In what is likely the best admonition of the Right, Jake Tapper presented a clinic on their intransigence and outright racism. Jake Tapper nails them See full episodes here. One needed to do a double-take after listening to Jake Tapper‘s soliloquy that put the entire Right-Wing implosion into context. Whether on...
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...
A noted piece of work, State Senator Hensley, a Sons of Confederate Veterans member, decided there were so many new ways to get a KKK founder’s statue to stick around in the usual battles of Tennessee culture. This particular 1978 bust is a Jim Crow monument with marginal historical value other than honoring...
Darn those class commitments, aligning us to our political choices in a democracy, made worse by all those folks who knew they were in that Gilded Age. “If the future of the Democratic Party is in the rich suburbs, the future of American politics is another long Gilded Age.” Matt...
Donald Trump is ending his presidency the way he began it—as a squishy wad of id that just can’t get over how unfairly it’s been treated. Because he has the miasmic ego of a tyrant and the self-awareness of a prechewed legume, Trump is eschewing quiet reflection and self-recrimination in...
“A 22-year-old self-proclaimed member of the “Boogaloo Bois” movement pleaded guilty on Wednesday to trying to sell weapon parts to Hamas after traveling to Minneapolis amid this summer’s George Floyd protests.” What’s curious is that for these Boogaloo Bois, while domestic terrorism remained the goal, the path had that Iran-Contra...
The post-presidential Trumpian revisionist history continues because the grift continues, portending an attempt to attach itself to other pseudo-grievances that have persisted because of cultural and regional divisions. Trump will fundraise off a 2024 reelection myth the instant he concedes(sic), with the goal of establishing some permanent media presence. Check-out this...
The summary of today's Trump presser: Trump defended Kyle Rittenhouse x Trump actually offers a defense of Kyle Rittenhouse, his right-wing supporter who killed two protesters. “I guess he was in very big trouble, he probably would've been killed.” pic.twitter.com/XFBtDOHP8y— Pod Save America (@PodSaveAmerica) August 31, 2020 x To be...
The White House version of the Sturgis Smash Mouth concert is ready for its hydroxychloroquine treatments as one big Hatch Act violation. And for the umpteenth time he lies about Veterans Choice, even as he was called on it directly in a presser several weeks ago. JASS, Just Another Stump Speech....
This week I attended (remotely) the Rethinking Economics Festival and encountered challenging pluralist discourses like a platform economy (noting that most of such work is populated by women), decolonizing the Eurocentric position in disciplines, or “fully-automated luxury communism”. I thought I’d share some resource items and make a few observations....
Tom Cotton, the only member of Congress named after his own brain, appeared on Fox & Friends this morning, and he was fixing to put both feet, both hands, and perhaps Brian Kilmeade’s head in his mouth after bellowing more gormless gibberish to an ungrateful world. You see, Donald Trump is...
Trump went to another COVID “hotspot” and gave an infrastructure speech because it's that week again. CNN and MSNBC had the good taste not to broadcast it. Trump wore no mask, in violation of Atlanta policy. Strange how only GOP governors void local mask mandates, not coincidentally they have higher...
Just when you think we’re not going to go all degenerate art versus official art, Trump goes more Roman with triumphal graven images. Perhaps there’s a merchandising tie-in with replicas. If anything, Trump wants effigies out there, forgetting that there were the blimp babies. What better way to display Trump carnage than...
Trump wants Confederate spectacles, why else try to attack NASCAR because of its flag ban. The ultimate Confederate spectacle is the resilience of the lost cause narrative perhaps reinforced by the Jim Crow erection of monuments. It was amusing that the press tried to goad the WH Press Secretary into an admission...
It is more of a comment on Trump’s “cancel culture” that the Aurora, Colorado police would bust up a crowd of violinists peacefully demonstrating a bias death. x Police showed up in riot gear to a peaceful violin vigil for Elijah McClain. “Aurora police basically recreated the dynamic of McClain's death,†says...
