Rightist Hilarity, DOJ, Insurrect, 2022, Vote Rights, Sinema, COVID, Maddow

I am still recovering from painful complications after a recent biopsy. No cancer was the good part.
I very much appreciate the public and private messages of support.

I mentioned to a close and beloved family member that screaming continuous agony is not as much fun as people may think. I no longer recommend it.
He asked if that meant primal therapy does not work.

Here’s what I thought noteworthy from the last three weeks:

  • My longtime friend, Darrell Michaels, who is Unabashedly American, goes all uproarious, posting a series of memes representing the current state of contemporary conservative comedy. Apparently he shares the rightist instinct for humor.
     
    Here is his first:
     

    Most of the rest are of a similar level of wit and wisdom.
     
    I had completely forgotten that my friend, like so many conservative humorists, is hilarious.

  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit celebrated the New Year with memes a few steps upward from poor Darrell and his traveling troupe. Are you taking notes, my frolicsome friend?
     
  • While, as responsible citizens, we all pretty much had to be captivated by the legislative lynching in the US Senate of voting rights, an extraordinary criminal charge of seditious conspiracy was carefully documented by the US Department of Justice. In Letters from an American, noted historian Heather Cox Richardson reviews the indictment against 11 members of extremist group the Oath Keepers.
     
    The evidence is explicit. When combined with other well documented reports, it appears the combination of active violence and rightwing legalistic sounding mumble-jumble pretty much has to have been a fairly large conspiracy.
     
    Any plot involving that many participants can be expected to develop huge leaks.
     
    Stay tuned.
     
  • Our friend Dave Dubya goes tick-tocking the new evidence, providing a chilling January 6 timeline.
     
  • Green Eagle wants to remind us just how viciously insane our opponents on the right are and posts a few viciously insane examples.
     
  • An extraordinary headline in Axios:
     
    Trump accuses Jan. 6 panel of “seeking evidence of criminal activity”.
     
    Not kidding, that’s the report. They stand accused of seeking evidence.
     
  • On last week’s one year anniversary of you-know-what, Max’s Dad has a few well considered thoughts on the insurrection, including the flag of Confederate slavery carried into the Capitol building, Tucker Carlson, Ted Cruz, high level conspirators, and the character of America.
     
  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz points to what all Americans know and what decent Americans care about concerning last year’s most infamous act of violence.
     
  • Ant Farmer’s Almanac reports on a division among those who planned the January 6 insurrection on how to commemorate the anniversary.
    Okay, so it’s satire.
     
  • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life examines experimental research using random subjects in a controlled setting and discovers a likelihood of political violence this year.
     
    Looking over the same data, I would say YIKES!
     
  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger reports on a new Justice Department unit dedicated to battling domestic terrorism, and points to three steps that are needed to make that effort effective in keeping us, and our nation, safe.
     
  • Wisconsin Republicans, suckling up to Mr Trump, have been hot to investigate the 2020 Wisconsin vote that went for candidate Biden. One screwup after another has accumulated into an ongoing embarrassment for that investigation. Now we have a new scandal involving a forged election document signed by unelected Wisconsin “electors” and submitted to the National Archives as if it was real. Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson is getting impatient with state Republican officials and their propensity for having cartoonish cigars blow up in their collective face:
     

  • We do get some understandable impatience from those stunned by past, and some continuing, criminality:
     


    Bill Palmer asks us to take the conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell as an object lesson.
     

  • driftglass goes the thousand word picture route in providing a brief history of the filibuster.
     
  • Tommy Christopher is tired of professional pundits posing the voting rights struggle as two sides of a political game. Democrats and Republicans are key players, but news personalities often join politicians in dismissing without mention, without even notice, what in a democratic republic ought to be central: individual voters. When voters are no longer a concern, there is no democracy, and republic becomes a meaningless term. A major news personality criticizes President Biden for overemphasizing what are merely two bills. The legislation happens to to be central to the rights of voters to vote.
     
  • In Hackwhackers, Senator Kyrsten Sinema refuses to make an exception in filibuster rules for basic voting rights and fellow Senator Joe Manchin follows suit. To those outside the Senate, their reasoning seems an exercise in absurdity. Hackwackers asks Who bought them off?
     
    It is the simplest explanation, easiest to understand, probably containing more than an element of truth.
     
