October 3, 2017

"It's not a photo."

Said Jonah Goldberg, responding to this:

101 comments:

Bill Crawford said...

As a Christian, this makes me cringe.

Henry said...

Jesus wept.

Marty Keller said...

Where's all that smoke coming from?

California Snow said...

Ooooohhhkaaaayyy

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

That's awful.

buwaya said...

Hmm?

Why cringe at this?

There is far worse drawn re Trump, by partisans and critics both. And as for Obama, it seemed there was more than a sufficiency of magazine covers in a similar vein.

One should aspire to a balance of excess.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

Cassie Brunette was having a blonde moment.

tim in vermont said...

Yeah, I think it's hysterical, but I am Christian the way most of my Jewish friends are Jews, it's cultural.

Michael K said...

Jonah Goldberg has been round the bend since January 2016.

buwaya said...

And the comment that Trump is "a man of God" is way overblown.

It suffices to say that "God works in mysterious ways".

Bad Lieutenant said...



Why cringe at this?

There is far worse drawn re Trump, by partisans and critics both. And as for Obama, it seemed there was more than a sufficiency of magazine covers in a similar vein.

One should aspire to a balance of excess.

I daresay this is kindly meant, if a bit fulsomely in the hagiographic style. Some earnest feeling expressed with modest talent.

Not nearly as slick as all the clever fotogs who would always be capturing O, HRC, and other friendlies with strategically placed seals and other circular objects behind them, to evoke the halos of medieval portraiture. Or to get Trump, for example, to stand in Feb t if something that mKes him seem to have horns. When I set that pic and my phone wallpaper I knew something was going on...Sympathy for the Devil.

No, this isn't slick. Hand painted signs never look as good as the ones the Left has made up.

Rabel said...

Punching down can be quite ugly.

Bad Lieutenant said...

Get Trump to stand in front of something that appears behind his head and makes him look as if he had horns. Same hijinx as the Michele Bachmann photo attack, the McCain photo attack. But this is a nice positive thing, if clumsy. It reminds me a little of that woman who attempted to fix the portrait of the saint and botched that one up. She certainly meant well and who's to say she didn't have the spirit move her?

Should I know who this person Cassie brunette is?

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

That "photo" both creeped me out and made me laugh, but I understand Cassie, even as I joke at her expense. Some Christians are so happy to have a President who doesn't kick them that they have projected their own religiosity onto Trump. It's a mistake, but they are desperate for a champion.

Rabel said...

If this is "Let's make fun of Christians day" can we do Jews tomorrow. I've got some great Holocaust jokes.

Ann Althouse said...

Truno has been doing a lot of religion lately, fairly well. But don’t overdo it. What seems great to some Americans is ludicrous or worse to others.

Ann Althouse said...

“Truno”

It’s my “covfefe.”

Earnest Prole said...

If Goldberg had a sense of humor, he'd say he suspected it was photoshopped.

Nyamujal said...

The funniest caption is from a parody DPRK account:
"New painting, of high ideological value, depicts Hebrew prophet Jesus of Nazareth struggling in vain to correct the errors of Donald Trump".

tim maguire said...

Trump is not a man of god. A tool of god, perhaps, but he is no church-goer and I doubt he knows much about the contents of the bible.

And it's perfectly obvious that is not a photo.

Kylos said...

Possibly a spam account. here’s another account with the same profile pic.

Bad Lieutenant said...

Exile on Main Street, first I must thank you effusively for the piece on Lucius. Devastating.


Second, no, I don't think you are *quite* right. Just that they are not so naive. No more so than the Nobel committee awarding President Obama the Peace Prize, anyway. The wish may be father to the thought, but in any case I think hope is cheap enough.

JaimeRoberto said...

So some of Trump's supporters think he's guided by Jesus. Some of Obama's supporters thought he was Jesus. Both are wrong.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

Oh Lord.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

I'm sure that out in the ghetto or in the South there are multitudes of elderly Black ladies with something similar portraying Obama and Jesus hanging on their wall. Bet on it.

