We’ve posted the following photo-toon meme a couple of times, on September 12, 2022 and originally on December 16,2015. We’re reposting it now because the situation hasn’t changed with the GOP since 2016 or the days of Dubya for that matter. They are still pursuing a christian nationalist corporatist authoritarian agenda – a Holy Corporate Empire or Corporate States of America if you will. The only difference is that the GOP are unabashedly out in the open supporting fascism now. Take a look at our handy dandy checklist and you can plainly see – Republicans are fascist to the core!
Artificial Intelligence or AI has become a huge buzzword in the past ten years and rightfully so. We’re old enough here at the Bucket to remember back in the ’80s when AI first came into the national consciousness and the media overreacted as they usually do and predicted the end of civilization. Stephen Hawking even warned about it, but then again he’s predicted a race of superhumans and possibly aliens taking over earth. Well, AI has finally arrived and it may very well be as dangerous as everyone predicted it would.
AI deepfake videos have become prevalent in the last five years and the results are astounding. Not only are they of good quality, they can actually fool people into believing what they are seeing is real and not fake. Jimmy Kimmel is well known for having deepfake videos on his show, especially featuring TFG, but he promotes them as such. There are other shows and websites that announce that the videos or images are faked and not to be taken seriously. Jabari Jones YouTube site is a good example. But it becomes incredibly dangerous especially when you consider all the malicious agents around the world, like Vladimir Putin, who would like nothing more than a video surfacing where Joe Biden, Barack Obama or other prominent Democrats say disparaging remarks about certain Americans or other countries.
There are also AI image generator sites like img2go where you can create realistic looking images for free. We tried it out and made our photo-toon for today with the prompt ‘homeless Donald Trump begging for money’. The result was surprisingly good. We’ve obviously photo-shopped some items, but the look on the homeless man’s face is authentic (authentic for a fake image, that is ). We couldn’t have come up with a better reaction to Trump’s grifting. We people who despise the orange, megalomaniac man child have had that ‘just shoot me’ look for the past nine years. We just may use AI more in our photo-toons in the future.
Like we said back in 2017, Trump’s war on the media is insidious and incredibly dangerous for a free society. Freedom of the press is one of the cornerstones of our democracy. But Trump has made no secret that he wants to be a dictator like his man crush Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. And with that desire comes the flak generator of conservative media outlets and unregulated social media sites like Twitter and Facebook spreading lies, misinformation and propaganda so successfully, it’s become a full time job for an average citizen just to determine the truth. So what is the truth? According to Trump, it’s anything he says it is.
Here’s a repost of our photo-toon from July 7, 2017. We think the flabby green ‘Pepe’ (instead of orange) skin on his saggy ass jowls are pretty appropriate for this croaking bag of goo.
Well the verdict is in and America’s twice impeached CEO/Dictator Donald Trump, a.k.a TFG, has been found guilty of fraud in New York and fined $354 million dollars. The pre-judgement interest number boosts the amount to almost $450 million dollars or $450,000,000. That’s a lotta dough, folks! Then there’s the $83 million he has to cough up for the E. Jean Carroll defamation suit. Could it be that the orange skinned megalomaniac man child is finally facing some accountability? It sure looks like it. All we have to say is thank you E. Jean Carroll, Letitia James and the state of New York. You’ve taken Trump’s BS for many years and now you’ve finally got him. We can safely and accurately call Trump for what he is and always has been: a FRAUD! All the Republicans who still support this man are colossally stupid fools and we have no sympathy for you.
For our photo-toon today we went over to the Obama poster generator and made an image befitting of America’s biggest con man and crook. Choke on it, MAGA Morons!
More importantly, many Trump humping, election denier candidates across the country got beat including the Big Three here in Arizona, Blake Masters, Mark Finchem and Kari Lake. Generally speaking, Democrats performed pretty well here in AZ. One notable exception is the U.S. House of Representatives. Arizona had five democratic Congressional representatives in the 2020 election but thanks to redrawn districts from the census favoring Republicans, the GOP now has six seats compared to three for Democrats. There were some very tight races which have gone into recount, but overall, the Dems held the line. Democracy has been saved . . . for now.
Of course, Ms. Lake, in true Trumpian fashion, has refused to concede and has commenced to whining, promising law suits of election fraud. We’re so sick of this former newsreader. She should just move into Mar-a-lago so she can be with her crush 24/7. We’re sure Melania won’t mind. We saw a funny meme online about the loony Ms. Lake and decided to duplicate it using our own graphics. From now on, Kari Lake will be known as Karipatra, the Queen of Denial.
It’s time to get back to our final review of Arizona GOP whack-a-doodle candidates. We’ve already mentioned fluff-brained gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and plutocrat butt kisser senatorial candidate Blake Masters. We focus in this post on perhaps the most insidious and dangerous of the Trumphumpers, Mark Finchem, who is running for Secretary of State. In Arizona, the Secretary of State is second in command since there is no Lieutenant Governor. The Secretary of State is also in charge of certifying election results and keeping records of campaign finances. This is why Finchem is dangerous – he is an election denier and has openly stated that he would have overturned the 2020 election in favor of TFG despite there being absolutely no evidence of voter fraud. He’s also stated that if he loses the upcoming election he will not concede, just like Trump.
