Tuesday Stuff

10 years ago today, the state of Georgia murdered Troy Anthony Davis...



...and David Doel tells us about border patrol using whips on Haitian immigrants, which is awful of course...I’m not going to gloss over the Biden Administration on this since this is happening on their watch, and it turns out that that Afghan drone strike got innocent people killed, but I will only say this...maybe if there was a hell of a lot more outrage focused on the Trump regime which initiated a lot of it, the cleanup wouldn’t be quite so difficult now under Biden – and gee, a 1944 statute, this so-called Title 42, that had never been used against immigrants until now...let me think real hard and venture a guess that Baby Goebbles had more than a little to do with that (here) – but of course, our essentially useless fourth estate chose to bloviate and hector our politicians about “migrant caravans” instead, which was always bullshit...NSFW/H...and I'm sorry, but I just have no respect for Schumer anyway but especially after this; I can't help but feel that he's trying to deflect from his own failure...



Update: Great question.

...and Jesse Dollemore tells us about the insane MTG ad (is there any other kind?) blowing up a vehicle with “socialism” on it (NSFW/H...and gee, isn’t this interesting to see how she, being a good Republican, only obeys the rules she screeches about when it suits her).



And by the way, after watching that prior idiocy, I want to “go meta” again on something, so please bear with me.

After a certain point, I have to admit that I get more than a little fed up with making it clear that Republicans are nothing but performative idiots trying to suck the oxygen, if you will, out of intelligent debate concerning any substantive issue with their ridiculous nonsense. After awhile, that kind of turns into “yes I know, water is wet, sky is blue, etc.”

I realize we’re obligated to point out that stuff, but do you want to know what REALLY matters? Planning for the 2022 midterms, which (and believe me when I tell you that I HATE to point this out) are going to be on us again before we know it. And I want to know what the hell the alleged geniuses at the DNC/DCCC/DSCC are going to do about maintaining our hold in Congress (I’m not going to be presumptuous enough at this point to talk about building on it, since, with the historical mid-term slump Dems usually have – which is inexcusable for Dem voters, by the way – along with all of the garbage redistricting/gerrymandering going on (along with the horrible voting bills), just keeping up the status quo would be a victory at this point).

In PA-01, nary a day goes by without seeing our ridiculous joke of a U.S. House rep cutting a ribbon somewhere to open a new business, talking at a senior center or giving an award to a Boy Scout/elderly war veteran (like this). And yeah, that’s corny and deflects from the issues that matter. But do you want to know what ELSE that does? It keeps Brian Fitzpatrick in his own manufactured spotlight and in the mind of the voters of this district, that’s what. And he knows that. And he also knows that voters (with the enthusiastic aid of gullible, conservative-friendly media, most infamously the Bucks County Courier Times) will remember that when the election comes around.

There are Dems who get this and maintain a pretty decent social media presence (AOC is one along with Ilhan Omar – who of course gets utterly trashed when she says anything, but commendably doesn’t back down – and Steve Santarsiero/Perry Warren in these parts do a respectable job with that too). But for the most part, the Democratic Party continues to utterly stink on messaging and social media engagement. And it doesn’t matter if the person in charge is Howard Dean/Tom Perez/Jaime Harrison/whoever...they NEVER seem to get that! Basically (as people far smarter than I have noted), if you’re a Dem candidate and you get to about 2-3 months until Election Day and realize, all of a sudden, that you have to develop a social media presence and put out messaging that engages your base and motivates them to work and vote for you, then IT’S PROBABLY TOO GODDAMN LATE FOR THAT! And don’t give me this stuff about how much YouTube videos cost (which is virtually nothing, truth be told)! If you can’t manufacture your own media like the other side does, then why are you bothering to play this game at all?

So yes, let’s laugh at Marjorie Taylor Greene for acting like the psycho she truly is. But also remember that, as ridiculous, childish and outright dangerous as her antics are, when she does all of this, she’s engaging her base (and I don’t want to imagine what kind of a troglodyte you have to be to actually want to vote for her, but these are the people we’re up against).

And with that admittedly boring pretext out of the way, I now give you the latest installment of “This Day In Doomsy History” (more or less) from 9/20/17, in which Farron Cousins tells us about a U of P study pointing out how uninformed or misinformed we are overall as a country (and once more, this is not for me to say, “Oh, look how smart I am because I post about this stuff so much”...I’m just a guy with this dumb blog and I’m no better or worse than anyone else, but Cousins is right...we need to do something about the overall civic ignorance of too many people in this country, but I’ll admit that, unfortunately, I don’t have an answer on that)...



...and returning to more of the nuts-and-bolts stuff that affects the majority of our lives, what Biden says in this Now This clip about his “Build Back Better” plan should appear in ads and videos from EVERY DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE, regardless if you’re running for the U.S. Congress or municipal dog catcher (and by the way, all the debt ceiling stuff is more politically manufactured BS from the other side that ALWAYS comes up only when Dems are in charge – the answer is just to get rid of the damn debt ceiling)...



...and Sam and Emma of The Majority Report tells us about idiot Repug guv Brian Kemp of Georgia discussing the AIDS vaccine, which – and I know this is inconvenient to note – doesn’t actually exist; no word on whether or not the news anchor was up to the task of pointing that out...



...and this More Perfect Union video tells us about the janitor’s strike in California (more here)...



...and I came across this fairly recent tune after I watched more of the latest great Ken Burns documentary, this time on Muhammad Ali, and I thought it fit somewhat, so here it is.