overview including the murder-hornets, remember them?

Mascot, 2020

This year saw some losses — 333,000+ dead from Covid-19 in the USA alone. Also marked “deceased” this year is humanity’s shared sense of objective reality. “Truth is the first casualty of war,” but who is responsible for the 2020 Final Massacre of Truth? Where are the battle lines, and who is fighting whom? MassMiss feels comfortable stating that Vladimir Putin and Mark Zuckerberg are not on the side of Truth. Also “What is truth” is a serious question. Remember when Donnie BoneSpurs got impeached in far-distant January? Adam Schiff said, in his closing argument:

No constitution can protect us [if] right doesn’t matter any more. And you know you can’t trust this President to do what’s right for this country. You can trust he will do what’s right for Donald Trump [….] you must find that he should be removed. Because right matters. Because right matters and the truth matters. Otherwise, we are lost.

Congress, January 23 2020

We lost because the Senate is controlled by Republicans who are either practiced liars or, after years of cultivating charlatans, can’t tell the difference anymore between their nonsense and actual facts. It’s not really lying anymore, it’s that facts are optional — “What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.” Which is what, in 2020, allowed QAnon to get pretty solid control of a major U.S. political party .

I guess “The Truth” is now a Choose Your Own Adventure game for dummies, complete with multiple endings, depending on your world view. Check out these ladies, whose vibrational frequencies protect them from Covid:

I’m convinced!

Ladies: if you are not quantum physicists or zen masters, don’t be babbling about how the universe is made of vibrations. And to everyone else: do not encourage, bolster, support or “empower” this nonsense. If you’re a therapist or a teacher, you may have to let them down gently, but just do it. Social media is a fire hose of bullshit and they don’t need any help — The Atlantic called FaceBook a Doomsday Machine and they are not wrong.

QAnon folks like to mimic scientific inquiry and investigative journalists — professions that require expertise. Their “theories” cannot be disproved, which is the opposite of the most basic methodology of science….

At one point, Harger [….] told me I should look into what happened to John F. Kennedy Jr.—who died in 1999, when his airplane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Martha’s Vineyard—suggesting that Hillary Clinton had had him assassinated. (Alternatively, a contingent of QAnon believers say that JFK Jr. faked his death and that he’s a behind-the-scenes Trump supporter, and possibly even Q himself. Some anticipate his dramatic public return so that he can serve as Trump’s running mate in 2020.) When I asked Harger whether there’s any evidence to support the assassination claim, he flipped my question around: “Is there any evidence not to?”

… but they think because they play around with numbers, that they are doing irrefutable “research.” Here’s one of them in action:

Wait, what?

I can’t even. This is not even numerology (a divination practice that ascribes meaning to numbers) because numerology is a symbolic language based on depth psychology. This guy is just imitating what he dimly imagines scientists do, like a five-year old playing with plastic test tubes. When people like this feel “empowered” they tend to do things like destroy vaccine supplies because they want to be heroes in the war against the Deep State or something:

Anti-vaxxers, in the House?

OR, OR! they can decide to blow things up, because LIZARD PEOPLE! This appears to be one motive of the Nashville bomber. He seems to have gotten a pass from the authorities last year when his girlfriend called in a warning that he was building a bomb in his RV, because, wimmminamirite? Also, he’s white.

Mascot, 2021

There are glimmers of hope, such as: Biden and Harris will be better than Orange Twitler; The Corporate Transparency Act will do away with shell corporations; we might even get out of quarantine sometime this year!

But achieving a shared understanding of reality is going to be difficult. We will continue to swim in a sea of disinformation on social media:

Speaking as a leftist, I will take this chance

No, it was not a direct energy weapon

Meanwhile mainstream media outlets are stuck on reporting “both sides” and staying neutral. The New York Times headlines trivial disagreements about Biden’s cabinet appointments — DEMS IN DISARRAY!!— while burying the story of Trump considering imposing martial law on page 28. Stately letters of complaint were delivered to the editor, see below. I’ll bet someone wrote a sternly worded letter about the OpEd on slavery, back in the day, too….

