Friday Stuff

Jesse Dollemore gives us an update on the tale of Curtis Sliwa and the Guardian Angels roughing up someone who (they thought) was an illegal immigrant who was (they thought) caught shoplifting...the video aired on the Sean Inanity program, but now apparently it looks like the individual in question was a U.S. citizen...gee, I wonder if that means there will be ANOTHER lawsuit against The Roger Ailes BS Factory...pass the popcorn...



Update 1: Looks like the CYA festival has already started (here).

...and Thom Hartmann asks Has the GOP Been Grooming Us To Accept Fascism (once again, if you have to ask the question, you probably already know the answer...Thom talks about how we’ve supported dictators including Pinochet in Chile of course, along with the potential impact of Project 2025, with the wingnuts trying to create a “break the glass” moment that leads to a strongman in the U.S., and Thom goes back the last 40 years, which I think is apropos...have to admit that I didn’t know about Poppy Bush’s role in this whole mess, but I’m not surprised)...



...and based on this Brian Tyler Cohen video, I take back my criticism of James Lankford not having a spine when it comes to immigration, and apparently, he did in fact vote for his own bill, even though it went down to defeat (and I agree with Cohen...Dan Crenshaw remains a bad faith actor on this in particular as far as I’m concerned)...



...and speaking of bad faith actors, Farron Cousins (not him) discusses this Valentina Gomez loon in Missouri who’s apparently running for secretary of state, so of course, being a Trumpette, she makes some kind of a campaign video burning books (Gomez is obviously unfamiliar with this quote...hard to get my head around all of this insanity sometimes)...



...and concerning yesterday’s escapades with The High Court of Hangin’ Judge JR, I have to admit that I thought this gentleman made a lot of sense, so here he his (really not familiar with Tennessee Brando, but I may come back to him if he has more clips like this)...



...and Elizabeth Warren pretty much lays out the stakes in this fall’s elections when it comes to women’s ability to exercise their bodily autonomy – pretty sure we know all this already, but it bears repeating IMO...



Update 2: I know we don't need a reminder, but here is another one anyway.

...and RIP Carole King collaborator Toni Stern, who helped compose this number along with a few other hits...



...and also Philly’s own Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez, whose remarkable voice and presence was featured in the 1981 film Diva, one of the most wildly original pics I’ve ever seen...she basically gave up what likely would have been a lucrative career to teach kids with special needs...truly a hero as far as I’m concerned.

Thursday Stuff

John of The Damage Report lets us know about the oral arguments that our thoroughly compromised SCOTUS conducted today in the matter of Our Ochre Abomination potentially being removed from the ballot in Colorado for the election this fall (with KBJ getting a little pushy with a Trumpster lawyer...boy, is John ever right about the cowardice on display today, and I’m not surprised to hear the wingnut justices trying to change the subject of whether or not 1/6 was an insurrection – I think anyone with a brain realized that THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT IT WAS – but I realize that “anyone with a brain” excludes 45...I’ll wait to hear what folks like Laurence Tribe have to say about this, but if I were to guess, I think the SCOTUS plan is not to rule on Trump’s eligibility for the election and not to let ANYONE ELSE rule on that either)...



...and Lawrence O’Donnell interviews Dem U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on Almost Silent Clarence Thomas and his laughably pathetic tax problems, which would truly have landed the rest of us likely in the gray bar hotel or permanent indebtedness at a minimum...more on Whitehouse’s legislation to end the thoroughly corrupt practice of billionaires reaping tax benefits from donations to dark money groups is here (have to admit that the ultra-wealthy making donations pre-tax as opposed to after-tax like the rest of us who contribute is truly the cherry on the icing on top of this sh*t sundae)...



...and Trae Crowder lets us know that the D.C. Circuit Court ruled that Dementia J. Trump actually DOESN’T have immunity to do every damn thing he wants...color me shocked (NSFW/H...and OK, I’ll allow a little bit of a plug for Toby Keith, but not much)...



