Trump supporters – the stupid goes all the way up

Today on “The stupid goes all the way up” – this is the latest talking point from people stupid enough to actively support trump. The suggestion appears to be that you can’t impeach trump because this map shows virtually all of the country voted for him.

 

Unsurprisingly for trump supporters, this is stupid on several levels.

 

First, that map is virtually meaningless in telling you how many people voted for trump as the red areas are very sparsely populated and the number of voters in the blue areas is orders of magnitude larger. As everyone but trump supporters knows, he lost the popular vote by several million.

 

Second, impeachment proceedings have nothing to do with the public vote. They’re a political process conducted wholly within the congress and senate. The public has zero involvement (except maybe in their ability to sway the votes of congresspeople and senators).

 

The real kicker for me is this takedown by an historian showing a comparison with Nixon’s electoral map. It really is meaningless.

 

And if you’ve never heard of Lara Trump, she’s married to Eric Trump. So that tells you how smart she is.

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Milkshakes vs fascists – the revolution will be pasteurised

I’m doubtless one of many people who didn’t imagine milkshakes would become the symbol of resistance to ultra right wing bigotry and hate but here we are. As the number of gammon getting milkshaked (milkshook? milkshaken?) increases I have to say I’m completely on board with this as a non-violent protest against these worthless scumbags.

And for anyone who wants to say this IS violent – fuck off. Just fuck right off. The bleating garbage who have been shrieking about how unacceptable this is (going so far as to call it terrorism) will always turn a blind eye to the outright thuggery of right wingers up to including murder (Nigel Farage famously said Brexit had been achieved “without a single shot being fired” despite one of his supporters having gunned down an opposition MP only a week earlier).

I like this as a form of protest because while being non-violent it definitely humiliates the. It makes them look stupid and they hate that. Then when they bleat about how terrible it is, they look even more stupid. And look at how much this kid loves seeing Farage get the treatment:

It’s gotten to the stage where even the representation of a milkshake winds them up. And that’s just beautiful.

 

Scott Morrison spouting crap

You know how writers on shows like Veep have their politicians say absolutely vapid, meaningless word salads when articulating their policies? The idea being we laugh because they’re exaggerating the way real world politicians talk garbage? In Australia, we had an incident recently where the government actually used a Veep slogan, almost word for word.

Oh Dear

Apparently wanting to avoid a similar embarrassment, our (hopefully) soon to be ex-government has taken the innovative approach of trying to put the Veep writers out of business by spouting garbage far more meaningless than anything they’ve ever written for their TV shows.

If we weren’t on the verge of throwing them out, I’d say we were doomed.

Another spectacular week of Trump train wrecks

It’s so easy for me to find material with Trump and Co. moving from crisis to crisis. Whether it’s his supporters, his lawyer or Trump himself being neck deep in shit, he’s the gift that keeps on giving. And he topped off the week beautifully with a call in interview to Fox and Friends that got so bad, the hosts themselves ended up cutting him off mid sentence.

Australia’s Banking Royal Commission and ANZAC Day controversy

It’s somewhere between fun and bizarre to watch the conservative LNP government act like they wanted a Royal Commission into the finance sector now that the scale of malfeasance in that industry is becoming apparent.

Also, with ANZAC Day approaching that means it’s time to get ready for the relatively recent national sport of people who call anyone who disagrees with them a snowflake losing their tiny little minds if anyone’s response to ANZAC Day deviates one iota from their declared orthodoxy.

Malcolm Turnbull loses 30 Newspolls in a row

Malcolm Turnbull and his supporters are trying to argue (with some merit) that him losing 30 Newspolls in a row is meaningless in and of itself. But it was one of the key metrics he used to justify knifing then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott and so now Turnbull’s detractors will use it against him.

And the though of more infighting within the conservatives fills my dark heart with glee.

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation tearing itself apart

There’s an old political trope that says left wing parties can’t hold power for long before they start turning on each other and right wingers are much more disciplined and balanced. This is clearly bullshit as conservatives and especially extreme right wingers continue to eat themselves around the world.

The latest to provide me with some joy on this front is Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party here in Australia. They appear to be proving yet again if you get a group of fringe extremists together they’ll find reasons to turn on each other as much as they turn on others.

Centrelink’s “debt recovery” is a disaster and must be stopped

Here’s a story that’s an ugly combination of a conservative government waging war on the most vulnerable and the worst sort of bureaucratic fuck up. Centrelink, the government agency responsible for pensions and unemployment benefits embarked on a debt recovery plan which sounds fine in theory but their system is so deeply flawed that they have been demanding money from people who owe them nothing.

So far the government is acting as though they’re doing nothing wrong even though they’re driving people to the brink of suicide. This programme is fundamentally flawed – it can’t be fixed and it needs to be cancelled.

As an aside, here’s some advice if you happen to get one of these debt letters.

Predictions for 2017

I spent some of today hanging out with some local YouTubers, socialising and talking about plans for the year. One of the things I’m really bad at is self promotion and marketing. What I have learned is that working with other people makes things easier.

It was also my first opportunity this year to make a video with my regular collaborator, AIDzee. We took the opportunity to use one of Melbourne’s colourful art alleys (in this case, Croft Alley) as a backdrop to talk about how we’re looking forward to seeing the extreme right eat each other.

Fake News is Everywhere

This is what I am convinced is going to be one of the big issues of 2017 (and beyond). While I think the Trump administration will dominate my blog and videos this year and ongoing issue is “fake news”. It’s hard to even define what that is but I’m going to spend a lot of this year trying.