Monday, March 18, 2024

How to Win the November Elections

I was talking with a business colleague the other day, about how I prefer a smaller cell phone size, so it fits in my pocket easier, without fear of bending or breaking it. I said it helps to have deeper pockets though, but because they’re men’s pants, they do, tacitly acknowledging the longstanding beef so many women have with clothing manufacturers, regarding a significant lack of pockets in apparel for women.

Then I said, “What will it take to get more pockets into women’s clothes, an act of Congress?

I was joking, of course, but later I was thinking, what if there WAS some kind of legislation directing pocket equality between the sexes? And the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced it could be the key to winning in November. Here’s how I see that going:

First, we get some Democratic Congress-people to create the Pocket Equality for Women, or “PEW” Act, into which they write a mandate to include at least two pockets in every woman’s top, vest, skirt, and pants. Pockets need to be real and not merely for decoration, deep enough to be useful… at minimum, the length of an average woman’s hand. I bet Nancy Pelosi would be down with it. 

Naturally, the PEW Act will set off alarms within the purse lobby. Big Purse will be like, “Good God, man! If women can carry their cash, license, credit cards, and cell phones in pockets, we’ll never sell another clutch. We have to kill this thing in its sleep!

With that, the lobbying from CoachPAC grows fierce on Capitol Hill, as they lean on the Congress-people they’ve bought… I mean, “Those to whom they’ve donated campaign funds, trips, and sample bags.”

They’ll find some willing listeners, I’m sure. But the problem, like with everything else that’s been lobbied out of existence, they can’t come out and say they’ve been bought off. They’ll need to find some other angle that they can tout in public, to use to kill the bill. Now why would anyone be against pockets? This stymies them for a few days. But then, the Alabama delegation has a breakthrough:

People can smuggle things in pockets… contraceptives, frozen embryos, very small fetuses… We must protect against Real Live Human Baby trafficking!

Huzzah! They now have a platform from which they can kill the PEW Act. With all the MAGA talking heads hitting Fox "News" and the Right-Wing Media circuit, they revive their old “Selling Baby Parts” accusations to include transporting. Now, no matter what the Senate does, the bill will die in the House, with Speaker Johnson vowing never to bring it to the floor for a vote.

Hopes are dashed in the short term, but the Democrats seize the chance to bring the case to The People. At every campaign stop, the candidates charge up the crowd:

Pol: What do you want?

Crowd: POCKETS!

Pol: Where do you want’em?

Crowd: EVERYWHERE! [Breaking out the finger guns] PEW PEW PEW!

"YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO... YOU JUST HAVE TO PASS THE PEW!"

At campaign stops, debates, and in political ads, Democrats tout the PEW Act and demand Pocket Equality. President Biden assures the nation that he will never "pocket veto" the PEW Act. The nation’s women, envisioning a life in which they never have to worry about leaving their purses behind, or getting them stolen by someone coming up from behind them, turn out to elect Democrats up and down the ticket. And there is rejoicing across the land.

So, do the women actually get pockets? Eh, probably not. Maybe. Conflicts in working out the specifics and arguing about what constitutes a blouse versus a shirt cause delay after delay to the implementation date and keep kicking the can down the road.

But, with the right to be fully enfranchised human beings restored, as opposed to the current state of being treated as private property/incubators, the momentum carries over into other issues. The new Democratic House, along with the expanded Senate majority and the Presidency, pass bills reconstituting the protections from Roe and Griswald, creating a national guarantee of reproductive rights and healthcare. They also pass a new law requiring that dry cleaning charges for women’s clothing be no higher than the cost for men’s. And for good measure, they add some more Supreme Court members so that the current six religious and Big Business shills are outnumbered and kept from interfering with the will of The People.

Yes, it’s all there for the taking, right in our back pocket, if you will.

 

Director’s DVD Commentary: I apologize if you came here all amped up about a new campaign strategy, and instead, you encountered my absurdist tendencies run amok. But take heart; I’m still confident that a full-throated push for reproductive rights will be a winner, come November. We just have to lay out the facts and turn out in greater numbers than the Religious Wingnuts.

Monday, March 11, 2024

SOTU vs STFU

 SOTU

I enjoyed President Biden’s State of the Union address last week. It was good to see him get all fired up again. Content aside, he should have put to rest any doubts about his stamina and vitality. He sure didn’t look like a doddering, senile old man, as he’s painted to be by the Right-Wing Echo Chamber and even some mainstream media. And he certainly didn’t look like he needed a mental acuity test, like some of the corrupt opposition suggest.

Of course, Republicans can’t admit that so now they say he was hopped up on goofballs and pick-em-up pills. Jesus. They might as well put “Heads I win, Tails you lose,” right there on their bumper stickers. It may as well be their motto. Whatever a Dem does is not good enough and even when it is, they invent another reason why it’s not.