...and Jesse Dollemore gives us his take on #45 telling Maria Bartiromo that President Xi Jinping of China will be responsible for a terror attack if Biden gets back in...yeah, he’s paying terrorists $50K a head to cross our border and do such a dark deed...but oh, Tangerine Palpatine got along GREAT with China, didn’t he?...as usual, they want us scared and not using the brains God gave us to realize how utterly full of fertilizer they are...



...and I now give you the latest installment of “This Day In Doomsy History” from 2/8/17 – Thom Hartmann tells us about the plot to attack peace-loving Muslims in an upstate New York community, egged on by “pastor” Robert Doggart, among other despicable life forms – kudos to Dean Obeidallah for reporting on this horror show (here)...so OF COOUURRSSE Kurt Schlichter at clownhall.com tries some misdirection and blames “the left” instead with his eliminationist garbage, written mainly for views and clicks (oh, and if innocent people end up getting killed, I guess that’s just the ”price of doing business” as far as Schlichter is concerned)..



...and RIP Neil Kirby McMillan, Jr.(aka Mojo Nixon)...God, they’re dropping like flies.

Wednesday Stuff

Rayyvana, Cenk and Jackson White of TYT give us the latest on “Curtsy Kyrsten” and her “let them eat cake” spending (and yeah, I’m sure she’ll end up with KKR or the Carlyle Group – as I and others first said awhile ago, to paraphrase Churchill, it’s plain what Sinema is...all that matters is negotiating her price...when I heard about Sinema paying $110K a month to Tulsi Gabbard’s sister, all I could think of was the BS that Cori Bush has gotten for paying her husband $42K a YEAR for supposedly the same thing, and he’s actually a professional in that business (and to do something about Arizona’s U.S. Senatorial mistake, click here)...



...and I thought this was a pretty good analysis from Sam and Emma of The Majority Report on the recently-failed immigration bill that I alluded to yesterday, including Repug U.S. Senator James Lankford VOTING AGAINST HIS OWN BILL to appease Mango Mussolini, which he likely will do (I thought Sam did a good job of explaining the triangulation – I guess you can call it that – of Chris Murphy trying to get the Ukraine aid by giving the Repugs everything they want on Israel and the border...not trying to attack Murphy, I wish to emphasize...and of course Lankford does nothing but toss red meat to his Trumpist base in response to Jake Tapper’s question, truth and factual reality be damned)...



Update: My money is on Sean Inanity, proving once more that the Repug Party works for Fix Noise and not the other way around (here...and what a "profile in pudding" by Lankford BTW).

Update 1 2/8/24: OK, so it was this Jesse Kelly life form (here).

...and John and Francesca of The Damage Report bring us the sorry tale of J.D. Vance from “The world’s greatest deliberative body” admitting he would have confirmed a duplicate set of electors on 1/6...and I realize I’ll probably be repeating this for the rest of my days in response to meat heads like Vance, but here I go again...THERE WERE NO FREAKING PROBLEMS WITH PENNSYLVANIA’S ELECTIONS IN 2020, YOU CORRUPT, LYING WEASEL!! Repugs won one – ONE! – lawsuit, and it had to do with not counting mail-in ballots where the address was accidentally written on the secret envelope. THAT’S IT!!! And as I watched this, I couldn’t help but think of all of the poll workers giving up because they don’t want to be “swatted,” doxed or otherwise attacked (to say nothing of family members also) by single-digit-IQ’d Trumpist life forms WHO THINK VANCE IS ACTUALLY TELLING THE TRUTH!! (more here).

And oh yeah, nice job by Vance to utterly wreck the bill providing relief to the people in East Palestine (here and here)...anybody remember them??...



Update 2 2/8/24: More here.

...and when it comes to the “D” team, Thom Hartmann tells us how President Biden’s economic policy echoes FDR, Truman, JFK, and LBJ by investing in manufacturing from the bottom up...pro-labor, FTC investigating mergers/monopolies, etc. (yes, more to do, etc., but let’s not lose sight of exactly where we are with this stuff, versus where we’d be with, God forbid, President Combover Caligula for another term)...



