The Smashed Banana, issue #4

International News

NATO Leaders Sneak Out After Curfew, Run Up President Trump’s Credit Card

Brussels, Belgium–After a hard day of negotiations and some tough love from American President Donald Trump directed at the other member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the leaders of the chastised nations decided they’d get back at the stern-talking father figure and have some fun while they were at it.

“It was all (German Chancellor) Angie (Merkel)’s idea,” confessed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, seated at the NATO kitchen table with several incriminating bottles of hard liquor and a bag from Hot Topic containing two t-shirts and a plushie along with a receipt in President Trump’s name.  Trudeau reluctantly admitted knowing he did not have permission to use the card.

“So we were all getting ready for bed and she was still mad about getting lectured about buying so much natural gas from Vladimir Putin,” Trudeau said as he squirmed awkwardly in his chair.  “She was all like, ‘I’m not gonna let him talk to me like that, he’s not my real dad.’  And Terrie (British Prime Minister Theresa May) just sat on her bed brushing her hair and asked what Angie was gonna do about it.  Angie got real quiet for a second and then left the room.  When she came back about two minutes later she had President Trump’s Platinum Visa in her hand and a wicked grin on her face.”

“I know we weren’t supposed to be out so late but she promised it’d be fun,” Trudeau whimpered.  “Am I gonna get grounded?”

French President Emmanuel Macron told a similar story when cornered.  “We didn’t think it was that big a deal,” he mumbled from under his hooded sweatshirt as he slumped on the couch.  “Theresa didn’t even want to go along with it at first, she said she’d been making her NATO contributions like she was supposed to and wasn’t going to get in trouble, but after Angie promised her we’d stop for a mochaccino at the all-night coffee shop down the road she came along.”

Macron acknowledged that he was responsible for the purchase of the reflective sunglasses and the Deadpool iPhone case but adamantly insisted that the bill from the pastry shop “was all Justin and Angie, I swear.”

British Prime Minister Theresa May could not be reached for comment as she sat on her bed and hid her face behind her stuffed puppy.  Chancellor Angela Merkel was ultimately persuaded to return the President’s credit card but had already opened two bottles of black nail polish and was wearing her new earrings as she refused to speak to Trump the next morning.

“Figures I couldn’t trust Justin and Manny (Emmanuel Macron),” she was heard grumbling into her cereal.  “Bunch of babies.”

The President had not decided on an appropriate response as of press time, although he is reported to be considering a combination of grounding, working off the bills for the items that could not be returned, and an increase in GDP contribution to 4% per member state.  President Trump did announce that, because he did not go along with the plan, Finnish President Sauli Niinistö (attending the summit as a non-member) would be allowed the use of the car this weekend.

Photo inset: President Trump catches the NATO leaders the next morning and boy are they gonna get it now.

U.S. News

Colonel Sanders Driven Out of Own Restaurant After Being Mistaken For Member of Trump Administration

Louisville, Kentucky–A local Kentucky Fried Chicken franchisee who dressed up to portray the iconic Colonel Sanders in a promotional event was driven out of his own restaurant on Sunday after protesters mistook him for a member of the Trump administration.

“I just thought it’d be a fun thing to do, had balloons for the kids and free lemonade and I was walking around handing out samples and taking pictures,” said Everett “Bud” Hazleton, 54, who has owned and operated a KFC for the past eleven years.  “It was about midmorning I started noticing this group of college kids kind of milling about by the restrooms, taking pictures with their phones and such.  I heard a couple of ’em say ‘Sanders’ and one or two say ‘he kinda looks like her,’ but I didn’t think much of it until they came after me about when the after-church lunch crowd hit.”

“Bud was just making nice with the customers as usual,” said a cashier who spoke under condition of anonymity.  “Laughing it up, taking pictures with babies and stuff, and everyone was having fun except for this cluster of people who weren’t ordering and just hung out by the door.  I heard one or two of them say something about ‘kids in cages’ and ‘fascist’ and then someone said ‘he’s a Nazi liar just like she is’ out loud.  That’s when they all went over to him.”

“Hitting the Colonel’s Buffet after church is a family tradition for us,” said Darryl Easterbrook, 38, who witnessed the event with his family.  “I’d just refilled my Mountain Dew when the chanting started and the nice old guy in the costume got assaulted by about two dozen kids.  I couldn’t really tell what they were saying, I heard something about President Trump in there among the ‘hey heys’ and ‘ho hos’ but the next thing we knew they were shouting and cornering the guy until he bolted straight out the door.”