But first, who is Mark Finchem? The way he dresses and acts, you’d think he’s a native Arizonan. But he was born and Michigan and moved to AZ and adopted the garb and persona of a rough and ready, independent Arizonan. Basically, he’s a poser. But the conservative rubes eat it up which is why he was elected as a state representative for Legislative District 11 which represents about 225,000 Arizonans in Pinal and Pima counties which covers the northwestern parts of the Tucson metropolitan area up to Casa Grande and Maricopa. Finchem’s been married four times, so he’s got TFG beat there. Other Arizona Republicans have called Finchem a “political gadfly” and “one of the dumbest” members of the state legislature.
The bottom line is this, folks: Mark Finchem is a bat shit insane, QAnon, Oath Keeper, fascist nutcase and is an absolute danger to Democracy. If he is elected Secretary of State, he will guarantee that only Republicans will win key offices in upcoming elections which is not only undemocratic but out and out fascism. We Arizonans need to make sure to vote him out this November 8th or we will never have fair elections in this state again and it might start an unfortunate trend that goes nationwide.
Update 9/26/22: Here are a couple more links to stories about Finchem.
We’ll start with Kari Lake, Arizona’s answer to Sarah Palin; movie starlet looks and a cotton candy brain. Ms. Lake has been a newsreader at the local Fox (of course) affiliate in Phoenix for the last umpty-nine years. She has absolutely no experience in government or running for office. We wouldn’t even want her to run our local HOA. She’s nothing but fluff. But apparently she’s seen that brains don’t matter in today’s Republican party so she’s got a clear path to power. What’s funny is that Lake supported Obama in his presidential runs and before that supported Bush. How does one go from Bush to Obama to Trump? They’re not even close politically; one extreme to the other What exactly is her game? She’s bouncing around like a ping pong ball between the political parties. Her reasoning isn’t convincing and despite her Republican opponents hammering on that issue, the MAGA morons decided that if Trump likes her then she’s the chosen one.
But for Lake to win the governorship, she’s going to need the Independent voters (like us) in Arizona and despite what the local media says, the Indys are leaning these days to the left. Speaking for many of Arizona’s Independents, we abhor what the current Republican party stands for. They are filled with Neo-Nazis, Neo-Confederates, QAnon conspiracy theorists, racist KKK members, anti-immigrant, anti-science, anti-women, bible thumping christo-fascists hypocrites who want to shove their religion down everyone’s throats with their guns fully loaded – (see the abortion issue). That’s why most Indys voted for Mark Kelly and Biden in 2020. But the Arizona GOP, led by the bat shit insane Kelli Ward, cannot admit they made a mistake with Trump and instead are doubling down on Trumpty Dumpty’s election fraud nonsense. They’ve done repeated audits (or fraudits) and checks on the 2020 election. There was no election fraud! Even sane, responsible Republicans say so. We repeat – THERE WAS NO ELECTION FRAUD!Repeating lies doesn’t make them true and Kari Lake is beating the drum loudly on the non-existent election fraud. And not surprisingly, Lake has repeated crazy GOP talking points after the FBI search warrant of TFG stating that the FBI should be defunded. Her Democratic opponent, current Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, outclasses her in every way, shape and form. But we’ve seen that before many times here in Arizona. For example, the intelligent Terry Goddard has run repeatedly for Governor here, the latest in 2010 against Jan Brewer, a.k.a. Skeletor and should have been elected hands down. But the Republicans chose the incompetent Brewer and she got to wave her bony finger at Obama.
The scary thing about Lake is that conservatives in Arizona, especially white, right wing, christian men, will be suckered in by her charm and her spiel. She’s playing right from the Trump playbook. On primary night, she declared victory before all the results were in. The funny thing is that she claims election fraud is all over the place. How do we know, her winning the primary wasn’t fraudulent? Because in Trumpland, there’s only fraud if the Trump candidate doesn’t win.
The up and coming Republicans in the House of Representative are notorious for one reason – they’re all colossally stupid. Take Matt Gaetz … please. Much like his mentor TFG, Gaetz makes ten inane comments each day before breakfast. Then there is Colorado’s answer to Sarah Palin, Lauren Boobert (misspelling intended). She thinks she’s actually in the same class as AOC, but her comments and actions say otherwise. But the biggest ass on the GOP’s team has to Marjorie Taylor Greene, a.k.a. MTG or as she should be called MTHead. This living relic of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons mating has collected an astonishing collection of insipid statements in just less than two years of serving as a representative for Georgia’s 14th district which covers the northwest corner of the state.
Unfortunately, the problem is that the district MTHead represents is heavily right wing conservative Republican. She just handily won her primary and looks to be a shoo-in for another two years despite being possibly the stupidest Congressperson in history. We know one thing: we will never visit that section of Georgia. The people who would elect this imbecile are not worth knowing.
Yes, Ted Cruz has proven himself to be many things; Senator, sycophant, seditionist, traitor and coward. Which begs the question – how and why the hell is he still in Congress?
With the revelations by the Republican led Senate Intelligence Committee this last week, it’s been made crystal clear that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in tampering with the 2016 election. It’s out in the open that America’s Impeached CEO/Dictator and petulant man child Donald Trump cheated his way into the White House. And now four years later, Trump is pulling out all the strings again to cheat his way back for another four years.