New York Times, Dec 22 2020

New York Times OpEd, Jan 20 1859

 

THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA

December 10, 2020 kdez1011 5 comments

December 8 was the deadline for Georgians to register to vote in the January runoff race for two seats in the US Senate. If Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock win, the Biden administration will have the votes to pass legislation, appoint cabinet members, and seat judges. If Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler keep their seats, well…. Mitch McConnell will continue to reign supreme, and the Senate will continue to where legislation goes to die. Compare and contrast these two stimulus bills to see the difference between a congress that works (Democratic) and a gridlocked, corporate-owned, do-nothing, luxury retirement village (Republican):

One of these bills is not like the other

QAnon on Parler, keepin’ it real

With a key race at stake, the usual r/w media suspects are flooding the zone with misinformation, both about Georgia and about the presidential election results. Fox’s Hannity, Ingraham and especially Lou Dobbs are beating the drum for Trump’s claims that the presidential election was rigged and that proper investigation is being blocked or ignored. Hate radio’s Rush Limbaugh appears to have drunk his own Koolaid and is demanding that Trump display all the myriad proofs of fraud. Combined with rampant lies and rumors racing around social media, there is now a sector of the population that is delusional, and potentially violent.

Only 18% of frequent Fox News viewers say they accept the outcome of the presidential election and only 11% of them say it was conducted fairly. But to some denizens of MAGA-world, even Fox is too reality-based. They’ve moved on the completely unhinged, conspiracy-theory spaces online and on TV. Parler is full of incitements to violence, and Newsmax (TV’s up-and-coming, more-fascist-than-thou channel) has started pushing up against Fox in the ratings.

So how is this affecting the Georgia runoff? It’s possible the Republican Party might pay a price for all the lies, slanders and accusations they propagated and/or refused to deny. The most ardent pro-Trumpers, like Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, are testifying loudly on Fox and elsewhere about how corrupt and unreliable the election process is. Here’s Lucian Lincoln “Lin” Wood, Jr. lecturing the MAGA’s on the virtues of maybe not voting in the runoff:

So … Don’t vote for Republicans? Okay then!

The combination of RIGGED ELECTIONS FRAUD STOLEN VOTES ARGLE-BARGLE and the fact that the actual, real-life election process down in the Peach State seems to be going pretty smoothly, gives your MassMiss hope. There are come concerns about several counties cutting back on early voting sites which will inconvenience voters, especially voters of color. On the other hand, there have been many requests for mail-in ballots and these are being handled smoothly.

On the state level there are still Republicans with integrity managing elections: per the NYT, They refuted conspiracy theories, certified results, dismissed lawsuits and repudiated a president of their own party. And it really isn’t easy for them, they take a ton of abuse for doing the right thing. Hats off to Gabriel Sterling, a Georgia elections official and a Republican, who here gets pretty shirty about all the nonsense:

Feelin’ ya, Mr. Sterling

But you know who gets all the support from the top, and coverage from the press? People like Mellissa Carone, Rudy Giuliani’s star witness at the Michigan election hearing, a fiery train wreck from which you cannot look away. She claims that, while working as an IT contractor for Dominion Voting Services, she saw myriad violations of the voting process. So convincing!

You MUST watch this  https://youtu.be/i7C4JUV8iWs

Thanks to people like Mr. Sterling, and in spite of Trump, Rudy and Mellissa, your MassMiss is cautiously hopeful about the outcome in Georgia and the future of Democratic control of the Senate. Kelly Loeffler, a vastly wealthy Stepford-carpetbagger, is incredibly robotic and unappealing. David Perdue, a vastly wealthy corporate slimeball, is a coward who didn’t even show up for his debate. They are not likable, and polling indicates a Democratic win is possible.

And now, hoping that justice prevails, here is the real “Devil Went Down to Georgia”….

“Fire on the Mountain”, run, boys, run  https://youtu.be/sh7BZf7D5Bw

 

RIGHT WING SPLITS & A NEW HOPE

December 1, 2020 kdez1011 6 comments

FOX LOSES FAVOR

When Trump attacked the election results, he expected full support from Fox et al., and was enraged when Rupert Murdoch didn’t come through for him:

…Using all three of his American properties, Fox News, the New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal, Murdoch clearly sent a top-down message that he did not support Trump’s move to denigrate free and fair elections. Without those unified voices on the right cheering his every move, Trump’s road to securing even a rhetorical victory became nearly impossible

Eric Boehlert. Press Run, Nov 25 2020

Predictably, Trump unleashed a Twitter-storm against Fox:

He laid an egg, it’s true

QAnons said it, so it must be true

THE NEW SCUM ON THE BLOCK

A big chunk of TV-watching Trump-world is flocking to Newsmax, a low-rent TV “news” station owned by his old buddy, Mar-A-Lago member and former New York Post reporter, Chris Ruddy – a completely amoral piece of work with no principles of any kind.

