Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

“In this country American means white. everybody else has to hyphenate.”

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

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

This fight is for everything.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

The lights are all blinking red.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

T R E 4 5 O N

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Not-So-Funny Memes about Cats and Dogs: It’s Not Helping

Not-So-Funny Memes about Cats and Dogs: It’s Not Helping

by | 115 Comments

This post is in: 

Update: Here’s the article about the restaurant that accompanied the photo.  (h/t banditqueen)

image from Dan B

Good advice.  I often think about the ways that we inadvertantly help spread the awfulness from the other side, even as we are mocking it.  But not this time; I hadn’t thought about that.  So here you go!

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

115Comments

  1. 1.

    Kyle Rayner

    Hell yeah! That’s probably the stronger story – how much Springfield residents straight up enjoy having their new neighbors. We can leave the details of acknowledging and working out growing pains to the local government whose job it is.

  2. 2.

    Fancycwabs

    The number of people I know who wouldn’t dare make a joke about an ethnic group eating watermelon sharing “eating cat” memes is distressing.

  3. 3.

    Baud

    I agree it’s time to move on but disagree that Trump shouldn’t have been mocked in the first place.

    But let’s just move on rather than debate what was done in the past.

  4. 4.

    KatKapCC

    I unfortunately have some FB friends who have been sharing a lot of those memes. They’re all liberals  but I think some of them just don’t see how it’s somewhat heartless to do so. I’ve tried to gently explain it, but I fear that the only way they’ll stop finding it funny is if/when someone is killed over this garbage.

  5. 5.

    Lobo

    Here is the original post:
    “My neighbor [Newton] informed me that her daughters [sic] friend had lost her cat. … One day she came home from work, as soon as she stepped out of her car, looked towards a neighbors house, where Haitians live, & saw her cat hanging from a branch, like you’d do a deer for butchering, & they were carving it up to eat.
    ”https://www.newsguardrealitycheck.com/p/origins-haitians-eating-pets-claim
    You can judge it on its own right.  You are right.  I just can’t on the memes.  I can do the Onion.
    Onion Headline Contest: Woman who wrote inflammatory post surprised it inflamed.
    It was an ugly post. The fact she claimed she was a Democratic person who voted Trump is a tell.  I will leave it at that.  My heart goes out to all these people.  We keep on saying someone is going to get hurt to the powers that be, but what do we know.​

  6. 6.

    bluefoot

    @Fancycwabs: IME, some people jump at a chance at expressing “acceptable” racism (or white supremacy) whether they realize it or not.  It’s why I continue to be fearful about the election.  People say one thing in public, but what they do in private, like in a voting booth, is something else entirely.

  7. 7.

    lowtechcyclist

    Maybe some organization should schedule a march or rally in Springfield in support of the Haitian community there.  I’d fly out to be part of something like that.  Bet we’d get a lot more people than those neo-Nazi groups got in their marches there.

    ETA: And I bet the Haitian restaurants in town would get a metric ton of business, too!

  8. 8.

    Joy in FL

    I”m glad to see this thread.

    I was thinking last night about some of the things I’ve seen on the internet, and how, if I were Haitian, or any non-white person, it would sting, at best.

    I thought about why the couch meme was funny and gross and apt and also not destructive…. how that was different from the cat/pet meme.  Should I reject both memes, I wondered. So I pondered what the difference was. Here’s some of what I established in my mind: couches are not living things, like cats/pets and Haitians. Nobody was terrorizing couches, nor Vance himself, because of this meme. But keeping alive the pet-eating meme, even through mockery, keeps attention on people who are being endangered or at least threatened. And I didn’t see that the mockery was making the point that Vance is lying deliberately to create division and danger.

    Eating pets is not funny, to me. More importantly, whole communities of decent people are threatened/ endangered, and no one here thinks that’s funny.

