The event was termed a “day of infamy” by our visionary then-president Frnklin Roosevelt. Much has changed since then. In 1941, the country was solidly Democratic in the House, Senate, presidency, and in most state legislatures. The nation believed in its leaders with good reason. Labor unions had mushroomed into being, providing our laborers with a strong vehicle to negotiate higher wages and fairer pay standards, which would soon usher in an unprecedented era of worldwide prosperity. Our current president, Donald Trump, was not even born yet. It was a problematic era, and no nirvana by any stretch. However, the thought that we would someday elect a defiant, immature, ignorant,spoiled-rotten little brat to the presidency was nowhere in the public psyche, and no one alive back then could have predicted such a horrible thing. My, how low our standards have fallen!
Cory’s treading water in the Presidential primary, unfortunately. But there’s another Booker in Kentucky who’s making a play to unseat Moscow Mitch.
It’s been about four months since Charles Booker, the Democratic state representative from Louisville who has formed an exploratory committee for a U.S. Senate run, drove to Harlan County to throw his support behind protesting coal miners camped out along a set of railroad tracks.
Conservative Christian Republicans really, really, really don’t like to abort babies. Interestingly enough, aborting a baby isn’t a thing. Neither is Baron Barron. #BeBest
Margaret, I don’t suffer fools gladly. Nor do I gladly suffer today’s Conservative Christian Republicans. And now that I’ve read those first two lines, I realize I’m being repetitive.
To be clear there are some of each I can tolerate and some I even love. Not all conservatives are racists, but many are without even knowing it. Not all Christians are hypocrites and I would venture to say most aren’t. And not all Republicans are asshats although I’m beginning to think most are. But every Conservative Christian Republican I have met has very definitely been a racist, hypocritical asshat. Every. Single. One. By definition.
By definition a conservative is a person who is averse to change and holds to traditional values and attitudes. The problem with that is traditionally we have created a country that values some and discriminates against others. America has a real problem with racism and other-ism and it’s not going to be solved by clinging to traditional values.
By definition a Christian is a person who has received Christian baptism and is a believer in Christianity. Christianity is the religion based on the person and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Interestingly enough Jesus was born into a family of refugees fleeing violence in their homeland. You know, they were… well… they were immigrants and not the fair-skinned ones from Europe.
By definition a Republican is a person who is a member or supporter of the Republican Party. The Republican Party has chosen Donald Trump to be its leader. Most Republicans are conservative but it’s not necessarily a requirement. Donald Trump is a racist but he is not a conservative. He is also not a Christian. He is, however, an asshat.
In case you are missing my point, let me spell it out for you.
Now, I’m the first to admit that I’m no expert on the mind of the average voter, or even the average Democratic voter, but my first two reactions to this interaction were “Jesus, Biden is going to get killed for this!”, followed immediately by “Eff that guy!”
The more I saw it, the more I loved it, because this guy wasn’t just some voter with an honest disagreement with Biden, he was a supporter of another campaign (Elizabeth Warren’s) who got up and mocked the former VP’s age, then lied about him. As Biden would say later, he just needed to “shut this down.”
The scene also reminded me, almost immediately, of former President Barack Obama’s run-in with another midwestern jackass named Joe the Plumber, whose name was not Joe (it was Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher) and who was not a plumber (he was a contractor).
Obama met up with Joe while on the campaign trail as a candidate in 008, and spent a good five minutes humoring the guy as he just made stuff up about how an Obama tax proposal would hurt his imaginary business.
For his trouble, Obama managed to create a right-wing superstar, and was attacked every time he or his campaign tried to refute the dumb stuff Joe the Plumber would go around saying. I don’t think there’s an Obama supporter alive who doesn’t watch that video and headdesk themselves comatose watching Obama be so nice to the guy.
I probably would have out-Bidened Biden in that spot, and told him “Why don’t you go vote for McCain, then come crying to me when you can’t afford health care, I’ll still be here.”
But there is a conventional media wisdom that any slight of any voter ever is necessarily a bad and damaging thing for a candidate, best exemplified by the media freakout when Hillary Clinton called racists “deplorable,” and was dead accurate in assessing their numbers.
There are some indications that that wisdom may be somewhat obsolete in a post-Trump world.
Andy Borowitz reports on the blowup at the NATO summit as national leaders challenge Donald Trump to a spelling contest in which he is required to spell “NATO”.
North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz is asked what happens if Trump wins again. Pastor John answers in two ways. He explains what we must do if that happens. And he explains what we must do to keep that from happening.
Republicans are embracing the propoganda of Russia’s government that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 US election. Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger sifts through the polls and discovers that voters are not buying it.
Says something, I suppose, about the current state of political conservatism. Iron Knee at Political Irony reports on the retirement of US Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA). Seems no Republican Senator can be found willing to replace him as chair of the Senate Ethics Committee. Nobody. Taunts practically invent themselves. GOP ethics have become toxic. It’s late. Seemed the most obvious.