    And yet:
     
    More than half a century ago, I enrolled in a college semester program that took a group of students to Washington, DC, where we could study government up close.
     
    I learned to recognize Senators and Congressional representatives as they sometimes traveled between buildings on foot.
     
    They never opened doors. Such obstacles did not exist for them. They were surrounded by staff as they walked. They listened to advice, dictated letters, and formulated strategy. Each Senator marched along sidewalks and crosswalks surrounded by what amounted to a traveling office.
     
    Cell phones were a few years away, but more primitive radio phones were available, and some Senators could be seen talking with other members of the club.
     
    And it was a club, occasionally referred to as the most exclusive club in the world.
     
    Negotiations were conducted, deals were reached, laws were agreed upon in an environment that functioned as a continuous cocoon, even when members were outside and away from the chamber.
     
    Senators saw their institution as the Seat of Democracy. I suspect they still do.
     
    I wonder if at least a few Senators take that image over the edge. Is it possible that they see the Senate, not as a center of functioning democracy, but as democracy itself? That anything that disturbs the flow of that isolated process is to be considered a threat to democracy?
     
    It might explain the weird sort of defense of comity proposed by the two renegades, a defense at the expense of the actual core of democracy: the right of ordinary citizens to vote unobstructed and to have their votes counted impartially.
     
    And it might explain other strange reactions to voting rights.
     
    Mitch McConnell once referred to moves that would make voting more possible for working people as a power grab, a phrase that continues to be used by Republicans when it comes to voting rights for ordinary citizens.
     
    Most of us regard seeking out voters and persuading them to vote as democracy in action. Rand Paul regards that practice this way:
     


    It pretty much demands a response:
     


    I wonder if his weird view, and those of McConnell and Sinema, might make more sense to those who regard the Senate itself as democracy, rather than the product of democracy.

  • tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors has a public report offering an alternate theory. Senator Sinema is vividly aware that she is brighter and more talented than just about anyone. So she has unusually higher ambitions for 2024 than most of us might suspect.
     
  • Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara says accusations that conservatives somehow want to restrict voting rights is a big lie because “no one is proposing to restrict or rescind anyone’s right to vote, as far as I can determine.”
     
    Well! That settles it!
     
  • News Corpse unpacks a Fox Network attack on Rachel Maddow for saying, back in March, that vaccines meant the end of the pandemic.
     
    Boy, what a ditz, that Maddow! Except they left out one tiny detail.
     
    She really said the pandemic would end if enough people got vaccinated fast enough: before COVID could mutate. Her critics at Fox have been working feverishly to make sure that doesn’t happen.
     
    So… … … she’s not a ditz after all. Um, uh, good work there, Rachel!
     
  • Frances Langum watches, then tells us all about an anti-vax activist who forces his maskless way into a fast food joint with mostly elderly customers, a place that requires masks, and is stunned that all those old folks seem so rude.
     
    He has a point, of course. We aged ones should never, ever fail to show a degree of hospitality toward those who simply want to exercise their freedom to endanger our health.
     
  • Sarah Cooper reacts to what we can hope might become a new COVID narrative:
     


    If enough macho-MAGA types believe this new urban legend, perhaps a few more lives might be saved.

  • Julian Sanchez makes short work of misplaced reasoning we hear repeatedly from anti-vax circles:
     

  • As if avoiding prolonged breathless agony or exceptionally brutal death from COVID is not enough, M. Bouffant at Web of Evil has another reason you should get a free and available set of vaccinations.
     
  • At Political Irony, the old set of COVID variants from 2021 have helpful advice for the new set of COVID variants in 2022.
     
  • John Scalzi at Whatever provides an update on the state of his family in the face of the newest variant then, as an almost aside, provides a compelling case for the mature decision on COVID immunity. As they say, there can be only one.
     
  • PZ Myers reacts as a Texas School Board member explains that Houston educational scores are lagging because there are too many teachers of the wrong color. Professor Myers has an alternate suggestion.
     
  • Legal expert Imani Gandy posts a takeoff on a cliché that’s been around longer than have I, and laughs at one response.
     

  • Nan’s Notebook illustrates one reason we spend so lavishly on military hardware then use that super-expensive hyper-advanced weaponry for something requiring perhaps a little more than a hand grenade.
     