Based in Boca Raton, Fla., the network features lo-fi production values and off-brand personalities like Sean Spicer and Diamond and Silk. Even finding it can be a chore: It appears on Channel 1115 in some major markets…. Until recently, the network’s top shows attracted a paltry 58,000 viewers. On Thursday night, the network drew its biggest audience ever, notching 1.1 million viewers at 7 p.m.

Michael M. Grynbaum and John Koblin, New York Times. Nov 22 2020

Also in favor with the White House is One America News Network (OAN or OANN,) a division of Herring Broadcasting in some kind of strategic partnership with The Washington Times, formerly owned by Sun Myung Moon. You remember the Moonies, right? Mass weddings, land-grabs, drugs? Now they want to get in on the MAGA gun-humper action.

Newsmax has increased viewership by a factor of 10 since the election. OANN is probably doing better as well, but they are not Nielsen-rated and they lie a lot, so it’s hard to know. MAGAs are now chanting “FOX SUX” at their rallies:

Fox is the traitor in the hen house! Or something!

MEANWHILE, BACK AT RANCHO DELERIUM

Right-wing social media is also in an uproar as FaceBook, Twitter and to a lesser extent, YouTube try to dial back the spewings of the lie-machine. Lies about the election results, and about Covid-19 are being tagged as explicit disinformation and in some cases, blocked. Yes, even Donny BoneSpurs got blocked, at least briefly.

When even Twitter blocks you…

Forget it, Donny, you’re out of your element!

Parler: evil see, evil do

As a result the MAGA trolls and QAnons are moving onto the Parler app, pronounced par-lay, like the French verb “to speak.” They call it parlor. Parler bills itself as a “free speech social network, an unbiased social media focused on real user experiences and engagement.” They say they won’t ban users, remove content or block anyone, no matter what.

GabFrog is Pepe

Owned by China

Other right-wing social media apps that got a boost after the election are MeWe and Gab. These lesser apps are scrambling to sign up the MAH FREEDUMBS crowd, along with the usual incel-libertarian trolls that infest the backwaters of the ‘net. Since “owning the libs” is the whole point of their miserable lives, they will probably drift back to Twitter and FaceBook. It’s the e-version of shouting in people’s faces without a mask; what’s a bully without a victim?

A NEW HOPE

Speaking of Twitter: have you heard of John Fetterman, the Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania? He is my current Hero de Tweet. You should keep an eye on him too.

Fetterman was born in York, PA, to poor, teenaged parents, who managed to do all right financially. He did jock things in high school because he is 6’8″ and huge, and continued playing football in college. Then one day a friend died in a car accident while on his way to pick up Fetterman at the gym. This was pretty shattering and afterwards Fetterman joined Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, pairing with an eight-year-old boy in New Haven, CT, whose father had died from AIDS, and whose mother was also infected. He became “preoccupied with the concept of the random lottery of birth.” He joined AmeriCorps and went to Pittsburgh and then on to Harvard Kennedy School, then back to AmeriCorps in Braddock, PA — he says he was attracted by its “malignant beauty;” I know just what he means. In Braddock, Fetterman ran against the incumbent mayor and won by a single vote. Then, as mayor he:

• Created a community center
• Started a two-acre organic urban farm, worked by teenagers of the Braddock Youth Project
• Developed the town’s ruined buildings and poor economy, thusly:
  • Bought the scheduled-for-demolition First Presbyterian Church for $50,000 and lived in the basement for several months while renovating
  • Purchased an adjacent warehouse for $2,000, placed two shipping containers on the roof for “extra living space” and moved in there
  • Bought and renovated many additional houses and offered cheap, or no, rent
• The cheap rents and art exhibitions he opened brought young artists to the town
• People from Chicago, Portland, OR, etc., arrived to share in Braddock’s “renaissance”
• He got tats: on his left arm, Braddock’s zip code, 15104, and on the right, the dates of five murders that occurred in the town during his mayorship

Let’s do what he says

Since becoming Lt Governor, he declined to occupy State House, the official residence for the Lt Gov, and instead lives with his family in a converted car dealership — take a tour with Mrs. F:

Industrial chic, very cool

He campaigns on issues like environmental protection, gay rights, immigration, and marijuana legalization. Also he lost 150lbs in 2018 and I can’t even lose my Covid weight so, RESPECT.

