Robert Harrington

Another one on the embarrassing debacle that the GOP perpetrated on Dr Anthony Fauci. The Republicans are trying so hard to please Trump they might just destroy anyone who gets in their way, or might just destroy the country. And we thought they were the party of "law and order." That's now a cruel, cruel joke.

This one is from yet another American that's had enough and is standing up and speaking out. We need many more like Robert Harrington, who by the way has a Substack now.

I noticed with more than a little amusement a significant uptick in MAGA trolls on the Facebook copy of my most recent Substack article [“The Failed Republican Attempt to Crucify Dr Fauci,” 31 July]. I responded to a few but there were so many in the end — hundreds really — that I decided to respond to them all here and now.

Ordinarily such an effort would not be possible. Individual comments almost always merit individual responses when they are worthy of a reply at all. But these trolls are distinguished less by individuality and more by what they share in common.

First of all, their spelling and grammar are almost always appalling. I hasten to point out that poor spelling and bad grammar are not always the final arbiter of poor education or stupidity. There are many very bright people who can’t express themselves in writing worth a damn for a variety of valid reasons beyond willful ignorance.

But when absurdly awful self-expression applies sweepingly to an entire class of people, you can bet your bottom dollar that poor education and low brain wattage play a significant role.

In fact, I would consider it axiomatic that whenever you encounter a controversy about which you know absolutely nothing, all you need do is look at the spelling and grammar of the opposing groups. If there is a wide disparity between the two and you place your chips on the better educated side, you will walk away from that particular gaming table a very rich person indeed.

In other words, idiots like MAGA losers are always on the losing side. I’m frequently impressed at how many mistakes they can cram into a single sentence.

Second, virtually to a man (and less commonly woman) they seem to believe that tropes and memes and Republican talking points and claims that I suffer from TDS actually carry real weight. Some of them even make the ironic point that I am guilty of believing everything I am told without any reference to what they know and who told them. As if I’m the one who was deceived and what they know they received from a source too lofty, perfect and sacred to even mention.

That’s ridiculous on its face of course. For my part, I get my information from published clinical trials and peer reviewed papers in distinguished scientific journals. Not always directly, I freely admit. But what is responsibly reported in the news concerning the work of Dr Anthony Fauci is supported by those studies and journals and are frequently footnoted in articles. In any case I have done the legwork and traced those footnotes to their sources. That’s my job, after all.

But where do these MAGA trolls get their points of view? As near as I can tell (and by all means feel free to confirm my findings, sisters and brothers) many of the talking points used against Dr Fauci originated from a handful of social media influencers that found their badly informed voices during the pandemic.

I give you an abbreviated list here. They include Doug Kuzma of FROG News podcast, Marc Bernier or “Mr Anti-Vax,” Phil Valentine a conservative radio host, Bob Enyart of Christian radio, Dick Farrell of Newsmax, Jimmy DeYoung Sr a Christian broadcaster, and Christopher Foley an online physician and blogger. There are about half a dozen more, but that group is fairly representative of the whole.

Needless to say, I would love to interview those gentlemen and find out what they think now. Unfortunately, they are all dead.

Each and every one of them died miserably from COVID-19. In hospitals. Pitifully, gasping for breath. Wretchedly hooked up to mechanical ventilators, CPAP machines, oxygen concentrators and ECMO machines.

The family of Phil Valentine said he regretted discouraging vaccination and wanted his listeners to get vaccinated. Friends of Dick Farrell said he texted them from the hospital urging them to “Get the shot,” and “This virus is no joke — I wish I had gotten [vaccinated].”

Meanwhile, even as the glassy-eyed talking headcases at Fox “News” were supporting some of these online bullshitters, they were scrupulously following the network mandate to wear masks, observe social distancing and get vaccinated. It wasn’t just a request from the network, either, it was a full-throated commandment. Failure to follow those dictates to the letter could result in instant termination.

