"...suppress the the Trump..."

I felt I needed to grab and preserve an image of the following tweet from the entity tweeting as "@realDonaldTrump" this morning before it is corrected.

"Major story that the Dems are making up phony
polls in order to suppress the the Trump . We are
 going to WIN!" @realDonaldTrump 24 Oct 2016

Not only is the idea of "phony polls" supporting his fiction of an upcoming rigged election classic Trump, as is the capitalized "WIN!" and the citing of an unnamed "major story" to support his unsupportable rant, but it reaches legendary Trump tweet status with the vaguely Freudian typo about his fear of people out to "suppress the the Trump." The combination of egotism and paranoia in that strange combination of words needs professional exegesis, but it's clear that this tweet belongs in his hall of twittering fame.

Reading it earlier, I couldn't resist one more quick response from the Trump Tweet Translator that makes a regular appearance on the Twitter feed of @TrueBlueLiberal:

Trump Tweet Translator:
"Dems work for the New York Times and International Bankers [wink]. Grab your tinfoil hats and follow me to battle!" https://t.co/1XJs42pG9s

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) October 24, 2016

Is there any proof that Donald Trump ever voted (before voting for himself)?

Trump on Facebook, 13 August 2016, promising to
change system from "Rigged" to "Fixed."

It was strange when Ivanka and Eric Trump couldn't figure out the rules for voting as Republicans in this spring's New York primary (I figured out how to switch from "No Party" to "Democratic" even without my father running), but maybe voting has never been a high priority within the Trump family before 2016.

This feeling was reinforced when Donald Trump said the following to Bill O'Reilly as he started his latest free-fall in the polls:

“The whole thing with voter ID identification I think is really — I mean people are going to walk in, they are going to vote 10 times maybe. Who knows? They are going to vote 10 times. I am very concerned and I hope the Republicans are going to be very watchful and I hope the authorities are going to be very watchful.” --Trump on Fox News, August 2

Who knows? Anyone who has ever been at an actual local polling station knows that this sort of casual "going to vote 10 times maybe" would be impossible. I've only voted in five different places in two states (New York and New Jersey). None of them ever required photo IDs, but once you signed your name in the book, there would be no way to sign twice (or ten times) without having created multiple identities at multiple addresses in advance. How could a significant number of people be recruited to commit these crimes?

By this week in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump was keeping the same conspiracy theories alive, though now admitting that the thousands or millions of vote fraudsters might only be voting half as many times:

"We're gonna watch Pennsylvania. Go down to certain areas and watch and study and make sure other people don't come in and vote five times. ... The only way we can lose, in my opinion -- and I really mean this, Pennsylvania -- is if cheating goes on. I really believe it." --Trump in Altoona, Pennsylvania, August 12

Trump is currently down by more than 9 points in the latest Keystone State polls, and he has never led there, but if he loses in November it will only be due to "those people" voting 5 or 10 times? This is dangerous anti-democratic and anti-American demagoguery aimed at the most credulous elements of his uneducated base of supporters, and it will be amplified by the Republican spokespeople of Fox News who still harbor fictions about Romney losing Pennsylvania because of fraud.

Now, even though every polling place already has official poll watchers from both parties at every local site (something that most 70-year-olds with a lifetime of voting behind them would probably know), Donald J. Trump is asking supporters on his website today to volunteer as "Trump Election Observers" to "Help Me Stop Crooked Hillary From Rigging This Election!"

As seen on donaldjtrump.com on August 13, 2016.

There has never been more of a need for an absolute landslide for Hillary Clinton. Every vote in every state counts in 2016. A decisive electoral college victory will not be enough to convince the most hardcore conspiracy theorists, but a popular vote burial of trumpism will insure that the conspiracy theorists might remain a very small nutcase fringe rather than a main current of Republican thought.

And are we ever going to see any documentary proof that Donald Trump visited an actual polling place before he voted for himself in 2016?
(UPDATE 10/21/16: Click to see video of DJT and Billy Bush voting in 2004.)

Great minds and all that...

When I posted my snarky little piece about Donald Trump's official weight this morning, I had no idea that the Pulitzer-worthy journalists of the National Enquirer were asking the same question about the Democratic nominee. So I was a little surprised when this was the cover that greeted me on the checkout line as I bought my lunch this afternoon:

"Hillary Gains 103 Lbs!" ?

