John Avlon of CNN gives us his opinion on U.S. House wingnut Thomas Massie and his “locked and loaded” family Christmas card (a little “both sides” BS thrown in..."real conservative principles??"...but Avlon is right about the redistricting BS, even more of a reason for the Senate to pass...oh, screw it; I’m TIRED OF REPEATING THIS OVER AND OVER – I FREAKING GIVE UP!!!!)...
...and of course, what has an awful lot to do with the Trumpist fealty is the nonstop flow of utterly rank partisan garbage from The Roger Ailes BS Factory, and here is merely the latest instance, where The Swanson TV Dinner Heir speaks with Nigel Farage (with barely any gray matter between them) about COVID and “feminization” (John and Abelina Sabrina break it down...wonder if "Tuck and Nigel" know about this, or if it's what they're talking about?)...
...and speaking of performative garbage, we learn about a speech from wingnut U.S. House Rep (and Bri-Fi best bud) Dan Crenshaw where he appeared to call out MTG, Boebert, Gosar and the treasonous gonzo caucus of his party, but at the end reminded his supporters to “be afraid,” with a great response from Beau (“be the meddling kids in the home of the brave” – great advice...and often, Beau’s attire compliments his message, and he REALLY accomplishes that here)...
...and Kellogg’s is "outta here" (in terms of being represented on our breakfast table or as any other food option) after this (and nice way to treat your workforce just in time for the holidays too – more here)...
Don Winslow reminds us about everyone who has yet to be served a subpoena from the 1/6 Commission, or any other governmental or legal entity for that matter (such as a grand jury)...
...and Thom Hartmann tells us about all the ways that Not Your Father’s Republican Party is trying to strip women of political power (as far as Thom can recall, the SCOTUS has only taken away rights once, and that was against African Americans in Plessy v. Ferguson, which were basically won back in Brown v. Board...why any woman would go along with living in Texas unless they did so at gunpoint, which would be awful, is something I will NEVER understand...and I didn’t know about all of the cases of red states that have already prosecuted women on criminal charges who ran into catastrophic health issues while trying to give birth...I don’t think all of Thom’s numbers are correct here, but they’re damn scary enough...and of course, if our corporate media weren’t completely and utterly asleep...rock a bye baby...maybe THEY would try reporting on this stuff too!!)...
...and I now give you the latest installment of “This Day In Doomsy History” (no, I hadn’t forgotten about it) from 12/9/13, in which we hear about a report from the AFT on the state of public education...among other things, the report made a pretty solid case for funding of public schools, particularly in middle-to-high income areas, though we need to implement that across the board regardless of income of course, something to keep in mind in light of more BS from that death eater Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao (here)...
...and HORRORS! David Doel tells us that the Fix Noise Christmas tree was burned recently, which surely now means that our democratic experiment is coming to an end (hope I’m being snarky only on that...as Charles Pierce pointed out on the Twitter machine, Our Lord didn’t have such hot luck with trees...and the tree stands for Hanukkah???Ummm...very slightly NSFW/H)...
...and I suppose that's as good a transition as any to more seasonal selections.
Rachel Maddow reminds us here that the 1/6 insurrection was only a dry-run for those treasonous bastards seeking to overthrow our government...we need to prosecute those responsible to the fullest extent of the law, and we also need to, if necessary, outbid those pulling the puppet strings of President Manchin and Vice President Sinema to get those 2 to trash the wretched filibuster at long last and pass the voting rights bill – that’s the ONLY way we’re going to prevent the “party of Lincoln” from taking over next year, not because their notions of governance are better (with each passing day, I think those cretins have less and less of an idea of what responsible governance truly is - more here), but because of the ridiculous gerrymandering going on in states with Republican legislatures (and here’s a link to the Barton Gellman piece in The Atlantic cited by Maddow)...
...and oh yeah, here’s a bit of a historical reminder of how Trumpism got started; this is an excerpt from a 1947 film by the War Department called “Don’t Be A Sucker” (The Swanson TV Dinner Heir didn’t do anything that hadn’t been done before him, as you can see from here...can't think of a word to describe the under-handedness of criticizing NATO over Our Former Ol' Buddy Vlad Putin...and of course, it wouldn’t truly be wingnut BS without a typo)...
...and this video from More Perfect Union describes the economic recovery the media is ignoring (this video should be seen far and wide by everyone, including anybody who’s entertaining the slightest thought of voting for a Repug next year, because if they take control of Congress, all of the progress shown in this video will come screeching to a halt)...
...and for the latest in rapacious predatory capitalism, John and Nina Turner of The Damage Report tell us about this CEO tool named Vishal Garg of Better.com who laid off 900 people on a Zoom call ("oh, I hope I don't cry this time"...how about a nice, heaping glass full of STFU? And here is more really awful behavior, including calling employees “dumb dolphins” and threatening to staple a guy to a wall and burn him alive...charming)...
...and here are three more seasonal tunes (plus this), along with our annual remembrance.
