Friday Stuff

I should probably include more clips from this Liberal Redneck guy, since this is probably the best take I've heard yet on the antics of “curtsy Kyrsten” (NSFW/H - to help with Sinema's all-but-assured primary challenge, click here)...



Update 1/21/22: Too funny, but not surprising (here).

...and Seth Meyers speaks with Bernie Sanders about #MaseratiManchin and his selling out of West Virginia, though Bernie does so in politely forceful but measured terms, which is the best way to do it (I typically wouldn’t give politicians generally the time of day to speak about Manchin and Sinema’s utter betrayals, but Bernie “walks the walk” as well as “talking the talk” on the issues that matter as we know)...



...and speaking of betrayals, that’s exactly what I call the U.S. freezing Afghanistan’s assets while that country is enduring a food crisis and a brutal winter; yes, it’s indeed true that nobody likes or trusts the Taliban, nor should they, but we can release a little more than half of what we’re withholding and that will go a long way towards providing the relief that besieged country needs...Chris Hayes fills us in (more here)...



...and turning now to our regularly scheduled plague, John and Caroline Johnson of The Damage Report tell us about President Biden sending military medical personnel to our hospitals in response to the COVID/Omicron surge (and no, I don’t have a clue as to what would satisfy the wingnuts from Biden on this stuff either, assuming that’s even possible)...



...and in a bit of positive political news, David Pakman tells us that the Ohio Supreme Court threw out Republican gerrymandered redistricting maps (and no, I don’t know either how the hell the son of Mike DeWine gets to rule on something that his father had a hand in without being forced to recuse himself...the son that is of course)...



...and a belated happy birthday to multi-talented musician Don Snow, now of Medford, NJ (under another name), who performed with Squeeze, Procal Harum and other bands...so yeah, that gives me an excuse for another damn Procal Harum tune...really cool cowbell number though.

Thursday Stuff

This Rebel HQ clip from David Shuster tells us about some nut named Christopher Key, who apparently is now telling people to drink their own pee to fight off COVID-19 (and why the hell would “pee” be censored? Are YouTube such hard asses when it comes for looking for reasons to de-monetize somebody? I guess so.)...

via GIPHY

...and now turning to what appears to be the failing effort to try and save our democracy, David Doel informs us of the latest antics of Arizona's U.S. senatorial mistake Kyrsten Sinema, who (sniff) is apparently so overwrought (sniff, sniff) in an effort to...oh, I don't know...try and save the UTTERLY RIDICULOUS FILIBUSTER THAT REPUBLICANS VIOLATE WHENEVER THEY FEEL LIKE IT (mildly NSFW/H...more here and here..and it's unintentionally hilarious, to say nothing of deceitful, for Sinema to complain about "Holy Joe" Lieberman given that she's 10X worse.)...



Update: I definitely agree with Mehdi Hasan here.

Update 1/14/22: And this isn't surprising either, is it?

...so basically, “Curtsy Kyrsten” is making common cause with the “party of Lincoln,” and with that in mind, Thom Hartmann tells us Why They Don’t Want You To Believe in Democracy (and I understand Thom’s anger about CNN, and yeah, the cynicism pisses me off too, but unfortunately, as great as Biden’s speech was, it indeed ended up not mattering...good for Thom to bring up the utterly toxic link between the Repugs and the Birchers)...



...and I’ll dig into the archives and come up with this item from TYT, with Cenk and (I believe) Michael Shure discussing the clip of conservative “godfather” Paul Weyrich giving a 1980 speech proclaiming why the wingnuts don’t want people to vote (or, at least, they want only the “right”...wink, wink...people to vote)...



...and I sincerely hope that Beau is right here to think that there will be an electoral price to pay for the individuals involved in this garbage (including this), but I’m not at all sure about that...



...and RIP Ronnie Spector...another legend departs.

Wednesday Stuff

Rachel Maddow brings us an update of a story she did last December 23rd about fake ‘20 election documents in Wisconsin; well, it turns out this garbage also happened in at least four other states...Georgia, Nevada, Michigan and Arizona (credit to Maddow and Politico...hate to give the latter credit for anything, but fair is fair – Nicholas Wu is a good reporter...among other responses, I don’t want to hear another goddamn word from Repugs about “voter fraud”...also, Merrick Garland needs to appoint a special prosecutor for this...sounds like MORE people need to go to prison for a loooooong time)...