As politicians go, this guy gives me hope — Recommended follow on Twitter, @JohnFetterman, where GQ describes him as “an American taste god”, to which Fetterman says: LOL

 

DEEP BREATH, EVERYONE

November 9, 2020 kdez1011 3 comments

Okay! Joe Biden got elected and sane-America is dancing in the streets. Not-sane America is bitter and outraged and basically nuts, so no news there. MassMiss wishes to call your attention to the even greater gift of this historical moment, namely, the Four Seasons press conference. Trump arranged this event to spread lies about voter fraud, yadda, yadda, the usual nonsense. But it didn’t go well — I’ll let this TikTok girl explain:

I will laugh about this until the day I die

• 

  Fantasy Island Bookstore

• 

  Delaware Valley Cremation Center

• 

  Four Seasons Total Landscaping

Just made of class, right?

And here is Rudy Giuliani, at the important presser, reacting to the election being called, in real time.

“Old Man Yells at Cloud” – The Simpsons

And then, AND THEN, the first person he summons to the podium to talk about voter fraud is Daryl Brooks — convicted sex offender (public masturbation), perennial candidate in New Jersey elections (Green Party, Libertarian, Poor People’s Party, etc.), and token GOP Black person. The whole event was very “Death of Stalin.” You must read what the Twitterverse says about it here.

Gentle reader, I will be giggling about this forever. It is truly God’s blessing in a dark and troubled time. And we need it: this election should have been a landslide, a crushing tsunami of blue. Instead, 70+ million of our countrymen voted for Donald Trump, knowingly, consciously. They voted for a proto-fascist. According to the New York Times, “Exit polls showed Trump doubled his support among L.G.B.T.Q. voters. His share of the Hispanic vote also went up steeply, and he also did better with Black voters this time….” I despair of humanity in general, and America in particular.

But let us entertain ourselves with the spectacle of Trump’s downfall. For instance, the right-wing media reaction: we seem to be at the wrecking-and-splitting phase in response to Trump’s defeat. All extremist movements devolve into factional quarrels and mutual blame in the face of failure and they are no different:

• Fox News, the biggest Trump enabler (with FaceBook) is having some kind of schizophrenic break over the election and its aftermath. The Mr. Hyde of their actual news staff is more and more pointedly at odds with their Dr. Jekyll/Tucker Carlson/Sean Hannity/Pundits ‘n’ Propaganda arm. Plus the MAGAs are all “Fox sucks!” because Fox is not partisan enough.

• The same is true of other Murdoch-controlled outlets: “It’s as if there is a tug-of-war going on within the Murdoch media universe: The WSJ and the NYPost are running op-eds urging Trump to stop the “stolen” election rhetoric and step aside gracefully, while some Fox stars are telling him to keep fighting…“ CNN Reliable Sources.

• Out in the badlands of social media, the trolls on 4Chan (sewer of the internet) are attacking the libertarians: ‘I Fucking Hate You’: Pro-Trump 4Chan Forum Turns on Libertarians as His Re-Election Crumbles. As the president’s hopes looked increasingly doomed, the same Internet cesspool that took credit for his 2016 win found a new scapegoat. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of guys.

• Rush Limbaugh is of course telling his listeners that Democrats have stolen the election – “I Haven’t Conceded Anything!” and is accusing the institutionalist GOP (what’s left of it) of treachery: “The GOP Establishment Wants to Run Trump Out of Town”

• There is also a struggle in tech-world to be the next big r/w social media platform. FaceBook and Twitter banned the “Stop the Steal” anti-Biden people, who immediately jumped to nasty little plague-spots like Parler. These ‘Free speech’ platforms cater to people like Lang Holland, the police chief of Marshall, Ark (recently resigned) because they need a place to post death threats and so on. The whole business model of these bottom-feeders is based on hosting these rabid screeds. The Parler app shot to top-rank at the Apple App Store as soon as ‘Stop the Steal’ got banned from the ‘respectable’ social media sites.

And if the gods really are crazy, then we will wind up with Trump TV as a replacement for Fox. It will be an alternative reality for MAGAs to live and rejoice in.

Next stop, Trump TV? — When I introduced Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy as a Trump friend and potential future competitor, he suggested I should call him a future Trump business partner instead. Ruddy is trying to build up Newsmax TV as a rival to Fox News, though the channel lags very far behind in the ratings. Ruddy is tapping into Trump’s frustrations with Fox and positioning Newsmax as a friendlier media outlet. He said he would “love to have Donald Trump on Newsmax a lot, whether he is president or not. I think he is great television.

