First Draft

Elections, Fog Of History, Lost Cause, Shapiro, Stupid Republican Tricks

A Rich Man’s War But A Poor Man’s Fight

I’m a Civil War buff.

No, I’m not one of those re-enactors who take a perfectly good summer weekend and ruin it by dressing in wool suits and running around playing good guy vs. bad guy (and take your choice which side is which).

As a matter of fact I’m not terribly interested in battles fought on muddy fields or “gallantly” charging men storming up a hill that will never be forgotten till after the test. I learned all that in both high school and college American history classes.

I’m more interested in what is so lightly if ever taught at any level of American education, the politics of the Civil War. Oh yeah, plenty is talked about the politics of the pre Civil War era, the Missouri Compromise, the Dred Scott decision, the election of 1860, but so little is taught of what was going on politically during the fighting. Movies like LINCOLN and GANGS OF NEW YORK have highlighted the political machinations behind the passage of the 13th Amendment or what led to the New York City Draft Riots, but as a rule the American educational system has chucked out the political portion of the narrative or at least kicked it down the road to only those truly interested in an Masters or PhD in 19th Century American History.

It’s a shame, because if they taught the politics at least on the high school level then this whole cult of The Lost Cause would go up in smoke.

I get amused when some Southern boy clutching the Stars and Bars flag goes on about how “they” are trying to cancel his heritage. I want to ask him, which heritage are you speaking of? Can you trace your lineage back to plantation owners? Well then your heritage is one of the certainty of the righteous belief in the concept of one group of people holding as property another. Do you still believe that?

And if your heritage search gets you only to a white planter living a subsistence existence on a small farm you might be interested to know that most of those folks not only were against leaving the union, they were against slavery. They thought it was unfair they had to compete with giant factory farms who didn’t have the debit line on their balance sheets for wages.

In fact it is estimated that somewhere between 75 and 90 percent of the white male heads of households (i.e. those who could vote) in the slave states held no slaves. Unfortunately it’s also shown that somewhere between 75 and 90 percent of those states’ legislators were slave owners. To ensure themselves of that proportion they rigged elections, making it hard if not impossible for poor whites to vote (sound familiar?) and if they did vote just plain out chucking any ballot not in their favor. This is where poll taxes and literacy tests first came about. It’s also where the fine art of voter intimidation was perfected. Vote to stay in the Union and you might find yourself at the wrong end of the whipping post. Or the hanging tree.

Too bad there wasn’t a 19th Century equivalent of Stacey Abrams to help them out. So many of them, their sons, their brothers, and their friends could have been spared a horrible battlefield death.

Jun 07 2021

Cassandra, Congress, Elections, Political Crack, So Called Liberal Media

Well I got nothin’ ‘gainst the press/They wouldn’t print it if it wasn’t true

After a few weeks of relative quiet, The Senator You Love To Hate ™, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, was back on Sunday with a new op ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail. It spawned a bunch of trending social media hashtags, the expected negative responses from the usual suspects, and a few people asking me if I was going to write about it, lol. I guess I’ve found my branding angle.

So I pulled the op ed up on my laptop and read it with great anticipation—it made so many people angry that it MUST have something new and incendiary in it, right? Nope. It’s the same stuff he’s been saying since March, when the House Passed H1, the For The People Act.

Partisan voting laws engender mistrust? Check.
He won’t vote to abolish the filibuster? Check.
Let’s pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act? Check.

First, let me say that I have been calling Manchin’s office on a weekly basis to say that he should support voting rights, equal rights, a big infrastructure package, raising corporate tax rates, and that he should vote at least to bring back the talking filibuster. I’m in favor of keeping the filibuster with some significant changes because it is a powerful tool for a minority with party discipline.

I also think Manchin has a good point about the deleterious effect of one-party election lawmaking, and I’m fully aware that the laws the Democrats want to implement are good laws. But the country right now is a powder keg, and ripe for violence. Right wingers have already shown they are open to using violence to overturn a lawful election.

Although I suspect most of the Republicans who tell pollsters that Joe Biden isn’t a legitimate president are just being jerks, there is still a significant number of people who believe that who are armed and who have no regard for laws. And I’d also listen to what a Democratic senator in a heavily trumpian state has to say about how to communicate effectively about election legitimacy.

But the thing that has gone unnoticed, after being brought up in March after the House passed HR1, is that the FTPA was dead in the Senate back then. It’s not just Joe Manchin who has issues with the bill as a whole and so it was never going to pass with zero changes.

One group that has objected to the current version of the FTPA is state election directors.

“Listen, I’ll do this—if the law passes, I’ll follow it,” said one state-level Democratic election director in the southeast who declined to be named. “But I can’t guarantee it’s not going to be a total clusterfuck the first election.”

The sections of the bill related to voting systems—wholly separate from its provisions on voting rights—show remarkably little understanding of the problems the authors apply alarmingly prescriptive solutions to. Many of the changes the bill demands of election administrators are literally impossible to implement. Others would significantly raise the cost of elections but provide no assured long-term funding.

This was news to me because the news media is generally too lazy to delve into things like this that aren’t as click-baity as “JOE MANCHIN BAD!!!”.

And there are cowardly Senate Democrats who oppose parts of the bill but insist on secrecy regarding their identities:

The most visible hurdle to date is the apparent opposition of Mr. Manchin, who said last week that he opposed allowing the federal government to wade into election law, which is typically left to the states. He signaled that he would be unwilling to vote for any elections bill that was not bipartisan, much less provide the 50th vote needed to change the Senate rules to get past an all-but-certain Republican filibuster….

Behind the scenes, two election lawyers close to the White House and congressional Democrats said Mr. Manchin was not the only one on their side with reservations about the measure. They insisted on anonymity to discuss the concerns because few Democrats want to concede that there are cracks in the coalition backing the measure or incur the wrath of the legion of liberal advocacy groups that have made its enactment their top priority.

And there is a group of senators who agree with Manchin that the best approach right now is the push for passage of the John Lewis Voting Right Advancement Act. Funny how that’s not being tweeted to the skies, huh? Who are these senators? As it turns out, members of the Congressional Black Caucus have expressed some reservations about the feasibility of passing the FTPA:

The massive election reform measure known as H.R. 1 passed the House last month, but it has yet to win unified support from the 50-member Senate Democratic caucus amid a fierce GOP pushback effort that casts it as an aggressive consolidation of political power. With that Senate logjam in mind, a group of Black Democrats is pressing to elevate a more targeted voting rights bill — named for and championed by the late Rep. John Lewis — that they believe could be a more successful sell on Capitol Hill.

I want to make it very clear that I fully support the goals of HR/S1, and that while I think that in skillful hands the filibuster can be used to fight off bad laws it still needs to go. Providing context for an issue isn’t endorsing a position, it’s helping to create informed discussion.

If only the voting rights obstacle we are facing were as simple as what the media is feeding us–“Joe Manchin is bad”—because that could be remedied with a stick and a bunch of carrots.

Instead it’s much more complicated: lawmakers are writing laws without input from election experts, moderate Democratic senators are afraid to stick out their necks, the House bill is way beyond what is feasible in the current political climate, and the media is more interested in quick click bucks than in presenting the actual context.

It’s clear something has to change. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said he will put S1 to a vote this week. We’ll see if that happens.

Jun 04 2021

3 Comments

Congress, COVID-19, Current Affairs, Economy, Education, Elections, Law/Justice, Random Ruminations, Sexism, Shapiro

The Friday Fishwrap

Once upon a time there was a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle (that was a newspaper) named Herb Caen. His column ran in the paper six days a week, but his Friday column was called the Friday Fishwrap. A convenient reminder that that morning’s paper would be used in the evening to wrap up and dispose of the remains of the no meat on Fridays throw aways. Thus he filled the column with throw away items, thoughts, flotsam and jetsam.

In his honor I’m going to try that today.

