Satire that shovels it to the public – just like the real media!
Thanks to the disastrous Trump campaign, we’re given on a daily basis such a plethora of gaffes and blunders to choose from, the satire just writes itself. Take for instance, Mike Pence recently stating that name calling has no place in politics; this from the Vice Presidential candidate of a man who’s made his living for the last year calling his opponents childish nick names like Lyin’ Ted, Little Marco and Low Energy Jeb Bush. We think ol’ Puritan Pants is a bit irony impaired.
As the Democratic National Convention wound up this week and the Democrats, the only sane party left in the United States, united to support their nominee Hillary Clinton, news surfaced that the Russians may have been involved in hacking the DNC email server. If that wasn’t enough, authoritarian demagogue, GOP nominee and comedian extraordinaire, Donald Trump, “jokingly” hoped his pal Vladimer Putin hacked into Hillary’s email server to find missing emails. Way to go Trump! Nothing says patriotic like conspiring with the Russians and committing treason on your fellow American.This shouldn’t surprise anyone though because Republicans have been pulling this shit for the last half century at least. Remember Nixon sabotaging the Paris peace talks in 1968. Or how about St. Ronald Reagan’s secretive deal with Iran, behind the Carter administration’s back, in 1980. Then there’s the whole Watergate affair with Nixon again. And who could forget the malfeasance of the 2000 election, when the conservative leaning Supreme Court and Dubya’s brother Jeb, handed the presidency to George W. Bush. If you’re looking for filthy politics, look no further than your nearest Republican.
Then, to top it off, Trump then tried to distance himself from his hot bromance with Putin, by saying they’ve never met despite evidence to the contrary. What’s amazing (and frightening) is that there are still people who want this orange haired pathological liar to have his finger on the nuclear button.
We’ve commented ad infinitum about our befuddlement over the fact that megalomaniac Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for president and is somehow ahead in some polls, despite running an absolutely miserable campaign, and presiding over one of the worst Republican conventions in history. It really boggles the mind! Can Americans really be this dense?
It goes back to previous posts(here, here and here) about some lower income Americans seeing themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. They see a rich man like Donald Trump and they buy his con that he’ll make things better and that all that wealth will come flooding in and tricking down(where have we heard that before). There’s a reason why Trump says he loves the poorly educated; they’re pretty easy to con. And you throw in the fact that most Americans are horrendous at math and you’ve got a world class swindle going on right now in the Republican party which could not only affect the United States but the world in a stupendously negative manner.
Take Donald Trump’s claim a few months back that he gave a million dollars to a veterans charity. On the surface that seems pretty generous. But when you consider that his estimated wealth is 4.5 billion dollars, the one million dollar gift is only 0.022 percent (not even 1% folks!) of his wealth. This is like a person with a $1,000 dollars giving 22 cents to the charity; not very impressive in reality. But that’s the beauty of this con and Republicans use it all the time. They claim that these poor billionaires pay millions in taxes every year. To most of the Republican party’s lower income blue collar white workers, this seems like robbery because a million dollars to these people is an absolute fortune. But to billionaires, it’s a drop in the bucket.
For simplicity sake, take a CEO who earns a one billion a year. If the tax rate is 30%, then he should pay $300 million a year in taxes. Most of us would scream bloody murder if we had to forfeit this much money. But this CEO still has $700 million dollars left. He ain’t hurting! He’s still living high off the hog while you’re scraping and scratching just to get by. When he complains and gets his tax rate lowered he’s taking that extra money and selfishly puts it into offshore tax havens or buying up more real estate and mansions. He’s not letting that money trickle down by any means. In fact, he’s leaving us to foot his portion of the tax bill, one that he easily could afford. Money is power and with great power comes great responsibility. The 1% in this country want all the money and power but none of the responsibility. Instead, we, the middle and lower classes, are squeezed and the corporate lackey conservative Republicans the 1% pay off in Congress convince everyone it’s the Liberals or the Democrats fault. The Republicans claim loudly that the rich, like Donald Trump, would never con anyone. Hah! Just look into Trump University and his numerous failed businesses. If you’re supposed to run the government like a business, like many Republicans claim, then Trump is the wrong person to be CEO. The astonishing truth is that if you’re a Trump supporter and you make less than $125k a year, you’re voting against your own interests. In short, DO THE MATH!
