Snitching

The President has demanded that government employees rat out anyone working for the Federal government that is a "DEIA hire" (the A is for Accessibility, so not just no darkies, broads, or queers, but also no gimps and crips) so that said individuals may be purged from the payroll in favor of more deserving applicants. And he isn't just requesting snitches within the Washington agencies, he's opened it up to everyone and directed reports be emailed to DEIAtruth@opm.gov. As a patriotic American, I felt it was incumbent on me to do my part, particularly since the directive promised "adverse consequences" for those failing to report on DEI leeches and their sympathizers within ten days.

My email is transcribed below. 

To: DEIAtruth@opm.gov

Subject: unqualified employees

 

It has come to my attention that there are affirmative-action hires in the executive branch, none of whom are qualified for their posts and none of whom were hired on merit. All were given their jobs based on their race, gender, and backgrounds and have zero business being in government if we are to be, in fact, a meritocracy as President Trump has declared.

As the president and the Secretary of State and acting Attorney General have stated, such employees are wasting taxpayer dollars in a shameful attempt to undermine American values. They have taken jobs from far more qualified true Americans that happen to be of a different gender, ethnicity, or background. Some have criminal records and many are even born of immigrant parents and grandparents, people who were not even actual Americans!

There are dozens of these individuals, including the following: 

• Donald John Trump (family is German immigrants, changed their foreigner name from Drumpf; immigrant wife; felon; rapist; fraudster; stochastic terrorist; insurrectionist)
• James Donald Bowman AKA James David Vance (family line from the UK, wife's parents are south Asian immigrants, fraudster, insurrectionist)
• Elon Musk (African, illegal immigrant, neo-nazi, criminal, insurrectionist)
• Devin Nunes (sounds ethnic, insurrectionist)
• Susan Wiles (insurrectionist)

In addition, there are several people being considered for jobs that are not qualified and are clearly DEI applicants to fill some sort of quota:

• Peter Hegseth (addict, serial abuser, propagandist, neo-nazi, insurrectionist)
• Pamela Bondi (bribery recipient, consorts with cults, insurrectionist)
• Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy Junior (drug addict, known criminal, propagandist, conspirator)
• Linda McMahon (abetted pedophiles, insurrectionist)
• Tulsi Gabbard (stooge of hostile foreign governments, insurrectionist)
• Kristi Noem (murderer of pets, insurrectionist)
• Russell Vought (propagandist, insurrectionist, radical anti-Constitutionalist)
• Lee Zeldin (environmental terrorist, insurrectionist)

If we are to reward merit and cease discriminating against worthy individuals in favor of unqualified losers in the name of "inclusion" then all of these people need to be shown the door. Get on that straight away, will you?

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick   |   Posted on January 24, 2025 at 3:31AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

American Carnage 2.0

What a week it's been, and it's only Wednesday.

I've been trying to keep myself busy—site update project, TV shopping, umpiring shifts, making a bunch of appointments I'd been putting off—to combat the utterly depressing events happening in DC. It only worked to a small degree, I'm pretty depressed anyway. (Aside—as a clinically depressed person I am obligated to point out that this is not the same version of "depressed" as what I usually contend with. It's just that English isn't broad enough to have a word that differentiates the two types properly. For today's purposes we're using the term as is commonly used by the masses who don't know from clinical depression.)

I did not watch or listen to or in any way engage with the inauguration of POTUS 47 on Monday. This is highly out of character for me as a politics nerd, but I frankly knew it would be unhealthy for me to do so this time. I knew what he was going to say, more or less, I knew it was all going to be lies and projection and, in the words of George W. Bush, "some weird shit." Which it was. I knew he would take the Oath of Office and mean exactly none of it, which is exactly what happened; he betrayed the oath within hours of taking it, just as he betrayed it countless times when he was POTUS 45. I knew he would then make his way to the Oval Office and commence "flooding the zone" with an obscene slew of executive orders that would be at best harmful and at worst utterly illegal, which he most certainly did.

