Martin Luther King Day, Racism, Voter Fraud, Documents, Dragging Santos

  • Dave Dubya joins in Martin Luther King Day this week with a look at conservatives who adopt Dr. King as their own while attacking immigrants and refugees. Dave examines the content of conservative character.
     
  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz acknowledges the love White Americans have for Martin Luther King’s most famous speech, but wonders if we still resist the less comfortable parts of the same message.
     
  • The basic premise of libertarianism, one increasingly embraced by contemporary conservatives, is that government action is evil and any issue requiring government action has to be fraudulent.
     
    Thus climate change must be fraudulent,
    or
    Climate change caused by humans must be fraudulent
    or
    Climate change caused by humans that government can do anything about must be fraudulent.
     
    And so it must be with any issue the solution to which involves government.
     
    Including racism.
     
    To his credit, libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara honors the memory of Martin Luther King, and rejects the conservative inpulse to deny racism.
     
    He only rejects the idea that we should do anything about it.
     
    Key mixed judgment:
    Thus is the paradox of Martin Luther King.
     
  • Rand Paul remembers the legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged remembers that Rand Paul blocked a bill to outlaw lynching until an election year when he suddenly changed his mind.
     
  • The Propaganda Professor takes a look at the controversy surrounding the history of slavery in America. Experts are praising The 1619 Project, but conservatives seem to think it is too negative. Makes me wonder what positive aspects of slavery they want stressed.
     
  • Scotties Playtime reports on why Florida Universities are renaming their courses.
     
    Scottie quotes:


    along with details.

  • Most folks in the small city of Defiance, Ohio are enthusiastic about a prospective monument to a founding father. In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce reminds the city that Anthony Wayne was a slave holder who dedicated much of his public life to “the uncommon slaughter of Native Americans” to get their land.
     
  • Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson is disillusioned with fellow conservatives who seem disinterested in converting voters with the quality of their policies. Instead, many are focused on voter suppression. In particular he wonders about one member of the Wisconsin Election Commission who actually boasts about keeping black voters from voting.
     
    Key quote about Commissioner Bob Spindell:
    If Spindell had been in charge of elections during Jim Crow, he would’ve bragged about literacy tests and poll taxes suppressing the Black vote.
     
    Key quote FROM Bob Spindell:
    …we can be especially proud of the City of Milwaukee (80.2% Dem Vote) casting 37,000 less votes than cast in the 2018 election with the major reduction happening in the overwhelming Black and Hispanic areas…
     
  • Republicans act to keep mail-in ballots from being counted with unfounded, untrue stories of voter fraud. Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit points out one singularly unfortunate effect of proposed restrictions. Turns out Republicans are okay with denying the votes of military service people.

  • Karen Stenner is a political psychologist and behavioral economist who, long ago, predicted the rise of Trump-like figures.
     
    CalicoJack in The Psy of Life is inspired by what she says is the liberal super power against fascism.
     
  • Infidel753 suggests that Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, combined with the Speaker Spectacle giving right-wingers disproportionate influence, leaves democracies around the world little choice but to abandon nuclear non-proliferation.
     
    Key passages:
    Ukraine had nuclear weapons after the break-up of the USSR, but renounced them in favor of paper security guarantees which we can now see were worth nothing. It is obvious that if Ukraine still had a nuclear deterrent, the Russian invasion would not have happened, and the country would have been spared tens of thousands of deaths and horrific devastation. Taiwan, South Korea, Poland, etc are well able to understand this and to see the implications for their own situation. They want to be secure from invasion like Israel, not vulnerable like Ukraine.
     
  • Hackwhackers goes cartooning as Empty Gee (Oh Come on, sound it out – Okay, so MTG) is put on the committee in charge of Homeland Security. And George Santos is put on …well… something.
     
  • Master of Rant Max’s Dad watches as multiple fiction-weaver George Santos encounters an, as yet, unconfirmed report that among his many careers was a drag queen named Kitara.
     
    George denies it, of course, it being counter to the currently prevailing Republican cultural mood.
     
    It occurs to me, the credibility of George Santos being what it has become, he could disprove the report by insisting it is true.
     
  • Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse for poor Representative Santos than an audience eagerly waiting to laugh at the next tall tale:
     
    tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors relates a more serious story of George raising funds for life saving cancer treatments for a dying service dog owned by a disabled veteran, then disappearing with the money.
     
    I suppose we can stop laughing now and get seriously angry.
     
  • Frances Langum reviews the comedy of lies that has become the biography of GOP Representative George Santos and finds a far more serious question about Kevin McCarthy.
     
  • Andy Borowitz covers Kevin McCarthy’s celebration of his great success at being barely tolerated by his colleagues.
     
    Key satiric quote:
    “I’m deeply honored by the display of grudging acceptance,” the new House Speaker said. “It’s time for a victory lap.”
     
  • For years, Republicans have been passing measures to slash taxes on elite high income folks, while passing the burden to middle income wage earners.
     
    In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson looks at the latest, as the most conservative of conservative Republicans in Congress propose abolishing any income tax completely, especially on the highest of upper incomes, and replacing it with a “consumption tax” designed to raise prices for ordinary Americans by an additional 30% on everything.
     
    Key quote from President Joe Biden:
    National sales tax, that’s a great idea. It would raise taxes on the middle class by taxing thousands of everyday items from groceries to gas, while cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans.
     
  • driftglass glances through coverage by The New York Times of classified Joe Biden documents and remembers another news story about classified information that eventually withered into nothing.
     
