Thought For The Day – Professor Allan Lichtman

Cloudy With A Chance Of Winning

September 9, 2024

Hopefully, you are sitting down. We here at Paying Attention are bringing you something extremely rare and beautiful. Clearly, this is not our brand, but sometimes you just gotta go with the flow.

Lately, the flow has been the wind beneath the sails of Vice President Kamala Harris, who is poised to use DarnOld Trump’s synthetically “haired” head to mop up the debate stage tomorrow in Philadelphia – the city that cemented Joe Biden’s massive victory in 2020.

If you’re not familiar with Allan Lichtman, you will be momentarily. Professor Lichtman has made a name for himself by predicting the outcomes of presidential elections. As the video below explains, he has a pretty good track record (a pun that while meaningless now, will be simply stunning shortly). We have been anxiously awaiting Professor Lichtman’s prediction, and it is finally here…

Professor Allan Lichtman

The good and wise professor has everyone here at Paying Attention nauseously optimistic.

This has been your Paying Attention™ Thought For The Day.

Thought For The Day – McCain v. McStain

The Measure Of A Man

September 8, 2024

On July 18, 2015, then-candidate Donald Trump said this about John McCain:

“He's not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured.”

Donald Trump is only a presidential candidate because he has 34 felony convictions and wants to stay out of prison. I like candidates who don’t have 34 felony convictions and a number of other indictments and charges hanging over their heads.

This has been your Paying Attention™ Thought For The Day.

Gun Bless America

Is Our Children Dying?

September 7, 2024

“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”
George WTF Bush, January 11, 2000

“Rarely is the question answered: When will our children
stop being gunned down at school?”
Ed Venture, September 6, 2024

There's no joy in Gunville, except for those who worship at the altar of the Second. They continue to revel in the knowledge that they still to have what they claim is the God-given right to shoot up a school full of children and teachers. Gun bless America.

The usual apologists, assholes and anti-lifers are predictably and worthlessly flinging thoughts and prayers like caged primates flinging feces.

Trump’s ruining mate JD Vantz had this to say about the latest Ratpublican-assault-weapon mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia: “I don't like this, I don't like to admit this, I don't like that this is a fact of life.” In January of this year, after another mass shooting in Iowa, the thing at the top of the traitorous ticket offered these words of sympathy, “It’s just horrible, so surprising to see it here. But have to get over it, we have to move forward.”

Just as these heartless scum have made ungodly strides in normalizing the hatred, ignorance, racism, fascism, insanity, raping, stealing classified documents, attempted coup and 34 felony convictions and unrelenting tsunami of lies of DarnOld Trump, they would have us think, pray, yawn and move on after each and every mass murder they condone with every well-compensated bone in their bodies.

Transitioning Children In Our Schools

Trump recently claimed that “childs” go to school and then a few days later they come home as a different gender. While this is simply more dementia/syphilis talk from a badly deteriorating old bastard, there are plenty of school children – or childs as Trump calls them – who are being transitioned at schools across this country. They are being transitioned from being alive to being shot to death thanks to the Fascist/Trump Party’s obsession with arming mentally unstable people like themselves with weapons of mass murder.

“The transgender thing is incredible. Think of it; your kid goes to school, and he comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child. And you know, many of these childs (sic) 15 years later say, ‘What the hell happened, who did this to me?’” (sick) First of all, what the actual fuck is Dementia Don talking about? And, yes boys and girls, that was an actual quote. This from Mr. Tuna-Melt-For-Brains who also keeps yammering about abortions after the baby is born; that is, when he’s not waxing idiotic about abortions being performed “after the baby is born” or “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” or preferring electrocution over being eaten by sharks, or windmills causing people to stop eating bacon.

Why isn’t corporate media beside itself with fear and loathing about how old and mentally feeble this guy is? Remember how they couldn’t stop talking about Biden’s age and mental state? Trump is making Joe Biden look like Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

“Child care is child care.”
Donald Trump, September 5, 2024

If You Can Follow His "Logic" Seek Immediate Psychiatric Help

Trump has taken to calling his dislocated rambling utterances that veer from half-subject to half-subject, from sentence fragment to brain damage, confusing everyone in their path as “The Weave.” I believe DarnOld is actually referring to that tangle of tress-like material atop his head.

Hold on to your lunch folks, this 78-year old waterlogged lump of soft coal is still running for president.

I. Mangrey, straight shooter.                                                        

                                                                            

Broken News – In Case You Missed It

The Election Is Near?

September 5, 2024

Many people are saying this, and I don’t know if this is true or not. Every day, people are coming up to me on the street, big strong men and women with tears in their eyes, some coughing up blood, saying “Sir, there is an election in two months between someone named Harris from the Democracy Party and some half-dead, half-psychotic, off-color lunatic and Russian operative (i.e., stooge) from the Reptile Party. And it's happening two months from today!"