The Democrats missed an opportunity last week with the 1/6 investigation vote in the Senate. They should have let the Repugnicants filibuster, really filibuster, the Jimmy Stewart in MR SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON type filibuster, where all work in government comes to a stop. The public would have gotten a look at what the filibuster really is. Then the Dems could have gone on a media blitz tearing up the Repugnicants for bringing the federal government to that halt. It could have built a groundswell of support into a tsunami of criticism, the kind of criticism that would prevent the Repugs from trying to filibuster the For The People Act or the Infrastructure Plan.

On HBO Max right now is a film of the play OSLO. It’s about the back channel negotiations that led to the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993 between Israel and the PLO. The key takeaway from the film is that the Norwegians who acted as facilitators between the two parties insisted that each day when the meeting ended all the participants would then sit down and have dinner and drinks together and talk only of their families and friends. In other words humanizing each side to the other. If the Israelis and the Palestinians can do that, surely those of us on the left can have a meal with those on the right.

The San Jose rail system is still down, a week after the proverbial disgruntled worker killed nine. The reason? He had planted bombs at his house and bomb making materials were found in his locker at the yard. The VTA is taking no chances and methodically going through everything looking for explosive material. Maybe if they had combed his employment record as keenly as this, nine of his fellow workers would be alive today. Just saying.

The Army won’t investigate Herr Obermeister Flynn’s comments on the appropriateness of a “Myanmar style coup” here in the country all members of the armed forces swear an allegiance to protect. They say it’s because they never investigate retired officers. OK then, call him back to duty and court martial his ass for insubordination, treason, and any other crime you can think of that he’s committed.

There’s an old saying in politics: If you’ve got the votes, call the roll. Gavin Newsom has the votes to overcome this insipid recall vote so it looks like we will have the election in early September. Once that is finished, can we please talk about making it more difficult to qualify a recall vote? Ten percent of the electorate should not have the power to force a wasteful and unnecessary recall election.

More after the break

May 25 2021

Congress, Current Affairs, Elections, Fog Of History, Shapiro, Stupid Republican Tricks, Web/Tech

A Postcard From Out Of The Past

Have you ever said something and wished you hadn’t?

If you’re married it’s probably a daily occurrence.

We’ve all done it. That cutting jab about the boss’s wife when she’s standing behind you at the office Christmas party. The letter to the editor excoriating the town council for a particular decision before realizing that policy is actually going to benefit yourself. The admiration for a band based on the only listenable song on an album.

Now-a-days we have Twitter to thank for being a repository of an entire lifetime’s supply of regrettable statements or opinions long since repudiated. With Twitter though even removing such thoughts doesn’t prevent them from reappearing years later. Someone somewhere will have cataloged and archived your appreciation for CATS The Movie.

A 22 year old Jewish woman named Emily Wilder finds herself pursed by the ghosts of Tweets past. Ms. Wilder was a student at Stanford University where she wrote for the school newspaper, got good grades, put out an occasional Tweet filled with the passion that only a college student can exert, and also was a Middle East peace activist often taking the side of Palestinians. She was in particular involved in the Return The Birthright movement.

Birthright is a program by which young American Jews are given a free trip to Israel to experience the uniqueness of a country where they are in the majority. I always thought it was a great program till I found out that it’s major funder was Sheldon Adelson of Las Vegas Republican infamy and that once students arrive in Israel the program heavily slanted the experience away from anything having to do with those folks in Gaza, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank.

Returning to Ms. Wilder, a group of students calling themselves the Stanford College Republicans decided to go on a Twitter rant about her because, heaven forbid, she got a job with the Associated Press as a junior reporter. If we’re going to be honest calling her position reporting is a stretch. She was so far down the food chain microbes fed off her. Over a year removed from having graduated from Stanford, this group for some reason thought it was appropriate to rage against her.

Then again they seem to be one of those conservative college groups that feels no matter how much privilege they have it’s not enough. Here is the opening of their mission statement:

Against the backdrop of the pernicious leftist assault on our liberty and the moral fabric of our nation, challenging the left’s monopoly over American campus politics by exposing students to conservatism is crucial for the survival of conservatism in coming decades.

Um right, leftists are in control of Stanford. The Stanford that is home to Billionaire’s Corner where all the computer science buildings are. The Stanford that is home to the Hoover Institute. The Stanford whose endowment was doubled by demanding a cut of Google’s profits since the original search engine was developed using their computer network.

Yeah, it’s a real hot bed of liberalism.

Nevertheless an enraged group of incels, er, I mean, conservative students thought there was no way anyone with an activist pedigree could ever be impartial in her coverage of…um, hold on let me check what she was assigned to cover…oh yes, local Phoenix area goings on. That’s right, she wasn’t the AP Jerusalem bureau chief or even a reporter there or even a full fledged reporter anywhere but in the suburbs of the American southwest. She had about as much to do with AP’s coverage of the Middle East as the janitor in the chemistry building on campus.

May 24 2021

3 Comments

Elections, Free Republic, The Darnold, Tommy T

Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with the Freeperati – old gold edition

Not much new in Freeperville this week, kiddies, so let’s look at some stuff from a few weeks ago, shall we?

First up – It’s gonna be YUGE!

‘It’s All Gonna Come Out’: Bannon Drops Major News About Election Case
Conservative Brief ^ | 5/10 | Carmine Sabia

Posted on 5/10/2021, 12:39:23 PM by TrumpianRepublican

Former White House adviser Steve Bannon revealed some massive news on Monday about Rudy Giuliani and his upcoming efforts.

During a segment on his podcast War Room, Bannon said it is “not by accident” that the deep state announced a probe on Giuliani for “FARA violations just as the investigations into the theft of the 2020 election are about to hit pay dirt.”

1 posted on 5/10/2021, 12:39:23 PM by TrumpianRepublican

When you think you’ve hit “pay dirt”, but you’ve actually just hit a septic tank….of course, when you go to the toilet, you usually hope “it’s all gonna come out”.

To: TrumpianRepublican

yeah……yeah…….yeah……

4 posted on 5/10/2021, 12:41:34 PM by wny ( )

They hate you, yeah yeah yeah!

To: TrumpianRepublican

I have nothing against Bannon specifically, but I’m tired of having my chain jerked with more “now its all gonna come out” or “this is where it all collapses” type statements.

5 posted on 5/10/2021, 12:42:03 PM by PGR88

The only thing more entertaining than a Trump-humper being convinced that The Darnold is going to be put in office is a Trump-humper tired of having his chain yanked about it. Never gets old.

To: TrumpianRepublican

it didn’t all come out the last time he said it was about to all come out. I think it probably all stays in.

7 posted on 5/10/2021, 12:43:18 PM by JohnBrowdie

Heh.

To: PGR88

Yep. “Once one falls, they all fall” and “This is huge” is getting old.

8 posted on 5/10/2021, 12:46:12 PM by albie

Not for me, angel drawers – not for me. Keep slipping on that banana peel forever and ever.

To: TrumpianRepublican

Suicide watch for Bannon.

22 posted on 5/10/2021, 12:58:34 PM by Vaquero ( Don’t pick a fight with an old guy. If he is too old to fight, he’ll just kill you. )

I’m on it!

To: TrumpianRepublican

24 posted on 5/10/2021, 12:58:53 PM by Sans-Culotte (11/3-11/4/2020 – The USA became a banana republic.)

Dude – dud.

To: TrumpianRepublican

This hearkens back to Hannity’s “bombshells”. Tick tock.I’m bombshelled out with anemic “revelations”.

26 posted on 5/10/2021, 12:59:20 PM by Governor Dinwiddie (Working like Crazy to support the Lazy.)

To: TrumpianRepublican

Jim, please change this website to FEyore Republic.

32 posted on 5/10/2021, 1:02:17 PM by bray (Hating Whites is racist)

If only….

To: TrumpianRepublican

“Trust the plan” – “Q”Lmao!!!!!