FullMoon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
tim in vermont said...

What happened to Jonah anyway?

madAsHell said...

I doubt he knows much about the contents of the bible.

Respectfully, I disagree.

Sure, he has speech writers, but at some point he encourages his writers to find an appropriate passage from the Bible.....cuz he knows it's there.

Henry said...

Was this when "Trump signed a law designating the courthouse on Church Street in Nashville, Tenn., as the Fred D. Thompson Federal Building and United States Courthouse," or was it when "the president signed a law requiring the government to allow federal employees to use Uber, Lyft, bike sharing and other forms of alternative transportation for official travel."

Thank you Jesus!

Henry said...

What happened to Jonah anyway?

Whale got 'im.

madAsHell said...

Where's all that smoke coming from?

Trump blows that out of his ass. It's SOP for battle space prep.

D 2 said...

DT: and lo on the seventh day, as it is written, when Rocket Man has been vanquished, and the nation is made greateth again, and after a bigly dinner with the best steaks back at the club, ye shall walk with me, and together we shall meet some great - really great - super fantastic football players who knew what was right and honoured the flag, and after the game we shall all walk out of the darkness of the tunnel of that super stadium and maybe engage in some low-key banter in the locker room that - ok - is situationally problematic but -

JC: let me just stop you right there buddy.
DT: i cant use "grabbeth" in the Book of Trump,Chapter 8,Tweet 19?
JC: no thank you.

rcocean said...

#Nevertrumpers like Jonah Goldberg, Rod Dreher, Bill Kristol, and Glenn Beck need to get their stories straight.

One minute, Trump is a fraud, who's fooling the social conservatives because he's really Pussy grabbing, abortion supporting, atheist.

The Next minute, he's a Right-wing Evangelist, who wants to make Christianity the national religion and close business on the Sabbath.

All these guys have dropped the mask. Their only REAL disagreement with Trump is he *seems* to be a Patriot that doesn't support "Free Trade" and wants to enforce the immigration laws.

Jupiter said...

I suppose Jonah thinks he is being cute. Maybe next he should try to joke around with some Muslims, about how Muhammad was not actually carried to Jerusalem on the back of an Angel, and that isn't really his footprint on that rock.

rcocean said...

"Trump is not a man of god. A tool of god, perhaps, but he is no church-goer and I doubt he knows much about the contents of the bible."

So, in other words, he's like Bill Clinton, Obama, Hillary, Bush-I, Reagan, Nixon, JFK, LBJ, IKE, Goldwater, Ford, Stevenson, Truman, Humphrey, Dukakais, Mondale, McCain, Dole, and McGovern.

I.e. every POTUS candidate since FDR, with the exception of Jimmy Carter and Bush II.

YoungHegelian said...

Every faith that isn't iconoclastic (e.g. Islam) has these devotional images for the faithful, which are often saccharine to say the least.

The Hispanic Catholics have their enormo votive candles for household use available at bodegas everywhere. Hindu popular culture just has this stuff any where you look. I was surprised to see how much of these "street" iconography there was in the Chinese Buddhist Temples I visited in San Francisco's Chinatown.

Growing up in the deep South, stuff like this doesn't faze me. I mean, who doesn't have a velvet portrait of Jesus right next to the poker-playing dogs in the rec room, generally close to the gun rack.

Bix Cvvv said...

