Bizarro Cabinet Spotlight: SecDef

The incoming POTUS has named many, many utterly horrible people as cabinet nominees. Some of these incompetent and dangerous buffoons and clowns (clowns with the arsenal of the Joker, by the way) will be confirmed by the incoming Senate. We can only hope that enough Republicans in the new Senate have actual standards befitting their office and the worst of the worst get rejected.

Our worst-of-the-worst spotlight today is on the Department of Defense. The nominee is one Pete Hegseth, who is a Fox "News" personality and wholly unqualified for the gig. But he is, like the incoming POTUS, a sexual assaulter who pays off women to keep them quiet, which likely makes him an A-one perfect candidate in the eyes of the man nominating him. He's also appears to be one to give Rudy Giuliani a run for his money when it comes to who's drunkest.

Prior to becoming a weekend anchor on Fox, Hesketh headed up two veterans advocacy groups, Concerned Veterans of America and Veterans for Freedom. He was forced out of both due to frequent intoxication and misuse of funds, among other reasons.

A report on Hesgeth's conduct with CVA described a series of drunken appearances at CVA events which were "embarrassing, but not surprising; people have simply come to expect Pete to get drunk at social events." One person who worked with Hegseth at CVA said, "I’ve seen him drunk so many times. I’ve seen him dragged away not a few times but multiple times. To have him at the Pentagon would be scary."

With VFF, Hesgeth mismanaged funds so thoroughly that the group had run up nearly half a million dollars in debts while having less than $1,000 on hand. “There’s a long pattern, over more than a decade, of malfeasance, financial mismanagement, and sexual impropriety,” said a former Hegseth associate. “There’s a fair dose of bullying and misinformation, too.”

That part makes him basically twinsies with POTUS 45/47. The alcohol abuse isn't something they have in common, but he was seen at a bar in 2015 shouting, with a companion, "kill all Muslims!" in a drunken chant, which no doubt 45/47 finds endearing. Oh, and he has white-nationalist tattoos and one of an American flag with an AK-47.

But not to worry. It's just the Defense Department. Not like he'd be heading up anything important or influential in any way.

We're so screwed.

Source: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/pete-hegseths-secret-history

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick   |   Posted on December 3, 2024 at 4:49am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Hundred-dollar evening

Green-sauce enchiladas, spanish rice, refritos, and avocado. Traditional Thanksgiving fare.

Greetings, Internetizens. I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving holiday; mine was largely unremarkable. It's been a while since I had a regular Thanksgiving hang, what with people dying, marrying into other holiday groups, kicking me to the curb, or moving out of state—most of my pre-pandemic Thanksgivings going back a couple decades at least have involved being with those specific folks. This year I treated it like most any other average day, except I did cook a whole lot of food. Mexican, though, not the traditional sort of things, as turkey's been off my menu for 37 years. (Incidentally, I had a weird dream last night/this morning that I had been very hungry and ate one and a half hamburgers before realizing that I hadn't eaten a hamburger in nearly 40 years. I was disturbed by the realization and quite upset but still finished the second hamburger since at that point I had already contributed to the cow's death and throwing it in the trash would benefit nothing. It was a strange nightmare.) There will be leftovers and I will see folks over the weekend.

But Thanksgiving Eve was notable. Wednesday night I went to a speed dating event in Fremont. I'd done a couple of similar events before, but this one was by a different outfit and was a less organized, differently-structured format. I won't be trying this outfit's events again.

I met, I think, six different women, most of whom didn't register much. I mean, nice enough ladies, but I'm not prompted to try to see them again. But two were exceptions. One was someone I may or may not have umpired last summer, she is on a softball team I may have drawn on my Sunday afternoon schedule once or twice but I'm not often at the park her team plays at. But we did know people in common and our "date" consisted mostly of talking about people and experiences with the league. She evidently knows several people on my favorite team to ump, The Leftovers, so Neal, if you have any scoop on Anna from Line Drive Capital, feel free to let me know. She was fun to talk to.

The other one I haven't been able to get out of my head, and not for any good reasons.

I don't recall her actual name, but let's call her "Olive," since olives are among the most repulsive of the edible plantfoods. Olive started our mini-date asking blunt questions, which I liked, and quickly noting which of my answers were red flags, which I didn't like but found interesting. My never having been married was a red flag. My interest in science-fiction was a red flag. OK. When I told her one of my "red flags" was voting behavior or lack thereof, she revealed that she was a Trumper.

She did so in a kind of exaggerated fashion, too, going on about how the Democrats suck and Kamala Harris was useless. In the moment, I was, frankly, dumbfounded. I of course know these people exist—we're going to be very shortly living in a world that 70 million such folks willed into being with cruelty and ignorance—and that I'd inescapably encounter them in the wild, but I hadn't expected to run into one—a female one, no less—in "The People's Republic of Fremont, Center of the Universe." Clearly she traveled in for the event from somewhere else, but still.

I was so stunned that I thought she might be doing a bit, some sort of comedic performance art wherein she plays a character, Colbert Report-style, of some sort of cross between Victoria Jackson and Ron Swanson. So I interrupted her and asked, "are you doing a bit?" She was somewhat offended and said no, she was deadly serious, and had I ever seen Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speak? which just reinforced my impression that she must be doing a bit. Sadly, she was not.

