The Home Stretch

 Here we are again, approaching the next Most Important Election of our Lifetimes. Early voting has already begun in many places; I dropped off my ballot at a drop-box on Friday, so my deed is done. So it’s time to talk about this election in “now” time, rather than in some amorphous future.

What happens with this election is going to send the country careening in one direction or another. Or possibly several.

The Republicans aren’t even hiding their intentions anymore. They’re explicitly saying they want to enact a national abortion ban, overturn the right to same-sex marriage, further restrict contraception, and cut back on Social Security and Medicare.

All of those scare the piss out of me because there’s no reason to think they won’t try to do what they say they’re going to do. Many people thought Republicans would never really kill Roe v Wade, but here we are. They put the right religious nutjobs in place and they did what they intended to do all along. We should not have been surprised.

Granted, they’re not exactly running on all those points. You won’t see many commercials saying “Hey, I want to take your (or your parents’/grandparents’) social security check away, vote for me!” No, they’re busy trying to scare you about crime and inflation. Fear… it’s what works.

That their threats are hollow doesn’t matter. They know most people won’t learn that the highest crime states are the ones that went for TFG two years ago. And they know that inflation is a global phenomenon, with many countries worse off than we are, but they don’t care. Nor do they have any kind of plan to reduce inflation themselves. They just blame Biden and the Democrats.

The funny thing is that the new British Prime Minister just got yanked out of office when her tax cuts and supply-side economic plans torpedoed their economy, the same idea Republicans enact every chance they get.

I suppose they could always ask their wealthy business-owning donors to do them a favor and stop price-gouging so hard for a little while. But I doubt they’ll even do that because they don’t give a shit. Do you think Mitch McConnell gives a rip about how much milk costs? Not a chance. He’s too wrapped up in setting a price for how much a Congressman costs.

So these are the ads and memes we’re seeing this week. Prices are high so vote Republican. Crime is still here so vote out the Democrats.

For me, the situation is numbingly simple. Assuming that the Dems really are at fault for high prices, (and I don’t believe for a second that they are), I’ll gladly pay a few more bucks for gas and groceries if that will buy half of our citizens the right of bodily self-determination, Social Security and Medicare gets shored up rather than cut down, everyone can love whomever they choose, use whatever birth control they choose, and the rest of the government takes climate change as seriously as the military does. Prices go up and down and always will, but you can’t put a price on basic human rights. And the right of rational people not to have to abide by the fever dreams of religious wingnuts is supreme.

I do think there may be enough votes out there to keep Congress under Democratic control; I just worry about how far those people who have weaseled their way into positions of influence over elections will go to ensure the outcome they desire. What are all those hired to “watch” and “challenge” voters going to do? How many state legislatures, who have gerrymandered themselves into permanent positions of power, will seek to overturn legal results that they deem fraudulent, for no other reason than that they don’t like the outcome?

We only survived the last election with a degree of sanity because there were so many people of high integrity, from both parties, who were running things. Unfortunately, many of those principled individuals have been driven from the position by harassment and death threats, making room for the aforementioned weasels. I think the aftermath of this one is going to be bad. Like, “democracy-killing” bad. If we’ve learned anything in the last two years, it’s that it doesn’t take much to get a crowd of idiots to take up arms against the government, out of “patriotism.”

Vote Early, Count Early

Sometimes I can find arguments to pull apart on Facebook like they grow on trees, yet other times the trees are bare. But today I had one fall right into my lap. Someone dropped an Anonymous comment on my last post that just took my breath away. There were so many faults there I barely knew where to start with a reply.

It was completely off-topic for a post about legalizing pot, which is a reliable indicator for a troll with an agenda.

I wrote a short reply anyway, knowing I could flesh it out in today’s post because there are multiple fronts for dissection:

·         This is a complete, raging, logical fallacy, as there is obviously zero correlation between the quality of any candidate and when the votes are counted. That right there is enough to dismiss it from serious consideration. Whether you count it before or after Election Day, a legal vote is a legal vote. Period.

·         The commenter, of course, is passing on the conservative trope that some kind of nefarious, liberal, monkey-business going with mail-in and drop-off voting. Not that anything has been proven or even reliably demonstrated. It just is because they want it to be. It’s the only way they can rationalize that their point of view is not dominant throughout the country.

·         Explain how when using the same methodology, there is less “Trustable, reliable, secure” counting going on before Election Day than there is after? Is he charging that there’s a completely different set of rules for counting votes prior to Election Day? (Probably, despite the fact that the idea is ludicrous.) They won’t recognize that Republicans (mostly TFG) engineered the high likelihood that most of the late-counted votes being Democratic, by exhorting their own people to vote in person. If TFG didn’t rail against mail-in voting like he did, the late returns would have come in more evenly. Obviously, it wouldn’t change the count, it would just rearrange the order of the returns. Note to Election Deniers:

o   1+2+3=6

o   2+1+3=6

o   3+1+2=6

o   2+3+1=6.  Etc.

See, in any order you count it, you still get the same result. Biden won.

TFG and his minions had a pretty good idea that he wasn’t going to win, so he created the very set of circumstances he then used to contest the result. That’s fine for a Banana Republic dictator, but it doesn’t fly for the President of the United States.

·         If you want the results on (or near) Election Day, in 2022, you’d better start counting them early. There are far too many mailed and dropped-off votes in play to only start counting after the polls close, without severely delaying the results. Maryland is expecting over 400,000 of them. And remember, until this election, Maryland state law decreed that they can’t even start counting the votes until the Thursday after Election Day! Weren’t Republicans also complaining about counting votes that far past Election Day? (Answer: yes they were. They even went to court to stop the counting, (in places they were ahead, of course).

This guy is on it.

