The Setting Sun

I don’t know how big of a national splash this made last week but they announced that David Smith, the owner of the Sinclair broadcasting group, bought my local paper, the Baltimore Sun, as a personal investment.

Sinclair is an ownership group that buys up all the local stations it can muster and turns them into right-wing MAGAphones, including the mandate that they all run pre-recorded editorial content from the “home office.”

Maryland is a blue state and the Sun has traditionally reflected that, although not so much so that they didn’t endorse a Republican governor or two, over the years. But this has effectively come to an end.

The new owner says he wants The Sun to function like our local “Fox 45,” which is also owned by Sinclair. In other words, one more piece in the right-wing echo chamber. Sinclair owns Fox 45 in Baltimore, as well as the local CW channel.

Both networks specialize in attacking the local government and school systems. They love to ambush public officials on their way to their car at night, to lob loaded questions while the camera rolls. Every night, when I’m usually watching syndicated shows, I see the promos for their news broadcasts, and it’s always the same.

They proclaim how they’re “keeping local officials honest,” but that’s just a cover. It’s an unrelenting drumbeat of bad news, day in and day out.

It’s one thing to cover news that makes officials look bad. But it becomes disingenuous when positive stories are omitted or skewed to make them look bad. I’ve had this argument with people before when they say, “But what if this news is true? What if this really is a bad thing?”

I counter that there’s never a “good thing” aired, even when good things abound. Lies of omission are still lies. When a broadcaster’s only objective is to smear the ruling party, that’s not journalism, it’s just PR and propaganda.

A couple years back, I decided to take some notes on the subjects of the local Fox and CW nightly news promos, which I did for about a week or so before I lost interest. (I was hoping to make a post out of it, but you know… squirrel!) I still have the notes though, so, Score!

These were the stories they were hyping at the time:

·         CW: High price of gas.

·         Fox: Violence in Baltimore City, State’s Attorney ethics charges.

·         Fox: Save Our Schools: Lawsuits filed against the school district.

·         CW: Crisis at the Border, Baby Formula crisis haunts the Biden Administration.

·         Fox: Electric vehicle fires

·         CW: The danger of letting the WHO determine what is a pandemic.

·         CW: While government fights record inflation, migrants are flooding in.

As you can see, it’s just a compendium of Republican talking points, blaming Democrats for inflation, bad schools, the pandemic, corruption, and electric cars. It’s All Crisis, All the Time while propping up the fossil fuel industry, private schooling, and catering to the MAGAs at every turn.

This is what will become of our deep-rooted bastion of journalism, a paper version of Fox “News.” I’m sure we’ll never see another big half-page story on a decrease in border crossings, like the one I ran in my last post. Such good news will never be set in ink again if it benefits a Democrat.

What I’m going to do next, I don’t know yet. I’ve been a Baltimore Sun subscriber ever since I came to town in 1998. I’ve always been a newspaper guy, a habit I got from my dad, who always had the paper delivered, wherever we lived. Sometimes we even got two, like when we lived in Columbus Ohio, and got the morning Citizen Journal and the evening Columbus Dispatch.

In practical terms, I get most of my news online, via the blogs on my blogroll and my Yahoo home page. The Sun staff is a mere shell of what it used to be. Most of their content comes from news syndicates and affiliates. Aside from TV listings, my primary use for the Sun is the comics page and puzzles.

Doing crossword puzzles (and the Jumble and Sudoku) are baked into my weekday lunchtime routine. On the weekends, Sweetpea and I both work on the morning puzzles.

I know I can get crosswords online, but I don’t like doing them via computer, nor do I want to have to print the puzzles every damned day. But I feel sick at the prospect of giving those vultures any of my hard-earned dough.

For the time being, I intend to stay put and watch what happens. After all, this could be a good feeder system for Right Wing material to pick apart, or maybe even to rebut via letters to the editor. It’s not a bad idea to see what kind of BS the other side is pushing. It’ll let me know whether they have serious points, or if they’re pushing myths and illusions. Then when they eventually cross the line, I can, with haughty indignity, write in, refute their stories, and end it with “Cancel my subscription, you odorous band of kowtowing mullet-heads!”

Fun at the Grocery Store

Sometimes, when checking out a new grocery store, the aisles are arranged in such a way that I can create a little mirth, for those that know how to find it.

Bloody Vikings...

 

Finding New Speakers

We still don’t have a Speaker of the House, which is a mixed blessing. Given the majority makeup of The House, at least they can’t do any more damage or hold necessary legislation hostage.

Steve Scalise was the initial candidate put forth by the Republicans, but after two days of “negotiating,” he learned that he had no shot at 217 votes, so he dropped out. I heard some withheld support because he’s fighting a blood cancer diagnosis. It’s apparently treatable, but the GOP treats their own people just as disgustingly as they do their opponents.

That left Gym Jordan to pick up the mantel. Sigh… Gym freakin’ Jordan. As I mentioned last week, I just can’t stand the guy. He inherits the same problem Scalise had; a portion of his party that wants no part of him. And with the slimness of their majority in The House, a portion of any size is one they can’t omit.