Plus, given the newly revealed, hyper-pharmaceutical culture of the previous administration, it’s probably just more deflection and projection of their own issues.

To all the yayhoos drawing ominous conclusions about his occasional stutters or stumbles, I’d like to see YOU try to read from a script for 69 minutes straight, on national television, with the occasional dipshit yelling at you from the peanut gallery. It’s not easy to do for the heartiest of people. These “critics” are like the armchair quarterbacks who think they could lead the team down the field at crunch time, but in reality, would lose containment just stepping onto a field in front of 65,000 people. Try it sometime, before throwing stones, Gomer.

Content considered, I thought there was a lot to like. I don’t know how he’s going to actually do most of the things he said he’s going to do, but that’s a problem for another term, one in which I’m sure he hopes can work with a Democratic Congress. Otherwise, he’ll be looking at Four More Years of doing little of substance. In which case, sometimes just keeping the wheels on is the best you can hope for.

STFU

I also caught the MTG sideshow, wherein she apparently thought she was on a reconstituted version of You Bet Your Life, where her task was to make President Biden say the magic words “Laken Riley,” and then when he did, it was like she was waiting for the giant duck to come down out of the rafters. Yes, he said the name (of a woman who was killed by an undocumented alien, one of the microscopically few, statistically, who have killed someone in this country). You know the deal… tens of thousands a year killed by domestically bred Americans and they don’t give it a second thought. But this is the outrage. We can add THAT to the Republican Platform, right after More Tax Cuts for the Rich… the Right to be Murdered by an American! Accept nothing less!

So did MTG win something for her Big Get? Were they playing GOP BINGO back there? I don’t get the big deal. Once again, we have a Republican acting like the dog who finally caught the car she’s been chasing and yapping at and has no idea what to do next. I’m sure that she’s just had a whole pile of free time open up now that she can’t go on Fox and yell about how “Biden won’t say the name.”

I have no clue how a vacant pea-brained self-promoter like her gets elected to national office. What happened, did they airdrop lead paint all over her district 30 years ago? Not that they would stoop to using someone’s pain and tragedy to score political points, like some common Democrat, would they?

I didn’t bother to stay up and watch the GOP response, but I understand it was a trip. “The Stepford Fundamentalist,” if you would. So the speech was full of fabrications, misrepresentations, and stories that happened a long, long time ago, in a place far, far away.

So Sen. Britt has been taking her lumps about that, and as well she should. However, let’s not put the blame solely on her and her doll’s eyes.

Do you think there’s any chance the Powers That Be would let some first freshman senator write and present their party’s nationally televised rebuttal to the President, all by herself? I know she didn’t sit there in her perfect kitchen, which probably hasn’t seen a white person wash a dish in it since it was built, and scratch out that speech in a spiral notebook? Or even on a Chromebook? Not without the supervision of the party bosses, she didn’t. In fact, I’d bet they had a whole team working on that thing.

They KNEW it was essentially fact-free. They KNEW their big story took place in another decade, with an entirely different cast of characters running things. And they put it in there anyway, because they don’t care if a story is true, as long as it works. I’m sure they were counting on the audience for that speech, the MAGA faithful, to embrace whatever fairy tale they spin out. And they will because they’ve been conditioned to filter out any sources of contradictory information and believe only what their own people tell them. Fox “News” has them well-trained and obedient.

An Irrelevant Thought

I love it when Sweetpea buys her margarita mix in 8-oz cans…

…I get to walk around and pretend I’m Andre the Giant.

Monday, March 4, 2024

Next Stop, the Warring 20s

There can be no doubt that Republicans are coming for women’s rights to reproductive self-determination. All signs are pointing in the same direction: to the 1920s.

We already know about Dobbs overturning Roe v Wade, which sent the abortion issue back to the states. We know that the Red States immediately began to see who could produce the most draconian laws to punish those who dared to make a choice with which The State did not agree. We’ve got total bans, 15-month bans, 6-month bans, travel bans, and lawsuits encouraged in which there is no recourse from having to pay for counsel, regardless of merit.

But that’s not good enough. Now the MAGA Bible-thumpers running the Republican Party are seeking a federal regulation that a legal human life begins at conception, now that the backward Alabama Supreme Court has so ruled.

While it doesn’t say so specifically, that put an end to In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) in the state because there were no provisions for the disposal of extra fertilized cell clumps. Storing them in perpetuity was also a no-go.

Banning IVF was not the goal. The real idea was getting human life defined as the moment of fertilization because THAT’s how they’re going to start attacking contraception. IUDs? Gone. Day-After pill? Gone. Birth control pill? Gone.

Why the birth control pill? If I remember from my old health classes, taking The Pill prevents ovulation, so there is no egg to fertilize. BUT, it also thins the lining of the uterus so there is less chance of implantation (same as an IUD). The implantation of the fertilized egg is when medical science considers a pregnancy to be happening. But, now with the new legal definition of “life” beginning at the moment a little swimmer pierces the outer rim of an ovum, any interference with the implementation becomes murder.

