#his entire program is “talking about conspiracy theories and then debunking them at the end”

[doodlboy]

Finding a fairly interesting sounding channel and actually watching a video from them & and finding out they sell antisemitic & conspiracy theory merch is like just- the fuck is wrong with people

[d2kvirus]

Dickheads of the Month: September 2019

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of September 2019 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

As if proven liar Boris Johnson suspending parliament to try and force through a No Deal Britait at the end of August didn’t look dictatorial enough, he then moved on to threatening and Tory MP who doesn't fall in line with deselection - and yet, rather than call this the obviously despotic move that it is, instead the media spent more time focusing on him adopting a fucking dog

Master strategist Dominic Cummings said that, rather than listen to “rich Remainers” in London, people should listen to those all over the country - which certainly helped, as Cummings’ genius idea to have proven liar Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson walk the streets of Morley and Doncaster saw said proven liar have to listen to the non-rich giving him both barrels for being responsible for the mess we are currently in

Not only did Laura Kuenssberg repeat what the press did with Carrie Symonds’ neighbours and throw around the term “Labour activist” to dismiss the very real concerns of the father whose daughter was in the understaffed hospital that proven liar Boris Johnson visited for a press op and then called out the proven liar’s claims it wasn’t a press op by pointing to the camera crew a few feet away, but she went one step further by doxxing the person by posting one of his tweets to her Twitter timeline, which unsurprisingly led to him getting a dog’s abuse from people because he dared say bad things about proven liar Boris Johnson - abuse he would not have got if Kuenssberg hadn’t doxxed him to her 1.1m Twitter followers, all because she wanted to distract attention from the fact her beloved BoBo had been caught on camera lying to someone’s face

...and it wasn’t long before the BBC proved their blatant double standards, having circled the wagons around Kuenssberg to say she did nothing wrong while doxxing a member of the public, yet disciplining Naga Munchetty for an off-the-cuff remark about the Orange Overlord saying Trump saying non-whites who criticise him should “go back where they came from” is racist

There is nothing sinister about Dominic Cummings saying that, if MPs wants to stop receiving death threats, they need to get Britait done.  Absolutely nothing sinister about that at all...

When Jacob Rees Mogg wasn’t literally lying in parliament, he was dismissing the genuine concerns of neurologist Dr David Nicholl by comparing his concerns to those of anti-vaxxer Andrew Wakefield, who was struck off for giving erroneous advice

I’m trying to work out if Justin Trudeau forgot about the whole wearing blackface thing, or merely assumed everyone else had.  Either way, at best he could generously be accused of gross naivety - especially when the second round of photos came out, after he tried to pass it off as a one-time prank

So not only did proven liar Boris Johnson sound supremely cuntish by saying that leaving the EU would honour the memory of Jo Cox - that’s the same Jo Cox who, while campaigning for Remain, was murdered by a member of Britain First - but when quizzed on this Bernard Jenkin could only respond about the stress that the proven liar was under, because as we all know the real victim is the person who said something monumentally dense and not the person murdered by a member of the far-right on the streets of their constituency

If anyone can explain what the hell compelled Stephen Kinnock to suddenly decide that Theresa May’s deal should have yet another going over in parliament in spite it being defeated three times already and her not even being PM at this point, let alone why he wanted to bring this up at the moment No Deal was being defanged, I would love to hear it

Something compelled Quentin Letts to compare the recently-deceased Robert Mugabe to Boris Johnson...as a compliment

Compelling argument against nominative determinism James Cleverly thought he was being clever by keeping up the “chicken” jibes against Jeremy Corbyn that proven liar Boris Johnson and his cronies at The Sun had been keeping up for days in a desperate attempt to pretend Corbyn hadn’t spotted an obvious tarp by Dominic Cummings and sidestepped it...right up until his stunt ended up seeing the entire Tory party get bitchslapped by Kentucky Fried Chicken

...and it wasn’t long before proven liar Boris Johnson rendered all jibes of Corbyn being “chicken” laughable when he responded to some heckling when visiting Luxembourg by publicly running away from a press conference with Luxembourg’s PM 

According to Kwasi Kwarteng there are people up and down the country questioning the impartiality of the Scottish judges who ruled Boris Johnson’s prorogation of parliament unlawful.  Just a reminder, Kwasi Kwarteng is the Business Secretary and not a Youtube right-wing conspiracy nut

Waffling gargoyle Nigel Farage has decided that those dozens of appearances on BBC political programming over the last decade were examples of the BBC being biased against him, and he;s boycotting all future appearances.  He neglected to mention whether or not any other member of The Nigel Farage Ego Project would follow suit...

We saw just how little credibility Laura Kuenssberg has on the 2nd September edition of The Six O’Clock News where she stood outside 10 Downing Street talking about how proven liar Boris Johnson would be calling a snap election, only for her to be cut off mid-sentence by the proven liar walking out to waffle for five minutes where the only thing of note he said that wasn’t an easily-debunked lie was that there would be no election...and once he was finished Kuenssberg continued talking about a snap election as if she hadn’t been stood less than twenty feet away when it was said there would be no election

The fact that nobody was surprised when James Cleverly falsely claimed that the Tories created the NHS during the Tory conference isn’t a surprise - not least because it’s not even the first time Cleverly has made that patently false claim 

It would appear that Alan Sugar misses the days that he and not Alexander Boris De Pfeil Johnson was being held up as the British answer to Donald Trump, judging by his posting a tweet taking aim at the dogwhistlers’ favourite target Diane Abbott

We are supposed to feel sorry for David Cameron after his memoirs stated that he thought that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove behaved “appallingly” before and during the EU Referendum campaign.  If only the party leader did something about this, which they were in the position to do, and what was the name of the leader of the Tories at that moment in time again...?