First, Jonah Goldberg is extremely funny (although not in this case). Second, this type of photograph is a common version of folk art. One often sees, if one does not consciously avoid them, beautiful and humble images of people going through hard times, being accompanied by their guardian angel, or Jesus, or sometimes - this is a motif frequently seen on the frontispieces of the novels of Dickens - by their departed loved ones. Third, this type of art is a nice change from the Orwellian attempts to put subtle little halos behind the photographed head of the abortionist in chief who used to sit at the desk pictured in the photograph. God loves those who love the innocent: whatever you say about Obama, you can't really say precisely that (God loves him of course and pities him, that goes without saying). Maybe you can't really say it about Trump, either (that is, you can't picture Trump in the middle of the phrase "God loves those who love the innocent"), but it just sounds much more preposterous to say that "the signer of partial-birth-abortion-friendly documents loves the innocent" than to say "Trump loves the innocent." Hence the sincerity of one of the motivations for the artwork some of us are mocking from what a true philosopher would call an insincere position (or what a second-rate philosopher would call an inauthentic position - I had to quickly google Heidegger's name to find the word inauthentic).

Dude1394 said...

Well if the Hillary Clinton for President National Review had, had their way we would have had a godless she bitch in the
Whitehouse. So I think god was DEFINITELY looking out for us.

Bix Cvvv said...

Off topic - Sadly, Gorsuch, who I have up until now admired, seemed not that bright in oral arguments these last couple of days. Even if you agreed with him you have to wonder - rookie jitters?

YoungHegelian said...

I'd love to make that image my background on FB, & then see in the morning which one I have more of: A) FB friends or B) fingers on one hand.

wildswan said...

What won't work anymore is saying that the Constitution forbids religious tests hence secularists are the only ones fit for public office. Secularism now has all the characteristics which led the Founders to forbid "religious" tests. It is a hostile and exclusionary ideology. But it cannot build. What do people believe when they don't believe? "Endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights". Do American secularists believe that? No, because there is no Creator. So. Endowed by "the more advanced among the inhabitants of a portion of North America but can we really say they are advanced or aren't we talking white privilege" with 'certain inalienable rights' "which however in the case of the unborn who are viable can be taken away by the State and it doesn't matter that more of the unborn who are black have their lives taken away because black lives matter some of the time but not all of the time and 'the time' is defined by a group which defines themselves as white privilege-guilters but that doesn't mean in the case of disproportionate abortion against black babies that something is wrong" and and and blah, blah, blah.

AMDG said...

Why does the a Rolling Stones 'Girl With Far Away Eyes' go through my head when I look at that picture?

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Those right-wing Trump supporters. So intelligent!

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

The Toothless Revolutionary said...
Those right-wing Trump supporters. So intelligent!"

Just like this Obama supporter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=P36x8rTb3jI

Who needs Jesus when Obama's gonna pay your mortgage and put gas in your car!

Be said...

This makes me think of both the "Laughing Jesus" and the "Footsteps" framed posters in my mother's (Sadly, but Thank God Foreclosed Upon) place, glazed in Nicotine Gold.

rcocean said...

"First, Jonah Goldberg is extremely funny (although not in this case).'

Really? When has that happened?

readering said...

Is there a matching picture of Christ welcoming Hef into heaven?

Bix Cvvv said...

rcocean - I think Jonah G. is a very funny guy, because he has made me laugh many times (I used to comment on his mom's website back in the late 1990s and I can testify he and his mom were totally in the zone back then - take my word for it). Google his observations on his beloved dog Cosmo (a.k.a. Snowball). Sure Jonah was and is wrong about Trump but what does that matter - it is hard for anyone to understand anyone else ----- being right about important things is a very high standard that almost nobody meets, so you have to live with the idiocy of those you would otherwise admire .... for example, I completely disagree with the worldview of George Carlin, but he was a funny guy too. Would not want him to spend so much as an hour on a date with my daughter, (not that any daughter of mine would not see through that phony funny man in a second - but that is off topic) but he could make me laugh. So there's that. We need to make distinctions. Jonah does not like Trump because he does not have the experience of the world that so many of us have - the experience to know that guys who were untrustworthy back in the day eventually settled down when they get older and recognize that Death waits for us all, and is a thing, and that we will eventually need to respond to our Creator, one way or another, as someone who has tried to follow his word, in whatever sad little way we could, or to not respond to our Creator, and wind up as someone who just fucking gave up (I use the word fucking because it is not a nice word but it is one of those phony rebellious things that many people like to proudly think about in the moments before death. Sad!, as Tolstoy said, copied by other Russian novelists, and others beyond that).. Back to Jonah G., whom I still admire as a mensch, in his way: Sure he has a wife and kids and a few dogs, but that does not mean he has been given the gift to understand the world - and who am I to mock someone who has worked hard but has not yet been gifted with authentic understanding?