Well, the RNC has come and gone and it’s been every bit a clusterf*ck as predicted. Some highlights(or lowlights): Melania Trump plagiarized Michelle Obama’s 2008 DNC speech – Trump’s campaign denied then admitted the fraud; the so called anti-Trump movement never really gets going; Pence bores everyone to sleep; a tepid endorsement from Paul Ryan; and the smuggest Senator alive, Ted Cruz, still licking his wounds from his defeat in the Republican primaries, refuses to endorse Donald Trump. When your top celebrity endorser is Scott Baio from Joanie Loves Chachi, you know it’s bad. To top it off, Trump delivered a lie filled acceptance speech in an effort to make his supporters shit their pants in fear. Wow! What a sucky, sucky, suck ass Party!
But one thing that is incredibly disturbing is the platform adopted by the Republicans. It looks like it was written by extremist, far right wing, evangelical christians. You might as well call the Republican Party the Puritan Party now. Among the more dismaying platform points: appoint anti-choice Supreme Court justices; legalize anti-LGBT discrimination; pass an anti-choice constitutional amendment; end funding for Planned Parenthood; repeal environmental protection laws; ignore climate change; expand fracking and burying nuclear waste; privatize Medicare; cut food stamps; require bible study in public schools and (the worst one in our opinion) make christianity the national religion. Apparently, the Republicans want to go back to the ’50s…the 1650s! The Republican party platform also bears a strong resemblance to our fascist checklist we posted several months ago. If there was any doubt before there is no doubt now; with this party platform the Republican party has gone into hard core fascist mode.
On the eve of the Republican National Convention, a.k.a. The Finest Dumpster Fire The World Has Even Seen, the RNC is busy preparing themselves for what looks to be a complete clusterf*ck. Donald Trump seems to have selected Indiana governor, christian soldier and blandest man alive, Mike Pence, as his running mate. Many prominent Republicans are not even attending the convention, preferring to distance themselves from Mr. Trump. Given this, the Republican party has decided to officially assent to the rise of Trump by re-branding the party with a brand new logo which more properly reflects its current ideology: a steaming pile of patriotic shit (note the dead elephant’s trunk sticking out on top).
It’s the first week in July and the good news for most of America is that there is only four months left in the farce that is Con-a-thon 2016. Polls show that Hillary has opened up substantial leads in the battleground states, which has given most sane Americans a reason to breathe a sigh of relief. But there is a reason for pessimism. Let’s face it folks; Hillary is far from perfect and has lots of baggage. We’ve felt that she’s moved to the right and is for all intents and purposes a moderate Republican and Noam Chomsky seems to agree. Her coziness to Wall Street is why so many left leaning Democrats and Independents (like us) ‘felt the Bern’ this past year.
Hillary and Bill Clinton also have a history of pulling stupid gaffes at inopportune times. Of course, Bill’s infamous affair with Monica Lewinsky during his presidency stands out as the biggest blunder. Bill Clinton almost hurt his wife yet again recently. He reportedly met with current Attorney General Loretta Lynch in secret during a layover in Phoenix recently with the FBI’s investigation of Hillary’s private email server looming. Fortunately, for Hillary, the FBI found her to be ‘extremely careless’ but should not be charged of any wrongdoing.
In addition to Bill pulling boners (pun intended), Hillary has had a huge problem of appearing disingenuous to the American public. Recently, she talked about income inequality while wearing a $12,000 pantsuit. Several months back, while blatantly pandering to moderate Republican, she credited the Reagans for bringing awareness to AIDS, which is the exact opposite of what they did.
Throughout the debates and the primaries, Hillary and Bernie Sanders clearly distinguished themselves as the only adults in the room. If Hillary is to win the election, (and we here at the Bucket sincerely hope that she does now that Bernie Sanders is out), she’s going to have to cut down on the gaffes and change her duplicitous persona. She needs to aggressively attack Trump and the Republicans every chance she gets. She needs to play to win and not play not to lose, like her predecessors Al Gore and John Kerry. Fortunately, she seems to be doing that so far and Trump seems to be doing a pretty good job of self-destruction as well.
