“Imagination is a good horse to carry you over the ground, not a flying carpet to set you free from probability.” – from The Manticore by Robertson Davies

1.
Kicking off with the most important story of the week which asks the question; Is your cat’s butt getting on your nerves? How about your tablecloth and your pillow case? In case you didn’t see it, a sixth grader’s science project takes on the big question.

2.
I hope you take the time to read Heather Cox Richardson’s post regarding Biden’s historic speech. She is a virtuoso at presenting the historical arc that ties this day to the United States’ shift toward an oligarchy that’s been snaking its way into our system of government for decades.

“In the United States, the move toward oligarchy had been underway for decades. First, Movement Conservatives, who wanted to destroy the liberal state President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created, increasingly grabbed power through voter suppression, gerrymandering, filling the courts with originalist judges, focusing on the idea of the so-called “unitary executive,” and propaganda. Once they controlled the Republican Party, their techniques left it open to a leader like Trump to gather power to himself alone. Their admiration for oligarchy left them open to autocracy.

Biden is calling this move to autocracy like it is, and making a bid to shift the course of the nation.”

The lies from Republicans were instantly trotted out by Senator Tim Scott, their token black man, who must’ve had horrible gas the night after his speech of outright lies and absurdist comedy. Or not.

“I’m an African-American who has voted in the South my entire life. I take voting rights personally. Republicans support making it easier to vote and harder to cheat. And so do the voters. Big majorities of Americans support early voting and big majorities support voter ID, including African-Americans and Hispanics. Common sense makes common ground. But today, this conversation has collapsed. The state of Georgia passed a law that expands early voting; preserves no-excuse mail-in voting, and, despite what the president claimed, did not reduce Election Day hours.”

He also said, “America is not a racist country,” and, in the days leading up to Trump’s second impeachment trial, he said of the insurrection of January six, “The one person I don’t blame is President Trump.”

As Charles Pierce stated in his piece on Thursday, “The Brennan Center has pointed out that, since last November, states with Republican legislators have introduced 361 bills in 47 states, all of which will make voting in 2022 more difficult than it was in 2020. This is on top of all the laws passed since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. Many of the proposed laws are virtually identical. Scott wants us to believe that all of this is not what it seems—that it's coincidental.

The conservatism for which Scott fronted on Wednesday night is an exhausted set of empty slogans that fewer and fewer people believe anymore. Culture-war banner-waving is all they have left that has any life in it, and any blood running through it. And sooner or later—sooner, I think—his political party is going to do something that makes Senator Tim Scott look like a chump, and there’s nothing that can stop that now.“

Now that the GOP has a black friend, they must not be racist, right?

3.
For some more GOP bashing, the real question here is why did CNN hire this doofus in the first place…oh, ratings. Coming from the man who said Newt Gingrich would be a much better president than Barack Obama, who, as a senator from Pennsylvania, compared homosexuality to bestiality and pedophilia, saying the “definition of marriage” has never included “man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be,” who wanted to keep government out of education policy, who wanted to block the DREAM Act, who wanted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, wanted to ban all abortion and reverse the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage, this is no surprise.

How do guys like this keep getting paid to spout this bile over and over again?

4.
Speaking of more lies and fraud, how about that Republican State Rep. John Kavanagh actually, and mistakenly, telling the truth about the GOP’s hideous bills to make it more difficult to vote; “We’re moving forward to do bills to correct problems that came up during the election that need to be solved, regardless of whether there was actual fraud or nonexistent fraud.”

He also said this, “Republicans are more concerned about fraud, so we don’t mind putting security measures in that won’t let everybody vote – but everybody shouldn’t be voting. Not everybody wants to vote, and if somebody is uninterested in voting, that probably means that they're totally uninformed on the issues. Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well.”

I know I’m mostly preaching to the choir here but these crooks and liars are relentless, and hordes of people buy their bullshit. Republicans control 61 of 99 state legislative chambers, and with heavily gerrymandered legislative districts, they are gaining enough control of the process, along with the voter suppression initiatives across the country, to diffuse most progressive initiatives.

We need more Stacy Abrams’ in every state. Now.

5.

Yes, tonight my band will be gracing the stage at Monterey Court in Tucson from 7-10. It’s a pretty darn safe outdoor venue, food and booze, dancing, cavorting…you know the drill. Y’all come!

And now, some Orwellian Orwell…