    Her example reminds me of Mark Twain’s critique of the extravagant writing style of James Fenimore Cooper.
     
    He comes thundering down with all his battalions at his back, cavalry in the van, artillery on the flanks, infantry massed in the middle, forty bands braying, a thousand banners streaming in the wind…
    …in order to attack a grazing cow.
     
    Except this is real, and her example (I’m no expert) seems tragic on many levels.
     
    What lends credibility to her argument is that Congress is force-feeding funds to the Defense Department, passing a military budget significantly higher than the administration, or military leaders themselves, say is needed or wanted.
     
  • At The Moderate Voice retired U.S. Air Force officer Dorian de Wind draws on the US victory in the first Iraq war for one, largely unreported, reason for the US loss in Afghanistan.
     
  • We sometimes have to take our cautious optimism in stages. Nojo, one of the consistently brighter lights of internet wisdom, points to progress after a fashion.
     
    With the defeat of Mr. Trump, we are no longer barreling downhill. We are now in a mere downward slide, with a hope that things will not get a whole lot worse.
     
  • MadMikesAmerica does not seem entirely optimistic about 2022.
     
  • A bunch of kids get to communicate directly with the President of the United States! Wow! Talk about a lifetime memory!
     
    But the father of one of the kids is a Trumper. So he yells out the current favorite euphemism for proscribing a crude anatomical improbability to our President: “Let’s go Brandon!”
     
    President Biden handles it with grace, sparing the kids anything more that might mar the experience.
     
    Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged is somewhat amused that the aberrant father is shocked that he isn’t greeted with universal high-fives. The First Amendment protects him from government retribution, a wonderful part of our legal system. Vixen point out that the First Amendment works both ways.
     
  • Infidel753 celebrates the return of a favorite blogger, Yellowdog Granny, and suggests an object lesson to the rest of us who write online. This is why we need to guard against threats to effective free speech. Not all threats are governmental.
     
  • And, yes, Yellowdog Granny is indeed back (YAY!) after losing her blog site for a time. Seems her internet host objected to her mean satire of conservatives. Took her some time to get set up with a more tolerant host. She starts the year with a series of memes devoted to Saint Betty.
     
  • We religious folk do find new, creative ways to express our arrogance, do we not?
     
    In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Pastor Nate Pickowitz insists that there is no such thing as an atheist. The good pastor notes that humans in all parts of the world have worshiped one deity or another. So humans are hardwired for belief. AND he points to the Bible as evidence that even atheists recognize God before they die. Atheist Bruce is surprisingly gentle as he turns the argument into bits of dust in the wind.
     
  • The Propaganda Professor travels to Guatemala and encounters an attitude toward tourists. Apparently, Trump followers also travel (who would have guessed?) and so US tourists in general live with resulting first impressions.
     
  • Scotties Playtime posts a series of toons and memes devoted to workplace hardship. But the most important item is his update on his own health. His posts are a labor of love. A comment or two of encouragement might be, well, encouraging.
     
  • It’s been three weeks, but it’s worth taking a look at Vagabond Scholar, where we find the annual listing of last year’s best of the best posts from bloggers.
     
  • Anthony Fauci was caught on a live mic referring to a Republican inquisitor as a moron. Andy Borowitz reports that Fauci is defending the characterization with I’m just following the science.
     
  • Reductress reports on a woman who manages to reach a very special point in her career.
     
  • The Onion warns of several social media mistakes, any of which could definitely cost you your job.
     
  • SilverAppleQueen has cats who contemplate snowfall.
     
  • @momwino98 decides to prank her spouse and ends up pranking herself:
     

    @momwino98

    Boxer fail…Its hot in here..😂🤦🏼‍♀️ ##backbenchersonflipkart ##boxersoftiktok ##k18hairflip ##StepandFlex ##fyp ##horrible ##tiktokmom ##fyp ##foryourpage

    ♬ original sound – @Momwino98

Tweets I thought worthy:

And I’m allowed a few of my own:


– Podcasts –
 

7 thoughts on “Rightist Hilarity, DOJ, Insurrect, 2022, Vote Rights, Sinema, COVID, Maddow”

  1. Very glad to hear you’re on the mend!

    “Congress is force-feeding funds to the Defense Department, passing a military budget significantly higher than the administration, or military leaders themselves, say is needed or wanted.”