36 posted on 5/10/2021, 1:13:11 PM by dware (Americans prefer peaceful slavery over dangerous freedom)

And, of course….

To: TrumpianRepublican

Free beer tomorrow…

56 posted on 5/10/2021, 1:55:26 PM by gov_bean_ counter (Lift the rim. You’re not that good a shot.)

More old stuff below the folderino.

Tagged Clown shoes, Free Republic, Freeperati, Freepers, Freeperville, Right-wing nutcases, The Darnold, the stupid it burns, Tommy T, Wingnuts

May 18 2021

4 Comments

Congress, Current Affairs, Elections, Shapiro, Stupid Republican Tricks

A Postcard From Your Census Taker

Question #1 was all that mattered. All else was elaboration.

Greetings!

So last year, 2020 in case you forgot, with nothing else to do because the pandemic had cancelled all my regular work and with a desire to do what small part I could to help our country, I agreed to work for the US Census Bureau as a Census Enumerator. That means I, like thousands of others across the country, would go out to the homes of people who had not sent back the Census form delivered to them in the mail or hadn’t gone online to the Census website to fill out the form and get the information needed.

From my experience I’ve got one thing to say about the results of the 2020 Census:

It’s wrong.

It’s wrong because there was no way this census, under these circumstances, could be right. The circumstances I mean were not just those emblematic of the pandemic but the ones that were deliberately installed in order to insure a miscounting of the American population.

And imagine that, the results come in and major blue states lost congressional seats while major red states gained seats. That is not the end result of migratory patterns of older citizens moving to warmer climes or younger ones moving to find new work opportunities. That is the end result of a deliberate misuse of the system by one political party in it’s never ending attempts to game the system in order to win elections and control the federal government.

The census should have been put off till the pandemic was over. Yes I know, the census is written into the Constitution and not doing it in 2020 might have brought on, well let’s call it a constitutional contretemps, I don’t think it would have qualified as a crisis. Here it is in black and white, figuratively and literally from Article One, Section Two:

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting
of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to choose three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight,
Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

If the timing would have been constitutionally suspect my reply would be that in the same paragraph enumerating the every ten years it also says to only count free persons, no Native Americans, and all other persons (in other words black slaves) as three fifths. The 14th amendment did away with the three fifths, but kept the no Native Americans. Yet we now count Native Americans because of a 1940 decision by the Census Bureau to include them. If the Bureau could do that in 1940 they certainly could have done away this one time with a dictate as to the count being every ten years.

I’d also point out that if we stuck to the one representative for every 30,000 people Congress would currently have nearly 11,000 members. Rhode Island and Providence Plantations alone would have 35 representatives.

May 17 2021

1 Comment

Elections, Free Republic, Q, Tommy T

Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with the Freeperati – Morning Wood edition

Morning, everyone! Let’s check in on the deputy Kraken, shall we?

Lin Wood: Trump has secret military backchannel to authorize nuclear strikes
droolindog.net ^ | May 12, 2021 | David Edwards

Posted on 5/13/2021, 12:00:19 AM by Eagle Forgotten

Election attorney Lin Wood claimed this week that former President Donald Trump maintains a secret backchannel to the U.S. military that allows him to order nuclear strikes.

Wood made the assertion during an event in Myrtle Beach, where he was campaigning to become the next South Carolina Republican Party chair. Video was later obtained by PatriotTakes.

“He won the election,” Wood said of Trump. “Donald J. Trump is still the guy the military will call for the code if they need a first strike. Joe Biden is not the president of the United States.”

*******************************************************************

Apparently, a site called Patriot Takes got a video, the info was picked up by RawStory and then by DroolinDog. I know RawStory is hard left; I never heard of the other two sites.But, regardless of the source, there’s a video. It sure seems that Wood is making this wild assertion about the military chain of command. I can’t imagine that the military would actually bypass Biden and phone up Trump for orders. I also can’t imagine how, even if that were true, Lin Wood would know it.

Go ahead, dump on RawStory all you want, but I think Lin Wood has just totally lost it.

1 posted on 5/13/2021, 12:00:19 AM by Eagle Forgotten

Analysis?

To: Eagle Forgotten

Lin Wood has just totally lost it.

Lin Wood is right on. 100%.

DJT signed the Insurrection Act on Jan 10 of this year. We all know the election was stolen, and Biden is, if anything, an illegitimate POTUS. Taking the oath of office is Treason. With the Insurrection Act, Civilian government is temporarily on hold. The military is in control. A covert operation is now engaged to restore the Constitutional Republic, from the current insurgency.

For details on the tasks that have been performed, are being performed, and will be performed to complete the transition and return to civilian control, see sections 11.3 and 11.4 of The DOD Law of War Manual:

ii FOREWORDThe law of war is of fundamental importance to the Armed Forces of the United States…

15 posted on 5/13/2021, 12:14:27 AM by C210N (“)

Well, you can’t spell “analysis” without “anal”…

To: C210N

Uh, no. That is nonsense and disinformation. Trump isn’t secretly running the military. No cavalry will riding into restore anything anytime soon. Trump is a private citizen residing in Florida with as much control over the U.S. military as a guy bagging groceries at a Wal-Mart in Cedar Rapids…

When SDNY gets through with him, he’s going to WISH he was a guy bagging groceries at a Walmart.

which is to say, none.

25 posted on 5/13/2021, 12:27:21 AM by irishjuggler

Woody pecker does still have some fanboys in Freeperville :

To: C210N

Yep. You got it.

This appears as a facet of Eisenhower standing orders kept out of view in the background.

Since that era there are whispers of a generation to generation contingent ready to activate to save the Republic no matter what circumstances emerge.

The Mission is to ensure the United States will never be conquered.

Insiders report all that has been revealed had to happen for ordinary Americans to understand the consequences of an attack from within. It is asserted there is simply no other way for people to become aware other than to directly witness history unfold before their eyes.

Those accusing Lin Wood of being ‘crazy’ conveniently ignore the ‘crazy’ history of 2020. If ‘crazy’ connotes “insane”. “sociopathic”, ‘bizarre’, ‘out of mind’ and so on, then Lin Wood is a model of mental fitness compared to the events of 2020 and the behaviors of so-called ‘elites’.

33 posted on 5/13/2021, 12:44:50 AM by Hostage (Article V)

Most of the Freepers, however, are of a different opinion :

To: Eagle Forgotten

fool.

2 posted on 5/13/2021, 12:02:19 AM by the_daug ( )

To: Eagle Forgotten

Guy is a kook or a saboteur or both.

6 posted on 5/13/2021, 12:05:50 AM by Williams (Stop Tolerating The Intolerant)

To: Eagle Forgotten

Umm no, Lin, no.

7 posted on 5/13/2021, 12:06:09 AM by cranked

To: Jonty30

“Lin Wood has been a consistent Democrat donor all his life. He is purposefully throwing conservative concerns into disrepute in order to make it impossible to challenge the Democrats.”
*********************************************************
Yep, Lin Wood is a DemocRAT serving as a saboteur. I think no one on our side believes his silliness except for the low-IQers and the most gullible in our ranks.

8 posted on 5/13/2021, 12:06:59 AM by House Atreides

Lin Wood is a nut job!

11 posted on 5/13/2021, 12:09:58 AM by Doofer (The Lockdowns Will Continue Until Your Morale Improves! )

To: Eagle Forgotten

lin wood didn’t lose it. he never had it. if you followed him breathlessly during the election aftermath debacle, you’re a fool. if you still follow him breathlessly, you’re clinical.

12 posted on 5/13/2021, 12:10:02 AM by JohnBrowdie

To: Aria

I paid attention to Lin Wood until he started telling people in GA not to vote GOP . . .

many people here on FR vociferously advocated the boycott, and defend their mindlessness to this day. the boycotters gave the senate to the democrats.

17 posted on 5/13/2021, 12:18:38 AM by JohnBrowdie

But – but – “Q” told them to!!

