Jake Tapper

I Blame Jake Tapper

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A “body count” — this guy should be ashamed of himself.

Here’s what I think of when someone says “election denialism”:

  • When was the last Democratic primary election that wasn’t rigged? 2016? Rigged. 2020? Rigged. (Both to prevent a Bernie Sanders nomination.) 2024? Double-rigged. No one was allowed to challenge Biden, probably to avoid debates. After he “won” the nomination, he was pulled and replaced by Kamala Harris. How many people voted for Kamala Harris as a presidential nominee? (Hint: it’s a round number.) And yet Democrats get huffy if you accuse them of rigging elections.
  • Why is “election denialism” linked only to 2020? Did Democrats accept the results of the 2016 presidential election? They didn’t. House Democrats challenged the votes from nine states. The losing candidate, Hillary Clinton, called Donald Trump an “illegitimate president.” The Democratic party consensus was that Trump stole the election via collusion with Russia, although after a multi-year investigation, this was proved to be a hoax.
  • Questioning election results is a perfectly fine thing to do. It’s not illegal, not immoral, not a threat to democracy. Threats to democracy include trying to prosecute and imprison your political foes, setting up a censorship regime in which tech companies are coerced into suppressing political dissent, things of that nature.
  • When President Obama was elected in 2008 and 2012, he got 60-something million votes both times. When President Trump was elected in 2016, he got 60-something million votes. And remember, people were actually excited to vote for Obama and Trump. In 2020, Joe Biden was elected with, we’re told, 81 million votes! There’s not one person in America, including his wife, excited about Joe Biden — but he got 81 million votes?! I believe Joe Biden got 81 million votes like I believe the cow jumped over the moon.

I’ve noticed that blaming people for terrible events seems to be more of a Democratic thing than a Republican thing. Donald Trump is to blame for Jan. 6. Tucker Carlson is to blame for a guy shooting Black people in a Buffalo supermarket. Sarah Palin is to blame for Gabby Giffords being shot. Anytime there’s a high-profile shooting, it’s blamed on Republicans and the NRA.

Following this line of thinking, who can we blame for the assassination attempt on Trump? Trump himself seems to be taking the high road and not blaming it on anyone.

I’m going to take a different approach and blame it on Jake Tapper and everyone else who’s been comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler for eight years. Who wouldn’t want to go down in the history books as the person who killed Adolf Hitler?

No one who isn’t an absolute nutjob actually believes that Donald Trump is the second coming of Hitler. How do we know this? After Trump was shot, every prominent Democrat (and possibly media figures, though I don’t follow the media closely) wished Trump a speedy recovery. Joe Biden did. Nancy Pelosi did. Chuck Schumer did. Even AOC, one of the leaders of the “Trump is Hitler” wing of the Democratic party, did.

Imagine if sometime between, say, 1933 and 1944, the real Adolf Hitler had been shot in the ear. Would anyone who wasn’t an actual Nazi have said, “We wish Mr. Hitler a speedy recovery. All the best to him and his family”? Would FDR have said, “Our prayers are with the Fuehrer and his Nazi followers. We’ll have to tone down the rhetoric to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again”?

Anyone who really believed that Donald Trump is in any way comparable to Adolf Hitler, the single most hated person in history, would have cheered the shooter, or at the very least, remained silent.

Then why have we had eight years of Trump-Hitler analogies? Again, who wouldn’t want to go down in the history books as the person who killed Adolf Hitler?

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Thomas Jefferson on Pete Buttigieg, Lies and Crime Stats

by  on Thomas Jefferson
 

Thomas Jefferson

My fellow Americans –

What Mayor Pete is saying here is that even though Donald Trump has disavowed a national abortion ban, he — Mayor Pete — doesn’t believe him because “he lies all the time.”

In my opinion, this is not the right moment in history for Democrats to take a holier-than-thou position vis-a-vis lying to the American people.

If I were a Democrat, I would not show my face in public and if I did, it would not be to lecture anyone on the perils of lying to the public.

We’ve just had 3-1/2 years of Democrats lying to us about the mental health of our president, Joe Biden. Anyone, during that period of time, could watch new videos every day of the president falling down, mumbling incoherently, wandering around lost and confused.

