Meme-ries – Page 15 – BilgeBucket Gazette

Lisa Clinton vs Bart Trump

The results are in from the first Presidential debate and the consensus is that Hillary Clinton wiped the floor with Donald Trump. As expected, Trump and his acolytes are proclaiming victory or claim that such things as a faulty microphone or a cold were to blame for Trump’s less than stellar performance. (Really, what was with the Donald’s sniffling all night? Gee, we thought Hillary was supposed to be the sick one. Why doesn’t the media spend hours obsessing over Trump’s health? Is he on death’s door or just doing coke?)

Which brings us to the bigger question; will the debate performance boost Hillary in the polls? Most people think so, but Michael Moore posited an interesting and disturbing response with which we are kind of grudgingly, reluctantly and frighteningly inclined to agree. Moore states that even though Hillary beat Trump handily and may rise in the polls, so what… Trump will still win the election. Unfortunately and frighteningly, he could be right. Look at what has happened this past year. Trump has said the most disgusting, vile, repulsive, repugnant things that a person could say not just during a Presidential campaign but in general life. And what’s the response? His poll numbers are boosted! It’s exactly like Trump boasted last year; that he could shoot people in Times Square and his backers would still support him. Logic, reason, facts, statistics, science and common sense don’t matter to Trump supporters. Even our local rag, The Arizona Republic, endorsed Hillary for President; the first time in the paper’s history they endorsed a Democrat. Will it sway the right wing Teabagger Republicans in this state? Probably not. This race should be a Clinton landslide, but instead Trump’s blind, unthinking, sycophantic supporters and the lax and enabling coverage of the corporate conservative news media have made this election into a nerve wracking vigil for an impending, apocalyptic nightmare or the Trumpocalypse.

We noted a few posts ago about how Hillary is like Lisa Simpson and the Donald is like Bart Simpson. Unfortunately, America seems to have transformed itself into a country just like a certain cartoon town of idiots.

Just like on 'The Simpsons', Hillary 'Lisa' Clinton proclaims she is prepared to be president only to be obnoxiously ridiculed by Donald 'Bart' Trump much to the delight of the cartoonish idiotic citizens. — Despite being completely qualified mentally and physically to be President, Hillary ‘Lisa’ Clinton discovers that the cartoonish idiocracy prefers the inane, rude, crude, obnoxious imp, Donald ‘Bart’ Trump.

Children Of The Don

The adult children of GOP nominee Donald Trump made headlines this past week by releasing a truly creepy ad aimed at Millennials. Ivanka, Eric and Donald Jr. looked eerily like some combination of the Children of the Corn, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the Stepford Wives as they seem to be saying to their peers: Vote for our dad… or we will destroy you! It kind of makes us glad that we’re old coots here at the Bucket, and we’ll be kicking the bucket relatively soon. We’d hate to have to live in a world where these soulless husks of human flesh rule over humanity. At least they’ve got a future in horror movies.

Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Eric Trump command millennials Children of the Corn style to vote for their dad or face complete destruction. — Donald Trump’s children, Ivanka, Eric and Donald Jr, have released a new ad that commands Millennials to vote for their dad or face the dire consequences.

Republicans May Be Right

Republicans have been vocal in recent years about voter ID laws despite the in person voter fraud being virtually non-existent. (Another article here.) Now, voter ID laws, like the one in North Carolina, are being struck down because basically they are an attempt by Republicans at repressing certain people like minorities from having access to the voting booth.

But with the rise of Donald Trump as the GOP nominee for President, maybe we should have voter restrictions…against Republicans. Let’s say if a person voted for Dubya, Ms. Ubetcha, Sarah Palin and is in the process of supporting the megalomaniac, orange haired rage monster then that person clearly lacks the intelligence to astutely choose a candidate who will run this great nation properly. We would suggest that this person stick to the more basic skills in life like drinking beer, watching wrestling on tv and belching on the couch. It would be a win-win for everyone.

Given the choices Republicans have made over the last 20 years, maybe some people shouldn't be allowed to vote. — Given the choices Republicans have made over the last 20 years, maybe some people shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

Square Mileage ≠ Population

The election is less than three months away now and according to polls, Clinton has opened up a sizeable lead over Republican nominee, megalomaniac Donald Trump. But Donald Trump has a crafty plan; just claim the election was rigged and get his echo chamber at Fox News, a.k.a. the Republican Propaganda Network to relay and repeat the message ad infinitum to the sheeple who watch it and bingo! – any result that doesn’t turn into a Trump victory is invalid.

We saw this coming back during Con-a-thon 2012, when Donald Trump declared the election was rigged and said he would start a revolution. But we never dreamed in a million years he would actually become the 2016 nominee. He and all Republicans will no doubt use the same old inevitable con that conservative Republicans always use; look at the electoral map and say “Wow! Look at all that red! How could the Democrats have won, when the majority of the map is sooooooo red!” They once again take advantage of American’s poor math skills and inability to grasp that square mileage doesn’t equal population.