·         This line of complaint is in sync with Republicans’ overall messaging, as relayed by Fox “News” and other such open-air sewage systems, that mail-in voting is inherently corrupt. This is despite there being zero evidence of any widespread malfeasance, or even just enough to tip a single election, despite there being several states who have used mail-in voting extensively for ten years or more, without incident. And in some of these states, especially rural ones, Republicans have been mailing in their votes too.

What it comes down to is that mail-in voting is just too easy. It allows the common people a much faster and easier method of voting, and that’s the LAST thing the rich Republican donors want. Rich people don’t want poor people voting, because it might cost them money, especially if the poor realize how badly they’re getting ripped off. So they want long lines. They want fewer voting machines in more populous areas. They want to require the specific IDs their opponent’s voters are least likely to have. They want to make it more expensive and time-consuming to get those IDs. They want it to be inconvenient to vote so that the huddled masses STAY HOME and let the well-to-do keep carving up the country’s resources for themselves.

On a Lighter Note…

I might have stumbled onto a more entertaining way to deter Jehovah’s Witnesses and other doorstep pests:

If this catches on, I just may have to invest in that front-door surveillance camera system that I’ve been avoiding.

Also, how long before someone claims “Devil Vagina Magic” as the name for their all-female punk band?

High There

I trust you saw the good news over the weekend: President Biden is pardoning all those with federal marijuana possession convictions? I understand it doesn’t really cover that many people; I read there are only between 6000-7000 people that have such convictions and none are currently in jail. But it’s still an important step to sane weed laws.

First of all, it does help those 6000+ people by wiping a serious conviction off their records. Often employers want no part of hiring anyone with a prior arrest, no matter what it’s for.

When I used to manage record and video stores, it was an automatic disqualification if that box was checked on the application. No matter how perfect the candidate may have been for the job, I was forbidden from hiring them.

Secondly, and I think most importantly, it sets a signpost for governors to do the same. That’s where the real numbers kick in. Most pot busts come from the state or local level, not from the feds. The president leading on this issue can get a lot of people back into the legitimate workforce.

Granted, I don’t think anyone but Blue State governors will bite, but every little bit helps. And if it becomes a campaign issue in Red States, all the better.

It strains the brain to realize that even now, marijuana is still categorized in the same bracket as heroin and cocaine. Seriously. Even when I was back in college, (where I first encountered that little tidbit), I couldn’t believe it.

While I don’t think many people support giving the shit out as party favors on the playground, it can at least be treated on par with alcohol or regular cigs. And the tax windfall should be huge. What government is going to pass up such a lucrative area of taxation? It may even be enough to tempt the Red States. Then they can gain more operating money on the backs of the common people and leave the corporations alone, just like they always do. Although based on recent history, I do expect to hear the following argument from the Right:

"Hey, I took my pot bust like a man. I accepted my consequences. Everyone else needs to suffer like I did or else it won't be fair to ME."

The thing is, no amount of government propaganda and scare tactics are going to convince anyone who’s smoked pot, or even been around someone who’s smoked pot, that it’s some kind of heinous pharmaceutical boogieman. We’ve all seen it. Most of us have survived it, none the worse for wear. That’s why I’m sure that marijuana legalization is going to pass with flying colors in next month’s Maryland elections.

Those like me who grew up in the 60s and 70s will welcome the chance to decriminalize it. The people who are hard biased against weed are probably those who grew up in the 40s and 50s, and are aging out. Or maybe not.

My dad, who was always highly anti-pot, eventually softened his stance once he got older and began experiencing chronic back and leg pain. It was keeping him from sleeping until he tried THC oil. He’d put a few drops on a pizzelle before bed and it was lights out. He eventually got himself a medical marijuana prescription for it. So maybe the old anti-reefer people will come around once they see what it can do for them now.

I got my ballot over the weekend, which reminded me that legalizing pot is even being voted on. I completely forgot. The state legislature is ready to legalize, but wanted the voters to give them the cover of a mandate. I’m pretty sure they’ll get it.

Once it’s passed, I expect our next governor to follow Biden’s example and pardon/waive/forgive all simple marijuana possession convictions. (Assuming it’s not Dan Cox, GOP nominee and TFG’s Maryland ball-licker-in-chief, who I expect to lose by at least 20 points. I expect he’ll just do whatever TFG tells him to do.)

For my part, I’ve never been much of a pot smoker. I can probably count on my fingers the times I’ve indulged and still have some left over. Most of those times, usually when I was in my teens or early 20s, I was already so drunk I couldn’t tell the difference after taking a hit. But the biggest reason for not doing it is that I don’t like smoking anything. Regardless of any benefits of mellowing out, I end up coughing my face off trying to get rid of the tightness in my chest. Who needs it? I’d just as soon have a couple of drinks and call it a night.

But the big change that legalization would present to me is making edibles available. I’m very keen to try copping a buzz via eating a light snack. If I like it enough, I may just quit drinking. There will be fewer calories than alcohol and it will be much easier on my liver. Of course it may be so expensive that drinking remains the go-to vice. So we’ll see what happens.

And speaking of health, I hit a new high on my Fitbit from last week. I got my best sleep marks ever!

Sure, my daily steps have cratered since I stopped going into the office, but at least I can still rack up the sleep!

I wasn’t really having much trouble sleeping before but for some reason, the Fitbit would delay when it started tracking me as asleep. I’d get up from a good night’s sleep, check my stats and it would only have shown me as asleep from 1:30 AM on, when I was out cold by 11:15. Anyway, I had a very good week not only with time spend asleep, but the quality. I think it was because it finally turned cool at night, and there’s nothing like burrowing down under the covers on a chilly night.

