I remember when a candidate would be mocked for something as simple as sticking his dog in a crate on top of his car and having terrified canine diarrhea stream down over the windows.
To which RFK Jr has now said, “Hold my bear.”
His daughter Kick has revealed that he chainsawed the head off a dead whale and drove from Hyannis Port to their New York home with it strapped to the car roof, with the juices flowing down in such foul abundance that they cut eyeholes in plastic bags and put them over their heads.
Kick apparently being the family member who is still talking to him. Lord knows what the ones who oppose his political hijinx could be telling us.
Ohman suggests that this fits the prevailing lunacy of the Trump campaign, while Bramhall makes the more specific point that it is another step in Dear Leader’s destruction of the Republican Party.
Now, to be fair, Theodore Roosevelt used to bring home dead animals, which he housed in a small museum in his bedroom, their details carefully recorded in a notebook together with sketches. He even brought in the skull of a dead seal from the fish market near his home, having examined and measured the full corpse.
However, he was seven years old at the time and his father was one of the founders of the American Museum of Natural History and the Bronx Zoo.
RFK Jr was about 50 at the time and a disgrace to his father and, oh by the way, the NYTimes reports that removing parts of endangered marine mammals is a violation of federal law but I’m not going to waste a gift article linking to that.
Bramhall’s cartoon makes me envision members of the Whig Party looking down from heaven, satisfied that their party’s self-destruction has been utterly eclipsed by the pending disappearance of the GOP.
Unless the cuckoobirds win in November, which remains a strong possibility, at which point Idiocracy will be in full swing.
David Horsey brings in yet another marine animal to suggest that Trump’s increasingly odd campaign is weighing down the chances of down-ballot Republicans in November.
He’s specifically talking about candidates in his home state of Washington, where Republicans would be waging an uphill battle even without Dear Leader as an anchor, but one does have to speculate about how much, for instance, the GOP’s voter suppression will offset its war on abortion rights nationally.
The GOP could lose the White House and still come out with Congressional majorities, but that will largely depend on voter turnout, which in turn will largely depend on things like pro-choice ballot initiatives.
However, there is also the issue of bizarre antics, and John Buss offers a comment on Trump’s debacle at Arlington National Cemetery which required little more than a depiction of him grinning and giving a merry thumbs up at the grave of a dead marine, though the bogus Purple Heart and Russian lapel pin are nice touches.
For those who missed it, the draft dodger — who has called dead soldiers “losers” and “suckers,” and who didn’t know why there is a national memorial at the USS Arizona in Hawaii and who declined to visit the graves of American soldiers in France because of a light rain — caused a ruckus at Arlington by staging a photo op in violation of federal law, and posed with a merry grin and a thumbs up alongside the families of dead veterans.
And to say he caused a ruckus is not simply a political charge. His entourage got into a physical confrontation with Arlington security that attempted to keep the circus out of an area in which political posturing is specifically forbidden.
Charlie Pierce was not amused, but we shouldn’t expect him to be. Nor, alas, should we be surprised that some families of the dead invited Trump to stage a jolly photo op graveside.
Nor should we be surprised that he didn’t explain to them that it would be both illegal and shockingly inappropriate and tasteless.
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
The show must go on, and it looks as though there will be a debate between Trump and Harris, despite all the whinging and attempts to change the rules and so forth.
The issue of muted microphones provides a bit of humor as well as an interesting barometer of where things stand. As Deering notes, Trump dearly wishes he were going to debate Joe Biden again, and if their first meeting hadn’t gone so well for him, he might be.
But he’s left with the results of his own success, and, Anderson suggests, the microphone issue shows that Harris is not only not afraid of his rude behavior but is hoping for a demonstration of it.
In 2000, he followed Hillary Clinton around the stage and she was so taken aback by his rude behavior that she didn’t push back. He’s not apt to get away with such antics this time around, and if he wants to stage a demonstration, we’ll find out if he wins by proving Harris to be a shrew and perhaps a bit uppity, or if he loses by proving himself to be a rude oaf.
That’s why we have the elections.
However, the question of microphones is quite simple: If he prefers to have them muted, he has the option of muting himself. More bluntly, as Ann Coulter suggested, he could learn to STFU.
And when you get to the point where Ann Coulter has to warn you against saying stupid things, you’re in pretty deep.
Jen Sorensen cast herself in an imaginary interview with Trump, in which she projected the likely responses.
She seems to have captured his ability to avoid serious answers, but she’s also unintentionally captured a media weakness, which is a failure to push back against false reasoning.
If questions are asked but evasive answers are not challenged, Trump can keep to his nonsensical claims about piles of dead birds under windmills and Mexico emptying mental hospitals over our borders, and do well.
If, however, moderators press him for honest replies, and Harris refuses to let him duck and dodge, it may all blow up in his face.
*unafraid
What’s going on at the left side of that group pic at Arlington — was someone (badly) photoshopped out?
Gosh yes, that extra hand IS sort of spooky…and kind of touchy-feely too.
I assume you mean stage right. There is a woman in a long, blue dress to the left of the blonde in a white blouse and dark skirt, between the blonde and the man. Her head is blocked by the blonde’s.
It was definitely “shopped”, the solid gray area between the two women appears to have been placed to cover up the missing person’s legs.
Surprised nobody in the Arlington photo, where Trump is happily gathered with the family of one of the dead who invited him – are not using middle fingers as well as thumbs.
By the way (I looked it up) Robert E. Lee’s mother- and father-in-law are buried at Arlington as well…since it was their home before the unpleasantness of the 1860’s.