    So I’m just sharing my thoughts about this topic.  (not edited, which bothers me, but I’m pushing post comment anyway)

  9. 9.

    bluefoot

    @KatKapCC: Most people don’t want to be reminded incessantly, even in jest, that they don’t belong or aren’t considered fully human.  I don’t need to be reminded every time I am online or just going about my business.  And people wonder why minority groups want safe spaces…

  10. 10.

    brendancalling

    We played a show in New Hope PA last night, and the opening band mocked the shit out of that statement. That said, I agree that it shouldn’t be spread anymore, even as a joke. I have a bunch of Haitian kids at my school, and as the journalism teacher, I spent time last week using dogs/cats/pets as an example of slander and why it’s wrong/illegal.

  11. 11.

    eclare

    It’s good to see so many people there.  I checked, and the closest things we have in Memphis are Caribbean restaurants.  Pretty pricey too, IMO, for jerk chicken.

  12. 12.

    laura

    It was laughable when he said it during the debate because it was so ludicrous and beyond the pale. And I laughed at Sarah Cooper’s as always great interpretation. But because it was engineered in a nazi lab to cause real harm to real people it is no longer a laughing matter.

    Black Twitter is Not Having It. At. All.       I’m using their assessment in pushing back on friends and family – that this language has been used to kill, to burn down cities, to other, to encourage random terror and violence.

    It’s a time for choosing. I know what side I’m on. If I can’t be counted on to be a reliable ally, what use am I to others?

  14. 14.

    Baud

    @JPL:

    What little I’ve seen suggests that their doubling down has hurt them, rather than rally their side. Hard to know for sure.

  15. 15.

    kindness

    Let’s not undersell the benefits of mockery.  I agree, spreading the right wing trope is wrong, but mockery of those same right wingers with this helps us.

  16. 16.

    MattF

    I agree that publicly spreading a racist blood libel is a very bad thing. Period.

    Now, how should one respond to Vance doing precisely that very bad thing on CNN? I’m quite sure that waving a finger and saying ‘Naughty’ is ineffective.

  19. 19.

    TS

    @JPL:

    Certainly catching up to JD. Seems the campaign is making him the fall guy (trump has to blame someone) by sending him to talk on the Sunday shows.

    Wait for the trump denial that he ever thought it was true.

  20. 20.

    BigG

    Yes. This is a winning issue for Trump because it is taking all the oxygen from the news.  every time it is discussed, even to debunk it, it seeps a little more into the country’ subconscious and more low-info people will think “there must be something to this, I keep hearing about it”. Most people are drawn to salacious rumors about people outside their family/friend group/tribe. It takes a little time ( shockingly they have been pushing this hard only for a week now), but by November this will be accepted truth by the vast majority of MAGA and a healthy chunk of Independents.

  22. 22.

    jonas

    @eclare: Reminds me of a Caribbean restaurant near where I went to college way back when — awesome food, but, yeah, really expensive for some reason, at least compared to the local Thai or Mexican spots we’d hit on a Friday night when looking for something (cheap) other than the usual dining hall fare.

  23. 23.

    BigG

    @kindness: I watched some of those videos of Trumps Pet Speech set to music on YouTube, then made this mistake of looking at the comments. Uniformly 100% pro-Trump: either they loved the video and saw it as glorifying Trump or people saying they have first-hand knowledge of Haitians eating pets , people, each other. This is actually helping drive to support the lies ( maybe mostly among people who would have gotten there eventually).

  24. 24.

    Nukular Biskits

    @JPL:

    If JD’s appearance on today’s talk show is any guide, the lies are catching up to them.

    Maybe. Hopefully.

    But I would like to see local media start asking elected Republicans if they agree with Trump’s & Vance’s lies.

  25. 25.

    Sister Golden Bear

    All the people I’ve seen sharing eating cat/dog memes are mocking them, but sharing a blood libel ain’t helping, especially given the bomb threats that have shut down the city hall, a couple schools, two hospitals and the local college.

    Also too, another important debunking: A comprehensive look at Census, school district, and birth/death data, with receipts, completely dismantles the claim that 15,000-20,000 Haitians moved to Springfield. (Twitter link to thread, sorry I’m not awake enough to futz around with Nitter this morning.)