And yet we were told that behind closed doors, Biden was riding unicycles and juggling knives. He’s as sharp as a tack. Complete command of the issues. We can’t keep up with him. And oh, by the way, those videos are all fake.

After the Trump-Biden debate, when there was no point in lying anymore, it’s amazing how fast Democrats pivoted from “sharp as a tack” to “we’ve got to get rid of this guy.” My head is spinning, that’s how fast it was.

As a former president myself, I find it extremely concerning that Democrats never cared that we had a vegetable in the Oval Office, until it became apparent that the vegetable was not going to be re-elected.

How much of the 3-1/2 year campaign of lies was Mayor Pete involved in? I couldn’t say exactly, but I do remember seeing a video of President Biden introducing him as “Secretary Bootyjuice,” so clearly he was aware of what was going on.

 

Another topic under discussion with Mayor Pete was crime. He was quite adamant that crime is down during the Biden administration as compared to the Trump administration and encouraged viewers to look up the data themselves.

There’s a not very well-publicized problem with comparing crime data under Trump with crime data under Biden. Either Mayor Pete is not aware of the problem, although it seems like he should be, or he’s lying and relying on his audience to be unaware of the problem.

The problem is that in 2021, the FBI changed the way it collects crime data, and many police departments did not get on board. Only 63% of the country’s police departments submitted anything, and some of the data that was submitted was incomplete.

In some large states, like California and Florida, almost no agency in the state submitted any data to the FBI. The Los Angeles Police Department did not submit data to the FBI. The largest police department in the country, New York Police Department, didn’t submit anything to the FBI.

There’s no way to do an accurate comparison of current data with pre-2021 data. It’s apples and oranges. For violent crime, property crime and homicides, the number of crimes could have gone up, gone down or stayed the same.

It seems obvious that if the FBI crime data collection goes from 90-something percent of police departments to 63 percent, it’s going to look like crime went down.

We’ve also had a trend toward more “progressive” DAs, who prefer to release arrestees rather than charging them with crimes. That would also drop the crime rate.

My source for the information on FBI crime data is this article on npr.org.

Thomas Jefferson

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Can I Get a Witness?

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We sometimes weep in front of a mirror not to inflame self-pity, but because we want to feel witnessed in our despair.

— Maggie Nelson, Bluets

I can’t live alone anymore. I’ve tried it and I can’t do it, the reason being that I need to have a witness to my life.

Without the witness, I say things and no one hears them, I do things and no one sees them. It’s like I don’t exist.

As a younger person, I lived alone successfully, but even then I imagined a witness, an observer.

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Biden-Harris

The J21 Coup

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For years now, you could go online every day and see new videos of Joe Biden falling down, mumbling incoherently, wandering around lost and confused. But if you said anything about this out loud, you’d be called a far-right MAGA propagandist (or something similar), accused of spreading disinformation.

And by the way, according to Democrats and corporate media, those videos were fake.

Then came the Trump-Biden debate. Why Biden would agree to stand next to Trump for 90 minutes and debate, I have no idea. My best guess is that, in addition to lacking awareness of his own condition, he was instructed to do it by Democratic insiders who wanted to give the country a cold, frost-brewed dose of reality, and to obtain a solid reason for dumping Biden as the presidential nominee.

If that was the plan, it worked.

After the debate, more people by the day withdrew their support, people who for years had been lying about Biden’s mental and physical health: Why, behind closed doors, he’s riding unicycles and juggling knives! Sharp as a tack! Amazing grasp of issues! We can’t keep up with him!

Having a vegetable in the Oval Office apparently never bothered these people. What bothered them was a possible loss of power.

 

Some people refer to the events of Jan. 6, 2021 as a “coup” or an “insurrection.” In my view, a coup has to have more than a zero percent chance of success to really be a coup. A bunch of angry but unarmed couch warriors has a zero percent chance of overthrowing the most militarized government in the history of the world by rearranging a lectern.

On the other hand, Democratic elites, corporate media and billionaire donors can and did force the sitting president out of office. Yes, he’ll be allowed to serve out his term, but he was chosen by Democratic primary voters as the 2024 nominee and he was very clear about his intention to run for re-election.

To me, that is a coup, an overthrow of democracy. Although really, even though I’ve heard that it’s Donald Trump who will do away with elections, it’s been a little too obvious, at least since 2016, that the Democratic presidential nominee will be whoever party leaders want it to be, and not a person selected by voters.