It’s clear that all of these moral and philosophical hurdles are not meant to “save babies.” Republicans don’t give a shit about babies. This is about controlling women to promote patriarchy, just like we had in the Old Days.

Most Repubs won’t admit that now, but don’t follow their words, just watch their actions. Like in 2022, after the Dobbs decision, there was a bill in play to codify the right to contraception. 194 Republicans voted against it.


Voted against contraception, in this day and age. Sure, they’ll tell you that it was because they thought it was unnecessary, or they were protecting the rights of pharmacy workers to withhold treatment from you due to their own beliefs. It was amazing they could spew such nonsense after Roe had just been done in, with one justice openly stating that he wanted to go after Griswold next (which enshrined the right to privacy decision that ensures access to contraception). It’s funny how they talk out of one side of their mouth about how something “isn’t necessary,” while from the other side, back actions that make it VERY necessary.

The bill never saw any action in the Senate. But the next year, a nearly identical bill passed the House again, by almost the same margin. (All Dems and a smattering of Republicans who were retiring.) The bill was eventually squashed by Senate Republicans before it could be brought to a vote.

At this point, you can’t be fooled by any single, seemingly “reasonable” Republican. They have become a monolithic entity… you’re either with them or against them. Any digression from the expected dogma and they stick you straight into the “against them” pile. And right now, regardless of what they say, their actions are coming to ban abortion and several kinds of contraception. And no Sex Ed, either. They don’t even want kids to know the correct terminology for their own anatomy. All they have to offer are platitudes about the “sanctity of life,” even as they watch hundreds of thousands fall into poverty, despair, and even death, for lack of family planning and reproductive health options.

This isn’t about you obeying your own sense of morality, it’s about obeying theirs. They don’t give a shit what you think about when life begins.

This campaign against reproductive freedom and for the subjugation of women is the only reason one needs to vote straight Democratic in November. It’s that important.

 

Monday, February 26, 2024

News Wheel of Fortune

Let’s spin the old News Wheel and see what to talk about today.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZINGGGGGGG tika tika tika tika tika  tika   tika    tika    tik:


I’m sure there are a lot of finance rules with which Lara Trump is unfamiliar.

It appears that the TFG’s takeover of the Republican Party is officially complete, what with the installation of his own lackeys at the Republican National Committee, namely his daughter-in-law. So now, all money raised by the party’s premier fundraising arm will now go exclusively to TFG, whether it’s air time, internet ads, or millions in legal fees and penalties. Down-ticket races are now on their own.

Basically, the RNC will become the Sucker’s Lounge, funded exclusively by the MAGA faithful, while the traditional, filthy rich, fat-cat branch of the party will wield their own PACs to fund Senators, Representatives, and Governors who will do their bidding. It takes a special kind of individual to pass laws cutting pollution standards and rewrite regulations so that banks can screw their clients more effectively. Without massive funding for slick ad campaigns, people might not think electing politicians to do those things is a good idea. Then where would those poor fat-cats be, having to take a small downturn in their obscene profits? Yachts don’t grow on trees, you know.

Let’s take another spin.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZINGGGGGGG tika tika tika tika tika  tika   tika    tika    tik:

Much like the proverbial dog who finally caught a car he was chasing, Republicans don’t quite know what to do with themselves now that the “True Believers” they put into power declared that a clump of cells is legally a person. At least in Alabama, anyway. I presume they wanted the clumps to feel at home, intelligence-wise, and Alabama fit the bill.

While the GOP politicians are trying feverishly to avoid saying anything concrete about this turn of events, I disagree with Sen. Duckworth that they won’t back such a bill with actual votes. They’ve been hollering so long about how life begins at conception, they can’t really back down now. They don’t know what to do now that they’ve got what they’ve been asking for. But they know that IVF is a popular and essential medical procedure, used by tens of thousands of people, including their own constituents. Much like abortion and the southern border, they’d much rather run a fearmongering campaign on the conceptual issues rather than deal with actual details and the inevitable fallout.

Issues like this bring into sharp relief how important this election is as well as every following one. Our democracy is just a swing state or two away from being destroyed by religious zealots who only care about their own narrow brand of morality, and wielding it like a scythe over anyone who disagrees.

What else do we have here?

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZINGGGGGGG tika tika tika tika tika  tika   tika    tika    tik:

Looks like the Biden Impeachment is DOA, what with the arrest and total discrediting of their top witness, Alexander Smirnov. It seems he was selling a complete fabrication, supplied to him by Russian Intelligence. Is anyone actually surprised here? Except Gym Jones, who always seems to look that way.

This is the inevitable outcome when a group starts with a conclusion and then tries to backfill the reasoning. It’s the opposite of the scientific process. Or in other words, a true witch hunt.

Unlike what TFG so often proclaims, it’s not a witch hunt when there’s overwhelming proof of criminal activity, like what’s happened every time he’s been investigated.

