Monday Stuff

Farron Cousins gives us the gory details of the farce orchestrated by Generalissimo Trump and his minions at the recent G7 summit (I predict more memes from the pic above than Governor Bully and the beach chair, by the way)…



…and in a related story, TYT reports on Canada's tariffs against us (love Josh Fox's comment aboot the "South Park" movie - I think they're beating the "Corporate Democrats" thing to death...not saying they don't have a bit of a point, though...one more thing - when it comes to this country and trade, let's keep this in mind, OK?)...



…and last Friday night on “Real Time,” Bill Maher, in his closing “New Rule,” pointed out that Dems, as far as he’s concerned, are more interested in winning the “culture war” than trying to come up with a responsible approach to governance (should they ever get the opportunity to run Congress, at a minimum, ever again, to say nothing of other branches of government). And today, as if to put an exclamation point on that a bit, we have the story of Robert DeNiro saying “f*ck you” to Trump at the Tony Awards, alongside the story of the Supreme Court ruling, by a 5-4 margin as you might have guessed, that it’s OK for the state of Ohio to continue conducting its voter purges (I know Breyer and Sotomayor dissented, and I’m guessing Ginsburg and Kagan were the other two, but I don’t have a confirmation on that yet).

My point is this – the DeNiro story will probably get more traction, but the voter purge story is one of infinitely greater importance and much more of a threat to the institution of voting in this country. And this suits the Repugs just fine; they can continue pulling this garbage while we continue to distract ourselves as far as they’re concerned (and yes, I know the right-wing outrage machine would have cranked up no matter what DeNiro had said, but something more articulate would have been better all around).

The Repugs know, of course, how to connive themselves into power by playing the voters of this country like the proverbial fiddle with their typical “red meat,” dog whistle BS, and they sure as hell know what to do with that power when they have it (the stolen Merrick Garland Supreme Court seat now occupied by movement right-wing ideologue Neil Gorsuch will be a haunting legacy probably for decades). Oh, but DeNiro sure burned Trump at the Tony Awards, didn’t he?

I think too many on our side assume that, if we keep beating up Trump for voters without articulating as clearly as we can how we are substantially better than the “party of Lincoln,” voters will say, “Oh, I now know how much Trump stinks (in case they hadn’t figured that out already), so I’ll vote Democratic now.” Well, in reality, what happens when we don’t campaign the way we should (and if you’re a Dem and you’re NOT running on the economy, why are you running at all?) is that voters will say instead, “Oh, I now know how much Trump stinks…so I won’t bother to show up on Election Day.” As a case study, all you need to do is look to the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016 (notwithstanding the other garbage from Comey, Russia and the “Bernie or bust” crowd, among other culprits).

I know our side is mobilizing for the fall, and we need to keep doing that and redouble our efforts. All I’m saying is that we should all be on the same page when it comes to policy and articulating why we’re infinitely better than the Tiny-Handed, Treasonous Orange Egomaniac currently residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And though I respect the hell out of DeNiro, I’m not sure that an F-blast on world-wide TV helps our cause all that much.

So OK, with that admittedly long-winded preamble out of the way, here is what Maher said (NSFW)…



…and Kyle gives us his take on the aforementioned SCOTUS ruling about Ohio (more here – slightly NSFW)…



…and Sam Seder tells us about Mariah Parker, sworn into office as a Athens – Clarke County, Georgia commissioner on a copy of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” which of course caused the heads of wingnuts to automatically explode…



...and RIP Danny Kirwan of Fleetwood Mac (the original version of the band, that is).