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

She gets caught in the rain and just doesn’t care for a good reason🌸 pic.twitter.com/HAKMQUeYDi

— Tansu YEĞEN (@TansuYegen) October 4, 2022

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
11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th 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.

• The Palmer Report watches as Republicans examine the election results, analyze what they did wrong, and plan on how to do more of it.
   
• Ever wonder why almost a third of the country embraces a political party whose objective seems to be to screw them over?
   
  Green Eagle gets under the skin and comes up with a compelling explanation.
   
• North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz speaks to those of us in solid red areas who might be tempted to give up.
   
  Key passage:
  Well before you and I showed up, there were other people here: people whose names, faces, and stories we’ll never know. They faced similarly dire circumstances, they also endured great suffering, and they too surely found themselves at hopelessness and resignation.
   
  But they didn’t stop.
   
• Just before the election, Dave Dubya provided a thoughtful summary of how Trumpism outgrew Trump.
   
• Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger brings us the front page as Murdock’s New York Post goes post-election Trumpty Dumpty.
   
• Notable Republicans seem ready to move on from Trump. Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson seems skeptical:
  

  2023: The spine of the GOP will be… https://t.co/Scazw41P6w pic.twitter.com/TlJMpjipx7

  — James Wigderson (@jwigderson) November 11, 2022

• Tommy Christopher watches Chris Wallace take on Republicans who stood by Trump as he instigated a violent insurrection, but are ready to abandon him because he looks like a loser.
   
• Donald Trump really doesn’t like Florida governor Ron DeSantis. As DeSantis hosts a grand reelection celebration, Donald seethes.
   
  The Moderate Voice reprints the rant, unintentionally funny, with an entirely complete and accurate summary in one brief headline.
   
• Frances Langum enjoys Biden enjoying the big fight between Trump and DeSantis.
   
  
   
• Trump sues Hillary and others for conspiring to accuse him of conspiring with Vlad Putin, all in order to destroy his life and political future and to rig elections against him. Sheesh.
   
  News Corpse covers the dismissal of the lawsuit, complete with with the Judge stomping all over Trump’s lawyers for bringing into a courtroom such a dumb frivolous piece of trash.
   
• In Hackwhackers, Tiffany is getting married (all the best, of course). But since Daddy Don is, as usual, preoccupied with himself, she will carry on with her mom. She will be accompanied by her distracted, sputtering, zoned out other parent.
   
• In Happiness Between Tails da-AL reviews the writings of Alka Joshi on how professional women in India handle dress codes, how it is part of a larger issue of cultural gender bias, and how it transcends India and applies to us.
   
• For over 40 years, it has been against the law to remove indigenous children from their families and place them elsewhere if qualified members of their extended families are available and willing to take them.
   
  Legal experts Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo examine the likely overturning of that law by the US Supreme Court:
   
  
   
• Scotties Playtime works for free on a computer problem for an elderly friend, and learns something about local bigotry and local courage.
   
• A few weeks ago, a couple of immature environmental activists threw tomato soup at a priceless van Gogh painting.
   
  The Propaganda Professor uses that incident, and reactions to it, as a starting point in examining when generalizations are, and aren’t, valid.
   
• Dave Columbo objects sort of to objections to Confederate statues, and has a suggestion:
  

  @davecolumbo Tell me I’m wrong #standup #comedy #standupcomedy #jokes #funny #politics ♬ Super Mario 64 (Main Theme) – Tony Brattoli

• Elon Musk says his recent impulsive moves on Twitter are kind of noble, if you think about it. Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez seems skeptical:
  

  I've never seen Musk say a word about "elevating citizen journalism" before; this is a lame post-hoc rationalization for disastrously blowing up Twitter's authentication system in pursuit of a few grubby ducats.

  — Julian Sanchez (@normative) November 11, 2022

• tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors concludes that Twitter is running like one of Musk’s self driving cars.
   
  One aspect I hadn’t thought of:
   
  Among the key executives who left en masse, were those making sure Twitter did not break any laws, including legally binding consent agreements.
   
• I know it’s satire, but it seems so plausible. Ant Farmer’s Almanac reports that Elon Musk will insure Twitter for the full purchase price in case of fire. He assures us there is no suspicious intent.
   
• Andy Borowitz reports that Twitter employees are now required to sign an affidavit swearing they think Elon Musk is cool.
   
  The document also indicates that Musk’s arrival at Twitter headquarters while carrying a sink was “not only very cool but also super funny.”
   
• Nojo goes all Ozymandias on Elon.
   
• Reductress explains how to explain what’s going on with Twitter to someone who does not want to know.
   
• Infidel753 still glories in videos of conservative Christians reacting to the 2020 trouncing of Trump, and offers two entertaining samples.
   
• In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, former pastor and current atheist Bruce takes a look at the IFB branch of Christianity, the churches who are at war with pretty much everyone.
   
  He offers one example, Bob Jones University, whose President is under fire for what the rest of the moral universe would regard as a series of miniscule issues.
   
  Key passage:
  IFB churches are known for being fighting Baptists, willing to fight and divide over even trivial matters. In their world “trivial” doesn’t exist.
   
• YellowDog Granny says being gay is fine as long as you’re high, and quotes scripture to prove it. Chapter and Verse.
   
• My longtime friend Darrell, of Unabashedly American, publishes a “poem” that his fevered imagination tells him is a devastating takedown of the left.
   
  Entitled The religion of the left, it includes among its insights:
  Climate change is the cult, CRT is the creed, abortion is the sacrament, Marx is a church father, and so on and so on and scooby dooby doo.(Damn, I’m old!)
   
  Useful mainly if you need to fulfill a curiosity about what right-wing moon howlers, in the darkest corners of their Fox-reinforced collective imagination, think they are fighting against.
  As Darrell puts it, [what] I thought was brilliant and perfectly encapsulated the leftist mindset in their “religion”.
   
• M. Bouffant at Web of Evil seems skeptical as KFC apologizes. Seems they accidentally urged Germans to celebrate the beginning of the Holocaust.
   
• This is cool.
   
  Professor PZ Myers has discovered an online map that uses historical data to plot routes and times in the ancient Roman equivalent of google maps. This many weeks by donkey, this many days by ship.
   
• John Scalzi at Whatever gets up early so you don’t have to and photographs the red moon. I suppose photographing the actual eclipse would show pretty much nothing, right?
   
• Nan’s Notebook ponders whether we will ever make contact with sentient others in the universe.
   
• SilverAppleQueen discovers a poem about the rueful pain of being the other woman.
   
• The Journal of Improbable Research discovers research from a while back at the Tripolis Army Hospital in Greece indicating that left handed people tend to be smarter. Or at least they tend to enjoy smarter pass times.
   

– Podcasts –