Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Democrats have delivered the Square Deal, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and now… the Big Joe Biden Deal.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

I’m more Christian than these people and I’m an atheist.

Be a traveling stable for those who can’t find room at the inn.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Even though I know this is a bad idea, I’m off to do it anyway!

He really is that stupid.

If West Virginia and San Francisco had a love child.

Israel is using food as a weapon of war. Unforgivable.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / 2024 Primaries / “God Made Me Upchuck”

“God Made Me Upchuck”

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Y’all, Trump dropped the smelliest turd of an ad — the worst political ad I’ve ever seen in my life — on his Twitter knock-off site today. It’s called “God Made Trump.” It begins with scratchy, somber piano music and a visual of an old-timey record player. Then the ad zooms in on the planet while a narrator intones Trump’s date of birth and a photo of toddler Trump looms on the screen while voiceover declares that God sent Trump as a “caretaker” to protect his “planned paradise.”

There’s a montage of Trump’s greatest hits as president, including that time he placed a tiny wingtip over the North Korean border and when he rudely shoved another world leader aside at an international summit as the narrator sings his praises and implies that Trump personally delivered at least one of Ivanka’s babies. (No, really. I have a vivid imagination, but I could not make that up!) The ad claims Trump worked 110 hours per week as president and that he attends church every Sunday.

It’s a rip-off of DeSantis’s “God Made a Fighter” ad, which was a rip-off of old-timey radio man Paul Harvey’s “So God Made a Farmer” bit. But it’s so much more over-the-top than even DeSantis’s puke-worthy paean to his own greatness. Trump will not be out-narcissisted! Here’s a link in case you’re feeling masochistic, but I do not recommend clicking through. You might actually puke.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

167Comments

  4. 4.

    Caveatimperator

    I can’t watch the ad at work, so I’m relying on your description.

     

    How the fuck is an ad like that supposed to convince anyone who isn’t a hardcore Trumper already? Nobody except cultists think that God appointed their favorite politicians.

  5. 5.

    Alison Rose

    I mean…as a believer (which I think puts me in the minority here), sure, he’s right. God made all of us, as well as every other critter on the planet. Doesn’t mean all of them were good ideas. There’s a reason the lamprey lives in the ocean. He made that one and went “Ah fuck Me, that looks like it was drawn by Dr Seuss on bad acid” and chucked it into the water so humans wouldn’t have to see it. Even an infallible being can have an off day.

  6. 6.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    the narrator sings his praises and implies that Trump personally delivered at least one of Ivanka’s babies.

    Sure, the guy who visibly hates kids and has said he hates the sight of blood personally delivered a baby. Seems totally legit

  8. 8.

    SiubhanDuinne

    O/T (as I so often am), but just heard on MSNBC that Wayne LaPierre has resigned as head of the NRA.

    I’m sorry that sentence didn’t end the way I hoped it would. One baby step at a time, I guess.

  11. 11.

    Alison Rose

    BAHAHAHAHA BYE BITCH

    On the eve of a legal battle in New York, Wayne LaPierre told board members on Friday that he would step down as the longtime chief of the National Rifle Association.

    Mr. LaPierre, 74, has led the organization for more than three decades. But his resignation came as he faced his gravest challenge yet, a corruption trial in Manhattan amid a legal showdown with New York’s attorney general, Letitia James. Jury selection has already begun and opening arguments were scheduled for early next week.

    The announcement, which is effective on Jan. 31, is not part of a deal with the attorney general’s office. Andrew Arulanandam, Mr. LaPierre’s longtime spokesman, will become the interim chief executive. The development was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

  12. 12.

    cope

    I for one will not be clicking through so thanks for taking one for the team.

    The total lack of self-awareness of these people is…something I cannot find words to describe.

  16. 16.

    MattF

    Someone is concerned about the loyalty of the Base. I’ll bet there’s hard evidence they’re drifting away, getting bored with Trump’s monotonous, constant whining.

  18. 18.