Forgetting that we’re supposed to be calling Jeremy Corbyn a chicken, instead our good and honest friends at the Daily Mail instead ran an article about how awful it was that Jeremy Corbyn supported the Guildford Four’s Paul Hill.  That’s the Paul Hill who, like the other members of the Guildford Four (and the Maguire Seven) were threatened, beaten and tortured by the police and served fifteen years in jail for being members of the IRA in spite of the fact that they weren’t members of the IRA nor plotted any terror attacks, and the Mail thinks it’s bad to show support for someone who was a victim of one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British history

It’s a bit rich for Rachel Riley to be the face of the Don’t Feed The Trolls campaign considering her history of harassing, doxxing and encouraging pile-ons on anyone who disagrees with her

Sentient testicle Toby Young thought he was being really, really clever when he accused Phillip Hammond of an “anti-semitic conspiracy theory” after Hammond stated that the sole reason for proven liar Boris Johnson trying to take the UK out of the EU by October 31st is to help out his speculator mates - although the cleverness rapidly evaporated when Hammond responded personally with a threat of suing for libel, and for some strange reason Young’s really, really clever tweet vanished off the face of the earth

...and because Toby Young has to be Toby Young about things, rather than keep his head down after Hammond’s threat of legal action instead he came rushing to the defence of the proven liar by saying that female Spectator employees felt upset if they weren’t groped by proven liar Boris Johnson, which is not only the defence of the rapist but his “defence” only serves to say that proven liar Boris Johnson has a history of groping

It’s as if The Sun have decided they can go back to their pre-Leveson levels of scumbaggery, judging by how they’d both told Gareth Thomas’ parents he was HIV positive and threatened to publish it, as well as reporting how two members of Ben Stokes’ family had been shot and killed several years ago without actually obtaining consent from Stokes before splashing it across their front page

...and right on their heels was the Daily Mail doxxing Jo Maughan for the sole purpose of...nope, no idea why they felt the need to do so, but they did it anyway

If Steve Baker thought he was helping the Leave side look non-deranged, his claiming that proven liar Boris Johnson is moving the Tories back to the centre ground failed to do that on a molecular level

It’s all well and good the Liberal Democrats acting as if bringing in Luciana Berger and Angela “funny tinge” Smith as MPs is some kind of major breakthrough...but they sure kept it quiet that they wouldn’t be defending the parliamentary seats they’ve been squatting in since February

So nice of Mike Gapes to join the dogwhistling brigade with his deciding to highlight Diane Abbott’s poor use of grammar...by highlighting that she was using grammar correctly while Gapes’ attempts at grammar bullying only served to highlight his grasp of the English language could be better

It says it all that the Daily Mail was encouraging their readers to stop sponsoring the RNLI for the crime of using 2% of those donations to support causes abroad

To nobody’s surprise, as soon as John Humphrys was out the door he harrumphed about the BBC’s “liberal bias” to the Daily Mail - as if over thirty years of his using the Today programme as a platform of his right-wing views and generally being a miserable twat

How generous of Tim Martin to say that, as the UK had left the Customs Union, Wetherspoons could now charge 20p less per pint...except Britain hadn’t left the Customs Union, revealing that Martin could have cut prices long ago if he wanted to, but he obviously felt he didn’t need to as the chain’s profits weren’t nosediving as a direct consequence of Tim Martin alienating half of his customer base for the past three years

According to reports, Nicalis head honcho Tyrone Rodriguez went to the same business school as Channel Awesome supremo Mike Michaud, judging by the reports coming out that he would go weeks without answering any calls - which is not what an indie dev who sent their game over to Nicalis to be ported wants to discover - as well as a laundry list of evidence of him not realising he isn't a 14-year old edgelord who can only talk in raicst, antisemitic, homophobic or ablest slurs, on top of his charming habit of bullying members of staff

In the latest attempt by PewDipShit to prove he's not beholden to the alt-right section of his fanbase he offered to donate $50,000 to the Anti-Defamation League...and when that same alt-right section of his fanbase kicked up a fuss, he cancelled the donation and waffled about “taking responsibility” while demonstrating that how averse he is to the idea

This month it was John Ocasio-Nolte who was getting insanely triggered by Greta Thunburg, taking to Twitter to suggest she either needs to be spanked or receive psychological counselling (which worked about as well as can be expected the second the tweet was posted) while Dinesh D’Souza said she looks just like images used for Nazi propaganda as if that means anything other than Dinesh D’Souza spend hours going through Google image searches to try and find something, anything that would serve as the basis of an utterly batshit proclamation that his moron followers would swallow

Not a good look for Focus Home Entertainment to decide that, once their deal to distribute Frogwares’ games expired, their solution would be to drop all of Frogwares’ games from every online store - yet rather than return the code to Frogwares, instead they’d be keeping those as well because if Focus Home can’t sell those games, no-one can

It’s not a surprise to see The Sun forgot the faux outrage they stoked last December at trying to say Jeremy Corbyn called Theresa may a “stupid woman” (even though any lipreader will tell you he said “stupid people” of the entire Tory front bench) judging by their response to proven liar Boris Johnson calling Corbyn a “big girl’s blouse” was to dispatch one of their hacks to Corbyn’s house the following dya waving an item of women’s clothing at him, seemingly under the impression this looked anything other than mad

Meanwhile The Daily Telegraph wrote a piece comparing waffling gargoyle Nigel Farage to Britait’s Icarus...somehow forgetting how the story of Icarus ended

Britain’s most triggered man Piers Moron Morgan took to Twitter to howl about how Dora the Explorer discourages men from becoming explorers.  I’m guessing that he forgot how Indiana Jones and Nathan Drake exist...