To: Eagle Forgotten

Lin Wood has lost his frikkin mind.

He had one to lose?

He lost Georgia for us, and now he’s trying to screw up South Carolina. If there was a stealth Manchurian Candidate in our ranks, it this guy.

The MSM pounces on the idiocy, and it sets us back.

22 posted on 5/13/2021, 12:24:03 AM by Fido969 ( Sc)

One Freeper addresses “C210N” directly :

To: C210N

you need counseling. lots of it. stat.

19 posted on 5/13/2021, 12:20:19 AM by JohnBrowdie

Now, where did i put that Freud meme?

Anyway, in response, “C210N” does the Big Reveal :

That’s not really Joe Biden in the White House – IT’S AN ACTOR!!!!

No, really.

Stop laughing.

STOP LAUGHING!!!

Continue reading for the undeniable proof.

Tagged Clown shoes, Free Republic, Freeperati, Freepers, Freeperville, Right-wing nutcases, the stupid it burns, Tommy T, Wingnuts

Feb 07 2021

Donald Trump Is, Elections, Shapiro, Television

Remembrance of Super Bowls Past

L if I know what happened to the Roman numerals.

So it’s Super Bowl Sunday, the official unofficial winter holiday of the USA and this year’s first crack at a super spreader event. It’s tempting to go on about The Kid versus The Old Man or the meaning of sports events at a time of limited fan participation, but I’d like to talk about television and Donald Trump.

What, more words?! Just stay with me.

In the before times I worked in the Hospitality Industry, specifically the Destination Management end of the Hospitality Industry. If those phrases don’t mean anything to you don’t worry. Most people’s eyes glaze over when I use them. Then I explain that it means I’m a tour guide for Northern California and I work primarily with large corporate groups who come in for meetings and “incentive” travel. Generally I then get a “oh cool, that sounds like a fun job” and I will nod and say it certainly is an interesting occupation.

I am an independent contractor. Since no one Destination Management company (DMC) could possibly have full time work for me and those like me we all end up working for many companies. Last year I listed 17 of them on my tax return. TurboTax nearly exploded entering in all that data. In any program there will be the Sponsoring Company (the company the attendees work for or the one footing the bill for the trip), the Client (a planning company hired by the sponsoring company), the local DMC (hired by the Client), and then me (hired by the DMC). I’m the low man on the totem pole, but just like the bottom face on the pole, it all falls over if I don’t do my job right. Part of doing my job right is blending into the background, not being noticeable until needed. Which means I get to hear a lot of conversation.

In 2016 the Super Bowl was held in San Francisco, by which I mean the game was played forty miles away at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara. Pretty much every attendee was staying in The City since pretty much all the parties were being held there. That week I worked for a DMC who had been hired by a Client who had been engaged by…. well let’s just say a major television network. It was my job to take care of many of the executives of that network, pick them up at the airport, get them to their hotels, to the dinners and parties they were invited to, get them to the game itself and back, then get them back to the airport on Monday morning.

Super Bowl week was the first week of February in 2016. Most of my charges were arriving on the heels of the Iowa Caucuses. I’m sure you’ll remember, and if you say you do there’s a 90% chance you’re lying, the winner of that bizarre Midwest beauty pageant that year was Ted Cruz. But nobody I was working with was talking about Ted Cruz.

Everyone was talking about Donald Trump. And ratings.

The Republican primary debates for that election cycle had been gangbusters for the television news divisions. TV ratings for primary debates usually are somewhere between depressing and drive an executive to suicide, but this year they had actually been decent. Every time Trump opened his mouth another bizarre utterance would emerge and the needle on the ratings meter would tick up another point. He had single handedly taken a moribund format full of arcane policy debates and stiff performances and turned it into must see TV. The ultimate reality show.

My executives were trying to figure out how long it was going to keep on going. They liked their ratings going up, they liked the extra dollars they could charge advertisers, and they knew that to keep it going they were going to have to keep Donald Trump in the race. People may not have wanted to vote for him, but they sure didn’t mind tuning in to see him talk about the size of his penis or a woman’s menstrual period.

But let me make this clear: Not a one of them thought he would win the nomination. Cruz or Marco Rubio, maybe Jeb Bush, were the consensus opinions. Even though Trump was the frontrunner they talked about how he had all the voters he was going to get and once the smaller fish got out of the way (remember there were another 14 vying for the nomination) all those votes would go to either Cruz, Bush, or Rubio leaving Trump a distant memory. It would have been their wet dream for Trump to win the nomination.

So there was a lot of conversation about how much airtime to give Trump both on the evening news and on the Sunday political shows. Right now it was easy, he was the frontrunner. Later on, when things were shaking out and one of the “real” candidates took over the lead, that was when they were going to have to get creative.

We know what happened. Television gave him lots of time. The more time television gave to Trump the more he won Republican voters over. In my opinion I think it was the fact that Cruz and Rubio and especially Jeb Bush were horrible candidates. They inspired nothing, they delivered nothing, and they always seemed afraid of saying something that would put them in the crosshairs of Trump’s vitriolic temper. Trump said ridiculous things and his opponents never fired back at him (a lesson Joe Biden learned from). Trump seemed to be unafraid of what the reaction would be. And if Republican voters were honest with themselves, they knew who ever was nominated was little more than a sacrificial lamb to be slaughtered by the Hillary juggernaut. Why not Trump, at least he was entertaining.

So now it’s four years later. News ratings are at an all time high. Even nontraditional news times have been given over to news. Remember soap operas? They’re pretty much gone, replaced with cheery light news shows because Erika versus Kendall can’t compete with Donald versus Bobby Three Sticks. Instead of sitting down to laugh at Archie Bunker, millions are sitting down to nod in agreement with Tucker Carlson (substitute Maude and Rachel Maddow if you like). Information flows on a constant basis, an addiction that needs to be fed. And take your choice, what version of reality do you want to hear? Conservatives opt for Fox, Liberals for MSNBC, moderates for CNN. Even the crazy QAnons have their own news channels if they can find them. Just sit your ass down in front of the tube and consume. Get angry if you want, the tube likes it when you’re angry cause you need to feed on that which makes you angry. It makes you bolder. You want to do something. You want to smash something. There’s a rally in DC and a march on the Capitol? Yes, feed me. Run through those gates, pound in the doors, search for the congresspeople who the tube has told you are bad. Have no fear, the great TV God Trump will protect you….

It was a great game. It got a 46 rating and a 72 share, one of the highest in Super Bowl history. Oh and the Broncos beat the Panthers.

Shapiro Out.

Dec 05 2020

1 Comment

Adrastos, Diary, Elections, Film, New Orleans, Odds & Sods, Political Crack, Sports, Television

Saturday Odds & Sods: Help On The Way

New York Movie by Edward Hopper.

It’s a been a cold week in New Orleans. Not Minnesota cold but our hundred-year-old raised house is designed to stay coolish in the pre-AC era, not stay warm in the winter. It’s drafty but we love it anyway.

It’s runoff election day in the Gret Stet of Louisiana. I discussed the DA’s race at Bayou Brief but there’s also a local ballot measure that would mess up our public library system, which is one of the few things that works well in New Orleans. I’m voting NO and if you’re in the Crescent City, you should too. If you don’t believe me, read this piece by my friend Kevin Allman.

This week’s theme song was written by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter for the Dead’s 1975 album, Blues For Allah. The attached instrumental Slipknot came out of a jam by the whole damn band.

I selected Help On The Way to remind our readers that the Trump regime will only be in power for 46 more days. Help is on the way, y’all.

What’s a Grateful Dead theme song without a live version? It’s not only helpful, it rolls away the dew too:

I’m in a helpful mood right now, so here are songs by The Beatles and Joni Mitchell that should help elevate your mood:

Now that I’ve extended a helping hand, let’s jump to the break.

Nov 09 2020

Elections, Free Republic, JOEY B SHARK, The Darnold, Tommy T

Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with the Freeperati – “This is the song that never ends” edition

Actually, I feel a bit like Brak : Pretty much burned out from watching too much news lately.

