Semi-recently Elon Musk interviewed Donald Trump on X (the social media platform formerly known as Prince) and due to X being about as well run as a Tesla on autopilot, the interview started 40 minutes late.
Just in case you’ve forgotten, back when Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign was announced on what was then called Twitter it had also had multiple technical glitches and according to USA Today, here’s what Donald Trump had to say then: “Wow! The DeSanctus TWITTER launch is a DISASTER! His whole campaign will be a disaster. WATCH!”
But as someone whose name I forgot to write down recently said about Trump, “Consistency is not a concern.”
According to The Hill website, during the interview Trump repeated his goal of abolishing the Department of Education and turning the problem back over to the states and Trump added: “Not every state will do great. Of the 50, I would bet that 35 will do great.”
So if you live in one of the 15 states that will go down the educational shitter, pay attention in shop class because you’re going to have a long career bagging groceries or recapping tires and will also need to know how to construct a sidewalk condominium out of cardboard boxes under a freeway overpass once they train some AI robot to replace you at the grocery store or tire factory.
Apparently, Trump also praised Elon Musk for firing striking workers at Tesla, because worker drones and future grocery baggers and tire cappers need to shut the hell up and do what their obscenely rich billionaire slave masters ask of them.
Musk repeatedly suggested that a Second Trump Reich form a commission to study the national debt and ways to spend money efficiently and offered to help out in that area, because if there’s anything you need on a commission about efficiency is a guy who runs a social media platform that has failed spectacularly the two times politicians tried to use it.
Back in June, NASA and Boeing got together and shot two astronauts into space for an eight-day trip to the International Space Station, but then the spacecraft’s flux capacitor got the heebie-jeebies which means this latest space venture has combined the plots from:
1. Gilligan’s Island
2. Back to the Future and…
3. Gremlins
So the astronauts have to stay on the space station, possibly until next year, so the astronauts who were already on the space station must feel like they invited their best friends from high school to stay in their guest bedroom while they searched for an apartment, but then, after the couple starts hanging pictures and repainting the room, realize their high school buddies have no plans to go anywhere and it will require the assistance of a SWAT team and a hostage negotiator to get them out of their house.
In any case…
Astronauts stranded in space for two months is worthy of a cartoon, but I didn’t get motivated until NASA insisted the astronauts weren’t really stranded and people ought to quit saying they were, which didn’t stop anyone – including me – from continuing to say there were stranded.
According to the amount of the Le Monde article I was able to read before they unreasonably demanded I subscribe, NASA is now admitting the astronauts actually are stranded and the Boeing space vehicle (which I’m pretty sure is called the S.S. Minnow) had problems before launch and Boeing was already in hot water for telling a wide variety of lies and safety failures, but pushed to launch the Minnow anyway because they didn’t need one more fuck up on their permanent record, but now they’ve got a huge one and I’m guessing there will eventually be a congressional hearing to ask why The Professor with an entire island full of trees couldn’t build a damn boat.
I’ll put my money on The Professor not wanting to get off the island because he was either banging Ginger the Movie Star or Mary Anne the Farm Girl and possibly both, although Thurston Howell’s wife “Lovey” is still considered a longshot.
A description of the TV show says attempts to escape the island were constantly ruined by Gilligan’s stupidity and ineptitude and I’m guessing if that happened in Real Life, after about the third time Gilligan put his foot through the escape raft or set the new sailboat sails on fire, the other six survivors would have a secret meeting and vote to kill Gilligan and force the Skipper to do it because he’s the one that brought him along.
Anyway…
Just in case you want to hear the reasoning behind why the astronauts are not technically “stranded,” here’s an article which was written back in July from SPACE.com (which is as you might imagine, pro space exploration) which kinda sorta suggests the astronauts could leave if they really wanted to, but this is a huge opportunity to troubleshoot problems in space.
Which seems an awful lot like arguing the Donner Party could have left the Sierra Mountains if they really wanted to, but it was a huge opportunity to experiment with alternative diets.
https://www.space.com/boeing-starliner-nasa-astronauts-not-stranded-space
According to a story by United Press International, Donald Trump’s campaign got hacked and the campaign blamed the hack on foreign sources and the story was actually kind of murky, but it sounds like a “spear-phishing” email was involved and the email was sent from a compromised account of a former senior advisor to a “high-ranking official” of the Trump campaign.
So it also sounds like some “high” Trump campaign official clicked on a “hyperlink” which sounds like a link that drank one too many Red Bulls and the hacker then got access to some campaign documents which he/she/they started sending to Politico, which the internet say is a “political digital newspaper” although a newspaper without paper is like a cowboy without cows.
You can wear a Stetson and Tony Lamas (I’ve got both because they look cool, but can’t figure out where to wear them), but unless you spend the day punching cows – which must really piss off the cows and I’m surprised the radical vegans at the SPCA haven’t put a stop to it – whatever you are, it’s not a cowboy.
In Urban Cowboy John Travolta worked at an oil refinery during the day, but at night liked to dress up like a cowboy and ride a mechanical bull, which is pretty much like wearing a basketball uniform, wristbands and a knee brace and then playing NBA Jam.
P.S.
Unfortunately, I made the rookie journalist’s mistake of over-verifying my story and according to the internet, Politico actually has an ink-on-paper edition “up to” five times a week so ignore all that snotty stuff I said about newspapers without paper, but continue to enjoy the snotty stuff I said about John Travolta and Urban Cowboys because that’s rock solid.
But I digress as I so often do.