No doubt the Republicans will continue their witch hunt and character assassinations of Hillary. They’re already throwing a tantrum about the FBI findings. But it seems that fortunately, for her and America, she’s inherited some of Bill’s Teflon coating.
The so called GOP stalwarts, who have so brazenly yelled what a monster Donald Trump is, are falling one by one to the bullying charms of this authoritarian megalomaniac. Bold men like Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio are now sycophantic bootlickers of the orange haired menace. The latest to cave in meekly to the Donald: Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan.
We’ve never really taken to Mr. Ryan. During Con-a-thon 2012, when he was Spiff Romney’s vice-presidential candidate, we noted the several times he just flat out lied or was a complete hypocrite. (Here, here and here.)
Nothing’s changed really. For months, he claimed he wasn’t interested in taking over Speaker of the House for John Boehner and then suddenly …BOOM… he’s Speaker of the House. So I guess this latest development shouldn’t come as any surprise. Paul Ryan has been boldly stating (or conning) these past several months that he just can’t support Donald Trump. But after a ‘very important’ meeting this past week, Ryan now endorses Trump. What a man of integrity! Why shucky darn…with guys like Trump and Ryan leading the way, changing their points of view every time the wind blows, America’s sure to be great again in no time.
One of the more perplexing things about the rise of Donald Trump is the support he’s getting from the evangelical christians. We thought for sure they would support supposed ‘savior’ Ted Cruz, but they have overwhelmingly come out in support of someone who is thrice married; a hedonist, morally bankrupt and has at best a sketchy knowledge of the bible. We’re atheists here at the Bucket and we probably know more about the bible than Trump. Samantha Bee recently gave a hilarious analysis of the religious right evangelical’s seemingly hypocritical viewpoint. It’s definitely a lip diddler for us, folks. But then again, we can’t figure out how the hell Donald Trump is the GOP nominee for president.
We’re not pulling any punches here at the Bucket. We are vehemently anti-Donald Trump. Sure Hillary Clinton isn’t perfect, but she is basically a centrist Democrat and a moderate Republican. Like our guy Bernie Sanders has said, even on her worst days, she’s still one thousand times better than Mr. Trump.
There are countless reasons to not elect GOP frontrunner Donald Trump president. So far, he’s been as fickle as the wind on foreign and domestic issues alike. Oh, it’s Tuesday, then he’s for punishing women for abortions. If it’s Wednesday’s and the wind’s from the northwest, then women shouldn’t be punished. He used to be for gun control, but now he’s all for everyone having guns everywhere. Other issues he’s been for and against: transgender bathroom usage, same-sex marriage, NATO, reducing the national debt, Planned Parenthood, violence for political gain, etc…
But probably the biggest reason not to elect this psychopath is his foreign policy experience. We can’t think of a more dangerous person to have his finger on the nuclear button than this egomaniacal, authoritarian rage monster. The thought should make every sane Americans blood run cold. Let’s take the recent incident when U.S. sailors ventured into Iranian waters and were taken prisoners. Within a day, thanks to diplomacy by the Obama administration, the sailors were released. But Mr. Trump wanted to get tough with Iran (and possibly start World War III), which will undoubtedly be a nuclear war. He’s already sending mixed messages on foreign war policy as well. He stated that the U.S. shouldn’t be involved in foreign wars. But then he turns around and says he’d carpet bomb ISIS and show force in Syria. Can you imagine the Donald handling incidents with North Korea, China, the Ukraine, the Middle East. Just the slightest provocation would send Trump to the nuclear button. He’s already said, he would use nuclear weapons. Who knows — if Mexico doesn’t agree to build the border wall that Trump wants, he may send a few warheads southward.
The bottom line is this; if a person is thinking about voting for Trump, then that person should be prepared to go to war themselves, or send their sons, daughters or grandchildren to war. And this war won’t be just any war. It will be World War III: the Trumpocalypse.
We thought we were done with our review of lame AZ political figures and issues but former Governor Jan ‘Skeletor’ Brewer had to open her mouth and of course when that happens, something stupid usually comes out.
Brewer said in an interview that way too much emphasis has been placed on electing female candidates, stating that “this woman thing has gotten way out of control I believe.” That’s right women; get back in the kitchen and serve your man. No wonder Donald Trump and other conservative christian Republican men love her. Up Next: Jan Brewer says that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