    FelonyGovt

    How purportedly religious people aren’t completely turned off and offended by this is beyond me. He thinks he’s the Messiah.

    ETA I hope Biden’s campaign is aware of this and intends to use it. I think it’s a gift to us.

  19. 19.

    Brachiator

    Y’all, Trump dropped the smelliest turd of an ad — the worst political ad I’ve ever seen in my life — on his Twitter knock-off site today. It’s called “God Made Trump.”

    I watched 35 seconds and then had to tap out.

    I will say that even with all his legal issues, Trump stays on political message. He has been flogging his “I’m being persecuted just like Jesus” crap for a while. He listened to the rationalizations of his evangelical followers and feeds them what they want to hear.

     

    ETA. I also had to block notifications from Truth Social or whatever the name is. I will avoid this site in the future. I don’t want to risk getting anything from it or related right wing social media hell mouths.

  20. 20.

    Caveatimperator

    @FelonyGovt:

    Because the kind of people who belong to right wing evangelical churches are using their religious beliefs to validate their political ones. Not the other way around.

  23. 23.

    zhena gogolia

    I thought, well, I should watch it to be informed. But no, the painting of him as Christ on the cross with an American flag loincloth yesterday was quite enough for me.

  25. 25.

    Ken

    @MattF: Someone is concerned about the loyalty of the Base. I’ll bet there’s hard evidence they’re drifting away, getting bored with Trump’s monotonous, constant whining.

    And delusional “chosen one” fantasies will bring them right back?

    Scratch that — I just realized that this is like the briefs his lawyers file, where every normal lawyer says “WTF”. Trump thinks this madness is a winning strategy, so his ad people give him what he wants.

  26. 26.

    Paul in KY

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Maybe it was made as a parody ad and then the MAGA nutwads saw it and thought it was great (or maybe TFG saw it and having no clue it was all tongue-in-cheek & made for laughing at him, ran with it)! That’s about how fucked up they are.

    If TFG OKed this, he just has to think his acolytes are the dumbest, most credulous, simpering lickspittles that one could ever be blessed with.

  28. 28.

    artem1s

    the narrator sings his praises and implies that Trump personally delivered at least one of Ivanka’s babies.

    the eeeewwww factor here. Jeebus. Isn’t it bad enough that the TIFG has already declared his own daughter fuckable? What exactly prompted them to think adding this imagery to the TIFG ‘mythology’ was a good idea? Why on earth would they want to engage the audience in additional incest speculation? Are they thinking “Hey omnipotent beings engage in incest all the time, let’s liken him to Zeus or Ares in all their daughter raping glory. That’ll turn the tide and put him right back in the WH.” JFChristonasidecar WTH is wrong with these people?

  29. 29.

    Baud

    God sent Trump as a “caretaker” to protect his “planned paradise.”

    So he’s going for the environmentalist vote.

  30. 30.

    Hoodie

    @FelonyGovt: We’re not talking about sincerely religious people here.  I wonder if Trump’s people are sensing some slippage in support in the evangelical ranks.  The key to appealing to that group is that you have to sell them that you’re some sort of divine instrument in a religious prophecy, not that you’re particularly pious.  Trump sold them that he would get shit done for them and did so to a significant extent.  DeSantis’ video plows the same ground, but the problem for him is that the evangelicals already had chosen an instrument, so changing to another one requires a sizeable overhaul of the prophecy narrative since Trump won’t get out of the way.   That’s not to say they won’t change the narrative if Trump crashes and burns.   Authoritarians destroy history and recreate it to meet their current needs.

  31. 31.

    El Cruzado

    @Caveatimperator: Bets are this aims at squeezing more money out of the rubes, I don’t think they care about getting more votes at this point (or any point really).

  34. 34.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    Clicked on the link. I don’t know who this Trump guy is, but he sounds like a real hard worker and family man. He should be President.🫠

  37. 37.

    Suzanne

    @zhena gogolia:

    Christ on the cross with an American flag loincloth 

    Ironically, this was the art for one of the movie posters for “The People vs. Larry Flynt”.