“What do you mean he’s not at all related to Sarah Huckabee Sanders?!” said Wil Teslee, 23, a dishwasher at the Starbucks down the street who participated in the incident.  “Just look at him, man!  If that’s not what a racist looks like I don’t know what does!”

“We will not apologize for answering the call of social justice!” declared Iris Thurgood, 22, one of the crowd who was cited for disturbance of the peace.  “I don’t know what anybody in the Sanders family thinks they’re doing in our town but they and the rest of our illegitimate president’s administration are not welcome here!  I mean seriously, could he get any more white?”  Thurgood declined to comment further after being shown publicity artwork of the Colonel Sanders character.

Photo inset: The face of KFC.  And also fascism, apparently.

 

2018, The Smashed Banana.  If it doesn’t say The Smashed Banana on it, it’s fake news.

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NeverTrump goes to Helsinki

No, children, it was not “disgusting” or “disgraceful,” nor was it “being a pushover.”  Let’s get it right up front that everything being said by weak-willed establishment types and deranged NeverTrumpers is every bit as delusional and dead wrong as the hardcore members of La Resistance who seem to think it’s treasonous for a sitting president to meet with another world leader.

I am well aware we live in bizarro world where nothing the President does or says will be right, but come on a fantastic journey with me for a moment into a world where President Trump could appease his critics in this life.  What did these twits expect him to do?  Shake his finger at Vladimir Putin and scold him for putting stuff up on Facebook and engaging in what is run-of-the-mill espionage and subversion?  Tell him to “cut it out” with the supposed election meddling that we have been told time and time again had no effect on the outcome of the election?  Eat up time and good faith at this important summit, time that could and ought to be spent on things like dealing with the Middle East and Islamic terror or trade or generally de-escalating tensions that Whatshisname deliberately cranked up, and spend it on the left’s favorite fairy tale?  As far as I’m concerned, even mentioning the “election meddling” foolishness in passing as President Trump met with Vladimir Putin was investing far too much time and giving it far too much credibility.

But of course we do not live in a world where President Trump is capable of the slightest amount of good in the eyes of these retarded children.  Either Sean Hannity or the President himself foresaw that if President Trump came home with the deed to the city of Moscow given to him by Vlad Putin in reparations for all past Russian sins, the President’s critics would rip him for not getting St. Petersburg too.  This is entirely correct.  The President could call a press conference tomorrow and inform everyone that he is resigning at noon, that he is directing Vice President Pence to appoint Dr. Pantsuit as his own V.P. when he is sworn in and then to resign himself, and that he will subsequently report to the gallows on the National Mall at 12:15 to be pilloried for an hour before being publicly hanged, and the response from La Resistance would be “he should have done that a year ago!”  There is literally no making these people happy, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re the rabid left or the deranged NeverTrump corps of the establishment GOP.

There was literally nothing wrong with President Trump’s big Europe trip.  He hit all the high points–strengthening NATO, supporting Brexit while throwing Theresa May a lifeline if only she’s smart enough to grab it, and ignoring the wails from the insane left about how he can’t be allowed to meet with Vladimir Putin because reasons.  Even farther-gone-with-every-tweet Ben Shapiro has acknowledged (right after inexplicably slamming President Trump for, I don’t know, not insulting Putin’s mom or something) that President Trump has been harder on Russia than many of his predecessors including Whatshisname.  Rush Limbaugh wondered today if President Trump is fed up with these jackasses continually running their mouths about how he didn’t win and the horrible candidate he beat fair and square would be president if only the Russians hadn’t helped him somehow.  I’m inclined to say the President writes that off as the cost of doing business (and with his “stable genius” line I’m confident he’s trolling the hell out of the fake news while he’s been doing all this winning), but I know I’d be pretty damn tired of it by now if the accompanying insanity from the left wasn’t showing everyone what they really are and always have been along the way.

So once again, La Resistance and Zombie NeverTrumpers alike, keep it up.  The normals are watching.

Lies we tell children will return next week

For various reasons I am taking a skip week on this series.  All good reasons, if anyone is concerned.  I do expect to have the next issue of The Smashed Banana out on Monday, though it might be late in the day.

Thanks as always for stopping by.

In which the left decides that they love NATO for some reason

You know, I’m old enough to remember when NATO was a bunch of American puppets and tools of Western imperialism back when they were arrayed against the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.  Of course that was back when the left loved Russia too, before they thought they’d make a good scapegoat for not fixing the election in Dr. Pantsuit’s favor.