The fact that this all happened on MLK Day was just salt in the wound, as the new president mandated government discrimination against LGBTQ persons on the day we were supposed to be celebrating the advance of civil rights. On top of that, he declared that he and his minions would begin firing anyone they didn't like at any position within the Federal government for any or no reason, which had previously been out of bounds.

One thing we should have learned from the POTUS 45 administration is that their "flood the zone" strategy worked then. The continual onslaught of awfulness was so overwhelming that it was simply impossible to cover it all, and attempting to do so gave every piece of it more or less equal weight. So this time around, I'm hopeful that we (that's a very broad "we," meaning anyone trying to educate the public on what's actually happening, anyone trying to counter-program the propaganda coming out of the mouths and keyboards of Republicans and Republican media) will learn to triage the components of the flood and call out the worst of the worst. The lesser offenses are for sure still offenses, still deserve to be fought, but when it comes to communication and messaging, we have to understand that most Americans (a) do not read well if at all, (b) are easily gaslit, and (c) respond to threats more than they do to logic. This gives the autocrats, and by extension the entirety of the modern Republican party, an advantage: they know how to manipulate people. Or, in the words of 45/47, "I love the poorly educated."

So we should focus on meeting the bandwidth the public has and not exceeding it and thus shutting down all reception. With that in mind, the worst things to come of the first few days of this administration in the opinion of your humble webmaster:

• The Orwellianly-named "Restoring Accountability for Career Senior Executives" executive order along with the "Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce" EO. This is a rebrand of what, as 45, he called "Schedule F," the reclassification of all Federal employees to be subject to political hiring and firing. The "accountability" sought here is more accurately described as "be loyal to Trump or you're gone." This is a direct response to the experience of the 45 administration in which people like Miles Taylor and Andrew McCabe displayed ethical behavior and tried to stop policy moves that would harm the country. Those kinds of people will be pre-purged now so sycophants can take their place.
• Actions to promote climate change. Not to promote combating or mitigating climate change, but promoting the climate crisis itself. These include withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord as well as "any agreement, pact, accord, or similar commitment" to the Paris agreement; revocation of the U.S. International Climate Finance Plan; orders to "prioritize economic efficiency" in "all foreign engagements that concern energy policy"; orders to "rescind, revoke, revise, amend, defer, or grant exemptions from any and all regulations, orders, guidance documents, policies, and any other similar agency actions" regarding the exploitation of oil and other resources in Alaska and to ensure that the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge is open for drilling and destruction in the name of fossil fuels; and the rescission of all Biden EOs that reversed or mitigated pro-climate-crisis actions of the 45 administration. (In fact, all Biden EOs were rescinded, regardless of their content. I submit that the reason for this was more sheer pettiness than any policy aims.)
• Reinstatement of and draconian instruction regarding the Federal death penalty. The 45 administration executed more prisoners than all prior administrations put together, so this is no surprise. The language of the EO includes gems like this: "The Attorney General shall ... pursue Federal jurisdiction and seek the death penalty regardless of other factors for every federal capital crime involving the murder of a law-enforcement officer or a capital crime committed by an alien illegally present in this country." Just an added bit of race-baiting and immigrant-terrorizing to put a cherry on top of the cruelty.
• And the worst of the worst: All of the pardons. POTUS47 pardoned everyone who took part in the January 6, 2021 attack regardless of the offense they were convicted of or actions they took. I believe this was done for one reason only—to ensure that he has a loyal mob of domestic terrorists who will work for him in the coming days, weeks, months, and years; who will go after people he publicly demonizes but can't legitimately prosecute. Innumerable people are already living in fear for their lives now that these criminals have been released. (Surprisingly, and somewhat encouragingly, one—and to my knowledge only one—January 6th rioter rejected her pardon. "Accepting a pardon would only insult the Capitol police officers, rule of law and, of course, our nation," said rioter Pamela Hemphill. "I pleaded guilty because I was guilty, and accepting a pardon also would serve to contribute to their gaslighting and false narrative. We were wrong that day, we broke the law [, and] there should be no pardons.") He also pardoned Ross Ulbricht, an online drug-dealer and money-launderer; I suspect this one was at the behest of Elon as Ulbricht is revered in cryptocurrency circles since he developed and promoted crypto as a tool of his narcotic crimes. For good(?) measure he also pardoned two DC cops who were convicted of murder, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice. I extrapolate from the above graph and this item that in 45/47’s world it's a capital offense to murder a cop, but if a cop murders it's hunky-dory.