I was so gobsmacked that this outwardly attractive middle-aged woman was on the inside either a mean-spirited hateful racist or a cognitively deficient rube (or both) that when she challenged me to explain why I or anyone would ever vote for Kamala Harris I hesitated for what felt like many seconds before diving in to policy matters. She then said how Harris was "horrible on the border," without answering my reply of "in what way did she do anything negative regarding the border since that wasn't really in her portfolio as VP," and went on to explain how vaccines are dangerous and that the worst thing Kamala Harris ever did was visit a Planned Parenthood office, which I assume refers to a campaign stop but might have been some sort of right-wing propaganda I missed that said she'd had abortions or something. I didn't ask.

"Are you sure you're not doing a bit? Because you've been hitting all the satire points pretty hard." She just told me that I was "obviously quite ignorant" and I laughed. Hopefully in a fashion that was clearly I'm laughing at you, not at your sense of humor since you are not doing a bit. She returned the conversation to RFK Jr. and her strong belief in "informed consent" and started talking about how parents shouldn't have to vaccinate their children because not everyone exposed to a virus will get sick. I asked if she saw any irony in believing in informed consent when she was so steadfastly opposed to being informed and she told me I would see she was right when Trump fixes health care. I laughed again. She said she was a doctor and knew what she was talking about and I laughed harder and said I'd never before met a "doctor" that was pro-polio. Then our phones beeped with the text notification that it was time to move on to the next speed date. I said, "All right, Olive, good luck," and moved on, she replied "good luck to you too," and I suspect each of us was not talking about speed dating. I know I meant "good luck getting through your life being a ripe mark for con artists and it'll serve you right if you become destitute and find yourself in the middle of a measles outbreak in the coming hellscape." She might have meant something similar.

After the event I left the bar and walked back to my car to find I'd inadvertently parked in a restricted-by-residential-permit zone and had a ticket on my windshield. What a capper.

So factoring in the ticket, an eleven-dollar mocktail, and the fee for the event, my evening cost me more than $100. Can't say it was money well spent.

If I do more of these speed dating things they will not be with this company, which claims to have a special algorithm to match you to "compatible dates" but clearly just says that for marketing purposes and has no such selectivity involved. Better to go back to the other outfit that makes no bones about it being random, you meet whoever signs up. (The events put on by the other folks also feed you as part of the fee rather than saddle you with a minimum bar purchase, so there's that.)

At least talking with Anna was pleasant. If nothing else, I may see her on the field next year.

Tagged Politics, Holidays   |   Posted on November 29, 2024 at 2:08am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Quotes of the day

Botox cautionary tale and rejected Batman villain Matt Gaetz

“We’re going to see the return of diseases we have controlled for decades.”

—Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, about potential public health consequences of RFK Jr. leading the Dept. of Health & Human Services.

 

"[She is] our girlfriend."

—Russian state television commentator, speaking of Tulsi Gabbard, 45/47’s nominee to be Director of National Intelligence.

 

"I’m sure it will make for a popcorn-eating confirmation hearing."

—Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), speculating on whether or not Attorney General designee Matt Gaetz can be confirmed for a cabinet post.

 

"[He] will sacrifice our public lands and endangered wildlife on the altar of the fossil fuel industry’s profits."

—Kierán Suckling, executive director at the Center for Biological Diversity, about Interior Secretary nominee Doug Burgum.

 

And the chef's kiss of today's quotes:

 

"Matt Gaetz is a sex-trafficking, drug-addicted piece of shit. He is abhorrent. There are pools of vomit with more to offer the Earth than this STD-riddled testament to the failure of fallen masculinity.”

—Ben Domenech, co-founder of the ultra-conservative publication The Federalist, concerning 45/47’s choice for Attorney General.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick   |   Posted on November 15, 2024 at 8:27pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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It begins

The Age of Idiocracy isn't scheduled to begin until next January 20th at 9:00am PST, but the incoming idiot-in-chief has already started naming his subordinate idiots, nominating some truly exceptional individuals to very important jobs.

I don't mean exceptional in a good way, either.

Many people that voted Republican, for POTUS and for Senate and House, likely don't realize what they've invited in. Not only are incompetents Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswami now co-heads of the fictitious "Department of Governmental Efficiency" (no such thing exists and no such agency can be formed without Congress), charged with eliminating government programs they don't think are good for billionaires, but the people being tapped for real jobs in the real government are frighteningly extreme.

For the benefit of some folks I've talked to over the past few days what have been asking who these people are, let's have a look at the proposed nominees for the Idiot Cabinet:

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio. You might say, wait a minute, isn't Rubio "Little Marco," one of those Republicans 45/47 hates and ridicules all the time? Yes, same guy. But that doesn't mean anything, the wannabe führer disdains everyone who isn't himself whether he says so publicly or not. Rubio is a toady, a yes-man, who will go in whatever direction the winds of power are blowing, yet is just enough of a "regular" (i.e. pre-2015) Republican that he won't face much trouble getting confirmed by the Senate. Left to his own devices, Rubio is a simpleton and a hawk who likes the idea of the U.S. being "robust" in confronting nations like Iran and North Korea and has characterized Vladimir Putin as a "gangster" (presumably as a negative), so accepting this gig means he'll do a 180 on all of that (except maybe Iran), since Putin is the incoming POTUS's boss and North Korea's Kim Jong Un is the incoming POTUS's best bud.
• Attorney General Matt Gaetz. In no universe, including this one, is Gaetz confirmable to any cabinet post without shenanigans of some kind. He is (was) the Ted Cruz of the House, loathed by basically everyone. He resigned from Congress early in order to stop a House investigation into allegations of him engaging in statutory rape and sex trafficking. Of course, 45/47 likes him probably because of all that, two peas in a pod, if you will. Gaetz would have no problems turning the justice department into a new form of thug force to carry out the incoming POTUS's grievance fantasies. At least he's out of Congress now.
• Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Gabbard has zero experience in the field, but she is a Russian propaganda mouthpiece, which makes her ideal for 45/47’s purposes of kowtowing to Putin.
• Secretary of Defense Pete Hesgeth. Though Hesgeth is an Army National Guard veteran, decorated for tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, he has no experience in government of any sort. Instead, his career has been as a pundit/talking head on Fox "News," spewing lies and propaganda on behalf of 45/47. Also not remotely confirmable to the post in any year before now. Oh, and he has tattoos of Christian Nationalist/neo-Nazi symbols on his torso, so, yeah, nice guy.
• Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Infamous for being a puppy killer, Noem is no doubt attractive to 45/47 for this gig because as governor of South Dakota she defied all health measures during the pandemic and loves the idea of deporting immigrants. Though I suspect the biggest draw was that she killed her dog.
• CIA Director John Ratcliffe. This guy was DNI for the final year of 45/47’s first term, having been nominated, then withdrawn because of massive bipartisan pushback, then renominated and barely confirmed. His only qualification is staunch obedience to 45/47 in all things. When in Congress, Ratcliffe was ranked by the Heritage Foundation as the second-most conservative legislator nationwide. He was a member of the defendant's team in the first impeachment trial of 45/47.
• Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Also not confirmable, RFK Jr. is an anti-vaccine conspiracist and has claimed that vaccinations are a sort of "holocaust" on American children because he believes they cause autism (they don't). During the pandemic he slandered/libeled Dr. Anthony Fauci repeatedly and spread lies about COVID-19 and the vaccines for that virus, no doubt endearing himself to 45/47 in the process, including a whopper that the COVID vaccine killed Hank Aaron (it didn't). At one point, RFK Jr. was regarded as a respectable environmental activist, but no longer; he's a brain-addled nutjob who literally had a worm eating away at his cortex.
• Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins. Another toady, Collins was also on 45/47’s defense team in the first impeachment trial. Collins is a 2020 election denier, a climate crisis denier, an anti-abortion zealot, and an ardent foe of the Affordable Care Act. So, you know, exactly the kind of guy 45/47 would want in charge of veterans and their health care.
• Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum. The perfect guy for the post in 45/47’s mind, the North Dakota governor is in deep with various energy industry CEOs. One of the loudest voices behind the absurd claim that Joe Biden Wants to Ban Your Gas Stove, Burgum supports fossil fuel industry of all kinds, hates the very idea of subsidizing a shift to electric vehicles, and wants to open protected Federal lands to mining and oil and gas drilling. The guy makes James Watt look like a tree-hugger.
• Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin. Zeldin has no experience (sense a theme?) in the field, though he was on the congressional Climate Solutions Caucus as a hostile member. He opposed the Paris Climate Agreement and champions the elimination of regulations that prevent industry from even greater polluting behavior.

Maybe "Idiot Cabinet" isn't the proper term. It's more like the "Bizarro Cabinet." Every official is there to do the opposite of what the job is supposed to be.

And that's just cabinet officials. If we were to get into White House staff it would be even scarier, in part because there's no check on them, the president can put whomever he wants there without approval from anyone.

Of course, 45/47 wants to do an end-run around Senate confirmations because he knows most of the people he wants in these jobs has no business being there. At this point we can only hope that the Senate Republican leadership won't just give away its power and abdicate its Constitutional duty. Not sure what kind of odds I'd give that.

Much of this has to be 45/47 trying to see just how far he can push the envelope before he gets back into the Oval. How many Senators are dumbfuck sycophants like Tom Tuberville and how many value their job to advise and consent and, if necessary, reject? Tuberville, Lindsey Graham, and no doubt at least a couple dozen others are lost causes, but what about the rest? What about incoming Majority Leader John Thune?

I suppose one silver lining of the Bizarro Cabinet is that since they all know nothing about their potential gigs a lot of stuff could blow up on their and in 45/47’s faces. Hopefully some of it, at least, won't blow up in ours as well.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick   |   Posted on November 14, 2024 at 9:26pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Cheaper eggs

My friend and neighbor Rachel forwarded this to me and I thought it worth sharing with you all. Please to enjoy.

 

 

Follow-up video. Skip to 4:15 and start there; there's supposed to be a way to make it do that when embedding, but it isn't working here for some reason.

 

 

P.S. Eggs will not be cheaper.

Tagged Politics, Tennessee Brando   |   Posted on November 12, 2024 at 5:34pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Still processing

It's been a tough week, if I may state the obvious. After a couple of days of basic wallowing I've tried to distract myself with other things—TV, household stuff, the cats, books—which has been helpful. But I've still kept up with all (or most) or the political stuff I'd become accustomed to following, just at a bit more of a detached remove, if you will.

Even at a remove, though, it's pissing me off.

Pundits and analysts and observers and just plain folks everywhere seem to be tripping over themselves trying to find the reasons Kamala Harris lost the election. Theories abound: She didn't distance herself enough from Joe Biden (why would she? Biden's been a fantastic president no matter how people are perceiving him right now and to say otherwise would be dishonest); she erred in being too focused on "joy" and "positivity" (ludicrous; the enthusiasm for her was profound and she had the best ground game of any campaign in decades); she picked the wrong guy for VP (would Shapiro have delivered Pennsylvania? Would not having Walz have hurt her elsewhere? No way to know); she didn't reach out to voters by nontraditional means (bullshit, she was on apolitical podcasts and local television and "The View" and on and on); she alienated voters by being too focused on "wokeism" and "identity politics" (absurd—when reporters tried to goad her into talking about identity politics she called it a "distraction" and insisted they move on).