People were actually acting surprised that President Trump did not announce a withdrawal from NATO at this past week’s summit meeting.  People who have a less-than-steady grip on reality, I ought to say.  Anyone with half a brain knows that wasn’t on the table and more importantly, weakening NATO was the exact opposite of what the President went to this meeting to do.  I believe it was Christiane Amanpour who tried to claim that NATO member nations bumped up their required individual defense spending (to the 2% of GDP called for) in response to when Vladimir Putin “changed the rules of the game” during Whatshisname’s administration and annexed Crimea from Ukraine.  This is pure verifiable horsecrap.  EVERY NATO member except for the United States lagged well behind in their own defense spending for years because they all believed that the United States (whose defense spending is nearly double the NATO requirement) would act as the umbrella protector for all of them.  Putin invading Crimea had nothing to do with amping up spending because despite Amanpour’s ignorant and condescending blabber a spending increase quite literally did not happen.  President Trump putting pressure on NATO, on the other hand, DID get results.

As a side note, though, it should have put NATO on notice that they really do need to be able to handle their own protection when a Democrat is president.  After all, we did promise Ukraine we’d protect them if they gave up their nukes, and well, they did, and we didn’t.  I’m not going to say we should or should not have gone to war over Crimea, there are arguments on both sides of that.  I AM going to say we should not have engaged in that kind of a boneheaded agreement in pursuit of a stupid goal if we had no intention of following through.  The twits who are crying about President Trump destroying our reputation on the world stage are not only dead wrong, but they ignore the fact that not only did we let pissants like Syria and ISIS humiliate us under Whatshisname, but we also left erstwhile allies to be eviscerated in blatant violation of the agreements we made.  THAT is what destroys our global reputation.

I find it kind of funny how the fake news thought they had caught President Trump in a mistake that not only turned out to be true, but really made their favorite person in the world (Germany’s Angela Merkel) look really, really bad.  President Trump called Germany out for relying on Russian gas, claiming they were on track to be dependent on Russia for 50 to 75% of their gas needs, and after a few rounds of guffawing about how silly that was the fake news accidentally found out that, um, the number’s about 70%.  This after years of Germany bowing to the “Greens” and scuttling their once-vibrant nuclear power plants.  So answer me this, lefties: how do you figure President Trump is a “puppet of Putin” by making NATO member nations actually spend money on their own defenses, thereby strengthening the alliance as a whole, but just brush it off when Angie Merkel deep-sixes Germany’s successful nuclear energy program in favor of cutting a check for billions of Euros to Vlad for Russian gas every year?  If you’re looking for a puppet I’m pretty sure I can see the strings.

Finally, some overstuffed Euroweenie made a pitiful “sick burn” attempt when he told the President (paraphrased) “don’t alienate your allies Mr. President, you know you don’t have many left.”  Uh… first of all, we have all the allies we need–and if by “allies” you mean “freeloading treaty partners” then maybe we could stand to shed a couple.  Second, if it ever came down to it, I’m pretty sure the USA could rely on Israel, probably Japan, probably Canada, and possibly the UK to come riding to our aid, for all the good it would do.  The rest of Europe would remember it had a very important soccer game to watch or something.  I mean really, they won’t even fulfill an agreement to spend money on their own national defense during peacetime, do you really think that they’re going to fulfill their obligations to come to our aid in a time of need (even if it would help)?  Third and most importantly, the bare fact is our European allies need us far more than we need them.  If something ever were to explode in Europe that prompted a need for NATO to spring into action, make no mistake, they would be calling on us for aid, not the other way around.  Don’t kid yourselves.

Over to you, Mitch

President Trump has announced his second Supreme Court pick to be Brett Kavanaugh.  From everything I can hear, he’s rock solid.  As expected, the left is melting down and predicting he will be a nightmare on everything from gun restrictions (good–they’re unconstitutional) to gay marriage (also good–I personally am in favor of gay marriage but I am not in favor of cramming it down the throats of people who believe it violates their religion) to the lefties’ most sacred of cows, abortion (about damn well time too–both Roe and Casey are horribly decided and grossly wrong as well as, you know, being responsible for allowing about ten Holocausts worth of deaths).

Most commentators are predicting this will be an easy win for President Trump and I hope they’re right–with John McCain on his deathbed and Susan Collins already croaking about how she won’t vote to confirm anyone who doesn’t think killing babies is super awesome this could get dicey in a 51-49 Senate (thanks a lump, Alabama).  It’s anticipated that a couple of “Red State Democrats” might break ranks with their party and help confirm the president’s pick, Joe Manchin of West Virginia most notably.  Given the eagerness that Mitch McConnell has been demonstrating in his comments from the Senate floor about the impending nomination I think we’re about to see some more good work from the majority leader.  I know I have had some serious issues with McConnell in the past, especially regarding the Roy Moore fiasco, but I’ve been watching the man work for years and I really think he wants very badly to be like Ted Cruz deep down.  He’s just spent so many years being the loyal opposition and the establishment patriarch that he’s got a lot of inertia to overcome.

