Lily Salter's Blog, page 1031
August 4, 2015
The Donald gets duped: Harvard Lampoon tricks Trump with phony endorsement — and he’s not happy about it
The Donald's been duped.
In what's been called a "a prank of presidential proportions," the staff at Harvard University's humor magazine, The Harvard Lampoon, targeted Donald Trump for their latest prank in a longstanding rivalry with the University's daily student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson.
Trump, the real-estate mogul turned Republican presidential frontrunner, inadvertently became the center of the rivalry when an article, titled “Crimson Endorses Trump for President” and signed “The Crimson Staff,” appeared on a phony site purporting to be the Crimson's last month.
The phony endorsement came with an accompanying photo of Trump surrounded by students signaling a thumbs up all around. Trump was apparently duped into posing for the picture with the staff of the Lampoon while he was seated on the famed Crimson president's chair, stolen from the newspaper's headquarters earlier this summer. The photo appears to have been taken at Trump Tower in New York.
“Moderate” Bill O’Reilly upbraids Democrats who support “abortion factories” that murder “unborn babies”
On Monday, Bill O'Reilly expressed his extreme displeasure with the Saul Alinsky-spouting left-wingers who have wrestled control of the Democratic party from moderates -- a point he proved by noting that only one Democratic senator voted to defund Planned Parenthood, a group about which "there is no question that [it] is an abortion factory that sells the body parts of dead babies or fetuses."
Of course, there is abundant evidence that the group does nothing of the sort, no matter how much Bobby Jindal wishes otherwise, such that voting to protect Planned Parenthood is, in effect, a measure of support for keeping women's healthcare available in low income communities. But that's not how O'Reilly saw it.
"What happened to liberalism?" he asked, not the least bit tendentiously. "The liberal philosophy is based upon fairness for the underdog, helping those who are down and protecting the defenseless. Yet unborn babies don't count!"
Scott Walker, world-class hypocrite: Why he’s the last person who should be railing against “special interests”
In a recent opinion column for USA Today, Wisconsin Governor and Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker criticized Democratic contender Hillary Clinton for fighting for labor unions, groups he referred to as “special interests.”
"While Clinton is dead-set on defending and enabling the special interests that have driven our nation’s capital to the point of dysfunction, we’re focused on fixing the broken system these forces created," he wrote
Walker has obviously gotten the memo that Americans are looking for candidates to put forward credible solutions to the problem of special-interest politics. Recent nationals polls by the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have found that the political influence of corporations and the wealthy is a top concern for voters in 2016 and that Americans overwhelmingly support fundamental changes.
But does the criticism of Clinton have any credibility coming from a candidate like Scott Walker?
The Notorious P.I.G.: Ted Cruz is trying very hard to be a cool Internet guy — and failing in spectacular fashion
The Ted Cruz 2016 presidential campaign is settling into a comfortable routine of inflammatory comments interspersed with silly man-of-the-people gimmicks. Since launching his campaign, Cruz has called the Obama administration “the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism,” gone on the Senate floor and accused Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell of being a liar, badgered Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz about Iran deploying sci-fi weaponry against the United States, and he’s currently working on shutting down the government over Planned Parenthood funding.
“Adios motherf*ckers!”: Jon Stewart calls out Fox News hypocrisy one last time — and it’s absolutely glorious
Jon Stewart had one final message for Fox News on Monday night's "The Daily Show": “Adios motherf*ckers!”
With still three shows (including the hour-long finale) remaining, Stewart couldn't help himself from issuing a premature goodbye to the conservative news network -- while the display behind him became engulfed in flames.
There's a good reason Stewart is all fired up: More than a week after news broke that he'd met up with the president for a "secret meeting," Fox News analyst Howard Kurtz is still harping on the matter.
Stewart was ready to fire back (sorry): “Your hypocrisy isn’t a bug in the Fox model; it’s the feature," he said. "Your job is to discredit any source of criticism that might hurt the conservative brand by angrily holding them to standards you yourselves jettison in your news network’s mission statement.”