To truly grasp the electoral map, one needs to go to Nate Silver’s election site fivethirtyeight.com. He has an electoral map that gives the true representation of what’s happening with the electoral vote, which is based on population, and not the square mileage. So yes, for example, Montana has a lot of square mileage(147,164), but there are more people living in the 372.4 square miles of San Diego California (population: ≈ 1.356 million) than in the whole state of Montana (population: ≈ 1.024 million). So these calls by Trump and his fellow con artist Republicans stating that there’s no way he should be losing are absolute bunk according to Nate Silver’s site. Trump is losing and losing badly. If you have any doubts, DO THE MATH!

Donald Trump and his conservative Republicans try to convince their gullible audience that square mileage equals popluation and that the election is rigged if Trump loses. — Conservative Republicans and their cohorts in the corporate media are trying once again to push the old square mileage equals population ploy on its gullible audience.

The Art Of The Con 101

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!

Donald Trump claims to give a million dollars to chairty which accounts to a not so generous 0.022 percent of his $4.5 billion dollar wealth. — Thanks to the atrocious and pathetic math skills of Americans, authoritarian. megalomaniac con artist, Donald Trump, is on the verge of becoming President.

World War III: Trumpocalypse Now

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.

In Donald Trump's new patriotic poster, an exuberant Trump supporter exhorts other Americans to join the fun in World War III: the Trumpocalypse. — In Donald Trump’s new patriotic poster, an exuberant Trump supporter exhorts other Americans to join the fun in World War III: the Trumpocalypse.

SEGUMUCA Nation

Well, the unthinkable has happened in America. What started out as a joke last June, has become a reality. Donald Trump has pretty much clinched the Republican Presidential nomination. Like other sane, reasonable folks, we’re completely surprised and a bit horrified at the ascendancy of this disingenuous, authoritarian megalomaniac. And naturally the blamestorming has commenced. Common scapegoats include the obvious choices like the Teabagger Republicans and corporate media. The Republicans have the gall to actually blame Obama. John Stewart has suggested it’s the Democrats. We here at the Bucket will go one better; we’re all to blame for this fiasco.

That’s right folks. Whether we want to admit it or not, we’re all responsible for Donald Trump because the orange rage monster is the epitome of capitalism run amok. We’ve commented before about the ugly predatory nature of unregulated capitalism. Upton Sinclair documented it one hundred years ago in the book The Jungle and it still is applicable today. Trump has come to represent everything that capitalism holds dear; greed, avarice, egoism, ultra-competitiveness, selfishness and materialism. Most Americans who have been raised on the belief that capitalism is the only sensible economy for this planet, look to the self-aggrandizing, megalomaniac billionaire, who has had three trophy wives and scores of material possessions like houses, cars, planes, etc… and say “Hey! I want to be like him.” That’s the American way. The rich, greedy plutocrats dangle the carrot and the rest of us salivate and go after it. We’ve mentioned John Steinbeck’s quote about the poor seeing themselves as temporarily embarrasses millionaires instead of exploited grunts. These are Trump’s trumpeters; the temporarily embarrassed millionaires; and of course the plutocrats, like Sheldon Adelson, who will naturally support his fellow billionaire.

We here at the Bucket were kind of hoping that Bernie Sanders, the self proclaimed democratic socialist would have gotten the nomination. That would have made the election a referendum of sorts between democratic socialism against unregulated capitalism. According to polls, in a head to head showdown, Sanders thumps Trump.

We think it’s time that all Americans do a bit of self-introspection, especially conservatives. Conservatives generally don’t do this because in the conservative mindset, they are always right, hence no need to look at oneself in the mirror. Questioning your actions is bad and a sign of weakness. One must do what has been traditionally done forever and ever. And don’t even think of apologizing; that is absolute weakness and worthy of death. But is Donald Trump really who were are as a nation? Are we really like Trump? Are we a SEGUMUCA nation: a nation of Selfish, Egotistical, Greedy, Ultra-Materialistic, Ultra-Competitive Assholes? (Catchy eh?…[sound of crickets chirping]…hellllooooo) Isn’t it time we put the people’s health and welfare, the public good and the environment above profits and selfish, greedy materialistic desires? Maybe if we do that, we won’t look in the mirror, see Donald Trump snarling back and say to ourselves, “Holy Shit! How did we get so fugly!”

Uncle Sam recoils in horror as he looks in the mirror and sees that he has become a selfish, egotistical, greedy, ultra-materialistic, ulta-competitive asshole, a.k.a. Donald Trump. — Uncle Sam recoils in horror as he looks in the mirror and sees that he has become a Selfish, Egotistical, Greedy, Ultra-Materialistic, Ultra-Competitive Asshole.

Al Was The Smart Bundy

Continuing with our mockery of Y’all Queda…

Poor Al Bundy! The much maligned patriarch of the dysfunctional Bundy family from the classic sitcom Married…with Children, can’t even retain his fame as the stupidest Bundy in America thanks to Y’all Queda leader, Ammon Bundy. Come to think of it, Ammon’s Dad, Cliven dethroned Al last year. Oh well. At least Al’s still the funniest Bundy.