I have said more than once that if Mitch had to pick one place to draw a line and fight against Whatshisname it was in protecting Justice Scalia’s seat.  He clearly knows the importance of the Court and so does President Trump’s base–why else would the evangelicals have attached themselves so solidly to a twice-divorced playboy?  I hope and expect to see a quick-turnaround confirmation and a new justice of the Supreme Court by August.

I leave you with a line from Shannon Low-Watts, the lying moron who is the figurehead for Bloomberg’s Moms Demand Action:

“Judge Kavanaugh has applied an extreme and dangerous interpretation of the Second Amendment when determining whether a law is constitutional, one that does not take into account a law’s impact on public safety.”

In other words, he does what a judge is supposed to do.  The Courts are not supposed to take into account a law’s “impact on public safety,” that’s the job of the legislature.  As long as the legislature did its job right AND did not violate the Constitution (which any infringement on the right to keep and bear arms necessarily does) then the Court has no business interfering.  Funny how Low-Watts thinks this is a negative.

Over to you, Mitch.  Let’s make this happen.  In the meantime…

 

The Smashed Banana, issue #3

International News

Royal Air Force announces “Baby Trump” blimp to lead island’s defenses

London, England– With growing tensions between the continental European Union, Germany in particular, and the United Kingdom as Brexit efforts make slow and tedious progress, Britain’s Royal Air Force announced plans to unleash a weapon the likes of which has no precedent in Europe: a gigantic orange baby with a face vaguely resembling American President Donald Trump.

“In these tense times it is important to take whatever measures are necessary to ensure the success of Brexit and the continued safety of the British people,” said RAF Colonel Alistair Higginbotham in a press conference last week. “We are confident that with Baby Trump’s all-seeing beady eyes hovering over the British Isles and standing petulant watch across the English Channel that not only will Brexit inch ever closer to success but that no continental force will dare attempt to compel us to stay in the European Union.”

Asked why the blimp resembles a poor caricature of the American President, Higginbotham replied “We felt this symbolized our adversarial relationship with our continental neighbors, Germany’s Angela Merkel in particular. I doubt she’ll risk taking hostile actions against Great Britain when she could find jaundiced Baby Trump in the skies over Berlin as a counterattack.”

Photo inset: Concept art for Britain’s last best hope.

Added Higginbotham, “Make Britain Great Again.”

When pressed on whether the giant baby Trump was actually created as a protest of the American president’s impending visit to London, Colonel Higginbotham dismissed the idea and remarked “okay seriously, that would just be stupid. Pathetically, childishly stupid.”

U.S. News

People who are not proud of being Americans act shocked when told there are people who are not proud of being Americans

Washington, D.C.–This Fourth of July, polls indicated higher numbers of Americans than ever declared they were not even “a little bit proud” to be Americans. This poll was met with shock and consternation primarily by Democratic party members and millennials, who according to the poll are the demographics most likely to not even be a little bit proud of their nationality.

“I mean, it really says something about where we are as a country,” said Ana Ramirez, 20, a sophomore majoring in gender studies at American University. “It’s, like, depressing that so many people don’t feel that they can take pride in their own country, but, like, with Trump and the alt-right fascists running everything I guess you can’t blame them.”

“I don’t think there’s any excuse for it,” said Barton Mondale, 41, a research assistant at a D.C. area environmental engineering firm. “It’s unbelievable that so few people can take pride in their country. Trump and his supporters should all be ashamed of how they’re making us feel. That’s what happens when NASCAR passes for culture and ‘being green’ is what you do when you drink too much moonshine.”

Dissecting the poll numbers revealed that Republicans’ and Independents’ levels of American pride remained fairly constant while Democrats’ sharply declined following the election of 2016, to the extent that the Democrat dip was substantial enough to drag down the entire average.

“Of course I was proud of my country four years ago,” said John Hollings, 36, a contractor from the Tidewater region. “We were doing some pretty stupid stuff but we were still the best in the world by far. Couldn’t be prouder that we came out of that funk and are doing so well now.”

Added Hollings, “America: F**k yeah!”

 

2018, The Smashed Banana.  Just lyin’ on the sidewalk.  Like a boss.