    Larry Flynt is a better person than Trump.

  42. 42.

    TaMara

    Nothing could make me click that link. Thanks for the recap Betty!

    O/T this gave me life yesterday. Gawd I miss the early West Wing years.

  44. 44.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Trump has publicly bragged that he’s never changed a diaper. (For my money, if you’ve been a father of a baby and you are physically able to change diapers, bragging that you have never done so is a signal that you are a bad person.)

  47. 47.

    Mike in NC

    A favorite picture of Fat Bastard shows him saluting some North Korean general in a big hat while in the background Little Rocket Man has an expression on his face that screams “I cannot believe this!”. What a national embarrassment.

  50. 50.

    Brachiator

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Trump has publicly bragged that he’s never changed a diaper.

    If you ask a right wing nutjob “What is a man?” they will tell you that a real man is biologically incapable of changing a diaper. This is written into the Y Chromosome.

  52. 52.

    dmsilev

    I’m going to guess (hope?) that this was made as a parody and because Trump has no sense of humor or humility, he thought that it was serious and genuine and worth reposting.

    And no, I’m not going to watch. Let’s all instead celebrate Wayne LaPierre’s “resignation” from the NRA.

  53. 53.

    Layer8Problem

    @Matt McIrvin:  Christopher Buckley years back said his dad, William F. Buckley, never once changed a diaper.  Probably too busy thinking about world and domestic affairs and how to stuff high-scoring SAT words into his columns, plus isn’t that job what one hires staff for?

  57. 57.

    Gravenstone

    Trump personally delivered at least one of Ivanka’s babies

    He then the dropped poor thing on their head, explaining why they are as they are today…

  58. 58.

    TBone

    I can hear Glynis Johns singing ‘Send In the Clowns’ and I can’t wait till Randy Rainbow gets ahold of this.

  59. 59.

    MattF

    @Bill Arnold: That’s consistent with a strategy of taking every documented fact about Trump and asserting the exact opposite as religious dogma. Makes life much easier.

  61. 61.

    trollhattan

    God also made smallpox, lamprey, Guinea worm, malaria, the devil, Putin, polio, the Norway rat, PHAs, the candiru.

  64. 64.

    Dangerman

    Life is too short for some shit. Or that Shit. Who apparently shits himself. I wonder if Trump confuses a Biden with a bidet?

  65. 65.

    Marmot

    @Alison Rose: And marsupialer!

    @Caveatimperator:

    Because the kind of people who belong to right wing evangelical churches are using their religious beliefs to validate their political ones. Not the other way around.

    With respect, that crowd has been generating justifications since before Southern Baptists were even a thing!

    It’s truly rare to see events the other way around.

  66. 66.

    Rocks

    Betty, please!  It’s Balloon Juice, of course, but there are still limits to what decency will allow.

  67. 67.

    Almost Retired

    Goes to church on Sunday?  Wonder if that’s reflected in the President’s Public Schedule Calendar?  I guess we’ll see these documents when the Trump Presidential Library opens in Pyongyang or St. Petersburg.

  68. 68.

    pat

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    That ad cannot be real. Someone has slipped a joke past the cult.

    My first thought as well.  Or else he has gone totally off the rails.

    Just got here, now to read more comments.

  70. 70.

    Bill Arnold

    @trollhattan:
    Add Fournier gangrene to that list, and it would start to approximate the foreshadowing of the foothills of Trump’s just rewards.

  72. 72.

    ...now I try to be amused

    Trump will not be out-narcissisted!

    HA! I may start calling Mar-a-Lago a narcissisted living facility now.

  73. 73.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Alison Rose: ​
     

    God made all of us, as well as every other critter on the planet. Doesn’t mean all of them were good ideas. There’s a reason the lamprey lives in the ocean. He made that one and went “Ah fuck Me, that looks like it was drawn by Dr Seuss on bad acid” and chucked it into the water so humans wouldn’t have to see it.