I want to make another point here but let me take a short detour to this editorial cartoon I found in the Baltimore Sun last week.

As I’ve mentioned before, The Sun is under new ownership, of the founder of the conservative media empire Sinclair Broadcasting. Immediately upon the takeover, I noticed a distinct shift in focus of the editorial cartoons. Most were pure conservative talking points, but others “appear” to find a middle ground, but if you scratch the surface, they reveal an insidious “both-sider-ism.” Like with this cartoon:

At first glance, I thought “Hell yeah. What a waste of Congressional resources.” But then I noticed there were five broken emergency cases, one for each impeachment since the 90s. The problem is that not all impeachments are the same, not by a long shot.

1.     Clinton. This was a fishing trip engineered by Newt Gingrich, who went looking for a financial scam but was left with nothing but a clandestine blowjob. The entire affair was a hit job, meant to keep the president occupied with defending himself rather than doing what he was elected to do. Yes, the president lied to the grand jury, but he never should have been put there in the first place. The matter had zero to do with governing and everything to do with vendetta politics.

2.     Trump's first impeachment, which laid out proof that he tried to extort Ukraine by withholding funds and arms unless they pretended they were investigating Joe Biden. There are documents, witnesses, recordings, or in other words, overwhelming proof.

3.     Trump's second impeachment, regarding his actions leading up to and on January 6th. The proof of his involvement and support of a government overthrow left zero doubts of his guilt. As with the previous impeachment, only the cowardice and ambition of the Republican Senators kept him from being convicted.

4.     Secretary of Homeland Security. Impeached because of policy differences in an area where the Secretary has wide latitude. It's a complete sham that started with the conclusion and sought to backfill from there.

5.     Biden. Another sham, an impeachment pushed merely because their guy was impeached. Tit for tat politics. The only problem is they have no case. Every “witness” they produce ends up discredited or arrested. They desperately want Biden to be guilty of something, they just can’t seem to find anything he actually did wrong. They want to be able to say, “Hey, HE was impeached too,” thereby taking TFG’s double whammy off the board. But all they can conjure up is a mirage.

So, in a subtle maneuver, the cartoonist is insinuating that all the prior impeachment proceedings were a waste of time, rather than just the three that didn’t turn up any legal wrongdoing.

But don’t get me wrong, there have still been a couple of good cartoons. Let me end with this one, which I thought was pretty good:


Personally, I think Obama should have been on there, or maybe Roberto Clemente. But why quibble? There’s only so much room. And now I want to go play frisbee.

Monday, February 19, 2024

The Art of Moving the Cheese

Last week, Congressional Republicans showed their butts to the country as they refused to take up the border bill they asked for, which contained just about everything they wanted. Their Orange Idol decreed that it would be better to leave to next year the “crisis” they all decry as an existential threat to the nation, so he could spend the year fear-mongering on the issue. Well done, guys. How very noble of you.

Democrats gave them things I’m sure they never expected, which blew up one of their talking points, the long-lasting mischaracterization that Dems want an “open border.”

They made it clear that they have no intention of solving a problem when they can use it to gather and maintain power for themselves. It’s like moving the goalposts has become a plank in the Republican platform, you know, if they’d ever bother to create one (besides “Do whatever TFG says. And own the Libs.”)

Moving the goalposts is so ingrained in them now, that it must have made the negotiations on the border bill an ordeal worthy of Sisyphus. I can just imagine how it went:

GOP: We want a border fence that’s 25 feet high.

DEMs: OK.

GOP: I mean, we want a fence that’s 50 feet high, made out of Vibranium.

DEMs: We’re good on the 50, but isn’t Vibranium the stuff Captain America’s shield is made of in the Marvel comics?

GOP: You have a problem with Captain America? Now we want the wall 75 feet tall.

DEMs: OK, we can live with the 75-foot Vibranium wall.

GOP: We want it eleventy feet tall and made of eels.

DEMs: [looking dejectedly at each other] Sure, OK. Now what about the river?

GOP: We want it filled with alligators.

DEMs: OK.

GOP: I mean, crocodiles. We want it filled with crocodiles.

DEMs: But crocodiles aren’t native to North America, alligators are found in…

GOP: We want crocodiles… electrified crocodiles with suits made from razor wire.

DEMs: But…

GOP:  Loch Ness Monsters. We want 4 dozen Loch Ness Monsters patrolling the river.

DEMs: OK, whatevs… You source them, we’ll put’em in the river.

GOP: And the river has to be acid, like from Alien blood.

DEMs: Wouldn’t Alien blood acid kill the Loch Ness Monsters?

GOP: [Huddles to discuss] The acid goes in a second river, like a moat. We want an acid moat.

DEMS: OK, we agree, if you guys quality test it first.

GOP: Um, won’t we get burned?

DEMs: Take a Tums antacid first, you’ll be fine.