Lies we tell children, chapter 2

The lies we tell children have many different aims.  The one we discussed last week, “don’t judge a book by its cover,” is obviously and understandably meant to teach children not to be prejudiced.  The problem with teaching this lesson with a lie is the problem with lying in general–more often than not, sooner or later your lie will get found out, and when it does the point you tried to make or the lesson you were trying to teach will not just lose its credibility but it will in fact be directly undermined.

Today’s lie is another example of one such fairy tale that can have some pretty powerful blowback once reality comes knocking on the door.  This one hasn’t been distilled to some catchy universal saying, unless there’s one I’m overlooking, but the lie itself if “be yourself and people will like you.”  Young children especially are very eager to please their peers and “fit in” so others will like them and play with them and share their toys and not exclude or bully them on the school playground.  This can cause problems for children who are socially awkward for any of a number of reasons, and realistically speaking, the overwhelming majority of children will have some reason to feel awkward in some way.  Often this manifests itself either in a child feeling left out because of some immutable or difficult-to-change trait, feeling uncomfortable doing something because the other children he wanted to play with were doing it, or getting into trouble because the kids he was playing with did so.  It’s understandable that parents would want to try to shore up a child’s self-confidence and encourage him to feel comfortable “being himself,” and it is not wrong to tell a child that confidence is an attractive trait.

Image inset: And yet they can.  And they will.

What IS wrong is the blanket statement “just be yourself and he/she/they will like you.”  The problem with this is that when stated as this broad of a catchall, it is patently untrue.  Some personalities and interests just do not mesh.  You can be the nicest person in the world and if you like to stay home and read and play video games you’re probably not going to be best friends with the kid who likes to go to her grandparents’ farm and go hiking.  Note that I say “probably,” there are definitely exceptions–but the blanket statement does not countenance exceptions, much less being the exception.  Likewise you can have similar interests to another person but if she’s a self-obsessed jerk then all the common ground in the world is probably not going to result in a good relationship.

The biggest problem with this lie is that it is often pitched and heard as “be yourself and the person who you want to like you will like you,” whereas the real truth is “be yourself and the kind of people who you will want to be around will like you.”  In reality, “being yourself” and letting your proverbial freak flag fly is at least as likely to drive away the kid who has the shiny new toy you want to play with or the girl who you’re just dying to take to prom as it is to get them to sit down at your table.  But the hard reality is that not everyone who you like is going to like you back, and not everyone who you want to spend your time with is going to want to spend time with you.  In fact, chances are that asserting your individuality will drive away more people than you’ll attract, which also very likely includes the people you’re aiming to befriend–if “being yourself” was going to do it, chances are they’d already be your friends.  The danger of this lie is that telling a child to “be himself” in the hopes that he’ll draw the attention of the people he wants to be friends with is that when doing so backfires the lesson he learns is that “I need to pretend to like horses next time if I want the pretty girl to sit beside me.”  His individuality and self-confidence take a major hit.

Image inset: Reality.

And of course there is an important subset of people for whom this statement is dangerous because “being themselves” is not something that ought to be encouraged.  To put it simply, before you give someone the freedom and support to completely be themselves, it’s wise to make sure they’re not a complete jerk.  The hard truth is that some people even as children are proto-sociopathic dickbags for whom “being yourself” means growing into a narcissistic loner as the rest of humanity never fails to disappoint them.  In which case such people probably have a bright future as Twitter trolls, Facebook junkies, and food bloggers, where their ego can be fed and stroked and their appetite for being nasty and condescending can be sated without ever having to deal with real people in meatspace.

As a final note, I want to be 100% clear that I am NOT suggesting it is bad in any way to teach children to be themselves and to instill self-confidence in them.  What I am saying is that it is harmfully dishonest to teach kids that this is the solution when they want other kids to be their friends.  Be yourself and the friends will come, or they won’t, but either way there’s no other way to live.

Tune in next week for another lie.

The Merrick Garland fantasy

On Monday, President Trump is (at least tentatively) supposed to announce who his pick to replace Justice Kennedy on the Supreme Court will be.  Several names have been batted around and their character and pasts smeared as expected.  It must suck for these people to wind themselves up thinking every single person that President Trump or any Republican president appoints to pretty much any position is an incompetent cultist out to feast on the brains of brown people and nationalize women’s bodies.  Must be exhausting.  Of course their attention spans are so short that they don’t remember this is the same fit they’ve been throwing since the 1980s at least, and yet four Republican presidencies later none of their bogeymen have turned out to be anything like their dire predictions.  Which is kind of why people are tuning them out.

