Trump on Bible: The whole thing is good

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 0 Comment
I don't know why you have to Photoshop the sign in this perfectly good picture of Donald Trump buying a Guatemalan.

Someone photoshopped the sign in this perfectly good picture of Donald Trump buying a Guatemalan.

Now that Donald Trump is a Republican candidate for president, he has to lie about how often he reads the Bible. Last week, he told interviewers from the Bloomberg program With All Due Respect that it was his favorite book. They asked him to cite a favorite verse. Instead of just saying “Jesus wept” and staring at the hosts until they fell silent, he ad libbed:

Trump: I wouldn’t want to get into it, because to me that’s very personal. You know, when I talk about the Bible, it’s very personal, so I don’t want to get into verses…The Bible means a lot to me, but I don’t want to get into specifics.

Interviewer: Are you an Old Testament guy or a New Testament guy?

Trump: Uh, probably equal. I think it’s just an incredible…the whole Bible is an incredible…I joke, very much so, they always hold up The Art of the Deal, I say “my second favorite book of all time.”

It tells us something about our present politics that the man who called Mexicans drug dealers and rapists during his announcement speech won’t just say he doesn’t read the Bible. Video and close reading after the jump.

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Friday links! Possible boners edition

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 0 Comment

Joker boner

“Everything is only for a day,” Marcus Aurelius writes in book IV of the Meditations, “both that which remembers and that which is remembered.” He means don’t worry about your historical reputation, because the people who know it will all die, too. Still, among the living, it’s hard not to hope posterity will like us. I think of my grandparents’ segment of history—from the Depression through fascism into boom decades culminating in the hypertrophied 1980s—and I am overwhelmed with admiration. Then I try to come up with titles for our chapter of the history books. “Deficits and Decay” seems toppable. “Where Animals Went” would work in a work of popular nonfiction. Today is Friday, and history might remember us as people who didn’t think about the future, but not in the good way like Marcus Aurelius wants. Won’t you chortle at the boners with me?

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Knowing what we know now, I should have smoke-bombed Megyn Kelly and disappeared

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 0 Comment
Jeb Bush

Today’s Combat! blog is written by guest contributor Jeb Bush.

As a person who might consider someday becoming a candidate for president, I knew the media would try to trip me up with “gotcha” questions. But I also knew that the American people—and, to a lesser extent, immigrants—deserve to learn about their potential candidates’ views. And we all know they can’t get enough Bush. My dad was president, and my brother was president twice. Who knows but I might be elected president three or four times? I mean if I decide to run. Anywho, the other thing my dad and brother both did was start wars with Iraq, which was great. Still, knowing what we know now, when Megyn Kelly asked me if I would have invaded Iraq, I should have dropped a smoke bomb, ninja-twisted her neck and disappeared.

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N. Korea announces “gust of hatred and rage” over James Franco movie

By Dan Brooks in Fascism 2 Comments
Kim Jong Un visits the dolphinarium at the Rungna People's Pleasure Ground. Nothing in this caption is made up.

Kim Jong Un visits the dolphinarium at the Rungna People’s Pleasure Ground. Seriously.

The good news, if you are an asshole, is that James Franco and Seth Rogen are making another high-concept buddy movie. The bad news, if you are an even bigger asshole, is that the comic premise is Kim Jong Un. In The Interview, Franco and Rogen play journalists whom the CIA recruits to assassinate the North Korean dictator. Normally Kim has a great sense of humor about himself, but this time Hollywood has pushed it too far. According to a spokesman for North Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

If the United States administration tacitly approves or supports the release of this film, we will take a decisive and merciless countermeasure…[The film] is the most blatant act of terrorism and an act of war that we will never tolerate.

Somewhere in the State Department, a whole office is dedicated to interacting with these people.

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Operation American Spring waiting on millions

By Dan Brooks in Tea Party 0 Comment
Two OAS attendees comfort each other by the reflecting pool, in a photo by Carl Woodward

Two OAS attendees comfort each other by the reflecting pool. Photo by Carl Woodward

Reliable coverage of Operation American Spring has been hard to find, maybe because major media outlets are colluding to cover up a popular movement that threatens to restore constitutional government, and maybe because hardly anyone showed up. Although organizers predicted a turnout between 10 and 30 million, only a few hundred people attended—and that number comes from OAS itself. According to this mean-spirited photo essay by Carl Woodward—in which he congratulates himself on foreseeing “weeks ago” that their plan wouldn’t work—OAS attendees were so few as to be indistinguishable among the families there for a GW commencement.

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