    Reminds me of Oolon Colluphid’s blockbuster philosophical trilogy, Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God’s Greatest Mistakes, and Who Is This God Person Anyway.

    Even an infallible being can have an off day.

    But wouldn’t that mean he’s fallible?

  79. 79.

    Ryan

    “God sent Trump as a “caretaker” to protect his “planned paradise.””

     

    So he IS a Democrat?  A purveyor of the Nanny State?

  81. 81.

    cmorenc

    Don’t underestimate how enthusiastically T’s cult followers will receive that sort of over-the-top “dear leader” sort of ad promotion.

    I recall about a month out from the 2020 election, parking next to a car in a restaurant parking lot that I thought must belong to the owner of a fancy hairdressing/spa catering to women – the back-seat passenger-side window was adorned with a painted-on large image of a woman’s profile who had a beautifully coiffed head of hair – but wait, I don’t see the name of the salon.  My path to the restaurant took me around the driver’s side if the car, and that side’s rear window had a similar painted-on profile of Trump, complete with his orange possum mop of hair.  And so the woman’s image on the passenger side was Melania.

    Once inside the restaurant, we happened to get seated the next table over from the couple to whom the car belonged-who had another couple accompanying them.  I knew it was them, because they were discussing strategies underway to prevent democratic party voter fraud, and the context of the convo indicated they were involved with such local efforts in Wake county nc (Raleigh).

  86. 86.

    Hoodie

    @cmorenc: These people are as dumb as stumps.  If they’re talking local elections, then I assume they live in Wake county, and not goobers from out in the hinterlands. That you can live in Wake county and not realize that, yes, it is  a Dem stronghold is a prime example of how modern media allow people to live in hermetically sealed bubbles.

  87. 87.

    Almost Retired

    Republican ad executives:  I’ll call your demon sheep and raise you a crucified Trump.

  88. 88.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Pete Mack: ​
     

    It’s a declaration that he’s the anti-christ.

    He certainly is an anti-christ. (Per 1 John 1:18, there are many of them.)

    Here’s a fun one for any pro-Trump fundies: the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians, chapter 5. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” Remind them of that.

    Then have them read Trump’s Christmas rant.

    Ask them how that fits in with the fruits of the Spirit.

    Then remind them of the passage that precedes the fruits of the Spirit:

    “The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

    Pretty obvious which category Trump falls into. He may miss out on witchcraft and drunkenness, but he’s got most of the rest of that list nailed.

  90. 90.

    Bill Arnold

    @Bex:
    It is amusing. The gormless [demon] hosted by the DJT flesh is quickly losing sanity, in part due to its host’s progressive dementia. Cough.

  93. 93.

    NutmegAgain

    @Brachiator: “a real man is biologically incapable of changing a diaper.” .. as in, haven’t evolved opposable thumbs yet. That checks out.

  94. 94.

    Layer8Problem

    @TaMara: ​. Thanks, no worries! Much. 🙂 Just annoyed that being vaxed to the gills didn’t make me bulletproof. And more importantly I have a significant other to worry about.

  96. 96.

    Captain C

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Trump has publicly bragged that he’s never changed a diaper.

    Would this include his own?

    ETA:  Baud (and possibly others) beat me to it.

  97. 97.

    Bill Arnold

    @lowtechcyclist:

    He may miss out on witchcraft

    Nah. He (ineptly) practices chaos magic, though he doesn’t know it; see the whole “luck is always in his favor” part of his beliefs. (A thing, with a wikipedia page with many references.)

  99. 99.

    Captain C

    @rikyrah: “How dare that [racial slurs, plural, deleted] demand that money from me?  Doesn’t she know I’m a multi-billionare and don’t have any cash?!?”

  103. 103.

    Tony G

    If you believe in an omnipotent God, then, by definition, literally everything that exists was made by God and is part of His plan.  That includes excrement, cockroaches, deadly diseases, Hitler, etc.  So, yeah, for Evangelicals, Trump is part of “God’s plan”.  But everything else is part of the plan too.