GOP: Deal! Suckers…

Sometimes I have a disturbing imagination.

And Now This:

Just a quick callback to last week’s post about GOP moderate Larry Hogan running for the upcoming Senate seat from Maryland…

This article appeared in the Baltimore Sun:

Someone needs to let Hogan know that his party’s attempts to govern the uteri of American women ensure that codifying such rights is completely necessary. It doesn’t matter if he is personally reasonable on the issue, if he votes with the rest of the wingnuts, and we have no reason to think he won’t, reproductive rights will disappear all the same.


Monday, February 12, 2024

Crunch Time for a Blue State

As if we need more bad news on the political front, we have a new local development that will have national implications. Former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan has decided to run for the Senate seat being vacated by Ben Cardin. Normally a Republican declaring for a Maryland Senate seat would be greeted by yawns, but Hogan was a rare bird that won two terms as a Red governor in a very Blue state.

He was able to do that because he wasn’t a Bible-thumper or religious wingnut, nor did he support TFG. (He also ran against a couple of thoroughly uninspiring opponents.)

He was one of the rare Republican governors who took COVID seriously and actively promoted vaccinations, masks, and social distancing. Consequently, Maryland weathered the “Rona storm pretty well, with more than 95% of its population getting at least one COVID shot.

However, he was still a traditional Republican at heart, which was demonstrated by how fast he shot down a major public transportation project to create an east/west-running light rail. (Baltimore’s only other light rail line runs north/south.) There were tens of millions in federal funding already in hand, secured by the previous administration, but he left that money on the table to build and widen roads instead, mostly in the Washington suburban areas.

He seems to be burying his Republican past, eschewing party funding in lieu of raising his own money. He wants to run an “independent” campaign, which is fine, but we voters have to keep in mind that he will still be caucusing with the rest of the Republicans and will count as one of them when it’s time to see who wins control of the Senate. That’ll be a big deal when it comes time to get things done. Any bill that’s beneficial to the average American will be strangled in its sleep by a Republican-controlled Senate.

Democrats already have to defend a handful of seats in Red states; now they have to worry about what should have been a reliably Blue seat. I wish he’d just leave politics and open up a sandwich shop. He could call it “Hogan’s Heroes.”

I hope his opponents have the smarts and strategy to take him on and make him wear that “R” around his neck, whether he likes it or not. It doesn’t matter if he rides the middle if it swings power to the wingnuts. And speaking of:

This is what I’m talking about. Here’s a sitting Senator explaining how he would have supported the Trump Insurrection if he had the chance, and insisted on accepting fraudulent ballots. Sure, it’s a lot of Monday morning quarterback woulda-coulda-shoulda, meant to bolster his MAGA cred. But it tells you what this guy will do at crunch time if he’s called to support either the Constitution or the Wingnut Brigade. If he has to wipe his feet on his oath of office to placate a bunch of idiots who think it’s a fix whenever they lose at something, from law parts to lawn darts, it shall be done.

Now this was my favorite story from the recent past:

Excuse me, I have to go find some pearl to clutch. Will marbles do? I can’t believe Hannity was even covering this shit, let alone hyping it like it was Hunter Biden’s laptop. Have they ever heard their Dear Leader before? He swears so much, that you can’t even rule out Tourette’s.

And we KNOW Dark Brandon likes to drop the occasional F-bomb at important times. Remember how the ACA was a “big fuckin’ deal?” And it was, so Joe labeled it as such. I loved that when it happened.

The Right-Wing media ought to make up its mind. Is Biden a senile old fool who doesn’t remember who he is, or is he an evil mastermind who takes years to ratfuck his enemies, create byzantine conspiracies, fix NFL games, and offer dating guidance for young pop singers?

President Biden may be losing a step or two, and maybe a younger pol should step in. But that’s not going to happen in this world, so we’re reduced to a choice between two starkly different options. (And any third-party options are nothing but indirect ways to influence the choice between the main two.) I will always take a sometimes forgetful but well-meaning, true family values person who supports the working class over a sadistic, narcissistic, petulant, spoiled, ignorant, fucktard bent on installing himself as king and spreading the wealth to his rich “friends.”

Also, remember that Presidents have staffs that keep things running. Should Biden falter, I trust his staff to keep the train on the tracks so much more than the toadies and yes-men that will populate TFG’s prospective administration.  He appointed adults in the room last time and hated being told “no.” That won’t happen again. Now it will be all kiss-asses, all the time. And speaking of the biggest kiss-ass:

Yes, the border bill that contained everything Republicans wanted, negotiated in good faith by both parties and got shot down so that instead of solving (or even addressing) a problem (that Republicans claim to be cataclysmic), they have something to use in a campaign instead. And now, Margie Three-Toes thinks it’s traitorous NOT to go along.

