Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

~~~

~~~

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Day Two of the Republican National Dumpster Fire

UPDATE BELOW


The plagiarizing scandal continues.  Rick Wilson, a conservative pundit writes:


Rick Wilson ✔ @TheRickWilson    Listen, if Michelle Obama stole Laura Bush's convention speeches the right would be ripshit livid for a month. 1:33 AM - 19 Jul 2016 



********************


Four years ago the GOP had Clint Eastwood talk to an empty chair; last night Chris Christie held a mock trial.  (Will the Dems conduct a fake trial for the Trump University fraud case?) 

Nah. 

The Dems don't need to, there are so many fraud cases against the Trumper, no one needs to hold a pretend one for "theatrical effects."

But really.  What's with these Goopers?  The only way to get their messages across is through make-believe? 

They certainly live in a fantasy world, perhaps that's why they believe in what isn't there.

Meanwhile, Hillary had a wicked good comeback:


With a single tweet, Hillary managed to turn the tables.


"If you think Chris Christie can lecture anyone on ethics, we have a bridge to sell you."


UPDATE:


Andrew Sullivan live-blogged the Republican National Dumpster Fire, and had this to say:


"Just mulling over the events tonight, there’s one obvious stand-out. I didn’t hear any specific policy proposals to tackle clearly stated public problems. 

It is almost as if governing, for the Republican right, is fundamentally about an attitude, rather than about experience or practicality or reasoning. The degeneracy of conservatism – its descent into literally mindless appeals to tribalism and fear and hatred – was on full display. 

You might also say the same about the religious right, the members of whom have eagerly embraced a racist, a nativist, a believer in war crimes, and a lover of the tyrants that conservatism once defined itself against. 

Their movement long lost any claim to a serious Christian conscience. But that they would so readily embrace such an unreconstructed pagan is indeed a revelation."

We at P.E. have been saying that for a long time. The Evangelical Right has embraced a man who is everything they detest and have stood against in the past. They are moral cowards.

17 comments:

Shaw Kenawe said...


The pundits are not finished with Mrs. Trump's plagiarizing blunder:


Conservative Pundit, David Frum:

"Ten Reasons Why Melania Trump’s Speech Will Have a Lasting Impact

Since Sunday, every journalist at this convention has been collecting examples of the Trump campaign’s failures and incompetence: the quarrel with Ohio Governor John Kasich, the absent senators and governors, the no-show donors, the convention’s financial embarrassments, the floor fight over rules, the lack of a proper schedule, and the defective apps and other technology. Suddenly, there is one easy-to-understand incident that encapsulates in one grim joke all this convention’s cavalcade of derp.

Point #4:

4) To this point, the Hillary Clinton campaign has been unsure how to attack Donald Trump. There has been noticeable hesitation, uncertainty, and even mutually refuting contradictions in its early attacks. How can Trump both be a cynical con man and a dangerous extremist hate-monger? Now at last the script writes itself: Trump as doofus, the guy who went broke running a casino—and can’t even find someone to write an ordinarily competent speech for his wife’s big self-introduction to the American public.

Point #5

5) Trump has just vividly demonstrated that his campaign—never mind the campaign, he himself—have zero skill at crisis management. Confronted with this comically absurd failure, their instinct is not only to lie, shift blame, and refuse responsibility, but to do so in laughably unbelievable ways. It’s all a big joke when the crisis in question is a plagiarized speech by a would-be first lady. It won’t be so funny when a President Trump tries to manage a truly life-and-death crisis in the same blundering, dopey, and cowardly way."


READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE HERE.

Shaw Kenawe said...