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

I daresay this is kindly meant, if a bit fulsomely in the hagiographic style. Some earnest feeling expressed with modest talent.

Well put.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

The Hispanic Catholics have their enormo votive candles for household use available at bodegas everywhere.

Bodegas nothin'; there is an entire aisle of them at H-E-B, which is a large and modern south/central Texas supermarket chain.

(the best supermarket chain in the galaxy, I might add)

traditionalguy said...

Don't tell Jonah Goldberg, but Trump's daughter and son-in-law and daughters-in-laws are part of the ancient chosen Hebrew tribe complete with an Abrahamic Covenant. And the Calvinist Presbys of Stornoway, Scotland will tell you that they are certain they are also chosen ones... chosen by a uniquely powerful Hebrew man from Nazareth in Galilee whom they believe to be alive.

Maybe Jesus mistook Trump for William Bradford.

J. Farmer said...

I still think it is pretty unlikely that Trump is a "man of God." He likely believes in God, but I doubt that God or Christian scripture has had much impact in Trump's day to day life. For what it's worth, I doubt Ivanka is that devout of a Jew.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

And, Goldberg, it's tacky to make fun of the unsophisticated, and it's polite to ignore someone's harmless goof.

traditionalguy said...

To me, it seems strange to test for Trump's Man of God cred by how pious and religious he acts in public. Any one can see that scripture has imparted to him the spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, and knowledge and the fear of the Lord.And those gifts never make act man pious and religious in public.

Again, God probably mistook Trump for William Bradford.

YoungHegelian said...

@Pants,

Bodegas nothin'; there is an entire aisle of them at H-E-B,

Well, hells-bells, waddya expect in Texas? I imagine in LA the supermarkets have just glorious displays of veladoras, as they are called in Spanish.

There are so many Central Americans in the DC area that all the major grocery chains carry an endcap or two of them. I have one of Our Lady of Guadeloupe when me & my Jewish Texan bride really want to go authentic Tex-Mex (her Tex-Mex cooking is, like most of her cooking, simply outstanding).

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

really want to go authentic Tex-Mex

You'll also need to kit out your dining room with a portrait of OLoG, another of a madonna & child, and festoon both with rosaries. Also, make sure you hang up the cross that you made with last year's Palm Sunday frond. :)

I love our taquerias :)

JOB said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
JOB said...

No one thought to mememeld this?

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/33/74/77/3374771eee6174f786308d226fefc74b--jesus-facepalm-jesus-loves-you.jpg

YoungHegelian said...

@Pants,

You'll also need to kit out your dining room with a portrait of OLoG, another of a madonna & child, and festoon both with rosaries. Also, make sure you hang up the cross that you made with last year's Palm Sunday frond.

My wife is a very tolerant woman in the matter of my faith, but the poor woman does have her limits, ya know.

furious_a said...

I like saviors who haven't been crucified.

furious_a said...

I recall Obama,radiographic art, notably a naked Obama straddling a unicorn and a bare-chested Obama walking on water through a,spray of roses.

furious_a said...

"hagiographic", not "radiographic", stupid auto-correct.

Gabriel said...

Yeah, the image is hilarious and so are the people who appreciate it without irony.

It is true that many or even most Christians have very naive ideas about their faith, but the theologians will tell you that God does not hold it against them.

Gabriel said...