    I’m reminded of some gargantuan Defense Contractor (Might have been Lockheed-Martin with the F-22) once bragging that their contract was un-killable, because they managed to have some sub-contractor providing jobs in every congressional district.

    Eisenhower TRIED to warn us about the Military-Industrial Complex (albeit after spending the eight years of his presidency building it up, so I don’t credit him THAT much)

    1. Bildor,
      Before being banned by Darrell for my “hate”, I was accused of being a “racist commie” as well as portrayed as a “leftist fascist who hates America”. How can I live with myself? 🙂

      I think my repeated requests for evidence of a “stolen election”, along with my reminding them that Trump praised his seditious thugs with “You’re special, we love you” was more than he could tolerate.

      How hateful of me.

      Bless his heart.

  2. Howdy Burr!

    Great medical advice abounds in the blogosphere this week: (1) Screaming in continuous agony is not as much fun as people may think. I no longer recommend it. And (2) don’t get hit by a truck. Unfortunately, it is lost in all the recycled platitudes and pablum that so many think of as good medical advice.

    Glad you’re back among the blogging.

    Huzzah!
    Jack

  3. Bildor, I am sorry that this is what you took away from my blog. I actually welcome those good folks with opinions that are different from my own. Indeed, I have many friends and family members whom I love very much that have wildly different political views from my obviously and irrefutably accurate political views who frequent my site. 🙂 What I do not tolerate is hateful rhetoric and name-calling. (i.e. calling someone a racist Nazi because he espouses conservative views is counter-productive.) That tends to stifle serious conversations. I have only had to ever ban two people from my blog for such actions thankfully. You might even know one of those two people , although his recollection of the facts in his defense is… inaccurate.

    I welcome you and everyone that is either right or left of center to visit my blog, comment, and tell me where I am wrong. Such comments can be made with strong sentiments and still not degrade to incivility. I hope you will come back and see!

    1. Darrell,
      I hereby denounce anyone who called you a “racist Nazi”, even though you abet the person who called me a racist commie.

      Of course we understand you feel that you are the real victim of smear, and I deserved the false accusation. Your feelings are paramount.

      BTW, I am NOT a “leftist fascist who hates America”, in case you need reminding. But then, you’ve always known me better than I know myself. Who am I to tell you that you’re wrong?

      And please let us know when you have the evidence that shows Biden stole the election from Trump.

      We know poll workers, the numerous recounts, the election officials, state certification boards, secretaries of state, and sixty-some courts determined there was NO massive voter fraud.

      We know the members of the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council (GCC) Executive Committee – Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised. All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary.”

      We know on Nov. 12, 2020, officials from two Department of Homeland Security committees — the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council and the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council overseeing cybersecurity — released a joint statement to Trump.

      “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.”

      For that, Trump fired director of DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Christopher Krebs. The dirty rat.

      We know Trump lied when he declared he won, wanted to order the military to seize voting machines, pressured a secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes” to win Georgia, demanded the DOJ to “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressmen”, and sent a violent mob to the Capitol to “stop the steal”.

      Please show us how silly we are to think Trump is dishonest, and has such a weak ego he can’t admit he lost.

      Unlike you, I cannot support, believe, or trust the man who openly praised his seditionist terrorist insurrectionists as “very special” and that he loved them.

      Even the “Camp Auschwitz” guy. (Must be a “leftist”, amirite?)

      See? I can learn from you.

      1. I’m sure Darrell doesn’t want to discuss the issues we have with his Fearless Leader and his destructive lies and divisive hatred for “Communist Democrats” and the rest of us “leftist fascists who hate America”.

        He can’t be bothered with pointless trivialities like that, when he has such outrage to express for Joe Biden’s “tyranny of the fascist America-hating left”.

        He declared: “Of course the leftists in power are far too concerned with holding on to their power to ever remove this repugnant and mentally incompetent human being. Party is more important than the country evidently.”

        And he sees none of that from his party that bends its knee is obedient servility to their much more repugnant rapist and terrorist-praising Dear Leader.

        No. He’s entirely OK with all that.

        He’s very angry about Biden murdering American troops in cold blood during the Afghanistan withdrawal that Trump left for him.

        And here I thought public health care, public education, fair elections and representation, equal justice under law, infrastructure, preserving voting rights and environmental protections are important to our country.

        Alas! It just proves I hate America.

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