Patterico's Pontifications

5/30/2019

Hillary and Chelsea Go Hollywood!

Filed under: General — Dana @ 3:54 pm



[guest post by Dana]

I thought this would be a suitable follow-up to JVW’s amusing all-time awesome troll job post. Because, as he asks at the end of his post, I too was compelled to ask: This is a parody, right?

Nope, it’s true:

Hillary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea are forming a production company to pursue film and television projects, making a foray into Hollywood after decades in the public eye…

The family hopes to use film and television to influence culture and society now that Hillary Clinton is out of politics. They plan to focus on stories by and about women. The production company is one of many potential business opportunities that Hillary Clinton, 71, is considering.

Looks like the Lifetime channel may have some stiff competition in the near future.

Hollywood: They’ll Pay You a Thousand Dollars for a Kiss, and Fifty Cents for Your Soul. Yep, sounds like a pretty good fit for the Clintons.

Anyway, I also saw this, and given it’s a little bit too on the nose, thought for sure it was a parody.

Wrong again:

Untitled

–Dana

An All-Time Awesome Troll Job (Right?)

Filed under: General — JVW @ 12:40 pm



[guest post by JVW]

I don’t know about you, but I love a really well thought-out and executed troll job, in which the pretension and self-absorption of the modern social justice warrior is gleefully mocked, but with just enough plausibility to make one not entirely 100% sure that it is a put-on. From the hilarity of the Los Feliz Daycare Twitter account to the clever scholars who punk trendy postmodern academic piffle to the delightfully witty Professor Titania McGrath Twitter account, those who expose the charlatans and frauds who seek to rule the world of grievance mongering are truly doing important work.

So now (hat tip to a Titania McGrath tweet) comes a promising new entry in the let’s-parody-the-crybullies sweepstakes. Behold the Race2Dinner website whose mission, we are told, is to force white women (it goes without saying, progressive white women) to bear witness to their complicity in perpetuating racism in our society. The site creators propose that white women host dinner parties for two particular “women of color,” Regina and Saira, in which the hostess(es) will be instructed on the ways in which they “work to keep all things in place that support white supremacy.” Here are the exacting demands as made by the two site principles:

Please consider WHY you want to join a dinner with Regina and Saira. If it’s “to learn” or to feel better or to be a “good ally,” reconsider. This dinner is not for you or about you. The dinner will be painful, uncomfortable, maddening, and upsetting. But what you’ll experience listening to our stories doesn’t come close to the pain of living as a Brown or Black woman in America. Are you TRULY ready to join us?

This is parody at its finest, right down to the capitalization of “Brown” and “Black” and the intentional lower-casing of “white,” even when that word is the first word in a sentence. The broken dinner plate on the homepage with the button labeled “Click here to smash your white fragility” is also fantastic. I understand that Kristen Gillibrand has already scheduled her dinner with Regina and Saira; it’s naturally to be catered.

Anyway, thought that was good for the laugh of the day. I mean, it is a parody, isn’t it? (See what I mean about not being entirely 100% sure it’s a put-on?)

– JVW

The Point of Impeachment (Updated)

Filed under: Accepted Wisdom,Politics — DRJ @ 10:15 am



[Headlines from DRJ]

Andrew C. McCarthy @ National ReviewThe Point of Impeachment:

… the capacity of Congress to oust a lawless president is central to the Framers’ design of our governing system. Because executive power is awesome, and intended to be that way, certain abuses of it can be discouraged only by the credible threat that Congress will remove the president from power — or, if discouragement fails, can be remediated only by the president’s actual removal. That is why Madison believed that the inclusion of impeachment in Congress’s arsenal was “indispensible” to preserving the Constitution’s framework of liberty vouchsafed by divided power.
***
“[H]igh crimes and misdemeanors,” the Constitution’s trigger for impeachment, is a term of art for abuses of power that violate the president’s fiduciary obligations to the American people he serves, the constitutional system he takes an oath to preserve, and the laws whose faithful execution is his core duty. High crimes and misdemeanors are not — or at least, not necessarily — the same as “crimes” and “misdemeanors” prosecutable in the courts. Impeachment is a political remedy (i.e., the removal of political authority), not a legal one (i.e., the removal of liberty after criminal indictment and conviction). That is why Hamilton, in Federalist 65, described impeachable offenses as “political” in nature — as “proceed[ing] from the misconduct of public men, or in other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust.”

UPDATE 6/1/2019: Andrew C. McCarthy today — The Mueller Investigation was always an Impeachment Probe.

— DRJ

AP Headlines: Trump, Trump, Pence

Filed under: Politics — DRJ @ 8:36 am



[Headlines from DRJ]

Trump lashes special counsel after he says no exoneration:

President Donald Trump blasted special counsel Robert Mueller on Thursday, calling him a “never Trumper” who led a biased investigation on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and failed to investigate his opponents who didn’t want Trump to be president.

Trump’s eruption came a day after Mueller pointedly rejected his repeated claims that he was cleared of obstruction of justice allegations and that the two-year inquiry was merely a “witch hunt.”

The president also offered mixed messages on Russia’s efforts to help him defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton, first tweeting that he had “nothing to do with Russia helping me get elected,” then minutes later, telling reporters: “Russia did not help me get elected.

Trump says not involved in keeping McCain ship out of sight:

President Donald Trump said Thursday he had nothing to with directing the U.S. Navy to keep a warship named for the late Sen. John McCain out of sight during his visit to Japan this week.

Speaking to reporters as he left the White House, Trump acknowledged that he “was not a big fan” of the late senator “in any way, shape or form,” but said: “I would never do a thing like that.”

“Now, somebody did it because they thought I didn’t like him, OK? And they were well-meaning, I will say,” he added, while insisting he was kept in the dark.

Pence in Canada as he looks to build momentum on trade deal:

Vice President Mike Pence has arrived in Canada as he looks to build momentum to get a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico passed.

The visit comes after President Donald Trump removed steel and aluminum tariffs on Canada and Mexico, clearing a key roadblock to a North American trade pact Trump’s team negotiated last year.

The new trade deal, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement , was signed in November by Trump and the leaders of Canada and Mexico and is meant to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement. It needs approval from legislatures in the three nations. Several key U.S. lawmakers and Canada were threatening to reject the pact unless the tariffs were removed.

— DRJ


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.0607 secs.