Category: The Good Fight

There’s a good chance you’ve seen this photo by now:

It’s from the Instagram account of the Donald Trump’s second-most-favorite kid (and from all accounts, it’s a distant second), Donald Trump Jr.:

Here’s a close-up of the table. As you’ll notice, it’s all McDonalds food, even for RFK Jr.:

He doesn’t look all that happy about it:

For the benefit of those readers who’ve never seen someone die on the inside, here’s a zoomed-in version of RFK Jr.’s face:

Loyalty tests and ritual humiliation

RFK Jr. famously doesn’t eat processed food, and explained why in a video he posted barely a month ago:

Trump could have easily accommodated RFK Jr.’s dietary preferences: “not junk food.” But he didn’t, for two key reasons.

For starters, he looooves the stuff:

…but the more important reason is that he’s a bully, and bullies generally cycle between two modes with their allies: cruelty and disregard…

…and loyalty tests:

And a bully who has the opportunity combine the two — say by making someone eat something they don’t want to — can’t pass it up. So Trump did just that.

If he’s willing to do that to someone in his own inner circle, wait till you see what he’s got in store for you.

Jon Stewart’s right, and we’ve been here before. Where we are now, I’ve been before — and I’m still around.

And I will remain to be around, fighting the good fight, running the good run, standing for justice, and bringing the accordion-powered “golden retriever energy” that is my stock in trade.

Keep watching this blog!

And in the meantime, here’s where the Jon Stewart quote comes from: the New York Times Podcast episode titled Jon Stewart Looks Back With Sanity and/or Fear, posted last week. Enjoy!

At his recent Madison Square Garden rally — yup, the grievance-fest where they let their racism really shine — Donald Trump said that if elected, “I’m going to let [Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] go wild on health. I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines.”

That’s not good news. RFK Jr. has bought into a lot of conspiracy theories, including:

• Chemtrails — a conspiracy theory from the 1990s, and you can find out more about this wacky idea on David Keith’s Geoengineering page on Harvard’s (yes, that Harvard) site.
• Vaccines — in fact, his anti-vaccine campaigning can be directly connected to the deadly measles outbreak in Samoa
• and one from back in the 1950s that simply refuses to die in spite of decades of evidence that it has benefits and was one of the top 10 public health innovations of the 20th century: fluoride.

We’re back in Dr. Strangelove territory, folks, and should RFK Jr. get a hold on the reins of national health in the U.S., prepare for an era of unprecedented quackery.

Bonus video: Last Week Tonight on RFK Jr.

Because you might need a reminder of what RFK Jr. is all about:

Bonus non-conspiracy: Trump on asbestos

Because TrumpLand is effectively Bizarro World, Trump doesn’t think that asbestos is really a carcinogen and that the health issues surrounding it were made up by the mob. Really.

Bonus video: Prince (yes, that Prince) on chemtrails!

Here’s Prince talking about chemtrails in a rare interview on Tavis Smiley’s show. He can be forgiven for his wacky belief in chemtrails considering he also believes — and you’ll hear him say so in the interview — that there were eight U.S. presidents before George Washington:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X36798F5mY

Here’s a set of videos produced in the first (and hopefully last) Trump era that explained the techniques, tactics, and goals of the alt-right movement, and they’re incredibly well-done. Even though they date back to seven years ago, they’re still applicable today.

They were put together by Ian Danskin, and you can find out more about them in this CTV (Canadian) news piece.

This is in response to the Trump campaign rally last night where comedian* Tony Hinchcliffe warmed up the crowd with racist jokes:

In response, Maria Salazar posted the tweet above that Jef Poskanzer is referencing. She’s a Republican and a U.S. representative for Florida’s 27th congressional district (Miami and area). Some people forget (and worse people wish otherwise) that Puerto Rico, while not a state, is a U.S. territory, and if you’re born in Puerto Rico, you are a U.S. citizen.

I’m sure she’s getting a lot of colleagues telling her, “Hey, when we say ‘those dirty people,’ we don’t mean you — you’re one of the good ones!” I know — I get this from time to time from conservatives who only have the best of intentions.

(In case you want to see it, here’s Jef Poskanzer’s tweet.)

In case you were wondering, the term “leopards ate my face” comes from a tweet made by Adrian Bott back in 2015, and is generally used as a joke to refer to people complaining about suffering from easily-foreseen consequences:

Here are screenshots from the closing bit of Seth Meyer’s recent A Closer Look segment on his late night show:

And because it’s worth watching, here’s the whole thing: