Truth was, she felt, such a transitory thing. One man's certainty might well be another's incredulity. The only dimension civilization depended on, was a kind of calm; the strength of order; the presence of coherent patterns; the regulation of chaos. Too many questions, too much acknowledgment of alternatives, other angles, other points of view, might lead to fresh chaos and greater disorder. It was the way to anarchy, to the blind, blood-letting pursuit of that wild freedom advocated by the ill-educated mob who sought only for themselves, totally disregarding the balance, the complete picture. —Blood Ties, Jennifer Lash
1.
If you’re not familiar with the musings of Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station, take a few minutes to read his latest rant on the state of Fuckleroy taking over the country. Here are a few excerpts but read the entire post for context:
I told you Merrick Garland would fail us. I fucking told you. I told you that if Trump wasn't indicted, charged, and convicted in time, he never would be. There was a window, maybe two years, where Garland could have put Trump away and the nation might have accepted it and we could have moved on with minimal violence. He's got to go slow! Garland has to cross the T's and dot the I's! It's a painstaking process, have faith in the system! My audience screamed at me. You're not a lawyer! You don't know! And you were right, I'm not a lawyer. But I do know politics. I'm certainly not an expert on the law, but I know what civil war looks like -- I've been in the middle of more than one.
But, again, you're not really surprised, are you? You were warned, over and over and over again. You were warned what would happened if Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell were allowed to pick the majority of Justices. You were warned. You knew. Don't pretend you didn't. But not enough Americans cared, not back when it would have made a difference. Not enough to show up for the elections where their votes could have actually changed the outcomes. Those elections weren't sexy enough, weren't important enough, didn't affect them personally enough. Hell here in my own Florida District 1, serial sex trafficker Matt Gaetz's district, less than half of registered voters even bother to show up for anything less than the general election every four years -- the one election where their vote doesn't actually decide the outcome.
The Republican nominee for president is a twice impeached, self-declared serial rapist, a convicted fraud, and a tax cheat currently out on bail, facing ninety-one felonies in four different jurisdictions, who owes over a half a billion dollars in restitution for his crimes, who can't differentiate between a picture of the woman he raped and the mother of his children (who he also raped, that's why she divorced his flabby orange ass, and why he had her buried in an overgrown weed-choked plot on his golf course for a tax break), who is so addlepated he often doesn't know the name of the current president and his supporters have to keep making excuses for his fits of dementia and increasing memory lapses, who brags about how he managed to identify an elephant like he'd discovered nuclear fusion on a test any five year old could pass, and who led an insurrection against his own country live on national television.
2.
H. C. Richardson provided us on Tuesday with a Biden/Fuckleroy comparison essay. While Biden’s team was busy during SUPER TUESDAY capping credit card late fees and making an attempt to address price gouging, Fuckleroy was busy spouting about how he would round up all the immigrants to put them into camps for deportation, and giving local police more power and immunity. “Oh, day one. We have no choice. And we’ll start with the bad ones. And you know who knows who they are? Local police. Local police have to be given back their authority, and they have to be given back their respect and immunity.”
And then there are the folks who say they refuse to vote for ‘the lesser of two evils’ in the upcoming election. Uhhh, Biden is evil? I don’t think so. He may be too old, he may have trouble speaking, and he’s boring. Boring is a good thing. These are people doing administrative duties, not to be confused with celebrities. The collective WE have been watching too many episodes of America’s Got Talent and American Idol. Biden may stumble over words in his speeches, and get confused at times, but with Harris and the team GETTING SHIT DONE in the last three years coming out of pandemic times, it seems almost impossible considering the ruin that Fuckleroy left behind. (He didn’t leave behind top secret and sensitive documents, now did he?) Worth reading again is Politico’s article, 30 Things Joe Biden Did as President You Might Have Missed, that I posted in early February.
I cannot wrap my head around ‘undecided’ voters. Uhhhh, should I vote for the raping, racist orange stain con man, who is also just fine with handing over women’s rights to aging white Republicans, or the guy who fumbles a few words. For those of you not paying attention, Democratic policies are working. The New York Times reports that the unemployment rate rose to 3.9 percent in February but it remained under 4 percent for the 25th consecutive month, the longest streak since the late 1960s. And, employers added 275,000 jobs in February, the Labor Department reported Friday, in another month that exceeded expectations.
Biden, in his address last night, never referred to Fuckleroy by name, calling him “my predecessor.” And Michelle Cottle of the Times was on the money when she wrote, regarding Alabama’s Senator Katie Britt’s rebuttal speech from her kitchen, Britt, the youngest Republican woman ever elected to the Senate, came out chewing the scenery like she was auditioning for a soap opera — overwrought, whipsawing between radiant delight and tremulous grief, beaming at inappropriate moments, pausing too long at others, dropping her voice to a breathy near-whisper to convey intimacy.
Ah, youth…overrated.
He also spoke directly to the Supreme Robed Ones in the front row: “In the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court wrote the following, and with all due respect, justices, ‘women are not without political power — excuse me, electoral or political power. You’re about to realize just how much you were right about that. Clearly, those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women, but they found out. When reproductive freedom was on the ballot, we won in 2022 and 2020 [sic], and we’ll win again in 2024.”
In case you’ve been locked in your room, the BORDER CRISIS is not of Joe Biden’s making. It’s the result of Congress never legislating meaningful immigration policy, rejecting bipartisan solutions that include everything Republicans have requested for border security. Because Fuckleroy told Mike Johnson to NOT even bring it the floor so HE ALONE can SOLVE the BORDER CRISIS when elected. On DAY ONE! Fuckleroy has said “This is a Joe Biden invasion. This is a Biden-vasion.”
And one more post of interest is Damon Linker’s rant on Wednesday, a plea to Nikki Haley to burn the GOP to the Ground. Please, Nikki Haley: Make it happen. Lead your supporters on a mass exodus out of the Republican Party. You need only say what is true: That a party led by Donald Trump and the thugs he’s surrounded himself with have no business wielding power at the highest levels. Stop fantasizing of a restoration of Reagan-Bush conservatism in the Republican Party. It isn’t going to happen. If you want to have an influence on our nation’s politics, it can only happen in the Democratic Party. Have the self-respect, the civic-mindedness, and the courage to say out loud what you must be thinking. Trump is an abomination who must be stopped, and the only way to accomplish that goal is to ensure his party’s decisive defeat in November. You have it within your power to help make that happen.
Again, one can dream…
3.
And to make it even harder to let your voice be heard, Arizona House Republicans (all of them) recently approved a bill that would force a return to precinct-based voting instead of voting centers and would force most voters to head to the polls on Election Day instead of dropping off or mailing an early ballot. In Arizona, almost 90% of ballots in 2020 were cast by mail and around 75% of voters signed up to receive early ballots in 2022, so it’s a big FECK YOU to Democracy and one more way of electing more MAGA feckers to the government dole. The main thing we have going for us now is that Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs will veto this thing…
And, just so you know, Republicans would not win elections if they were not doing everything they can to stop people, other than the white middle and upper class, from voting. Thom Hartmann reports that if you live in a Blue area of a Red state, or one of the swing states that will decide the next president, get ready: the GOP is pulling out all the stops for this fall’s election. Read his report for all the latest, juicy tomfoolery and chicanery that Republicans are pulling off across the land to rig elections.
4.
The Voyager 1 space probe, launched in 1977 is still sending messages back to earth from the edge of the galaxy some 15 billion miles away. But the computer system on board is not quite as sophisticated as the key fob you use to unlock your car, so the messages now being sent are mostly a series of 1s and 0s. Suzanne Dodd of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who has been the project manager for the Voyager interstellar mission since 2010, said "It's remarkable that they (the Voyagers) keep flying, and that they've flown for 46-plus years."
5.
We were in Prescott for the week checking in on the mother-in-law and happened to schedule our trip home yesterday as a rain storm followed us every bit of the way. Phoenix was a bit of a nightmare, more so than usual, but the reward as we got closer to home was the amazing light and the stunning greenery everywhere due to the amount of rain we’ve seen in Southern Arizona this year.
And now…
That photograph! That photograph!
Good one, Gary! Sheesh, you make me smarter!