  108. 108.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Tony G:

    If you believe in an omnipotent God, then, by definition, literally everything that exists was made by God and is part of His plan.

    Actually, that not only makes no sense, it’s inherently self-contradictory.  You’re saying that an omnipotent God lacks the power to abstain from using his all-powerfulness.  But that means he’s not only not all-powerful, he’s locked in to using his powers in all situations whether he wants to or not.  He’s a slave to his own powers.

  110. 110.

    Tony Jay

    @FelonyGovt:

      How purportedly religious people aren’t completely turned off and offended by this is beyond me. He thinks he’s the Messiah.

    Arguably it’s worse than that. He and his advisors think religious people are so stupid and easily conned that they they’ll flock to the polls to vote for a piece of shit lying fraudster rapist as long as he claims to be their Messiah.

    Are they wrong about that, though?

  113. 113.

    RaflW

    @Caveatimperator: “Nobody except cultists think that God appointed their favorite politicians.”

    It sounds to me like the tRump Trainwreck Committee is getting nervous about Haley (just saw a Koch group is pushing $27M towards her) and her improving poll numbers. Mark my words, they’re going to start attacking her faith journey. But first they have to do this (grotesque) anointed-by-god thing as the tee-up.

    If normies in swing states can be shown this ad later in the race, I think backfires on him terrifically. It’s one thing to be a megalomaniac, but to start claiming g-d’s imprimatur. Dang.

  114. 114.

    Karen S.

    @Tony Jay: No, they’re not. The Christianists are fine with Trump, as they view him as an imperfect vessel doing their God’s work.

  115. 115.

    Raoul Paste

    @Layer8Problem:  I had Covid over Christmas, and Paxlovid really eased the symptoms.  The caveat is that it interacts with a lot of other drugs that you may be taking, but a good pharmacist will be able to advise you.

    The pharmacist also told me how to go on a particular website and get a code that made the medicine free if you are on Medicare.   In any event, I hope you have an easy time of it

  118. 118.

    Josie

    @Omnes Omnibus: ​
    You and my late husband. He never made a big deal of it. It just so happened that, when diaper changing time rolled around, he managed to be somewhere else. I think that was true of many men of his generation.

  119. 119.

    misterpuff

    Movementarians:
    Na na na na na na na na, Leader.
    Na na na na na na na na, Leader.
    Leader, Leader, Leader.

    Homer:
    Batman!
    I mean-
    Leader!

    MAGAts:

    Something something something something, TrumpGod.
    Something something something something, TrumpGod.
    TrumpGod, TrumpGod, TrumpGod.

  120. 120.

    patrick II

    So during Trump’s pictorial story (in the fictional sense of the word, the narrator said “fight the monsters” while a picture of Letitia James and Alvin Bragg is shown.  And now I read that she upped her trial-suggested penalty from $250,000,000 to $375,000,000. Let’s see what happens if he calls her a monster again.

  121. 121.

    Yarrow

    Someone should make a series of these. Frame by frame recreations for all sorts of people. You know, “God Made Mussolini.” “God Made Hitler.” “God Made Stalin.” Etc.

  123. 123.

    Betty Cracker

    @raven: Thanks. I’m in favor of removing Confederate statues in civic spaces that glorify slavery or “Lost Cause” bullshit. Removing grave markers is a different kettle of fish, and it strikes me as wrong. Since the marker was a copy of a famous French monument that was created decades before the U.S. Civil War, I’m thinking it didn’t directly glorify the Confederacy, so its removal seems egregious, but I don’t know all the facts around it aside from what you shared. What do you think?

  124. 124.

    Tony Jay

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    They are as their God made them, and visa versa. Which explains a lot.

    @Karen S.:

    ‘Imperfect’ isn’t so much doing the load-bearing role in that sentence as it’s taking on the role of Atlas.

    “He’s saying he’s the Messiah again.”

    “Nobody’s perfect.”

    “You still haven’t read the f#€$%#g Book, have you Rod?”