I'm not even including the attack on diversity and equity policy, the revocation of any and all acknowledgment let alone protection of minorities in the Federal government; that's reprehensible, but survivable. The real harm that does is to legitimize racism and misogyny to those Americans who want to feel freer to wear their white-supremacist attitudes openly and beat down on anyone else. It's awful but can be dealt with socially as well as by policy. Also, the whole "Department of Government Efficiency" garbage; it's a real thing now, although advisory. I don't think he made it cabinet-level, but that probably doesn't matter. It's still basically toothless as Congress controls spending; all it can do is recommend. Not included here is the withdrawal from the World Health Organization because we've already lived through a pandemic under this idiot and know he'd ignore anything related to the WHO anyway. Also, I didn't include the EO that was the most blatant betrayal of his oath of office, the attempt to declare and end to birthright citizenship to anyone not born of American parents—that's unconscionable, but so clearly unconstitutional that even this illegitimate and corrupt Supreme Court would have to bend itself into a pretzel to come up with a way to justify ruling that a President can amend the Constitution with an executive order. It'll be challenged very soon and if John Roberts allows a ruling like that he will have destroyed any remaining trust in the Court's validity.

Also this week we had Elon Musk enthusiastically give sieg heil salutes to a cheering MAGA crowd, white supremacists marching in DC in celebration, and the Bishop of Washington calmly implored 45/47, to his face, to be compassionate and merciful and respectful—basically, to be more of a Christian and less of an asshole—and in response the president(!) posted on social media that the Bishop "was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater" and that "she and her church owe the public an apology!"

The cruelty is the point. That and the grift.

Soon enough the rubes that voted for the first convicted-felon President will see that he won't do a damn thing for their bank accounts (despite the EO deceptively titled "Delivering Emergency Price Relief for American Families and Defeating the Cost of Living Crisis" that actually says nothing of any substance) and nothing in their lives is better for having him in office except that they feel better about using the N word, R word, and various other slurs in public and feel freer to beat on their wives and girlfriends. Or, more likely, they won't see it even though it'll be obviously staring them in the face because, as noted, they're easily gaslit.

So they have to be told. Repeatedly, and in no uncertain terms: The President lied to you. He thinks you're stupid. To him you are merely a mark for his con game. Your groceries are more expensive, not less; your freedoms are more curtailed, not greater; crime is up, not down; the country is less respected, not more, yet he is telling you otherwise. The President is a stochastic terrorist (look it up) that lies to you to make you afraid of people he doesn't like and pretends he's your friend while he robs you blind. The trick is going to be to find a way to do it that actually gets through.

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick   |   Posted on January 22, 2025 at 8:25PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

The clown cabinet and the phantom infield

Pete Hegseth does not care that he is in no way qualified for the job he's been nominated to

I've been busier than usual the last few days, so stuff has happened and I've yet to catch up on it all. But some thoughts on a couple of things I have been following:

• Pete Hegseth's confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense began today in the Senate Armed Services Committee, and, rather predictably, it sucked. Hegseth himself was a bloviating fount of machismo and bullshit—talk of "restoring lethality" to the military (has the army been using stun guns all this time? Are Navy missiles somehow designed to deliver fungal mushrooms and not mushroom clouds?) and "patriotic," "America-first" goals—who avoided answering any question of substance while making sure to get all the boot-licking talking points in to show his would-be boss, the once-and-future (gag) President VonClownstick, that he'd be an obedient and obsequious toady.