John and Francesca of The Damage Report tell us about Judge Winebox losing what’s left of her mind again about those dastardly libs and the recent school shooting in Michigan...and yeah, maybe Jeanine Pirro has a SLIVER of a point on the issue of the teachers taking Ethan Crumbley’s gun from his back pack given the signs he was showing, as Francesca sez, but take a guess about ALL THE WAYS THAT SCHOOL, THE TEACHERS AND THE WHOLE DAMN DISTRICT WOULD HAVE BEEN SUED FOR ALLEGEDLY VIOLATING CRUMBLEY’S SECOND AMENEMENT RIGHTS! AND TAKE A GUESS ALSO AS TO HOW MANY SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS WOULD HAVE BEEN SCREECHING ABOUT “THOSE DAMN GUN-GRABBING LIBS”!!!
(OK, I fixed my cap locks key.)...
...and speaking of white insanity, Farron Cousins tells us about the group Moms for Liberty in Tennessee (of course) that wanted to get books banned because they hurt the fee fees of white kids, or so these nuts say (topics have to do with slavery and Jim Crow)...
...and I’m glad Beau, as per usual, is thinking at least one step ahead of what is being discussed concerning the Michigan shooting alluded to above – actually, what I think students in an active shooter situation should be able to do is call Wayne LaPierre directly and ask why the #@!$ they’re supposed to be killed or maimed so every “ammo-sexual” in this country can get any weapon of death whenever they want it, which leads to crises like the ones students too often face in this country...
...and today’s marks the 80th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor that led this country into fighting in World War II...don’t know how many vets are still with us who lived through that, but kudos to all of them for their sacrifice, enabling us to enjoy the freedoms that we hopefully don’t take for granted...
I admit that I wasn’t planning to say anything about Bob Dole, the Kansas Republican senator and one-time Republican presidential candidate, who just died (here). I was going to hold off because I thought I didn’t have anything original to say (and I suppose you could argue that I still don’t, but I’m going to try anyway).
For starters, he is to be praised for his courageous WWII sacrifice that resulted in the effective loss of his right hand; as a result of that, he created the Dole Foundation in 1983 to help provide for and support programs for those with disabilities, and the foundation played a large role in securing passage of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (both noted here). So Dole is to be commended for all of that. And it also took guts for Dole to become the pitch man for Viagra; I don’t care how much money he made off that – those ads helped reduce the stigma of a condition that can be pretty debilitating.
However, I don’t want to sit idly by while more accounts pour out of our corporate media about Dole that only tell one side of the story (after the nothing-but-fawning tributes to The Sainted Ronnie R in 2004, I swore I would do all I could not to let that happen again).
As noted here, Dole also ran interference for The Koch Brothers (with Koch Industries based in Kansas) as they took control of the Republican Party, with Chuck and Davey The Late giving Dole nearly a quarter mil from 1979 to 1994. And for that dough, Dole helped to derail a 1990 investigation into $31 million of oil from Native Americans that the Koch Brothers basically stole (here). This had a lot to do with Dole earning a 19 percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters (here). Oh, and for the record, Dole declared himself to be a Trumper as recently as last July, and encouraged President Manchin not to abolish the filibuster (noted in the USA Today story linked above).
(Also – and unfortunately I can’t track down the video – I distinctly recall that once, when Dole was campaigning as the Republican candidate for president in 1996 with VP candiate Jack Kemp...heralded as supposedly some great policy wonk on the right, when in reality he was just another heartless GOP shill (referring to Kemp)...a band played “Hail to the Chief” during Dole's introduction, which is typically disgusting hubris for Not Your Father’s Republican Party.)
So yes, pay tribute to Dole for the good things he did. But tell his story straight, warts and all (also from here). And there were a few of them too.
Update 12/8/21: And when it comes to those who have departed (and telling the whole truth), I guess we should mention the subject of this post also.
Now to the other stuff...Rachel Maddow tells us about Ruby Freeman and her daughter who ended up suing and moving because of terroristic threats emanating from the Gropenfuhrer and his minions (see, she and her daughter were Fulton County, Georgia poll workers, and #45 wanted those 11 thousand or so votes, so we know what happened next...more here)...
Update 12/11/21: This takes this story to a whole other new, disgusting and insulting level.
...and in the latest Second Thought video, we learn more about the illusion of upward mobility in the U.S. (and yes, he’s right about neoliberalism, and how the entire “Third Way” version of the Democratic Party championed by Bill Clinton among others helped to create a divide that the party is still trying to overcome to this day, but I want to say something in defense of our 42nd president...yes, in hindsight, it was wrong to suck up to campaign donors the way he did, but our party had been out of the White House for 12 years, which was a LOOONG freaking time and definitely long enough for Not-Your-Father’s-Republican-Party to cement its utterly ruinous marriage with Koch Brothers libertarianism, as alluded to above in the Robert Dole note...by regaining the White House in ’92 and in successive years, Clinton and Al Gore managed to do a lot of good, and I don’t want to imagine what this country would be like after 20 straight years of Republican presidents)...
...and Jayar, Cenk and Rayy Vana of TYT discuss huckster preacher Joel Osteen’s story about a sudden windfall of sorts (stuffing the cash and checks in the wall like this reminds me of Ray Liotta in “Goodfellas,” only it’s $$$ in the wall instead of drugs...maybe it was Osteen’s “rainy day fund”? And “allegedly” of course)...
...and David Doel speaks with Alex Kotch about this typical idiocy around Bari Weiss and the “University of Austin,” which sounds like another glibertarian front of an alleged institute of higher learning to manufacture consent for the benefit of the ”one percent”...and I DEFINITELY want to learn more about the "opt out" app...