Democratic party democracy is defined as single-party rule by Democrats, excluding Democratic voters.

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I Just Don’t Care Anymore

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I went into a local Circle K to buy a soda . . . they have one of those “double wide” soda machines with ice dispensers on both sides.

Circle K

When I went in, there was already a middle-aged gentleman filling up a Mountain Dew on the right side of the fountain, which he then set down well off to his left and started filling up another Mountain Dew.

His first Mountain Dew was so far left, it was actually past the left side ice dispenser. I picked out a cup and started filling it with ice from the left-hand ice dispenser, which for some reason he took exception to.

“Do you mind, buddy?” he said.

“Do you really need the whole width of the store just to fill up a drink cup?” I asked. Politely, of course.

He picked up his first Mountain Dew and moved it over closer to where he was actually standing.

I told my wife about this and she asked what I was going to do if the guy had responded more aggressively.

“Oh, I had it all planned out. I was going to throw my cup of ice in his face and while he was staggering backward, start raining blows down his midline.”

“What if that didn’t work?”

“It’ll work. I read about how to do it in a book.”

“But what if it didn’t work?”

“I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” I admitted.

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Drunk guy

I Used to Be Depressed, Broke and Anxious

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I used to be depressed, broke and anxious. Now I’m just depressed and anxious. 🙂

I appreciate this gentleman contributing free advice. It seems worthwhile. But something is off when the first thing a person tells you about themselves is how much money they make.

I just read an article about a loneliness epidemic in Silicon Valley. People make a lot of money in Silicon Valley but apparently can’t figure out how to convert it into joy or connection.

I’ve never seen any evidence that people with a lot of money are happier than anyone else. Quite the opposite, really. People think they’d be happy if they just had lots of money. Then they get lots of money and they’re no happier than they were before. Plus they’ve lost the fallback of thinking that the reason they’re not happy is that they don’t have a lot of money.

There are lots of dysfunctional rich people. I’m sure you can think of examples. One that always sticks in my mind is Ben Affleck. He was in rehab. He’s rich, famous, handsome, doesn’t have to work any more than he wants to, but for some reason, he couldn’t get through the day without getting smashed.

If Ben Affleck can’t get through the day, what are the rest of us supposed to do?

I’ve got no advice on making oodles of cash, but if you want to be happier, I’d say find a few people you really enjoy being with and spend more time with them.

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Joe Biden - 2024 Debate 1

The First 2024 Presidential Debate is in the Books

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When the presidential debates were first announced, I said that there was no way Biden was going to do a debate, so now I have to admit that I was wrong. But also, you can probably understand why I said that.

Biden is who he is. He’s mentally and physically enfeebled. As long as he doesn’t do something deranged, like challenge his opponent to a live debate, the media can continue to do their best to cover for him.

For example:

Here’s what Biden said the day after the debate:

“I know I’m not a young man. I don’t walk as easily as I used to. I don’t talk as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to, but I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. And I know how to do this job, I know how to get things done.”

He may know how to tell the truth, but he lies anyway. For example, he’s been pushing the Charlottesville “Nazis are fine people” lie for seven years. He used it in the debate at least twice. He must know it’s a lie. He can’t be that far removed from reality. It’s been refuted over and over. Snopes got a lot of press in the last week or so by debunking it again:

He may know right from wrong but he does the wrong things anyway. Democratic leaders don’t prosecute their political opponents. They don’t censor political dissent. Those things happen in “bad” countries. That’s what we’ve been taught.

If, say, Vladimir Putin does it, we condemn it. We say he’s a dictator. He’s a tyrant. He’s running an authoritarian regime. He’s perverting the justice system for political gain.

I think most people recognize show trials when they see them. Now that Joe Biden has brought show trials to America, some people say, “Nobody is above the law.”

Okay , , , maybe that’s what’s going on in Russia too. Maybe Putin is not a bad guy, it’s just that no one is above the law. Same in China, North Korea, Cuba, and banana republics all over the globe.

He doesn’t know how to do his job. He barely knows his own name. And yes, he has gotten things done, but they’ve all been disastrous.

 

A lot of Biden supporters have denounced the moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, for not fact-checking Trump in real time. That, I think, is the wrong line of defense.