...and for more good news form our side, Mike Figueredo tells us about Connecticut guv Ned Lamont forgiving medical debt to the tune of $1 billion for about 250K eligible residents, which is the #1 cause of bankruptcy in this country...and yeah, it was pretty funny to hear that Repug in that state pretending to care about other social spending in response (I remember Lamont’s run for the Senate against “Holy Joe” Lieberman, and I’m glad to see how much good he’s been able to accomplish in his life in politics in this current role...NSFW/H)...



...and I’ll be honest; I really wasn’t planning to say anything about Toby Keith one way or the other until I came across this great tweet...he entertained our military, so he deserves credit for that, but otherwise I thought he was a POS (yes, I know, you’re not supposed to talk ill of the dead, but Keith had no problem talking smack about libs, as noted in the tweet, especially during the high-and-mighty, ruinous Bushco reign).

About the incident in question...Keith could have owned up to it and taken his lumps, but no, he said it never happened. Kris Kristofferson, for his part, took the high road and kind of blew it off, which he had the right to do. However, Kristofferson’s wife confirmed that the incident took place (proving once more that Keith only acted like a “man” when he attacked women rockers).

Well, if that isn’t an excuse for a Kristofferson tune, I don’t know what is.

Tuesday Stuff

Oh, by the way, when it comes to the supposed “grand bargain” on immigration between the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House, it looks as if the familiar cycle has played itself out once again (more to come I'm sure):

Repugs kick and scream about an issue

Dems offer to help and give Repugs everything they want

Repugs still kick and scream and (almost completely) refuse to help

Dems try to come up with a bill pretty much on their own that, once more, gives Repugs everything they want

Repugs “overturn the game board” like spoiled brats

Bill fails at the last minute

Repugs blame “socialism” (running to Fix Noise with their hurt fee fees) while corporate media blames “both sides”

Voters get confused by politics generally in response and lose interest

Lather, rinse, repeat

(And I'm completely aware of the role played by Tangerine Palpatine in this latest mess, of course...here.)

Now to the videos...Sam and Emma and the crew from The Majority Report discuss the recent online idiocy from “The Moustache of Understanding,” comparing the Middle East to the Animal Kingdom (so “Bibi” is a “lemur”? Like that character from the “Ice Age” movies? GMAFB!)...nice job by Sam to recall Janeane Garofalo, going back mainly to Friedman cheerleading for Dubya’s Not-So-Excellent Adventure in Iraq...I’d heard the story about Sam and Friedman before – great stuff...nice job to recall the “F.U.” And oh yeah, the U.S. is an “old lion” and Iran is a “parasitoid wasp”? Really??? Gee, I wonder how well THAT will sit with the mullahs, e.g., pointlessly inflaming an already tense situation for no good reason other than for Friedman to be feted at cocktail parties I’m sure...



...and when it comes to the “party of Lincoln,” doing everything they can to utterly destroy any chance of immigration “reform” so Dementia J. Trump can have something to complain about while he tosses ketchup against the wall at McDonald’s, or something...well, it looks like they’re a little short in the “long green” department too, as Jesse Dollemore informs us (though I’m sure the donor class will come riding to the rescue with all of that sweet, untraceable dark money courtesy of the High Court of Hangin’ Judge JR...love to be wrong)...



...and when it comes to Our Ochre Abomination, Thom Hartmann tells us that scholars are examining Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to make sure #45 doesn’t get another crack at the presidency...at around 3:00, Thom talks about anti-abortion states forcing kids in school (“no later than grade 3,” huh?) to watch something called the “baby Olivia” video, which is apparently pretty hardcore from the “forced birth folks”...



