NO, MR. MAGA, I EXPECT YOU TO DIE.

I mean:

Nolte: Howard Stern Proves Democrats Want Unvaccinated Trump Voters Dead

Do you want to know why I think Howard Stern is going full-monster with his mockery of three fellow human beings who died of the coronavirus? Because leftists like Stern and CNNLOL and Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi and Anthony Fauci are deliberately looking to manipulate Trump supporters into not getting vaccinated…

Not even kidding: John Nolte of Breitbart’s “argument” here is that liberals have been using reverse psychology -- a concept you may recall from old sitcoms and cartoons! -- to keep conservatives from getting vaccinated, thus killing them. 

How does that work? Nolte lays it out:

1.) Liberals are, in his words, “pieces of shit” and “scumbags,” so conservatives hate them;

2.) Liberals, using their status as pieces of shit and scumbags, have “bullied or ridiculed or mocked or pushed” conservatives to get vaccinated, knowing this will cause them to have the “perfectly human response” of refusing to get vaccinated.

There’s so much wrong with this: For one thing, this only sounds like a “perfectly human response” if you’re five years old. For another, before anyone made fun of conservatives for refusing to get vaccinated, they had to start dying in massive numbers but still continue to tell pollsters that they wouldn’t get vaccinated, and had to march in multiple protests and their red-state governors had to issue orders against vaccine mandates, and they had to resort to horse paste and other folk remedies out of fear that the vaccine would load them up with microchips or liberalism or whatever. 

Nolte also suggests that the liberal media was hiding the fact that nearly nobody who gets vaccinated dies of COVID-19. But that fact has been well-publicized by, among others, CNN -- excuse me, “CNNLOL.”

I’ve heard some people say, well, whatever it takes to get these guys vaccinated is good. But this won’t get them to vaccinate. These people booed Donald Trump when he told them to get vaccinated. You think John Nolte is going to turn them around?

I don’t think Nolte expects it either -- and neither do the nuts like DeSantis and Greg Abbott who are keeping their states petri dishes for the virus. In fact I’m sure they expect hundreds of thousands more to die, and their plan then is to blame liberals for their own death-waves (DeSantis has already started), because at this stage in the decadence of conservatism that’s how they do everything -- like when they run up massive debts giving the rich tax cuts, and then scream when Democrats do deficit spending to recover the rest of the country from the damage of the pandemic. 

So if you think at Nolte’s column is an attempt at double reverse psychology -- getting conservatives who are staying unvaccinated to own the libs to instead get vaccinated to own the libs -- consider how they do everything else, and see the truth: It's not about saving lives, it's about saving face.  

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

I'm very fond of Paul Simon's "Loves Me Like a Rock' with the Dixie Hummingbirds on bkg voc,
But I think I prefer their own version. What about you?

•  How about some Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies? Here, a fantasia inspired by the hilariously catastrophic California recall effort (previously covered here at alicublog). Larry Elder, beaten by 26 points in the recall, is proclaiming victory in a Trumpian manner by showing how red the map of California counties is, because it shows... how far ahead of #2 loser Kevin Paffrath he is. Like Newsom, Paffrath's a Democrat, see, so he beat a Democrat, so he won. That's how deep in fantasy Republicans will burrow just to avoid the stink of loserdom -- but that was also shown by the 59% of them who still think Trump won the 2020 election (or, more to the point, think it's either very or somewhat "important" to "believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 election" -- a nice distinction that suggests objective reality isn't part of the equation).  

Oh, and here's another one about Peggy Noonan's latest lunacy and why the Never- and Just-the-Tip-Trumpers are really starting to bug me. 