    In reality there’s barely 5,000 in the entire state, a little more than double from 2021.

    The Springfield City School District posts their enrollment online.

    This week, their head count is 7,415.

    Huge increase from last year, right?

    Except not… The district is still below pre-pandemic levels. They had 7,716 students in 2020….

    These [supposed] 15,000-25,000 Hatian immigrants beyond what the Census lists?

    They’re not dying,
    they’re not having extra babies,
    they’re not in the schools?

    Where are they?…

    In 2022, ACS listed 5,442 people born in Haiti in Ohio.

    In 2023, ACS listed 5,264 people.

    This is fake. And bad journalism.

    Especailly since they’ve been making up this number for a year now – and we have the data for the ACTUAL population when this rumor started….

    Bottom line:

    Folks are choosing to believe and spread any of these lies 🐈🐕🦆 because it fits their racist narrative.

    Inventing a massive population surge of immigrants is just to serve this. It isn’t about facts for them, it’s about targeting communities of color.

  26. 26.

    jonas

    @TS:  Wait for the trump denial that he ever thought it was true.

    That’s exactly what he’ll do, especially if it starts looking like this loathesome little stunt is going to backfire on him in places like FL. “Fake news!” he’ll cry. He’ll throw JD under the bus in a hot second.

  28. 28.

    The Thin Black Duke

    I posted this downstairs, but I think it’s worth repeating:

    Maybe, just maybe, some voters aren’t ready to hop off the joyful Kamala Express and get back on the GOP’S Pretty Hate Machine that grinds hope and laughter and dreams into ashes. Maybe.

    Call me naive, but I think this hateful rhetoric about Haitians eating cats and dogs is just reinforcing to normal people how monstrous Republicans are. Doubling down on the craziness isn’t helping them.

    Americans have been stalked, harassed and terrorized by Trump and his thugs for almost ten years. In November, voters will have the opportunity to finally get rid of him.

  31. 31.

    Jackie

    @Baud: 

    I agree it’s time for us to move on but disagree that Trump shouldn’t have been mocked in the first place.

    But let’s just move on rather than debate what was done in the past

    I’m content for us to move on, but I’m quite content to let the MSM keep it front paged as long as possible! As long as TCFG and Vance AND the GQP keep doubling/ tripling/ quadrupling down, I’m happy!

  32. 32.

    KatKapCC

    @kindness: But this mockery requires the use of the people already being targeted, and shows a greater interest in owning the right than in supporting their victims.

  34. 34.

    eclare

    @jonas:

    Yeah, I was surprised.  Both places had jerk chicken for a minimum of around $20 for just a leg.  I can make jerk chicken at home a lot cheaper.

  35. 35.

    TBone

    @Baud: I’m with ya on that. He was deservedly ridiculed and it’s not on us to anticipate what bullies will resort to in attempts to “top it.” Because worse is coming.  How are we supposed to predict the consequences of shit that they pull outta their asses?

  40. 40.

    Baud

    @Jackie:

    I meant on mocking the debate on the dogs and cats thing. We don’t need to stay stuck on that. I always thought “concept of a plan” had more long term punch anyway.

  41. 41.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @BigG:

    This is a winning issue for Trump

    Boy fucking HOWDY is this not true.  It is directly hitting his polling numbers, Democrats are fund raising off of it like mad, and elected Republicans running away from it means it’s hurting Republican voter enthusiasm around the margins, which he cannot afford to lose.  No, this is absolutely not a winning issue for Trump.  It just might be the worst issue that could be dominating the news for him, although his Jan 6th apologies also really scare and infuriate normies.

  42. 42.

    Soprano2

    @Chet Murthy: I think this is the same phenomenon as people thinking women talk a lot more than men when they actually talk about the same amount of time. To people like TCFG and Vance it seems like there are 20,000 Hatians in Springfield, OH, so they think it’s true.