She, of course, should know from being “traitorous,” given her public participation in the January 6th Insurrection and Hootenanny, after which she sought a presidential pardon. If she had been incapable of identifying traitorous behavior, she wouldn’t have felt such a need.

Aside from wanting to use the southern border as a fear-mongering campaign issue, what Republicans really want is an end to immigration, period. No asylum, no work programs, no brown people coming over the border for any reason. That’s the real goal here.

Consider this editorial cartoon from the Newly Republicanized Baltimore Sun:

To make this accurate, turn the funnel upside-down. Then put a cork in it. That’s the Republican immigration plan.


Monday, February 5, 2024

If Not Medium, Then an Extra-Large

As you may have noticed, if you’ve been reading me long or have ever noticed the name of this blog, I’m mainly reliant on science and measurable data to guide my views on life.

But that’s not totally the case. I’ve had some pretty weird shit happen to me that keeps the door open a crack, to all kinds of mystical hoo-doo. Let me just tell you the story…

Have you ever had “dream flashes?” Maybe you call it déjà vu, but I know them as dream flashes. They are those little snippets of life that hit you all of a sudden and you know you’ve dreamed them before.

I used to get them maybe 2-3 times a year (now, maybe once every other year) and they’re usually when I’m doing something completely inconsequential, like sitting on the couch watching a game and eating a ham sandwich. 

Then, POW! For a second or two, up to maybe five, I know I’ve seen this view before. For a few seconds, everything is exactly as I’ve seen it; from where I’m sitting, to where I’m looking, to the taste of the sandwich, to the announcer’s call on TV, and even what I’m thinking. I always try to go with it and see how far I can stretch it. Then real life takes over quickly and on I go as usual.

As superpowers go, it’s not exactly awe-inspiring. I’ve had zero luck in predicting which things I’ve dreamed about will come to be. And believe me, there are a few that would make me very happy to see come to pass… But so far, Tina Fey still won’t return my calls.

Déjà Bluz
OK, so I was in 9th grade back in the 70s. We were living in Columbus, OH, and had just learned that we would be moving upstate to Toledo at the end of the school year. Again, I would be leaving my friends and starting all over again in a new school.

One night, that spring, I dreamed I was at my new school. I was in some weird class that started with “P” and everyone was sitting at these black tables. There were none of the usual school desks, to which I was accustomed. And a girl was passing out M&Ms to everyone in the class.

I woke up thinking, “WTF?

When I went downstairs to breakfast, I told my mom about the dream. Neither of us knew what to make of it, and that was that. I never gave it another thought.

Half a year later, while firmly entrenched in my new school and new life, I was in Physiology class.  Mary, another student, was having a birthday and for the occasion, she brought in a bag of M&Ms that she began to pass out to the class.

Next thing you know, POW! Full-barrel dream flash. Everything was exactly how it was in my dream.  From my perspective in the room to the black lab tables, to the exact same girl in the same place with the M&Ms, it was just like I’d seen it. The scene played out for maybe 5 seconds while I sat there with my mouth hanging open.

I realized at the time that this was all quite impossible. When I’d had the dream, I’d never been to Toledo, let alone to that school. I’d never heard of Physiology. I’d never seen black lab tables like that.  OK, I’d seen M&Ms before, but that was it. There was no way I could have been able to “see” everything I’d just seen.

Except that I did.

After class, I staggered up to tell the teacher what had just happened. I don’t really remember her reaction other than maybe a slight bemusement. She probably just marked down in her little class book that she should keep an eye on this one, who was obviously a troublemaker and not much of a scientist.

Through the next few years, I did a little research on the phenomenon but was never able to find anything that adequately explained how these dream flashes happen. 

What I took out of the whole thing is that one can never say what is or isn’t possible. If I can take a peek into the future, who’s to say if someone else can see spirits, or predict what’s going to happen next? That doesn’t mean I buy into every crackpot that says they have powers… there are too many con men running around trying to separate people from their cash in exchange for mystical services rendered. A healthy skepticism is necessary to get along these days.

But right before I dismiss some whack-a-loon that claims to be able to “see”, I’m forced to think, “what if?” 

Sometimes, “seeing” is believing. And I saw for myself that there are things in this world that cannot be explained.

Director's DVD Commentary: I wanted to take a break from politics. so this is a reworking of a post I did 14 years ago. And I still don't know what it all means.

Monday, January 29, 2024

When Up is Down and Down is Up

The MAGAs are still out there pretending that the economy is Biden’s Achilles’ Heel. I harvested this meme from the weekend:

I saw a similar one, which I unfortunately neglected to capture, that wanted everyone to go grocery shopping and fill up the tank before they go to vote.

That one had to be old… I agree with it 100%. I think by November, unless Republicans do something to tank the economy in the name of maintaining another avenue for campaign attack ads, the economy will be just fine. Gas prices are always a question mark because so many things can send them shooting up. Production issues, transport issues, war, terrorism, and just plain greed can spike gas prices. And as it’s often said, gas prices go up like a rocket and come back down like a feather.

