Twit, Thanks, JFK, Heroes, Victims, Climate, Trump Trumped, God Speaks

Continue reading “Twit, Thanks, JFK, Heroes, Victims, Climate, Trump Trumped, God Speaks”

Veterans Day, Election Red to Pink, Trump Trumped, Twitter Twit, Ukraine


Personal note: Our young Marine is still on the mend. Last week was discouraging. This week a lot better.
 
We are getting to appointments pretty much on time.
 
This will last a few more weeks.
 
AND yesterday was Veterans Day, celebrating the
11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918,
the end of the Great War: before we knew we had to number them.

  • Vagabond Scholar salutes veterans and continues to repeat a suggestion from 63 years ago.
     
  • Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara thanks veterans for their service, but urges us to remember the real heroes: the truly productive, which is to say the very wealthy, who are compelled to pay for the military.
     
    Yeah, he really thinks that.
     
  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit compares Ukraine related expert predictions with actual events. Vlad is a screwup, but not the only one.
     
  • Which brings us to the other expert debacle.
     
    In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson examines some of the aftermath of the non-tsunami-non-ripple balloting.
     
    Now that that election, during which Republicans attacked Biden for global inflation, is over: US inflation turns out to be cooling faster than expected.
     
    The stock market is jumping upward as soon as the red scare subsides.
     
    President Biden is soaring.
     
    The Republican Party devolves into warring camps. Which is to say warring.
     
    Key Passage:
    White nationalist Nick Fuentes told his audience that the solution to the fact Republicans are in a minority and keep losing elections is to establish “a dictatorship.” “We need to take control of the media or take control of the government and force the people to believe what we believe or force them to play by our rules.”
     
  • Vixen Strangely takes a close look at the Red Wave that wasn’t, and narrows it down to what pollsters may have missed.
     
  • Iron Knee at Political Irony explains how Democrats tried something really dangerous, which turned out to be very smart.
     
  • At The Onion, John Fetterman smiles as he asks Mehmet Oz to very slowly repeat his concession a few times.
     
  • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life suggests that White voters did not support Republicans in spite of racist and fascist messaging, but rather because of racist and fascist messaging.
     
  • Disaffected and it Feels So Good covers the group that pressed to make illegal any interstate travel by women suspected of pregnancy. They prepare, if asked, to take any possible legal action to throw out election results unfavorable to Republicans.
     
    Key quote from one of the lawyers involved:
    If there is a close election, it’s going to be up to us to fix it.
     
  • I truly love the entire range, from analysis to rant, of wisdom from Max’s Dad. He is moderately encouraged by the national election result, disheartened by local results in Nebraska and neighboring Iowa, and enthusiastic about the musical Annie.
     
    Annie has the depression, FDR, a plucky orphan, fraudulent villainous parent impersonators, Daddy Warbucks, and a happy ending.

Continue reading “Veterans Day, Election Red to Pink, Trump Trumped, Twitter Twit, Ukraine”

Not So Good Family News

Our young combat hero is hospitalized.
The Marine Corps is transporting us to be with him.

There will be no posting this week.
Return is possible, not likely, next week.

Prayers from those who, in good conscience, can give them are appreciated.
Good wishes from my closely held, non-believing, friends are valued.

Thank you for staying with me.
I hope to return with good news.

Truss Tossed, VP Harris Distorted, GOP Violence, Fascism Considered

This is worth a few seconds:

  • In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson explains how Prime Minister Liz Truss applied conservative supply-side policies to British economic problems and achieved a new, spectacular record in rapidly forced retirement.
     
  • Green Eagle has a few unexpected words in defense of Liz Truss.
     
  • Reductress says the sudden resignation of Prime Minister Truss leaves her unsure about what new direction to take.
    Note: the headline is the whole point.
     
  • Vice President Kamala Harris gave an interview, talking at length about aid efforts to Florida during and after Hurricane Ian. Late in the interview, she mentioned that natural disasters often hit hardest those struggling with poverty including, disproportionally, Black people.
     
    Conservatives, being who they are, immediately fit those innocuous comments into something sinister. Hurricane aid, they charged, would target people based on skin color. White folks would be denied help.
     