  44. 44.

    Starfish

    @BigG: Eh, the bullshit cycle is so rapid these days though. It is like we don’t even remember what a great guy Hannibal Lecter is.

  47. 47.

    Nukular Biskits

    @WaterGirl:

    I regularly harangue media here in MS to ask state-level Republicans if they agree on whatever the latest Trump insanity is.  The local mullet-wrapper, The Sun Herald, for example, is more interested in running stories about lottery winners in Oregon, however.

    By refusing to even ask the MS GOP, they are in effect sane-washing the Trump campaign without actually putting in any effort, a la the FTFNYT.

    I’m tilting at windmills.

  48. 48.

    Nukular Biskits

    @Baud:

    Poe’s Law:

    Poe’s law is an adage of Internet culture which says that, without a clear indicator of the author’s intent, any parodic or sarcastic expression of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of those views.

  50. 50.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Soprano2: ​the same phenomenon as people thinking women talk a lot more than men when they actually talk about the same amount of time.

     Somebody else can Google for exact sourcing, but the general rule-of-thumb is that when a minority population (gender, race, economic class, nationality, etc.) reaches 33%, the majority population perceives the minority group as 50% or more… and reacts as if threatened with extinction.

  51. 51.

    banditqueen

    This is the restaurant pictured above — The Rose Goute Haitian Creole Restaurant — and the article does include comments from Springfield locals who are appalled by how their town has been terrorized by local & shipped-in magas (individuals & families have been threatened, schools and the local university have been closed, bomb threats at the hospital, etc). And yet again we have to come to the defense of people who help harvest food, teach children, run businesses, work in healthcare–all in rural areas & small towns like Springfield where those needs had gone unmet until immigrants came in to meet the need thus helping to build and support these towns. Vance admits to lying about all this and more–this is what a pogrom looks like. It’s blood libel against Haitians and this Jewish woman will not let it happen again.

  52. 52.

    Fancycwabs

    @bluefoot: As a gen X person from the Deep South, I grew up in with a lot of casual racism, so even Harris supporters among folks with my background have a tendency to have a blind spot for it because they perceive it as “normal.”

  55. 55.

    kalakal

    I’ve heard this poisonous crap for decades in the UK, in Europe, and now here.

    It’s always aimed at immigrants, it’s always a pack of lies, and it’s at best malicious, at worst lethal.

    In the UK I first heard it aimed at Chinese and then Indian restaurants. The irony is Indian food in particular has made huge inroads there, is now super popular, and there is a lot of really good Indian food there. Gone are the awful English curries of 40 years ago.

    We shouldn’t spread the meme, we should nail the GQP for promoting it.

  59. 59.

    Torrey

    Thank you for this post, WaterGirl. Like several of the commenters in the earlier post, I don’t think any of those memes were ever funny. I did notice that those spread by “our side” tended to leave the Haitians out, i.e., to ignore (dodge, erase) the actual people who are hurt by spreading this kind of disinformation, even if it’s done ostensibly to laugh at Trump. I realize that the memes didn’t directly blame Haitians–although I’ll also note that the Kamala “cat on a griddle” one was pretty awful. But the fact is that when there’s a narrative/schema going around, referencing a part of that narrative results in people filling in the blanks. That’s the way advertising works–what’s included in your mental image of Clydesdales, for example? It’s what’s happened with JD and “couch.” We just need a hint, and we fill in the rest. And when we see a meme about cats and dogs fleeing Springfield, it brings up the whole narrative, including what they are fleeing from. In any case, I’m glad to see this as a PSA and a counterpoint to the earlier post. Thank you.

  61. 61.

    arrieve

    @kalakal:

    I’ve heard this poisonous crap for decades in the UK, in Europe, and now here.

    It’s always aimed at immigrants, it’s always a pack of lies, and it’s at best malicious, at worst lethal.

    In the UK I first heard it aimed at Chinese and then Indian restaurants.

    Growing up in San Francisco, I heard these stories about Chinese immigrants eating dogs DECADES ago. This crap isn’t new.