I think Democrats need to do a better job at highlighting how the prior inflation rise was primarily due to corporate price gouging rather than the after-effects of the federal COVID stimulus. We need some charts circulating that show how when the inflation was at its peak, so were corporate profits. If the cost of supplies was really the culprit in high prices, profits wouldn’t have been smashing records.

Granted, such presentations are likely to put those who most need to hear them to sleep.

It continues to rankle how Republicans keep trying to compare current gas prices to when COVID had cratered them. All it took for gas to fall under $2.00 was a mishandled pandemic that made people stay home, dried up demand for gas, and caused the deaths of over a million Americans. Although I’m sure they’d take the deal in a second if the dead were solely made up of brown people, gays, and non-Christians.

All the metrics are looking good right now. Wages are up, joblessness is down, and inflation is as low as it was before the pandemic. Polls say people feel they are personally doing well, but still think the overall economy is a disaster. This is 100% the media’s doing, especially the Right Wing Echo Chamber, which pushes the bad news regardless of actual statistics to the contrary. When a Democrat is in power, it’s all bad news, all the time. And mainstream media doesn’t broadcast economic successes nearly as forcefully as they do the preceding failures.

***

In other news, Republicans could not look worse on The Border than they do right now, what with the Senate taking orders from TFG to tank a bipartisan bill to address the southern border so that he (and the rest of the party) can run on the immigration chaos for this year’s elections. They refuse to take any action that might look like a “win” for President Biden.

Last I’ve seen, they’re pretending that this bill is so terrible, even though their teammates were in on its creation. But in actuality, it’s like I’ve been saying about abortion, election security, and other issues: Republicans don’t really want to address the problem if they can campaign on it. They prevent solutions so they can stoke fear over Democrats’ inaction. That’s page one in the GOP playbook. Democrats need to highlight this practice at every opportunity.

***

Lastly, congratulations to E. Jean Carroll, for becoming filthy rich at the expense of TFG. Although I wouldn’t make any big plans, just yet, for how to spend all that dough. It will be a long time before she sees a dime if TFG can do anything about it. I’m sure he’ll pull every delaying tactic available to get avoid paying out, from endless appeals to limited bankruptcy. And when it eventually does come time to pay, I have no doubt he’ll try to draw the money from other people via “loans” he never pays back, or fundraising from his sheep.

E. Jean should also avoid going up in any tall buildings, lest she become another victim of faulty Russian staircase design, wherein that first step is a real killer.

Monday, January 22, 2024

The Setting Sun

I don’t know how big of a national splash this made last week but they announced that David Smith, the owner of the Sinclair broadcasting group, bought my local paper, the Baltimore Sun, as a personal investment.

Sinclair is an ownership group that buys up all the local stations it can muster and turns them into right-wing MAGAphones, including the mandate that they all run pre-recorded editorial content from the “home office.”

Maryland is a blue state and the Sun has traditionally reflected that, although not so much so that they didn’t endorse a Republican governor or two, over the years. But this has effectively come to an end.

The new owner says he wants The Sun to function like our local “Fox 45,” which is also owned by Sinclair. In other words, one more piece in the right-wing echo chamber. Sinclair owns Fox 45 in Baltimore, as well as the local CW channel.

Both networks specialize in attacking the local government and school systems. They love to ambush public officials on their way to their car at night, to lob loaded questions while the camera rolls. Every night, when I’m usually watching syndicated shows, I see the promos for their news broadcasts, and it’s always the same.

They proclaim how they’re “keeping local officials honest,” but that’s just a cover. It’s an unrelenting drumbeat of bad news, day in and day out.

It’s one thing to cover news that makes officials look bad. But it becomes disingenuous when positive stories are omitted or skewed to make them look bad. I’ve had this argument with people before when they say, “But what if this news is true? What if this really is a bad thing?”

I counter that there’s never a “good thing” aired, even when good things abound. Lies of omission are still lies. When a broadcaster’s only objective is to smear the ruling party, that’s not journalism, it’s just PR and propaganda.

A couple years back, I decided to take some notes on the subjects of the local Fox and CW nightly news promos, which I did for about a week or so before I lost interest. (I was hoping to make a post out of it, but you know… squirrel!) I still have the notes though, so, Score!

These were the stories they were hyping at the time:

·         CW: High price of gas.

·         Fox: Violence in Baltimore City, State’s Attorney ethics charges.

·         Fox: Save Our Schools: Lawsuits filed against the school district.

·         CW: Crisis at the Border, Baby Formula crisis haunts the Biden Administration.

·         Fox: Electric vehicle fires

·         CW: The danger of letting the WHO determine what is a pandemic.

·         CW: While government fights record inflation, migrants are flooding in.

As you can see, it’s just a compendium of Republican talking points, blaming Democrats for inflation, bad schools, the pandemic, corruption, and electric cars. It’s All Crisis, All the Time while propping up the fossil fuel industry, private schooling, and catering to the MAGAs at every turn.