Al Bundy, famous shoe salesman and athlete, who once scored four touchdowns in one high school football game, discovers that he's no longer the stupidest Bundy in America thanks to Y'all Queda leader Ammon Bundy. — Al Bundy, famous shoe salesman and athlete, who once scored four touchdowns in one high school football game, discovers that he’s no longer the stupidest Bundy in America thanks to Y’all Queda leader Ammon Bundy.

Flouting Godwin’s Law

At the risk of flouting Godwin’s Law, we’ve noticed how far to the right the Republican party has traveled over the past twenty years; specifically in the years after Dubya left office and with the rise of the Teabaggers. Now that Donald Trump has started to spew forth truly hateful rhetoric in this farce of an election called Con-a-thon 2016, comparisons to the NSDAP party(Nazis) of 1930’s Germany are not only inevitable, but necessary. Make no mistake, it’s not just Trump who believes this filth. Every Republican candidate believes it as well, especially Rubio and Cruz, who both have said some vile, nasty unchristian things toward immigrants, foreigners, gays, women, and non-christians. Although every single high ranking Republican condemned Trump for his words, they would absolutely vote for him and support him in the general election. Yep, Trump is the heart and soul of the current Republican party and it’s pretty ugly.

What grinds our gears though, is when right wing blowhards violate Godwin’s by bloviating and showing their ignorance by comparing Obama to Hitler. This is not only laughable but blatantly incorrect. History shows that the leaders of the NSDAP party were overwhelmingly right wing conservatives not leftists (For an excellent, informative read try Richard Evans’ Third Reich trilogy: The Coming of the Third Reich; The Third Reich in Power; and The Third Reich at War). They had a well oiled propaganda machine that spewed forth hateful rhetoric about minorities and foreigners who would serve as convenient scapegoats for all national maladies. They were against gays, democratic socialists (they would have killed Obama), immigrants, and unions. Women were second class citizens who would only be useful to provide further citizens for the nation. They promoted eternal warfare and invoked nationalism to incite citizens to join the military. They pushed for a strong military and were very friendly to corporations which fueled the military industrial complex. They would regularly stoke fear in the hearts of the citizenry by claiming the aforementioned scapegoats were going to ruin their nation. They would regularly stifle opposing viewpoints by announcing that anyone who disagreed were enemies of the state and should be eliminated. Hmmmm…notice any similarities? We think Americans must take notice, (Godwin’s Law be damned) and be very concerned about this 21st century neocon Republican party that, according to its propaganda, wants to ‘make America great again’ just as a certain right wing conservative fascist party wanted to make Germany great again in the 1930s.

The modern Republican Party has some eerie and frightening similarities to a certain right wing conservative fascist party from 20th century Germany, a.k.a. the Nazis. — The modern Republican Party has some eerie and frightening similarities to a certain right wing conservative fascist party from 20th century Germany.

Salk, Hero; Shkreli, Zero

How about that Martin Shkreli, huh? What a piece of work he is. In case, you don’t know, Martin Shkreli is the wunderkind CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals who recently made every sane person’s list of most hated man in the world recently by raising the price of a life saving drug Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill. Yes, you read that right… $750 per pill.

And now poor little rich man is mad at Bernie Sanders because Mr. Shkreli wanted to donate to Sanders campaign and Sanders wisely rejected the donation. According to Shkreli, he is so mad at Sanders that he could punch a wall. Ahhhhh! Poor wittle baby!!! Well, I think it’s safe to say that there are many Americans who would like to punch Mr. Shkreli’s greedy, smug little face into oblivion.

Shkreli could learn a lot about ethics from Dr. Jonas Salk. Salk discovered the vaccine for polio and instead of filing a patent, which could have made him a gazillionaire, famously said “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”. He had no desire to profit personally but instead wanted the vaccine distributed as widely as possible in order to cure as many people as possible of this dreaded disease. Of course, in this age of greed and profits at any and all costs, Dr. Salk’s actions are scoffed at by most modern day doctors and scientists, who seem to support the idea of putting profits before people. This way of thinking seems counter not only to the Hippocratic Oath (“I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.“) but also to basic christianity, which this nation supposedly has claimed itself to be.

Health care for humans and even our pets has become ridiculously expensive. What’s needed is regulation for the pharmaceutical and medical industry so prices remain affordable to every American, not just the rich. But people keep electing people to Congress who are against any kind of regulation (a.k.a Republicans). One thing is for certain; health care for profit is a bad idea and one that needs changing. Either that, or say hello to more assholes like Mr. Shkreli with their $750 pills.

Dr Jonas Salk is a hero and Mr. Martin Shkreli is a zero. — Mr. Martin Shkreli and his price gouging brand of health care has a long way to go to if he wants to have the same status as Dr. Jonas Salk.