After the vaccine was widely distributed, tens of thousands of Americans died from COVID anyway. But the vast majority of those deaths occurred either to persons who were unvaccinated, or elderly people who had the misfortune of personally knowing some unvaccinated MAGA fucking douchebag.

Finally, a lot of these MAGA trolls are imbued with a kind of testosterone heavy machismo. As if there’s something manly about not getting vaccinated. I find it especially amusing that most of these assholes cosplay John Wayne from behind pseudonyms. It doesn’t take much imagination to know what they are really like: cringing little racist nobodies looking to Trump for an identity because they don’t have one of their own.

Well, I have exactly two words for them. “Fuck” and “you.”

Robert Harrington

not guilty

Another month, more bullshit from the orange chud shitting in the White House. Trump is married to the idea that he can NEVER admit he was wrong about ANYTHING. They were willing to send an ex-Olypmpian athlete to prison for up to TEN YEARS just to protect Trump's malevolent ego.

Now that it has been PROVEN that there was no slit in the reflecting pool (most of us already knew this), and that it was literally just a shitty job done by a bunch of unqualified dumb fuck MAGA supporters, I feel like a shift has finally happened. Let me explain.

This fat orange asshole has lied so much, that his supporters now look like the dumbest people on the earth. They went hard, once again, and stood ten toes down for this man as he told everyone there was a 350ft slit from vandalism and even arrested a three time Olympian for taking flakes of peeling paint.

Two things here:

1) He’s going to ask you people to do some stupid shit like J6 again. He loves to set people up to take the fall for his bullshit. It’s who he, and his entire administration are. You are fucking pawns and it’s ok for you to leave the cult. You don’t have to become a Democrat, you can be an independent like me.

2) I think the shift I see, is that at this point, even republicans/maga know that all this administration does is lie cheat and steal, but they don’t care anymore. They have shown everyone, they will double down on gaslighting even when they are caught red handed, and we are now in the “we don’t give a fuck what you or anyone else thinks, we only represent a tiny portion of the population, not you, and you are just going to deal with it” phase.

Literally, it would not surprise me if this shit doesn’t end in some kind of weird ass David Koresh Branch Davidian type of situation. No normal human being could still support this shit. America will still be here after he is gone, and these people are going to prison. But you have to vote, people. We can never allow this again y’all.

Saying “I don’t do politics” is like standing on a railroad track and saying “whatever happens happens.” Nah, you have a voice, and it’s your responsibility to vote just like it’s mine. It ain’t fun, it’s hard, and time consuming, but you have to engage or people will make the decision for you. Make sure you have your documents ready, make sure you know where and when your voting location is open.

Jason McPhail

Dr Fauci

Dr Anthony Fauci is an American hero. He has dedicated his life and time to medicine and finding ways to stop disease. His actions during the AIDS crisis in the 1980's helped to wake up this country to a deadly disease and deserve a national award. Actually, I'm pretty sure he got a few awards for that work.  He helped to keep a lid on the Ebola epidemic back in 2014. Then Zika in 2016. The man is a national treasure, and to see one of our political parties, the one that has rotted from within, try to insult and somehow pin the COVID epidemic on Dr Fauci is surreal in the extreme. 

We have got to do better than this. The GOP...people....are better than this. They have to be. Why they are using their power to attack a man who has dedicated his life to serving this country is beyond me and is one of the ugliest things yet from the GOP. Is there worse to come?

The essay below is from Sean Lobdell, another regular American who has decided to stand up and be heard. 

Watching the Fauci pile-on this week, I keep thinking America has become very good at misplacing its rage.

I support Dr. Fauci.

That does not mean every COVID policy was perfect. It does not mean every mandate was wise. It does not mean every school closure, mask rule, workplace requirement, or public message aged well. Some people were hurt by vaccine complications. Some people lost jobs. Some families were squeezed by policies that felt blunt, confusing, and sometimes cruel.

All of that deserves an honest accounting.

But that is not what the Fauci circus is giving us.