This time around the Democrats are taking a somewhat different tack.  In addition to their usual predictions of doom and disaster if the President attempts to appoint a justice who doesn’t think killing babies is super awesome and the disgustingly contrived precedents of Roe and Casey are cast in stone, they have also been loudly leaning on President Trump to name one person in particular: Merrick Garland, the nominee who the Republican Senate “stole a seat” on the Supreme Court from.  We’re not going to rehash the “Biden rule” here today nor how the Democrats nuked the filibuster to stack the federal courts and bragged they’d do it again under Dr. Pantsuit, except to remind you that no, children, nobody “stole” anything.  We’ll get into that a little more in a minute.

Chucky Schumer reportedly called President Trump directly to urge him to nominate Garland as a move for “unity.”  So the first part of the Merrick Garland fantasy is that this would in any way achieve any sort of “unity” with the lunatic left.  It won’t.  Nothing will.  Nor should it.  The core of La Resistance will not be satisfied even if President Trump takes the podium Monday, announces he’s nominating Adam “Pencilneck” Schiff to the open seat, further announces he’s already fired Mike Pence and appointed Dr. Pantsuit in his place, then kneels down and orders his Secret Service detail to shoot him in the head.  La Resistance would still wail for years about how this just proved how guilty he was and that he should have done it eighteen months earlier and so should all his supporters.  The very suggestion that any action that President Trump could take would make him less deplorable in the eyes of the insane left is laughable.

But that’s a more generalized principle that applies to practically any move the president has taken or could take, and in all honesty I think he knows it and makes his moves accordingly.  Where Merrick Garland is concerned, however, there’s a fairy tale concocted just for him, and that’s the idea that there was any possible way he would be appointed to the Supreme Court.  The truth is, no matter what happened, Merrick Garland was never meant to take Justice Scalia’s seat, and his nomination was doomed from the beginning.  He was nothing more than an election year football and an attempt to defuse or even flip an issue that the Democrats know damned well guides millions of evangelical voters.

There were two ways this could pan out.  The first was the way it actually went, which I honestly don’t think Whatshisname and the Democrats expected to happen, and that was for the Senate GOP to find a spine, cite to Gropey Uncle Joe Biden’s own rule, and make a goal-line stand against even holding confirmation hearings.  Even if this unforeseen outcome took place, the Democrats bet that they could use it to rile up their base with this silly notion of a “stolen” Supreme Court seat and maybe even sway a handful of normals along the way.  In the final analysis it didn’t seem to work out that way, but hey, what did they have to lose?  Throw up a name the GOP won’t get behind, try to paint him as a “moderate” and thereby smear the Senate Republicans as “extremists” and “obstructionists,” all the while knowing the nomination isn’t going to go anywhere?  It was an election year and this issue was just begging to be exploited.  So what if it meant Garland wasn’t a serious candidate?

The other possible outcome was what I think the Democrats were expecting and hoping for, that Mitch McConnell and the heretofore named “Surrender Caucus” would buckle to pressure and the relentless “Do Your Job” hashtag campaign and allow Garland’s nomination to advance at least as far as debate…at which point I firmly believe that for some reason, contrived or otherwise, Merrick Garland would withdraw his name from consideration and step aside.  Because at that point his mission would have been accomplished.  The GOP would have drawn a line in the sand (one which I have said, if they only picked one place to stand their ground, this was it) and capitulated yet again on an issue that even Trump skeptics were planning to vote for him and their less-than-impressive GOP senators for.  This would have served the dual purpose of letting a lot of the air out of GOP enthusiasm AND eating up time to get closer to the election.  A major surrender like this on the last march could have been gamechanging not just for the Senate but also in the presidential election itself.

The point here is that in either of these scenarios, Merrick Garland was never actually meant to be appointed.  If Dr. Pantsuit had won, as the Democrats were convinced she would, regardless of whether they also controlled the Senate (as they were also convinced they would), Garland wasn’t getting his nomination renewed.  Forget that.  I guarantee you Dr. Pantsuit’s short list consisted of party loyalists and lunatic hard lefties and would not have been surprised in the least if her top three picks were Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, and Whatshisname himself in no particular order.  A popular theory is that in the infamous tarmac meeting between Lynch and Billy Jeff, where they supposedly caught up on old times and talked about grandchildren, Lynch was promised a seat on the Supreme Court in exchange for helping the Pantsuit investigations go away.  I’m not endorsing that theory because I honestly think her first pick would have been our esteemed constitutional law scholar ex-president.  Thankfully we’ll never know, but what we do know is that Garland was never anything but a red herring.  Schumer trying to make him happen now really shows how little the Democrats have left in the tank.