Update 1/13/22: Oh, so now it's SEVEN states, apparently including PA? (here)...

...and I would say that that utter assclown Rand (“Fake Ophthalmologist”) Paul getting his comeuppance from Dr. Fauci was incredibly overdue (mildly NSFW/H...more here)...



...and continuing with our ongoing plague, John and Francesca tells us that the wingnuts are just so overjoyed to hear that AOC has tested positive...sick bastards (as Francesca says, likely because AOC visited the land of Ron #DeathSantis while doing her job)...



...and Sam of The Majority Report tells us about the SCOTUS hearing a challenge to Biden’s vaccine mandate (and apparently Gorsuch showed his true colors...why vaccinate anybody for anything as far as he’s concerned, right?).

And I saw a few minutes of a clip of Ali Velshi and Dahlia Lithwick recently talking about remarks from “Strip Search Sammy” Alito raising doubts about the COVID vaccines (which makes me ask where the hell it was exactly that Alito received any medical education whatsoever).

And with all due respect to Velshi and Lithwick, I’m pretty fed up with anybody at this point being surprised that 6 wingnut SCOTUS justices want people to hurry up, get back to work, and get sick and die. That’s their end game, people (COVID has just given them the chance to hurry things up a bit). Make sure the rabble is smart enough to know how to operate the machines but way too dumb to do anything else, as The Eternal George Carlin once put it. And yeah, screwing over workers in the process is great, as far as the wingnuts are concerned. And if you do the same to women, minorities, working families, and kids while you’re at it, all the better.

We’ve been watching this play out for at least 40 years, people. None of this should be a surprise...



...and Monday 1/10 marked the 17th anniversary of that ridiculous “audit” of CBS by a Bushie pal, the late PA Guv Dick Thornburgh, in response to the story of Dubya allegedly disappearing while serving in the Texas Air National Guard (the news story is here, and producer Mary Mapes’s response is here – the clip of Dubya and Connie Chung from the '88 Republican Convention includes a typically stoo-pid remark at the end about Vietnam and the National Guard from Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History)...



...and RIP Michael Lang, who helped produce Woodstock (including this tune).

Monday Stuff

Farron Cousins reminds us that we shouldn’t be “giving a cookie” to “Big Time” or “Bush’s Brain” over their words/actions on the anniversary of the 1/6 attack on the U.S. Capitol (and I think The Rude Pundit captured the appropriate level of outrage here, as usual)..



...and because humor will always have a liberal bias as far as I’m concerned, I can offer this...



...and with the prior two clips in mind, the latest from Second Thought reminds us Why American Fascism Is On The Rise (pretty comprehensive in linking the rise of Trumpism to Reagan and the overall failure of neoliberal economics)...



And by the way, has it occurred to anybody besides me that creating economic uncertainty, trying to sow political discord over it and enabling a “strongman” to tell everyone “Vote for me and I will solve all of your problems” (leading to authoritarianism) is pretty much what this country has been doing for probably the last 50 years or so in other countries, and this is kind of a case of “chickens coming home to roost” now?...

...and Ana “rocks it” in another solo TYT clip (75 billionaires increasing their wealth during the pandemic by $1 billion...I wish I could be mad at the TYT host for her dig at Pramila Jayapal, but unfortunately, Ana is exactly right)...



...and with this spate of high-profile public individuals departing us recently (including this Temple grad – 65 is way too damn young), it might be easy to lose track of the passing of Lani Guinier, who was tagged by former President Clinton as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in 1993 (noted here), though 42 ended up withdrawing her nomination when too many butt-hurt white Republican senators complained about her...as far as I’m concerned, this was an early example of what a suckers bet it truly is to try and mollify these cretins, which is utterly impossible ...whenever you hear ANY Republican bitching about, for example, Robert Bork’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing, tell them that Bork at least got an up-and-down vote, which he lost, while Guinier was never given that opportunity (Roland Martin tells us more)...



...and RIP also Marilyn Bergman, one of the major influences behind this song among many others.