    I teach English to adult immigrants and they brought this up yesterday. They were bemused, but also scared and angry. I did tell them that it was an old, old trope.

    Also, not only are they lovely people but they are more savvy than many Americans. We’re studying U.S. presidential elections and they’ve learned about the Electoral College. Yesterday I showed them a national poll that said something like Harris 51%, Trump 49%, and they said, “But that doesn’t mean anything! It’s votes in the states that matter!” I was so proud.

  62. 62.

    Dave

    @Baud: Agreed “everything is a winning issue for Trump” is exhausting it’s not now and has never been true. Will it hurt him as much as it should, like a million other things, no probably not.

    It may be a winning issue for the ugliest white supremacist neo-Know Nothings but even that is only mostly true if it doesn’t create greater push back and isn’t seen as a mainstream losing issue.

    I don’t like the memes but I do think most are mocking the stupidity of the lie but because they are ambiguous they can be adapted to serve the feckless empty bastards pushing this in the first place.

    Some are definitely using it as wink wink racism and many of the memes support that even if the people posting them don’t see it. So I’d encourage people not to post them and wouldn’t use them myself but don’t necessarily see them as representing ill intent.

    The other reason they suck they give even more space for “cute” shithead plausible deniability racism but again that doesn’t mean everyone or even most people posting them intend to support that.

  63. 63.

    Peke Daddy

    Never strengthen your opponents’s frame by mentioning it. Strengthen your frame by constantly using it.

  64. 64.

    Bill Arnold

    @kalakal:
    The wikipedia page for “blood libel” has the term purely for Jewish blood libel (the entirely false accusations of ritual murder of non jews, blood eating, etc). (Am wondering without evidence whether some Jewish scholars have a hobby of defending it against generalization.)

    Is there a general term with similar punchy-ness for closely analogous deliberately-caused moral panics/fear mongering, particularly when done for political gain?

  69. 69.

    KatKapCC

    @rikyrah: “needs to resign” Yeah…that will not happen. He could be caught on camera strangling a bald eagle to death and he wouldn’t resign.

  70. 70.

    Nukular Biskits

    H/T Crooks And Liars for bringing this to my attention.  I think it explains why the race is STILL so close.

    No More Mister Nice Blog: THE VOTERS WHO ARE KEEPING TRUMP IN THE RACE THINK HE’S AN IDIOT

    Here’s the problem: Trump supporters who aren’t superfans already seem to recognize that he’s an obnoxious, angry blowhard. They’ve priced that in to their decision this year. Their view is that if he’s elected president, he’ll say a lot of awful things, and he’ll post terrible things on social media, but he’ll also make inflation go away magically. So it doesn’t matter to them that he looked like an idiot on Tuesday night. They already thought he was an idiot — but they think he’s an idiot who can make prices lower using that business magic they saw him display on The Apprentice.

    […]

    So there are clearly voters who recognize Trump’s character flaws and back him anyway.

    I’m not pointing this out because I’m feeling the gloom and doom I was feeling when Joe Biden was still in the race. I think Harris is in pretty good shape, and is a slight favorite to win. I’m just trying to understand why the race is still close.

    Maybe Trump will double down on rage, resentment, and Laura Loomer-style conspiratorialism, and his numbers will continue to erode. Or it might be that Harris has to challenge him more forcefully on the economy, because the gettable voters she needs are willing to vote for a guy who says immigrants eat pets if they think he can lower the price of eggs.

  71. 71.

    WaterGirl

    @Dave:

    I don’t like the memes but I do think most are mocking the stupidity of the lie but because they are ambiguous they can be adapted to serve the feckless empty bastards pushing this in the first place.

    I agree that it’s mostly mocking, in our circles at least, but in the mocking we are also spreading.

    It turns out that our continued mocking on this particular is hurtful to Haitians and people in that community, as well as other folks who aren’t pristine white, because it spreads the hate and mistrust of everyone who isn’t the “right” color.