Political cartoonists are always looking for contradictions and the Trump campaign – which has assured America that Donald Trump will keep us safe from the illegal immigrants willing to do the crappy jobs we don’t want to do and foreign leaders will be afraid to invade other countries because a draft-dodging president will be so intimidating – couldn’t protect their own documents.
According to the following article, Tim Walz – intentionally or unintentionally – misrepresented his military service when in a video he spoke about opposing assault weapons “that I carried in war” which makes it sound like he saw combat when he didn’t.
A Harris campaign spokesperson said Walz “misspoke.”
Couple things about that:
I guess you could accidentally say “in war,” but even though I never served in the military because I lucked out in the draft lottery, I’m also guessing you’d have a pretty clear and vivid memory if you were ever in combat and people tried to kill you, so I’m once again guessing it’s like me talking about the bat I carried “in the Big Leagues” and then when someone pointed out I was never actually in the Big Leagues, saying, “Oh, I misspoke.”
As you may have noticed, politicians don’t lie, fib, deceive, distort, exaggerate, fabricate or prevaricate; they misspeak.
Which we can all learn a lesson from because if you get pulled over for drunk driving, just tell the officer you misdrank and then misdrove and if you get arrested for holding up a bank you can say you misrobbed and if you get caught in the back seat of the family van with your son’s eighth-grade teacher you can always say, “My apologies, I misscrewed.”
And now, having made fun of Tim Walz…
It takes some huge balls to call Tim Walz on mispresenting his record and then say we should ignore Donald Trump’s history of lying about everything under the sun including why he didn’t serve in the military at all.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/10/politics/walz-national-guard-harris-campaign/index.html
As Thomas Jefferson didn’t say: “Government that governs least governs best.”
According to the following article, back when he was Vice President, Mike Pence erroneously attributed that quote to Jefferson when Pence was on Fox & Friends misinforming the nation and addressing the criticism that was aimed at Republicans for trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.
Apparently, we were all supposed to be immensely grateful for the Republicans doing their best to make sure people didn’t have health insurance.
Now here’s an article from the fact-checking website Politifact that explains how it was actually Henry David Thoreau who wrote “That government is best which governs least” in his essay Civil Disobedience and turns out Thoreau was probably misquoting United States Magazine and Democratic Review which wrote “The best government is that which governs least.”
So “You say potato and I say potahto,” which last time I checked was actually said by nobody ever, but still gets quoted a lot.
Anyway…
The point here – and I do have one – is the people who like to misquote Jefferson about the desirability of having a government who doesn’t interfere in your life, will then turn right around and try to tell you who you can have sex with and what drugs you can take while having that sex and what to do if you get pregnant from that drug-infused sex and who you can then marry, assuming the person you had sex with pressures you into proposing and you’re still high enough to ask for their hand in marriage in what will turn out to be a poorly-thought-out attempt to get them to shut the fuck up.
(Trust me; if they won’t shut the fuck up before you get married, don’t expect them to take a vow of silence afterwards.)
The people who say they want a government that governs as little as possible are generally speaking full of crap, which I’m reminded of every time some part of the country floods or gets hit by a tornado or has a blizzard or suffers a shortage of Taylor Swift concert tickets and then those people want the government they despise to bail them out.
And if you don’t believe me, ask yourself the last time you heard someone refuse to be airlifted out of disaster area because they’re a Republican.
Today’s Lesson
You’ve got a wide variety to choose from, but I think the main one is remembering the magical properties of the syllable “mis” because put that in front of anything and you’re no longer technically responsible for whatever dumbass thing you did and if you disagree all I can say is “I miswrote.”
Have a good weekend.
Two highly successful guys having a conversation and immediately it kicks in your TDS. When all you do is pander to an audience that semi agrees with you, you would be way more successful, If you played both sides of the fence, you have a lot of material that you could work with and you know it, but yet you sit in your closet and pander. vote for the policies, not the person.
The potato-potatoh bit is probably a reference to an old song, "Let's call the whole thing off." "Let's Call The Whole Thing Off"
Things have come to a pretty pass
Our romance is growing flat,
For you like this and the other
While I go for this and that,
Goodness knows what the end will be
Oh I don't know where I'm at
It looks as if we two will never be one
Something must be done:
You say either and I say either,
You say neither and I say neither
Either, either Neither, neither
Let's call the whole thing off.
You like potato and I like potahto
You like tomato and I like tomahto
Potato, potahto, Tomato, tomahto.
Let's call the whole thing off
But oh, if we call the whole thing off
Then we must part
And oh, if we ever part, then that might break my heart
So if you like pyjamas and I like pyjahmas,
I'll wear pyjamas and give up pyajahmas
For we know we need each other so we
Better call the whole thing off
Let's call the whole thing off.
You say laughter and I say larfter
You say after and I say arfter
Laughter, larfter after arfter
Let's call the whole thing off,
You like vanilla and I like vanella
You saspiralla, and I saspirella
Vanilla vanella chocolate strawberry
Let's call the whole thing off
But oh if we call the whole thing of then we must part
And oh, if we ever part, then that might break my heart
So if you go for oysters and I go for ersters
I'll order oysters and cancel the ersters
For we know we need each other so we
Better call the calling off off,
Let's call the whole thing off.
I say father, and you say pater,
I saw mother and you say mater
Pater, mater Uncle, auntie let's call the whole thing off.
I like bananas and you like banahnahs
I say Havana and I get Havahnah
Bananas, banahnahs Havana, Havahnah
Go your way, I'll go mine
So if I go for scallops and you go for lobsters,
So all right no contest we'll order lobster
For we know we need each other so we
Better call the calling off off,
Let's call the whole thing off.