So in keeping with his character, Jordan and his allies in Congress and on Fox “News” began a campaign of browbeating and threatening fellow Republicans who are withholding their votes from him. Jordan is one of those guys, as the saying goes, whose only weapon is a hammer, so he sees every obstacle as a nail.

Luckily, there seem to be people who don’t play that shit, so who knows what’s going to happen to his Speakership opportunity.

Maybe, and that’s with a big M, some moderate Republicans can work something out with the Democrats and install some kind of sanity to House leadership. It’s such a low bar when you’re really just looking for someone who isn’t batshit crazy. I’m not sure if there are many out there, who are impervious to the MAGA forces.

Republicans and Democrats are so far apart on basic issues right now, that I don’t see how they’re going to find common ground on anything. But I’m glad they’re trying because I am NOT looking forward to another year of clown shoes investigations and circus acts. Anybody would be better than Jordan.

***

I probably ought to say something about the Israel/Hamas situation. But I really don’t want to. Other people are far more astute regarding the history and the details than I am. I don’t claim to know any more than any other schlub sitting at the bar.

Things are bad and they’re about to get much worse. I hope Israel’s ground invasion can obliterate Hamas forces and free any hostages left alive, but I also hope they do so with minimal damage to civilian lives. I do realize that’s basically impossible… Hamas embeds themselves among civilians as a deterrent to such retaliation.

But when you take on one of the most militarily capable countries on the planet, blow a hole in their border wall, rape, kill, torture, and kidnap their civilians, there will be repercussions. They’re not just going to let that go. A world of hurt is about to rain on some truly evil people, as well as people whose primary concern is to put food on the table. They probably should have thought some more about it before voting to put monsters in charge of their region.

So… I hope it’s over soon. I’m not counting on it, but I hope nevertheless.

That’s all I’ve got, M'kay.

The End of America

Last week saw a story published that represents the most serious threat to the way our country governs, and even the Constitution itself, that I’ve seen in my lifetime. The New York Times ran a story, corroborated by the Trump campaign, about how in a second administration, TFG plans to remove the autonomy from the Justice Department and other administrative agencies, substituting loyalty to HIM over loyalty to the Constitution.

This would be bad enough in the hands of a sage and serious person with the purest of motives. But in the hands of a petty, petulant, tyrant? It’s the end of our country as an institution of freedom. Suddenly, we’re Saddam’s Iraq. Or North Korea.

With the power to prosecute and jail his enemies via the Justice Department, destroy their finances through the IRS, or regulate them to extinction through the applicable oversight agencies, this will become the United States of Trump. A whole country in service of a single egomaniac who has the self-control of a colicky toddler.

And I’m sure he’ll find a way to rope in a military/police faction, by adoption, or just starting his own, essentially turning him into a warlord.

Do you think there will ever be a fair election again? Hell, there may not even be ANY election again. They’ve finally figured out how to get around that petty matter of “public will” being articulated through elections. A plan like this only works if there are no further changes to who’s in power.

Is this the country our Founding Fathers imagined? Hell no, in fact, they took tangible steps to ensure that nothing like this would ever happen. This country was formed at the very core as a way to remove control of a country from a single man, “royal” or otherwise.

All the teary-eyed paeans to the US Constitution and veneration of the Bill of Rights coming from these “Constitutional Originalists” are pure lip service. If this comes to pass, you might as well break into the National Archives and tear those documents to pieces.

What I don’t know yet is the mechanism by which such a power shift would be executed. It can’t be that a president can just decide he gets all the power. I would think it would have to go through Congress. That could be the fail-safe that keeps this whole thing on the rails, assuming Democrats have control of at least one House. Although I certainly make room for the possibility that even a self-decreed self-anointment may likely be blessed by the stacked Supreme Court. That’s why at least three of them were appointed, to do their master’s bidding.

So far, I haven’t heard a single Republican criticize this effort, which now becomes a new plank in the GOP platform… perhaps the ONLY plank. They’re all in on it because they mean to grab some for themselves. Hell, Mitch McConnell and his mega-donors will probably have TFG rubbed out once all the steps have been taken and the pieces are in place. He’s not going to let all that power get wasted by some narcissistic ass clown.

With that kind of power in hand, you’ll see the real Republican agenda. IRS? Gone. Minimum wage? Gone. Social Security and Medicare? Gone. Food assistance? Gone. Reproductive freedom? Gone. (OK, they’re halfway home on that one already.) CDC and National Institute of Health? Gone. Any program that serves the average citizen will be replaced with more ways to siphon money upward.

This is such a bombshell, I can’t believe the Republicans ever let a word of it escape. They must be pretty confident in their voter suppression tactics for 2024. And the fact that this story hasn’t become political suicide just shows how fucked up this country really is.

This. Must. Be. Stopped.

Right in its tracks. The fact that it’s even been proposed shows how little the Republican hierarchy cares about the will of the people. It’s All Power, All the Time. And they’ll use every emotional ruse in the book to misdirect their misguided fans until they find out way too late, that they’ve made a tragic mistake.

Democrats need to make this campaign issue number one. Every candidate needs to ask his opponent if he supports such action and get them on the record. And if the answer is not “Hell NO!” then rip them to shreds for even considering such an assault on American Democracy.

There is no “both sides” bullshit on this one. Nothing analogous has ever come from the Democratic side, this is 100% Republicanism. This is a heinous power grab, being executed by a wannabe mushroom dictator. They tried to wrest power from the voters once already on January 6^th, and this is round two. If we allow it, we deserve the dystopian hellscape that’s guaranteed to follow.

Debt Ceiling, Coffee Wars, and Goodbye to a Queen

I had mixed feelings about the Debt Ceiling agreement that passed last week. I mean, there was a big part of me that wanted President Biden to keep giving the Republicans the finger and refusing to negotiate. Every time they’ve tried to hold the economy hostage over the debt ceiling, they ended up caving because they were unable to convincingly lay off the blame on the Democrats. So I wanted to see them get humbled, I really did.

But then, it’s easy for me to say because I’m not reliant on the major government services that were at risk of being shut down. I don’t take Social Security, nor do I have Medicare/Medicaid. I don’t get SNAP or Welfare. I haven’t been to a National Park in ages. (And I know there’s other stuff as well.) So I could just keep my head down and do my work-from-home job and wait for it to resolve without taking any hits to my comfort. But a lot of other people would get screwed, wouldn’t they? A lot of people would be SOL.

That’s why I’m glad we had the steady hand of Grandpa Joe at the wheel, who acted like the adult in the room and walked away with a deal that Democrats can live with. In fact, I don’t think he gave up much at all, considering Republicans came in wanting to (among other things) shit-can the infrastructure bill on which he’s staking his Presidency. As if that was ever going to happen. (It’s just like when Republicans wanted to hold the ACA hostage during the Obama years. Like he was EVER going to sign on to having that repealed.) The Republicans just needed enough movement that they could distort into an alternate reality where they fleeced a senile Commander in Chief.

I also agree with my friend the Green Eagle when he notes that the wealthy Donors That Be probably put a bug in the Speaker’s ear telling him to can all this nonsense so they don’t derail their gravy train. They no doubt notified the ignorant rabble-rousers in the House as well, to try to maintain the status quo. I mean, what’s the use in buying a Speaker of the House if he gets replaced within the year? They can’t have the inmates running the asylum, who think that printing more money is the solution to economic woes. Someone must ensure the money trough is still filling so it can be siphoned upward.

So, like always, the can was kicked down the road so it can blow up on another cast of characters and the charade can continue. If there’s a Republican in charge, they’ll raise the debt ceiling like it was a Congressional pay raise package. If it’s still the Democrats, be prepared for the next hostage drama.

This Is Not Your Father’s Folgers

I was in the grocery store over the weekend and came upon this rather disturbing display of a coffee brand I’d never seen before. Take a look at this stuff:

It looks to me like this “Black Rifle Coffee Company” is marketing directly to MAGAs and military wannabees, who are so insecure about their manhood that they need morning psych-ops with their cuppa Joe.

How do you even know what this shit tastes like? There’s nothing showing that tells you how one flavor compares to another. Or maybe it’s all the same shit only with different collectible bags, like Wheaties.

I have some theories about who these various versions are trying to reach:

Five Alarm: Fireman wannabees.

Freedom Fuel: Oil workers, drillers, and fossil fuel/monster truck fans. Those who fear E-cars and sustainable fuel production.

Just Black: All Lives Matters people. Slogan: “Black coffee matters!”

Gunship: Small dick fear.

Spirit of ’76: This should actually be tea.

Loyalty Roast: Trump fanatics. Probably shouldn’t picture a dog though. Just put the famously petless former guy’s picture on the box.

Tactisquatch: I don’t know… yetis?

I can see their new tagline now… “The Jews will not percolate us.”

Are You Ready for Tina?

It was with great sadness I heard the news of the passing of the great Tina Turner. That Friday, Sweetpea came home and asked me to put on some music before dinner. I said I had just the thing:

We had our weekly slow dance to “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”

My first memory of her was from when I was a little boy and Ike and Tina Turner were performing on some variety show. Tina was wearing one of those diamond-shaped dresses that was cut up to her hip bones, with the bottom point of the dress down between her knees, making it look like her legs were 8 feet long. I recall my Dad commenting, “Now THAT’s a woman.”

Like anyone with a soul, I became a huge fan and had mad respect for her after seeing her life-story movie where she was played by Angela Bassett. (I later read her book that it was based on, “I Tina.”) I cheered out loud when she finally left her bastard of a husband.

I ended up seeing Tina perform solo on four occasions. The first was in August of 1985, in Toledo, with Glenn Frey opening. I got a pair of tickets and took my mom. We were having a very nice pre-show dinner, because we had all the time in the world to get to the show… right up until I realized I left the tickets back at my apartment. But after some Fast and Furious driving maneuvers, we managed to get to the show on time. As always, it opened with a dark stage, with Tina’s sultry voice asking us, “Are you ready for Tina?”

I saw her twice within a month, in the summer of 1987, once in Baltimore with my parents and sister, and again two weeks later in Cleveland, both at outdoor pavilions with Wang Chung opening. The last time was at another outdoor pavilion in Saratoga Springs NY, in 1993 with my then-wife. Chris Isaac opened

Every time, she put on an unreal show, with her powerful singing and dancing her ass off with her backup dancers. In later years, I saw recorded concerts where she was still putting on the show well into the 2000s. The last one I saw, she was in her 70s. I was thinking, “Man, she’s really slowing down,” because, for about half the show, she sang from a stool. But I immediately had to qualify my thinking… “Yeah, slowing down for Tina Turner.” For any other 70+-year-old woman, she was a freak of nature, an Energizer Bunny with “legs long enough to wrap around the world.” *

*Quote from Bluz Mother.

I’m happy that she lived long enough to reap the world’s love and respect and retire in comfort. One of her songs from Private Dancer was called, “I Might Have Been Queen…”

As far as I’m concerned, there was no doubt about it. She was definitely queen.

Putting the "Rat" in Authoritarianism*

*if you read it backward.

It seems the Republicans’ new hobby is threatening impeachment of anyone they don’t like. Most recently, Rep. Adam Schiff has drawn their fire, for his role in presenting such compelling evidence in TFG’s impeachment hearings. My friends at Crooks and Liars have a story about Florida Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna having filed a resolution of impeachment against him, accusing him of sedition.

She said that Schiff lied to the American people and weaponized the FBI against Trump.

One US Representative can weaponize the FBI? Really? If that were true, Rep MT Greene would have the FBI at Biden’s house right now, looking for black market youth elixir. And since when is it “weaponizing” to have a law enforcement body go out to find evidence of wrongdoing and present it? Isn’t that their exact job? The fact that the vapid, empty vessel she idolizes was proven to have done wrong, doesn’t prove or even suggest that his accusers have committed any crime, let alone sedition.

Also, “Lying to the American people?”

Rep. George Santos telling the “truth.”

When Republicans have dealt with their own resident liars, then they can worry about others. Until then, STFU and STFD, Rep. Loona. Case dismissed.

I know Republicans are itching for “revenge” for the Democrats daring to prove TFG was a crook, but do they really want to open the door for ousting Congresspeople for specious personal reasons? Because it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility that the Democrats take back the House, and then what do you think can happen? With this new precedent, say goodbye to Reps. Greene, Jordan, Boebert, Santos, and add McCarthy, just for being a spineless weasel.

I don’t think this Congressional impeachment movement is really going anywhere, other than being a tool for self-promotion among little-known Congresspeople. There are cooler heads that will prevail, not including Speaker McCarthy. If he had any real power, he’d have already squashed this nonsense before it went public. The last thing he needs is a rock fight in his own greenhouse.

***

In yet another pointless bid for relevance, faded rocker Ted Nugent joined the chorus of conservatives lauding the ex-marine who choked out a homeless guy on an NYC subway car.

Again, that’s what it’s come to… applause for some guy to decide to be judge, jury, and executioner for some poor brain-addled guy, just because he was annoying.

Whatever the guy had done in his past is irrelevant, because the killer had no idea who he was. So when Nugent calls the victim a “monster,” it’s just a racist cover. All he was in that moment was a guy being loud and creepy in public. Maybe you put him in detox for the night, or have the cops take him to Central Booking. Execution seems a little harsh. That’s what they do in Iran. (After a little torture first, of course.)

I don’t, for a second, believe this was a life-threatening situation, other than that of the homeless guy. I’m no stranger to subway “performance art.” I’ve ridden the Baltimore Metro (subway) every day for 23 years and seen my share of ranters, ravers, panhandlers, and hustlers, making a scene on the subway when all you want to do is get home in peace. Yes, it’s bothersome. No, it does not warrant a fucking death sentence, handed out by some bored ex-military who craves an adrenaline rush.

If this guy gets off, where does it end? Are we now allowed to shoot, stab, or choke out anyone who alarms us? Am I allowed to snap the neck of anyone who walks up beside someone else on an escalator and then stops, so no one else can get by? How about the next time I see someone taking up two seats on a crowded car, I just set him on fire? Why not? It’s a public safety thing. The fewer people standing in a moving subway car, the safer we all are. Or if someone is singing loud with headphones on, can I put a pistol under his chin and fire?

“I’m sorry officer, but he was off-key and a little pitchy. This was a public service.”

We need to be very careful about what kind of public behavior is being encouraged, or no one is going to feel safe going anywhere. As long as we accept and reward self-appointed arbiters of who gets to live, we are all at risk.

 

They Need a Fall Guy

 The MAGA anti-vax nutjobs have been a little more vocal lately, because of that FBI report that they say proves them right about COVID being released from a Chinese lab. The MAGA crowd, who so often claim the FBI is a pack of left-wing freedom stealers, suddenly believe them now about this. (But not about anything else that they don’t want to hear.)

As with most things coming from the right, there’s a grain of truth wrapped in a whole truckload of wishful thinking and bullshit. The report assigns very little confidence in that finding, basically admitting that it’s possible, but the origins are still in question. So once again, we have this huge roar about something that makes very little difference. Or rather, as far as I’m concerned, matters not at all.

Why? Because the origin of the virus, whether it occurred in the wild or was released accidentally or on purpose from a lab, doesn’t change what we had to do to fight it. Whatever the source, the US government had to make a risk assessment, plan a strategy to battle and contain the virus and execute it. The degree to which they did or didn’t has been debated ever since, but none of that hinges on the origin of the virus. It came, we fumbled about for a while, and more than a million Americans died from it, with millions more sickened; sometimes seriously, other times not as much.

I think Republicans desperately want it to be a lab release for one simple reason: blame. They need to be able to blame The Enemy for something that had such a negative effect on the country (and the world). Being able to blame an entity that has been TFG’s favorite punching bag is the cherry on top.

When your chief characteristic is rage, it’s a hard thing to maintain over a naturally occurring process that just sprung up from flora and fauna. What are they going to do, dox Mother Nature? Threaten her job? Cut down her trees? So they need a bad guy, which is why they need COVID to have been man-made, just to have somewhere to aim their rage.

Let the academics work out how COVID got loose so that maybe more effective preventative measures might be used the next time around. But other than that, it just doesn’t matter and there’s no sense even arguing about it.

Debunkery

I saw this back in January and I kept it so I could highlight how bad arguments aren’t only a fault of the Right. Consider this graphic:

Now, I’m upset as anyone about the number of people killed by police entities in this country, but this graphic is not the weapon it should be.

Notice how it labels the data as “fatal shootings by officers and other deaths at the hands of police.”

Were there no deaths at the hands of police that were justified? Any number of these could be police responding to hostage situations, a perp who’s pointing a gun, or shooting at them.

A more effective graph would clearly count the number of killings by police of unarmed people. That’s the real issue that causes strife and unrest (and rightly so). A logical assumption would be that if the numbers were properly narrowed that way, they would have been described as such, but since they weren’t we should assume it counts all killings.

Maybe there’s a better case to be made out there, but this isn’t it.

***

I found another bad argument seeping into the sports world again, this time regarding some new baseball rules. This year, MLB has installed a more aggressive pitch clock and batter’s clock, which limits how much time batters can spend dicking around at the plate with their batting gloves, how much time pitchers can spend glaring at the catcher, and how many times he can lob the ball over to first base with a runner on.

As with any adaptation to sports rules, there are many “traditionalists” who bristle at attempts to make the game more engaging. I’ve seen several memes illustrating this point:

The logical counterpoint here is that yes, there’s a delay on that one pitch, but that’s just time invested in preventing MORE wastes of time. You lay down the law once, then the rest of the game speeds up. This is not a complicated concept but it seems to be one these meme creators aggressively ignore. It’s another one of those things that you can yell at the TV down at the bar and the rest of the drunks can nod along in agreement.

Personally, I’m all for anything that will speed the game up a bit. I’ve seen some say that when they’re at the game, they don’t care how long it takes. But I’m sure there are even more there who have actual lives. I’ve seen a ton of baseball games and most of them are night games, just because there are so few day games even scheduled. Most games start at about 7:10. A three-hour game will wrap up around 10:00 PM, with gives people time to get out of the park and back home before 11:00, to get some sleep before getting up in the morning to go to work.

They’re never going to be able to eliminate the occasional long game due to an explosion of hitting and scoring. But that’s the fun stuff to watch, isn’t it? What you DON’T want to see is an extra hour of guys stepping out of the batter’s box, loosening and refastening their gloves, then stepping back in. And then watching the pitcher step off the mound, fiddle with his hat, rub on the ball some more, then climbs back to look in for more signals. Everyone needs to stop jerking around, get in there and play. If the umps call a penalty ball or strike, so be it. Let that light the fire under everyone’s ass to keep things moving. Some of us have to get up in the morning.

RIP

It was with a heavy heart that I saw the news this morning of the passing of one of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s founding members, Gary Rossington. Skynyrd’s music was part of every party we ever threw in high school and college. Even my dad used to love dancing to Gimme Three Steps.

I was lucky to be able to meet them many years ago and in another life, back when I was a record store manager. (Remember those?) My buddy and I went to see their big 1987 reunion tour in Cleveland, their first tour since the plane crash. After the show, the MCA rep (who got me the tickets) asked us if we’d like to go hang with the band at a small party in their hotel suite. Believe me, we didn’t take long to answer. You can read the whole story, here. I didn’t get to talk to Gary, probably because I was too busy chatting up his wife, but she and the rest of the band were great to us.

 

Deja Blue

To the surprise of exactly no one, it happened again. Just like it always does. Lather, rinse, repeat. Police kill a guy, people get inflamed and call for change, and it happens again. It’s happened enough over the last decade or so that I’ve written about it 43 times before, according to the “Police Stories” label on my Label Cloud on the right. This is the 44^th time. What does one even say anymore?

So, five cops from a special “Scorpion” squad chased a guy down on a traffic stop for reckless operation, and just beat the guy to death. Five guys punched, kicked, and tased an unarmed man until he lay there unconscious and eventually died. According to the police chief, they’re not even sure there WAS any reckless op. Why five cops from a specialized unit were pursuing some rando in the first place is another question. I mean, don’t these “elite” teams have a higher list of priorities to pursue besides traffic violations?

I’m suspect of all of these “elite” teams that are separated from the rest of the rank and file. (The brilliant Lawyers Guns and Money blog is on the same wavelength.) I think it’s human nature for those placed in small groups with increased power to let it go to their heads. Hell, just look at HOAs. I guarantee there are people in your HOA who would just LOVE to curb stomp anyone who lets their grass grow too high or has non-standard pavers making up their walkway. But they don’t have the cover of law enforcement protecting their actions.

Baltimore is famous for its “Gun Trace Task Force,” which created the need for a Consent Decree and spawned the HBO mini-series/docu-drama “We Own This City.” This was a unit assembled to get guns off the streets but quickly devolved into a renegade band who robbed drug dealers (and anyone else they found with more than pocket change), kept the money, planted evidence and guns at crime scenes, and arrested anyone who had the nerve to complain. And all the while, they were padding their paychecks with unworked overtime to an obscene degree.

The Memphis police chief disbanded this Scorpion unit over the weekend and we’re already watching how these five officers are being singled out for 100% of the blame. The problem is that this “civilians as blood enemies” culture doesn’t grow out of thin air; that’s why these incidents keep happening. The recruitment, training, and supervision of the nation’s police units need a top to bottom overhaul. I guarantee it never happens, for the same reason that every other systematic injustice remains: because the people with money want it the way it is. Hardcore policing keeps the riffraff at bay. It’s not their problem if they get the crap kicked out of them. It’s their own fault for not being born into wealth.

Of course, Fox “News” is leading the way with headlines like this:

“Lowered standards,” right beside pictures of the five Black cops. Tell us what you really think the problem is, Fox! Maybe their point is that White cops would have known to turn their body cameras off before beating someone to death. Silly savages.

The racists love Black-on-Black violence because then they get to sit back and cluck over it all, knowing that whichever party is in the wrong, a Black person gets the blame.

RIP

It is with a lead-heavy heart that I read of the passing of Annie Wersching, who I adored. She played many notable roles but came to my attention when she co-starred in two seasons of “24,” as Special Agent Renee Walker, FBI badass, and eventual love interest of Jack Bauer. And here I thought it was bad when her character was killed off. She died of cancer at 45. Forty-freakin-FIVE!

This is what I wrote in this very blog, back in 2010, when her character was whacked:

“Sometimes it really sucks following shows like 24 and last night was one of those times.  Just when you think things are going well… Jack finally gets a moment’s peace and gets to do some belly rubbin’ with yummy FBI Agent Renee Walker.

“All looks good, but deep down, you know that there are still six more episodes to come, so something else has to happen.  Then… BAM.  Sniper fire.  Agent “Freckles” is down, wearing nothing but a bed sheet.

“You would think having sex with Jack Bauer would make a girl bulletproof.

“So I’m bummed.  No more looking into the haunted eyes of our Agent Walker. She’s been my favorite part of the last 2 seasons.  I know it’s stupid to get upset about a freakin’ TV show.  I know that right afterward, someone yells, “Cut!” and everyone gets up and grabs some coffee and a donut.  But why let reality encroach on the story?  You can’t help but get drawn in when you follow a story over time.  While the show is rolling, you start to see these characters as real people.  What’s the point of watching a drama if you don’t suspend disbelief?

“The skeptic can come out after the credits roll.”

So there’s no real-life buffer with this loss. This one hurts.

On the flip side, I can offer a happy “RIP” to the Cincinnati Bengals Super Bowl hopes, after their loss yesterday to the Chiefs. Once again, they lost in part because they couldn’t keep themselves from committing stupid personal fouls. They’ve handed the Steelers at least two such wins in past years. Now they’re spreading the love.

And thank you to the Chiefs! Your win keeps me from having to root for a Philadelphia team, and that’s always a winner in my book.

Francophiles

This is an off-cycle post and far from my usual topic of our culture wars and political nonsense. This one is personal and sports-related. If you’re looking for my usual weekly post, just scroll down to Monday’s publishing.

***

It was with a heavy heart, that I read of the death of Franco Harris, who reportedly died at home Tuesday night. No cause of death was reported as of this writing.

As you may have inferred from my sidebar and the color motif here, I’m a Pittsburgh sports fan. I was born in The ‘Burgh, to two lifelong Pittsburghers. Even though we moved away when I was about seven, our roots, as well as most of our extended families, are still there.

No matter where we lived, from Chicago to Columbus, to Toledo, we were always a Pittsburgh family. As a little kid, I liked football well enough but didn’t really follow it very closely. I’d watch the occasional game with my dad, just to be doing the same thing he was.

The first year I really started identifying as a Steelers fan was 1972, when we lived in Columbus, OH. I turned 11 during that football season and started following the players I liked and watching their position in the standings. You have to remember that football wasn’t nearly as pervasive as it is now. There were only two games on TV every Sunday, (Three really, but two of them were on at the same time, so you had to choose.) There was no Thursday night or Sunday night football, and Monday Night Football had only just begun. There was no ESPN or NFL channel. So because this wasn’t a local team for us in Ohio, we had to work to keep up to date.

The Steelers had never won a playoff game, not only during my dad’s lifetime but going all the way back to their origination in 1933. But they seemed like a much better team that year and their big rookie running back Franco Harris was making a lot of headlines.

I remember watching that playoff game against Oakland down in our little TV den. It was a tense, low-scoring game. When Raiders quarterback Kenny Stabler ran for a 30-yard touchdown late in the game, it looked like it was set up to be another disappointment in a long line of such disappointments.

Then, on 4^th and long, with but a few seconds remaining, the “Immaculate Reception” occurred. You know what it is by now.

As Franco rumbled into the end zone, my dad made the loudest noise in the history of noises, like it was 30 years of beat-downs avenged in one play. At that same time, my friend from next door was coming up our steps to the front door, right outside the den. He was probably on his way to give me shit about my team losing. He later told me it sounded like someone started up a giant vacuum cleaner inside.

That play eliminated any chance that I would ever drop my allegiance and root for another team. I mean, I was an impressionable young boy and this was a miracle, right before my eyes, right there on our little 24” TV screen.

Every time someone runs a national poll on the NFL’s greatest play, the Immaculate Reception always wins, not just because of the sheer unrealism, but because of what it started.

That play was the spark that lit the fuse. The Steelers went on to lose their next playoff game to the eventually perfect Miami Dolphins. But two seasons later, the Steelers won their first Super Bowl and went on to win four championships in six years. It was a tremendous time to be a young Steelers fan. That 1972 playoff game reset the expectations of the entire fan base and that’s something that remains today. It also boosted the spirits of a town that had been run down and gave it the kick it needed to come roaring back to life. It’s not for nothing that there is a statue of Franco in the Pittsburgh airport, eternally snatching that football away from the turf.

Since, as I said, we didn’t live in Pittsburgh during any of this, we never had much of a chance to mix with the players, at store openings, restaurants, or bars. But, as I’ve written before, we used to go to Cleveland every year to see the Steelers/Browns game and stayed at the same hotel the Steelers used. It was always bedlam, as it seemed half of Pittsburgh was there as well. There was a party in every room. That’s where we had this Franco sighting.

Franco, running the gauntlet

Franco with “Mean” Joe Green. Too much Hall of Fame for one hallway.

I also briefly ran into him one more time. I was on a plane home from Baltimore after visiting my parents, and as I shuffled onto the plane, there was Franco sitting in the last row in first class. And when you see a face like his, there's no mistaking him for anyone else. 

Not wanting to make a fuss, I caught his eye and gave him a nod and a half-smile. He nodded back. At first, I was like, “WTF is HE doing here?” But then I remembered that he was a co-owner of a sausage business located in Baltimore, so he was probably doing the same thing I was, going home.

By all accounts, Franco was one of the good guys; always generous with his time and money, a true member of the community, and the bedrock of Steeler Nation.

It’s such a shame that his death came only three days before his number was to be retired at the Steelers/Raiders game this weekend, with 50,000+ yinzers all set brave the elements to honor him. The Steelers will no doubt be using this as fuel to beat the Raiders, for Franco.

And somewhere, I’m sure Raiders owner Mark Davis is thinking, “Dammit, that guy just screwed us again!”

Rest in peace, Paisan. 

The Point of Know Return

 Last week ended up being a significant period of Joe Biden’s presidency, with the passage (or near passage) of a couple of important bills, and an important election result.

More Than Just Dust in the Wind

The state of Kansas spoke very loudly when it rejected a measure on the ballot designed to overturn state constitutional protections on abortion, by a margin of about 20 points. No doubt about it, this was great news. Many people are touting how much better the odds are for Democrats in the mid-terms. But I’m wary about extrapolating that success into other situations. I see a couple of big factors here.

For one, the religious conservatives who push for revoking abortion rights are not going to stop trying, no matter what courts or voters say. When was the last time one of these people said, “Hold On, the majority of our state disagrees with our position? OK, never mind. Forget it.”

These people fought a Supreme Court decision, which had been upheld at every turn, for 50 years before getting it overturned. They’re not going to let a little thing like an election stop them from stripping the rights from women. They’ll just go back to other methods, like the ones used before Roe was overturned. There will be new zoning laws for clinics, new procedural requirements, and lots of new hoops to jump through, all for the “safety of women,” of course.

If we were to Play the Game Tonight, I don’t necessarily see the Democrats flipping that many voters. They can gain by hyping the issue but it will more likely be from Independents. I doubt there will be many Republican converts. I think this motion was shot down because it was just an issue. There were no “politicians” tied to it, therefore, no personal baggage or smears. (Although I’m sure there was plenty of misinformation passed around.) I believe a lot of Republicans voted to maintain the right to safe abortions because they could do it without having to vote for a damned liberal snowflake commie Democrat.