Garbage, all of them. Not very many people seem to grasp the obvious here.

I've received a little bit of pushback on my last post, where I described most of 45/47's voters as hateful. The argument being that only a minority of them are hateful, the rest voted because of the economy or because they're woefully ignorant. 

First off, if you voted for the fascist because you thought it would be better economically, then you are also woefully ignorant, so I dispute that those are different cohorts. Secondly, yes, there are plenty of voters that are phenomenally uninformed, misinformed, and/or stupid—I just don't buy that most of them are not also hateful.

She lost because a majority of Americans—a hefty majority, at that—either didn't vote or voted for the convicted felon wannabe autocrat for one or both of these reasons:

1. They properly understand and approve of what he stands for and what he wants to do, which makes them hateful. They like his various bigotries and cruelty and thirst for retribution against people who are other than them in whatever fashion. Racists, mysoginists, champions of extreme wealth and poverty, people so fearful of LGBTQ folks that they can't stop to think about why they're afraid.
2. They are so gullible that they bought into the lies he constantly spews and lack the sense to give it any critical thought. You voted for him because of inflation? Then you didn't think it through, or even partway through, or think about it at all, because you actually voted for the guy that made inflation worse in the first place and against the VP of the administration that reined it in and brought it back to better-than-normal levels.

Certainly the corporate media went all in on the second group. Certainly the oligarchs-in-waiting exploited the second group to a truly impressive degree. And certainly much of that second group will be experiencing a kind of buyer's remorse within a year as things start going downhill, but I wonder if even then those people still wouldn't vote for someone with two X chromosomes.

Kamala Harris lost because most Americans won't support a woman at the top of the ticket, can't be bothered to engage with politics even a little bit, and/or hate trans folks and brown people so much that it outweighs anything else. Not because her campaign was flawed or because her policies were unpopular or she didn't sit for an interview with Joe Rogan. It boils down to sexism, willful ignorance, and hateful bigotries. The end.

What to do about it? Well, quit looking for reasons to blame Kamala Harris or Joe Biden or the DNC or whomever for the loss, for starters. Then focus on the people who to this point couldn't be bothered to pay attention.

It's going to be a challenge. The incoming president "loves the poorly educated," after all, because they're easier to manipulate, and his promise to destroy the Department of Education is in the service of further expanding the ranks of poorly educated Americans. How to counter that? Some disengaged people will always be disengaged, but some would be willing to learn. It's a matter of reaching them.

I tried this past spring. I put together a little booklet on presidential history that was intended to be accessible to anyone even a little bit interested; in the end it might have been a little more complicated than that, but still I felt it was something people would respond to. I reached out to a number of people and organizations that I thought would be interested in assisting me in distributing it and was surprised to get zero help. No one on Democratic forums or in campaign offices or on liberal podcasts or educators thought it worth their time, and I didn't exactly have thousands of dollars available to print out and distribute it door to door in seven swing states myself.

When I was a kid we had a more centralized media landscape. Newspapers were prevalent and largely trustworthy, there was civics education, we had Schoolhouse Rock. Schoolhouse Rock was great, it was on TV every Saturday morning in between the various cartoon shows. Truly a brilliant tool. It couldn't be done today because there is no platform like the network TV Saturday morning cartoons used to be. You could make it, you could get it available to people, but they'd have to search it out purposefully, which the people who need it won't do. We're all in our own insulated bubbles.

We have to figure out how to burst them.

Tagged Politics   |   Posted on November 11, 2024 at 11:24pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Coping?

Captain Pike showed aliens how WWIII began slowly starting with Jan. 6, 2021

Like many of you out there, I'm trying to cope.

This certainly isn't the first election to have not gone my way, but it is the first one where not going my way has predictably catastrophic consequences and I'm not sure how to deal with it.

My neighbor expected it to go down like this, more or less. She was more cynical than I. Me, I truly thought people were going to repudiate the monstrous cancer on our society that is Trumpism. I mean, how could they not? Especially with the way the guy campaigned in the last month-plus?

And yet.

For the moment I'm still mostly stunned. But there are a plethora of other feelings in there, trying to surmount the stunned numbness. It's hard to catalog them all.

You'd think I'd mostly be angry. Don't get me wrong, I am angry—angry at the corporate media that abdicated its journalistic duty, angry at the candidate himself for his overall awfulness, angry at the Russians for their interference (bomb threats?!), angry at each and every one of the people who voted for this petty wannabe tyrant—but it's not the primary emotion here, and I'm not sure what is.

Sadness is in the mix. Fear, certainly. Helplessness. But also embarrassment.

I'm embarrassed to have not seen it coming. I remember the olden days of 2016, when he-who-shall-not-be-named won the first time, and having conversations with friends about what it would mean. I was 100% certain that he wouldn't last a full term in office (hell, I thought there was a very good chance he wouldn't last a full year), as he was surely going to commit multiple impeachable offenses and he would be removed by Congress. Which he did. And, after too long a period, he was impeached. But what I hadn't counted on was the complete and total slide into corruption of the Republican party.

That was then.

It's been eight years and we've seen the bastard get away with everything. We've seen officials from his party turn against their oaths of office almost to a person. We've seen the cult of personality so envelop tens of millions of Americans as to destroy their ability to think critically.

But I still believed in a majority of the voting public. What a sap I was.