(If you missed Saturday’s Bonus “Obsession”, please click here for the fun and schaudenthingy.)

Good Monday morning, all! Remember Mittens’ loss to Barack Obama in 2012? The despair and hysteria among the Freeperati at the thought of being forced to have health insurance, and the realization that they had lost?

Go to the link above, if you will, and look at the quick progression along the Five Stages to Acceptance when Obama won.

It’s different this time.

Really different.

Weirdly different.

The cult has backed itself into a corner that has no exit. The Darnold said that he really won, and that Joe Biden cheated.

That Biden managed to fabricate 75 million votes, because of course he did.

Dr. Carrie Barron wrote, in Psychology Today:

“You might hear a tale of woe, and just have the feeling that the teller is not all that woeful. Maybe there is a need to blame or malign for secondary gain: attention, fame, money, importance or drama. Maybe the person is not in touch with reality and is retaliating against an imagined transgression. Some seemingly intact people can have paranoid fears at the core. In order to “defend” themselves, they act against others. Maybe the goal is to take someone else down for competitive, regressed, or even unconscious reasons. They just want what the other one has.”

And if someone you praise and support denies the cheating?

STFU, Bibi !

Netanyahu congratulates Biden

Arutz Sheva ^ | 8/11/20

Posted on 11/8/2020, 2:03:45 AM by Eleutheria5

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday morning congratulated Joe Biden after US news outlets declared him the winner of the election.

“Congratulations Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Joe, we’ve had a long & warm personal relationship for nearly 40 years, and I know you as a great friend of Israel. I look forward to working with both of you to further strengthen the special alliance between the U.S. and Israel,” he tweeted.

Netanyahu also thanked Trump for his friendship and actions taken during his presidency.

“Thank you Donald Trump for the friendship you have shown the state of Israel and me personally, for recognizing Jerusalem and the Golan, for standing up to Iran, for the historic peace accords and for bringing the American-Israeli alliance to unprecedented heights.”

********************

Outcome of election is still very much contested. So STFU, Bibi.

1 posted on 11/8/2020, 2:03:45 AM by Eleutheria5

To: Eleutheria5

Effing ingrate. No US President has EVER beeon(sic) a better friend to Israel. And this buttplug can’t wait to slide the knife in Trump’s ribs.

Lowlife move.

4 posted on 11/8/2020, 2:07:14 AM by DesertRhino (Dog is man’s best friend, and moslems hate dogs. Add that up. ….)

“A lot of you are in the real estate business, because I know you very well. You’re brutal killers, not nice people at all,” he said. “But you have to vote for me—you have no choice. You’re not gonna vote for Pocahontas, I can tell you that. You’re not gonna vote for the wealth tax. Yeah, let’s take 100% of your wealth away!”

The Darnold, addressing the Israeli American Council in 2019

To: Tommy Revolts

WTF? After Trump saved his ass! This won’t age well.Trump saved Bibi’s fat ass multiple times.

All Netanyahu had to do was say nothing. What a schmuck.

21 posted on 11/8/2020, 2:39:44 AM by Right_in_Virginia

There’s no need for that kind of language.

To: Eleutheria5

All world leaders throwing Trump under the bus .

43 posted on 11/8/2020, 3:35:55 AM by sushiman (i)

To: Eleutheria5

Effing piece of SH*T

50 posted on 11/8/2020, 4:05:19 AM by toddausauras (How far will the left go in terms of destroying our personal freedoms?)

Next in the trail of traitors – Et tu, Red State?

RedState sells out The Fop Posted on 11/7/2020, 2:55:04 PM by The Fop

After HotAir went over to the dark side over the past 4 years, I started reading RedState again and was pleased to see that Erick Erickson was no longer associated with them.

But ever since Wednesday morning, I’ve been keeping an eye on the tone of Conservative blogs.

RedState seemss(sic) quite calm and unperturbed by the steal. Yes, they’ve done some stories about alleged voter fraud, but their heart doesn’t seem to be very into it.

So far they have no stories about Giuliani’s press conference today. But they did have a story sticking up for Dan Crenshaw in his Twitter spat with new GOP congresswoman, who criticised his lack of fight.

Free Republic is for the people by the people. Nobody here trying to make a living in journalism. At this point, I don’t trust anybody in the political class, and that includes many blogger’s(sic) too.

1 posted on 11/7/2020, 2:55:04 PM by The Fop

And the hits just keep on coming….

…after the linky thing below, of course…

It’ll never match the Obama / Mittens thread from 2012, of course…

Tagged Clown shoes, Free Republic, Freeperati, Freepers, Freeperville, Right-wing nutcases, The Darnold, Tommy T, Wingnuts

Nov 07 2020

4 Comments

Elections, Free Republic, The Darnold, Tommy T

Today on Tommy T’s Obsession with the Freeperati – Throw Them a Bone Us edition

I got permission to go ahead and do a two parter. There’s just too much Schadenfreep for one post.

It’s not like they didn’t already know :

(from last Wednesday morning)

Trump Trailing in Michigan
https://www.foxnews.com/elections/2020/general-results ^ | 11/4/2020

Posted on 11/4/2020, 8:03:24 AM by Heff

Trump trailing by 3000 votes.

1 posted on 11/4/2020, 8:03:24 AM by Heff

Oh – I do so look forward to the slow disintegration of all their dreams of a permanent regime for The Darnold.
Let’s watch their hopes disintegrate in 1,500 fps frame rate, shall we?

To: Buttons12

That’s exactly right! The nonstop brainwashing via every part of our society is destroying any thought of real freedom.

Our young people are mostly leftist.

I always said Trump’s margins of victory in Michigan and Wisconsin were likely too slim to be repeated. I guess people are gullible and still listen to the media’s lies.

I think I’ll take my flag down and fold it up and put it away and sob a while.

I won’t be a slave to them. No way in hell. I’ll suicide out first.

277 posted on 11/4/2020, 11:08:22 AM by Vaden (First they came for the Confederates… Next they came for Washington… Then they came…)

Um – that was a little bit faster than I would have liked, but whatever….

To: Heff

It’s game over for America.

Forever.

8 posted on 11/4/2020, 8:06:49 AM by Scott from the Left Coast (Make Orwell Fiction Again

Dagnabbit – you guys are taking all the fun out of this thing. I want some slow torture and false hope!

To: Travis McGee

How many GOP attorneys and people on the ground, in these states have seen, and are exposing and fighting this?

22 posted on 11/4/2020, 8:12:09 AM by Jane Long (Praise God, from whom ALL blessings flow.)

There you go, baby! FIGHT DA POWER!!!!

They need the best, most experienced, and most highly regarded legal minds of three generations to take on this challenge!!!!!

Giuliani and legal team heading to Philly 11/04/2020 Posted on 11/4/2020, 2:26:02 PM by Kevin in California

God couldn’t love me this much.

Let’s jump back to Tuesday for the live election day thread, shall we?

LIVE THREAD: Election Day Results and Marathon Coverage
Fox ^

Posted on 11/3/2020, 5:09:32 AM by nikos1121

Please post your voting experience for fellow Freepers through out the day and yes post your prayers. We want to know where you are and what you are seeing. Trump voters are proud to tell everyone who they are voting for so ask them why they’re voting for Trump. Rumors are flying about violence at polling centers. Be alert and on your guard.
*************************

I’ll start.Dear Heavenly Father, we ask that You watch over all Americans today as they go out to vote. Protect them from harm and from evil. Give them the wisdom to vote for people who honor, cherish and celebrate this great land and You. We know that You have orchestrated the events these past four years not only for our future but for all the people on this earth. You are doing this through Your humble servant, Donald J. Trump. Protect him Dear God and direct him to do good as he strives to unite all of us going forward from this day. Amen

1 posted on 11/3/2020, 5:09:32 AM by nikos1121

To: nikos1121

Good enough. Bump and let’s get this party started!