  Democratic Senators tried to hold Hegseth's feet to the fire to a degree, but thanks to the limitations on their time and an apparently coordinated effort from the Republican majority (gag) to dismiss every point brought up by a Democratic questioner, their efforts basically failed to move the needle. Still, Mark Kelly and Tammy Duckworth each refused to accept a non-answer to their questions but it mattered not since Hegseth talked over them and essentially filibustered them until time ran out. Republican Senators made excuses for Hegseth's disqualifying behavior and incompetent background. The committee chair Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) kicked things off with an invitation for Hegseth to bullshit his way through dismissing the reports of his awfulness. Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma by way of system 892) channeled his MMA performer persona and equated Hegseth's drunkenness and infidelity to behavior of Senators in the room in a weird attempt to negate the troubles associated with a potential Secretary of Defense showing up to work drunk off his ass.

  Every Republican on the committee revealed themselves to be one or more of the following:

  • Themselves unqualified to hold their own job
  • Uninterested in the function of the role of Secretary of Defense
  • Obsessed with "wokeness" as a barely-concealed avenue to promote their own racism and misogyny
  • Spineless cowards who bend the knee to Trump over all else

  The Democrats all said good things and made as much as they could out of Hegseth's myriad negative qualities, but nothing put the former Fox "News" anchor on his heels, nothing made a lick of difference to any of the Republicans, and in some cases the questioning was too cordial. Duckworth was not, her time was well spent and appropriately aggressive, but Jack Reed's genial "I do not believe you are qualified for the overwhelming demands of this job," while substantively on point, conveyed no sense of scale. Jean Shaheen and Kirsten Gillibrand took Hegseth to task for his misogyny, Gillibrand doing the better job, and Hegseth simply did not care. Tim Kaine (D-Virgina) brought up his spousal abuse and womanizing, but Kaine did it all with kind of a smile, which is usual for him and not special here, and wasn't able to hold his own. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) took on Hegseth's about-face on his sexist remarks after being nominated, and thankfully wouldn't tolerate his attempt to filibuster her, but again did not get any suitable answers. Hegseth wouldn't even answer a question about whether he would abide by the pledge he wants every general to make to not work for the defense industry after leaving the service.

  Duckworth was the star of the hearing, among other reasons for pointing out Hegseth's financial improprieties and noting that "our adversaries watch closely at time of transition, and any sense that the Department of Defense is being steered by someone who is wholly unprepared for the job puts America at risk." But even that made no difference to the Republicans.

  As Tom Nichols put it in a piece covering the hearing for The Atlantic, "America's allies should be deeply concerned; America's enemies, meanwhile, are almost certainly laughing in amazement at their unexpected good fortune."

• Item two is far less important: the Seattle Mariners' offseason. After having a conversation the night before with a friend about what the actual hell the Mariners' front office is even trying to do to address their many needs before Spring Training begins next month (from what we can tell from the outside, nothing; though surely things are being attempted that have flopped, unsurprisingly given how stringent the budgetary decree from above is), I had an umpiring shift that included a game with a player that works for Mariner de-facto GM Jerry Dipoto's department of baseball operations. I asked him when we were going to hear anything regarding the gaping black holes around the Mariner infield and he suggested that, while his official answer was "no comment," perhaps something was imminent. Now, I don't know how high up the chain this guy is in the baseball ops office, he might know a lot or he might know next to nothing, but he does seem to know more than I do, so I was keeping an eye out and sure enough, the Mariners made two player acquisitions in the days that followed. Sadly, they both mean very little and neither fills a need for regular players at first, second, or third base.

  First of these moves was the signing of free agent Donovan Solano, late of the San Diego Padres and Minnesota Twins. Solano has played third, second, and first base, put up pretty good on-base numbers, and looks like an excellent guy to have on your bench. But he's 37, has never been an everyday player, and while a useful pickup appears at best to be a platoon partner for Luke Raley at first base. At least he comes cheap.