Rand Paul finally got his hearing, dragged Fauci in, read from his pandemic diaries, made the usual accusations, and then acted shocked when Fauci took the Fifth in a room built to trap him politically and possibly legally.

The MAGA crowd instantly screamed, “Guilty.”

Interesting standard from the same movement built around a man who took the Fifth more than 400 times and then called it smart.

COVID broke something in this country, and a lot of people still have not dealt with it honestly.

So now they need a villain with glasses.

That is easier than remembering the hospitals. Easier than remembering exhausted nurses. Easier than remembering families saying goodbye on iPads. Easier than remembering refrigerated trucks outside morgues. Easier than admitting that a real virus killed more than 1.2 million Americans while the country argued with itself like a drunk family at Thanksgiving.

Fauci did not create that grief.

He stood in front of it.

Was he perfect? Of course not. Nobody who worked through COVID was. The science changed. The virus changed. The guidance changed. Sometimes the messaging was awful. Sometimes the confidence was stronger than the evidence. We should study all of that without worshipping anyone.

But the Facebook version is ridiculous.

Fauci killed people. Fauci made millions. Fauci invented the virus. Fauci forced every shot. Fauci controlled every employer, every governor, every school board, every hospital, every airline, every pharmacy, every mask sign at every stupid grocery-store entrance in America.

Come on.

At some point, conspiracy becomes a way to avoid adult memory.

Trump was president when COVID hit. Trump ran the White House briefings. Trump had the task force. Trump backed Operation Warp Speed. Trump wanted credit for the vaccines when they sounded like a win, then watched his own people turn them into poison once resentment became more useful than pride.

Funny how that part keeps getting deleted from the family album.

And the money claims are always the same swampy mess. NIH royalty transparency is a fair issue. If government scientists or agencies had conflicts, investigate them. Release records. Tighten rules. I am all for it.

But saying Fauci personally made millions from COVID vaccine companies because he pushed shots is a serious accusation. Bring proof.

Not a meme. Not a podcast clip. Not some guy in sunglasses yelling from a truck. Actual proof.

The same people who demand evidence for every Trump scandal somehow accept “Fauci got rich killing people” if the font is angry enough.

That is the part that gets me.

They do not want a pandemic review. They want a ritual. They want someone to punish so they can stop thinking about the mess, the fear, the death, the mistakes, and the way their own side turned public health into a loyalty test.

And yes, vaccine injuries deserve honesty. People with real complications should not be mocked, ignored, or buried under statistics. They deserve care and answers.

But millions of people also survived because science moved fast. Vaccines reduced severe illness. Doctors and nurses saved lives. Researchers worked around the clock. Public health people took death threats while trying to make decisions in fog, pressure, politics, and panic.

There is a difference between reviewing mistakes and trying to jail the nearest scientist because five years of memes taught people where to point.

I watched people online this week call Fauci a murderer while defending Trump’s grift, Trump’s war, Trump’s pardons, Trump’s lies, Trump’s corruption, Trump’s cruelty, and Trump’s daily attempt to turn public office into a personal cash machine.

Apparently expertise is tyranny, but a con man selling coins from the White House is freedom.

That is where part of the country has landed.

So yes, investigate the pandemic response. Investigate the origin. Investigate the funding. Investigate the mandates. Investigate the communications failures. Investigate every agency, every contract, every conflict, every political decision that made things worse.

Do it seriously.

But if the whole argument is “Fauci took the Fifth, therefore throw him in jail,” spare me the courtroom cosplay.

We lost more than a million Americans. We owe them something better than Rand Paul’s theater, Trump’s amnesia, and Facebook epidemiologists who think punctuation is optional but criminal prosecution should be immediate.

Fauci is not the reason COVID became a national trauma.

He is just the man a broken political movement needs to blame so it never has to look in the mirror.