And now, a word from Herschel Walker and every other Republican Congressman and Senator:

 

Read the Labels

I know it seems like we hear about elections all year long but now it’s heating up in earnest. There’s only another month left until the mid-term elections, where either Republicans take one or more houses of Congress and grind bill passage to halt, or the Dems hold on and we continue the possibility of making incremental changes. Granted, it’s technically possible that Democrats not only hold on but gain enough seats to make Manchin and Sinema irrelevant, but hardly anyone thinks that’s likely.

I’d like to think that there will be enough anti-Anti-Abortion sentiment to surprise everyone like Kansas did, but we have to remember, that was a vote on an issue. It’s one thing to vote for or against an issue proposal, but another to vote for a member of the rival party, who your own party has been condemning as subhuman, Satanic, Communist, baby-killing, pedophiles. The abortion referendum didn’t have an “R” or a “D” next to it on the ballot, so there’s philosophical cover there.

Still, I have hope that enough people will be practical enough to disregard labels and vote their interests. But it’s hard to overcome the messaging.

I realized that Republicans running for office right now are taking notes from the Supreme Court nominees. SCOTUS noms will come in and dance around every hypothetical and specific, trying to say as little as possible about what they’d do on the bench, and then once they get in, they vote the way their nominator and the Federalist Society put them there to vote. They preach “stare decisis” right up until they start shit-canning all the prior decisis that gets in their way.

So few congressional hopefuls (outside the deep-red Bible belt) will come out and say that they favor a national ban on abortion. Instead, they’ll pay tribute to the “sanctity of life,” and other bullshit they don’t really mean, or can even define, and hope that by soft-pedaling it, the election goes the way it was gerrymandered to go. Then, they’ll be free to vote with the rest of the party on that abortion ban, cutting or privatizing Social Security, cutting Medicare and Medicaid, and rolling back regulations on pollution.

Or in other words, they’ll say whatever it takes to get elected and then go do whatever they wanted to do in the first place.

In theory, people in their district or state can vote them right back out, but that doesn’t happen very often. When you see polls about how low the regard is for the institution of Congress, it’s always, “Well, I like MY guy but the rest of them suck.” Then multiply that by the people in the other 49 states, and you have the reason why so many incumbents coast to victory every time.

But if the threat of a national abortion ban doesn’t mobilize people, women in particular, I don’t know what else it could possibly take. It doesn’t seem like the charge towards authoritarianism is moving the needle. Even the highly publicized and televised J6 hearings have barely made a dent. I don’t think they changed many minds. The court case deciding whether state legislatures can overturn elections isn’t getting much play either, and I find that terrifying.

You can see the drip-drip-drip of revelations from Republicans… national abortion ban, restricting contraception, hell, even repealing the amendment that gave women the right to vote… and that’s just what’s been said out loud (before getting shooshed by their more polished brethren, who know not to speak of such things in public until they’ve been elected. Or even then, only when absolutely necessary, like when casting their vote.) But just imagine the things that go unsaid. Women have to be getting nervous about their status in this country. If they’re not, they must not be paying attention, and are about to become very surprised when they wake up one day and realize they are second or third-class citizens, with fewer rights than cadavers.

For all the problems we have locally here in Maryland, they really do “voting” properly. Early this year, I signed up for mail-in voting, in perpetuity. And I don’t even have to mail the ballot back; there are drop boxes all over the county. We have one about a mile down the road from us.

Last week I received an email from the Board of Elections:

They also email me a confirmation when they’ve received my ballot. I like that transparency and it gives me confidence that things are running well somewhere. Although getting them counted on time is still an issue. Like I mentioned a couple posts ago, the GOP nominee for Governor filed suit to stop drop-off and mail-in ballots from being counted before Election Day. (Actually, the current law says they can’t start counting these votes until two days after Election Day. It’s a remnant from before the demand for mail-in voting exploded from COVID.)

His suit was thrown out, but he is appealing the decision. Of course. That’s how far they’re prepared to go, just to maintain an excuse to challenge results they don’t like. And I’m confident they’re not going to like this one. When the sitting Republican governor of a deep blue state refuses to endorse his party’s nominee, it just shows how far from center this guy is.

One idea that keeps getting tossed around is making Election Day a holiday, to facilitate voting. On the surface that might sound fine, but it would be an ineffectual gesture, especially if the goal is to provide easier voting opportunities to those who need them.

The problem is that those who need the time won’t be the ones off work. Look at our biggest holidays… Christmas and Thanksgiving. Are there still stores open? Some are. Gas stations are open. Convenience stores are open. Many restaurants are open. Now consider that this will in no way as big as Christmas and Thanksgiving; it will probably be more like Veterans’ Day or MLK Day. What is closed on those days? Government and banks. All stores, gas stations, and restaurants are open. I bet Bezos doesn’t shut down his Amazon facilities, not while people are at home (or work) buying stuff online. Those are the people who need the time to go vote.

And yes, employers are obligated to make sure their staff has time to vote. And that works out for office workers like me, (back when voted in person.) I always had time to go vote, which I’d do first thing in the morning, on my way to work. If I was late, it was cool. I had my “I Voted” sticker. But picture the person who has two or three jobs. Each employer says “You have the whole rest of the day to vote, just make sure you’re here on time,” regardless of the fact that the worker then has to go to the next job, or just home to take care of the family.

So yeah, it’s a nice idea, but it’s pointless. Unless the point is to make it easier for those who already have it the easiest.

A Confidence Man

Did you see this headline about Sen. Lindsey Graham from last week? I wonder if he really believes his own bullshit here…

Oh, he’s confident, is he? Seriously? Is that because millions of American women are so hair-on-fire mad at Republicans for pushing for women to have fewer rights than dead people? Is that because a referendum on the same subject got trounced in blood-red Kansas? Is that because other Republican colleagues of his are all, “Hey Lindsey, shoosh with that, will ya? Yer gonna get us killed, or worse, not re-elected.”