    Unabashedly American is worth a review only to satisfy some interest in right wing caricatures of liberal beliefs.
     
    Darrell Michaels leads with a crude cartoon of Harris and Biden denying aid to Floridians based on a pigment chart.
     
    Just in case you have trouble getting the point, the Harris speech bubble is HA HA HA (CACKLE) (CACKLE) HA HA, while Biden peeps around the chart with SORRY, YOU AIN’T BLACK!
     
    Sadly, my old friend Darrell accurately represents the current state of contemporary conservatism. Among his many gifts, subtlety is notably absent.
     
  • So much for we report you decide. Fox News covers their reporter asking Biden Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre what they see as an embarrassing question. Fox interrupts her response with
    We wanted to show you the rest of her answer but she didn’t make any sense.
     
    Scotties Playtime has a better explanation and links to what Fox would not show. Turns out her didn’t make any sense answer was factual, completely sensible, and pretty much shut the Fox interrogator down – as in to‑the‑ground.
     
  • Max’s Dad explains why he’s not contributing to Democratic campaigns. At least not until they toughen up.
     
    Republicans are all accusation, way past the point of absurdity. Defund police, release violent criminals, kill your family, tax you to oblivion, give it to illegals, take your house, and on and on.
     
    Yet here we continue with the Democratic ads about how they are lying about me and can’t we all get along?
     
  • Ant Farmer’s Almanac has a brief summary of the official campaign strategy for all GOP candidates. It’s mandatory.
     
  • Dave Columbo knows everything that matters about the midterms and GOP positioning.
    @davecolumbo Reposted now with fewer triggering jokes!!! #democrat #democrats #democratsoftiktok #midterms #midterms2022 #politicaltiktok #politicalsatire #politics #news #breaking #fy #fyp ♬ original sound – Dave Columbo

  • Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson does not seem especially intimidated by the turn of the Republican party toward an institutional fascination with political violence.
     
    This is what we end with:
    Such a civil war would more likely resemble Beirut or Baghdad than Gettysburg and Antietam.
     
    If we’re going to avoid such a fate because we’re all a bit too heavy around the middle, and I would obviously include myself in that description, then I have some simple advice for Gableman.
     
    Have another Twinkie. War is not the answer.
     
    Everything that leads in to that is worth the read.
     
    I hate that an occasional conservative writer is that good.
     
  • Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez has little sympathy for today’s conservative nostalgia for 1930s and 40s fascism.

  • Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged, reacts to a Republican reaction from a minor candidate to German history before and during World War II: All Nazis weren’t bad.
     
    One key passage:
    …Dr. Matt Keefer has a different take: wouldn’t you just do a little genocide, because everyone else was into it? It’s not like it makes you a bad person if basically everyone else was into it.
     
    Sure. Myself, I get that peer pressure makes people smoke, do crack, sleep with everyone they know and vote third party, but I tell you what, I draw the line at genocide.
     
    A lot of conservatives these days seem genocide-curious.

Continue reading “Truss Tossed, VP Harris Distorted, GOP Violence, Fascism Considered”

Alex Jones Verdicted, Nov Election, Walker Badged, Trump Trumped

  • Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged goes all out eloquent about Alex Jones, the verdict, the followers, and the enablers. And she does it with genuine style.
     
  • In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson has more on the not quite billion dollar judgement against Alex Jones.
     
    After losing their little kids to a gunman who walked into a school and murdered the children as they sat in a classroom, the parents were subjected to a decade of harassment by followers of Jones.
     
    Parents answering their phones got late night death threats. Mothers were told they would be targeted with rape.
    The children’s burial sites were desecrated, including midnight urination activities.
    One grief stricken father eventually committed suicide.
     
    Experts determined that Jones had made over $100 million broadcasting his conspiracy theories:

    • The shootings were fake. Nobody died.
    • Nobody was shot. The children did not exist.
    • The parents were actors.
    • It was all a plot to promote gun confiscation.

    At trial, Alex admitted he had been somewhat incorrect. However, he shouldn’t be penalized.

