When I hear that some Republican House Reps claim to be preparing for a “World War III”-level fight against their own Speaker over spending cuts, I have a few reactions. First, none of these clowns would do anything but soil their pants in a real foxhole. Second, too many folks want to be war veterans without doing any of the hard work that comes with being war veterans. Third, when you’re throwing around words like “war” to describe negotiating with your own people, you’re showing your utter contempt for civilization. Not that item three is a surprise; these people hate civilization, because it repeatedly reminds them there are other people in the world who mean a damn.
Alabama state legislature redraws their Congressional maps, but doesn’t include a second majority-Black district “or something quite close to it” as our Supreme Court mandated. Well, that’ll teach people to count their chickens! Folks were salivating over getting another majority-Black district in Louisiana, too, but these states are just going to run out the clock on this matter, knowing our Supreme Court will allow them to use the maps they just made because “it’s too close to the election.” You think our Supreme Court knew that ahead of time? Of course they did!
Now the Florida State Board of Education has adopted “standards” which require public school teachers to tell students that slaves “developed skills” that “could be applied for their personal benefit,” and they deserve all the ridicule they’re going to get. There’s an upside to virtually anything, but generally the bigger the horror, the smaller the upside, and the mere existence of an upside doesn’t make just anything OK, and making slavery OK is of course what Florida fascists want. I eagerly await the first class clown to ask if surviving starvings and lashings from cruel masters was a “skill” that “could be applied for their personal benefit.”
People ask me what I think about Country Music Television (or CMT) yanking that Jason Aldean song about how us city folks shouldn’t try any of our putative shenanigans in a small town off the air. Long story short: my loathing for right-wing weaklings who act tough is bottomless, Republicans sure do have some cojones whining about “censorship” as they’re banning books about racism, and though I have only watched CMT for perhaps an hour out of my life, I’ve only heard terrific songs during that time – good, complex, hummable relationship songs – and I really doubt that’s just my dumb luck.
So Donald Trump is now obliquely threatening “to do things” to Special Prosecutor Jack Smith “that have never been done before” and also suggesting that since he has “a tremendously passionate group of voters” maybe it “would be very dangerous” to put him in prison. So Mr. Trump has become a surrealist, but instead of painting a pipe with the caption “this is not a pipe,” he’s issuing terroristic threats and saying “this is not a terroristic threat.” Anyway, his “tremendously passionate group of voters” are whiny diaper-loaded brats. A lot of them have guns, sure, but they’re about as ready overthrow a government as your average high school football team.
Finally, when I hear that former NBA superstar/current TNT analyst Charles Barkley has become a “role model” after all, I can’t help but think that whole thing’s quite overplayed. A handful of barfights got him negative press as a player, but everyone I know who’s met him say he’s kind, generous, and affable, suggesting, again, that maybe people treat you the way you treat them. The article doesn’t delineate his political transformation, either, from Friend of Rush Limbaugh to supporter-of-affirmative-action-but-also-for-poor-whites to “I was a Republican – until they lost their minds” (that was 2006!) to protector of diversity at Auburn and defender of gay and trans folk. I’m just grateful to know that someone, somewhere, didn’t let all that money make him an asshole.
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