The problem of Trumpian logic and math is that epidemiology has too many syllables. A “99% US survival rate” for Trump is the rhetorical acceptability of a million deaths. The weeks have become even more absurd as the election approaches. That 99% meme accompanies attempts on Twitter to convince people that masks...
After yesterday’s screed on the leftist boogeymen, tonight should lean toward jingoism with the Trumpian cultural economy of bread and circuses. IMPOTUS* claims that he will speak at 7pm ET. x President Trump promises a “special evening†in Washington including a speech, a military flyover and an enormous fireworks display....
Apparently Trump thinks there’s something called “new far-left fascism”, whatever that is. Strange how the official excerpts didn’t include the really provocative elements of Trump’s speech, as Trump obsesses over Confederate monuments at the base of a sculpture made by a Klan member. Don Junior’s girlfriend Kimberley Guilfoyle tested positive...
Joe Biden made a statement that the Right-Wing is likely to go wild about. He did not condemn protesters removing symbols of oppression, statues, but it is what else he said. Biden shows empathy towards protesters x x YouTube Video Watch complete episodes here. Joe Biden must be given kudos for this...
Now this is fascinating. David Graham argues in the Atlantic that white voters are abandoning Trump, and they are doing so because of his attitudes about race: White Voters Are Abandoning Trump And they’re doing so for a surprising reason. It’s not the economy (Conman Trump continues to bamboozle 56%...
Made to order for whenever the national guard(s) and whatever federal riot squads are ready in DC to trash BLM demonstrators. Heck, the RWNJs could recruit anti-freemasonists to take this sculpture down, once the NPS puts it back up. Even the RCP has led a street demo against this sculpture....
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee appeared on Face the Nation this morning, and he made some good points. The first being that an American president should probably be more concerned about the lives of our citizens than the memories of traitors who rose up against the legitimate government of the United...
Trump has just issued an executive order to protect statues. This faux martial law applies only for objects, and specifically protects by inference, right-wing extremism. Because Trump wants to sanction only one side of those “very fine people” and protect appearance rather than substance in public spaces. The farcical Trump regime...
There was unrest in Madison Wisconsin and while we’ve gotten used to the idiocy often associated with the activity, pulling down statues seems like the kind of testosterone-fueled adventurism that won’t really advance causes. This seems especially ignorant when anti-racist monuments get torn down since there are still fewer of...
Unfortunately, a still recovering nation has civil unrest which will be exploited by complicated agendas, especially with some malign elements that actually want a second Civil War. One way to do it is to help topple monuments, even pre-Civil War ones. Slave-holder and the Trail of Tears, the $20 bill...
Received this e-mail from U.S. Senator Cory Booker’s (D. NJ) re-election campaign: Confederate statues are symbols of white supremacist violence and hate. These monuments glorify traitors who took up arms against the American people to uphold the vile institution of slavery and do not deserve to remain in places of...
More monuments to oppressors probably need to be removed, just not by force and not with armed reactionaries doing militia cosplay. This time it’s in Albuquerque New Mexico. x If you don’t know about the New Mexico Civil Guard – you’re about to find a whole lot about them.They are...
Received this e-mail yesterday from Mike Espy’s (D. MS) U.S. Senate campaign: Thousands of people gathered across Mississippi this past weekend, demonstrating that people are ready for change. The people of Mississippi are showing that they are ready for a state that represents them — and that includes the Mississippi state...
Apparently the disinformation default for the GOP is to ridicule the iconoclasm of decommissioning US monuments and exaggerate illogical alternatives, while trying to get its base to waive its right to sue for damages if they go to a rally and get sick. The Obelisk of Wokeness actually sounds kind...
Fucking really?!? U.S. Sen. John Cornyn expressed resistance to the idea of changing the name of Fort Hood, a massive Texas military base named after a Confederate military leader, as calls mount nationwide to remove monuments and rename bases memorializing Confederate leaders. “There's no question that America was an imperfect union when...
A lot’s been going on in the news but here’s something you might’ve missed: The Senate is expected to debate into next week bipartisan legislation that would allow massive spending on the nation’s public lands and help two GOP senators boost their moderate credentials in tight reelection races. Senators voted...