  74. 74.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @H.E.Wolf: Not even 33%.

    According to various surveys, roughly 7.6% of Americans identify as LGBTQ+ which is about double from 2012. But:

    When people’s average perceptions of group sizes are compared to actual population estimates, an intriguing pattern emerges: Americans tend to vastly overestimate the size of minority groups. This holds for sexual minorities, including the proportion of gays and lesbians (estimate: 30%, true: 3%), bisexuals (estimate: 29%, true: 4%), and people who are transgender (estimate: 21%, true: 0.6%).

    It also applies to religious minorities, such as Muslim Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%) and Jewish Americans (estimate: 30%, true: 2%). And we find the same sorts of overestimates for racial and ethnic minorities, such as Native Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%), Asian Americans (estimate: 29%, true: 6%), and Black Americans (estimate: 41%, true: 12%).

    Much of the anti-LBG-and-especially-T rhetoric has a perceived cis-het extinction level threat underlying it.

  76. 76.

    O. Felix Culpa

    I think that the mocking had its time and place in the immediate aftermath of the debate, and that it did indeed help diminish TFG among normies, who were totally going WTF? in response to his comments. Mockery is one of several anti-fascist tools in the toolbox, and it’s clear that TFG hates being mocked.

    That said, now it’s time to use different tools, to hold up a mirror to JD Vance as a deliberate liar and TFG as a witless liar, and to show public support for the Haitian and other immigrant communities. IOW, time for people to demonstrate allyship with these folks in concrete ways.

  78. 78.

    Lyrebird

    Yeah as I mentioned last night, I know people’s mileages vary, but I don’t see a net win even in parody sharing images used to shame, inflame, and endanger.

    @brendancalling: Rock on!

    And thank you WaterGirl for posting this.

    You’re awesome.

  82. 82.

    EireIAm

    @MattF: I think we can mock them without spreading the blood libel. That’s at least the approach I’m taking (as well as sharing a lot of actual information about how it’s a racist lie).

  83. 83.

    WaterGirl

    @O. Felix Culpa: Ugh.

    On the plus side, you can’t say they are hiding who they are.

    Guess they didn’t get the memo about tracking to the center in the general election.  Or maybe they did get the memo, but their polling tells them they have already lost anything resembling center, so now it’s about turning out enough of their MAGAts so they can get the election close enough to call it stolen.

  84. 84.

    cain

    @arrieve:

    Mainland Chinese are very open minded about protein. When I visited there, you saw a lot of options including dogs and horses. I mean this pandemic started because of eating a bat. I don’t think that means Chinese immigrants eat animals here. Immigrants adapt to their new homes.

    Awhile back I did research on who the fuck eats moneys brain because when Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom came out .. we Indians were appalled at the claim that we would eat such things. Turns out it was rural area of China. Just awful cruelty since the animal was still alive.

    Glad that movie was banned in India. I hope they ban eating monkeys brains in China.

  85. 85.

    Lyrebird

    @kalakal: @Bill Arnold:

    Is there a general term with similar punchy-ness for closely analogous deliberately-caused moral panics/fear mongering, particularly when done for political gain?

    I am so NOT a Jewish scholar, but as a mushy marginal Jewish commenter, I have been very much in agreement with people labeling this blood libel.  This is not some of the bullcrap “masks are like yellow stars” or other bizarre false equivalencies, this is a fabricated story spread not only as a salacious rumor between friends but by community leaders (BARF) knowing it was false and intending to cause trouble for the people they’re targeting.

    I also think it is a useful term because so many Americans who are not Black have very limited understanding of how terrible a term “Jim Crow” is.  ETA: @rikyrah: apparently David Darmofal has a fuller understanding!  And yes, Shady Vance should absolutely resign!

  86. 86.