What would a month be without Donald Trump doing something utterly lunkheaded?  Not this month, that’s for sure, judging by his response to mistakenly claiming that Hurricane Dorian was heading to Alabama wasn’t to admit the mistake or even never mention it again, but instead draw on a weather map with a Sharpie to make it look like Dorian’s path would now head into Alabama - so not only did he prove he can’t admit to being wrong, but he’s so thin-skinned his being wrong eats at him so much he can’t let his being wrong go, which only draws attention to his being wrong in the first place

[hillaryisaboss]

Roseanne proves Russian propaganda worked: 7 reasons we can't allow Roseanne to normalize Trump

I hope Roseanne’s reboot is all one big satire. One big “bait-and-switch.”  

What do I mean by that, exactly? What I mean is… I hope what Roseanne is secretly doing is showing us how the working-class lost its way and ended up voting for Donald Trump. And that through Darlene moving home, and presenting Roseanne with a gender-fluid grandson, she slowly starts to realize her vote for the #1 bully of all-time was a mistake.

I hope the entire 10th season of Roseanne shows this evolution in Roseanne’s character – Trump supporter realizing the errors of their thinking when presented with modern America.  And who knows… maybe Roseanne herself is the only person able to reach these misguided working-class voters.

But if that’s not the case, and this isn’t one big ploy by Roseanne to change the hearts of Trump supporters, this is required reading for all Americans.

For better or worse, we all know Roseanne Barr is a bit of a bully like Trump.

Roseanne constantly fired people from her show (sound familiar?), viciously attacked critics (I can’t wait for her to read this), threatened to sue people, and thrived on constant controversy, celebrity feuds, and tabloid sensationalism. Roseanne and Donny are more similar than one might think.    

Is Roseanne the female version of Trump? 

Many on her show thought she was a tyrant, something Donald Trump wishes he could be in real life. Which is why all of these similarities between Roseanne and Trump make it all the more ironic and hypocritical when Roseanne attacks the bullies her grandson faces at school for wearing girls clothing.

Roseanne… you literally voted for a man that enabled the bullies that attacked your grandson. To ignore this glaring hypocrisy and lack of self-awareness is mind-boggling. Bullies across our nation were given the “green-light” to attack minorities when Trump won the Presidency. Roseanne should do some serious self-reflection and soul-searching on how her vote for Trump (the #1 bully of all-time) emboldened the very kids who bullied her grandson.

So all of this hypocrisy begs the question:

How did feminist hero Roseanne Barr go from supporting Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton during the 2008 Democratic primary (even writing a pro-Hillary article for the HuffingtonPost), to supporting Donald J. Trump (con-man and pussy-grabber) for President in 2016?

The answer is simple: Russian bots on Twitter.

After using Twitter to run for President in 2012, Roseanne submerged herself in political propaganda on Twitter (which she has since deleted).

There is no better proof than Roseanne herself that the Russians were successful with their online propaganda campaign. How else do you explain a feminist hero voting for a pussy-grabber over the most qualified woman to ever seek the Presidency?

Putin feared Hillary, and turning former supporters like Roseanne against Hillary was part of the mastermind. The ultimate con in American history to destabilize our nation in Putin’s favor.

Sadly, Roseanne is using her shows reboot to justify the unjustifiable: voting for a proud bigot who conned working-class people by scapegoating minorities and promising to return us to an America we will never be again.

So how will Roseanne go about justifying the unjustifiable?

By trying to say Hillary was an equally bad candidate – the “lesser of two evils” argument. Which was, after-all, Russia’s ultimate goal: muddy the waters so the American public thinks both candidates are equally bad.

“Neither Trump or Hillary will change anything, so why not give the finger to the establishment by voting for Trump? At least he gives the illusion of being on our side. He looks and sounds like us, right? Burn down the system!!”

This is a very petty and immature rationale from a group of people that have felt forgotten by the “establishment.” But it’s a rationale I fear far too many working-class people used to convince themselves that Trump (a 4-times bankrupt silver-spoon Daddy’s boy fraud) was somehow their guy.

Or maybe the working-class simply supported Trump in order to seek revenge against America for feeling ignored? But why is it always liberal America’s job to understand conservative America’s bigotry and ignorance? Didn’t 3 million more people vote for Hillary?

Given that blue America is the majority, don’t allow Roseanne to use her reboot to justify the unjustifiable. Never allow the minority support of bigot Trump be normalized or rationalized.

So in preparation of Roseanne’s reboot, I present to you 7 reasons why Roseanne is wrong about Hillary, Trump, and America:

1. Roseanne’s reboot tackles the skyrocketing cost of prescription medication.

Hillary Rodham Clinton fought for universal healthcare in the early 1990s, and eventually helped pass the Children’s Health Insurance Program – a program that covers 8 million children.

Hillary also secured healthcare for 9/11 first-responders as New York Senator, and President Bill Clinton passed the Family and Medical Leave Act.

I guess in addition to believing Russian propaganda, Roseanne doesn’t remember history, either.

The Clintons have been tackling the issue of healthcare for decades, and deserve credit for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Family and Medical Leave Act. Two achievements we take for granted now days but are actually a result of the pragmatic Clintons.

Heck, while Bill Clinton was Governor of Arkansas, the Clintons helped expand access to healthcare in poor, poverty stricken communities. Around the same time, Donald Trump was being sued by the Justice Department for racial discrimination (doesn’t Roseanne have an African-American grandaughter in the reboot?).