  Next was Tuesday's purchase of Miles Mastrobuoni's contract from the Cubs. Mastrobuoni had been DFA'd, meaning the Cubs had no use for him, and in nine years as a pro he's managed three uninspired partial seasons in the Majors as a utiltyman. He did have a few good Triple-A years, or partial years, but the ceiling for him seems to be a replacement for the more interesting and more versatile Sam Haggerty, who the M's sadly let go earlier in the offseason.

  Way to get my hopes up, anonymous softball player. Psych! (Not really, I remained skeptical throughout.)

Tagged Politics, President VonClownstick   |   Posted on January 15, 2025 at 12:02AM   |   Permalink   |     |  

Miscellany

Weird but fun, Interior Chinatown is worth a watch

Today's post: A random assortment of disjointed stuff!

• The dishwasher saga is over, with a new one purchased, delivered, and installed and the old one carted away to whatever scrap heap such things are taken to. I hadn't initially planned to replace the broken one so quickly, but holiday sales at Lowe's convinced me I was better off spending $600 now, on a good one on sale, than later on a cheaper one at regular price. It works, it's quiet, and most importantly, it doesn't leak into Rachel's kitchen downstairs.
• I've spent a chunk of time doing maintenance on this here website, including recreating the sketches page and beginning to populate it with stuff readily available, i.e. mostly stuff from the last few years that was either already scanned into my computer or at hand in my currently in-use sketchbook. There's other stuff in my hard drive already digitized, things that were on prior versions of my blog, but they were posted in the olden days of the Internet when nobody had a screen resolution bigger than 800 pixels and are thus pretty lousy scans. I'll have to find the originals and rescan them at some point. Anyway, the current format has clickable icons that produce a fullscreen image and a button to continue to "notes and comments" that takes you to a page for that individual sketch and any blathering I may have done about it, plus a commenting form just like a blog post. Click anywhere other than the button to close the fullscreen image and return to the sketch menu.
• I had my Christmas the other night at K&E's place, enjoying delicious food and talking about the world and also TV. All three of us love the Hulu show Interior Chinatown, starring Jimmy Yang and Chloe Bennett. It's a wacky comedic sendup of action movies, the Law & Order franchise, and meta-storytelling that takes place both within a Law & Order-style TV show and around a mild-mannered Chinese-American's family in a fictional Chinatown neighborhood. Recommended. We also agree on the greatness of Michael Schur's A Man on the Inside (Netflix), which I discussed briefly earlier but deserves a second recommend. The Diplomat (Netflix) also works for all of us, and we commented on the overlap of cast and crew from The West Wing on it (even though neither of them have ever really watched West Wing, which is really a bummer for them). Shrinking (Apple TV+) wasn't something they'd seen but which I think is terrific; they liked Slow Horses, which I've not sampled to this point. I'm very much into Silo (Apple TV+) and, naturally, the just-concluded (boo) Star Trek: Lower Decks, but know better than to try to convince K&E to watch those.
• I was gifted the book What's Next on that early-Christmas evening, and though I've yet to start into it, I am anticipating some great West Wing reflections and truly wonder how it will feel to revisit the details of the fictional Bartlet Administration while living in the impending nightmare of Trump 2.0, Now With More Oligarchy.
• I just learned that baseball Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson died today. One of the all-time greats, Rickey was a fantastic character with is arrogant self-assuredness, his speaking in the third person, and his generosity to others. Despite being exactly my kind of ballplayer—the stolen base king! Consistently walked more than struck out!—he was never one of my favorites, maybe because he took the steals record away from one of my faves, Lou Brock, or maybe because he spent his career primarily with the Oakland A's and the hated New York Yankees. He did spend part of one season in Seattle as a Mariner, in 2000, in the waning days of his very long career, and was always fun to watch no matter who he played for. My two favorite Rickey Henderson anecdotes come from other players. One, from former Seattle Mariner Harold Reynolds, who won the stolen base crown in 1987 with 66 steals (because Henderson was injured that year) and got a postseason call from Rickey congratulating him but also containing Rickey-style mockery, with Henderson ending the call with "Rickey would have had 66 by the All-Star break." Two, from fellow Hall of Famer Mike Piazza, who was Rickey's teammate with the New York Mets; Piazza recounted how Rickey voted when teams would be divvying up the postseason bonuses among the support staff. “Rickey was the most generous guy I ever played with, and whenever the discussion came around to what we should give one of the fringe people—whether it was a minor leaguer who came up for a few days or the parking lot attendant—Rickey would shout out 'Full share!' We’d argue for a while and he’d say, 'Fuck that! You can change somebody’s life!'” Apparently Rickey died from pneumonia, less than a week shy of 66 years old. Bummer.
• Earlier this week, Craig Calcaterra referenced a Washington Post article called "America's Best Decade" in his newsletter. The article analyzes results from polling 2,000 American adults on which decade was best for 20 different things, like best movies, best economy, best music, best reporting, and so on. There are some interesting (though not surprising) things, like Republicans are twice as likely to think the 1950s were awesome as other people are (hey, Republicans, that being the case, let's go back to the 90% marginal tax rate that existed then, which made for a lot of the circumstances you say you want!), or that people think the "best music" is the music they listened to in their formative years. But Craig's takeaway was surprise at the generational consistency of people liking their own youth (not just the music, but everything). "Americans feel nostalgia not for a specific era, but for a specific age," says the article. "The good old days when America was 'great' aren’t the 1950s. They’re whatever decade you were 11, your parents knew the correct answer to any question, and you’d never heard of war crimes tribunals, microplastics or improvised explosive devices." There's a handy graph to illustrate:
  

