Most of us have heard the tale of the frog in boiling water. If you try to put a frog in boiling water, it will hop out, but if you place it in the water and heat it slowly, it will sit and cook to death. The Republican party has...
Liberals
Yet another mass shooting happened overnight near my sister’s home in Virginia. After the body counts, the gnashing of teeth, and the solemn looks of talking heads interviewing the survivors and grieving family members, the right-wingers will step in and victim blame. The Alex Jones(s), Marjorie Taylor Greene(s), and Lauren...
In last night’s midterm results, deep red states remained blood red, and gerrymandered Democratic districts in Florida and New York turned purple or outright red, like Miami-Dade County in Florida. Now that the red wave has been dashed against the shore, I must write another of the millions of rehashes...
Anyone who has read my column, stories, blogs, and meanderings is well aware that I am an avowed liberal. I am so anti-gun in the hands of civilians—banning assault rifles would be the beginning for me. Despite the recent assassination of their former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, I am a...
With roughly a third of Americans who identify themselves as Republicans, the party bombards us with the term American People at every utterance. With almost 60% of the country fully vaccinated, Republicans say the American People have doubts. Yesterday, Mitch McConnell, in response to questions about the insurrection, said the...
If you have seen the movie Birds of Prey (And the Fabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), you know the underlying theme was her discovering her power amidst a world of insanity, crime, and social degradation; hence her emancipation. That brings me to the current impasse in the Senate, with...
Yes, everyone has the right to swing their fist; but no one has the right to swing their fist at my nose. The previous statement is a reworking of the old saw—your rights end at the tip of my nose, but vaccinated Americans need to reiterate their rights to life...
Paraphrasing Pvt. Sam Watkins, 1st Tennessee, Co. H. ‘America has no north, no south, no east, no west,’ those words could apply to the pandemic. Watkins was lamenting brother against brother killing each other in the American Civil War. All of America is watching the unvaccinated kill each other and...
I tried sitting through FOX News’ commentary/critique yesterday, following Joe Biden’s report on the status of the nation, and in particular the American troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. After a few minutes, and when one of the conservative panelists had the temerity and amnesia to call Joe Biden a liar, I...
From that moment in November of 1969, when former President Richard Nixon asked for a “silent majority” to support his ‘Vietnamization’ effort, utilizing the peace with honor strategy; America’s shotgun wedding to the GOP marriage of silent loyalty and moral obedience was consummated. Between the Nixon and Reagan administrations, Republicans...
Republicans swing the word freedom over the heads of their voters like the Sword of Damocles. It has become a meaningless mantra, cutting away real freedoms like affordable housing, healthcare, pay equity, and a clean environment. Freedom for a majority of Republicans has translated into the freedom to kill their...
Women and people of color had a unique experience that ended yesterday in Tokyo, Japan. The controversial Summer Olympics closed with America at the top of the medal leader board despite some members of the team having barbs and sticks hurled at them from the right-wing. Lots of conservatives and...
Most of us saw or heard the campaign ads for the gubernatorial race for Florida. Ron DeSantis, dressing his infant daughter in MAGA motif pajamas, helping her with border wall building blocks, and reading her a faux bedtime story about the fanciful mind of Donald Trump. Unfortunately, the internal xenophobic...
The misplaced displays of so-called love for the U.S. by Republicans will eventually strangle her to death. We heard evidence of that in the opening testimony from one of four officers present at the Capitol insurrection on January 6. Faced with a frothing mob of white supremacists, fascists, and riotous...
Now that Texas, Georgia, and Florida Republicans have left America by subverting the right of every American to vote, let us look at the rest of the southern Republicans, 66% of which favor secession. According to several polls, the phantom confederacy overwhelmingly favors leaving the Union. To be fair, five...
There is a lot of media hand-wringing over a little mind with tiny thoughts who has been elevated into a big political voice by the liberal press. Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson, a distant heir to the Swanson frozen-food fortune, is as slimy and indigestible as a pile of cream...