Unless he’s talking about his local church coffee klatch, I’m confident that a mass majority of Americans would absolutely NOT support a national ban on abortion. It makes me wonder where he’s getting his information. Is he looking at a poll of Federalist Society members? Otherwise, his statement reeks of desperately wishful thinking.

You have to wonder that when an idea is this unpopular, why would any politician go near it? That’s why prospective justices bob and weave and do anything but reveal their true intentions regarding how they would rule on abortion cases. Then after they’ve been appointed for life, they can get on with reducing American women to the level of “breeding livestock.” But they don’t lead with that, for Pete’s sake. It’s bad for business.

The Universal Kibosh

As I’ve often said, whenever conservatives want to squash an idea, they just drag out the issue of homeless veterans… not to provide homes, obviously, but to use them as a blockade against anything that costs money or benefits someone they deem undesirable. So here we are again:

I saw this posted on Facebook. I’m not sure if it’s a patch or a doormat, with the latter being applicable to the way Republicans figuratively step on veterans to prevent anything beneficial from happening to anyone else.

My usual reaction is that this isn’t a binary equation. There’s no reason the government can‘t do something for both veterans AND asylum seekers. We don't have to decide on one over the other.

Republicans had two years of unrestricted power. If they wanted to do something for veterans, they could have. But what did they do? They passed a massive tax cut for the richest among us and made it permanent. Then they tossed some tax cut scraps to the rest of us, and set it to expire after seven years. And that’s about it. They did diddley-squat for homeless veterans when they had the chance.

And hell, Republicans had to be shamed into supporting health care for veterans and 9/11 first responders last month. Their initial action was to shoot it down as payback for the Democrats having the gall to pass a bill Republicans didn’t like. Then Jon Stewart raised enough of a ruckus about it that they had to turn tail and reverse themselves.

This ties in with the Republican trope of using people’s lives as pieces on a board to play an inhuman game of chess. On one side, homeless veterans; on the other, asylum-seeking immigrants, locked into a perpetually stalemated game that no one ever wins. Except for the rich, who rigged the board in the first place, keeping us moving against each other while they pad their bottom lines.

I guarantee you this. If the Democrats ever proposed something to provide housing to every homeless veteran, (and they should!), Republicans would find a reason to block that too, probably while ranting against handouts and socialism. They’d accuse Democrats of political gamesmanship because they only recognize the games they’ve already fixed.

Here’s another angle on why providing homes for homeless vets would never fly: It would be unfair to the rest of the veterans who already bought their own homes. In fact, we may have already heard this argument a time or two, haven’t we?

Why Can’t We Just Go Straight to Jet Packs?

One of my conservative FB friends posted this on her timeline:

I just wonder where this even comes from. Is there a bloc of people raging against the A/C? I’ve never heard such a thing. I’m pretty sure it’s not coming from the mainstream.

But regardless, this is still another example of the Fossil Fuel industry sowing the seeds of misinformation to be spread by conservatives, to try to stamp out the momentum driving toward electric cars. They always seem to want to point out that it takes energy and possible earthly harm to create machines that reduce or eliminate emissions. And I’ll even concede that point, to an extent.

It takes energy to make both a gas-powered car and an electric one. See, both are on an even footing. But then take a look after the cars are built. One operates far more fuel efficient and the other continues to emit exhaust into the atmosphere and continues to require fuel that has to be pumped from the ground and highly refined, which also carries environmental harm.

Yes, electric cars require electricity, but that can be made with far less damage done to the atmosphere. There’s wind, solar, and even nuclear, that when done properly, are more environmentally friendly than drilling for oil and refining it into gasoline. But that’s the last thing the Fossil Fuel industry wants you to think about. They know they’re on the way out and they’re doing everything in their power to delay that from happening.

America needs to get off its collective ass and make progress with creating renewable energy sources. The tech is there, the conditions are there, we just need the collective will to make it happen.

Taking the News by Storm

I love it when hurricane season brings storms with the same name as people I know. I remember a while back when there was a famous storm with the same name as my ex-wife. I was totally on the lookout for clippings I could send her as the storm-ravaged her home state. But I never found anything compelling… most headlines referenced “Hurricane X” or “Tropical Storm X” rather than just “X Destroys Valuable Beachfront Property.” I was probably better off without it though. I doubt she would have accepted the clippings in the spirit I would have intended.

But this morning, I found a headline that I could use on someone else, so I tagged my cousin with it on FB.

That cracked my shit up as soon as I saw it this morning.

Ian appreciated it and wrote back about something similar his family had done regarding his father:

It’s even funnier because his dad is probably 150 lbs of bone and gristle. He could have had a fine career as a spy because he’d only have to turn sideways to he’d disappear from sight.

Lastly, just because this bluzdude has a birthday coming up this weekend:

MAGA Bingo

Hey there political junkies! Tired of listening to the same old excuses from the GOP whenever their Orange Idol steps on his own dick again?

Bored with the same old outlandish lies and blatant misdirections when one of TFG’s minions spills the tea on Republicans’ actual plans?

Why not make a game of it with MAGA BINGO!

When the next news cycle brings another atrocity, just cut out your game card and start playing along! Keep track of what the MAGAs say to alibi their heroes out of hot water and win valuable prizes!*

*Prizes = Sense of pride and well-being for not falling for their bullshit.

Yeah, That’s Exactly the Same

I saw this on my Yahoo news home page last week:

It’s from Fox “News,” of course. Otherwise, they might have realized that their guy spent millions worth of taxpayer money on golf trips, the funds for which were paid directly to his own properties. Maybe Fox should pipe down about a president going to vote.

And aren’t they against mail-in voting anyway? I guarantee that if he mailed in his ballot, they’d come up with some kind of twisted story involving fraudulent ballots. Given their own loyalists’ penchant for voting in multiple places or in precincts to which they don’t belong, they should pipe down about that too. In fact, they should just pipe down about everything… they’ll raise the country’s average IQ by at least several points.