...and that's a fitting transition, sadly, to John and Francesca bringing us the gut-churning news that nearly 65K pregnancies have resulted from rape in the states that have effectively banned abortion after Dobbs – I don’t encourage violence, though it tragically has already occurred in these stories, but I’m waiting to hear about a woman killing one of these monsters, and I’m sure they’ll punch her ticket to the gas chamber (or whatever method they use now) almost right away (GREAT point by John that, if you want to go after something truly evil, go after the rapist instead of the woman...but yeah, good luck with that)...



...and I now give you the latest installment of “This Day In Doomsy History” (more or less) from 2/7/14...I’ll be honest; every now and then I get to the point where I really can’t find anything that I think I should include or comment on (particularly having to do with Our Orange Nightmare or OH GOD I SWEAR I’M NOT GOING TO MENTION THAT WOMAN’S NAME!!), so that’s when I “set the wayback,” and I’m glad I found this clip on actor/activist Mike Farrell...happy 85th (as I’ve said, I part company with him, and a lot of others, when it comes to Mumia, but I applaud him on everything else...interview ends at about 9:05, and the Gore Vidal stuff on the “national security state” was good also...more on The Real News is here)...



...and also in the milestone department, RIP Wayne Kramer of the MC5 (NSFW/H).

Monday Stuff

Mike Figueredo of The Humanist Report tells us about Marjorie Trailer Trash Greene’s typically disgusting new attack on Ilhan Omar and this misinterpretation of what Omar said about this breakaway portion of Somalia, and oh yeah, Cori Bush too while they’re at it, led by this Troy Nehls life form who only wants to see Dementia J. Trump installed for another term, the good of the country be damned – I still don’t like ”defund the police” as a slogan (embraced by Bush), but I support the underlying policy of reallocating police budgets to provide more funds for communities in the way of funding for early childhood and pre-K development, job training, housing assistance, etc., and I know Bush does too, to her credit (and the Leeja Miller video that shows up soon gets into how much $$ politicians and government officials need to spend on security, so the $42K video for her husband sounds reasonable IMO; actually, it sounds like a bargain)...NSFW/H...



...and speaking of Miller, she brings us her first video of the new year on political violence...I have to admit that I didn’t know how widespread the problem was until she started listing all of the states where these incidents occurred, though I knew it was bad; the info on election officials was particularly jarring IMO...the amount of threats since Our Treasonous Orange Overlord seized power is eye opening, but I guess it shouldn’t be surprising (and it’s pretty plain what Marjorie Traitor Greene and Lex Luthor Scott are, but that doesn’t justify violence and “swatting” against them or anyone else – “The call is coming from inside the house, and it has the potential to take us all down with it.”; also, kudos to Miller for giving us ideas on a “way forward” potentially out of this mess, which, as far as I’m concerned, includes throwing #45’s mangy ochre ass in the slam, and I don’t care how butt-hurt his guttural followers get over that...NSFW/H)...



...and Jesse Dollemore informs us of Laura Ingraham and Baby Newton Leroy Gingrich screeching about “OMIGOD, THAT ‘WOKE’ JAMES LANKFORD IS GOING TO GIVE BIDEN A WIN ON IMMIGRATION – HE CAN’T DO THAT...THAT’S TRUMP’S ISSUE!” (spoiler alert – Lankford is indeed a Trumper with a staunchly conservative voting record, in case nobody knew that somehow)...



...and Beau discusses President Biden’s “measured response” to the drone attack that killed our three service people...the bottom line to me is that we just don’t know yet if there will be a “response to the response” as Beau admits, but from all accounts, it looks like this was a prudent move by #46, particularly in that it apparently didn’t strike inside Iran, God forbid...



...and RIP actor and former football player Carl Weathers...have to include a clip from the incredibly PC-incorrect ‘80s film “Action Jackson,” which is a lot of fun IMO if you’re in the mood...



...and in the milestone department, I also should mention that last Saturday was the 65th anniversary of the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper (here)...I should probably include “American Pie” here for the occasion, but to be honest, I really can’t freaking stand hearing that song any more, so as a compromise, here’s Don McLean performing a Holly tune (absolutely love the bottleneck guitar on this one).