Oliver Darcy, CNN Reliable Sources, Nov 8 2020

But sufficient onto the day is the evil thereof, Matthew 6:34; let us pray.

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE!

Splitting is happening in real life groups, as well as in the right-wing media space. Here is a meetup in a Denny’s in support of the candidacy of devoted MAGA Errol Webber, Candidate for Congress CA-37, who is Black. Outside, another, alt-right group gathers…..

Keep in mind that Errol Webber won 13.6% of the vote in his district. We are so doomed.

 

WE DON’T NEED ANOTHER HERO. OR DO WE?

October 31, 2020 kdez1011

Heading into the actual, final, at-last election, MassMiss takes a look at the right-wing noise machine’s “strategy” during these last few weeks.

JOE BIDEN, PUNCHING BAG

Heroes aren’t really in fashion; the current style is attack-and-denigrate, not praise-and-admire. Donnie Bone-Spurs, the Fanta Fuhrer, sets the tone, and social media expertly destroys celebrities as fast as it creates them. Trump’s actual performance is a hard sell for the right-wing media (what with the stock market dropping 600+ points, and the pandemic raging) so most of their energy is going into frantic attacks on Joe Biden.

They say Joe Biden is old: “Biden’s senile!” “He’s fading!” “He’s in hiding.” “He’s losing it.” “He thinks Bush is still president.” “He’s on drugs!” This is either an accuse-your-enemy-of-the-crimes-you-commit propaganda trick, or they just have zero imagination and hurl back every critique of Trump as a counter-insult. It’s all very middle school.

Their ‘October surprise,’ the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, has been thoroughly debunked by mainstream newspapers, and then drowned in viral movie clips from the Rudy Giuliani/Borat movie.

So … he’s tucking his shirt in?

In response to the Borat humiliation, R/W media went full QAnon: “Hunter Biden had 25,000 pics of him torturing and raping children under age 10 in China on his laptop“, just for one example. Jim Hoft, the Gateway Pundit, famed “dumbest man on the internet,” crowed “Oh Boy: Rudy Giuliani Reads Text Message from Hunter Biden to Joe Biden talking about FaceTiming 14-Year-Old Girl Naked While Smoking Crack.” This was in reference to the Newsmax video below:

How is this not slander or libel? Lawyers? Comments?

These “October Surprises” have actually fallen pretty flat. Hunter Biden has certainly had drug problems and flailed in his life and career but did not involve his father. Nevertheless, Sean Hannity set up a camera outside Biden’s house, demanding that JB ‘walk outside’ and ‘answer these pressing questions.’ Biden very properly ignored him — it was as lame as Geraldo Rivera opening Al Capone’s mystery vault on live TV back in 1986.

It’s a house….

There are several reasons these tales are not getting traction: one is that the mainstream media is not reporting every ridiculous claim, having been burnt by the Hillary’s-email-nothing-burger back in 2016. Even Fox News was dubious about the Hunter Biden laptop, and New York Post reporters wouldn’t put their byline on the original story. Plus, let’s face it: we, their audience, are exhausted — and everyone knows Hannity and co. are bullshitters, just like Trump.

Another solid reason for the lack of traction is that Biden has done pretty well in debates and interviews, which undermines the HE’S SENILE!! narrative. You can criticize Joe Biden from the left over his past positions on incarceration and policing, or his treatment of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings — he’s a moderate, centrist Democrat. Maybe he’s too huggy and doesn’t notice when someone is uncomfortable with it? Could be. But you can’t tell me the person in this clip is not a basically decent human being….

Comfort

NOT THE HERO WE WANT, BUT HE’LL DO

Your MassMiss would prefer to be represented by somebody like Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas, because that guy is WAY cool. He rides around the Mexican countryside on horsesback, supporting the rights of indigenous people. He writes novels and poetry. Plus his whole look is just ready-made for t-shirts and dorm-room posters — the guy knows how to rock an eye-patch, right?

But that’s just my girlish fantasy. Here in the real world of 2020 America, Biden and Harris getting elected next week looks pretty fine. If they don’t take the initiative themselves to make massive improvements in governance, they can be pushed, hard, by we the people. Another four years of Trump and we’ll all wind up out beyond the Thunderdome. And, trust me, what we need is NOT out there.