    • How was he to know anyone would take his theories seriously enough to actually act on them?
      Why hold him responsible just because a few maniacs reacted to his broadcasts with a bit too much enthusiasm?
    • Besides, the so-called suffering of parents was not all that serious:
      What I think of as the can’t-they-take-a-joke defense.
      No harm, no foul.

    As the trial wound down, he went on brat-casting, making fun of the proceedings.
     
    The jury apparently forgot that Alex Jones is hilarious.
     
    $965 million.

  • No matter what you think of Alex Jones all he did was speak words..
     
    And with that, tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors highlights a Republican Congressional representative with an unusual understanding of the 1st Amendment.
     
  • Andy Borowitz reports as Tucker Carlson warns us that the billion dollar judgement against Alex Jones will have a chilling effect on lying.
     
  • Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson writes in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel why he simply cannot bring himself to vote Republican this year, and gets a an important endorsement himself:

  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has a quick and reliable guide on how to look inside and decide how to vote in a couple weeks.

Continue reading “Alex Jones Verdicted, Nov Election, Walker Badged, Trump Trumped”

Listless – This Week

I do love writing here.
To give an idea how much:

Apologies to those who favor me with their readership.
Age and this week’s workload have taken their toll.
I have nothing prepared this week.

Fortunately, retirement is imminent.

I expect to resume listing essential links to appreciated bloggers next Saturday.
I hope you will return with me then.

Ian in Florida, Puerto Rica IS US, Trump, Alex, Jan 6, Books, Abortion

  • Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara is irritated. If climate change is caused by humans and is dangerous to humanity, that means governments have to step in with rules and regulations.
     
    Libertarians like Michael are forbidden to even think along those lines. Otherwise their internal membership would be canceled by some sort of Trumpian mental process. Or something.
     
    So they can’t, just can’t, acknowledge even the possibility.
     
    Michael A. LaFerrara is put out because biased media doesn’t present both sides.
     
    Some folks do define responsible journalism as just presenting every viewpoint. If one side says it’s raining, and the other side says it’s dry outside, journalists should accurately quote both sides and call it a day.
     
    Other folks, which is to say me, think a responsible journalist will actually look out the window and report on Hurricane Ian.
     
    Even if Michael A. LaFerrara objects.
     
  • News Corpse takes on Fox as they seem loath to count some Americans as Americans. News Corpse posts just one thoughtless example:
     


    Should someone tell her?

  • Hackwhackers offers a fifteen second study on responses to Florida’s hurricane violence, with three contrasting leadership styles.
     
  • Dave Dubya has been paying attention to the legal saga of Alex Jones. He especially notes one bit of testimony from a parent who lost a child to gun violence. She talks about finally confronting Jones in court.
     
    I mean this is literally facing the biggest bully I’ve ever faced.
     
    Dave determines why Alex Jones fits the description, then turns his gaze to another figure who may fit.
     
    If anyone in class can guess who, you get to stay and help clean the erasers!
     
  • Dave Columbo and Laura High go newsing (It IS a word! ‘Tis, ‘Tis!) and explain this week’s continuing Trump bad news saga.
    @davecolumbo Poor guy can’t buy a break. #news #breaking #politics #political #politicaltiktok #democrats #democrat #democratsoftiktok #fy #fyp #foryou #foryoupage ♬ original sound – Dave Columbo

  • driftglass is irritated that right-wing enablers, seeing the disaster Trump has wrought, now claim to have been warning us all the time.
     
  • Frances Langum brings us the courtroom conclusion of one Jan 6 adventure. An insurrectionist discovers that aiding in the assault of a police officer with what could have become deadly force will result in seven years of confinement. But first, the judge and the officer verbally slap around the defendant for MAGA excuses.

Continue reading “Ian in Florida, Puerto Rica IS US, Trump, Alex, Jan 6, Books, Abortion”

DeSantis Doused, Putin Pummeled, Iran Rumble, Trump Specially Mastered

Too Cute for Words:

  • Martha’s Vineyard seemed like a good place to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the limousine liberal crowd. The right wing crowd could not imagine those leftist scolds being anything but horrified when actually confronted by all these Latin folk claiming to be refugees.
     
