#6
GOPer goober rhetoric long ago blasted through babble when it comes to explaining their weird pro- Russia fetish.

There's a good reason many societies created meaningful rituals for dealing with fighters' return from war. These rituals were often designed to rid the veteran of any bad juju attending coming into contact with enemies and the resulting mayhem and death. It's not necessarily described as "therapy" or something involving "psychology" in Indian Country, but it's there and still called upon. As to whether or not it works, that seems largely dependent on whether the returning warrior believes.

"Fruity."

Gotta love it. Rayner garnered a lot of laughs when Tories in Parliament groused to the press about her crossing and uncrossing her legs during Question Time, whining it distracted Boris Johnson. Vance? Just a word. "Fruity," indeed.

"It makes me wonder why he would carry out an assassination attempt on the conservative candidate."

ZED at #1 might have opened the door to an explanation.

Trump is not "the conservative candidate" because he is not a conservative.

It's the name, that's the draw.

No longer a bug in US culture; a fixture.

Lifting a page from Vance's musing about Trump being "America's Hitler," gotta wonder how this raw opportunist sees himself. Is he Trump's Goebbels? Or perhaps Goring? Vance brought it up before he signed on as circumstances changed, so maybe he can explain things a bit better now? Speer? Or the guy who tended to Blondie? The chauffeur?

"I don't really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other."
JD Vance
Crappola Artiste

Well, then you've hitched your sad wagon to the right vehicle: a loathsome parade of mob ignorance and hate led by the man you described as "America's Hitler."

#6
"Paraphrase"?
No.
Just stupid using a word like that when you apparently don't even know what it means.

Red line? Come off it. Trump erased any red line for himself long ago. It vanished, washed clean out by his vomiting a sewage of lies, innuendos, cruelties, and threats.

Same essay:

Donald Trump, willy nilly, has provided a platform to those extreme elements in American society. In order to garb himself with Presidential robes, Trump would not hesitate to sell his grandmother's dentures. Never has ever been apparent in American Presidential politics such avarice for power, such greed for prestige and such pursuit of falsehood.

By being a victim of a gunshot in Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024, Donald Trump has effectively become a victim of his own vitriol, of his own pursuit of polarizing politics.

Thanks for that, Coriolanus.

#5
Release the pearls.

Trump is the only major political figure in this country who has been consistently involved in pitching hate and conspiracist lies, stirring the cauldron with the sort of violent rhetoric often displayed by physical cowards. Sometimes, when you play with fire you get burned. He will, however, learn absolutely nothing positive from the experience. Nor, it would appear, will those whose self-esteem is so damaged they've signed on for cultic worship.

#6
Of course they would. Because they're ignoramuses.

#43
Reilly was branded as well: "D" on cheek for "deserter." By one account, on both cheeks. Immigrants of the "wrong sort" - Irish and others as well -were treated like crap in the US. Glad to see you bring them up. That correction of mi e was a minor one. There was no need for a draft at the time. Ripping off Mexico was quite a popular idea in the US (He ry David Thoreau and others of like mine excepted). And the military offered, or seemed to offer, some respite. But the US Army in those days was an awful, brutal outfit. William Harney, who supervised the sadistic hanging at Mexico City, went on to spread horrors among the Plains Indians.

#14
Trump is a lard-loaded cautionary monument to that old piece of sage advice: "Eff around and find out."

The San Patricios are honored in Mexico. The US didn't hang John Reilly, their leader, because he deserted prior to the start of the war. (They weren't conscripts in the US Army prior to desertion, by the way; no draft for that war.). I think about 30 were hanged as they watched Marines take the palace at Chapultepec (the proverbial "Halls of Montezuma..")

Boebert is a train wreck aspiring to be a car wreck. It's going to always be a bumpy road for her with plenty of potholes along the way. And it just won't end well.

Susan Collins, such a dithering ditherer. Her profound cluelessness is, for me at least and weirdly, reminiscent of Margaret Michell's utterly useless Scarlet O'Hara character.

"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind."

No, not in Two Corinthians, Donnie.

You shouted to the high heavens for violence, stoked fires and stirred the pot bloviating about your sick fantasies. Then violence paid old Cadet Bone Spurs a call. Whispering something in your nicked ear, Donnie. What was that? Oh, yes, now you remember: "Karma."

What's guns got to do with it?!?
~ N.R.A.

#36-37
The history of the Borderlands is astonishing when you really get into it. Consider today. It's soon past the summer solstice, coming up now on mid-July, time for the Katsinam to make their appearance in northeastern Arizona for this round - until after the winter solstice - in village plazas atop mesas, perform their Home Dance rituals, receive blessings from the believers upon whom they also extend blessings, then, led by an elder-priest, make their way off for the spirit home in the mountains off to the west. That is but one tiny tessera in a fabulous regional mosaic.