Sean Lobdell

WHCD

The White House Correspondents Dinner? No way I was watching that POS. From all accounts, Trump has no comedic timing, no comedic mentality, just hate, ridicule, and insults, and he cannot stay focused on one thing at a time. This, from our "president." I think we as a nation will survive after Trump is ashes, but those who aided and abetted this narcissist should be made to pay for their complicity. Will they? Magic 8-Ball says, "unclear."

The Forgotten Candle

I came away from Donald Trump’s appearance at the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner with one overriding thought.

What an asshole.

Trump looked like a forgotten orange candle left burning too long on a dresser, softening, sagging, slowly melting into itself. There was no presidential presence, no dignity, no humility, no recognition that he was standing before the very people charged with documenting history in real time. There was only vanity. Endless vanity. A man who has mistaken attention for respect, applause for legitimacy, and grievance for governing. Even he seemed to realize he was bombing. After one of his tired jokes collapsed into silence, he admitted it was a “fricking stupid speech.” On that rare occasion, I found myself in complete agreement with the President of the United States.

And then there was Karoline Leavitt, who every single day has walked to the podium with an air of practiced superiority, treating legitimate questions from journalists as inconveniences rather than constitutional necessities. She doesn’t simply defend an administration. She defends distortions, dismisses facts, belittles reporters, and packages contempt as confidence. Day after day she serves as the smiling public face of an administration that has transformed lying into communications strategy and hostility toward the press into official policy. She doesn’t appear burdened by it. She appears to enjoy it.

As I watched this spectacle unfold, I kept asking myself the same question over and over again. Why was he there? More importantly, why was he invited? What exactly possesses an organization dedicated to defending the First Amendment to hand its most prominent stage to the man who has spent nearly a decade calling journalists “the enemy of the people,” threatening television networks with the loss of their broadcast licenses, suing newspapers into submission, driving respected news organizations from the White House press pool, subpoenaing reporters, and openly arguing that journalists themselves should become investigative targets whenever his administration springs another leak? At what point does extending an invitation cease being an act of professionalism and become an act of institutional surrender?

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is supposed to celebrate the First Amendment. It is supposed to honor the uncomfortable but indispensable relationship between a free press and those in power. Instead, this evening became little more than another MAGA rally dressed up in tuxedos and evening gowns. Trump wandered through more than an hour of recycled grievances, childish nicknames, personal insults, stale campaign material, and bitter attacks directed at journalists who were sitting only a few feet away. He mocked Kaitlan Collins. He ridiculed political opponents’ appearances. He compared reporters to social media personalities.

He mocked celebrities. He insulted members of Congress. He fantasized about White House UFC fights. He slipped a “Trump 2028” hat onto his head as though constitutional term limits were just another punchline. It wasn’t comedy. It wasn’t satire. It was narcissism with a microphone.

The room didn’t laugh much because there wasn’t much to laugh about. Most people simply stared. A few nervous chuckles escaped here and there, but awkward silence became the dominant soundtrack of the evening. Watching reporters politely endure insult after insult from a president who has spent years trying to delegitimize their profession felt less like witnessing a celebration of journalism than watching an institution negotiate with its own abuser.

I found myself thinking that perhaps the profession has reached the point where it should simply stop showing up. Trump feeds on attention the way a wildfire feeds on dry timber. Every invitation becomes another opportunity to humiliate the very people extending it. Every camera becomes oxygen for his ego. Every appearance reinforces the illusion that this relationship is somehow normal when nothing about it is normal. Journalism does not exist to provide scenery for authoritarian theatrics. A free press exists to hold power accountable, not to applaud politely while power ridicules it from center stage.

What disturbed me most, however, wasn’t what Trump said. It was what he never said.

An hour of insults.

An hour of grievance.

An hour of self-promotion.

Yet scarcely a meaningful acknowledgment of the American service members who have died in his war with Iran.