  • The Palmer Report says the bad news is that the both-sides industry has been boosted by the discovery of documents marked as classified discovered by Biden lawyers, mostly in an area once used by Joe Biden but also in his residence. The assignment by Attorney General Merrick Garland of a special counsel to investigate is the very good news.
     
  • Don Hermann at The Moderate Voice watches the both-sider press beating up on President Joe Biden over classified documents, and sees a clear opportunity for Biden to demonstrate strengths America wants, Biden has, and others only wish they had.
     
    Key illustration:
    Instead of waiting to be gored, he should take that bull and show who’s in charge
     
  • News Corpse looks into the Trump v Biden document competition and detects an easy way to to tell who is innocent and who is scared.
     
  • Green Eagle has a conspiracy theory about classified documents in that long ago Biden office and the Biden residence.
     
  • Elon Musk has attempted to show what he says was a secret campaign by previous Twitter owners to victimize Donald Trump right up to when Musk took over.
     
    Tommy Christopher watches the reaction by Joe Scarborough to a new report demonstrating the complete opposite.
     
    Key transcripted comment on how Trump was allowed to use Twitter to…
     
    Accuse me of murder. And when we talked to them, we said that anybody else in the world saying this would have their accounts taken down, and they had no answer! And it was very clear even then they were giving him preferential treatment and it continued all the way through January the 6th! How significant was that? Twitter’s inability to hold Donald Trump to the same standard they held everybody else to? How important was that to Donald Trump in fomenting this riot?
     
  • Julian Sanchez of Cato Institute suspects a bit of trickery by Elon’s Twitter:

  • Iron Knee at Political Irony makes the difference between debt and deficit interesting, and makes Republican dishonesty about both even more interesting.
     
  • At The Onion a debt ridden 4th grader recklessly invests in lunch.
     
  • Legal expert Imani Gandy reacts as a restaurant celebrates the sudden showing of police shooting an innocent woman awakened in her home.
     


    I’m a support-your-local-police kind of guy, but the no-knock attack, the shooting, the sudden showing of the video, and the cheers, are hard to understand and impossible to defend.
     

  • The Tom Cruise movie Jack Reacher was kind of fun. Always underestimated, always kicking ass. Always figuring out clues before anyone else. As when he determines someone tailing him is not a police officer:
     
    There’re three things cops never do: they don’t vote Democrat, they don’t drive Cadillacs, and they never use personal vehicles.
     
    Disaffected and it Feels So Good considers who currently (three years in a row and counting) kills more police officers than anyone or anything else, and how it is done.
     
  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has the numbers in graph form on the how many and the who and the why of Americans avoiding medical care.
     
  • The Wyoming legislature considers banning the sale of electric vehicles, and M. Bouffant at Web of Evil senses a contradiction with free market ideology.
     
  • Nan’s Notebook has a little known (except locally) controversy as several counties want to leave Oregon and join Idaho.
     
  • Make sure volume is on before clicking as Dave Columbo debates the issues:
     

    @davecolumbo He’s coming for us one kitchen appliance at a time #democrats #democrat #democratsoftiktok #politics #politicstiktok #fy #fyp #foryou ♬ Manke, honobo, everyday, funny, loop – arachang

  • My longtime friend, conservative Darrell Michaels, is irritated at the lack of coverage of misstatements by the egregiously corrupt Biden and his crime family. As proof, he posts 21 statements Republican authorities have said were lies spoken by President Biden.
     
    I briefly scanned the 21. My favorite is Item 20. Apparently Biden, as a county council member, moved the body of a dead canine for a constituent from her lawn. The question was whether he moved it entirely from her property or, as she requested, placed it on her front steps.
    That’s the sort of inconsistency that keeps me up at night.
     
    As additional proof, he links to the Washington Post which has catalogued 67 (I think 67 – it was behind a paywall and I’m pretty cheap) of what it calls false or misleading claims from the President.
     
    Telling challenge by my friend:
    All of this leads to the question of why hasn’t our “fourth branch” of government been doing its job and investigating/ reporting on Biden instead of simply fabricating false evidence on the Republicans all along? Don’t get me wrong; we need to hold all parties accountable, but up to this point, it has typically only been Republicans that have been held accountable by the DIM allies of the left.
     
    For the sake of clarity, the same Washington Post that came up with 67 for Biden totalled lies from President Trump while he was in office:
    30,573
     
    But, you know, both sides.
     
  • A newly-elected Democratic representative has chosen the book upon which he will swear the oath of office, and it is not a Bible. Professor PZ Myers welcomes what he sees as our new state religion.
     
  • Make sure volume is on before clicking as @whiskeywhistle98 is all generational retaliation:
     

    @whiskeywhistle98 Where are my 80’s friends?!! #80s #tiktokmom #kids #oldergeneration #cursive #stickshift #fyp #foryourpage #generation #old #young #whatever ♬ original sound – The Dirty Thirties

  • YellowDog Granny begins her political illustrations with a look back on her life and advice for the new year, then ends with a wonderful perspective on the aging process.
     
  • Vincent at A Wayfarer’s Notes discovers an unexpected “escape” from an Indian festival in Wales.
     
  • Clickbait satirist Reductress advises on how to keep living after someone texts you “OK”.
     
  • In Happiness Between Tails da-AL’s guest is author Robert Pacilio, who explains how his previous life as a teacher contributed to his success as an author and how he made the transition to that second career.
     
  • SilverAppleQueen has laundry, a spare room bed, and sleepy cats.
     

– Podcasts –
 

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