The thing is, a president has to travel by expensive means. That holds true for presidents on both sides of the political divide. It’s a sign of a dishonest argument to castigate your opponent for something your guy does even more. But my point is that it’s rolled into the cost of doing business as president. There are protocols and security issues that are above and beyond the experience of the average citizen, so most comparisons are skewed.

What the president does is important. He should be setting a good example. Being seen in the process of voting is good for the country because it promotes an important civic duty. But then the LAST thing Republicans want is for the unwashed masses to actually vote, especially in person. That takes a whole area of fraud accusations off the table. That’s why restrict the number of voting machines in urban areas and pass laws forbidding the distribution of food or water to people in the lines they just legislated into existence. And speaking of, look at this local issue:

This is from this morning’s newspaper. Dan Cox is a Trumpian, “Big Lie” supporting wingnut who won the Republican nomination for governor, without the backing of the current Republican governor, who thinks he’s a wackadoo. He did enjoy the support of the Democrats though, who spent money on ad buys backing him, because they couldn’t wait to run against this guy.

Remember how the Republicans and the conservative media outlets spent weeks decrying how long it took to count mail-in votes and because of that time delay, insisted it was proof of fraud? I don’t think they want to give up that particular rallying cry, otherwise, authorizing the advance or same-day counting of mail-in votes is a no-brainer. What possible benefit is there to holding off counting the votes? I can’t think of a single up-side, especially when everyone wants results and decisions immediately, Republicans included. But, even more, they want their excuse to protest any election they don’t win. This guy is just trying to keep his alibis in play.

Pawns to Queen Four

I was appalled at the crass gamesmanship employed by Florida Man Ron DeSantis, who borrowed some asylum applicants from Texas and flew them to Martha’s Vineyard on the taxpayers’ dime. ($12 million worth of dimes.)

I haven’t seen such a denial of status as a human being since the Knights jumped the Queen in History of the World Pt 1.

Mel Brooks was joking, but DeSantis is not.

The MAGA adherents he’s trying to inherit from TFG love this kind of thing… it’s red meat for them. Immigrants are sub-human to them anyway so this is nothing. They’re probably patting themselves on the back for giving these people their first plane ride.

What they didn’t get right is the thought of any Lib-owning.

Nothing like this remotely happened. They thought the hoity-toities of the Vineyard would get huffy about it, and they might have if there were even there. But this is “off-season.” Most of the hoities have left, leaving only the common toities to deal with the influx. And that, they did. They got them set up with beds and meals and are working out what to do long-term. DeSantis apparently couldn’t be bothered to even check if the people he was trying to prank were home.

What DeSantis did, with the help of Governor Abbott from Texas, is basically kidnapping. They got them onboard this plane with promises of jobs and quarters, without even bothering to let anyone know they were coming. It was like they were dumping an unwanted dog on somebody’s farm. Or like some big prank, only instead of a stack of pizzas showing up, it was thirty poor, scared, immigrants trying to flee terrorists and criminals. Sounds like they got out of Texas just in time.

The other thing that gets me is that this isn’t even a Florida concern. If he wants to round up some immigrants, let him burrow into his state’s Cuban communities. What the hell did he do, ring up Abbott and ask if he could borrow a cup of Venezuelans? But he just wanted in on some of the good MAGA PR that Abbott was getting. This was nothing but a photo op. And you can tell that for sure because Fox “News” knew they were showing up and sent a camera crew. How is it that they knew but no one from the state or town knew? It’s because the most important thing was that Fox “News” got a story and some footage.

Both “men” disgust me, and it disgusts me even more that there are people who cheer them on.

Getting Down to Brass Tax

There are now three guaranteed certainties in this life, Death, Taxes, and Republicans trying to get out of paying taxes. I saw this a couple weeks ago and it got me thinking: 

First, I don’t know who was “crying” about Elon Musk buying Twitter instead of “solving” world hunger. Yeah, it would have been nice for a guy like Musk to spend some of his excessive dough on projects that would better our surroundings. And he likes to pose as quite the philanthropist, but I think he prefers his vanity projects.

And since when can $80 billion “solve” world hunger? There are far too many factors and variables to make it so that no one is ever hungry again. $80 bil wouldn’t make a dent. It may help a select group of people for a finite amount of time, but that’s not a solution. A serious solution would look too much like Socialism and that’s the last thing people who like this meme would want. Or, it might look like this idea from the 80s:

“It occurred to me that there wouldn’t BE world hunger if you people would live where the FOOD IS!”

But I was really more interested in the IRS bit. This Democrat is thrilled that the IRS is getting rejuvenated. The last administration was keen to let the whole organization whither on the vine and die so that the richest among us could still use all the tax lawyers at their disposal to ensure that the national tax burden rested on the rest of us, and not them.

I don’t think the IRS is interested in chasing down us commoners for audits. Where’s the payoff in that? (Other than enjoying the sadism.)

If I’m a guy working for the IRS and I want to produce results, where do I look? I look where the money is, with the rich, and not with the working stiffs. Chasing down the average citizen is a waste of time and resources. I’d want to be able to say to my boss at review time, “I recovered X-dollars’ worth of unpaid taxes,” where “X” is the largest number possible.

Republicans know this, probably because their rich donors pound it into their heads, so they want the IRS to be as under-manned, under-funded, and under-equipped as possible. So when the new funding bill wanted to bolster the T-men, they figured they need to get the commoners good and scared about getting audited by gun-packing federal agents. It’s the tax equivalent of the “death squads” they trotted out to make everyone afraid of Obamacare, and just as misleading.

