New Zealand PM resigns, gives Tucker Carlson excuse to insult her looks and to make outlandish claims

 New Zealand PM resigns, gives Tucker Carlson an excuse to insult her looks and to make outlandish claims

By Hal Brown

By DonkeyHotey

 

I follow even minor New Zealand news because I have friends who live there and I often send them stories which end up being reported in the American media.

When I looked at The New York Times this morning I saw this on their website:

On MSNBC (click image to enlarge)

It was the top story on HUFFPOST:

Meanwhile on a major New Zealand news website the stories about the resignation appeared under an article about a wild kiwi egg:

The resignation gave Tucker "Tucking" Carlson an opportunity to demonstrate once again that he resides in a dark odiferous world of toxicity somewhere below pond slime.

I didn't know anything about her until today. From my reading today it became more than evident that  she has empathy. Carlson has antipathy to empathy and democracy and truth.

Tucker Carlson Announces Jacinda Ardern's Resignation By Mocking Her Appearance, HUFFPOST The giddy Fox News host made over-the-top claims about the outgoing prime minister.

HUFFPOST emphasized Carlson's mocking Ardern as "the lady with the big teeth" in the title, but this isn't his most disgusting comment.

He called her “an appalling abuser of human rights of her own people” who’s the “most authoritarian leader that country has ever had.”

What was the horrendous abuse of human rights? 

It was her taking stringent measures to stop the spread of Covid-19. Unmentioned of course is the fact that they were extraordinarily successful:

Click above for story

Then Carlson went a step further, you really have to watch his delivery to get the flavor of how he said these words:

“What are the chances she was a puppet of the Chinese government?We don’t have enough evidence to prove that, but we would rate that as about 100% likely.”

Click above

Tucker Carlson towers over also-rans like Alex Jones for the title of the most egregious and influential lying far-right propaganda purveyors. 

He would, and should, be seen as a caricature like the DonkeyHotey depiction I used to illustrate this blog story. 

He should be the blundering clown stumbling like a two-sheets to the wind drunk onto the the circus arena.  

Comment below or on Facebook or on Mastodon. You can make a reply on Twitter too.

Addendum:

Click above to read ABC News article

\

.

This is what well-known Australian actor Sam Neal tweeted:

 

Will Manhattan DA's case against Trump have deadly tentacles

 Will Manhattan DA's case against Trump have deadly tentacles

By Hal Brown

I read this article in RAWSTORY and the phrase shown above leaped off the page and sent me to DuckDuckGo Images to find man-of-war jellyfish.

The article begins:

Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg may finally have changed his mind about indicting former president Donald Trump.

The recent conviction of the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg gave a glimpse of evidence that could tie the ex-president directly to the tax fraud scheme, such as a memo he signed approving chief operating officer Matthew Calamari’s illegal request to reduce his taxed salary to cover the cost of his untaxed corporate apartment, reported The Daily Beast.

Here's the portion about the tentacles:

“This case has tentacles,” said Duncan Levin, a former prosecutor who now represents Jennifer Weisselberg and has been communicating with investigators.

The district attorney's office declined to comment on what Bragg meant about another chapter, but former prosecutors from that office say their experience leads them to believe prosecutors will go after Trump.

“For people who want a certain outcome — to go after Trump — it gives hope," said Catherine A. Christian, a former assistant district attorney who investigated financial fraud. "They’re going to be thorough. I’m doubtful he would have said ‘next chapter’ if they weren’t looking."

To tell the unvarnished truth I don't have anything particularly original to say about this. I just wanted an excuse to make a couple of illustrations. I leave it to readers to indulge in fantasies about the Teflon don Don falling into a jellyfish swarm.

I think he might a need a full immersion wetsuit rather than a coating of Teflon to protect him from the jellyfish swarming around him not only in New York (cue music video) but also in Georgia (cue video two).

Update:

Irrelevant to today's story, items to share:

Funniest puniest of the week:

More seriously, everyone should share this image.

This hopefully will be the final straw to break for Santos and humiliate McCarthy. It would be truly great if McCarthy has to take steps to remove him from the House, and at least to immediately kick him off his committee assignments. There are a number of Republicans who shoot their dogs because they can't hunt anymore, but far more are dog lovers. I just wish more articles shared this photo:

More people should see the video in this article. It is of a former Santos roommate describing how he used the Jewish sounding name Zebrosky on his GoFundMe pages because Jews give more money. 

"He would say, 'oh well, that Jew will give more if you're a Jew," Morey-Parker quoted his former roommate.

I wouldn't say that you can make a firm judgement of how smart someone is by how they look, but then again.... (article)

.....Comment below or on Facebook or on Mastodon. You can make a reply on Twitter too.

GOP in center of circular firing squad

GOP in center of circular firing squad

By Hal Brown

THE TITLE of the article below SAYS FRAGILE, I'd add "fractious about to fracture" to this title, and change the photo (click to see how below) - this dark triad, this danger to democracy if they have power, fighting among themselves can only instill hope for those who fear they will bring a fascist autocracy (MAGAism and America First) to the country.

I made my own version of the photo used to illustrate the article. Click above to enlarge. Here's the meaning of Dark Triad.

Also on RAWSTORY:

'Don’t be ugly!' Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert quarrel noisily in House restroom

The article in Daily Beast is behind a paywall but you can see their illustration:

We all watched the soap opera of the fight over McCarthy's nomination to be Speaker of the House which included an actual attempted assault.

One would think that this travesty for Republicans would have taught them a lesson about public fighting and even supposedly private bathroom outbursts of acrimony.

Too bad Debbie Dingell didn't take and share a video of the so-called noisy quarrel. It was called a near-screaming match between Greene and Boebert. Classy person that she is, Dingell said "what happens in the ladies room stays in the ladies room."

Who actually reported the incident - since apparently it was't Dingell, hasn't been reported. It would be interesting to know who it was, especially if it was a Republican.

I don't see any avenue for the leaders of the GOP to remedy the situation by holding their version of the Mafia's Apalachin Meeting which was held to stop the feuding between various Mafia families. (It would have succeeded had not the police noticed all the out-of-state cars headed into a sleepy village and raided the meeting.)

The sociopaths in the Mafia knew what was best for their greater good. Not so with the sociopaths in the GOP because their narcissism overrides their good sense.

The self-defeating actions of the Republicans don't just involve individuals. For example as Thom Hartmann reports in "House Republicans are playing with fire" in Rawstory+ "the House Republican threat to crash our economy if Democrats don’t agree to gut aid to higher education, the EPA, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid... are playing with fire and appear to be blissfully ignorant of how destructive it could become." He writes:

Will this be our entre into Strauss and Howe’s “Fourth Turning”? Will House Republicans provoke a worldwide repeat of the Republican Great Depression that, history suggests, could easily lead the planet into another world war? 

Anybody who thinks cooler heads will prevail like they did in 2011 doesn’t know these Republicans. 

If they’re willing to offer excuses for Trump trying to overthrow the government of the United States, there truly are no guardrails to protect our nation from their avarice, stupidity, and willingness to destroy America for personal and political gain.

Buckle up. We’re in for a wild ride.

The term circular firing squad comes to mind thinking of what the Republican Party has devolved into. Ready, aim, fire!

_________________________

Related from Salon:

Heroes and villains: Fascists now control Congress — we can't afford to pretend otherwise

Comment below or on Facebook or on Mastodon. You can make a reply on Twitter too.