When George W. Bush was reelected in 2004 I took it personally. I had worked for the John Kerry campaign, I knew Kerry was a fantastic potential president, and I knew what a disaster Bush had been. I also knew what dirty tricks and propaganda and outright lies the Bush campaign relied on and resented them no end. (And I still think history will one day reveal that those dirty tricks suppressed may thousands of Democratic votes in order to get Bush over the finish line.) When that election result came in I was furious. Bush had been the worst president in living memory, what the hell, people?

Today is so much worse, and yet I'm not furious, not at the top line. Instead I feel dumb. Foolish, even. I feel that I've allowed my relative privilege in this society to cloud my perceptions.

What the [shudder] president-elect represents is horrifying on more levels than one can easily count, but it's not new, not really. I just visited the site of a World War II internment camp the other day. Jim Crow laws persisted for decades. Misogyny has been ingrained in this culture forever. American society has been this ugly to one degree or another since Day One, but here and now is the first time I have felt—not just intellectually understood, but personally felt—oppressed within my own society. The majority of American voters hate people like me.

I'm not trying to draw equivalencies here, I am fully aware that I'm lower on the scale of hatred than many minority groups and people with more immediately obvious "otherness" about them. But the hatred feels personal for the first time.

Now, many that voted for the monster would tell me otherwise, that they didn't vote for him because they hate people. Some of them might even believe that. Some of them might be right, they could be in the cohort that is so disengaged from the world around them that they voted irresponsibly without knowing a goddamn thing.

But most of them voted for him because they hate. They like the cruelty their guy embodies. They like the bullying, the arrogant simpleton behavior, the basic meanness. The bigotry.

Maybe we need this. I mean, even in the idealized world of Star Trek, humanity had to get worse before it got better. In the series premiere of Strange New Worlds, Captain Pike shows an alien culture how Earth didn't get its shit together until after a catastrophic third World War, the origins of which, it was heavily implied, were traced back to January 6th, 2021 and the ensuing second American civil war. And I can now see how that scenario could come to pass—blue state governors are in a hell of a spot now, it's not difficult to imagine states trying to maintain the rule of law and fealty to the Constitution while Federal forces are arrayed against them. It's not difficult to imagine a violent crisis when the [gag] president-elect refuses to leave when his term is up in defiance of the Constitution. It's not hard to imagine a variety of scenarios that could play out with a fascist in the White House surrounded by enablers on all sides.

The majority of American voters preferred a convicted-felon, adjudicated rapist, fascist-to-the-core white man with the intelligence of a baked potato to a principled black woman with impeccable credentials and brains to shame MENSA. Racism lives. Misogyny lives. Idiocy reigns. Ignorance-as-virtue might as well be the new Republican credo.

And I feel—for now—broken and helpless in the face of a blind hatred I'd allowed myself to not see.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick   |   Posted on November 6, 2024 at 8:37pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Freakout sets in

I had faith in humanity. I had faith in there being more sane American voters than rubes and dupes and fascist bigots. I believed in the ability of adult human beings to empathize with women stripped of their rights and dying in ER parking lots. I believed enough Americans were smart enough to know when they were being lied to and what propaganda was sheer bullshit.

Turns out I was wrong about all of it.

There was election interference and intimidation fuckery in several swing states, Russian interference again favoring the fascist candidate, yet turnout was impressively high. And the incompetent criminal Hitler-loving authoritarian bigoted idiot got more votes.

Even if things take a turn overnight and swing state totals narrow and perhaps even flip in a miracle of miracles, the reality still exists that this country isn't populated by good people. This country is full of stupid, disengaged, and/or evil people.

We're in for a very rude awakening indeed.

I've not processed this yet, really, so I'm just going to share what Ben Cohen wrote over at The Banter.

Enough Americans have been taken in by this extraordinary cult of personality and have voted in a madman to be their president. The mainstream press failed spectacularly, again, to focus on the danger Trump posed to America. They turned the presidential contest it into yet another horse race where the reds were fighting the blues in battle to the finish. Trump was sanitized, repackaged, and finally thrust back into the White House with barely a scratch on him.

The polls, having been basically wrong about everything since 2016, were far more accurate than I and almost everyone in the media anticipated. They did not overestimate the Democrats, and they appear to have correctly gaged Trump’s almost mythical ability to activate his base and bring low propensity voters out to the polls. And that really is the story of the race. Despite having run one of the most racist, deranged, insane campaigns in modern history, Trump pulled out the victory again.

He massively over performed with Hispanic men, and shockingly made the huge gender gap irrelevant. It is the comeback of all comebacks, only it isn’t the good guy who has won, but the convicted felon and sexual abuser who tried to overthrow the US government only four years ago.

Sane, well adjusted people know that Donald Trump should not be allowed anywhere near the White House. He should be in jail for the multiple crimes he committed while in office, including his attempted coup. Now he will grant himself immunity and no doubt commit more crimes during his second term in office.

We are headed to a very, very dark place right now, and those who enabled, funded and voted for this despicable charlatan will have to own what is about to happen.

. . .

This is a war that cannot be ceded. We cannot allow Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Fox News to destroy reality and decimate truth. He does not get a grace period, and he must not be respected. Donald Trump is a fascist, and fascists must be defeated. His lies will be countered with truths, and his disinformation will be fought with facts. This is war, again.

And here's the reaction from Craig Calceterra, which I don't think I could improve upon:

America just enthusiastically voted for a violent, lying, bigoted, misogynist, insurrectionist felon who promised it nothing but destruction and misery. It is a damning indictment of the country and its people.