2 posted on 11/3/2020, 5:10:53 AM by Enterprise

To: SteveH; LilFarmer

Fox News has just called the election for Biden saying votes in PA and NV put him over the top. Bret and Martha are just gushing over Biden’s win and Harris being the first worman of color being VP.

The push is on for Pubs and Trump to ignore all the fraud and concede for the good of the country.

9,931 posted on 11/7/2020, 10:44:18 AM by CedarDave (NM’s oil patch needs fracking; large signs here saying: “Vote Trump 2020. Your job depends on it.”)

He said “Started”, not “Ended”!. Jeez Louise.

Let’s go back a little further in the day.

To: mo

I hope you are right my friend. I cannot freely type what I really feel on this website. However, I will openly state that I will never be a peaceful slave to a socialist new America. I just wish there was a battlefield I could report to.

9,770 posted on 11/6/2020, 6:37:52 AM by ohioman

“JediJones” tries to salvage a single troop ship of dignity :

To: dfwgator

There are just too many votes out in Pennsylvania for it to come down to only Georgia. I’d say PA is even more likely to flip to Biden and with a bigger margin than GA even if GA does also flip.

All the recounts should be done and everything should be examined carefully. But we don’t need Trump claiming the election is stolen when he can’t prove it and we don’t need protests in the streets. This is going to make the GOP look like sore losers. If that turns people off enough it could hurt the two upcoming Senate runoff races in Georgia, which if both lost, puts the Senate in Democrat hands.

Whining about losing an election doesn’t look good and doesn’t play well. After the recounts in close states are done, it’s going to be time to concede gracefully and regroup for the next election. Trump can run again in 2024 but he will hurt his chances if he comes off like a sore loser now.

9,727 posted on 11/5/2020, 11:15:59 PM by JediJones (We must deport all liberals until we can figure out what the hell is going on.)

Response?

To: JediJones

“Whining about losing an election doesn’t look good and doesn’t play well”

Really? It worked for the Dems they got the House back in 2018 and the presidency in 2020.

Take your claptrap elsewhere.

9,732 posted on 11/5/2020, 11:27:20 PM by over3Owithabrain

Much more “blowed up real good” Schadenfreep at the “Continue reading” link below :

Tagged Clown shoes, Free Republic, Freeperati, Freepers, Freeperville, Right-wing nutcases, The Darnold, the stupid it burns, Tommy T, Wingnuts

Nov 03 2020

3 Comments

Athenae, Elections

How Dare We Expect This To be Easy

We won’t know the results of the election tonight, but we do know one thing:

We hoped for a complete and overwhelming repudiation of this monster and everything he stands for—and that does not appear to be happening.

And it’s fucking heartbreaking.

— Leah McElrath 🏳️‍🌈 (@leahmcelrath) November 4, 2020

I thought this, too. I really did, and I’m ashamed of myself tonight.

Not because I thought we were better than we were; I always think that and I’m always GOING to think that because you never know when that little bit of belief is going to be enough to make somebody not suck, like I will WILL you to not suck and you will LISTEN. I’m ashamed of myself because I really thought it would be easy to fight fascism.

Like sure, the ideology of white supremacy and resentment that burned down half the world and required the death of millions to defeat will be routed in seconds.

Generations of ingrained hatred toward any challenge to the status quo no matter how mild will just … fall away, in the face of the mildest of resistance.

Four hundred years of subjugating black people and resisting any attempt at their empowerment, just dissolving in daylight.

How dare we? Honestly, how dare we? Like this stuff doesn’t take hold because it’s not attractive, it’s not powerful, it doesn’t WORK for a certain subset of people during a certain amount of time. Fascism in Europe wasn’t some kind of accident, it didn’t arise overnight, and it required the sacrifice of generations to stamp it out. And we thought we’d solve it in a day? In a year? Like who were we kidding?

We thought it should be SIMPLE, to take on the most dangerous authoritarian impulses our dumb chimpanzee brains could throw at us, and just waltz across the finish line? Like we’re in this for peace? Like we wouldn’t have to fucking scrap for it?

Sharpen your teeth, assholes. They were never gonna give an inch we didn’t pry from their cold dead hands.

Oct 20 2020

Athenae, COVID-19, Do Something, Elections

Two Weeks

Two weeks, cats and kittens. Increasingly I have nothing, due to the sheer avalanche of bullshit and my own pressing need not to lose my grip on reality. Clench your fists, sharpen your teeth and get ready.

In no particular order:

If we want everything to get back to “normal” we need to close down stadiums, restaurants, bars and performances, and pay all those people what they’d be making anyway. I don’t give a fuck, okay, about the owners of restaurant chains but if it takes a giant bailout for whoever owns six IHOPs to pay the people who clean those IHOPs then fine, do it.
If we want schools to reopen then game this out for me: However much it would cost to send, basically, the Army Corps of Engineers to every school in America tomorrow to install state-of-the-art rich-lady-hospital quality HVAC with UV filters or whatever the hell in every single school in the land, we should pay that. It’ll have the added benefit of schoolkids not needing to wear parkas indoors and/or suffer heatstroke in June, but mostly it will help ensure kids can go back to school safely. Because …
NOTHING gets better until the kids go back to school full-time. I’m sorry, childfree people, I was one of you and it blows to be held hostage to breeders like this, but our entire lives depend on doctors and bus drivers being able to work a full day. You can’t do that with part-time, hybrid, half-the-week-here, half-the-week-there schedules that throw everything into chaos. Kick’s school district keeps sending out emails that are like “what about a rotating once-a-full-moon day in class” and that’s fine for me, but a firefighter can’t just, like, blow off the rest of the shift and work from home and I’m pretty sure they don’t let kindergarteners actually ride in the ladder truck.
NATIONAL MASK MANDATE. I don’t know how “staying alive by wearing a small piece of cloth over your face during the time you have to leave your house” became something only liberal pussies do, I really don’t. It’s not that hard to rally America to do something. The GOP managed to do it for two unwinnable wars and the election of Donald Trump, you’d think they could get their own feral caucus under control on the side of “even if we hate the governors of blue states we can work with these dicks just once so that our voters survive.” It’s not like they even have to stop being pricks. Be as mean as you want, wear a mask that says “Hillary’s a cunt,” that’s your free speech, just wear a mask so you don’t get any of it on me and mine.
Once and for all time we are one country, not a collection of safe areas and danger zones. I can accept there are things Colorado has to deal with that Florida doesn’t and vice versa but if we all have a disease that crosses state lines we need solutions that do, too. This shouldn’t be complicated. This shouldn’t be hard. And the people who are making it difficult need to be identified and voted out.

So like this is the shit Joey B. Shark has to deal with on day one. Which necessitates the Senate, and not just a one- or two-asshole majority in the Senate. If Joe Manchin or some other dickhead can hold the whole place hostage every time someone doesn’t give him a rub and a tug just right then that’s not a majority, not the kind we need. Joe is 77 years old, I know Kamala’s right there but we do not exactly have a lot of time for the kind of cheap shit that went on during Obama’s two terms. Vote with your caucus or GTFO.

THEN we have to fix literally every agency and re-hire all the civil servants who quit, if they even want to come back, like would you. That’s if we have a clear decision on election night and a peaceful smooth transition STOP LAUGHING IT’S NOT FUNNY.

If, in two weeks, the cities are on fire and Trump is declaring victory, well, then, we will still have to do these things, and then I don’t see any way out of this that doesn’t involve jail time. I said this in 2004 and I meant it then, but I really mean it now, we’ve got two weeks. Whatever you’ve been doing, do it more.