We are in some strange space where to Ted Cruz, those people taking down monuments to genocidal explorers are like fundamentalist religious fanatics practicing iconoclasm. Ted doesn’t understand iconoclasm nor has he read kos’s book, but he went there on Twitter. x No, sweetie. THIS is the American Taliban. pic.twitter.com/VnoqlwiK5L— Adam Sank...
Republicans were not always Neanderthals when it came to science and climate. In 1901, the Theodore Roosevelt administration established the USFS, the United States Forestry Service. Along with that came the establishment of 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, 4 national game preserves, 5 national parks, and 18 national...
As part of the ongoing project to catalog every awful thing the Trump Administration has done as a reference for future political arguments and whatever few posterity survives to see 2020, here’s everything awful the Trump Administration has done this week. Sens. Grassley and Johnson start investigating Hunter Biden and...
Salvation is a post-apocalyptic film set in the year 2018. It focuses on the war between Skynet’s machine network and humanity, as the remnants of the world’s military have united to form the Resistance to fight against Skynet’s killing machines. Christian Bale portrays John Connor, a Resistance fighter and central...
When Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King lamented that language like “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization” had “become offensive,” GOP leaders like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy appeared horrified. But if they were shocked—SHOCKED!—to find Steve King’s racism going on in their Republican Party, they shouldn’t...
With the advent of the Trump era, the GOP has already gone all in with treason, so why not racism as well? If we are already at a place where a GOP congressman can yell at a Hispanic Democratic congressman on the House floor to “Go back to Puerto Rico,” I don’t...
OK, look, I know that I’m not the sharpest scalpel on the surgical tray, but even I can see a pattern emerging when it’s a 20’x20’ checkerboard. In several recent articles, I have talked about the changeover in the House control putting upward pressure on McConnell, as well as Trump....
Some people should not be in politics. I’m not talking just about perennial losers like Dick Morris or Doug Schoen. I’m talking about people who promote losing strategies, and double-down when those strategies fail. You and I saw this on the national level. The Democratic strategy was to focus on the...
Image Attribution: Friends of the Earth By Mike Hersh for Alan, Mike F., Dr. Bill, Deb, Dan, Donna, Janis, Kimberly, Bryan, and Shayna—Your PDA National Team Sign the petition: Demand Congress hold Secretary Zinke accountable for destroying our public lands and waters Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) is working with a...
I am very happy to receive this e-mail today from the former U.S. Senator and War Hero Max Cleland (D. GA) in support of Richard Cordray’s (D. OH) gubernatorial campaign: I’ve spent my life fighting for veterans—first as a soldier in Vietnam, then as Administrator of Veterans Affairs, in the...
Welcome to what I hope will become a daily feature. This carnival we call the Trump Presidency is like an out of control merry-go-round, shit being thrown off in every direction at 100 mph. By the time the 6:00 news rolls around, you've completely forgotten the “breaking news” of 8:39...
Well we’ll see how the Intellectual Dark Web handles this (spoiler alert, they’re going to ignore it). A Duke VP walks into a coffee shop that Duke has on contract. They were playing a rap song that the VP did not approve of. Let’s be clear (because it is important) —...
The neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville has spurred calls around the nation for the removal of public statues, monuments, and symbols venerating white supremacy and the “lost cause” of the Confederacy. Those sites include Capitol Hill, where eight statues of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Alexander Stephens, and five other traitors to the...
I watched Flimflam Man Paul Ryan’s CNN town hall last night, and realized that at this late date we still can’t honestly question, and thus confront, Republican leaders on the root problem of Charlottesville and Trump. Instead, all we get is moronic, weak tea like Paul Ryan and other Republicans condemning...
Defending the indefensible on Tuesday, President Donald Trump traveled back in time to deploy the “both sides do it” talking point to explain the Civil War. Providing air cover for white supremacists, Trump declared “you had some very fine people on both sides,” apparently including “many of those people were...