Point #9 is the money quote by Frum:

9) "Plagiarism draws attention to content of the passage plagiarized. In 2008, Michelle Obama summed up the values that she had learned from her parents and that she and Barack Obama now tried to instill in their children: work hard; tell the truth; keep your promises; treat others with dignity and respect. Donald Trump epically does not tell the truth, does not keep his promises, and does not treat others with dignity and respect. A plagiarized speech (and the failure to detect the plagiarism) pretty strongly confirms that the Trumps do not much care about hard work, either. "Thine own mouth condemneth thee, and not I: yea, thine own lips testify against thee.”

Anonymous said...



The sort of people who support Trump and believe he'd make a great president are the same people who see nothing wrong when their side cheats and lies. For them truth and honor is what they say it is, not what it actually is. They're blowing off Melania's disastrous appearance as if it doesn't matter. It really does matter because it's a picture of how sloppy, incompetent, and dishonest Trump and his whole operation is.

And What Rick Wilson said.

skudrunner said...

Anon, I don't see a lot of -H- supporters switching to trump so I think you are correct about supporting someone who cheats and lies.
It is not surprising that the party of tolerance has no tolerance for someone foreign born and English is not her first language. Of course that is the same party who degrades success and hard work in favor of free stuff.

Jerry Critter said...

In one sentence, Clinton shows the value of education and facts in shutting down Christie. Education and facts, something republicans continually deny. We see it all the time, Shaw, from your trolls.

Jerry Critter said...

skud -- "...party of tolerance has no tolerance for someone foreign born and English is not her first language." What does foreign born and English have to do with plagiarism?

skud -- "...same party who degrades success and hard work in favor of free stuff." How about some examples of how they degrade success and hard work in favor of free stuff.

Anonymous said...


Skudrunner, Have you been living under a rock? The fact is that Trump has been found to commit the most lies than any other condidate running for the presidency -- and Hillary is the most honest in comparison. But facts are not what people like you believe. you believe your own lies you pass around in emails. Also calling Mrs. Trump out on plagiarsim is not being intolerant as you hope to change the subject and blame that on the liberals, it's telling the truth about what the Trump people did. And remember Mrs. Trump did say on national television that she wrote all of her speech with just a little bit of help (yes, true, a little bit of help from Michelle Obama!). We did reward hard work and honesty and faithfulness to a spouse when we chose Barack Obama as our presidential candidate. Can anyone in the Rethuglican Party say that with a straight face about Trump?

Shaw Kenawe said...



Jerry, skudrunner is our resident Eeyore. Anytime something negative comes out about any Gooper, he runs here to tell us it's Obama's fault, but now in this election year, it's all Hillary's fault. Didn't some in the GOP blame Hillary for Melania's plagiarism? See what I mean. He's just following orders.

Shaw Kenawe said...



Wait? skud says the Dems have no tolerance for people who are foreign born? Well, according to the fright wingers, didn't the Dems make a foreign-born man president of the US? If that isn't tolerance, I don't know what is! ;)

Jerry Critter said...

Fright wingers make no sense at all.

Bluebull said...

Who the heck do you think you're kidding, Skidmark? Your party is the one that clearly hates immigrants (and most other non-white non-Christian Non-conservative types). You can't get away with peddling crap over here as you can on the rightie blogs!

skudrunner said...

Blueballs
I have no party but the noise being made by the media mafia is ridiculously over the top. All of this is an excuse to not deal with the real issues.
Declining middle class, stagnant economy, decreasing jobs for minorities and advancing welfare and food stamp recipients.
All of those are tough to blame on anyone but the current administration.
So much for hope and change for the last eight years.

Shaw Kenawe said...


Skud, ole buddy. Tell us how the Republican Congress worked with President Obama to solve the problems you so gleefully enumerated in you comment. Do you believe a president can solve all those problems all by him/herself? Because if you do, you need a remedial course in how the U.S. government works.

But thanks for being consistent in playing the Blame Game.

Shaw Kenawe said...

More dishonesty from the Trump campaign.

Melania Trump did NOT graduate from college with a degree in architecture -- in fact she dropped out of college:

From Gawker: "Melania Trump never actually graduated from college.