    Citizen Alan

    @The Thin Black Duke: I agree. I have to believe that anyone outside the MAGA cult who hears Trump saying “Haitians eating our dogs and cats” will think he is simply deranged. I have to believe that it’s just repellant to normies. If this bullshit brings in more voters for Shitgibbon from people who are taken in by the story than he loses from people who wake up to the sheer debased insanity of the GOP, then I will finally lose my last shred of faith in humanity.

  87. 87.

    Jackie

    @Nukular Biskits:

    But I would like to see local media start asking elected Republicans if they agree with Trump’s & Vance’s lies.

    AND GQP CANDIDATES running for office!  I’m hoping this helps Brown keep his senate seat!

  88. 88.

    Steve LaBonne

    @Nukular Biskits: I want to see Harris hit Trump much harder on inflation. Deportations even on the scale that’s physically doable will cause shortages that will lead to higher prices. And please start calling his idiotic tariffs what they actually are, a steep national sales tax.

  89. 89.

    Steve LaBonne

    Thanks for this post, WaterGirl. I have been trying to get people I know to stop sharing these memes.

  90. 90.

    Citizen Alan

    @Nukular Biskits: Mentioning the newspapers in MS reminds me of the time Sid Salter, then editor of the Clarion-Ledger, threatened to dox me because I sent him an email blasting him for his racist demagoguery over a proposed school finance reform referendum. I still keep his threat bookmarked in my email account after 7 years.

  91. 91.

    Jay C

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    Much of the anti-LBG-and-especially-T rhetoric has a perceived cis-het extinction level threat underlying it.

    Not to mention the Great Replacement fears: since the total of those “estimates” cited would mean the US population is 154% non-white/Christian, it makes sense…. (not).

  92. 92.

    Jackie

    @jonas:

    @TS:  Wait for the trump denial that he ever thought it was true.

    That’s exactly what he’ll do, especially if it starts looking like this loathesome little stunt is going to backfire on him in places like FL. “Fake news!” he’ll cry. He’ll throw JD under the bus in a hot second.

    But will he throw Lunatic Loomer under the bus along with Vance? I seem to recall she’s the one who whispered this into TCFG’s ear prior to the debate?

  94. 94.

    Can I do this later?

    If it helps anyone to donate, this Haitian immigrant service center in Springfield takes Paypal. I found it through Devin Nunes’s Cow, but otherwise it doesn’t reflect any of the nonsense of the past week.  Looked legit enough for my money but I don’t know more than that.

    https://www.haitiansupportcenterspringfield.org/

  95. 95.

    Jess

    @Citizen Alan: But you’re looking at this only through the lens of winning the election. You’re overlooking the danger and harm it’s causing to your fellow Americans who are targeted by this meme. This is no different than Vance’s calculations.

  97. 97.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Steve LaBonne: Please start calling it a sales tax? That’s exactly what she HAS been doing, stating in multiple stump speeches that the Trump “sales tax” would cost each middle American family about $4K per year. Good strategy that avoids going into the weeds about defining tariffs.

  98. 98.

    Steve LaBonne

    @O. Felix Culpa: Excellent to know, thank you. I hope it’s also in ads. This perception on the part of so many idiots that Trump would somehow be better for the economy is utterly maddening.

  99. 99.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @jonas:

    if it starts looking like this loathesome little stunt is going to backfire on him in places like FL. “Fake news!” he’ll cry.

    I don’t think so.  Maybe eventually.  Right now this is like the ‘perfect’ phone call.  Trump is furious that people aren’t recognizing that he is the greatest orator in the world.  He has a habit of doubling down on this stuff when he thinks it’s important, and it is very, very important to his fragile ego that he out-debated a black woman.  It’s not acceptable that anything in the debate is less than a magnificent triumph.

  100. 100.

    Ramona

    @Frankensteinbeck: his J6 apologies scare and infuriate normies?! And his actual well documented role in inciting the attack and two month long campaign to gin up and gather the mob does not scare them into voting against him?! I just don’t know about what passes for thought in the normie brain!

  101. 101.

    mrmoshpotato

    @MazeDancer: Ummmmmm…….

    Old man, is your fat, orange, fascist ass ok?

