The photos of the "crowds" at the tank parade remind me of when Bill Hicks would come on stage in an almost-empty club, scan the room slowly, and announce "I've had more people in bed than this" ...
When the president sends a cabinet member on TV to announce "We are using the military to liberate an American city from its elected leaders," where do you go from there. What is left to say. The idea of that being anything short of a near-universal "Wait, what the fuck is going on" moment proves how far we've backslid.
This is from 2022 but it was absolutely right. The practiced buffoonery of Trump 1, all the "just kiddings" and "seriously but not literallys" absolutely succeeded in desensitizing people who are hardly paying any attention to the harder stuff they always intended to do next. ...
The basic fallacy in chasing votes by being "tough on immigration" is that the modal American's position on the issue is "Deport the Bad ones and keep the Good ones," and they alone know who is which, and that simply does not translate into workable policy. So this kind of gestapo stuff horrifies some of the same people who cheered when Trump promised to do it. There are true sociopaths who love this, but "No, I meant only the BAD immigrants! Not my coworker/friend/neighbor!" is as likely a reaction as enthusiasm. You cannot do immigration policy that satisfies these people because what they want is nonsensical.
So by the time center-left parties fully commit to chasing the far right by "getting tough" on immigration, the backlash has already begun to build and they walk right into it. "I thought you people wanted this!" No, they want something impossible and convinced themselves they'd could have it - the "eat whatever you want AND lose weight!" of immigration policies.
It is hard to grasp but large masses of Americans are both racist/xenophobic AND not racist/xenophobic enough to applaud what Trump is doing. It's goldilocks shit, they want a level of racism/xenophobia calibrated exactly to their personal preferences, and you just can't make that policy. Don't try. ...
AP: Trump extends olive branch, invites Musk to White House cellar to taste some brand new amontillado ...
Mike says:
I thought Africa was a song by the band Toto.
I love O'Reilly's responses: "Oh you can tutor someone on the government and the world map." Nice!
Dustin says:
I have a hard time believing this though. It sounds like someone is sour grapes and is making stuff up to sound plausible based on stereotypes of Palin. I mean maybe. It just sounds too good to be true…
ladiesbane says:
Could it be well-poisoning if the reporters were told to keep it off the record until after the election? (And does this mean they would not have told us if McCain had won?) Doesn't matter, really. Did you see Carl's report to the other Fox anchor? The one who was deeply appalled? Guess who'll never go far with Fox!
Bill O'Reilly is a shameless twat for bulling through the report, as if ANY candidate for VP might not know that South Africa is an independent nation, or might need to be brought up to speed on the countries in NAFTA. (Hint: the first two letters of the acronym give it away. Does someone want to fill her in on that?)
Imagine him cutting a Democrat the same slack. Or a man!
She can quote from the Book of Revelations, but she doesn't know what NAFTA stands for — a true neo-conservative pin-up girl.
Ed says:
Might very wll be McCain people trying to undercut and scapegoat Palin.
Or she could be retarded.
I'll call it 50/50.
Nate says:
Looks like someone has a lot of basic civics/cultural learning to do before 2012.
beau says:
really ed, please stop calling palin retarded. it's very unfair to the legitimately disabled.