•  If you want to read someone good other than me, Greg Sargent at the Washington Post has a nice one about how the racist "replacement theory" that liberals are flooding America with non-whites to "steal" the country from honky hegemony -- famously expounded by the yahoos at the 2017 Charlottesville protest -- is fast becoming a Republican talking point. Of course the basic idea, which was once the sort of thing only Birchers and Klansmen would express in public forums, has been floating at the top layer of conservative discourse for some time. Witness Stanley Kurtz of National Review who has been raving for years about how Democrats are going to "abolish the suburbs" -- that is, enforce the Fair Housing Act via the federal Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing program, which would cause "de facto urbanization of America’s suburbs" -- and if you know your ooga-booga, you know what that means! From a typical 2020 Kurtz rant:

If you force urbanites into suburbs, force suburbanites back into cities, and redistribute suburban tax revenue, then presto! You have effectively abolished the suburbs.

Gasp -- it's base-mixing! Before you know it, young "suburbanites" may be socializing with "urbanites" -- even dating them! In the same essay Kurtz laments that "Republicans have been too clueless or timid to make an issue of the Democrats’ anti-suburban plans." Well, Sargent shows that's changing.

SO HOW COULD I EVER REFUSE/ I FEEL LIKE I WIN WHEN I LOSE.

Republicans are addicted to feeling like winners even when they lose -- witness their never-ending claims that the 2020 presidential election, which Tubby lost by seven million votes, was stolen -- and this is evident in their reaction to Gavin Newsom’s lopsided victory in last night’s California recall, which challenger/lunatic Larry Elder preemptively claimed would be stolen from him as well (though since his 2-to-1 trouncing he’s been pretty quiet about that). Jordan Davidson at The Federalist:

Multiple outlets officially called the referendum on removing the governor a failure on Tuesday night, less than one hour after polls closed. Some California residents were stunned…

Coulda used some corroboration for the “stunned” claim, Jordan.

…but others said they are determined to use the power they amassed to create the recall to keep fighting to hold the governor accountable for his tyranny.

So Californians either were literally stunned that the guy who led all the polls won the election, or they were freshly committed to resistance to the tyrant Newsom. Given this consensus I don’t know how Republicans keep losing out there. 

At National Review, Philip Klein said the problem was “Larry Elder Peaked Too Early” -- that is, Californians knew who would be governor if they ousted Newsom and their blood ran cold (“That was plenty of time for Newsom to turn the race from a referendum on him, to a more conventional governor’s race between him and Elder… that was the sort of race that Elder had no chance of winning” LOL). 

Klein’s colleague Kyle Smith took a similar tack: “A recall election that was a referendum on Newsom had a chance to succeed, but, not unreasonably, once the possibility of ejecting Newsom entered the imagination, voters started to wonder who might succeed him.” 

I wonder if these guys ever consider what the effect might be on normal people who stumble upon their stories and read how the Republicans could totally win if only the voters had no idea who and what they are. 

Then again, what do they care: conservatives can afford to cruise with this lazy and absurd shit because the prestige press keeps backing them up. When it’s all tallied Newsom stands to take two-thirds of the vote, yet look at all the headlines today that say he “survived.” 65% looks more like thriving to me. And with spectacularly bothsider coverage from the likes of CNN’s Chris Cillizza (“Tuesday night was, weirdly, a very good night for Larry Elder's political future”) and Kasie Hunt (“Democrats have a tough needle to thread both in California & nationwide… Democrats need to prove they can govern for EVERYBODY"), Republicans need never leave their bubble of contentment except to scream “fraud” and do insurrection.  

THE RETURN OF JUST-THE-TIP.

 You know, in addition to my five-day-a-week gig at Roy Edroso Breaks It Down (Subscribe! Cheap!) I also follow and comment on daily events at Twitter (Follow! Gratis!), which is fun but somewhat saps the strength I would need for more longform observations of life's passing parade. But here's something I noticed that I really wanted to make a point of. 

At National Review, Charles Two Middle Initials Cooke is one among many wingnuts enraged by last night's Met Gala. But while most of them are (as usual) obsessed with hatewank object Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez ("Twitter erupts over Ocasio-Cortez's 'Tax The Rich' dress at Met Gala: 'Hypocrisy of our ruling class,'" ejaculates Fox News), Cooke is mad that the help was masked:

The photographs from last night’s event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City show a host of celebrities — including New York Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Carolyn Maloney — enjoying themselves without masks while the staff that are waiting on them are all masked up.