  125. 125.

    raven

    @Betty Cracker: Well, here’s a piece from the Oakland Cemetery

    Though the Lion of Atlanta was installed to mark the graves of unknown Confederate dead, both the timing of its installation and the themes found in its design indicate that it also serves as a monument to the Confederacy. The Lion was erected in 1894 when white Southerners were well into the process of dismantling Reconstruction-era integration laws. It was modeled after the famous Lion of Lucerne monument, except that the mortally wounded lion protects a Confederate flag instead of the shields of the French monarchy and the Swiss coat of arms. In the Lion’s dedication ceremony, speakers declared that the “sacred” cause for which the soldiers fought was that of “righteousness and truth,” and that the war was fought over states’ rights to secede (as opposed to being fought over the right to maintain racial hierarchies, as detailed in Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens’ infamous 1862 “Cornerstone Speech”). Speakers described the outcome of the Civil War as “disastrous peace,” condemned the north “with its growing jealousy of power…its fanatical antagonism of slavery,” denied that the Confederacy was guilty of treason, and proclaimed that “the principles for which you fought and your comrades fell are not ‘lost’ and can never die. They stand today with renewed strength.”

  126. 126.

    trollhattan

    @Raoul Paste: Yeah, the contraindicated list of drugs for Paxlovid is LONG, but the one that really caught me was St John’s wort. WTF?

    So for you hippies: tell your doc about all your herbal shit. All of it.

    Am certain it helped speed up my ‘rona bout last summer–days instead of a week or more. God, what a horrid thing it is.

  127. 127.

    raven

    @raven: So I guess even though Jason Figg is buried there I don’t have much of a problem with it being removed. It was also vandalized repeatedly so they are talking about putting in at the Atlanta History Center where the Cyclorama was relocated.

  128. 128.

    rikyrah

    @Karen S.:

    No, they’re not. The Christianists are fine with Trump, as they view him as an imperfect vessel doing their God’s work.

     

    They don’t believe in God anyway. They just believe in White Supremacy,.

  130. 130.

    trollhattan

    @Betty Cracker: Plowing through a large book on WWI and the vast # of markers for unknown and never-found soldiers boggles the brain. Our first industrialized war was very good at obliterating the human body into nothingness.

    Considering how many borders have shifted during and since, one can find themselves tending to former enemy graves and monuments.

    Doesn’t explain Reagan and Bitburg, however.

  131. 131.

    Ken

    @patrick II: I thought the increase in the requested penalty was because during the trial evidence came out that showed additional fraud.

    It’s probably too much to hope the evidence was introduced by the defense.  Maybe it was from defrauded banks hearing the evidence and saying “Wait a minute, he told Deutschebank X? He told us Y! We need to amend our estimate of damage!”

  133. 133.

    raven

    @trollhattan: I just finished listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Bomber Mafia” about the attempt of the post WW1 Army Air Corps unit at Maxwell Airbase to prevent the kind of slaughter you reference by developing “precision bombing” to cut off the means of production of the enemy rather than annihilating them. Ask Curtis LeMay how that went.

  135. 135.

    raven

    @TaMara: I don’t know what to do. Being fully vaxxed and boosted seems to keep you from dying from it but not catching it.  I’m going fishing in Costa Rica at the end of the month and. . .I’m going!  I flew to both Miami and LA last year and dutifully masked in the airport but shit, I’m too fucking old to go back into hiding.

  138. 138.

    Betty Cracker

    @raven: Okay, that’s context that makes the removal sound much more justified. Thanks for the extra info.

    I’m a weirdo who enjoys strolling around graveyards, especially old and obscure ones. There are tons around here in small towns and farming communities in the middle of nowhere, where generations of my family are buried.

    When I tend family gravesites around here, I see lots of headstones with CSA markers and flags in the surrounding plots, just as there are throughout the South. I’ve never heard anyone suggest headstones should be removed or altered to eradicate references to the Confederacy, but I would disagree if anyone did.

    IMO, that’s different than a public monument, which symbolizes the community’s values. I’m in favor of their removal in that case.