Fun fact in closing: Justice Kennedy was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Reagan for a seat that, initially, Reagan wanted to appoint the incredibly brilliant and eminently qualified Judge Robert Bork to.  Bork, of course, was the first Supreme Court nominee who got stonewalled by the opposition party in the Senate due to an orchestrated smear campaign centered on his opposition to Roe v. Wade–a tactic that feminist harpies would come to refer to in later years as “Borking.”  His nomination was defeated and Justice Kennedy, who ended up being a moderate, took the seat.  Judge Bork passed away in 2012, while the Democrats still controlled both the White House and the Senate.  Meaning that the Democrats could have appointed Garland or whoever they wanted to this seat if they hadn’t stolen it from Judge Bork in the first place.

The Smashed Banana, issue #2

U.S. News
Justice Kennedy announces retirement, secret identity

Washington D.C.–Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy rocked the political world this week when he announced that he would be retiring from his position as Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court in the next few weeks.  He also shook the world of vigilante crime fighting to its foundations when he revealed his secret identity in the same letter.

“It has been the honor of my life to serve in this position,” read Justice Kennedy’s notice of resignation. “Also, it is time that the world knew the truth.  I am Batman.”

Reactions to both announcements have been understandably mixed.

“At his age I can certainly understand wanting to spend the rest of his days out of the public eye, and with a Republican president and Senate he can safely do that,” said David Carroll, 42, a D.C. area paralegal.  “And really, I’m sure chasing crooks and supervillains takes a toll on your knees.  Hell, I’m half his age and I dread even the thought of stairs, much less scaling a building using a grappling hook.”

“I can’t believe this, it’s totally irresponsible.  What will we do without our precious crucial swing vote that legalized gay marriage and made sure to rub it right in the faces of Christian conservatives?!  How can he just GIVE that seat to President Trump after we rightfully stole it from Robert Bork?!” said Aya Linwood, a 23 year old law student at the University of Virginia.  “And who’s going to protect Gotham from the Joker’s toxic masculinity?  Who’s going to empower Selina Kyle by letting her save him from some ridiculously contrived supervillain trap?”

“Oh God,” Linwood exclaimed a moment later, “…does this mean President Trump will be appointing a new Batman too?”

At present, Justice Kennedy’s plans for his retirement are unspecified, although a spokesman said he intends to live a quiet life at his family’s estate, spend sleepless nights staring at an illuminated plexiglass case containing his judicial robes, and do literally anything other than secretly train his replacement.

Photo inset: Left, Justice Anthony Kennedy.  Right, also Justice Anthony Kennedy.

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Supreme Court upholds travel ban in seven-word opinion

Washington, D.C.–In a devastating and yet painfully obvious blow to opponents of President Trump, the Supreme Court held that the so-called “Muslim Ban” imposed by President Trump in the early days of his administration was Constitutionally legal in a strikingly brief opinion.

Penned by Justice Samuel Alito, the succinct opinion read as follows. “Of course it’s legal. Learn to read.”

Chief Justice John Roberts was a bit more verbose in his concurrence. “Look idiots, it’s right there in the Constitution that the president has the power to do stuff like this. Good gravy, the stuff you people fuss about sometimes is just ludicrous. No wonder Tony’s peace-outing this gig.”

“I mean even if it was a Muslim ban it really sucks at it anyway,” Roberts continued. “Like, 92% of the Muslims in the world wouldn’t even notice. One of the countries on the ban list is freaking North Korea, in case you haven’t noticed. They’re just loaded with Muslims, don’t ya know.”

Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurrence was a great deal more terse, consisting of just one word: “Duh.”

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the dissenters, wrote a similarly short rebuttal.

“Nuh uhhhhh!” was joined in by Justices Sotomayor and Breyer. Justice Ginsburg was thought to be holding her breath in protest of the decision until Supreme Court staff remembered she no longer requires oxygen.

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Nation breathes a sigh of relief as “Pride Month” ends

Columbus, OH–After a month of incessant rainbow flags, endless virtue signalling by confused teenagers and aging hippies, and parades by men in tutus and purple-mohawked women with beards, the country took a moment to pause in appreciation of the fact that “Pride Month” is finally over.

“Oh thank God it’s over,” said Myrna Hasselbeck, 38, a local homemaker. “I really didn’t mind all the rainbows on everything and I figured the hair dye was just the kids’ way of expressing themselves, but you know, there are some subjects you just don’t need to bring up in front of six year olds, much less march down the middle of main street about.”