That’s the Fact, Jack

I saw this a while back and it’s just too ridiculous for words:

You have to admire the chutzpah it takes to attack fact-checkers by citing a book of myths and fairy tales.

The person who posted this on his FB account has posted several anti-fact checking memes in the past, no doubt harvested from the many conservative social media outlets he reads.

And what I always want to say, at top volume, is “Maybe if your side didn’t produce so much pure bullshit, the need for fact-checking wouldn’t be so severe!”

I’m sure it does get frustrating to have everything your team tells you to believe turn out to be a nothing-burger. But the solution isn’t to kill the fact-checkers, it’s to cut the crap. Come up with a message that holds up to scrutiny.

But that’s the problem. The people creating bullshit memes know they’re untrue, but the truth wouldn’t be good for business. If TFG taught us anything it’s that you can get ahead but by flooding the market with so much junk, no one can tell one outrage from another. And by the time we get a handle on one thing, ten more have taken their place. It’s the “Hydra” theory of politics.

Game On

I know it doesn’t matter to many but I was thrilled, yesterday, to get back into pro football. Got my fantasy team stocked, got my picks made, got my game jersey mojo spreadsheet open, and I’m ready for some football.

But I also realized that the world of sports can also produce bullshit memes, which seem impressive at first glance, but don’t really hold up under further review. Like this one:

Everyone knows Tom Brady and usually has an opinion. Greatest of All Time? The Anti-Christ? Or maybe something in between. Personally, I’ll be happy when he retires for good because he pretty much owns my favorite team. The sooner he’s gone, the better for me. But I won’t argue that his legacy isn’t impressive. Impressive enough that it doesn’t need a meme like this.

What’s wrong with it? Well, it’s cherry-picked to make his legacy look larger than it is.

Look at the list of other quarterbacks. This meme creator specifically chose big names who didn’t win many (or any) Super Bowls. Where’s Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw, Bart Starr, or even Ben Roethlisberger and Eli Manning. Bradshaw and Montana by themselves would top Brady. (Each won four.)

Hell, if you really want to pad the list, why not add every quarterback in NFL history who lost a Super Bowl? You’d have to keep paging down just to see them all.

I say Brady’s Super Bowl accomplishments stand alone as some of the greatest ever. They don’t need to be fluffed up by weak comparisons.

Odd Bits - Editia Latina

Republicans are still bellyaching over the president daring to help the lives of ordinary citizens by easing their debt load. As usual, misinformation, misdirection, and outright lies take center stage.

Misinformation: this meme.

One of the main points of the debt relief order is that just getting a job does not solve the problem of paying off the debt. Between the high interest and the structuring of the payment process (to pay interest before principle), it takes a truly high-paying job to make a dent, let alone pay it all off. Lots of people struggling with student debt have jobs. But they also have life expenses like housing, groceries, medical issues, and utilities, all of which are at all-time highs. Unlike non-executive wages.

The simplistic notion of “Just get a job” doesn’t do justice to the situation. In fact, it pretends that’s the solution when it clearly is not. “Just get a job as a CEO or Hedge Fund Manager” would be much more accurate, but sadly, there are not tens of thousands of such job openings.

I saw a commercial last week that was intended to mock the notion of student debt relief. In it, they had people portraying various manual laborers sarcastically talking about how they don’t mind paying for other people to go to college. This brings us to:

Misdirection: Talking about how all these “college graduates” get a free education on the backs of the rest of them.

One of the glaring problems with the whole situation is that student debt is hardly limited to people that got their degrees. When I went to school, I was told that only about a quarter of the freshman class would ever graduate. Assuming those stats are accurate, or close to accurate, that leaves a buttload of people who took out the loans but never earned that degree that was supposed to be key in paying off the loan.

Sure, some partied their way out of school, and others couldn’t hack it academically, but there are also many who had to drop out for other reasons, like having to go to work to support a family, medical issues, or getting pregnant and starting a family. Or any of a myriad of reasons that don’t involve a lack of effort or attention. So right out of the gate, they have to find entry-level (and usually low-paying) jobs and still service a high-interest loan.

Also, consider that $10,000 doesn’t necessarily pay off a student loan. While a reduced payment is welcome, the payment structure is still the same and the lendee still has to make payments aggressively if they are to ever pay down the balance.

Republicans don’t want you to think about those sides of the story, they’d rather you concentrate on getting angry over supporting basket-weavers, navel-gazers, and partiers.

The commercial actors also mention paying the loans for “rich guys,” which brings us to:

Outright Lies: The advertiser knows very well that there is no debt relief in this order for anyone making more than $125,000 a year, which hardly qualifies as “rich,” so this is an outright lie. That’s what bothers me so much; that these guys are broadcasting a 100% verifiable lie, knowing a segment of the population will eat it up. They do this just to make more tax money available for being grifted by the banking industry. Keeping a boot on the necks of the working poor is just a fringe benefit.

Free Speech

You may have heard that President Biden gave a speech last week. Not many heard it first-hand, as none of the major networks covered it live, but the reverberations were massive. Immediately there was a great crying-out from the Radical Right, for having just been called out as fascists. Gee, all they did was try to overthrow the government, there was no need for name calling!”

I saw a conservative Facebook friend writing about this as the most incendiary and divisive speech ever. I was like, “Have you ever HEARD TFG speak before? Perhaps you’ve heard the crowd mooing back about “Brandon?” Christ, the cognitive dissonance is off the charts. Like most bullies, these people love to dish it out but they cry like babies when it’s thrown back. Perhaps it’s because it’s got that extra sting of truth.

I say it’s about time the Dems take the gloves off and go toe to toe. I’d rather be aggressive and win (by telling the truth) than turn the “other cheek” and get pasted.

Free Press

I came across a little editing snafu within the Baltimore Sun this weekend. It seems the Chess column was designed for a niche audience: Popes.