Unlike in 2016, this was no fluke. This was no low-stakes leap of faith by some fed-up people hoping that an uncouth maverick might make their life better and might not cause much harm. This vote was made with eyes wide open. After all that’s been said and done over these past nine years, millions of Americans have decided they don’t care what Donald Trump is, what Donald Trump does, or who Donald Trump hurts. And make no mistake, he will hurt many. He has specifically and repeatedly promised to do so.

Donald Trump has harnessed a longstanding ugliness in this country. He has given voice to the desires of the tens of millions of people who want to round up, brutalize, and deport immigrants and they, in turn, have now given him the power to do so. He’s given voice to the tens of millions of people who want women to be, for all practical purposes, the property of men and, they in turn, have given him the power to do so. He’s given voice to the tens of millions of people who are just fine with abolishing democracy and instituting an authoritarian regime because they believe that regime will favor them and will punish those who they hate and they, in turn, have given him the power to do so. There is something very real, very large, and very ugly in the American body politic and there always has been. And America’s body politics has given Donald Trump power once again.

There is no coming back from this. America, the nation-state, will carry on in name as long as it has more bombs and missiles and money than anyone else and that may well be a very long time. But the ideas and values which all of us were brought up to believe in and that we have always called America is over. What is about to happen in America’s name will represent a perversion of every value I hold. The fact that it will be done with the country’s eager blessing means that the crimes will be committed with malice aforethought and that the damage will be permanent.

 

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick   |   Posted on November 5, 2024 at 11:28pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Wrapping it up

The calendar has turned to November, which historically has been my least favorite month of the year but lately hasn't been any worse than others; whether that will hold true this year depends a hell of a lot on next Tuesday's results.

Down do just a few days in Schrödinger's Ballot Box, soon we'll know if Americans chose a live Constitutional democratic republic or a dead rule of law and a new despotism. It's tough not to obsess about the latter possibility and worry about what to do then, but I nevertheless really do think we won't have to face that because I really do think the forces of good will triumph and President-elect Harris will emerge from the fallout of this ugly election campaign.

In just the latest outrage, Donald Trump has insinuated that Liz Cheney should face a firing squad. Add that to the ever-growing list of things that guy has done that should have destroyed his candidacy and yet somehow barely registers at all. Last weekend's version of the latest thing that should have destroyed his candidacy was the hateful screed and grievance rally at Madison Square Garden. It's hard to imagine any other presidential candidate in the history of presidential candidates that could walk out of that and not take a politically-fatal hit, but here we are.

Here's the great satirist Andy Borowitz on that:

PALM BEACH (The Borowitz Report)—With just four days until the election, Donald J. Trump is running out of time to alienate the few demographic groups he has not already offended, campaign sources revealed on Friday.

Though Trump has acknowledged that he did “an amazing job” of repelling Blacks, Latinos, Jews, and Arabs at his Madison Square Garden rally, he has groused that too many other cohorts remain unscathed.

In a heated meeting with aides on Friday morning, Trump banged on a table and shouted, “We need to go after the Inuit.”

“When did they become Inuit?” he demanded. “They were always Eskimos, and then, suddenly, they turned Inuit.”

Trump also expressed a desire to “do a number on the Amish” because “none of them watch me on TV.”

I also recommend spreading around Robert Reich's list of The 101 Worst Things About Trump's Shambolic Presidency. How people have memory-holed all of that heinous incompetence and treachery I will never understand. What makes it all the more remarkable is that one could probably argue an entirely different list of 101 things and still not reach the end of the list of Worst Things.

As the election campaign wraps up, so does my trip down to Southern California. I shall be heading home tomorrow, taking a different route that is more direct but still favoring non-Interstate roads (mostly). Meantime, Dad and Marty and I went to the weekly street fair thingy that happens in downtown Palm Springs last night, and as it was also Halloween there were lots of people in costume. Some of the outfits were pretty cool—in addition to the standard witches and ghosts and vampires, I also spotted a couple of Mandalorians, some stormtroopers, and a Princess Leia to represent the Star Wars crowd; several Dr. Seuss characters; two Velmas from Scooby Doo, but only one Daphne; plenty of Village People (it is Palm Springs); kids in store-bought Superman outfits; a giant Snoopy; one gender-bending Wonder Woman; and two guys in Next Generation-era Starfleet unis.

There was also an additional stage setup a block or so away that is part of a larger to-do being prepped for next weekend's Gay Pride Palm Springs event that Dad and Marty wanted to see, so we wandered over to that for a bit; it was basically a stage with a band, with the accompanying deafness-level speaker system blaring. I can't stand such things. I will never understand why it is standard practice for any rock show in a club or arena or even outdoor stage venue such as this one to amplify the volume to damaging degrees. If it is expected that one should bring ear plugs to an audio-focused event, then something is fucking wrong. I already have tinnitus, why in the world would I voluntarily exacerbate it for "enjoyment"? I once went to see one of my favorite bands, Fountains of Wayne (RIP, Adam Schlesinger), at a club on Capitol Hill somewhere and found it to be a real drag that I couldn't enjoy hearing them play because of the pounding being inflicted on my eardrums. I don't get it. Anyway, I finally dragged Dad away and we returned to the street fair proper and then made our way back to the house. Aside from the aural assault (and the band wasn't bad, by the way, just fucking loud), it was a nice enough time, though on prior visits when going to the street fair there were more interesting things being displayed and offered for sale. Off week, I guess.

It's been a decent week-plus down here, always good to visit, but I'm missing my cats and, frankly, I'm not used to such arid weather anymore and I look forward to being back among the raindrops.