First of all, if Trump says something that needs correcting, it’s not the moderators’ job to correct him, it’s Biden’s. That’s what he’s there for.

Second, it reinforces the perception of Biden as a helpless old man who can’t defend himself and needs someone to protect him.

And finally, wouldn’t the moderators have to fact-check Biden lies as well? “Nazis are fine people”? “Injecting bleach”? Trump is the cause of runaway inflation? No overseas troops died on my watch, etc.?

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Questions on the Hunter Biden Laptop

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Hunter Biden was convicted of multiple felonies this week, in part owing to the verified contents of his laptop, which the New York Post reported on before the 2020 election.

A group of 51 former U.S. intelligence officials released an open letter on Oct. 19, 2020, regarding the Post’s Oct. 14 report about the discovery of the laptop, the contents of which included documentation of a series of ethically questionable business deals that the Biden family was pursuing in both Ukraine and China, with the very likely involvement of Joe Biden himself.

The letter asserted that the laptop story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

If you read the fine print, the letter does say that while the signatories had no “evidence of Russian involvement,” the laptop op “would be consistent with some of the key methods Russia has used in its now multi-year operation to interfere in our democracy.”

The letter was then disseminated to the most reliable liars in the media, and first published, I believe, in Politico, under the heading Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.

None of the signatories have, in hindsight, expressed any reservations about signing the document, and no media organization that propagated the letter has, to my knowledge, issued a retraction.

In fact, many of the signers have doubled down, either personally or through their attorneys, saying that signing the letter was an act of patriotism.

Their key talking point can be summarized by this statement from Mark S. Zaid, an attorney representing several of the signers:

“A careful and objective reading of the document reflects that even today its content is accurate.”

And he’s right. The document, upon careful reading, does say — I’ll paraphrase here — “We have no evidence to support what we’re saying, but this sure looks like something the Russians would do.”

I have several questions about this letter that I wish I could ask someone.

Question 1: If the letter is not based on evidence, what is it based on? “Political motives” seems like the obvious answer. One narrative has Antony Blinken, the current Secretary of State, leading the effort to draft the letter and get it signed, although I believe Blinken still denies this.

Question 2: If the letter is not based on evidence, why write it at all? Why sign it? What’s the point of a letter signed by 51 people saying, essentially, “We have no idea what we’re talking about”? Why would anyone sign that?

Question 3: Is it possible that the signers didn’t know that the laptop had been in FBI custody since 2019, and that the FBI had already authenticated the contents? The list of signers includes James Clapper, John Brennan, Leon Panetta — people representing the highest levels of the U.S. security state. It seems implausible that they would not know that, in which case they are not just making incorrect inferences, they are flat-out lying.

Question 4: When the signers saw that the media were ignoring the caveat that there was no evidence to support what the letter implied, i.e., that the laptop was a Russian plant, why did none of them step forward to say, “You are misinterpreting what we said. We said that we don’t know if the laptop is genuine or not. We said we have no evidence either way.” Joe Biden even brought it up at a presidential debate: “51 intel guys said what he (Trump) is accusing me of is a Russian plant. He’s doing the Kremlin’s work for them.” Not one person stepped up to say, “That is not an accurate characterization of what we said.”

To postulate an answer to all of these questions, I’d say that everyone involved — the signers and the media — are professional liars. That’s their job. If you do your job well and successfully, there’s no reason to backpedal or apologize.

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My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: Jerry West

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I’ve always lived in Southern California — mostly in Orange County, south of LA. If you lived somewhere else, it’s probably not possible to describe what Jerry West meant to Los Angeles.

It starts with what the Lakers mean to Los Angeles and then what West meant to the Lakers, as a Hall of Fame player, and then as a coach and general manager. Yes, there’s another professional basketball team in Los Angeles but only a few misfits care about them. Quality of life in Los Angeles is determined in large part by how well the Lakers are playing.

West was synonymous with Laker basketball for 40 years. You could say that after West retired as a player, the Lakers were synonymous with Showtime, Magic Johnson, Kareem, James Worthy, and later with Kobe and Shaq and Phil Jackson. But West assembled the Showtime teams, acquired Kobe in a draft day trade for Vlade Divac, signed Shaq as a free agent and Jackson as coach.