One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do riot mean the Church as we see her spread but through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes I our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate. When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather in oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print. When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbours. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like "the body of Christ" and the actual faces in the next pew. It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains. You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy's side. No matter. Your patient, thanks to Our Father below, is a fool. Provided that any of those neighbours sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous. At his present stage, you see, he has an idea of "Christians" in his mind which he supposes to be spiritual but which, in fact, is largely pictorial. His mind is full of togas and sandals and armour and bare legs and the mere fact that the other people in church wear modern clothes is a real-though of course an unconscious-difficulty to him. Never let it come to the surface; never let him ask what he expected them to look like. Keep everything hazy in his mind now, and you will have all eternity wherein to amuse yourself by producing in him the peculiar kind of clarity which Hell affords.

I have been writing hitherto on the assumption that the people in the next pew afford no rational ground for disappointment. Of course if they do-if the patient knows that the woman with the absurd hat is a fanatical bridge-player or the man with squeaky boots a miser and an extortioner-then your task is so much the easier. All you then have to do is to keep out of his mind the question "If I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?" You may ask whether it is possible to keep such an obvious thought from occurring even to a human mind. It is, Wormwood, it is! Handle him properly and it simply won't come into his head. He has not been anything like long enough with the Enemy to have any real humility yet. What he says, even on his knees, about his own sinfulness is all parrot talk. At bottom, he still believes he has run up a very favourable credit-balance in the Enemy's ledger by allowing himself to be converted, and thinks that he is showing great humility and condescension in going to church with these "smug", commonplace neighbours at all. Keep him in that state of mind as long as you can.

Ray - SoCal said...

Tasteless / Rude / not very nice reply to a lady with 32 followers.

I respect the work / writing he has done on liberal fascism, but this seems like an action of his Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Bix Cvvv said...

Ray - well said.

YoungHegelian said...

Every faith I know of has, in its services, some sort of prayer for the government, "our leaders", or even the old standard "God Save the King/Queen!" for the Protestants, with its Latin equivalent "Domine, salvum fac regem" for the Catholics.

While we may not be thrilled by the artistic standards of the woman's tweet, theologically speaking, when we ask for the aid of God's Providential Hand for our nation & its leaders, that "photo" is what we're asking for.

YoungHegelian said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
YoungHegelian said...

And one of those faiths with ancient & hallowed prayers for the government very much includes your faith, Jonah Goldberg.

Lexington Green said...

Great photo. Glad to see you're getting more widely publicized.

Boxty said...

I don't know if you guys ever read the Book of Genesis, but the patriarchs of the Jewish people were real douchebags. The only hero of the Bible is Jesus. All the rest were flawed. Donald Trump is a piker in comparison.

Yancey Ward said...

Do we even know that Burnett wasn't writing that original bit tongue-in-cheek?

In any case, "Jesus is probably spinning in his grave" (required The Simpson's allusion).

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Nationally famous author Jonah Goldberg sure showed that dumb bitch a thing or two, huh? That idiot thought it as an actual photograph! I never would have had an opportunity with to laugh at that nobody moron--thank "God" Goldberg brought her to everyone's attention.

I bet she will think twice next time she wants to share something she likes with a few of her friends. Serves her right.

Bad Lieutenant said...

Anybody piping some of this flak in the right direction, i.e. Goldbergward? Love to have Insty call out this post and Instalanche his couch-loving ass on over here to explain whether he really thinks the lady thought it was a live photograph of people and things in the room, or whether he sees fit to mock anyone who does not distinguish between "photo" and "picture." I bet that outside the realm of vocabulary, that woman is a lot more valuable to her fellow man than Jonah is.


Oh and Bixx? Hey buddy, a word to the wise, paragraphs are your friends.

SDaly said...

I may be wrong, but couldn't it be a photo of a painting or drawing?

Robert Cook said...

HAHAHAHA! If there's one thing Trump is NOT, (well, there are many things he is not, regrettably), he is most assuredly, and foremost, NOT a man of God.

The people who think this, if they are Christians, don't have a clue about the tenets of their own faith. Not surprising.