The Clintons have a long record of achievements on healthcare. Why is this well-known history ignored by Roseanne? Did she forget?

2. Roseanne says Trump talked about “jobs.”

Hillary talked about jobs, too. But the media never covered it. Studies show that for the most part, the media only covered Hillary’s fake “e-mail scandal.”

Hillary had detailed policy plans to create jobs in 2016 America, such as clean-energy jobs. She even gave numerous speeches on her plans – speeches that weren’t covered by the media.

Meanwhile, con-man Trump promised to bring back coal jobs that will never come back to America. The original Roseanne Conner would have easily seen through Trump’s deception. Unfortunately, Roseanne Barr spent too much time on Twitter being subjected to Russian propaganda. I guess technology has unfortunate, unintended consequences?

Roseanne should have spent more time doing independent research regarding Hillary’s jobs plan rather than re-tweeting Russian bots on Twitter. Hillary promised green energy jobs of the future. Con-man Trump promised coal jobs that will never come back to America.

Oh and does Roseanne remember that President Bill Clinton created 22 million new jobs during the 1990s?

If you want to talk about jobs, let’s remember the prosperous and pragmatic Clinton Era. Meanwhile, con-man Trump shipped jobs overseas to China, stiffed American workers out of contracts, and hired immigrants rather than American workers to build his buildings.

Hillary’s jobs plan was crafted for the future. Trump’s jobs plan was crafted to con Americans into thinking we could transport back in time.

3. Roseanne says Hillary is a “liar, liar, pantsuit on fire.”

That’s only if you believe Russian propaganda and 40 years of manufactured “Clinton scandals.” Hillary was rated by fact-checking websites as the most honest politician running for President in 2016.

Furthermore – Hillary has never been found guilty of anything in over 40 years of “investigations.” I guess that would make Hillary the best liar of all-time, right? 40 years and not a single guilty verdict. Personally, I hope one day there is a book written debunking every single Clinton conspiracy theory.

Meanwhile, Trump has the all-time record for false and misleading statements. No President has ever lied at the rate Trump has lied. There is no distant second. Trump is in a league and category all on his own.

So making a joke about Hillary (who has never been found guilty of anything in 40 years) as being a liar rings hollow when you voted for a man who lies multiple times per-day (maybe even per-hour). I guess there was a true lack of self-awareness when this joke was written? Not only is it hypocritical, it proves Russian bots corrupted Roseanne’s mind.

Again – Hillary was rated by fact-checkers as the most honest 2016 candidate for President. Trump is the biggest liar of all-time. Hillary, unlike Trump, has never been found guilty of anything. Every single Hillary investigation has turned up nothing. No trial. No guilty verdict. The same can’t be said of Trump who has been found guilty or settled out of court hundreds of times.

This is yet another example of the Russians trying to muddy the waters and make Hillary seem like just as big of a liar as Trump is. Nothing could be further from the truth.

4. Roseanne says the Clintons are equally as corrupt as Trump.

Roseanne, just like Trump, consistently re-tweeted conspiracy theories about the Clinton Foundation, even though fact-checking websites debunked all of them.

Let us remember: the Clinton Foundation was given a higher charity rating than the Red Cross and provides 11.5 million people with HIV/AIDS medication – that’s more than half of all those affected by the virus worldwide.

Many of the Clinton Foundation conspiracy theories pushed on Twitter made it seem as though Hillary was just as bad as Trump. However, the Trump Foundation illegally paid off Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to hide Trump University fraud. Meanwhile, the Clinton Foundation helps treat millions of people affected by HIV/AIDS – treating more than half of all those affected by the virus worldwide.

Furthermore, the Clintons pay 35% in taxes (what do you pay, Roseanne?). We have yet to see all of Trump’s tax returns. Who truly is the corrupt one based on tax-rates?  

5. On Jimmy Kimmel, Roseanne said no American should want their President to fail.

So why did Roseanne support Trump, a man who led the racist birther movement against Barack Obama, the first African American President? And no, Hillary was not the “original” birther as Russian propaganda would have you believe.

Point is – why did Roseanne enable and spread the propaganda of those who made it their mission to make Obama a one-term President?

This is yet another example of Roseanne’s hypocrisy.

If Roseanne actually believes what she is saying, why did she enable and embolden those who wished for Obama to fail as President? The double standard is both maddening and terrifying all at once.

6. Roseanne hates Hillary’s foreign policy.

As Secretary of State, Hillary passed the first-ever U.N Resolution on gay rights (proclaiming: “human rights are gay rights and gay rights are human rights” on the world stage), and made it so trans Americans can legally change their gender on their passport. Hillary also rebuilt relations with every nation after the disastrous Bush Administration, traveling to 112 countries — more than any other Secretary of State. Our worldwide favorability rose 20% during Hillary’s tenure. Her primary focus was on women’s rights and health, bringing up issues such as forced abortion and maternal mortality rates. Hillary re-opened relations with Burma, enacted a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and killed Osama Bin Laden. She also was instrumental in putting together the Paris Climate Agreement, something Trump has since removed us from.

Roseanne supports Trump’s foreign policy because he enables Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinians. Remember: Trump appealed to all prejudices – including prejudices against the Palestinian people. As a Jewish woman, Roseanne is a hardcore supporter of Israel.

Trump’s foreign policy consists of Twitter wars with dangerous dictators. How is that better than what Hillary accomplished as Secretary of State?