Honestly, Tina, I could use a hero about now…

 

MAGA v. THE VIRUS

October 3, 2020 kdez1011 2 comments

Trump has been taken to Walter Reed Hospital with Covid-19 leaving a trail of disaster behind him, as is his way. The ever-growing list of his personal virus-victims reads thusly:

1. Melania Trump
2. Hope Hicks
3. Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign mgr
4. Kellyanne Conway
5. Sen. Mike Lee, UT
6. Sen. Thom Tillis, NC
7. Sen. Ron Johnson, WI
8. Ronna McDaniel, Chairwoman of the RNC
9. John Jenkins, Notre Dame Pres
10. Chris Christie
11. Eleven staffers at the Cleveland debate
12. Three WH reporters
13. Unknown number of Secret Service agents

None of these developments were properly announced by the persons allegedly governing the country. Just for one example, Kellyanne Conway’s condition was outed by her daughter, Claudia, on Tik-Tok. Once more, I give thanks to the youngs and their little hand-held machines, without which we would have NO IDEA what’s going on. Here Trump finally gets around to announcing his departure for Walter Reed:

Not helping

Typhoid Trump and his merry gang of super-spreaders certainly got a lot done before he was carted away. First there was the debate in Cleveland on Tuesday where Trump and his entourage arrived too late for a test, as required by the venue. The event organizers assumed that people associated with the campaigns would not come unless they had tested negative — they had an “honor system,” the poor dumb clucks! As if “honor” were even a thing in Trump-world! Per the Washington Post: “Trump’s people arrived wearing masks, which they had to have to enter the auditorium, but then removed them shortly after sitting down, and refused to put them back on. The campaign did not tell the Biden camp that Hicks, who attended the debate, had tested positive for coronavirus the day after the event.”

Before the debate, on Saturday, there was the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett (who already had Covid this summer) to the Supreme Court where there was all kinds of “hugging, back-slapping and canoodling” — with predictable results. That Rose Garden nomination party is now being regarded as a “super-spreader” event. Here’s a timeline of Trump’s appearances where he probably infected god-knows-how-many people.

The final docking of Plague Ship Trump was Thursday for a fundraiser at his own Bedminster golf club (ka-ching!) where he knowingly went right ahead and exposed his wealthy donors to the disease. Now there are 30 to 50 Richie-Riches out there panicking because they paid up to $250,000 for the privilege of being negligently-man-slaughtered by a narcissistic conman. They all deserve each other.

How is the right-wind media spinning all this? Here’s Tucker Carlson talking to Matt Gaetz, the Florida GOP congressman whose “son,” 19-year-old Nestor Galban (also referred to as his “helper,” a “House page,” or a “local student”) is definitely not his gay lover. Gaetz and Tucker are entirely agreed on two things: a) if Covid can get into the White House, it can get in anywhere so we should just open all the businesses, and b) Donald Trump is SO hard-working, he is practically invincible, so the rest of us might as well just roll over and get Covid.

“Such a smart point”

This idea that Trump has robust, super-human vitality is very popular in the MAGA-swamp. They need to see their hero, and therefore themselves, as superior in every way. This includes genetic superiority, because that’s not at all racist, fascist Nazism. Check out Brenden Dilley below, described by Wonkette as a MAGA life-coach and failed self-help author, yammering on about Trump’s “god-tier genetics.”

The gods aren’t what they used to be

“I don’t care what you say, that dude’s got God-tier genetics,” Dilley said. “His kids are always healthy. They’re all strong, tall, no fucking deformities, nothing going on. These are rock solid people. President Donald J. Trump, he’s been your president for three-and-a-half years. He’s been campaigning for like—I don’t even know how long—another two years on top of that? You’ve never seen him sick. You’ve never seen him without energy. So just remember, President Trump is not somebody that’s walking around with weak-ass pussy fucking genetics, alright? He hasn’t got those liberal genes, OK? These are like God-tier genetics, top fucking one percentile genetics. So, don’t even sweat that shit.”

Right Wing Watch. Kyle Mantyla, Oct 2 2020

Sean Hannity is going with lecturing everybody on decency and not falling prey to conspiracy theories. Where he gets off lecturing anyone but a rabid hamster on “decency” I do not know.

Rage seems appropriate, actually

He does have a point about conspiracy theories. Yesterday every single caller to Boston Public Radio’s Jim Braude and Margery Eagan very reputable talk show said the White House was lying: Trump was faking to get out of the debates; or he was going to pop back up and say, see, covid is a nohtingburger (and I’m superman); or he was angling for the sympathy/patriotic vote because the thing to do in a crisis is support the president.

Meanwhile, if some ordinary mortal with a normal genetic endowment, some sense of responsibility, and a basic conscience would step in and take over, that would be great.

Anyone?