The administration has publicly acknowledged eighteen American military deaths in the conflict. Even that number has shifted as casualty reporting has changed, while information about the broader human toll has often been slow to emerge. What is beyond dispute is that the number of wounded continues to rise, civilians continue to die, families continue receiving unimaginable phone calls, and this unnecessary war continues extracting a heavier price with each passing week. Every casualty represents a son. A daughter. A husband. A wife. A parent. Every folded flag leaves behind an empty chair that will never again be filled.

And yet there sat Donald Trump, basking beneath crystal chandeliers, complaining about reporters, reminiscing about owning the ballroom, joking about beef tenderloin and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. running over the cow that supplied the dinner, while barely pausing to acknowledge the Americans who have paid for his decisions with their lives.

That omission told me everything.

The presidency is, above all else, a moral office. Every occupant eventually reveals what he values most. Some reveal compassion. Some reveal humility. Some reveal courage under extraordinary pressure.

Donald Trump revealed Donald Trump.

His priorities were unmistakable. The dead weren’t the story. Their grieving families weren’t the story. The wounded weren’t the story. The First Amendment wasn’t the story. The journalists sitting before him weren’t the story.

He was.

Always him.

As I watched him stumble through another rambling hour of insults, I couldn’t help remembering that this is the same man who dismissed captured American service members as “losers,” questioned the heroism of John McCain because he had been captured, publicly disparaged Gold Star families, and referred to America’s war dead as “suckers.” Perhaps I should not have been surprised that eighteen officially acknowledged American deaths, and the many more wounded in a war whose human cost continues to escalate, barely registered in his remarks. The pattern isn’t new. It is simply becoming impossible to ignore.

The bitter irony of the evening was impossible to escape. A dinner intended to celebrate the First Amendment featured a president who has spent years attacking it. Journalists applauded award winners whose reporting had earned them lawsuits, subpoenas, threats, professional retaliation, and even the relocation of family members because of intimidation. They celebrated courage while sitting only feet away from the man responsible for much of the hostility directed at them. If that contradiction didn’t make everyone in the room uncomfortable, it should have.

As I turned off the television, I couldn’t shake the image that had stayed with me all night. Donald Trump didn’t look powerful. He looked exactly like that forgotten orange candle left burning on a dresser, softened by its own heat, sagging beneath its own weight, slowly melting into itself. The tragedy is that candles usually consume only themselves as they burn. Donald Trump has spent years consuming institutions instead: the presidency, public trust, the military’s sacrifice, the First Amendment, and now even the White House Correspondents’ Dinner itself.

The wax isn’t the only thing melting.

So are the democratic norms that far too many people, including too many in that ballroom, continue pretending are still intact.

Michael Jochum

Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Music, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition

GOP decay

I publish columns by Texan Allen Clifton because he often says what I am thinking. Strange how that works. Once this reign of error by Trump and the sycophantic GOP is over, Allen will be regarded as one of the many heroes of America, who helped to bring our great but flawed nation back from the brink of destruction by speaking truth. The Republicans have so abused the truth I wonder if they even can recognize it any longer. What a pathetic group of spineless greedy enablers they have become.

Let's make one thing perfectly clear: Donald Trump didn't change the Republican Party; he just brought to the surface what so many conservatives had spent decades denying was true.

The racism, bigotry, self-centeredness, out-of-control spending, anti-Constitutionalism, anti-democratic tendencies, perpetual victimhood, and never-ending hypocrisy.

Sure, Trump is all of those things — but the GOP has been all of those things for a very long time.

I wrote my article The Republican March Towards a Society of Sociopaths years before MAGA existed. I wrote The Cult of Republicanity well before Trump was anything more than a loser who called into Fox News to whine about Barack Obama's birth certificate.

Even when I was fairly young, I remember being confused about how Republicans could claim to be the party of "fiscal responsibility" while viewing Ronald Reagan as the "conservative icon" when he nearly tripled the national debt during his eight years as president.

How can you be "fiscally responsible" yet go into massive debt?

Now Trump is on pace to add more to the national debt than any president in history, and you don't hear a peep from Republicans about the need to be "fiscally responsible."

