Year: 2024
Befuddled Ex-President Confuses Afghanistan with Alaska
“We were energy independent, we were soon going to be energy dominant, and we would’ve been now having so much money coming out of the energy. We just have the best. We have Bagram in Alaska. They say it might be as big, might be bigger, than all of Saudi Arabia. I got it approved. Ronald Reagan couldn’t do it, nobody could do it. I got it done. In their first week they [the Biden administration] terminated it….Check that one out. Bagram. Check that one that. ANW—it’s, it’s—no, think about this. Between Bagram, between—you go to ANWR…”
– Donald Trump feeble-mindedly mistaking Bagram, an airfield in Afghanistan, with ANWR, a wildlife refuge in Alaska.
Hillbillies Are from Appalachia, So …
That asshat liar JD Vance never ceases to amaze ya,
But he seems to have caught some of Trump’s aphasia.
While doubling down
On his lies about Springfield town,
He said cat-eating immigrants are from a place called “Haitia.”
Trump and Wealthy Donors Have Started Undermining the 2024 Election Results
Judd Legum at Popular Information offers a pretty good explainer on how Donald Trump and billionaire asshats like Peter Theil are already calling into question the results of the presidential election before a single vote has been cast. It’s rich that Trump is accusing the U.S. Postal Service of ineptitude in handling mail-in votes, since the postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, is a Trump appointee:
There are 49 days until Election Day in the United States. Although the presidential race remains extremely close, Donald Trump and his allies have escalated their efforts to undermine the results.
In a post to Truth Social on Sunday morning, Trump falsely claimed that the United States Postal Service (USPS) “has admitted that it is a poorly run mess that is experiencing mail loss and delays at a level never seen before.” Trump asked, “how can we possibly be expected to allow or trust the U.S. Postal Service to run the 2024 Presidential Election?”
Read more here.
Institute: Democracy Declined Globally for the Eighth Straight Year
47%
International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance said its Global Report on the State of Democracy, which measures democratic performance in 158 countries from 1975 till today, found that 47% of countries have experienced a decline in key democratic indicators over the past five years, marking the eighth consecutive year of global democratic backsliding. One in three elections are being disputed in some way and the average percentage of the voting age population that actually cast ballots has declined from 65.2% in 2008 to 55.5% in 2023. Globally, in nearly 20% of elections between 2020 and 2024, one of the losing candidates or parties rejected the result, and elections were being decided by court appeals at the same rate.
Vance’s Pants Is On Fire!
JD Vance likes to tell those “useful lies,”
The ones guaranteed to draw the media’s eyes.
His whoppers about cat-eating Haitians
He peddled to a disbelieving nation,
Kind of like “Hillbilly Elegy,” the memoir he fictionalized.
Looney Loomer Looms
Trump seems susceptible to wingnut Laura Loomer,
Who has too much influence, say the doom-and-gloomers.
Did she tickle his hate
Before his disastrous debate?
And should she be cut from the campaign like a cancerous tumor?
34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prizes Feature Dead Trout, Guidance Pigeons, Drunk Worms
The 2024 Ig Nobel Prizes have been announced, and once again prove that science can be funny, which only sometimes gets in the way of it being good.
Highlights this year include research comparing the movements of live and dead trout, and sober and drunk worms. Apparently, being drunk may harm a worm’s capacity for movement more than being dead interferes with trout’s.
The Ig Nobel awards each year honor (or dishonor) research that “first makes you laugh, and then makes you think.” One such discovery won this year’s Ig Nobel for Medicine with the revelation that side-effects may make medicine more effective. How did the authors discover this important information? They gave people placebos (ie fake medications with no ingredients targeted at their condition). The capacity of the human mind to heal ourselves, at least partially, when given a treatment we think will work is remarkable, but requires some sort of belief.
Fifth-Hole Bogey
Ryan Routh won’t get the thanks of half of a grateful nation,
After not wasting even one round of ammunition.
Would-be killers like Thomas Crooks and Routh
Just aren’t in the league of Oswald and Booth,
They just seem determined to be the “ass” in “assassination.”
