The person pictured above between Former Commander Codpiece on the right and Our Gal Condi Rice on the left is Michael Gerson, former George W. Bush speechwriter. He served as a propagandist for our former ruling cabal of criminals before he was rewarded for his efforts with a job as a columnist for the Washington Post.
The reason I’m pointing out Gerson is because he died recently, apparently from kidney cancer complications at 58 as noted here. I’m genuinely sorry to hear that, and I’d like to extend my condolences to his family and friends. However, that’s not “the end of the story,” you might say.
Gerson had what I would call a peculiar gift with language, and that is that he could couch some truly insidious sentiments behind flowery phrasing, you might say. It would often take me a minute or two to process exactly what it was that he wrote, and by the time I did, I felt steam coming out of my ears. Probably that type of phrase that he’ll be remembered for the most is “the soft bigotry of low expectations,” related to #43’s whole No Child Left Behind grift, which of course was a way to reward Bush’s brother Neil selling his scammy educational products (I got into that way back when here), while at the same time trying to undercut public schools in this country (because, as any Republican will tell you, the only thing a U.S. public school can do is “fail”). That phrase from Gerson was his way of accusing Democrats of wanting to maintain the status quo and not see kids in this country achieve under his boss’s supposedly inspired plan.
Like with most print media hangers-on, Gerson was treated as some kind of eminence grise in the columnist world for becoming a supposed expert on how other people should live their lives (see BoBo, Bedbug Bret and The Moustache of Understanding in “the old gray lady”). However, I will always remember Gerson (and not fondly) for the speech he wrote for Bush on the 60th anniversary of V-E Day (news story is here). I’m not quite able to track down a link to the speech at the moment (I’ll keep trying), but I’ll never forget that it contained some truly Gerson-esque language which in essence said that the “global war on terror” being waged at that time was more important than World War II. And that pretty much enraged me because it diminished the sacrifice of my father as well as thousands of other U.S. soldiers who gave up big parts of their lives (and many suffering grave injuries or death of course) to fight in that conflict. And because I couldn’t think of much of anything else to do in response, I came up with this dumb blog to chronicle the nonsense of the Bush Administration and hold it up to the ridicule I thought it deserved. And nearly 18 years later, I’m still at it with this masochistic exercise (against myriad others besides the Bush Administration since then of course).
So I guess maybe in a weird way, I should thank Gerson. But I’m not prepared to do that at the moment, and I don’t think that I ever will be.
Now to the videos...Cenk and Ana of TYT tell us about yet another bomb threat received by Boston’s Children’s Hospital because they provide gender-affirming care, from demagoguery generated by that scumwaffle Matt Walsh (Ana and Cenk of TYT bring the reality perspective, and yeah, apparently the number of kids receiving puberty blockers is about 1K per year, not “millions” or “hundreds of thousands”...kudos to Cenk for his completely appropriate outrage)...
...and Jesse Dollemore tells us that Herschel Walker in Georgia is apparently trying to lock up that all-important “werewolves and vampires” voting bloc in his runoff election for the U.S. Senate with incumbent Dem Raphael Warnock...almost embarrassing to witness this, but attention must be paid to Walker if we are to defeat him...
...and Chris Hayes speaks with Obama senior advisor David Plouffe about the prospects of actual U.S. House governance from the “clown car caucus” of Not Your Father’s Republican Party...yeah, the chances of that are dim at best...the interview ends up as a tribute to Nancy Pelosi, who is stepping down from a leadership role in that body...you can measure Pelosi’s success by the pure, unbridled hatred aimed at her from the other side...and GREAT point about Hakeem Jeffries as a good choice for minority leader since he’s from NY and could help to win back those 4 seats that were lost, which could be critical in ’24...I’m hearing stuff about Jeffries being a corporate Dem, but we’ll see how that plays out of course...
...and I now give you the latest installment of “This Day In Doomsy History”...we’re just going around the corner back to a year ago today, with David Doel commenting on some typical Lauren Boebert insanity, this time aimed at Dem U.S. House Rep Ilhan Omar...and yes, this is topical because Boebert did manage to get back to the House for another term, as I suspected she would unfortunately (Adam Frisch, who ran a solid campaign, called her and conceded, because that’s what losers of elections are supposed to do in this country)...
Update: And of course Boebert and her playmates in "the sedition caucus" got help from some of the cretinous corporate criminals noted here.
Update 11/21/22: As I said, election losers are supposed to concede, shut up and go away, but of course that dangerous wackadoodle Kari Lake doesn't plan to do that (here).
...and I’m glad to hear things are going so well for the “bird app” under the alleged guidance of King Elon I, some other plutocrat presumed to be a genius of entrepreneurship...
Update: I know King Elon had some phony-baloney online poll about whether our not Orange Lucifer should be allowed back on Elon’s “bird app,” and apparently 52 percent of those polled said Yes, so #45 was allowed back on, and his followers total immediately jumped to about one million, and a whole bunch of people I respect are getting the willies over it.
Since Generalissimo Trump used the bird app to stage an armed insurrection against this country, as far as I’m concerned, he should be automatically disqualified for signing up on it again. But you know what? If he gets back on and gets a million followers – good. Same if he gets two million. Or three million.
Mango Mussolini’s continued online presence will remind everyone in this country with a brain of what a thoroughly execrable biped life form he truly is.
And at this stage of the game, does ANYBODY SERIOUSLY THINK he can actually generate enough of an impact to warrant serious consideration as a presidential nominee again? Hell, even Rupert The Pirate has turned on him (here). And so what if Our Ochre Abomination gets three million followers. How many registered voters are there in this country? About 220-230 million?
Using the bird app to remind everyone that Former President Fergus Laing remains a free man will reinforce to the vast majority of this country how sycophantic, moribund and decayed his political party truly is. So, as Cenk Uygur would say, “have at it, hoss.”
Update 11/20/22: I think Trump is now at about 83 million followers on the bird app (my guess is that at least half are trolls and/or bots). And yes, my point still stands IMO.
Update 1 11/21/22: In fewer words, let me just say this. If anybody thinks I’m going to cower before that bloated orange pustule regardless of what he does...well, you just don’t know me very well, do you?
Update 2 11/21/22: Uh, yep.
...and for folks in Montgomery County, PA, there are still a couple of hours left to participate in a gun
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