This illustration is pure kitsch lunacy.

SDaly said...

Like this this. Bad photo, though.

Robert Cook said...

"Some Christians are so happy to have a President who doesn't kick them that they have projected their own religiosity onto Trump. It's a mistake, but they are desperate for a champion."

1. Did Obama kick Christians? (Any answer other than "no" is a lie.)

2. Don't Christians already have a "champion?" Why do they need another?

Robert Cook said...

"Sure, he has speech writers, but at some point he encourages his writers to find an appropriate passage from the Bible.....cuz he knows it's there."

No. He's just telling his speechwriters to find something "classy" for him to day. He assumes they will find something in the Bible that will cover any situation.

Robert Cook said...

"Was this when 'Trump signed a law designating the courthouse on Church Street in Nashville, Tenn., as the Fred D. Thompson Federal Building and United States Courthouse'
...."


Well...Fred Dalton Thompson was very good on LAW AND ORDER.

Krumhorn said...

Someone else said it earlier in another thread, but our hostess has the best commentariat on the interwebs as evidenced in this post.

- Krumhorn

MayBee said...

Is Cassie Brunette someone other than just a normal person that for whatever reason now must be criticized on the internet?

Krumhorn said...

Did Obummer kick Christians? Frequently.

At Easter breakfast (of all occasions!): "On Easter, I do reflect on the fact that as a Christian, I’m supposed to love, and I have to say that sometimes when I listen to less-than-loving expressions by Christians, I get concerned,"

He routinely ignored atrocities committed against Christians by his Islamic co-religionists in Kenya and Syria.

Frankly, it's hard to identify his old church in Chicago where he and The Mooch were married as hardcore Christian. Trinity may have been a large UCC church, but it was and is a black theology hothouse of hate.

- Krumhorn

Krumhorn said...

And then there was this gem about the deplorable: "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."



He was Our Savior who was going to stop the rising oceans and heal the earth. There was no room for Christians in that guy.

- Krumhorn

sparrow said...

1. Did Obama kick Christians? (Any answer other than "no" is a lie.)

Just the title of the case Obama vs Little Sisters of the Poor
says it all

MayBee said...

I looked. Cassie has 33 followers and is following 22 people on Twitter.

She doesn't need to be the latest internet target. She can just have her private thoughts.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Gabriel,

Which 1920's English socialist tract are you quoting in your 11:16?

Henry said...

Every faith I know of has, in its services, some sort of prayer for the government, "our leaders", or even the old standard "God Save the King/Queen!" for the Protestants, with its Latin equivalent "Domine, salvum fac regem" for the Catholics.


God Bless the Tsar! And keep him far from us!

Fernandinande said...

The guy sitting has a blond mustache, so I'm going to guess it's a Photoshopped™ photo of Charles Manson helping Hulk Hogan with his taxes since Charles has figured out a way to not pay any.

Fernandinande said...

Gabriel said...
It is true that many or even most Christians have very naive ideas about their faith, but the theologians will tell you that God does not hold it against them.


That's lucky for you.

Robert Cook said...

"'At Easter breakfast (of all occasions!): "On Easter, I do reflect on the fact that as a Christian, I’m supposed to love, and I have to say that sometimes when I listen to less-than-loving expressions by Christians, I get concerned,'"

This is not kicking Christians. This is just expressing the truth. They can't handle the truth?

"He routinely ignored atrocities committed against Christians by his Islamic co-religionists in Kenya and Syria."

You're either purposely making a false accusation or are deluded to assert that Obama is a Muslim.

By "ignoring atrocities committed against Christians...in Kenya and Syria," do you simply mean: He did not send in the troops?

The President will not and cannot send in the troops anywhere in the world just to stop atrocities. (Heck, we commit our share of 'em!) You mistake the President for the head of S.H.E.I.L.D. or something, ready to send in the Avengers to stop the bad guys. This is not how the world works.

Another false accusation. Two in one post.

