News Stories Your Crazy Uncle Read Over the Holiday Weekend
There Was a President in Nantucket… The mainstream media reported on the President’s holiday weekend, and that’s to be expected.
Still, it wouldn’t be the new gilded age without stories casting doubt on his sincerity in the face of a huge (relatively speaking) boost on social spending waiting in the Senate. And when the opposition party has spent the week deifying a 17 year old shooter they need something to change the framing for the Sunday news shows.
Did you know POTUS and FLOTUS stayed on the property of a --gasp!-- billionaire. A couple of Google searches would have maybe changed the nature of the story. The holiday locale turns out to be a Biden family tradition dating back to the mid-1970s and one they skipped last year due to the pandemic. Oh, and they were renting the property, not staying for free or as guests, a fact left out of virtually all the reporting.
Zzzzzzz… Here’s the lowdown on Billionaire David Rubenstien from the Washington Post
Rubenstein is a fixture of Washington — he’s the chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Economic Club of Washington and the Kennedy Center, and he gave millions of dollars to help repair the Washington Monument after it was damaged in a 2011 earthquake — but he’s not a big Democratic donor. He doesn’t appear to have made any political donations since writing a $6,000 check to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2007, according to campaign finance records.
Are you ready for the really BIG scandal? The absence of mashed potatoes on Biden's Thanksgiving Day menu?
The starting point for all this Debbie Downerism is supposed to be how the American people are suffering and that it’s Biden’s fault.
Tens of thousands of the faithful followers of Dear Leader had to be convinced not to get vaccinated so the Wall Street Journal could run an op ed about Biden’s failure to tame the virus using Republimath.
In real terms, during Trump's last year in office the number of fatalities went from 10 (when Trump said it would soon decline back to zero) to 400,000, an increase of four million (4,000,000!) percent. During Biden's first year in office the number of fatalities went from about 400,000 to 800,000, an increase of only 100 percent.
That's a fatality rate percentage decline of 99.9975 percent. So it is brazenly dishonest to say that Biden did no better than Trump. The truth is that during Biden's term the United States went from 4000 people dying every day by the end of Trump's term, to about 1,000 deaths a day under Biden, A decline of 75 percent.
I’m sure somebody thought this was a great strategy until tons of Republicans started getting sick and dying. Now it’s taken on a life of its own, part of the party litany along with CRT and obscene library books.
https://twitter.com/jdboor/status/1465007708671668226?s=20
The gap in Covid’s death toll between red and blue America grew wider in October than at any time in the past. Unvaccinated people in the US are at a 14 times greater risk of dying from covid-19 than those who are fully vaccinated against coronavirus, according to data from September published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Unvaccinated individuals are also almost six times as likely to test positive for the virus.
BONUS: Now we have the oh-my-god it’s Omicron variant that’s sure to give a boost to the flat earthers in the GOP.
Dollar Tree Stores announced a price increase to $1.25 last week, blaming the current “inflationary environment.” CEO Michael Witynsk raked in only $11 million in total compensation last year, so things must be bad.
He who smelled it... Gas prices have been at the top of the GOP’s list of complaints over the past few weeks. And there’s no doubt about it, the cost of filling up is up, up, up. But it ain’t Biden’s fault (or Trump’s), given that the sources of crude are world-wide. The real reasons for increasing prices are simple, but the explanation to arrive at the answer is long-winded.
Suffice it to say, one word will do: greed. And that’s a good stand in for the first G in GOP.
Oh, and then there is the annoying fact that, adjusted for inflation, the panic over prices is largely an illusion. The rate of increase is (although tapering), but the price in real dollars is almost exactly the 20 year average (at the national level).
Adjusted for inflation, gas was more expensive in 2005, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2018. The real problem is that most people haven’t gotten pay raises to match inflation.
https://twitter.com/Public_Citizen/status/1464709869873807365?s=20
Lara Trump --who debuted her first drunk mommy video last weekend-- has been making the bottom of the barrel media rounds claiming Biden is using inflation to hinder Americans from buying turkey — to destroy Thanksgiving tradition.
Lara’s hubby was also dishing out psychobabble on Fox News. Donald Trump Jr. attacked President Joe Biden for not curing cancer during his first 10 months in office. He also expressed disappointment that there weren’t riots in the US in response to vaccine mandates.
Right wing outlets have decided, as long as we’re already living under a socialist dictatorship, that they’re going to adopt the North Korean model wherein they are allowed to tell people how to spend money.
Hence the brouhaha over Vice President Kamala Harris’s purchase of a Le Creuset pan in Paris for the outrageous price of $375, now inflated to $500 on Fox News and in social media commentary.
https://twitter.com/GeorgeTakei/status/1464637741673680897?s=20
Now it’s come out that maybe it wasn’t the fabled French brand, but copper dish and frying pan. And the amount of money involved totaled 516 euros, or about $580. Whew! I remember when facts were a fundamental part of reporting.
DC’s Free Beacon connected the dots: “The vice-presidential shopping spree came as Americans stateside suffer from the worst inflation in three decades, putting strain on both consumers and small businesses.”
Not since President Barack Obama’s tan suit has Washington been rocked with such a scandal. I’m sure CNN will have an op-ed up soon calling for her resignation, since they seem to think she’s worthless anyhow.
I should end this post with some good news, namely that the forces within QAnon are at war with each other. This could put professional wrestling to shame.
Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the military genius who lasted less than a month in the Trump administration, has disavowed QAnon. A taped phone call has the guy who once took the whacko loyalty oath saying it’s all “total nonsense” and a “disinformation campaign created by the left.”
QAnon followers believe Flynn’s now on Team Satan because of unusual remarks at a church echoing deceased cult-leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet.
(It’s just too weird to explain. Trust me on this one. Grant Stern has the deets if you really have to know.)
On the other side of this battle of the two-year-olds is Lin Wood, an attorney too crazy for the Trump campaign who’s been a major factor in the QAnon affiliated movements to deny the 2020 election result, also known as The Big Lie.
Flynn’s followers are demanding that Wood refute allegations concerning the misappropriation of Kyle Rittenhouse's defense fund.
Popcorn, anyone?
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