Oct 18 2020

Tomasky, proving that nothing has changed since 2002 for his simple ass:

Athenae, Elections, So Called Liberal Media, War in Iraq

It’s Always Gonna Be Democrats’ Fault

Trumpworld sees these things differently. Mike Pence articulated the view in the vice-presidential debate. “We’re about freedom and respecting the freedom of the American people,” Mr. Pence said. The topic at hand was the Sept. 26 super-spreader event in the Rose Garden to introduce Amy Coney Barrett as the president’s nominee for the Supreme Court and how the administration can expect Americans to follow safety guidelines that it has often ignored.

Kamala Harris countered that lying to the American people about the severity of the virus hardly counts as “respect.”

It was a pretty good riposte, but she fixed on the wrong word. She could have delivered a far more devastating response if she’d focused on the right word, one that the Democrats have not employed over the past several months.

For fuck’s sake. Sure, the problem here is that Team D just hasn’t used the right WORDS. If only they would play OFFENSE. If only they knew how to TALK, Republicans wouldn’t be forced to have a 24-hour propaganda network funnel every piece of puke from some incel’s basement onto the Twitter feeds of every reporter in America.

If only they’d SAY what was needed, we could have the intellectual debate Michael Tomasky, whose all-time hits include “the second Iraq war will be amazingly stupid great,” would like to have. Said intellectual debate being the real problem here, and not that the GOP is intent on KILLING PEOPLE.

Like imagine, in 2020, as the Republican Party dismantles voting rights from coast to coast, saying that this could all be prevented by a Democrat appealing to John Stuart Mill.

No, really:

Now, conservatives revere Mill. But today, in the age of the pandemic, Mill and other conservative heroes like John Locke would be aghast at the way the American right wing bandies about the word “freedom.”

Sure, that’s what would freak them out about the Grand Old Party of today, and not the ascension of an assheaded sentient cheeto who can’t string a sentence together if you spotted him a noun, a verb and two adjectives. You might also regale them with tales of “Freedom Fries,” a story I’m sure you’ve forgotten, Mikey, given that it happened during the days when Republicans had honor and dignity and the courage of their convictions and were in no way prone to spouting jingoistic garbage to appeal to the rubes.

I am so tired of telling Nancy Pelosi to fight harder and saying absolutely nothing to Mitch McConnell at all. Diane Feinstein sucks, okay, screw her, but let’s not pretend she’s done a fraction of the damage to the country in the past four years that Lindsey Graham has. Eyes on the goddamn ball. Every single day it’s WHY WON’T BIDEN BE PRESIDENT BEFORE HE’S EVEN PRESIDENT and come the hell on, here:

[…] the broad left in America has let all this go unchallenged for decades, to the point that today’s right wing — and it is important to call it that and not conservative, which it is not — can defend spreading disease, potentially killing other people, as freedom. It is madness.

The “broad left” in America has been drowned out by TV screamers in every podiatrist’s waiting room in the Midwest saying that liberals want to kill babies, take your money, give it to welfare queens, and reverse-racism the police. To come up with this kind of “if only the language were different” nonsense requires pretending that the media disparity between the left and the right doesn’t exist, or that there is a vibrant left media at all.

One thing Democrats in general aren’t very good at is defending their positions on the level of philosophical principle.

WHAT GODDAMN PLANET ARE YOU ON RIGHT NOW, WHAT ROLLING STONE DRUGS HAVE YOU SNORTED, THAT IS ALL DEMOCRATS ARE GOOD AT. They’re good at talking for HOURS about the philosophical underpinnings of this or that percent being necessary persuant to the above requirement that we all stuff our heads up our asses and means-test what we find there.

What they’re NOT good at, or weren’t until we decided to run the crabbiest old man in the universe, is fucking kneecapping the other guy and laughing while he whines.

I am so sick of this argument. I am so tired of the blame being shifted onto the party that DID NONE OF THIS, for not stopping it from happening, while the party of WE DON’T HAVE TO SCIENCE YOU CAN’T MAKE US gets to skate away with its pocket full of cash. I am so tired of nitpicking every D speech for something “they” can find to “use” against us when the past 20 years have proven definitively that if there’s nothing there Murdoch’s creatures will just make something up.

Why won’t Biden speak about this, why won’t Democrats make the debate about that, why won’t anyone do anything well WHY DON’T YOU ASK YOUR CABLE NEWS FRIENDS WHY TRUMP’S EVERY TWEET GETS A ‘BREAKING’ CHYRON WHILE BIDEN ONLY BREAKS NEWS WHEN SOMEONE WANTS TO BITCH ABOUT THE FOOD IN HIS PRESS ROOM. Ask them if they’d cover the campaigns fairly if Democrats used the word “freedom” as John Stuart Mill would have them do.

I’m sorry I’m yelling so much but this is how it’s going to be for the next four years if we’re lucky enough to get a Biden Administration. It’s going to be nonstop blame for every single move Democrats make to put out the fires, and any mention of Trump having lit the kindling the GOP lovingly laid out for him going all the way back to Ronald Reagan, or Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan’s TRUCKS FULL OF GASOLINE PARKED OUT BACK, will be derided as somehow living in the past.

Say this: Freedom means the freedom not to get infected by the idiot who refuses to mask up.

That is all they have been saying. That is all Democratic governors have been saying, and meanwhile their Republican state legislatures are suing to keep getting people sick and kill them. Maybe we could focus some on that, and a little less on why Democrats so stubbornly refuse to invoke the great philosophers of yore.

Schmuck.

Oct 13 2020

Athenae, Elections

It Can’t Be Close

Listen up:

BREAKING: In a late-night ruling, the 5th Circuit Court UPHOLDS Gov. Abbott order that limits counties to 1 mail-in ballot drop-off location.
3-judge panel, all Trump nominees, says Abbott in fact expanded access to voting by allowing drop-offs before election day.

— Chuck Lindell (@chucklindell) October 13, 2020

Yes, it’s disgusting. Yes, it shouldn’t be this way. Yes, we shouldn’t have to fight this hard to VOTE. And of course the GOP doesn’t want people in cities and blue states to vote, and of course they’re going tooth and nail to prevent that, and of course they’re framing it as “preventing voter fraud” so that they can get the “both sides” columns they need to confuse the people who are interested enough in actual facts to look things up and decide it’s all too complicated, a pox on both their houses, might as well stay home.

Amy Coney Barrett, John Roberts & Brett Kavanaugh all served on George W. Bush‘s legal team during Florida 2000 recount & worked to make sure only GOP votes counted, increasing likelihood 6-3 SCOTUS will throw out enough Dem ballots to keep Trump in power pic.twitter.com/Nd5eCdgr2N

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) October 12, 2020

What’s to be done? The odds are overwhelmingly in their favor. It is hard, in a normal year, to throw out an incumbent president, no matter how terrible. They have every institution of power on their side, every single one. That Trump is in enough trouble to warrant this kind of maneuvering is just a testament to how awful he’s been. So what to do?

We have 21 days.

Twenty-one days and then the rest of our lives, cats and kittens. What’s to be done?

Win. Win so big they can’t fight it. Win so big they can’t deny it. Win so big that we say, once and for all, that the America we want is not one in which their Nazi incel bullshit stands one iota of a chance.

It has to be overwhelming. It has to be a landslide for Joseph Robinette Biden, a human conference call, the most middle-of-the-road centrist on earth, the neoliberal-whatever-the-hell, in Congress for 200 years. We have to vote for him like we’re voting for Cardi B crossed with Santa Claus. It has to be a blue tsunami. It has to be a cyclone. It can’t be close.

Not in Florida, not in Wisconsin, not in Georgia, not in Texas. It can’t be close in Ohio or Pennsylvania. Ten points isn’t enough. It has to be beyond contestation.

We cannot DO four more years of this, and we can’t do Bush v. Gore again, not for this. Not to get kids out of cages and the Muslim ban rescinded and science back in charge of controlling a pandemic. That can’t be something we’re feeling six-of-one-half-dozen-of-the-other about. There cannot be compromise between people who want to roll back marriage equality for thousands of couples and people who don’t.

(What would that even look like? Divorce half the gay people? How do you compromise on that?)