  

  
  If they'd polled me, I might have skewed the results just a smidge. I mean, if I followed the pattern, I'd have my bests coming in the 1980s, and frankly there was a lot about the ’80s that wasn't all that. I mean, sure, those years were largely good for me (well, not ’89), but thinking big picture not so much. I'd say... Best Music? 1970s. Best Movies? I'm not really big into movies like some people, so I don't have a real feeling on this, but I guess the 2000s? Best Fashion? Hell if I know, but certainly not the ’80s; maybe the ’60s, since it spanned a lot of stuff. Happiest Families? Again, WTF do I know, but I'd say maybe 1990s since (a) women had far more agency than in prior decades, and (b) economically things were stable and good throughout. Most Moral Society is a question that inevitably tracks one's politics and I'd be tempted to say the 2020s if not for what happened last month to show us how many millions of Americans are still racist, misogynist, cruel asshats. Most Reliable News Reporting? 1970s again, though it really depends on how you quantify; there's a lot of fine reportage more recently, but also increasingly widespread BS from the dawn of cable TV forward. Best Economy? 1990s. Best Radio? I've no proper context for this, but given how much more radio was a thing the further back you go, maybe the 1940s or ’50s? For me, again the ’70s. Best TV? Right now, man. So much great TV being made even as the TV delivery system is transmogrifying. Least Political Division? Um...never? I mean, now is the worst in ages, but there's always been a lot; maybe the ’40s, what with the war being a unifying purpose. Best Sporting Events? For me, that's limited to baseball, really, and in this area I fit the trend—1980s baseball was great and I wish we could exhume Bart Giamatti to be Commissioner again. Best Cuisine seems like a dumb category, as food doesn't change, really, it's how we eat that changes. I like good food whenever it's eaten. Anyway, kind of an interesting survey.

Tagged Site issues, Politics, West Wing, Baseball, TV, Craig Calcaterra   |   Posted on December 21, 2024 at 8:37PM   |   Permalink   |     |  

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   |     |  

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   |     |  

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   |     |  

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   |     |  

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   |     |  

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   |     |  

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   |     |  

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   |     |