 

Tagged Politics, Traveling   |   Posted on November 1, 2024 at 3:13pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Anxiety today

Hanging out here at my dad's house there's usually some news program or other on the TV, and so I'm absorbing a lot of the coverage of Former President VonClownstick's American Bund Hate Rally at Madison Square Garden yesterday. I'm glad to know that people started streaming out of the arena after all of his opening acts of racist asshats gave way to the main racist asshat, but it's still—even now, nine years after this putz entered the political fray—difficult to wrap my head around the concept that so many tens of millions of American citizens are eager to put this aspiring despot back in power, even after suffering through the multiple disasters of his 2017-2021 term.

I mean, Trump is a loathsome criminal idiot that leaves more destruction in his wake than a category-5 hurricane or 9.9-scale earthquake, but he's one guy; his immediate circle of enablers and cronies and puppet masters are a relatively small group.

The number of people that have voted for and will vote for him again? Not small. Some of them are true believer Nazi types, but most? Unlikely. It's a damning indictment of the manipulability of the American people and a troubling look at the real power of propagandists.

I would so like to believe that the results of next week's election will be a profound repudiation of the hate and ignorance Trump and his cult represent, but last time—in the midst of a pandemic he enabled, a crashing economy he orchestrated, a diminishment of this country's international reputation that runs counter to the very "We're Number One" attitude the Republican Party used to exude through its pores—seventy million people voted for him. In a country of 350,000,000 with 240,000,000 eligible voters that might not seem like too troubling a figure, but fewer than 160,000,000 people bothered to vote at all. So that 70,000,000 figure is scary as hell.

Those 70,000,000—and the 80,000,000+ that didn't think it worth their time to cast a ballot—need a reminder of what the Trump term was like.

Fortunately, JoJoFromJerz has posted a bit of a recap, a personalized "Last time, on The Trump Administration Horror Show..." that is free for all to see. I share a few bits from it here.

I remember waking up every single morning bracing for the new crazy. What had he done? What had he said? Who had he attacked, mocked, demeaned or made fun of? What new layer of awfulness was on display that day?

I remember what it felt like to watch Republican after Republican, bending the knee to a bully. Excusing an idiot. Watching them accommodate, embolden and excuse the worst behavior possible. Watching them abandon democracy for a wannabe despot. Genuflecting for a mind-numbingly stupid, autocrat-curious, reality tv star who painted himself orange.

He’s fucking orange.

...

I remember feeling perpetually trapped inside an insane asylum with a monster. I remember feeling like there was no escape.

I remember feeling as if half of the country had lost its damn mind. That people I loved had lost their damn minds. Like I was surrounded by racists and sexists, bigots and xenophobes.

...

I remember watching the country turning on itself. George Floyd’s murder. Kyle Rittenhouse’s murders. I remember it feeling like we were being ripped apart from the inside. All while a madman held court from a goddamn golf course.

I remember living in fear. What crazy person might call me to say they were coming to “Paul Pelosi” me next?

I remember watching him send our National Guard on horseback to tear gas protestors in Lafayette Square. Watching him shaking a fucking Bible that wasn’t his in front of a boarded up church. I remember feeling helpless and hopeless. All the fucking time.

JoJo's best description of the Trump years, though, was this: "I remember feeling like we were all trapped on the inside of a two-year-old’s tantrum and we didn’t have any fucking snacks."

We can't handle another tantrum.

Tagged Politics   |   Posted on October 28, 2024 at 11:38am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Election paralysis

It's T-minus 14 days. Two weeks until we start to get results from this, the latest in our series now of Most Critical Elections Ever. Will we retain our democratic republic, or will we slide headlong into fascist autocracy? Will the propagandists be successful in turning enough level-seven-susceptibles into enablers in their own downfall, or will the majority of sane Americans so dwarf the coalition of evil, dumb, corrupt, and easily-malleable?

The zeitgeist has it that it's down to basically a coin-flip's odds. So, you know, no pressure.

I want to believe the zeitgeist is giving us a picture skewed form reality, that the idea that this country's electorate is split 50-50 between competence and chaotic dictatorship is based on faulty data. The more rational parts of my mind think it's far more likely that this will not be as close as the prior two presidential elections and that Vice President Harris will carry the day with plenty of room to spare. The more emotional part of my psyche says, "never underestimate the misogyny and racism of the average American voter, to say nothing of the vast ignorance of so many US citizens."

I've alluded to how this has been producing enough anxiety to infiltrate other aspects of my daily life, but as we get closer to November 5th it's becoming more paralyzing. I can't even say "I can't wait until this thing is over with" because if it goes poorly the anxiousness will multiply a thousandfold. It's affecting me in a similar yet different manner to one of my clinical depression episodes, basically sapping me of energy and motivation to do much of anything.

Tomorrow I'm heading out on my annual trip to visit my dad and Marty for Dad's birthday, which always coincides with the World Series; it's thus become our ritual to hang out at Dad's Palm Springs-adjacent abode for a week to ten days or so, watch the Series, and take care of whatever odd jobs and repairs need doing at his house. Aside from watching the end of the baseball playoffs, all I've been trying to do the past few days is plan my route for the road trip and get things ready here for when I'm away, but I can't even seem to make headway on that. I've decided on and reconsidered and redecided on and reconsidered whether I take an extra day and hang out in San Francisco on the way; or use that extra time instead to go the back-road route, maybe along the coast; or just go direct and minimize drive time. The current decision is the back-road along the coast option, but of course, subject to change and subject to my actually being ready to leave tomorrow by the middle of the day.

Anyhow, my focus on that or anything else is transient as the anxiety kicks in again. Just gotta ride it out, I guess.

