Five Days of Helicopter Jokes

 

Iran’s president, the butcher of Tehran, Raisi has died in a helicopter crash. Iran’s dictator has decreed five days of mourning in his honor. At the suggestion of the artist formerly known as Iowahawk, Americans are celebrating with five days of helicopter jokes. I have seen several good ones at various places, but my favorite so far is the following:

“As Allah as my witness, I thought Iranian presidents could fly.”

In the spirit of the thing and after reading the administration’s disgusting statement of condolence to Iran, I will quote the following more appropriate reaction from an anonymous, highly placed pentagon source, straight from the war room beside the big board:

“If I may speak freely, the raghead talks big, but frankly, we think he’s short of know how. I mean, you just can’t expect a bunch of ignorant goat humpers to understand a machine like some of our boys.”

Jokes aside, there should have been no condolences, and certainly no prayer about the murdering scum in the senate. People should be glad he is dead and and willing to say so.

Call It Too Close to Call

 

In most elections voting (other than some protest voting) requires deciding which bad candidate is less bad. With the Republicans picking Trump, and the Democrats sticking with Biden, that surely is the situation this year. Neither of them should be elected president, but unless something surprising happens, one of them will be. I have thought that, bad as Biden is, Trump is enough worse that it was clear who was the lesser evil, and Biden should be reelected. I believed that while still respecting the opinions of people who think the plans and policies of the Republicans are better than those of the Democrats or see the green left, the bigoted DEI left, and the anti-civilization pro-Hamas left for what they are want a bulwark against them or figure they should pick the scoundrel likely to do them less direct harm and so favor Trump.

Now I am not sure, because of what has happened in the last few weeks. In the war in Gaza Israel is right and should win, and Hamas’s savages are wrong and should lose. Seven months ago Biden seemed to know that. Now he does not and has betrayed an ally in wartime. The betrayal goes beyond the disgraceful public carping and refusal to give Israel needed munitions. He and his administration effectively have switched sides by advocating for the wrong outcome of the war. If Hamas survives as a capable force, the war will have been a strategic victory for it and its masters in Iran. An end of the fighting without Israel finishing Hamas off in Rafah would produce that result. The savages would have won, and civilization would have lost. Yet that is what Biden and his administration favor. Meanwhile Trump, who I feared would abandon Ukraine, did not go on the warpath against the speaker’s plan to give more weapons and munitions to that country, giving some reason for hope he would show some sense there.

Right now if people asked me who in this race would be less bad for the country, I could not give them an answer. The best recommendation I could make would be to watch both of the scoundrels until November and hope something happens to make the right choice clear, as I thought it was a while back. (As I have written before,  my plan  now is not to vote for either of them, but most people won't see that as an option and will settle on one or the other.)

The Bulwark and the Shark

 

The Bulwark is usually worth reading. Its mainly accurate coverage of Trump and its articles on other subjects are often well written and informative. However, it is possible to jump the shark even with Trump, and lately its writers have. A few days ago there was a piece suggesting with no evidence that the judge in Trump’s case in Florida will make a few rulings in favor of the prosecution to make sure she can stay on the case and then dismiss the charges with prejudice when the trial started, letting Trump skate. There have been articles characterizing the coming election as one in which the survival of democracy in America is at stake – warning that Trump would destroy the republic and that there might be no more elections after this one with Trump ruling by decree. That goes too far and frightens people unnecessarily - confusing what he might want to do with what he would be capable of doing. It may also help Trump. If it happens, a second Trump term will be bad, but it will not be the end of the world or the end of the republic. Pretending it would makes it easier for Trump’s defenders in the conservative media to argue to voters that the warnings about him, including the many appropriate ones, are just wild hyperbole from panicky Democrats.

It is also counterproductive to attack voters who favor or may favor Trump. Insulting people usually is not the best way to persuade them to consider your point of view. Today Mona Charen equated people supporting Trump to those supporting Hamas’s murderous savages. Other articles have insulted Trump voters as ignorant rustics too stupid to know what is good for them (“Cletus” and “Lurleen”), something not only vulgarly condescending to rural people but clearly false. If only country people, smart or otherwise, supported Trump, he would not be leading in the polls. There are too few of them. I cannot vote for Trump, but I understand that people can have good reasons for doing so. Some simply believe that the plans and policies of the Republicans are better than those of the Democrats. They may know Trump is a power hungry scoundrel, but note correctly that lots of politicians are power hungry scoundrels and decide to ignore it. Some see the green left, the bigoted DEI left, and the anti-civilization pro-Hamas left for what they are and favor Trump and the Republicans as a bulwark against them and the harm they want to do to the country. Some are very unhappy with inflation and the open southern border. Comparing him to Biden, some just see Trump as the lesser evil. Instead of attacking the voters, people at the Bulwark should urge the Democrats to move to the center, with or without Biden. The Dems probably won’t, but it would not hurt to tell them they should.