7. Roseanne hates the Clintons because of NAFTA.

George Bush Senior originally put NAFTA together. Bill Clinton oversaw the implementation of NAFTA due to denying Bush Senior a second term. NAFTA was originally Bush’s baby (not Clinton’s).

Instead of only remember the negatives of the Clinton Era, let us also remember the numerous positives:

—4-balanced budgets due to the superb compromising ability of Bill Clinton—Surplus —22 million new jobs —7 million fewer Americans living in poverty —Minimum wage up 20% —Assault Weapons Ban —Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act —Northern Ireland peace process —Campaign Against Teen Pregnancy: all-time low abortion rates —Office on Violence Against Women —Violence Against Women Act —Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP): 9 million children insured —Tax-credit for low-income Americans —Family and Medical Leave Act —Incomes rising at all income levels

Didn’t Roseanne also do well during the 1990s? And yes –  Roseanne’s show may have helped Clinton win in 1992. But Clinton resoundingly won re-election in 1996 due to producing results for the American people. 

Incomes were rising at all income levels, 22 million new jobs were created, minimum wage was up 20%, more children had healthcare (9 million covered under CHIP), and our country had a blanched-budget and a surplus. We also passed the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Plus, in-case you were wondering, Glass Steagall had nothing to do with the 2008 financial collapse according to fact-checking websites (try blaming Republican George Bush for a change). And sure… welfare reform sucked. But that’s because we had a GOP-dominated Congress and Bill Clinton was a true pragmatist (exactly what we need in a leader).

On balance, the Clinton Era was a great era for most Americans (including Roseanne). Just look at the long list of accomplishments! Hillary’s platform would have ushered in another pragmatic Clinton era, which would be going far better than the current Administration.

The worst thing that ever happened to Roseanne Barr was her Twitter account. She was constantly subjected to pro-Trump and anti-Hillary propaganda, causing her to support the pussy-grabber over the first-female nominee for President. In her Russian corrupted brain, Hillary was just as bad, if not worse, than Trump.

It’s truly sad that a former feminist icon didn’t support the first-female candidate for President due to Russian propaganda. This former feminist icon opted instead for a well-known misogynist. (And please don’t bring up Bill Clinton as your defense because he had consensual affairs and was then held accountable for his transgressions). Trump has yet to be held accountable for his abuse of women, and a true feminist would never support a man like Trump for President.

Unfortunately, Roseanne is going to attempt to use her shows reboot to legitimize Trump and justify her vote for the pussy-grabber. However, as much as Roseanne may try, Trump is not a legitimate President. Donald lost the popular vote by 3 million votes and was elected with Russian help (treason).

I don’t care how “forgotten” you feel by the establishment – it is never acceptable to support bigotry, discrimination, scapegoating, sexism, bullying, or hatred. I will never root for this “President” to succeed so long as he is a bigot filled with hate. Because if Trump succeeds, bigotry will be validated. That is something I will never support and something the original Roseanne Conner never would have supported, either. But the original Roseanne, unlike the Roseanne of the present, wasn’t corrupted by the Russians.  

Trump’s victory –aided by Roseanne/Russians on Twitter– legitimized bigotry and discrimination everywhere. Roseanne helped the very bullies she defends her grandson against. The embodiment of hypocrisy and irony.

Roseanne fell for the con-man fraud who promised to bring back obsolete coal jobs instead of researching Hillary’s jobs plan the media never covered – a plan that would have led to huge job growth, powered primarily by clean energy jobs of the future.

Roseanne is the ultimate example of the effectiveness that the Russian propaganda campaign had on Twitter. Roseanne was duped by Russian bots into thinking Hillary was as big of a liar as Trump (fact-checking websites confirm Hillary was the most honest 2016 Presidential candidate while Trump was rated the least honest). Luckily, even without Roseanne’s support, Hillary still won by 3 million votes. Roseanne will never be a member of the true American majority.

Roseanne is forever a member of the manipulated minority – manipulated by both Russian bots and a con-artist that was born with a silver-spoon in his mouth. A man who prides himself on bullying and sexism. A man who cheated working-class people out of contracts his entire life, shipped jobs to China, and hired immigrants over American workers to build his buildings. A man whose tax-plan only benefits people like himself.

The woman who always spoke truth to power and never fell for anyone’s manipulation finally did at the hands of Russian bots on Twitter. A true American tragedy.

Over 165 million Americans were subjected to Russian propaganda online saying both candidates were equally as bad. So for those that say Russia’s propaganda campaign had no impact on the election, look no further than Roseanne as “exhibit A” proof.

Roseanne preferred a “relatable” con-man over an overqualified “elitist” woman. Hillary was too “smug” for Roseanne’s taste. She preferred the pussy-grabber propaganda artist who looked and sounded like Dan Conner. A con-man who puts billionaires like himself above people like the Conners. A con-man who cheated drywallers like Dan Conner out of money his entire career.

I’m still holding out hope this is all satire and in the season finale of the 10th season, Roseanne will admit she was wrong about Trump and that she should have voted for Hillary (you know, the woman who worked for decades on healthcare and whose husband left us a booming economy and surplus). Because after 1 year of a Trump Presidency, can anyone really still say their vote was the right decision? I’d give anything to transport back to the Clinton years based on what we currently have now.

Roseanne Barr truly could do our country a great service by helping convince those who voted for Trump that they were wrong. Sadly, she’s still on Twitter submerging herself in Russian propaganda – believing that the Democrats are just as bad as Republicans. I guess that’s how Roseanne went from supporting Hillary in 2008 to now supporting Trump.