Meanwhile, I try to take some comfort in the guarded optimism of others. Here's Stephen Beschloss today:

If you’re measuring the election outcome by the current polling, you may count yourself among the worried Democrats. But I am increasingly convinced that the results will not be as close as many observers are expecting. The carnage-loving Trump may resonate with his cult followers, but that will never comprise a majority; the forward-looking Harris continues to have the ability to expand her voting population.

I still believe that most Americans yearn for a positive future characterized by humanity and decency, not one defined by grievance, degradation, and hate.

...But I also nod in agreement when reading things like this, from Craig Calcaterra today:

One candidate in this election has campaigned vigorously and competently, understands that basic civil rights and the rule of law is of critical importance to a functioning society, and has actual policy proposals. The other candidate has had multiple recent moments which strongly suggest that he is suffering from cognitive failure of some kind, has spent the entire campaign promising to usher in an unprecedented age of American authoritarianism, and is closing the campaign with hearsay about the size of a dead golfer’s dick.

The fact that this will be one of the closest elections in my lifetime says everything that needs to be said about the state of America.

My vote is already turned in. I'm going to attempt to enjoy a road trip and not worry about it. We'll see how that goes.

Tagged The Black Hole, Politics   |   Posted on October 21, 2024 at 8:34pm   |   Permalink   |     |  

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Exercise your franchise

My ballot arrived in the mail today. Will be taken to a ballot drop box tomorrow.

My home state of Washington has an excellent voting system. Since 2012 it has been 100% vote-by-mail, and I'd presumed the participation rates had jumped a lot from the before-times to the current system, but it's not as much as I thought.

Going by voting-eligible population (everyone who legally could be registered to vote if they wanted to be), we used to be in the 55-60% neighborhood; since the switch we've been 66%, 66%, and 75% (national figures those years were 58%, 59%, and 66%). Better, to be sure, but still not great.

Measured by registered voters, it looks better, of course—81%, 79%, and 84% in 2012, 2016, and 2020 respectively—but all that really tells me is that around 15-20% of people interested enough to be registered don't bother, which is also frustrating. This is a state that makes it super easy to register, too. You can even do it online. Even if you wait until election day itself, you can still register in person.

So with very few impediments, even in high-participation 2020, almost 600,000 Washingtonians who could vote didn't. Bummer. We're not a swing state, which may account for some of the non-votes. Going by midterm turnout, which drops 10-20%, and off-year turnout, which tends to be about half, POTUS is what gets a lot of folks to bother and some people (I've known a few) think it's pointless because of the electoral college.

Yes, yes, the electoral college sucks; it exists because of slavery and the only times it could have justified its existence as some have described it—a bulwark against corrupt processes and a dangerous candidate achieving office—it failed. It gave us Trump, G.W. Bush, and the Rutherford B. Hayes mess. (Which, come to think of it, are only failures if your metric of success is the greater good for the country; given why the thing was created in the first place, as all three times the anti-equality/protect-the-monied candidate became President, it actually kinda worked as designed.) The sooner it gets consigned to the dustbin of history the better. But until then, we work with what we've got.

Even in less-critical times, I'd be encouraging everyone who can to vote. I have done, to the point of annoyance in a couple of cases. Last time around, I was a lot more emphatic because the stakes were so much higher than they'd ever been. And this year, the stakes are just as high if not higher than in 2020.

We have it easy here in Washington. We don't have to wait in line, or face "polling place monitors," or prove our citizenship if we have an accent or our last name is something like Fernández. Our legislature isn't actively trying to purge us from the registration rolls or eliminating polling locations or allowing armed thugs to guard ballot boxes. So it may sound hollow from me, here in the easy-peasy Pacific Northwest, but no matter what state you live in, please, for the sake of everyone you know, the country, and the planet itself, vote. And vote for Kamala Harris. Not a third-party, not a "protest vote," and certainly not for the fascist Republicans—this time the margin needs to be as large as possible, electoral college or not. We need to break records here. I want to see a spread in the popular vote that beats Nixon's and Lyndon Johnson's. I want to see better-than-Coolidge numbers, people!

I realize everyone who visits here is likely already on board with this, so maybe share the sentiment with your own circles and encourage them to share with their circles. (Kind of like a pyramid scheme, I guess, but for good instead of evil.) I don't fully understand the people that pay no attention to government and politics, but they're out there and there's a ton of them. We have 600,000 could-but-don't voters here, for crying out loud.

These people need to be told that the lifestyle they currently enjoy, where they can go about their lives without giving a damn about government and politics, will go away in a hurry if this election goes badly. Quoting "JojoFromJerz":

None of us will be safe under a second Trump term. Not his supporters. Not his minions. Not his family. No one. He doesn’t have the capacity to consider anyone else’s safety but his own, let alone the collective of the American people. Far worse than that though, is the fact that there isn’t a human being on the planet, other than Putin anyway, whose life he wouldn’t trade for his own benefit.

Again, none of this is stuff we have to guess at.

He wanted to shoot protesters in the legs. Wanted to shoot migrants.

He put kids in motherfucking cages.

What he could and likely would do while surrounded with yes men and handed a blank check to bludgeon would be worse than anything we’ve ever known.

I for one ain’t sticking around for any of that shit.

So, let’s make sure he loses shall we?

Let’s vote like our lives depend on it.

Because they very much fucking do.

This is my best estimate of where things stand tonight, electoral-college-wise. With enough work, I think we can get at least five of those tan states and maybe even one of the pink ones to turn blue. Let's make it happen.

Tagged Politics, Kamala Harris   |   Posted on October 18, 2024 at 2:26am   |   Permalink   |     |  

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