By the way, the same internet sources that gave Trump's weight at 198 pounds this morning give Hillary's weight as 132, so I'm not sure where the crack researchers and punctilious fact-checkers (and creative Photoshop artistes) of the Enquirer got their "Then" and "Now" weights of 186 and 289 respectively.

With #HillaryHealth trending on Twitter this week for no reason other than the fact that Assange, Trump, Shkreli, Alex Jones, Breitbart, and Putin's RT.com, have all decided it is the attack of the week, I probably shouldn't be surprised to see Donald Trump's favorite bathroom reading joining in the fray. The message from Trump Tower headquarters must have gotten a little bit scrambled though; while most of the right-wing echobox is touting capitalist vampire Martin Shkreli's expert claim that Hillary has Parkinson's, the Enquirer seems to have transferred that ailment (with a side of Alzheimer's) to Hillary's husband.

* * ALERT * * FOX TO REVEAL ALL TONIGHT * * ALERT * *

In the moment all of America has been waiting a decade for, the fair and balanced Fox News Network will finally tie all its paranoia up in one bullet-proof Grand Unification Conspiracy Theory tonight, beginning with the story of how an evil young Kenyan infant invented a fictitious Hawaiian birth story and a chemical concoction he gave the name "Ebola" and proceeding through the nexus of the all-powerful Acorn-Alinsky-BlackPanther secret socialist power structure patiently pushing its Kenyan messiah and an agenda of marijuana and gay marriage to distract us from the real threat of Ebola-carrying Guatemalan children crossing the porous border and infecting the very last bastion of real Americans -- Texas. 

Hey Right Wingers, Here's a New Conspiracy for You! (and it's true)

I've noticed that every day those of you on the Right are promoting another new Lie/Myth/ConspiracyTheory in the echo chamber of your email chains, tweets, and blogs.  These are not the normal Fox News half truths and GOP talking points, but the stories about President Obama spending today in Paris (false, he's celebrating the 4th of July at the White House) or that the Affordable Care Act will implant RFID chips in all Americans by the strangely specific date of March 23, 2013 (false, of course, but still very alive on Twitter), or ... well there are a million of them that percolate below the surface until they bubble up into the general conversation like the Swift Boat lies in 2004 or the Birtherist myths in 2008.

But, my fellow citizens on the Right, here's something you can pick up and run with that is actually true!  I know that's a new concept for you all, but bear with me.

The Google Doodle this morning is quoting the words of an actual Communist:

Woody Guthrie was the writer of a regular column for the People's World and Daily Worker.  And if you don't believe that "This Land Is Your Land" is a Communist anthem, here are the last two verses, which don't get as much airtime as the "ribbon of highway" and "endless skyway" first verse.

As I was walkin'  -  I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side  ... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me
In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

And if you want to complete your Google/Obama/Communism circle, here's a video of Bruce Springsteen singing this Communist anthem at an Obama rally in Philadephia in 2008 bracketed by "Yes We Can" chants (yes, I  was one of those chanters).
He leaves out the most incendiary penultimate verse attacking private property, but he does sing the last  "relief office" verse (yes, I was one of those who yelled "YEAH!" when he sang these neglected words).

The question is, how can Chris Christie continue to state that he's Bruce Springsteen's biggest fan? Doesn't he realize that songs have words?

Happy Independence Day. 

Fox News network discovers the source of the #Occupy Movement

My doctor has warned me that neither my heart nor stomach would survive more than a minute of the actual Fox News Channel, but I couldn't help surfing past their website right now. And what did I find? It seems that they have exclusively discovered the source of power behind the Occupy movement. Of couse it's that omnipotent boogeyman, ACORN (I think I'll dress up as an Acorn for Halloween and go to a Republican town -- BOO!). Though it could have just as easily been George Soros. Or Jeremiah Wright. Or the Easter Bunny.
The network that helped to engineer the 'spontaneous' Tea Party demonstrations in 2009 (see this MMFA summary of Fox's involvement if you need a reminder) understandably can't understand the making of a truly leaderless movement without corporate support (they find themselves unable to type the word 'leaderless' without quotation marks). But it's just as absurd to think that a small group of community organizers could build a movement in a month that has support from 43% of the American people (or 69% in Fox's own poll of October 7).