In a recent New York Times article—buried way, way down—the Times notes that “Melania’s entire family sensed potential in her modeling. After high school, she concentrated on her career, dropping out of architecture school. (She still claims on her website to have graduated.)”

The New Yorker, too, wrote back in May, “Her Web site states that she obtained a degree in architecture and design from the University of Ljubljana when in fact she dropped out in her first year.”

So why did the program flat out lie about Melania’s “degrees”? It’s especially odd considering it would have been all too easy for the Trump campaign to touch only vaguely on Melania’s education experience. This wouldn’t have been any more honest necessarily, but it certainly would have been a far shrewder tactic than outright lying about something that can be so easily disproved.

This latest flub just adds to the growing body of evidence that not only is the Trump campaign dishonest, they’re incompetent, too."


Again, why lie? Why not just say Melania attended college to study architecture. That would not be a lie but the truth.

Imagine the howls from the right if Michelle Obama lied about her college education.

Again we see how willing the current GOP will excuse cheating and lying, as long as you have an "R" beside you name or you are the wife of the presidential candidate.

Jerry Critter said...

skud -- "All of those are tough to blame on anyone but the current administration."

skud, what you say would be true IF the republicans in congress had worked with Obama and passed legislation that he requested. But they didn't. In fact, (yes those nasty facts getting in the way again) they blocked practically everything he proposed.

Since they would not enact solutions he requested, it is tough to blame anyone but republicans in congress.

Bluebull said...

Skidmark,
You forgot to add that under President Obama and his steady hand, the Bush depression has improved greatly - gas prices are around 2.25 rather than the 4 - 5 dollars they were under the idiot bush. The unemployent rate is 4.9 and no matter how often the mutts on the right bellyache about how much worse it actually is - it's gauged the EXACT SAME FRICKING way it's been gauged for decades. The American auto industry, now prosperous and employing Americans was saved by the president. Bin Laden, Lily Ledbetter, an expansion of human rights for LGBT Americans, a vast improvement in our national reputation around the world (I know I know - to listen to the lying right, it's never been worse but there is ZERO evidence of that -- of course.) Many thousands of Americans now have access to health insurance and, while not exactly the solution I'd have chosen, it's a huge improvement over what we had -- again despite what the whining mutts on the right constantly say.
Yeah, I'll take this great president and his lovely family over ANY Repub who's ever infested the office.

Flying Junior said...

Media Mafia?

That's cute. Back to day two of the fear convention.

Let's see, "All lives matter!" "Blue lives MATTER!"

Who could have guessed that the shooting of police officers this week would prove to be such a self-affirming celebration of fear for republicans today?

Maybe I can shed some light on this phenomenon.

Surely all human lives matter. But just maybe black and brown lives matter just a little bit less than white lives. Particularly if the white life in question is a blue life. Please don't confuse this type of life, (i.e. a police officer,) with the life of a blues singer or musician, or possibly someone who is very blue most of the time. We can assume that a blue life is somewhat safer when presented with an unusual situation involving another white life, or at least no one who is actually darker in pigment than their own skin. Worst case scenario, when presented with a police problem involving a black life, the black person dies. This is okay, because the officer can be acquitted of all charges.

Apparently it is always much safer to shoot first and ask questions later when there is a police situation involving a black life. One can't be too careful. Even if the black life is a caregiver for the mentally ill who is trying to help an institutionalized adult male who has escaped into the street to play with a Tonka truck. Even if said black life is lying on his back with his hands in the air, pleading with arriving officers not to shoot. Laying on his back telling them that there is no reason to shoot. If one of the officers goes ahead and shoots him anyway, he can always say, "I don't know why I shot that black life!" At least he did not shoot a white life unnecessarily.

So, if a blue life shoots a black life, it may be messy, but does not have long-term consequences except for the black life who was shot. But if a blue life accidentally shoots and kills a white life, this could lead to very serious problems.