This is what will become of our deep-rooted bastion of journalism, a paper version of Fox “News.” I’m sure we’ll never see another big half-page story on a decrease in border crossings, like the one I ran in my last post. Such good news will never be set in ink again if it benefits a Democrat.

What I’m going to do next, I don’t know yet. I’ve been a Baltimore Sun subscriber ever since I came to town in 1998. I’ve always been a newspaper guy, a habit I got from my dad, who always had the paper delivered, wherever we lived. Sometimes we even got two, like when we lived in Columbus Ohio, and got the morning Citizen Journal and the evening Columbus Dispatch.

In practical terms, I get most of my news online, via the blogs on my blogroll and my Yahoo home page. The Sun staff is a mere shell of what it used to be. Most of their content comes from news syndicates and affiliates. Aside from TV listings, my primary use for the Sun is the comics page and puzzles.

Doing crossword puzzles (and the Jumble and Sudoku) are baked into my weekday lunchtime routine. On the weekends, Sweetpea and I both work on the morning puzzles.

I know I can get crosswords online, but I don’t like doing them via computer, nor do I want to have to print the puzzles every damned day. But I feel sick at the prospect of giving those vultures any of my hard-earned dough.

For the time being, I intend to stay put and watch what happens. After all, this could be a good feeder system for Right Wing material to pick apart, or maybe even to rebut via letters to the editor. It’s not a bad idea to see what kind of BS the other side is pushing. It’ll let me know whether they have serious points, or if they’re pushing myths and illusions. Then when they eventually cross the line, I can, with haughty indignity, write in, refute their stories, and end it with “Cancel my subscription, you odorous band of kowtowing mullet-heads!

Fun at the Grocery Store

Sometimes, when checking out a new grocery store, the aisles are arranged in such a way that I can create a little mirth, for those that know how to find it.

Bloody Vikings...

 

Monday, January 15, 2024

It Was a Call to Action

People were horrified last week when TFG publicly stated that he hoped the economy would crash in the next 12 months, meaning he could then blame President Biden throughout the campaign. For every other politician, such a cravenly selfish statement would bring them down in flames, but as you know, this guy is fire-repellant (as well as the usual kind of repellant.) A statement like his is completely on-brand for him. His fans expect nothing less.

But don’t look at this as just another self-serving proclamation. If you have paid attention to his previous speeches, it reads more like a call to arms. He’s not “hoping,” he’s asking/telling. Just like his statements about hoping “the Russians are listening,” “stand back and stand by,” “will be wild,” and “second amendment solutions,” this was a dog whistle to the select people who have the access and means to crash the economy.

He’s asking for business leaders to create more supply chain problems, for retailers to price-gouge a little more, for layoffs to roll out, and for his oil friends like the Saudis to cut back on production. He’s actively creating the crisis for which he’ll blame his opponent. And if that isn’t “on-brand” for TFG and the Republicans, I don’t know what is.

Just look what they’re doing with the southern border.

From the Baltimore Sun, last Monday.

Not only do they mischaracterize the situation by inferring that it’s much larger than it really is, but they refuse to even sit down to create solutions. It’s much more important to them to use it as a campaign issue than to fix a national problem desperately needing fixing.

The Eco-Destruct message also carries to his governmental partners in crime. He wants nothing more than for the government to be shut down. Obviously, no matter how it takes place, they’ll blame it on the Democrats, for not agreeing to every poison pill they can conjure up and put into play. Fledgling Speaker Johnson apparently didn’t get the message the first time, given his preliminary deal with Senate Leader Schumer, so this was a way to amplify the MAGA message: Never agree with a Democrat! Better to bring down the whole establishment than to cede ground on a single inch.

***

No matter what the Democrats do, it’s imperative that this guy doesn’t assume the reins of the government again. As I’ve said before, this time there will be no adults in the room to rein in his whack-a-doo impulses, only aiders and abettors. Did you see the statement from his former Communications Director about how he actively wanted to have people killed? In particular, regarding an aide who leaked negative information about him?


This guy as President, with complete immunity (as he is currently seeking in court), would be like having King Joffrey running the country.

Picture every wonton whim being carried out by enthusiastic yes-men and sadists, eager to please the Boy King, the gorier the better. Once he stacks the Justice Department with his toadies, “justice” will be for “Just Us,” as in Trump followers only. Anyone who displeases him in any way, like by opposing an idea, protesting unfair treatment, or merely saying something negative about him, will be dealt with and will most likely never be heard from again. It wouldn’t surprise me if he did like his autocratic idols do and charged the family for the bullet. Or in the case of a Putin-like long fall from an open window, charge them for sidewalk cleanup.

The Supreme Court may or may not find a way to claim TFG was/is immune from prosecution. The only sure way to keep the nightmare scenario from coming to pass is to not vote him in!