  139. 139.

    trollhattan

    @raven: ​
    Oh lord, LeMay was a piece of work. The Brits had their version in Bomber Harris, who had a similar take on changing hearts and minds from the air.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Harris

    Gotta love his lemonade from lemons conclusion: “In spite of all that happened at Hamburg, bombing proved a relatively humane method.”

  143. 143.

    raven

    @trollhattan: Well the Japanese gave LeMay The  First‐Class Order of Merit of the Grand Cordon of the Rising Sun, for shortening the war so there is that.

  144. 144.

    Bill Arnold

    @raven:

    Ask Curtis LeMay how that went.

    OTOH, Curtis LeMay’s most militarily effective conventional-weapons operation was arguably Operation Starvation, which used a small/moderate fraction of the B-29 force to drop mines in harbors and shipping lanes to disrupt Japanese inter-island logistics.

  145. 145.

    raven

    @Betty Cracker: You’d love Oakland Cemetery. Margaret Mitchell and Bobby Jones are buried there and it hosts popular stuff like Halloween  events.

    eta

    “General John Bell Hood, commanding officer of the Confederate States Army (CSA) watched it from the home of Atlanta Mayor James Calhoun, which was located on the highest point of what is now Historic Oakland Cemetery.”

    Historic Oakland Cemetery is Atlanta’s oldest public park and the final resting place of many of the city’s most noted citizens. Less than a mile from downtown, its 48 acres are full of treasures – history and gardens, sculpture and architecture, ancient oaks and magnolias. It’s a wedding venue, a green space, an art gallery, a classroom space, and a place to celebrate the city’s rich and fascinating past and its promising future.

    https://oaklandcemetery.com/

  148. 148.

    Bill Arnold

    @raven:
    Oh I agree about LeMay; as he said about himself, he’d have been tried, and maybe convicted and executed, if his side had lost.

  151. 151.

    Betty Cracker

    @raven: I’ll check it out if I’m ever unfortunate enough to find myself in Atlanta again! Savannah has several intriguing cemeteries, notably Bonaventure. Well worth a visit! ;-)

  152. 152.

    Bill Arnold

    @trollhattan:

    The Brits had their version in Bomber Harris, who had a similar take on changing hearts and minds from the air.

    The Israeli military has detonated in excess of 50 kilotons of military explosives on Gaza (by some estimates, at least), roughly 4-5x the Hiroshima bomb, though with no prompt radiation or fallout. The before-and-after satellite photos look worse than the similar Russian destruction of some Ukrainian cities. (Or of Grozny.)

  156. 156.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Karen S.: Not only is she a craven opportunist and spineless worm…

    These are her best qualities. This is why I trust her more than any other Republican candidate. She has relatively normal human goals.

  157. 157.

    Subsole

    @Tony Jay:

    Somebody smarter than me once said that Trump’s magic is that he gives people permission to be assholes, and some folks really, really want to be assholes.

  159. 159.

    Layer8Problem

    @Subsole:  Thanks!  I’m going to ask my doctor about Paxlovid.  This all kinda erupted in the last day.  I had taken a test that came up negative the day before yesterday; today, not so negative, twice.

  160. 160.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @cmorenc:

    Don’t underestimate how enthusiastically T’s cult followers will receive that sort of over-the-top “dear leader” sort of ad promotion.

    I agree completely. It might be completely alien to normal people, but his supporters really are that brainwashed and delusional.

  163. 163.

    Gvg

    We really are not a very religious society anymore. That ad is blasphemous and if more people still were really religious Trump would never have won the nomination. The people who claim they are Christians but still think Trump or any of the people around him are Christians at all, are all fakes and don’t know it evidently.We apparently also don’t have any recognized big name clergy who have been able to make this point. There have been endless preachers for money on Tv in my lifetime. I had not realized that there were not any of the regular kind left. It’s just bizarre to me. I was raised in churches but didn’t enjoy it or believe and escaped as soon as I was old enough. So i did not know this had happened.

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