Apparently, this Reptile guy is wallowing under 34 felony convictions and an ever-increasing number of other indictments, cannot complete a coherent thought, let alone a sentence, and yet has the undying, unthinking support of millions of voters – many of whom believe the Earth is flat, God didn’t make little green apples, and it don’t rain in Indianapolis in the summertime.

That is all we are prepared to report until we gather more information, but for now, you might want to put this on your calendar just in case the rumors are true. It all sounds very scary and we will bring you more details as they become available.

This has been a Paying Attention™ Special Broken News report.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled binge drinking.

Broken News – Jack Smith’s Silver Hammer

NEWS FLASH: Convicted Felon Indicted

September 2, 2024

In response to the rogue Supreme Court’s anti-constitutional presidential immunity farce, relentless Special Counsel Jack Smith has re-indicted DarnOld Trump with four more counts related to Trump’s attempted coup on January 6, 2021 – a date that will live in infamy. These lovingly and ingeniously selected counts are:         

·         Conspiracy to defraud the United States
·         Conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding
·         Obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding
·         Conspiracy against rights

Well, DarnOld, as my old man used to say, “You go with your strengths.” 

It is true that Trump has continued his pathetic life of crime. But instead of his crimes being against Black folks by refusing to rent to them, or against more Black and Brown folks by taking out a full-page ad in the NY Times calling for the execution of five innocent young men, or against women who he sexually assaulted/raped and/or defamed, his newer crimes have been committed against the United States of America – one of Trump’s least favorite countries in the world.  

Unfortunately, his more recent, more heinous crimes remain in limbo thanks to Trump’s endless stall tactics and the interference of his nick-of-time-appointed judge in Florida, Aileen Cannon. And these are crimes we all watched him commit in broad daylight. Lordy, there are tapes. Audio tapes. Video tapes. Leaders in Trump’s own party confessed that he was guilty, having been in the room where it happened. Jack Smith is still vigorously occupied with Trump’s crimes from 2020 and 2021. Most notably, inciting an insurrection against the government of the United States, an infraction that millions of suckers and losers seem either too stupid or too fascism-curious, or racist or misogynist to take into account before voting for this already-convicted felon. 

This has been a Paying Attention™ Special Broken News report.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled navel gazing.

Paying Disrespect

DarnOld Trump v. America's KIA

September 1, 2024

Approximately three thousand solemn memorials are held at Arlington National Cemetery every year. Not one of those events has ever required any intervention by ANC authorities since participants are always and only there to pay respects to loved ones who perished defending America, our democracy and our Constitution.

That is, until some ignorant MAGAts invited the Orange Ghoul to dance on the grave of their departed loved one. Trump has never shown a whit, or even a half whit of respect to anyone in the military, living or dead, not privates, not generals. Plus, no one expects Trump to do anything that does not benefit him and involve him as the center of attention, so cemetery authorities provided explicit ground rules to Trump’s team in advance of their incursion. We have not been able to verify exactly how many of those rules Trump broke during his assault on the resting place of countless fallen Americans at Arlington. The smart money says all of them.

Good times at gravesides for DarnOld Trump

Not only did Old Bonespurs flout the cemetery’s rules against campaign photography amid the gravesites, he ignored the wishes of one of the families who similarly did not want their loved one’s grave photographed. Naturally, Trump’s team immediately posted a campaign ad misappropriating ANC on TikTok. Scumbags gonna scum.

We do have it on good authority that one of Trump’s goons verbally and physically assaulted a female cemetery official who attempted to stop Trump from breaking the law by abusing his time at ANC to film a campaign ad. The assaultee opted not to press charges out of fear of retaliation by Trump-addled maniacs, so we will never get the full story.

Trump claimed ignorance (finally something bordering on truth) of the clearly delineated just before the event regulations, insisting that there just happened to be cameras right near him  

Fat, Furious and Fucked In The Head

We have acquired advance screenings and posters of upcoming scams from Trump’s latest soon-to-be-failed “businesses” – Trump Studios, whose mission is to remake B-movies in his own festering image. 

After shamelessly (as always) and illegally (no surprise there either) soiling the memories of thousands of those he considers “suckers and losers” buried in Arlington for another in an as-yet-unending series of distasteful and disgraceful photo-ops, crimes and unbridled buffoonery, DarnOld Trump decided to turn his unwanted attention to plagiarizing a popular movie franchise. Not that we here at Paying Attention™ could give even half a shit about the seemingly endless iterations of the Fast and Furious pantheon, but crime is crime (theoretically, unless you talk to the Supreme Court regarding Trump) and we feel a responsibility to bring you any news that washes up on the shores of our secret undisclosed, non-existent headquarters.