Thankfully, Hillary still won by 3 million votes despite Roseanne betraying women and supporting a sexist bigot. I’m proud to stand with the 66 million majority who voted for the slogan “Stronger Together.” Trump’s Electoral College victory will never represent me or the majority of Americans.  

Sadly, I guess false promises and scapegoating can even manipulate those you once viewed as idols. Maybe birds of the bullying feather truly do flock together?

So please defend Hillary and tweet @therealroseanne when she bashes Hillary with lies on her shows reboot.

Because we need to declare once and for all: Hillary is not nor has she ever been “just as bad as Trump.” Just ask the millions of people who receive HIV/AIDS medication from the Clinton Foundation – over half of all those affected by the virus worldwide. Or look at the hundreds of guilty Trump convictions vs. the zero guilty convictions for Hillary. Or the fact that the Clintons gave us 4-balanced-budgets while Trump had 4-bankruptcies. Or Hillary’s work at the Children’s Defense Fund investigating African American juveniles being placed in adult prisons. Or the Clintons working tirelessly on the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Face it Roseanne: you were duped by two abusive, sexist men (Putin and Trump) into hating Hillary, the first woman to run on a major party’s ticket for President, and who will become a bigger feminist icon than you could ever dream of becoming. Critics always said Roseanne hated other women who were more powerful than her. Did Hillary take your crown, Roseanne?

The old Roseanne Conner is a true feminist icon.

The new Roseanne Conner voted for the sexist pussy-grabber, which enabled bullies everywhere (ie: the kids who bullied her grandson).  

PS: Or maybe Roseanne simply wanted Trump to win so there would be a reason for her show to be given a reboot? 

Never normalize the con-man bigot silver-spoon fraud.

@roseanneonabc

[theconservativebrief]

Take a step back and appreciate the vertiginous absurdity of the fact that our military is now being mobilized to defend our border from a walking caravan of refugees from Central America.

There are, the Mexican government estimates, around 4,000 people in this group. They are poor men, women, and children, fleeing horrendous conditions, primarily in Honduras, and intend to seek asylum either in Mexico or the US. They are on foot in southern Mexico, weeks from the border, and their number is shrinking as they go.

Poor people, seeking asylum, walking toward the border: How in the world can that constitute a national security threat?

First, let’s acknowledge that a separate group of refugees (calling itself the “second caravan”) attempted to cross the border into Guatemala a few days ago, leading to skirmishes, rubber bullets from police, and at least one dead refugee. So the fear of a clash at the border is not totally unfounded, though the original caravan has shown no signs of violence. Still, though, we’re talking about unarmed families, on foot, weeks away.

Where is the emergency?

Well, first off, the caravan is much bigger than the fake news media is telling you. “I’m pretty good at estimating crowd size,” Trump told ABC’s Jonathan Karl (hilariously), “and I’ll tell you they look a lot bigger than people would think.”

Trump has also said — in one of his most nakedly racist statements to date, though there was no time to dwell on it — that “unknown Middle Easterners” are hiding in the caravan.

Sadly, it looks like Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States. Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy. Must change laws!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2018

Presumably, “Middle Easterners” — a class that includes more than 400 million people — is meant to imply “terrorists.”

Trump has not clarified what he meant by this comment. And there is no evidence whatsoever that any “Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners” are lurking in the caravan. But that has not stopped him from repeating the claims, media from passing them along, or the conservative movement from adopting them as gospel.

Our military is being mobilized at the Southern Border. Many more troops coming. We will NOT let these Caravans, which are also made up of some very bad thugs and gang members, into the U.S. Our Border is sacred, must come in legally. TURN AROUND!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2018

Across the right-wing media ecosystem, several notable commentators, including Laura Ingraham, speculated that people in the caravan may be carrying diseases. On Fox, they have repeatedly speculated about the diseases heading toward innocent (cough white cough) Americans.

That’s twice this week that a Fox host has gone to the “foreigners bring disease” trope, a staple of racist and antisemitic incitement for hundreds of years. https://t.co/7CRh034IRB

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 29, 2018

There is, suffice to say, no evidence that the refugees are carrying disease (though once they settle in as Americans, they can look forward to heart disease and diabetes).

All of this — inflating a bedraggled group of peripatetic refugees weeks from our border into a disease-ridden terrorist “invasion,” an urgent, imminent “national emergency” — amounts to a kind of willed delusion. It represents a collective agreement on the right to believe a narrative spun almost entirely out of whole cloth, draped over a reality to which it bears little resemblance.

It is also powerful evidence that America’s epistemic crisis is spinning up into a full-blown political crisis.

This is not the first time the right has told itself scary bedtime stories, of course. Conservatives have been trading lurid conspiracy theories in their own media echo chamber for ages.

But a couple of things seem different — ominously so — about this episode.

First, even more than usual, there’s a performative aspect to it. It is advantageous for the right to believe that this caravan is an urgent threat. It makes for clickable memes and video clips, gets partisans in a lather, and helps pols running in close midterm races. It is a perfect parable, emphasizing group identity and clearly identifying the corrupting, diseased, dangerous other. It is too good not to believe.

So they have simply willed themselves to believe it, or at least perform believing it, which eventually becomes the same thing.

Not despite but because of its absurdity, believing it together is a strong signal of tribal solidarity on the right.

Some of the kids with the invasion. They don’t seem to be taking their training very seriously. Victoria Razo/AFP via Getty

Second, the paranoid fantasies are no longer confined to right-wing media, as they largely were under Obama (with the occasional individual taking it too seriously, as when a gunman showed up at a pizza joint to rescue imaginary child sex slaves).

Now the right wing has control of the US government, and it can act out its fantasies with a military with real guns. The chances, in the hothouse environment Trump has created, that something will go wrong — that signals will get crossed and someone will get killed at the border — are also very real.

