Good Humor
We’ve spent some months here at Bumbling Bees laughing at the sheer stupidity of the rhetoric from the anti-Trump partisans, and sometimes I get a bit uneasy about that. I get worried that you fine people will conclude that I’m some type of Trump supporter, which is not at all the case; I’d spend far more time criticizing the president himself in these pages if only I could see a reason. Everyone in the mainstream press blows him up for absolutely every tiny fault, whether real or imagined — as a result, it seems to your humble narrator as though it would be far more fun to make fun of the media hacks instead.
And this is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about.
President Donald Trump is living every child’s dream: More ice cream…
For example: Trump takes two scoops of ice cream with his chocolate cream pie, TIME reported, while everyone else around the table gets just one.
Journalism!
You know, every week we do this, and every week I think I’ve seen the absolute acme of partisan pettiness. And every week I’m wrong. Who on the entire Earth cares how many scoops of ice cream the president has with his pie? What? Not to mention the absurdly po-faced attempt to appeal to the very basest egalitarian envy. Why, the president takes more ice cream than anyone else! How unfair! Just a small gedankenexperiment for you: do you suppose that if multimillionaire presidential advisor and nephew of president Trump Jared Kushner actually wants a second scoop of ice cream, any power in the ‘verse can stop him from getting it?
Fair and balanced
Okay, fine. Just to prove that Bumbling Bees is not some sort of Trump-lovin’ huggy party, we’ll talk about more substantively stupid things that came out in the Time interview. You know, the sort of things CNN could have covered if it cared about real news half as much as it likes fake news. In particular, let’s talk about how the president doesn’t like the mechanisms used to launch aircraft off of carriers. Fine in and of itself, but, well…
Trump was apparently livid with the discovery, saying that digital "sounded bad to me" and demanding that the aircraft carriers go back to using "[expletive deleted] steam" for their launches, claiming it would save hundreds of millions of dollars.
When president Trump orders Chinese food, he never gets his tofu fried — only steamed. He really enjoyed Final Fantasy 6 because of its steampunk setting, but he never played it until it came out on Steam, after which he also discovered and thoroughly enjoyed Steamworld Dig. He always insists that his suits are pressed with maximum steam. His favorite musical number from a Broadway production is The Pajama Game’s "Steam Heat." President Trump has saved several hundreds of millions of dollars this way, so I think he knows a thing or two about a thing or two, you friggin’ aeronautical engineers. You think you’re so smart.
Trump has previously promised to build more carriers, and now insists they’ll all use steam instead of the EMALS system, despite Naval recommendations to the contrary.
So, hey, this may not save any money, but at least they won’t work as well! I’d personally prefer to be expropriated for murder machines that murder less effectively.
Don’t sexually harass — the government hates competition
You like that slogan? It’s a new one I made for Ron Paul’s desk, to celebrate the fact that United Airlines has apparently decided to step up the customer abuse game. No longer will the TSA be the most obnoxious and humiliating part of air travel! Not if United has anything to say about it, anyhow! Which it does.
"After explaining that I have an overactive bladder and would either need to use the restroom or pee in a cup, I was handed a cup by flight attendants," [Nicole] Harper said in her post.
"You would think peeing in a cup on an airplane in front of my family and strangers would be the worst part of this story. But the way I was treated by flight attendants afterwards was worse," Harper wrote.
She said attendants "shamed her" by saying they would be filing a report and that she would have to speak to the pilot after landing. She said they also told her they would have to call a hazmat team to clean the row of seats where she had used the cup. Harper said there was no mess involved.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: sure, that’s all sorts of horrible customer service — and mere mundanes would go to jail for even thinking about telling a woman to disrobe and urinate in front of a roomful of strangers — but what does it really have to do with libertarianism? United’s response is what:
Initial reports from our flight attendants indicate that Ms. Harper attempted to visit the lavatory on final descent and was instructed to remain seated with the seat belt fastened per FAA regulations.
I’m sure you see it, right? The blunt object United’s stewardesses were handed to beat people with? You and I wouldn’t do a thing like this because we’re normalish, sensiblish people. With a Cloak of Impunity +3, though, normalish people can become all kinds of weird.
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the racism go down
Guys, if I can be honest with you for one hot second: I’m beginning to suspect that progressives have entirely lost the forest for the trees.
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray is slightly reducing the per-ounce amount charged by his proposed soda tax while adding diet pop to the list of beverages covered by the tax…
unlike the initial plan, the new proposal would cover not only sugary drinks but all sweetened beverages, including diet drinks — beverages with noncaloric sweeteners.
So, wait. I thought the point of the tax was to encourage people to drink "healthy" things like (God help us) diet sodas rather than sugary drinks. That’s what Wikipedia tells me, anyway, and just because Wikipedia’s article about Stevie Nicks’s Edge of Seventeen is entirely madcap doesn’t mean the whole site is rubbish. Doesn’t broadening the tax to cover artificially-sweetened beverages also kind of defeat the entire purpose?
The changes were recommendations that emerged when staff from the mayor’s office and the office of Councilmember Tim Burgess studied disparate impacts the tax could have on people with low incomes and on people of color, according to Murray.
That work involved conversations with community advocates, public-health professionals and business owners, according to the mayor. After Murray’s initial announcement, some suggested the exclusion of beverages with artificial sweeteners would be unfair because affluent white people tend to consume more diet drinks.
…
Ah. So actually the purpose of the tax is to hurt white people, then? I guess I lost track of that since, you know, that doesn’t seem to be a "public health" goal.
Perhaps I’m being unfair. I expect the reality is that the tax was originally about public health, but then something something Trump ice cream something, and now we need to kill whitey. Did I get it right this time?
But Murray has pointed out that heavy consumption of sugary beverages is linked to health problems, including diabetes, hypertension and heart and dental disease.
Dr. Ben Danielson of Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic and Estela Ortega of El Centro de la Razaare are leading the Seattle Healthy Kids coalition in support of the tax.
"It’s time for Seattle to confront obesity, diabetes and other health conditions among our city’s most vulnerable populations," they said in a statement.
… Which they intend to do by discouraging those people from drinking artificially-sweetened beverages that they believe are healthier.
In Stanley Kubrick’s classic film Dr. Strangelove, the titular character, played by Peter Sellers, frequently goes on at length expounding his brilliant plans, while simultaneously his right hand, acting of its own volition, attempts to strangle him. Dear progressives: you are increasingly turning into Dr. Strangelove.
Also, spoiler warning, but in the end the world blows up.