    And conservatives did scramble and shuffle to pretend that it didn’t backfire.


    Max’s Dad pulleth no punches, explaining with the sort of clarity that comes with laser focused fury, what went wrong for DeSantis in Martha’s Vineyeard and what the debacle revealed about cynicism and compassion.
     

  • Dave Columbo does Tucker doing Martha’s Vineyard:
    @davecolumbo Do you like the new haircut? #tuckerimpression #politics #political #politicaltiktok #politicalsatire #democrat #democrats #democratsoftiktok #fy #fyp ♬ Manke, honobo, everyday, funny, loop – arachang

  • Nojo has a suggestion.
    Since we’re now kidnapping human beings for sport, let’s just go for it…:
    More pranks to own the libs!
     
  • Iron Knee at Political Irony has suggested Ron DeSantis is like a Trump clone, but with intelligence. After the migrant stunt backfires and a previous voter fraud stunt backfires, maybe the intelligence factor had been exaggerated.
     
  • DeSantis explains he could not have been tricking or exploiting Venezuelan refugees because, he explains, he got them to sign a consent form.
     
    Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez explains how an explanation becomes evidence of guilt.

  • tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors reports as Jared Kushner, loyal Trump family member, is disturbed at the way DeSantis is using migrants as political pawns, ignoring that they are human beings.
     
    Jared speaks without intended irony, while falling into a kids-in-cages ironic ocean.
     
  • News Corpse brings us the latest Trump complaint about the search warrant that the FBI executed to find a ton of classified documents he had lied about. It seems they wore shoes during the search.
    Ruthless!
     
  • The Special Master mr Trump demanded to screen documents tells Trump attorneys they must explain which documents were declassified and how they were declassified so he can determine classification. In Hackwhackers lawyers respond with a sort of convoluted version of the fifth.
     
    Hackwhackers sees the dilemma. If they explain, then they admit he stole any documents their explanation doesn’t cover.
     
    And there is even more complication for them, poor saps.
     
  • Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged takes on one of the stranger defenses by Trump and company. The Mar-a-Lago stash of classified documents actually contained absolute proof that all accusations against Trump were false, just part of a global plot – or something.
     
  • The Hannity interview and mr Trump’s paranormal mental declassification techniques have inspired internet humor, and a serious side:


    Tommy Christopher has the text as Maggie Haberman points out the key admission. Trump eviscerated most of the defenses attempted by his own attorneys.
     
    The right to remain silent apparently has its limits in the Trump mind.

  • Ant Farmer’s Almanac surveys the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago and notices one previously unreported item.

Continue reading “DeSantis Doused, Putin Pummeled, Iran Rumble, Trump Specially Mastered”

Jefferson, Migrant Hijack, Abortion Rights, Lindsey Goes Loud, SCOTUS

  • Let us begin with a common rightist shibboleth:
     
    The anti-democratic tilt of today’s conservatism occasionally finds a home in the simple observation that our government is a republic, not a “pure democracy.”
     
    Conservative reverence for the founders has often centered on distortions of the views of poor James Madison.
     
    The term “pure democracy” did exist in the 1700s, referring to the then zombie vision that government would be better without bothersome structures like legislatures, executives, courts, and representation. Proponents argued instead for a periodic mass meeting of everyone to make mass decisions in a series of, you know, mass votes. Madison and others argued against that form of “pure democracy”.
     
    So conservatives sometimes trot out the tired, discredited argument that the founders hated democratic elections, wanting instead to shield rulers from unruly voters through buffers like the electoral college.
     
    Madison hated the concept. In fact, he didn’t even like a non-proportional Senate. He and others went along with both in order to keep southern slaveholders on board in establishing an independent country.
     
    Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara argues that the founders were against democracy and that we should honor their wishes. He wants to abolish direct election of Senators and go back to having state legislatures choose them for us.
     
    Mercifully, he does not pick on James Madison this time, choosing instead to twist Thomas Jefferson into a pretzel.
     
    As Jefferson said, “the majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.” The Founders were not primarily concerned with giving the people the right to vote. They intended to liberate the people from predatory government, whether monarchistic, theocratic, socialist, or democratic.
     