Newt Gingrich was House Speaker during the impeachment of Bill Clinton over a consensual affair — yet Gingrich cheated on both of his wives.

Gingrich's replacement, Dennis Hastert, later admitted to sexually abusing several underage males while he was a high school wrestling coach.

But this was the party of "moral, Christian values"?

Now we have Trump, who has literally cheated on every single one of his wives and has had nearly 30 women accuse him of sexual assault.

It's the party that, in 1989, elected David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the KKK and well-known white nationalist.

The GOP is the party that reinvented itself during Richard Nixon's presidency with a plan called the "Southern Strategy," designed to pander to white resentment, particularly in the South and rural areas, as those voters felt "betrayed" by the Democratic Party's embrace of equality for Black Americans.

It's the party that smiled as it unethically and unconstitutionally denied Barack Obama's presidential right to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court after Scalia passed away — claiming a nonexistent "precedent" against replacing a justice during an election year — then completely contradicted itself a few years later when Republicans rushed to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg after she died just a couple of weeks before the 2020 presidential election.

Yes, Trump is awful. He always has been. As I've said many times before, my disdain for him has nothing to do with politics. I couldn't stand the piece of crap long before he took over the GOP. He's been a horrible person his entire life.

But he didn't "change" the GOP.

He simply brought to the surface and exposed the many truths about it that people like myself have been pointing out for years.

That's why I've said Donald Trump is many terrible things, but one "good" thing he did was prove that the accusations and criticisms folks like myself have made against the Republican Party all these years were not without merit.

Allen Clifton (and he now has a Substack)

Border Patrol

Down here in deep South Texas, we see Border Patrol agents almost every day. And almost every week, we hear a new story about what a Border Patrol agent has done, whether it's getting busted for smuggling drugs, taking bribes, smuggling immigrants, beating the shit out of immigrants, or outright killing them. The Border Patrol down here has a mean reputation of pushing their privilege to the max. Almost anyone can get hired by the Border Patrol because their standards are so low. I hear a bunch of them left the Rio Grande Valley to join ICE. Watch out, America. 

Don’t worry, America.

You can cancel the panic.

It wasn’t an “illegal alien.”

It wasn’t a gang member.

It wasn’t someone climbing a wall or hiding in a clinic.

Nope.

It was Bart C. Yager

A U.S. Border Patrol agent from Willcox, Arizona.

Charged with 19 felonies, including:

Child sex trafficking

Rape

Prostitution

Fraud

The man who was guarding OUR border… was allegedly trafficking children.

Let that sink in.

But please, go on…tell me again how undocumented immigrants are the REAL problem.

If his name were José, he’d be deported, doxed, and demonized before sundown.

If he were undocumented, he’d be labeled a “national security threat” and paraded on every conservative network for a week.

If he were Black, there’d be a Blue Lives Matter rally staged next to his mugshot.

But he’s WHITE.

He’s local.

He wore a badge.

He probably went to church, voted “law and order,” and waved a flag on the Fourth of July (and voted GOP)

So now it’s:

“Due process.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

“Not all agents…”

Where are the MAGA hats now?

Where’s the “law and order” crowd?

Where’s the outrage from the Save the Children warriors, the same ones who swore pedophiles were hiding in pizza parlors and underground tunnels?

Oh, that’s right… they only seem to care when the suspect has an accent, BROWN SKIN, or a last name they can mispronounce on purpose.

When the monster looks like one of their own, the pitchforks vanish, and the “concern for children” magically disappears.

This isn’t one bad apple.

This is the orchard, the pesticide, and the cover-up.

This is what happens when a uniform becomes a shield instead of a responsibility.

You built a wall to keep rapists out.

But you forgot to check the ones you gave a gun, a badge, and a government salary.

So, go ahead, wave your flags.

Salute your “heroes.”

Build your walls.

Just know:

The real threat WASN'T crossing the border.

It was already GUARDING it......

Signed by Bob Kelly, another American patriot.