The Books of Bokonon

I just can't make this stuff up, y'all.  Elon Musk has been setting up fake Kamala Harris websites and has been sending texts to people directing them to those fake sites . The latter may well put Musk in some legal hot water.   This is an actual Associated Press headline, and one I never expected to read: Trump kicks off a Pennsylvania rally by talking about Arnold Palmer’s genitalia . Otherwise it was the usual boilerplate Trump appearance featuring profanity and deranged grievances. That's all he has to offer. Montana GOP Senate Hopeful Accused Firefighters Of 'Milking' Infernos For Extra Pay and Montana park ranger says Senate candidate Tim Sheehy lied about combat wound . This Tim Sheehy fellow is a piece of work. Montanans would be better off sticking with their incumbent Senator, Jon Tester, who seems like a decent guy who has worked to deliver for his state since he first became a Senator in the mid aughts.  I'm sure there is something I have missed.

Never mind that Russia's Putin regime invaded Ukraine in 2014 and illegally annexed Crimea as it fought a low-scale war in the Donbas that had been on-going prior to 2022. Never mind that the same Russian regime ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and have been engaging in human rights abuses ever since. In Trump's deranged and demented mind, somehow it was the president of the invaded country who allegedly started the war with Russia . Yeah, it makes no sense and is completely divorced from reality. But that's Trump for you. It's also a harbinger of what to expect if Trump is reinstalled in the White House. Trump will cede Ukrainian territory to Putin against the will of the duly elected Ukrainian government and the will of the Ukrainian people. Bet on it. Then again, it would be in character for Trump to blame the abused spouse for being beaten (or worse) or the rape survivor for allowing the rape to happen. That's what you get from a former ...

Yesterday Tina Peters, the former County Clerk for Mesa County, Colorado was sentenced to nine years in prison . What did she do? She was convicted of tampering with the voting machines in her county , including giving someone with no clearance access to voting machines in her county. She bought into Trump's Big Lie and acted unlawfully, using her elected position as a platform to spread lies about electoral integrity in the process. Her actions cost her county an enormous amount of money and reputational damage. As far as she is concerned, she did nothing wrong. Maybe she really believes that. Maybe she is just defiant in the face of being caught and being held accountable. I will provide a couple videos. One is of Tina Peters addressing the judge at her sentencing hearing. If you can get through all 40 minutes, you'll realize she really is a piece of work. The second video will be the judge's ruling, which is a master class in how to deal with an unrepentant defendant who...

That is all Trump has to offer. Seth Meyers is willing to call the Orange Fascist out since our legacy media outlets are simply not up to the task.  

    Pictured above: some useful idiots who have just lost their YouTube channels. Turns out that failing to disclose sponsors to YouTube is a big no-no and will get you banned for the platform. Sucks to be them.   The above images come from Ukraine Journal, a Telegram news channel that I trust. Here are the links if you use Telegram. And if not, no worries. Maybe subscribe to news channels on Telegram so you don't have to. The last link has this caption: Tayler Hansen, one of the MAGA influencers who (knowingly or unknowingly) was accepting money from the Russians to promote Russian propaganda and help Trump win stated that YouTube has deleted his channel and banned him for life. It is a violation of YouTube's terms of service to accept sponsorships and not disclose it to YouTube and their own audience. These "useful idiot" creators are claiming the money they got was for liscensing and it isn't undisclosed sponsorships, but it looks like YouTube isn't buy...

Anyone who takes at face value Putin's claims that he would prefer Harris to Trump as US President really needs to have their head examined. It's safe to say that Harris is going to pursue a national security agenda very similar to out-going President Biden, and neither of them plan on giving Putin's regime a free pass. Putin lies all the time, and he is not going to suddenly change his stripes, especially at his age. If you have taken even just one introductory psychology class you will probably remember that past behavior predicts future behavior. Russia has a history of interfering in US elections in order to put the thumb on the scale for Trump. Why change now? The recent news about a Russian operation to covertly fund right-wing influencers to produce viral pro-Trump video content is yet the most recent example of Kremlin-based election interference efforts. Disinformation is a Russian specialty. Make no mistake: Putin arguably needs Trump to be reinstalled in the Wh...

As much as I would have loved a fact check done in real time while The Former Guy was babbling for an hour or so during his press conference late last week, NPR did eventually enter the chat with a list of 162 of Trump's lies and damn lies . It goes without saying that Trump is constitutionally incapable of doing anything else but lie and it is apparent that the guy is less and less capable of distinguishing fact from fiction. And yet here we are. It looks like Trump and the GOP are going to rely on playing the old hits. Here's the good news: we can see what Trump is selling as the scam it is and vote accordingly. Absent our press doing its job - even belatedly - there is a good rule of thumb: if Trump is speaking, he is lying or has completely lost his mind. Either interpretation is reasonable.

I'll give the wingnuts credit: they cannot help themselves when it comes to being unspeakably idiotic. If only their idiocy didn't have awful consequences for real people. Sometimes, all any of us can do is laugh, because the alternative would be to scream. Let's take a closer look: And yes, the wingnuts are talented at whinging about "cancel culture", but it's amazing how much cancelling these clowns do when they even get a bit of power.

Here is something we need to keep an eye on, and it's something I feel is stating the obvious: Russian-inspired and Russian-backed influencers are not resting in their efforts to turn regular citizens in various parts of Europe and the US against the Ukrainian effort to defend itself from a full-scale Russian invasion, and against NATO itself. Martin Longman focuses primarily on the influencers in the US , and Reuters covers the influence campaign in Germany .  Many of the people Martin Longman refers to are political influencers who were once considered part of what counts for a far-left in the US, but who now are embracing and are embraced by far-right political entities. Some were writers I had some respect for, which is something I regret. Many of us who were left of center in the US were livid about the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and were equally livid about economic policies that left so many fellow Americans behind, and several of these individuals were among the ...