Thursday, August 10, 2023

Thursday Stuff


Brian Tyler Cohen and voting rights attorney Marc Elias discuss the failure of the anti-abortion ballot initiative in Ohio...and while it's true that the measure was to raise the percentage of votes required to pass a ballot initiative to 60 percent as opposed to 50, it definitely had to do with abortion, albeit indirectly (and even though it went down, look for Frank LaRose to try and use this to energize his campaign to win the Repug nomination and take on Sherrod Brown in that state’s U.S. Senate race)...



...and you’d better believe that the “fundies” are on board with eliminating not just abortion, but contraception, same-sex marriage, and the whole gamut of what you could justifiably IMO call social progress, to the point where preacher Russell Moore, who formerly was a member of the Southern Baptist Convention, is apparently shocked that congregants dismiss quotes from Our Lord as “liberal talking points”...not sure why Moore would be surprised, since that’s the direction they’re going with their adoration of Dear Leader Trump...a lot of important history here about the rise of the evangelicals and the role played by The Sainted Ronnie R, echoing some of the Leeja Miller video from about a week or so ago, though I think this stuff bears repeating...and I think Mike Figueredo is spot-on to equate this with what you could call “late-stage capitalism” (NSFW/H)...



...with another symptom of our de-evolution in this country being the Trumpists ascribing to “the big lie,” as Rayy Vana tells us (and Republicans generally as far as I’m concerned)...yes, I know what these people are, but unfortunately, we need to pay attention to these life forms...



...and as Ana and John of TYT tell us here, the same forces behind the garbage I noted previously are coming for your kids too, and this clip tells us about what’s going on in Flori-DUUH!, in essence banning Shakespeare... “Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit, for I am sick when I do look on thee.”...and for those of you keeping score at home, that’s from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” appropriately enough.

Oh, and OF COOURRSE PragerU is somehow involved...that video which I think has to do with “Christopher Columbus” is as ridiculous as you’d expect, as is the one with “Frederick Douglass”...surprised the video doesn’t mention the Bowling Green Massacre too (a minor issue with Ana is that I don’t know of anybody on our side trying to dumb people down through education; if she has evidence of that, I wish she’d let us know).

Meanwhile in the world of reality, do you want to know what the REAL Frederick Douglass thought of slavery? I give you the following (from here)...
“What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?

“I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”
Anyway, here is the TYT clip...



...and as a tribute to Robbie Robertson of The Band, I offer the following...



...along with this Robertson solo tune.

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