Greetings and salutations. The last time I wrote one of these was just before I stepped down to work harder on out local get out the vote efforts in the run up the Blue Wave. I live in a red district and both of my candidates lost. Our successes in the rest of the country helped to ease my local disappointment. Here;s looking forward to more wave elections and removing the Liar.
Back in November, I spent the entire day at the polls and looked just about every voter in the eye. I am more convinced now than ever before that many of them can be moved away from their complicit complacency. It’s just a matter of effort and direct engagement. Most people aren’t invested in politics they way folks who read these columns are. Sure, there are all those rabid knuckle draggers that the New York Times drags out whenever they feel compelled to interview conservatives. But most of the electorate just doesn’t spend that much time thinking about their votes. And those uninformed voters are reachable. If each of us inspires one person we’ve doubled our individual influence. If each of us inspires 10 more people, we’ve gained an order of magnitude of influence. If each of us … you get the idea.
For those of you searching for GNR’s, pucklady and I are sharing the Tuesday niftywriter slot in alternating weeks. Get well soon nifty.
Resist. Vote. Indict and Impeach. Imprison.
Anyhow, on the the good news.
The Drumbeat Strengthens
As much as we rail against the media, they are incrementally ratcheting up the pressure on tRump. For every disturbing false equivalency article we are seeing a lot of outright condemnations. Every voice that is raised against the regime helps to flake away more of his supporters. There’s a point where his pretend presidency becomes unsustainable. Let’s hope it’s soon.
From The Atlantic: The Atlantic Bears Witness to Trump’s Destructive Presidency
In a November 2016 editorial, The Atlantic warned that Donald Trump would be a threat to the republic—and a danger to democracy itself. In the course of making our case that he was unfit to command, we called him “a demagogue, a xenophobe, a sexist, a know-nothing, and a liar.”
That was an understatement, argues editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg. In a new Atlantic Argument, Goldberg elucidates The Atlantic’s decision to analyze 50 of the most norm-bending, destructive, and improbable events of Trump’s presidency to date. “This is not a partisan exercise,” Golberg says in the video. “Our list is comprised of incidents that we can’t imagine happening in any other presidency, Republican or Democratic.”
From Huffington Post: Protesters Flip Script On Trump At Farmers Convention: ‘Lock Him Up’
From CNN: The 1 giant question Donald Trump still hasn't answered on Russia
But even if you ignore all of those facts about the Mueller investigation, there's still one question I keep coming back to over the last 48 hours: Why did Trump go out of his way to ensure that no records of his meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin exist?
From The New Yorker: As the Shutdown Drags On, the Trump-Russia Story Is Back at Center Stage
From ABC News: President Donald Trump's inaugural fund spent lavishly at his DC hotel, new docs show
From MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell — The Last Word: ‘The Trump administration's new face of cruelty’ (Video 7:43)
Pushing Back Against the Wall
We all know the Wall is a publicity stunt, with no real reason behind it except tRump’s ego and his staff’s need to give him something he could remember to say during his campaign speeches. Outside of his silo, listening to opinions from the border is lowering support for the Inglorious Bleater’s pet project. The only emergency involved is tRump’s need to distract us from his mounting legal problems. The principal reason we have a government shutdown is that the Great Distracter was too lazy or incapable to learn anything more than a slogan about immigration. I think Randy Newman should rewrite Short People with the new subject of tRump People and change it from satire to a diatribe.
From The Rolling Stone: Why We Need Mexico
Yet somewhat lost in all the sensational immigration news is the fact that McAllen is also a prime example of how American border cities reap great economic benefits from a strong relationship with Mexico. For most of the past century, McAllen was a relatively poor agricultural center, largely dependent on cotton fields and citrus groves. But since the introduction of NAFTA in 1994 — and the resulting boom in maquiladoras, or manufacturing plants, across the river in the city of Reynosa — the region’s economy has been one of the fastest-growing in America, thanks largely to retail and international trade. Trump often says Mexico is leeching off America. But to Americans here in the Rio Grande Valley, as to millions of Americans on the border, Mexico is a boon, not a drag.
From Wonkette: President Trump Will Get His WALL If He Has To Break Every Bone In Mick Mulvaney's Body and Majority Of Americans Supports Trump Building Wall UP HIS ASS
And there’s a new song from The Killers
What Took Them So Long?
Is there such a thing as an Iowa Uptown Half-step Toodeloo? I hope there’s a lot of dancing in the streets around the country over this one. Sure, they should have done this decades ago. Is it ok to be rejoicing over King’s public emasculation by his own family?
From Huffington Post: GOP Strips Rep. Steve King Of All Committee Assignments Over White Supremacist Views
“We will not be seating Steve King on any committees in the 116th Congress,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Monday after a meeting of the GOP Steering Committee. The decision was unanimous.
King’s openly racist views align fairly closely with tRump’s “good people on both sides” view. I wonder if McCarthy is trying to tell tRump something. I hope so.
Reflections on Religious Freedom Day
Tomorrow is Religious Freedom Day. I wouldn’t want it to be said I passed up an opportunity for a little bit of righteous ranting. It strikes me that the Pences and Mercers of this world are freely invested in the right of everyone to follow their narrow-minded, bigoted, and unchristian version of Christianity. Dominionists, Antebellum Evangelicals, Falwell’s American Taliban and the other “My way or the highway” extremists do not respect the teaching of their own holy book and the man they regard as the Son of God. They have further perverted their faith by falling to their knees to fellate tRump’s massive ego (and tiny package). Their cynical usurpation of a faith is not only a gross disservice to our country; it is a slap in the face to the concept of religious freedom.
Whenever someone starts blathering about “Our Christian Nation,” ask them how many times God is mentioned in the Constitution (Spoiler — She’s not). Believe what you want. Just don’t try to legislate those beliefs onto the rest of us.
I think there’s a reason religious zealotry, bigotry, homophobia, misogyny and outright racism have married themselves to tRump. They are all symptoms of the same disease. Intolerance is fundamentally unamerican. It is the prescription of the morally bankrupt and has no place in our society. Our duty is to rail against religious oppression wherever we see it.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)
The Schitzenpatzen Files: Pants Fires
Maybe tRump is thinking about going back into the clothing business with another of his Russian connections, And this one isn’t even listed in the Russian contact compendium.
From Snopes: Did a Russian Asbestos Company Put Trump’s Face on Their Product?
On 25 June 2018, a Russian mining company named Uralasbest, which is one of the world’s largest producers of asbestos, posted a message of support for President Trump on their official Facebook and VK (a Russian version of Facebook) pages. The post included photographs of packed asbestos material adorned with the face of Trump and the text “Approved by Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States.”
I think he wants to make asbestos pants because of all the pushback against him redirecting FEMA funds to firefighting the pants fire inferno he’s suffering from.
How to Make a Blue Wave
There’s a new addition in my household and she’s clearly a liberal voice to be reckoned with. Here she is creating a splash.
Play us out Jerry
Disclaimer: I really was going to make this shorter. Those novellas I put out before the hiatus took way too much time to read and far too long to write. There’s just too much good news out there. Sorry.