    Actually, Jefferson and his contemporaries were concerned with both. That is why we have a Bill of Rights.
     
    Mr. LaFerrara was quoting from a letter Jefferson wrote to Pierre du Pont. It is an interesting choice. Du Pont had been a supporter of the French Revolution, and became a survivor of what became known as the Reign of Terror. He barely escaped the guillotine and came to America.
     
    You may suspect he might have been receptive to warnings against mob rule.
     
    Michael neglects to mention that, in that same letter, Jefferson begins with a strong endorsement of democratic elections. That would be direct democratic elections
     
    We of the United States, you know, are constitutionally and conscientiously democrats.
     
    Jefferson goes on to describe the benefits of direct elections. Citizens are able to reserve to themselves personally the exercise of all rightful powers to which they are competent, and to delegate those to which they are not competent to deputies named, and removable for unfaithful conduct, by themselves immediately.
     
    You don’t do what we want? We’ll vote you out.
     
    Jefferson even argued separately for the abolition of the electoral college: to have no electors, but let the people vote directly.
     
    Jefferson was a contradictory mess. Loved democracy, hated slavery, owned slaves, and wrote about why Black people were inferior in most every way.
     
    How about we don’t saddle him with the additional moral crime of conflating democracy with mob rule.
     
    Leave that to the current state of contemporary conservatism.
     
  • Most of us have heard how Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pulled some shady stuff in Texas to get charter planes filled with migrants. The operation was intended to show how liberals in Massachusetts can’t handle things when confronted by those damn illegals.
     
    Problem with the whole operation is, although the recipient communities were indeed surprised and unprepared, they quickly rallied at what could have been the humanitarian disaster intended by DeSantis and managed to find enough beds, food, and medical care.
     
    In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson delves into the story behind the story. Turns out the history of immigration from the south is richer and more complex than is generally reported.
     
    Part of the current story is statistical, but one reason Heather Cox Richardson is popular is clear narrative. She manages to explain numbers briefly and well without pulling readers into the high weeds.
     
    In fact, the border is not “open.” Fences, surveillance technology, and about 20,000 Border Patrol agents make the border more secure than it has ever been.
     
  • Tommy Christopher learns from CNN that the DeSantis/Abbott repopulating of “undesirables” was borrowed from 1960s segregationists.
     
    Meanwhile, Tommy bring us us this comment from Joe Scarborough:
     
    You don’t own the libs with human lives
     
  • Imani Gandy observes the political point made with refuge pawns.

  • Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged contrasts the coarse cynicism of DeSantis, using human desperation to own the libs, with the humanity of those in and around Martha’s Vineyard pitching in to help those in need.
     
  • Hackwhackers has several cartoon-type reactions to the DeSantis hijack of migrants.

Continue reading “Jefferson, Migrant Hijack, Abortion Rights, Lindsey Goes Loud, SCOTUS”

9/11: Remembering Victims of Collective Hatred

He was the office hothead. He often took it to laughable lengths. One incident in particular produced a permanent image in my mind.

It was a small, struggling company, and it was hard to start an advancement program. It was a technological company with no formal training and development. So I proposed to management a series of lunchtime training sessions organized by employees. We would bring our lunches to a conference room once a week and take turns teaching each other from books we bought together.

Eventually, management began showing some enthusiasm. They offered to buy our next set of books. They began buying lunch for those participating. That’s where my hotheaded friend came in. “Pizza!” he said in disgust. “Every damn week, Pizza! If they don’t give us something different, I’m not coming anymore.”

It was emblematic of his always-on-edge personality. Glass half shattered.

So when I showed up for work that day and was greeted by an especially sour welcome, it made me laugh. “You watch television this morning?” he asked. Nope. Then, shouting: “What the HELL is wrong with you?”

Then my smile was replaced by horror. Someone had rescued a training television from some training room. A tall building was burning. People were dying as we watched.

Future generations who watch replays of television coverage of September 11 destruction will never know how it really was to experience it for the first time.
Continue reading “9/11: Remembering Victims of Collective Hatred”