  

I. Mangrey reporting.

Summer Rerun - Not a Chance

Being There Now

Nowhere in particular
August 20, 2017

The main character in Jerzy Kosisnky’s 1970 novel Being There was named Chauncey Gardener.  He was affectionately called Chance. Chance was a gardener. He grew up and then remained in the household of his wealthy employer, and had no exposure to the outside world with the exception of the substantial amount of time he spent watching television. Chance was evicted after his benefactor died. All he knew of life came from watching TV. Sound familiar?

Peter Sellers masterfully portrayed Chance in the 1979 movie based on and named for the book. Everyone who meets him, including the president, interprets Chance’s gardening-based utterances as profound philosophical life lessons. The movie ends with high-level movers and shakers deciding that Chance is the only man they could back as the next president, convinced that his lack of personal history, his down-home “wisdom” and lack of political experience would be tremendous assets for getting him into the White House. Sound familiar?

The main difference of course between Chance and the person we are currently all still forced to be thinking of, the man we cannot stop thinking of as hard as we might try, is that Chance was a pure innocent. There was no pretense to him. He was what he claimed to be – a gardener. He did not know how to read. When asked what he read, he would answer honestly as always, “I like to watch TV.” People read into that what they wanted. Chance understood nothing of the world he lived in. And Chance had absolutely no interest in being famous, unlike his real-life doppelganger, who wants attention, fame and adoration above all else…with the possible exception of the ability to maintain a candy-corn-colored hair-like substance atop his empty cranium.

Being Chrump

Chance’s evil twin – No-Chance – demonstrates a complete absence of innocence. He is 100% artifice. From his fake wealth, to his fake words, to his fake hair and hue. Like Chance though, he knows only what he gathers from television (and the occasional intellectually disabled conspiracy addict). He has no idea how any of it applies to real life. He has no interest in real life. He has never had to. He never had a real job, grew up in the house of a wealthy man – except while sequestered at a military academy, due to his utter lack of ability to have non-sociopathic interactions with other humans. He was a bad seed, now grown into a fatally-diseased plant, sowing its seeds to the four winds with wreck-ful abandon.

It is long past time that everyone ridicule everything this so-called alt-president says. Every. Single. Word.

Anyway, the picture below was meant to be worth a thousand words. Apparently, it was only worth about 450.

“I like to be watched on TV.”

I. Mangrey reporting. I’m getting sick of watching.

Paying Attention™ Special Feature: Context Unnecessary

Always Avoid Awkward

August 30, 2024

Jeff Timmer, a political strategist and Lincoln Project senior advisor snarked, “I leave out a roughly 30-year period where I helped elect Republicans. Instead, I say I was in prison. Makes things less awkward.”

For The Context Obsessed

Timmer was responding to an unsurprisingly idiotic “exposé” on Kamala Harris’ early work history and why her time at McDonalds wasn't on her resume.

This has been a Paying Attention™ Special Feature: Context Unnecessary

Question For The Day – Pick A Side Already

What, Me Racist?

August 28, 2024

You know, it’s just possible that Droopy J. Trump had a point. (Just kidding, that could never happen, it’s just a vehicle to set up a mediocre joke.)

You might recall that during Trump’s unmitigated disaster at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago, ABC News’ Rachel Scott asked the self-proclaimed “least racist person anywhere in the world” (yes, he really said this)* the first question: “Do you believe that Vice President Kamala Harris is only on the ticket Because she is a Black woman?”

Trump’s now infamous and horrifyingly ignorant and racist response concluded with, “So I don't know, is she Indian, or is she Black?”

Sorry, we couldn’t resist giving this another airing

Somehow Trump neglected to include yet another minority of which Harris is a member. And that, my friends is why we here at Paying Attention™ get paid the big bucks.** So here it is, without any further ado…

Today’s Question For The Day:

So which is it? Is Kamala Harris a Black, an Indian or a woman and when did she decide to be whichever one she is or claims to be? And exactly whatthefuck is Donald Trump and when if ever is he planning on becoming a man?

________________________________________
*Full disclosure: Trump and his father were sued by the Justice Department of housing discrimination in rental properties in New York in 1973. As became commonplace, the Trumps settled, avoiding any admission of guilt. When confronted with this inconvenient truth by Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, Donald lovingly threw his father under the bus. Spoiler Alert: they were not discriminating against White people.

**For the record, we have gotten exactly zero bucks up to this point. Did we mention that we’re really rich? No, we did not. Because we are not. It is only out of badly misplaced pride that we are not constantly asking for money with which to run this slipshod operation.

This has been your Paying Attention™ Question For The Day.