Joey B. Shark, crabbiest dad on the face of the earth, 77 endless years old. There has to be an uprising on his behalf that sweeps away the last 40 years of Republican power in one go. That takes the Senate back, widens the lead in the House, lifts every statehouse candidate and every downticket perpetual also-ran who before this year didn’t have a shot in hell. It has to be something we’ve never seen in all our livin’ lives.

And the GOP is doing everything they can to make that impossible:

The California GOP installed unofficial ballot drop-off boxes. State officials say they're illegal.

"Operating unofficial ballot drop boxes — especially those misrepresented as official … is not just misleading to voters, it’s a violation of state law."https://t.co/vY1LafA7te

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 12, 2020

These dickweasels. Every last one of them learned at Roger Stone’s knee and they’re going to ratfuck because that’s what people who like to fuck rats do. Surprise and outrage, we ain’t got time for, and we can’t unfuck the rats. We can’t care about what they’re doing and God love every one of you watching the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation hearings. The ins and outs are not going to change no matter how much we yell at our TVs.

Put your money, right now, in state legislative races, bail funds, voter advocacy groups. Put your time into postcards and phone banking and signing up to drive people to the polls if you’re well enough to risk it. Protect yourselves and your families, check in on the people who’ll be at risk in the days after the election no matter how it goes. Either way, the neighborhood could be on fire.

All that matters now is the win. It can’t be a margin of victory. It can’t be single digits. Yes, we shouldn’t have to be in line for hours. We shouldn’t have to fight this in every court in the land. We shouldn’t have to all be tracking the status of our ballots obsessively online and constantly bugging each other. We shouldn’t have an electoral college and Senate that prioritizes landholders over citizens. This is no way to have a country.

And all we have is 21 days to save it.

So don’t back down. Don’t be scared. Don’t think, for one minute, that win or lose you have nothing to do in this situation. Fight. Fight for 21 days the way you’ve fought for the past four years, fight when you’re too tired, when you’re too sick, when you’re too scared, when you can’t anymore. I’m right there with you. Fight because you’re not dead yet and you don’t intend to let this kill you. Fight for those who can’t, for those who failed, for those who came before and won and were forgotten. Fight in daylight and dark and don’t give up and don’t back down and don’t back up.

Not. One. Inch.

Sep 29 2020

Athenae, COVID-19, Elections

Start Tearing the Old Man Down

It’s getting colder. I made two and a half quarts of soup on Sunday morning, before the rain started and the wind picked up. We have a chest freezer now. We have a store-room full of apples. Every day I peel, chop, bag, so we can use them in baking or stews.

Kick and I tried to grow potatoes. We planted too late, when it was already cooling off, and damp, and they rotted in the ground, but everything else went wild, took over the small patch we planned. We’re saving seeds — tomatoes, peppers, squash — from this year’s bounty to start again next year. In just a few months, we can start them inside; in just a few months, this will all begin again.

We’re looking at blowing out the front yard, turning the whole dang thing into a garden. I’ve never successfully grown anything before, but now I think daily of my grandmother, shouting at the rabbits in the rhubarb. Pulling carrots. What Kick knows about Great-Grandma is that she had a root cellar that could have withstood a siege.

There was no food, you see, when Great-Grandma was a child. Eleven kids, ten of whom survived to adulthood, on virtually nothing. A potato as a treat. Wouldn’t you pickle things, after that? Wouldn’t you make jam from every single strawberry?

We talk a lot about inherited trauma, about generational memory. I never wanted for a single necessity, all my childhood, but I was surrounded by that fear every day. It’s useful now.

Kick is not afraid. Kick wears her mask and learns online and goes to skating lessons without complaint. Kick wants morning glories. She’s obsessed with them, these indigo beauties that grow across the alley in the yard of a neighbor. I’ve promised a raft of them in the spring.

I can’t even think about the spring.

Begin. Again.

We talked to her about the debate tonight. Pondered letting her stay up to watch but it starts so late, and Mama intends to yell at Donald Trump a lot. She knows, thanks to him and my lack of restraint when stubbing my toe on a chair, most of the “grown-up words” by heart. Those she doesn’t know, she’s sure to learn, come election night.

I want to believe. In November, in January, in the next year and the next and the next. I want to believe in the train and the bus and the earth continuing to turn and everyone I love staying or getting healthy, staying alive, staying here. I want to believe, but I am preparing.

I spent the spring so sick and broken that any kind of optimism feels foolish. Every twinge of hope gets smothered by the memory of her tiny hand in mine, helping me mark the ballot for Hillary in 2016. I have a picture of us, grinning, outside the polling place. I have a picture of her at the Women’s March, kitty-cat hat and all, holding a sign that said, “Future President.” She’d colored it herself.

We are hunkered down for the winter, and we are counting on a 77-year-old man to save us and it seems like a lot to put on his back. I hold onto the railing to go down the stairs, and I turned 45 this year. But: shoot him up with whatever kind of chimp speed and greenies he needs. Make that sonofabitch a kale smoothie, because he’s what we’ve got.

You know, he’s a decent guy, Joe Biden. That’s the thing, when we talk about two parties, when we lament that we are choosing between two old white men. We are choosing, in fact, between a 78-year-old white man who enables the absolute worst of our society, gives aid and comfort to white supremacy, not only doesn’t care about Black people but doesn’t care about anyone, and a 77-year-old white man who shows up to work and screws up sometimes. We do actually need a leader who isn’t pointlessly mean, who doesn’t just make things difficult. Who looks at a problem and tries to solve it instead of screaming at it.

This isn’t even about Trump personally. I don’t care that he’s a shithead who eats fast food. I don’t even care if he has secret addictions and disabilities, or isn’t really a billionaire, or dresses dumb. LBJ’s mouth made mine look like an angel’s, come on, and JFK was a humongous poon hound, and Roosevelt was banging his cousin. None of that’s important.

You can be mean and a jerk and even a sexist pig, and still good at your job, but look around. Look around. Is he good at his job? Does any of this HELP?

Might as well mention this because it will never be reported by the Lamestream Media! https://t.co/5qqZrr9hXz

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 29, 2020

We just … it’s a fundamental question, right: Are you going to HELP ME? Are you going to nurture the kind of country in which I can grow and see the results of my work and live a good life? For too long we’ve ignored the people who’ve said this isn’t working for us, and for too long we’ve said wait just a little longer, and I would never say that’s not a part of how this happened.

We have to fix it now. There’s so much to fix. There’s the pandemic and the resulting poverty, there’s the poverty that was there before, there’s the healthcare that needs to be prioritized over health insurance, there’s student debt, there’s a housing crisis, prescription drugs cost a fortune, there’s a general unfucking of every single government service, but overall we need someone who will, upon hearing help me, not laugh and crush us under his heel because it’s fun.

This isn’t hard. It’s not hard to fake being a good dude for long enough to get the Post editorial board to love you. W managed to do it and he was an inside-out elephant anus. If you’re somehow on the fence, and I can’t even, but look. If you’re conflicted, at all, then watch, tonight.

If you’re still saying all of this is worth it for the courts, watch, tonight.

Who’s going to help? Who’s going to plant the garden, staff the shelter, run the program, chop the apples? Who’s going to help those people, instead of laughing at them, instead of raging? That’s it, that’s all there is. And if we know nothing else now, we know that.

The neighbors have a free box on their lawn from which anyone who is hungry can take canned goods. Nobody opens it in daylight, that I’ve seen, but in the morning it’s always empty. Our neighborhood’s project is literally giving things away: Coats, still warm and cozy, that are too small, boots that don’t fit growing feet, kitchen tools we no longer use or have a new one of. We put a table out front, post a picture on Facebook, and let people take what they want.

No judgment, no policing, no means-testing, no forms to fill out, no ID to show.

We’re thinking of a hot apple cider stand, to raise money for a cause, now it’s getting cold.

Things shouldn’t be so hard.

Sep 21 2020