This is the white nationalist right emerging from its media cocoon and striding onto the world stage, running the most powerful country in the world. It is now capable of acting on all the bizarre things it persuades itself to believe.

It will not end well.

To recall how we got here, let’s quickly review what I mean by an epistemic crisis (a subject I have written on at length before).

Epistemology, for those who didn’t waste a large portion of their youth in academic philosophy programs (hi), is the branch of philosophy concerned with justified belief — with how we come to know things and what it means to know something.

The crisis, in brief, is that the US conservative movement has almost entirely divorced itself from mainstream institutions, norms, and standards, developing its own media, think tanks, legal scholars, and historians — a hermetically sealed ecosystem of knowledge, news, and information in which nonsense and conspiracy theories flourish.

Conservatives have descended almost entirely into what I call “tribal epistemology,” wherein the distinction between what is good for the tribe and what is true collapses entirely — in which “true” simply comes to mean “our narrative.” They do not defer to any transpartisan standards of evidence or reasoning; they do not believe any such standards exist. Attempts to invoke such standards are, in their view, just one side’s way of trying to outmaneuver the other. So they use the language of transpartisan standards as a weapon, but the standards themselves are not a restraint.

The result is that, as a nation, we no longer share the same facts, the same understanding of events. We no longer live in the same world. As Rush Limbaugh, father of today’s right-wing media, said way back in 2010:

We live in two universes. One universe is a lie. One universe is an entire lie. Everything run, dominated, and controlled by the left here and around the world is a lie. The other universe is where we are, and that’s where reality reigns supreme and we deal with it. And seldom do these two universes ever overlap.

Tribal epistemology, illustrated. Javier Zarracina for Vox

The two sides share almost no factual premises, so they are no longer able to coherently argue with each other. Their enmity is total, and the country is becoming ungovernable. Politics is becoming a pure contest of wills, of power.

That’s the crisis. I first wrote about it in reference to Robert Mueller’s investigation, raising the question: What if Mueller uncovers rock-solid evidence that Trump colluded with the Russians or committed financial crimes, and … it just doesn’t matter? What if he finds something, but the Americans who get their news from conservative media simply never find out about it? What then?

Some of us have been warning for years that the (paranoid, white nationalist) right-wing fringe was, via the amplification of Fox News and its brethren, taking over the GOP. Yet many, many journalists and other members of the US political elite ignored it or dismissed fringe right lunacy as a kind of quirk, just one of those things “extremists on both sides” do. After all, Farrakhan something something.

The lunacy was somewhat suppressed under George W. Bush, or at least (fitfully) kept separate from the administration itself. And under Obama, Republicans had no power beyond opposition. They could rant on about their conspiracies and hold endless Benghazi hearings, but it never seemed to amount to much.

As so the right has spun off into a world of its own, virtually unrestrained, at little political cost.

When Trump and the Republicans took over the federal government in 2016, the remaining firewalls crumbled. The conservative base, the conservative media, the conservative government — it’s all the same thing now, all with the same perspective, all inhabiting the same epistemic universe, all pursuing the same war against the same perceived enemies. Fox News, Daily Caller, and Breitbart have more or less given themselves over entirely to serving as state media.

With the president himself coordinating the message, the process whereby the right-wing base brings itself to believe whatever it needs to believe has accelerated.

During the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, they needed to believe that Christine Blasey Ford was lying, or paid by George Soros, or confused. So they did. Ed Whelan freestyled a harebrained theory about mistaken identity on Twitter right in front of everyone. It was rapidly debunked and Whelan was forced to apologize, but a goodly number of conservatives — including Sen. Susan Collins, a crucial swing vote on Kavanaugh — believe the doppelgänger theory to this day. Whelan is still gainfully employed by the conservative apparatus. (Trump, always a truer reflection of the base’s id, has simply decided it was all a big hoax.)

Collins and Kavanaugh, agreeing that Kavanaugh didn’t do it. Zach Gibson/Getty Images

The MAGA bombs were fake (they weren’t). There’s going to be a middle-class tax cut by the end of the year (there isn’t). US steel has opened seven new plants in the US (it hasn’t). The trade tariffs are working (they aren’t). The US is the only country with birthright citizenship (it isn’t).

It’s getting easier and easier. Frictionless. There’s barely a pretense at going through the motions of inquiry and evidence anymore. We’ve reached the point where the movement, including its elected members of Congress, follow Trump’s twists and turns like a school of fish.

That’s how we get the caravan “threat” and our current military mobilization.

In a sense, the caravan standoff is all conservative role-playing, a set of tribal bonding rituals and shared narratives built around group identity and hostility toward outsiders. It’s a way for the chicken hawks of the right to do war poses, the media to get great visuals, and Trump and his base to get frothed up together about the libs and the illegals.

Like I said, though, the guy who’s leading this round of role-playing, the dungeon master describing the heroes and villains to his enthralled initiates, is the president of the United States. And the president of the United States controls a real government and a real military.

So Trump’s cosplay involves sending 5,200 troops — more troops than there are people in the caravan — to “harden our ports of entry” along the border. (Er, now he’s saying he may send as many as 15,000; it could be more by the time this is published. He told Karl he wants a “wall of people.”)

Head for the border. Staff Sgt. Nathan Akridge/US Department of Defense

These troops will be armed, but they are prohibited by US law from detaining or deporting anyone, so they’ll mostly be doing support work. “Many have been pressed into service providing administrative support and doing upkeep,” reports Christopher Woody for Business Insider, “including feeding horses and shoveling manure out of stables, office work, and basic repairs and maintenance work on border patrol facilities and vehicles.”