Watch the clip courtesy of Comedy Central below:
Lindsey Graham attacks “untrustworthy” Hillary Clinton with references to Monica Lewinsky
Republican presidential hopeful and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham attacked Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton by dusting off a twenty-year-old script and reading it like it was fresh off the presses.
In what will surely not be the final recapitulation of the Republican morality play that dominated American politics during the 1990s, Graham judged Hillary Clinton to be "the last person in the world you want to send into the arena with the Russians."
"As to the Clintons," he continued unprompted, "I've been dealing with this crowd for the past twenty years. I'm fluent in Clinton-speak."
"You want me to translate?" he asked a chuckling crowd. "When Bill says, 'I didn't have sex with that woman,' he did."
Bobby Jindal terminates Planned Parenthood funding over impossible concerns raised by hoax videos
On Monday, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal announced that the state would be terminating Planned Parenthood's Medicaid provider agreement because -- take a deep breath, people, this one's a run-on -- "multiple videos have surfaced showing Planned Parenthood Federation of America senior personnel and other employees describing how they actively engage in illegal partial birth abortion procedures and conduct these abortions in a manner that leaves body parts intact so that they can later be sold on the open market."
Following in the footsteps of Sarah Palin by buying into the narrative perpetrated by the Planned Parenthood hoaxers at the Center for Medical Progress, Jindal stated that he had "directed the Department of Health and Hospitals to investigate Planned Parenthood’s activities in Louisiana" -- which do not include any of the procedures discussed on the deceptively edited videos, for the simple reason that neither of the two remaining Planned Parenthood clinics in Louisiana provide abortion services.
Smiling their way to the apocalypse: How the GOP could finally address global warming (and why they won’t)
Today, President Obama released the final version of his latest and boldest climate policy yet -- the Clean Power Plan -- which aims to lower the carbon emissions produced by power plants around the country.
Power plants produce the largest amount of carbon dioxide in the United States, and the EPA expects their carbon emissions to be about 30 percent lower in 2030 than they were in 2005, if it all goes according to plan. The policy will give each state an emissions reduction goal; it will be up to them to comply and submit a plan to meet that goal. Of course, we must assume that in certain states, where leaders still deny the existence of climate change, this plan will be fought -- and if this does happen, the EPA will have to impose its own plan. That is, after all, what partisan politics have come to in America.
The casual killing of blacks: When everyday activities trigger lethal force by the police
Not having a license plate on your vehicle, changing lanes to make way for a police cruiser, casually walking in the middle of the street: Apparently each of these actions has started a chain of events that has ended up with someone being killed by a police officer. And that someone has, in each of these cases, been black.
When I heard about the killing of Samuel DuBose, the first thing that came to my mind was, “That is the absolute worst instance.” But immediately after that I thought, “Well, I thought the same when Trayvon Martin was killed by a ‘security’ officer.” In actuality, to say “that’s the worst” implies a trajectory of ever-increasing evil. But the reality is that things have always been horrible in this country with regard to the casual killing of blacks.
The South’s faces of terror must go: Don’t let the Confederate flag fight go the way of gun control
The United Daughters of the Confederacy understood how power works. For the better part of the twentieth century, the United Daughters – along with other like-minded organizations – filled the South’s public spaces with monuments to their heroes. Statues dot town squares, parks, and university campuses, while public schools are emblazoned with the names of Confederate generals.
Confederate organizations knew that the symbols standing sentinel over public places reflected our values as a society. These symbols are also expressions of power – they demonstrate who controls the present as well as the past.
Six weeks after the mass killing in Charleston, we are living through a heretofore unimaginable moment. We should take this opportunity to make clear that the Confederacy’s values are not our own. In that spirit, we should come up with creative and meaningful ways to rename schools called Lee and Davis, to remake Confederate monuments (or tear them down if necessary), and to re-imagine our public spaces. The alternative is to let them stand. And if we let them stand now, they may continue to cast shadows over our public spaces for generations.