The predictability of the Republican party is as thinly veiled as the Trump presidency, made of tissue paper, and lies. The tissue, because the former President was full of it and flush with lies. At the height of Hillary Clinton’s popularity, flip-flopping Kevin McCarthy, the now House minority leader, said...
This isn’t exactly earth-shattering news. Earth-shattering news would be Donald Trump getting a good night’s sleep for the first time in 10 years, realizing he’s been acting like a drunk pelican with a Hot Pocket stuck in his throat for most of this century, conceding the election, apologizing profusely to Joe...
If you take a moment and listen to the so-called moderate wing of the Republican party, they are as extreme as the rest. This weekend Utah Senator Mitt Romney was roundly booed by members of his party at the Utah GOP convention. The crime that elicited the verbal censure from...
Previous guy always expects the loyalty of mob silence Omertà, even when he throws everyone under the bus, it’s part of his personality disorder. The real goal for his relative silence might be the return to social media when Facebook reconsiders their suspension. He has a Parler account but doesn’t use...
Fail: REALITY BITES: That didn’t take long. Reality TV star and political neophyte Caitlyn Jenner was about 24 hours into the rollout of her California gubernatorial campaign this weekend when she posted her first major campaign gaffe on social media. Jenner, expressing outrage about a San Francisco Chronicle story involving SF DA Chesa...
Fifteen years ago, black suspect, Neal Mack gasped for breath, using the all too familiar words “I can’t breathe.” Mr. Mack was handcuffed and having his life drained from his body by a chokehold applied by officer Greg Kwiatkowski before being pulled away. Mr. Mack’s life was saved by black...
Previous Guy has been desperate for a regular social media channel to wreak his nonsense. Likely he’ll violate the rules again because we’ve seen his poor impulse control and then there’s the Big Lie. Tech experts are skeptical about plans for a Trump social media platform, if only because justice...
Fox News and Greg Gutfeld apparently believes he’s funny enough to go up against late night comedy programming. Because of the previous guy, the world might be safe for RW late night humor when ‘Pretentious Virtue Signaling’ can be an intelligible punch line. As if Dennis Miller on RT makes us feel better...
This is a bad place in history. Apparently half of the GQP thinks the 1/6 insurrection was left-wing activists trying to make Trump “look bad”, accordingly, MSM thinks Biden has “tamed” the left. The administration’s warm relationship with the left is one of the most surprising aspects of the Biden presidency, particularly...
No. No. We don’t need infrastructure bills in America . We are fine according to republicans. Well, that state of mind is being changed I bet as I type. (or maybe not according to Republican thinking) Manatee County Florida is under mandatory evacuations and every homeowner can expect higher homeowner...
Is US progressive politics, especially in cultural issues, incapable of attracting majority support. Not so much in terms of the usual self-fulfilling marginalization, but there are absolute limits to the mutability of moderate ideologies in order to build working majorities. In these conditions, it seems almost certain that tit-for-tat will...
I check off a day every morning on my calendar because I am counting down to the day of my second Covid-19 vaccination. I, like a lot of other Americans, especially black Americans, have expressed skepticism over the speed, effectiveness, and side effects of the vaccines. I wrote about a...
Like Martin Luther objecting to Pope Leo X selling indulgences to raise money for a variety of excesses, the environmental costs of carbon markets far exceed the benefits. Austerity would have denied us Renaissance art which is less at risk in an age of non-fungible tokens. Today the consequences for the planet...
Ying Ma is a conservative Chinese American who’s been appearing on Fox lately to hype her theory that liberals only became interested in anti-Asian violence when they could use it to smear Donald Trump—who, frankly, doesn’t really need anyone to smear him as it’s already impossible to suss out where...
I grew up Catholic. Went to Catholic grade school and high school, got confirmed, went to confession (at least twice!), received communion, ate ham and potato salad in basements—the whole nine yards. Speaking of yards, I can’t recall ever being hit with a yardstick, but I did get punched in the...