The text is in Latin. Not “Latin-American,” but Latin Latin. Like, Ancient Rome Latin. Medical School Latin. Ancient English Teacher Latin.

And not only that, what’s up with the chessboard moves on the right? They look like redacted nuclear codes sent by TFG. I think they’re playing it a little fast and loose in the page design room.

Local Poop

We’ve had a bit of stress over the last week… our dog came down with a case of the runs. We’re so fortunate I work from home because on Monday, the boy came to me every 60-90 minutes to be let out for a squirt. If we were both away from home for work, well I don’t even want to think about what kind of fresh hell we’d return to at the end of the day.

Sweetpea scheduled a vet appointment for Saturday so until then, we tried to fix things through diet. No more kibble and scraps, our boy dined on chicken breast, rice, broth, and a probiotic at every meal.

Our new preoccupation became trying to get glimpses of what the dog was producing and how to describe it, which wasn’t always easy or successful when he had to go out after dark. And we had to make extra sure we wore shoes out in the yard.

His frequency of going tapered off as the week went past until Friday when he never attempted a poop at all, so we were beginning to worry about the opposite condition taking hold. Like what if he now had a big chunk of rice holding up the works? We wanted to cancel the vet appointment, (“Put him on bland food for the week. That’ll be $300,”) but we didn’t want to be foolish about it.

Then when I got up Saturday morning, Sweetpea was out grocery shopping, but I found this note:

* "At the Loin” refers to the local “Food Lion,” which we always refer to as the “Food Loin” or just “The Loin.”

But yes, that was the top story, that we had finally achieved “poop.” Huzzah!

When she got back and gave me the rundown, she said she’d “Never been so glad to see a piece of shit in her life.”

What really cracked me up is the “we” part of the note, because it read to me like she was crouching down right alongside him. I’m sure the neighbors with Ring cameras would have been shocked. Or amused.

 Director’s DVD Commentary: The post title “Editio Latina” translates to “The Latin Edition.”

  

Term Limits and Loan Forgiveness

 The prospect of instituting term limits gets bandied about every so often and it’s usually a pointless endeavor because, at the federal level, it’s highly unlikely to change. No politician is going to vote to shorten his period of power and influence, not nearly enough of them to make it happen. But it’s a different story on the local level.

Last week, the Baltimore Sun ran a story about an effort to establish term limits in the City of Baltimore, via voter referendum, which would include Mayor, City Council, Comptroller, and such. Now, I can usually see the pros and cons of term limits… you sacrifice institutional knowledge for new ideas. It can be good to get some new people involved but they spend their first weeks or months not knowing how things really work.

But one thing jumped out at me immediately that convinced me to not be in favor of term limits and that’s because Sinclair Broadcasting wants them.

As you can see, the president of Sinclair Broadcasting financed the effort to collect signatures for the referendum to put the matter on this fall’s ballot. If Sinclair wants it, it’s going to be bad for the community. Sinclair is basically Fox “News” with a larger reach. They own 185 TV stations in 86 markets, including the Fox and The CW affiliates (and one more) plus two stations in DC. Their local TV news broadcasts are always touting their investigations into Baltimore City, be it the schools, crime, or the economy, and it’s always about scaring you to death. They hype their ambush interviews all day long during commercial breaks. They also require their affiliates to run prerecorded station editorials that would sound right at home on Fox and Friends.

If the mayor of Baltimore found a way to cure cancer, their top story would be about city “death panels” deciding whether you get treatment or not.

I’m sure Sinclair would love to have a crack at altering the 100% Democratic makeup of city government, maybe promote a DINO or two that will carry water for them, like their own pet Joe Manchin. Or maybe they just want some of their people to be able to get in, loot what they can, then make room for the next hog at the trough. They may also want to get someone in there who will promote other “connected” businesses for city contracts.

I don’t know why they’re worried about the Mayor though. We haven’t had a mayor serve out 2 full terms since I can remember. They either move up and on like Martin O’Malley, who became a 2-term Governor, get caught with their hands in the cookie jar like Sheila Dixon or Catherine Pugh, or abandon re-election hopes because they said something irreversibly stupid during their first term, like Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. Maybe our current Mayor, Brandon Scott, is a boy scout who they’re afraid will be here for at least another term. If he actually turns things around in the city, that would be their worst-case scenario.

But with five stations in the market, Sinclair will wield great influence over what we see on local TV, especially as it gets closer to November. If it works here, Sinclair may try the same plot in other markets they service, like New York, where they operate eight stations across the upstate region.

I’m far less concerned about term limits than I am about the consolidation of the broadcast industry. Since deregulation, we’re seeing more and more stations owned by fewer corporations, giving a select few people an outsized voice on public matters. Sinclair is showing why less diverse media ownership is a bad idea.

Give Us a Break

The bigger news of the week was that President Biden issued $10k in student debt relief to people making less than $125k, with 80% of that going to those making less than $75k. This provoked the predictable gnashing of teeth from the Right, who don’t like anything going to someone they don’t like. The deliberate misleading of the public began immediately, with memes about why common workin’ Joes should have to pay for schooling for a bunch of rich lawyers, which willfully misses the point about how the people making serious bank aren’t eligible. And when they weren’t misleading about qualifications, they were misdirecting on why people go to college, by presuming they’d be paying for smelly hippies to take interpretive dance and basket weaving.

If this stuff is coming from the rank and file, it’s clear they don’t really know what happens in college. And if it’s from the slick right-wing propaganda machine, they know that the rank and file will eat it up and pass it on regardless.

One of the most prevalent complaints is the fallacy that they are somehow personally stuck with the bill… as if they’re going to be required to start sending in $100 checks every month. Again, that’s the slickness of the messaging operation on the Right. They know this stuff will hit home, and their target audience will never realize that every citizen in this country pays for shit they’d rather not… except the 1% who don’t pay for anything (and want to keep it that way.)