Scotties Toy Box decyphers why so many aging white conservative are okay with abandoning democracy in favor of being ruled by a Russian autocrat. There is a reason, a shameful reason, so many of my generation love our Uncle Vlad.
A reporter demands that Speaker Pelosi explain whether she hates my president. tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors contrasts the reactions: sharp, angry reasoning by Nancy Pelosi and sniping insults by Donald Trump.
Frances Langum watches Joe Biden’s righteously angry reaction at a Fox News devotee who accuses him of sponsoring unqualified son Hunter for a job. Why the Fox follower knows it’s true: “I see it on the TV.”
Tommy Christopher covers the corporate agony as an obscure food magazine names Mitch McConnell as its Man of the Year. A large grocery chain with a similar name scrambles to deny and deny and deny McConnell’s own false claim that the food chain endorsed him.
Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara is alarmed by Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to penalize corporations when they deliberately lie to government regulators. Michael sees it as an attack on free speech. I dunno. People died and little kids got seriously sick from contaminated peanut butter during the self-inspection days of the Bush administration. Maybe corporate perjury laws could have prevented that.
nojo contrasts professional reporting as he learned it as a youth in journalism class with how it is practiced today. It isn’t just Fox, although that is today’s epicenter of journalistic degeneracy. nojo takes on the mainstream, mostly for rigid presentation of both sides as equidistant from truth, as opposed to diligence in searching for that truth.
Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson is understandably horrified by a shooting at the school his own kids once attended. He attacks Democrats for their reactions, that we should try to prevent such tragedies (“talking points about gun control”). James singles out one proposal that, as he points out, would not have prevented this single incident. So obviously, it and other proposals are not worth considering. But James does suggest “we find out all the facts…” So I guess we’re left with thoughts and prayers.
This is a brief bit of truth. Green Eagle accurately explains that the Conservative Party in Britain has driven that nation to “economic and political collapse” but despairs at the irresponsible response by the opposition.
Master of angry rant Max’s Dad goes to an old theatre, sits in an uncomfortable seat, twists his neck trying to see the screen, then falls in love with the movie. He begs readers to go watch The Irishman. Wow. Must be an extremely good movie.
Author John Scalzi at Whatever writes about his adventure with narcotics police after a friend bakes bread made from 4,500 year old yeast and sends it to him. The bread is flagged by police canines as a large package of illegal narcotics. Nobody is harmed and the bread is never in any danger. A photo of one eventual sandwich is posted.
I. The President’s Misconduct: The President Conditioned a White House Meeting and Military Aid to Ukraine on a Public Announcement of Investigations Beneficial to his Reelection Campaign
II. The President’s Obstruction of the House of Representatives’ Impeachment Inquiry: The President Obstructed the Impeachment Inquiry by Instructing Witnesses and Agencies to Ignore Subpoenas for Documents and Testimony
The impeachment inquiry into Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States, uncovered a months-long effort by President Trump to use the powers of his office to solicit foreign interference on his behalf in the 2020 election. As described in this executive summary and the report that follows, President Trump’s scheme subverted U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine and undermined our national security in favor of two politically motivated investigations that would help his presidential reelection campaign. The President demanded that the newly-elected Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, publicly announce investigations into a political rival that he apparently feared the most, former Vice President Joe Biden, and into a discredited theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 presidential election. To compel the Ukrainian President to do his political bidding, President Trump conditioned two official acts on the public announcement of the investigations: a coveted White House visit and critical U.S. military assistance Ukraine needed to fight its Russian adversary.
Even as you read this, the next Big Lie that Republicans like Rick Wilson believe will save them is being mortared into place in plain sight, brick-by-brick, and with the enthusiastic support of the Beltway media,. And that Big Lie is that the GOP was a principled, sane political party which was doing just fine until Trump rolled into town with his Magic Meathead Mesmerizing Machine and somehow overnight transformed +60M principled, sane Republican voters into a mob reprogrammable bigots and imbeciles.
The idea that 53% of Republicans in a recent poll think that Trump is a better president than Abraham Lincoln actually doesn’t bother me excessively because I drink an actual fuckton anymore have been watching Republican polls for a long time, and have observed the rise of poll-trolling and troll-polling. You know, the thing where Republicans, when questioned, will blame Obama for the Hurricane Katrina response or where pollsters will ask questions trying to cast a certain demographic (presumed knuckle-draggers) in a weird light by pointing up one weird and very click-baitable response. You can tell me Republicans by just 53% are defensive enough in support of Trump to compare him favorably to the guy on Mount Rushmore, the $5 bill and the freaking penny, and I’m going to basically shrug. (I will note, however, for posterity’s sake, that Trump invited this comparison. And outside of Republicans, he definitely does not compare favorably.)
Republicans are going to like the current Republican president. It isn’t brain science.