Why?

Guests at the event were obliged to be vaccinated. But so, per New York City rules, were the staff...

Never rule out willful obtuseness, but most people in big cities know that staff -- for example, waiters at restaurants -- are typically masked, while guests often are not -- for example, when they're eating food served by the masked servers. At the Gala, the guests were basically doing a photo shoot (what other purpose does the event serve?), hence their masklessness. 

As for the staff, it may be they're cool with being masked because it helps protect them from assholes who don't follow the rules, which service workers know allll about. 

You get some idea why Cooke is making this absurd stretch in his finale:

Is the science different for famous people, perhaps?...

If, as the president claims, unvaccinated people pose a risk to vaccinated people, then the Met chose to put its guests at risk — and those guests, by declining to mask up, went along with it.

"As the president claims." 

See, this is a variation on what I used to call Just-The-Tip Trumpers -- which, come to think of it, has always been overrepresented at National Review. Many, many conservatives have gone over entirely to COVID-hoax horse-dewormer madness, but the manicured magazine types like Cooke need to preserve their credibility with donors, newspaper editors, and Sunday morning talk show bookers. So they instead go the Just-The-Tip route -- for example, they may assure you they personally believe vaccines and masks work, maybe possibly, but liberals who say they do are big hypocrites, which they show either by failing to wear a mask or by wearing masks too much or by failing to acknowledge it's really black people making us all sick --  so, really, when you think about it, it's the MAGA people refusing treatment and getting hospitalized who have the better part of the argument. 

And the Met Gala is perfect for this routine. Look, liberals wearing fancy clothes -- they're for the "working man" so they're supposed to dress like extras in a Pudovkin movie! They think they's sumpin' better'n you, but them Hollyweird sissies are as barefaced as Cousin Cyrus at a Kid Rock concert! So tie their inappropriate glamour to COVID, and presto -- you've done your bit for the Cause without having to get down in the manure with the Base.

UPDATE: They just can't quit her -- National Review has a story headlined "Conservative Watchdog Files Ethics Complaint against AOC over Met Gala Attendance," which sounds very very serious but -- well, let alicublog commenter mortimer2000 tell it:

[National Review says] The American Accountability Foundation has filed an ethics complaint calling for a probe into whether Ocasio-Cortez accepted an “impermissible gift” to attend the gala or violated any campaign finance laws, according to Fox News.... “Without prompt investigation and enforcement of Congressional Rules, the American people are likely to lose faith in the ability of Congress to police its members,” the complaint says.

You will be shocked to learn that The American Accountability Foundation consists of two deeply not-just-the-tip Republican operatives -- veterans of the Trump administration, the Cruz for President oppo program, and Ron Johnson's staff, among other swamps.

Keep up the good work, AOC! They're obsessed with you.

Heh, indeed, get it. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND THE HORN.

Here’s something I don’t do enough:
Pimp new shit from people I know!
(Mike was the drummer for the legendary Sharky’s Machine.)

•   Speaking of new shit from people I know, I wonder how many of you are acquainted with The Underground Bunker, wherein former Village Voice EIC/my boss Tony Ortega harpoons his white whale, the Church of Scientology, practically every day. (Tony’s a real newsman so there’s lots of reporting and inside dope, not the kind of folderol I do.) And how about that very tight & cool band The Carvels whom New Yorkers can see live tonight! More log-rolling to come!

•   OK I know what you mugs want: More Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies. We have two this week: First, a history lesson inspired by Tubby’s lecture on Robert E. Lee. Next, today’s 9/11 anti-column, sorta, in that it’s about the backwash of bullshit that came in the wake of the Towers’ fall. We can be forgiven for being frightened and uncertain at a time of great stress, but the people who exploited those feelings to launch an expensive and destructive graft machine, and who kept running alongside it for years to make sure no reason or sanity could impede it, really ought to be in prison. Free-riders, why not subscribe? TODAY ONLY we offer 10% off the annual rate.