The real fun began when the various MAGA Congress people started tweeting about it and the Whitehouse smacked them down by pointing out how much they had forgiven in PPP loans.

It was nice to see the Dems on offense for a change. And all they had to do is highlight the raging double standard put forth by these “public servants.” Loan forgiveness is a sin to them unless it’s their own loan. And hell, it’s not even a sin, it’s a biblical requirement!

Or is the bible another thing that only applies to others? (Obviously.)

The other main nit to pick was from people who either paid their way through school or paid off their own loans, the logic being that it’s not fair to them for someone else to have their loan forgiven after they’ve already paid. To these delicate flowers, I say, “tough shit.” Life isn’t fair, the government isn’t fair, and these predatory, damn-near-impossible-to-pay-off-without-being-filthy-rich student loans aren’t fair.

I paid my own way through college without needing a loan, so I’m in that group. But I realize that back then, you could pay for college with a part-time job. Those days are long gone and if people want to better themselves through education, student loans are a way to go. Up until very recently, it’s what the culture said was the right thing to do; go to school, go to college, and get an education. Of course, now getting educated is tantamount to getting groomed to be a pedophile communist to the MAGA brigade. They don’t trust no fancy book-learnin’, no sirree. And they certainly don’t want to feel like they’re paying for it. And that’s what counts today, isn’t it? Feelings. How we feel about things, regardless of the facts at hand.

I know first-hand how oppressive it is to have these loans hanging over one’s head, especially when a college education doesn’t translate to high-paying jobs. I know college graduates who struggle to keep a roof over their heads and food in the fridge. The way the loans are set up, they have no chance of paying them off, ever. No matter how many payments get made, it makes very little difference in the principle owed. Removing a chunk (or all) of that debt is like getting the boot lifted off your neck, even just a little. If more jobs paid a living wage, the boot would come off a little more. But in the meantime, people living in the margins might have some more money to throw around the economy, so everyone eats better.

I think this is exactly what the country needs right now.

So yeah, I’m not getting any of this new benefit, but I’m OK with those that do. I'm on the side that thinks it didn't go far enough, but I'll take it as a win for now. It will help the community and the economy. The federal budget is a black hole of spending anyway, at least this is something they’re paying for that helps Americans. At least the ones who know the value of education.

GOP Playbook: Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

 I frequently mention that the first tenet of Republicanism is that whatever a Democrat does is wrong, just by having been done by a Democrat. I saw that on display again last week with this tweet from Nikki Haley (featuring an on-point counter by Rep Swalwell):

I’m not sure where this story even comes from so I’m certainly not taking it at face value. I mean, how do they even know these 66 were terrorists? Do they carry Terrorist ID Cards now? Did they find bombs in their backpacks? (Presumably looking like bowling balls with wicks stuck in them.) Or do they just have Arabic names? To Republicans, that’s all it takes.

So if these people were terrorists and were indeed stopped at the border, what’s the freakin’ problem? The system worked. Is Biden at fault because someone, somewhere dared to try to cross the border?

Well, yes. Just go back to Rule One, “Whatever a Democrat Does is Wrong.” It’s the Fox “News” Way.

They don’t care that the underlying logic is hopelessly damaged. How much sense would this make:

“666 people were stopped for speeding on federal interstates this weekend. Biden has one job: To protect America, and he’s failing. If Biden doesn’t take his job seriously, it’s up to local police to write tickets.”

Can Biden really get in the heads of millions of drivers and make them slow down? Nope, no more than he can make thousands of South and Central Americans somehow stop their plans to cross the border before they get there. All he can do is have a system in place to stop people trying to cross illegally. It would also help if there were a coherent system to guide legal immigration, but as far as I know, it’s still a major CF.

I think Republicans are still nostalgic for those good ole’ Trump days where the object was to make this country so shitty that no one wanted to come because they knew they would be detained by people whose goal it was to make the experience as traumatic as possible.

A Fox Guarding the Hens’ Bank Account

I’ve been munching the popcorn over this story, that the National Republican Senatorial Committee is running out of money.

They raised $173 million, spent $20m on ads, and have $27m left. How the hell does THAT happen, without a massive grift going on?

Rick Scott, on his way to audition for the Blue Man Group.

Anything that gets Republicans fighting Republicans is all right with me. It’s one thing to swindle the taxpayers, but swindling each other? That’s when the shit hits the fan. So let them turn on each other. I’m just waiting for the inevitable moment when they come up with a way to blame the Democrats. But this one’s going to need some serious creativity. I’d guess it’ll be something like “Antifa hackers funded by George Soros paid off BLM supporters to break into Rick Scott’s house and steal the money from under his mattress. The whole plan was explained in Hillary’s emails stored on Hunter Biden’s laptop!”

Gas Pains

This is the faux story that never seems to die, probably because the fossil fuel industry, which owns the Republican Party lock, stock, and barrel, won’t let it. I just lifted a new version from Facebook… they never seem to tire of trying to blame the president for the price of gas.

“IT WAS $2 LOWER BECAUSE THE COUNTRY WAS LOCKED DOWN DUE TO THE MISHANDLING OF COVID! No demand equals low prices, that’s Econ 101. It is willfully dishonest to compare the current prices, which have been affected by a giant shooting and bombing war in Europe and worldwide inflation to a price that cratered due to demand dropping off the table, and then blame the president for it. The prices are what they are because the oil companies want it that way. Do you see any of them taking big losses this year? The MAGAs “fall for it” every time. And I guarantee you that if TFG was still president and we had these same conditions, they’d still find a way to blame the Democrats.

“The pipelines we approved aren’t pumping enough oil because Antifa jammed them up with red tape, electric car batteries, and Hillary’s emails.”