“I mean, okay, you can get married now, you won,” Hasselbeck added.

“I don’t have the first problem with equality,” said Gregory Steele, 27, a Columbus area electrician. “That’s not it at all. I just really do not give a flying care who you want to screw and how. I like laying women, I don’t go out and demand a freaking medal for it.”

“Where I drew the line was when they decided every day of the month had to be to recognize a particular gender or identity or, whatever,” said Jennifer Hart, 30, a local secretary. “I actually tried to keep up for the first week but really, I still don’t know what all the letters in LGBTQIAAP stand for. No, please don’t tell me, they’ll just change it again anyway. At least now I can pretend to care about something else.”

“I’m just glad it’s finally July and we can get ready for some fireworks and barbecue,” Steele commented. “June is totally gay now.”

 

2018, The Smashed Banana.  If you peel us and we’re red, it means we’re fake news.

Lies we tell children, chapter #1

Society is run on pithy sayings.  As important as individual words are to the communication of ideas and the preservation of truths, little bite-sized truisms told to children and repeated by adults take on the same kind of absolute and unquestioned authority.  The problem with that is that very often, these little bits of supposed “wisdom” that are widely accepted on faith are half-truths at best and outright lies at worst.

This series will highlight some of what I consider to be the worst offenders, things that we’ve all been told since childhood and many people never question, but when subjected to sober scrutiny do not hold up.  As I said a few posts back when I announced this new series, I don’t know how long it will go on since I don’t have as much starting material as I did when I started Well Behaved Women or Words That Leftists Should Not Use, but we’ll see what happens.

The first lie we will discuss is the timeworn metaphor “you can’t judge a book by its cover.”  This is of course a favorite foundation block for the tolerance uber alles crowd, talking more about prejudice and stereotyping than it is about literature.  The point it tries to make and that is ingrained in young kids is that it’s incorrect and therefore wrong to make determinations about a person solely because of their outward appearance, which of course includes grievance group identification like race and gender and age but also can include things like clothes, jewelry, mannerisms, any number of “body modifications,” and so on.  Children are urged to “get to know who the person is on the inside” rather than judge them based on appearance.

Except there’s one big problem with this, and that is the fact that the cover of a book does in fact tell you almost everything you need to know about it.  If you were to go into a bookstore looking for a compilation of Churchill’s speeches, or for an annotated collection of Shakespeare’s plays, or for the Kama Sutra, or for Dr. Pantsuit’s latest straight-to-bargain-bin piece of ghostwritten fluffery, you wouldn’t stop to pick up a book that looks like this:

Unless you suddenly developed a craving for fondue or red velvet cake, that is.  But just looking at this front cover, you know the subject of the book, you know who wrote it (or in this case which company or organization promotes it), you know the publisher, and you can even see that the kind of recipes you’re likely to find on the inside are going to be showy make-this-stuff-to-entertain dishes.  Not many people sit down at their computer desks to munch on crackers and cheese and take the time to artistically arrange the olives after all.  Nevermind that if you needed more information, you also have the back cover of the book to consider, which usually gives a content or plot synopsis.  You most definitely CAN judge a book by its cover almost all the time.

Photo: Well, it was still true…

In the same vein, you most often CAN judge people by appearances, which is why whether any open-minded and tolerant parent likes it or not, people WILL judge your children by their appearance.  Again, this includes but is not limited to whatever racial or gender or other grievance group you may obviously belong to.  People will expect you to respond in certain ways based upon these factors because stereotypes don’t just grow on trees.  What’s more important is they will also make certain other judgments of you based on the way you have chosen to present yourself.  If you’re dressed up in a suit and tie or a skirt and heels with a clean-cut hairstyle and an approachable smile, you’re going to get a much different response than a person with sleeve tattoos, green and pink hair, holes in his ears the size of D cell batteries, or more metal in her face than in an average used car dealership, paired up with a “don’t talk to me” slouch and a sneer that could melt paint.  And you will be judged that way because chances are 95% or higher that any such judgments will be accurate.  As I have said before, time is a precious commodity, and frankly no one has the time to read through every book that says “I’m a cookbook” in bold block letters on its cover to find the one that might have winning lottery numbers or naked pictures of Madonna on page 136.

If you take issue with that, then maybe you ought to try to do something about the stereotype rather than pretending it doesn’t exist or that other people are wrong for noticing.  Either that, or you’re going to have to do something to promote your own book to make it more marketable, whether that’s making some changes to the cover or just engaging in some good PR.

Stop by again next week when we’ll be talking about another lie we tell kids.