I say the above as a NON-admirer of Obama, who WAS a war criminal.

Robert Cook said...

Misspelled S.H.I.E.L.D. above. Drat.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

"I say the above as a NON-admirer of Obama, who WAS a war criminal."

And yet, like Chuck, you spend a curious amount of time defending him and attacking his opponents. If you do indeed believe he is a war criminal and all that implies why would you expend any effort coming to his aid? Do you not see how that undercuts everything you write, Bob?

Robert Cook said...

"And yet, like Chuck, you spend a curious amount of time defending him and attacking his opponents. If you do indeed believe he is a war criminal and all that implies why would you expend any effort coming to his aid? Do you not see how that undercuts everything you write, Bob?"

No, I don't "defend" Obama, but I do point out when lies are being told or misinformation passed along. As Chomsky has said, it is important to distinguish the truth from exaggeration or falsehood. It's important to critique those one disagrees with on the actual things they say, believe, or have done that are objectionable. To pass along (or believe) nonsense as a basis for one's critique invalidates the critique, as it is then based on ignorance or fabrication, (such as the ridiculous attempts to invalidate Obama's qualification to be president because of the idiocy regarding his birth certificate).

If someone who hated Trump--as any rational person does--claimed Trump had eaten a live human baby--and others took it seriously and started circulating it as fact, I would point out that it was nonsense. I have repeatedly pointed out on this blog that the claim of Trump having acted in collusion with the Russians to manipulate the election is bullshit promulgated by the Dems in order to evade blame for the real reasons Hillary Clinton lost: Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.

Is that a defense of Trump, or is it a defense of the truth? (The truth, at least, insofar as the lack of any evidence requires us to consider it at this time. Given that a year later, no evidence has surfaced to support the litany of repeated accusations, I think this truth will stand.)

vanderleun said...

Dear Robert, You really need to take a relaxing break and climb back on your husband's strap-on until your mind clears.

Thanking you in advance.

Bilwick said...

Actually, Cookie, many "defenders" of Trump are simply exposing the stupidity and dishonesty of his opponents--because we know that the ultimate target is not Trump, but anyone who (unlike you) values liberty. Trump is merely a stumbling block-and a not-very-consistent one--in the way of "liberals" and other State fellators dragging us further along down the Road to Serfdom.

Robert Cook said...

@vanderleun:

If you're not going to try to make an intelligent comment...why bother? (But then, this applies to so many who loiter here.)

@William Chadwick:

I think you're missing my point, (though it's hard to tell, as indiscernible as your own point is): my comment arises from the accusation that I "defend" Obama, whom I detest for his lies, his betrayal of his public trust, and for his loyal service to the ruling elites and the war mongers and his furtherance of our criminal wars abroad. The accuser implied that my claims of scorn for Obama were insincere. I mentioned Trump only to demonstrate that my equal-or-greater contempt for Trump does not stop me from "defending" Trump against accusations that are lacking any evidence of credibility. A defense of the truth does not equate to defense of those untruthfully accused.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

"liberals" and other State fellators

What does the state's penis look like and how did you get to know so much about it?

vanderleun said...

"If you're not going to try to make an intelligent comment...why bother? " -- Cook.

You are not worth one. As most here realize. Now, as I said, pursue a clearing of what little bear brain you have by mounting .

vanderleun said...

Or, perhaps, when it comes to reacting to the letters "TRUMP" you simply continue your on site demonstration of auto-fellatio here.

Bad Lieutenant said...

In Cook's defense, vanderleun, he would similarly disparage and slight any conceivable combination of US government and apparently always has, or at least as soon as he attained political enlightenment after leaving the sticks. I can only guess that he would like to turn the clock back to about 1917. But he is not specifically a Trump basher. He would certainly bash any Republican. He says he bashes Democrats but I think he bashes them less. And yet when he stands up on his hind legs he says he is immune to compromise. It's tough to say. He does have a forthright demeanor, for certain values of forthright.