Every time I heard him speak, he impressed me as a true gentleman and competitor.

RIP Jerry West

Jerry West with Kobe Bryant

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Chet Walker

My Boyhood Sports Icons Are Dying: Chet Walker

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Hall of Fame forward Chet “The Jet” Walker, a seven-time NBA All-Star, has died at the age of 84. Although he played with other teams, I remember him as a member of the Chicago Bulls teams of the 1970s, with Bob Love, Jerry Sloan, Norm Van Lier and Clifford Ray.

RIP Chet Walker

Chet Walker

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Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson on the Hunter Biden Laptop

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Thomas Jefferson

Ex-Intel Chief James Clapper Says He Doesn’t Regret Signing Hunter Biden Laptop Letter — nationalreview.com

My fellow Americans –

The FBI had already verified the contents of the laptop when that letter was disseminated. The FBI testified under oath this week at the Hunter Biden trial that the contents were authentic.

Clapper knew he was signing his name to a lie but why should he regret it? He’s a professional liar. His job is to lie to the country to further his own interests and the interests of the U.S. intelligence state.

Also, if any of the media organizations that propagated and embellished the lie regret doing what they did, none to my knowledge have ever come forward to say so.

Thomas Jefferson

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Financial Reporting by Liberal Arts Majors

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Now Hiring at Pizza Hut

Payrolls popped by 272K in May — linkedin.com

Yippee! They are part-time jobs. There was a significant decrease in full-time jobs and the unemployment rate rose to highest in over two years.

(The photo above of the Now Hiring at Pizza Hut sign is from the actual LinkedIn story. I like it. Very appropriate.)

It would be helpful to get some context around this 272,000 number, beyond just “Payrolls popped.”

Nice alliteration though. Who says there’s no value in a liberal arts degree?

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Four Offerings at the Moment of Transition

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Every person that I’ve met in this moment of transition [death] wanted to make four offerings.

— Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and oncologist, speaking at the University of Pennsylvania commencement.

The four are:

  • I want to tell you that I love you.
  • I want to tell you that I forgive you.
  • Would you tell me that you love me?
  • Would you give me your forgiveness?

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Now there are some who think they confute a speaker the moment they ask, “What then ought we to do?” To these I will give the fairest and truest answer: not what you are doing now. — Demosthenes

And That’s the Truth: Mass Shootings

by  on Sojourner Truth
 
Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth

[And That’s the Truth is a feature by our guest blogger, Sojourner Truth– PE]

Lansing, Michigan shooting leaves 7 shot, 1 teenager dead: Police — usatoday.com

I hates to say it but when the number of people killed is low compared to the number of people shot, it’s always black folks. They just randomly firing bullets at each other.

This ain’t being reported as a mass shooting, even though that’s what it is. It ain’t being reported as a national news story. You probably won’t even hear about it.

And that’s the Truth!

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Climate Change — Is There Anything it Can’t Do?

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Climate change is behind increasing flight turbulence, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says — cnbc.com

There’s no “asserted without evidence” caveat of the kind you see whenever Donald Trump says anything.

Climate change is the default explanation for everything. “Climate change,” Buttigieg says and everyone just nods in agreement.

San Francisco

I remember reading a news story several years ago saying that climate change was reducing the amount of fog in the Bay Area of California:

The sight of Golden Gate Bridge towering above the fog will become increasing rare as climate change warms San Francisco bay, scientists have found.

But a a news story from the previous summer stated that climate change was increasing the amount of Bay Area fog:

The Bay Area just had its foggiest May in 50 years. And thanks to global warming, it’s about to get even foggier.

Less fog? Climate change. More fog? Climate change. What if the amount of fog stays exactly the same?

More turbulence? Climate change.

No one asks Buttigieg — who’s not a climate scientist, not an aeronautical engineer — to provide a clear cause-and-effect between climate change and clear-air turbulence. I’m almost certain that he couldn’t do it.

I’m not even sure that there’s more turbulence now that at any time in the past. What is that assertion based on?

There was an unfortunate Singapore Airlines flight last week that encountered unexpected turbulence in which, in addition to several injuries, one passenger actually died, although he was 73 years old and was reported to have likely died of a heart attack and not from being bashed about the aircraft.

I don’t see that one incident as proof of anything about turbulence or climate change.

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