Assuming the caravan does eventually reach the border in anything like its current form, US troops will also help Border Patrol agents spot immigrants attempting to enter the country illegally, at unapproved crossings. But remember — as Vox’s Dara Lind writes in her story on Trump’s “ongoing war on asylum” — applying for asylum, as the immigrants say they plan, is perfectly legal. So the military will only be there to help watch for immigrants who peel off and attempt to enter unlawfully.

Up to 15,000 members of the world’s greatest fighting force, sitting in the desert, watching for poor refugees approaching on foot.

They’re now in Juchitan de Zaragoza (some 12 days on foot from the nearest American city), exhausted and asking for buses. So this is what Trump feels he needs 15,000 troops to protect against? (Photo: Spencer Platt / Getty Images) pic.twitter.com/YBbi14ylRT

— William Low (@williamlow) November 1, 2018

The ludicrously named “Operation Faithful Patriot” will last 46 days. Even if it walks 20 miles a day, the caravan will arrive, at the earliest, in 45 days. It’s possible none of the troops will ever see an actual refugee.

In short, the troops currently heading to the border are being used entirely as a stunt to boost turnout for the midterms.

This is a hell of a lede: “President Trump is mobilizing the vast powers of the military and other parts of the federal government to help bolster Republican election efforts…” https://t.co/f0Sx9QxzDE

— Evil Prof (@dandrezner) October 31, 2018

Using the military for a domestic stunt has real consequences. “Committing troops to one operation means fewer forces for another,” write Helene Cooper and Thomas Gibbons-Neff in the New York Times. “Compared with how many troops the United States has stationed in Syria (2,000), in Afghanistan (14,000) and in Iraq (5,000), the number of soldiers sent to Texas, Arizona and California will be a significant slice of all troops deployed worldwide.”

And that’s to say nothing of the more intangible consequences of this stunt, which is yet another blow to the norms of conduct that hold our political life together.

And of course there’s the small but not inconsequential risk, if things go badly wrong, that we could see footage of US troops firing on unarmed refugees before the year is out.

With Trump, the base and the government have merged. The paranoia, hostility, and tribalism that have characterized right-wing media for so long now extend all the way up to the top; they now command troops.

As Voltaire famously put it: “Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.”

If Trump can take a bedraggled group of asylum seekers and transmute it into a national emergency just by tweeting about it, what would it take for him to do the same to his domestic political foes? How hard would it be for him to use antifa, “ecoterrorists,” or inner-city gangs as a pretext to expand police powers or justify political violence?

After all, he has already encouraged violence numerous times and told his followers that Democrats are a crazed mob.

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Even though it’s been shown pretty clearly that the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter was specifically enraged by the “Soros funded the caravan” theory — “The apparent spark for the worst anti-Semitic massacre in American history,” Adam Serwer writes in an excoriating essay, “was a racist hoax inflamed by a U.S. president seeking to help his party win a midterm election” — the numerous Republican leaders who endorsed it have conspicuously refused to disavow it.

Trump is still flirting with it.

The right, in all its organs, from social media to television to the president, is telling a well-worn, consistent story: Opposition from the left and Democrats is fraudulent, illegitimate, a foreign-funded conspiracy against the traditional white American way of life.

Having two versions of reality constantly clashing in public is cognitively and emotionally exhausting. To an average person following the news, the haze of charge and countercharge is overwhelming. And that is precisely what every autocrat wants.

That is why every aspiring tyrant in modern history has made the independent media his first target. (Read Ezra Klein’s excellent essay on Trump’s war with the media.) There can be no epistemic authority, no one to trust, other than the autocrat and his mouthpieces. That is step one.

Then they go after the courts, the security services, and the military. Once they have a large base of support that will believe whatever they proclaim, follow them anywhere, support them in anything — it doesn’t have to be a majority, just an intense, activated minority — they can, practically speaking, get away with anything.

But believing absurdities comes first. If they can make you believe absurdities, they can make you commit injustices.

That’s why this caravan story is notable. The intensity of belief on the right has begun to vary inversely with plausibility. Precisely because the “threat” posed by the caravan is facially absurd, believing in it — performing belief in it — is a powerful act of shared identity reinforcement, of tribal solidarity.

Once that support system is in place, Trump is unbound, free to impose his fantasies on reality. He can campaign on Republicans protecting people with preexisting conditions even as the GOP sues to block such protections. He can brush off Mueller’s revelations and fire anyone who might threaten him. He can use imaginary Democratic voter fraud to cover up red-state voter suppression. He can use antifa as a pretext for deploying troops domestically.

Looks like hate speech; better call the National Guard. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Perhaps that last one still sounds implausible to you, much as asylum-seeking children in detention camps once sounded implausible to me. But do you think, in any of those cases, that any significant element of the conservative apparatus would oppose him? Is there any remaining resistance to delusion and violence at all within the right’s coalition, other than from Sen. Jeff Flake’s tweets?

Trump does not view himself as president of the whole country. He views himself as president of his white nationalist party — their leader in a war on liberals. He has all the tools of a head of state with which to prosecute that war. Currently, he is restrained only by the lingering professionalism of public servants and a few thin threads of institutional inertia.

The caravan story, a lurid xenophobic fantasia that has now resulted in thousands of troops deployed on US soil, shows that those threads are snapping. The epistemic crisis Trump has accelerated is now morphing into a full-fledged crisis of democracy.

Original Source -> The caravan “invasion” and America’s epistemic crisis

via The Conservative Brief