Steve Bannon’s path to a pardon included appeals to a range of RWNJ groups including some dangerous proto-fascist cults. “The Fourth Turning” by Strauss & Howe returns to our attention, because of Bannon. But are we shifting to a more liberal era or are we on the brink of a greater series of disasters....
Consistency really isn’t their thing, is it? In the last election cycle, Tom Norton, a once and future candidate for Congress, challenged “RINO” Peter Meijer in the GOP primary for Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District. He lost. By a lot. Meijer captured 50.2% of the vote while Norton came in a distant...
State level GOP parties are doing all kinds of stupidity, censuring its US senators, and following on the usual RW craziness, resorting to the pre-GQP tropes, as befits a state that elected Tommy “not Mr. Potato-Head” Tuberville. This is another extension of the old CT of global new-world order, something,...
Democrats look for solutions, and Republicans look for blame. I am not sure where I heard that phrase and I probably rejected it as just political rhetoric. Recent events have given me reasons to examine and not dismiss the statement. Democrats are not perfect as demonstrated by the wavering support...
There are now far too many Trump proxies to ignore, but ignore them we must, simply because liberals seem too frightened, says Anat Shenker-Osorio. “Because in a battle of fear against fear, the right will always win.” Majorie Taylor Green is no Daughter of Kobani, and more like a Turkish taffy for...
Wading into Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter account is like walking into a virology lab in a Speedo to draw blood from the Ebola monkeys. If it’s my job, I’ll do it; but I’m going to need a Silkwood shower and a booster shot of something (and I’m not ruling out...
These past Dispatches were obviously a Trump-era commentary. Maybe I need to to come up with a new name. But since the Biden presidency is only weeks old, I thought I would continue this for a bit. So, in the spirit of a new beautiful day, below are some interesting rea...
This morning in his latest batch of rescinded Executive Orders issued by his predecessor, President Joe Biden reinstated the rights of transgender men and women to serve in the armed services. Biden was quoted as saying, “Allowing all qualified Americans to serve their country in uniform is better for the...
From The New York Times: x YouTube Video The first television advertisements of the 2022 campaign cycle are on the air in Wisconsin. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin on Wednesday morning began a week’s worth of television and digital ads pounding Senator Ron Johnson for his role in fomenting doubts...
Almost immediately after the siege on the Capitol ended, people started both-sidesing the event. You know, liberals didn’t care about the violence and property destruction that arose in the wake of the racial justice protests over the summer (erm, false), so why do we care about this? In other words, the...
I’ve seen clips of Trumpies insisting they’ll be at Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2021. They’ve already booked their rooms and everything! Come on! Of course he can still win! It’s predestined! So here’s MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who looks like the Muppet version of Alex Karras and is also convinced oleander...
A piece in The Bulwark gives us another political neologism, as if we had enough to deal with in designated “more conservative”, “more moderate”, “less liberal”, and even anti-progressive Democrats. At their margins they may be responsible for the Democratic losses in Congress even as Trump has been defeated. “Can’t we all just get...
As with most faculty politics, there is a subtext to the story of a professor fired for specious reasons. Garrett Felber was fired for failing to “communicate face-to-face” with his department chair at University of MIssissippi, even as he was outspoken about a variety of university actions after the selection of...
I have to admit, I always forget about my War on Christmas obligations — which include buying the “Fuck Christmas!” cookies and hanging mistletoe over the latest amalgam of carbon atoms and flop sweat passing itself off as Rudy Giuliani — until I’m reminded about the importance of the season by...
The Kraken Caucus makes itself known. GOP sedition messaging harkens back to the 19th Century, except Trump's lost cause won't rise again. This time it’s not a Brooks Brothers Riot but pseudo-secessionist displays. “Trump can't handle the concept of the label 'loser'” as he pimps a 'seditious abuse of justice', and Jake Tapper...