•   Speaking of grifters, I have to say I’m enjoying the shrieks of wingnuts who think Biden’s federal worker vaccine mandate -- which, I am sure you sane people will agree, is the least he should be doing -- is an infringement on their civil rights. Kudos to this cowboy for the most sputterrific logo:

In a nation where people got sterilized, lobotomized, and experimented on against their wills, it’s pretty rich that some people think inoculation against a deadly disease is Hitler. Top Republicans are trying to get on the bandwagon: In addition to screaming FREEDOM and threatening civil war (the new last refuge of a scoundrel) they’re trying the old “oh yeah what about black people you liberals love so much” thing:

Black folks are actually vaxxing up strong now, but that’s well beside the point -- which is that it’s about time we treated this goddamn emergency like an emergency. Fuck these assholes.

TRUTH OR DERP.

One of the great things about Daniel Dale the famous fact-checker is that he's very even-handed, and has no compunction about debunking things a liberal might like to believe but which are not so. Today he informs us that a study allegedly showing horse paste made 85% of its male human users sterile is not anywhere near adequate to prove the case -- small sample size, numbers misstated, etc.

I applaud this even though, as we all well know, conservatives operate very differently and are pushing horse paste (OK, ivermectin, though horse paste is funnier and appropriate) as a cure/preventive measure for COVID-19 despite having no proof or even reasonable hope for this. No rightwing-specific equivalent of Dale exists, so when rightwing celebrities falsely claim, for example, that the guy who won a Nobel Prize for formulating horse paste said it "cures" COVID-19, they are only fact-checked by outlets they don't read. 

And I applaud it even though wingnuts use the fact that liberals are more circumspect and likely to check and correct their own work as a cudgel against them. When Rolling Stone updated a story because they couldn't verify an Oklahoma doctor's claims that horse paste users were flooding the local ERs, every anti-"Fauciite" wingnut in Christendom acted as if it proved horse paste is good for COVID because anything liberals said had to be a lie. (They probably don't take corrections seriously because, being exclusively readers of right-wing publications, they've never seen one.) 

I don't applaud it because I think our sensitivity to what's true and untrue will convince conservatives to stop spreading bullshit -- they're too far gone for that. I mean it's good for our own self-respect. Not everything is politics, after all -- in fact very little is. There are people who are paid to spin the truth to give advantage to their candidates and policies, but for that kind of work I am not only not paid, but could not be paid enough. Think what constantly living according to those calculations, and having to support such absurdities, does to a person. It's not pretty, even if they get to wear pretty clothes. Like Lemmy said: Stay clean. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Living in one’s own world has its advantages,
but you do miss a lot of good pop music.
Were these guys as big as they sound like they should have been?

I have two freebies from the Roy Edroso Breaks It Down newsletter for non-subscribers (who really ought to be subscribig and getting this primo content on the regular!): Republicans explaining their inexplicable outrage that we got out of Afghanistan, and the one I showed you yesterday about the Texas abortion law. 

Speaking of the latter, I have to say I’m astonished by folks online telling me not to use the term “American Taliban” because they consider it Islamophobic. I don’t get it. I don’t associate Islam as practiced by Muslims in America, or even in most of the world, with the Taliban. Insofar as I understand them, it seems the complainants object to using foreign Islamic monsters to shame American Christian monsters. But this is the entire point of analogies, particularly in political discourse. If I compare Texas lawmakers to, for example, the Stasi because their system similarly relies on fear and informants, I’m not unfairly shaming the East German people -- I’m showing up the similarities between past events that we all know are bad and current events propagandists are busily trying to whitewash, to help you see how things really are. And normal people understand analogies, whereas lefties saying "don’t say bad things about the Taliban" may be, uh, misconstrued. What am I missing?