    Seriously, seeing an adult (in age only) posting that is just stupid.

    Oh, we can definitely mock Dump for this without furthering hateful, racist memes.

  104. 104.

    Nukular Biskits

    @Steve LaBonne:

    @Nukular Biskits: I want to see Harris hit Trump much harder on inflation. Deportations even on the scale that’s physically doable will cause shortages that will lead to higher prices. And please start calling his idiotic tariffs what they actually are, a steep national sales tax.

    Ditto. There’s still time and I hope she starts hammering him on the consequences of his economic “policies”

  105. 105.

    Nukular Biskits

    @Citizen Alan:

    I don’t read Sid as much now.   Several years ago, he and I got into an email argument regarding some blatantly false thing he had written in one of columns.  I can’t even recall the subject, but I do recall he was a real asshole about being called out.

    The past few times I have read him, it’s pretty clear that he’s now in the BOTHSIDES!!!11!!! camp of punditry, completely unwilling to call Republicans out without inventing some false equivalency on the part of Democrats/progressives/liberals/etc.

    Having said that, however, he really pissed off state auditor Shad White, who has been screaming bloody murder about DEI programs at state universities.  Sid called BS on Shad, which caused Shad’s panties to get into a wad.

    https://x.com/shadwhite/status/1831642678913564924

  106. 106.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Frankensteinbeck: and it is very, very important to his fragile ego that he out-debated a black woman. It’s not acceptable that anything in the debate is less than a magnificent triumph.

    Trump has an add on you tube claiming this very thing.

    I think the Springfield mess is  a convenient target for Trump to lash out at. Like an angry child kicking a puppy. Sending Trump mems of Alf titled “FBI captures illegal cat eating alien” are the think to do. Deny Trump his anger.

  107. 107.

    Dave

    @WaterGirl: Agree completely just making the distinction between bad intent and unintended negative consequences.

    It is disgusting how they are going after an entire group, hardly the first, because they are a convenient scapegoat/target.

  109. 109.

    Lyrebird

    @Ramona: I don’t know either, TOTALLY AGREE, but yes apparently google hits for registering to vote went up (not that I recall where I saw this) when he started into his horse manure justification for J6.

  110. 110.

    Starfish

    @cain: Just because other people’s food does not sound yummy, and you treat their food like pets instead of livestock, that does not make it their problem. In some places in South America, they eat cuy, and it is not their problem that we consider guinea pigs friends and not food. Also, don’t look up balut.

    The way the pandemic started is somewhat ambiguous because the Chinese government was withholding so much information. That is why we got so many Wuhan biolab leak conspiracy theories every six months or so. But generally, they did narrow it down to markets where live animals were being sold. Buying animals live and killing them yourself ensures that your food is fresh. We don’t know that the origin was necessarily bats. it could have been other animals in the market.

    Anyway, we buy lobsters and crawfish live so there is no moral superiority for “we like to buy our food dead and wrapped in plastic.” But there are health concerns with having a bunch of live animals in a market and how they can spread disease to each other.

    But outside of regular food, everyone is always accusing those other folks over there of being cannibals to bias their in-group against them.

  111. 111.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @Nukular Biskits: What kind of… maybe idiot is the right word? Just spit balling here..do you have to be to see any link between Trump’s idiocy and chaos and the economic conditions that supposedly prevailed for his first three years in the White House? It was a coincidence, period. Those happen. If I stub my toe on the way downstairs during sunrise am I to conclude that every time the sun rises I’ll stub my toe?

  112. 112.

    Ramona

    @Lyrebird: My charitable to normies interpretation of this is that Trump’s J6 apologia during the debate reminded them of January 6 three years ago and galvanized them into action. I withdraw my statement against normie intelligence.

  113. 113.

    K-Mo

    How do y’all feel about Amy Cooper, the “Central Park Karen,” who called the cops on a black bird watcher and falsely claimed she was being assaulted, and subsequently lost her job and has received a lot of nasty messages including death threats?

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