And I also think the Republicans will have learned something quite valuable. To support women’s health? No, I’m guessing they learned not to put any more pet issues on the ballot. Even though they thought they had it rigged by putting it up during the primaries, when fewer Democrats were voting, it still got shellacked by their own people, who might not have liked giving up bodily autonomy in favor of team politics. I doubt you’ll see Republicans place any more hot-button issues on state ballots.

But maybe the Democrats should Fight Fire With Fire. It worked for same-sex marriages… I think the difference is that a lot of Democratic Party principles are genuinely popular. If we can just peel them away from specific personalities, maybe we can get back to moving in a positive direction. If a single issue like this can Carry On this Wayward State, who knows what’s next?

That’s the PACT, Jack

I had to laugh, watching the PACT bill finally pass. I haven’t seen a pale, wealthy, men backtrack that hard since Michael Jackson did the “Moonwalk.” I guess it just shows that there IS a level of backlash that will move a Republican senator. 

It helps that the subject was aid for veterans, which is one of the primary flags Republicans use for wrapping themselves. It certainly didn’t look good on them considering all the huffing and puffing they did in claiming that athletes taking a knee were an insult to veterans and the military. And then there they were, torpedoing legislation to provide treatment for the vets they claim to revere, who were injured on the job. Talk about missing the forest for the trees. 

I’m glad there was at least someone on that side who went, “You know, guys? This isn’t just ‘owning the libs’ here, we’re severely pissing off our own voters. We just saw what they did in Kansas… You think maybe we should rethink this PACT thing and find a different issue to use for a political stunt?

Whip Inflation Now

Do you remember the old WIN buttons worn by the Gerald Ford administration to promote their efforts to fight inflation? Not unless you’re at least 50, I guess. But it looks good for the Democratic version, the Inflation Reduction Act, that is expected to pass through Congress. It was a real “sausage-making” experience, with a lot of horse-trading going on, primarily with the usual two, Manchin and Sinema, both of whom watered down the original bill packages considerably. Among other things, they had to cut insulin price reductions, and let hedge fund manager tax breaks and the Trump 1% tax cuts stand, but at least it ended up as a step in the right direction.

As far as I’m concerned, they can come back for the excised issues after the mid-terms, and use them as campaign fodder in the meantime. I mean, how does a politician like Sinema insist that keeping insulin at $1200 a pop is good for anyone but Big Pharma? Whoever runs against her (in 2024) or any other Republican who supports keeping the price that high should beat on that drum every single day on the campaign trail.

Democrats should have some sure-fire, slam-dunk material to use against any Republican who’s voting to keep prices high for their constituents, on behalf of the donor class. How can any politician argue against letting Medicare negotiate drug prices? But I never hear anyone bring that up.

And the great thing is, they can get people all riled up without even having to lie. Just bring out the opponent’s voting record. “Why are they voting for this? Why did they vote against that?”

Yes, I know votes can be misleading, but they don’t have to be. Sometimes a senator has to vote against something because of an odious side issue. That’s part of the sausage-making. But there are plenty of cases, like Sinema stripping insulin price reductions out of a completed proposal. As far as I’m concerned, there are zero good reasons for that other than as a big sloppy kiss to the drug manufacturers.

Very Interesting

There are a couple of angles to the Fed raising interest rates in the last months. The downside, of course, is that getting a loan for a house, car, or anything else, just got that much more expensive. Sweetpea and I have been lucky; our house and cars are paid for so we don’t have anything on which we’ve been paying interest.

But on the other side, savings account interest rates are rebounding as well. I noticed this last month, with my humble little online savings account. I opened it many years ago to take advantage of an offer for a high-interest checking and savings account. I think they were offering between 2-3%. But for the last five or so years, my interest rate has been adjusted down to .3%. The return was practically negligible.

But a couple weeks ago, it went up to .5%. Then .7%. Now it’s at .8% and I’m almost giddy. Maybe in another couple of weeks, it might reach, dare I say it? One by-god percent! A dude can dream, can’t he?

RIP

It was with great sadness, today, that I read of the passing of Olivia Newton-John. The cause of death was not announced. She was 73.

I was but a boy when her first songs came out on the radio. I thought this exotic name indicated a trio… Olivia, Newton, and John. I thought it must be Newton who had the deep voice on “Let Me Be There.” (I fully admit, I was not the brightest crayon in the box.)  

I learned the truth when I saw her picture on her first couple of album covers and I thought she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

I may have been only in grade school, but I was like, “That. I want THAT.”

Granted, I wouldn’t have known what to do with “that” if I had it, but I wanted it anyway. In fact, I wouldn’t have been able to speak a coherent sentence to her.

Even though my music tastes grew to be more BTO and Deep Purple than soft country classics, I always held a soft spot for Olivia and her light, beautiful voice. I was happy to see her continued success with her role in Grease, and then making contemporary hits like “Physical” and “Xanadu,” and “Magic,” the latter two with Jeff Lynne of ELO. She went on to fight breast cancer like a champ and make children’s albums. And I swear to the gods, she got better looking every year.

Rest in peace, dear, sweet Olivia. Here I will remain, hopelessly devoted to you.

Photo by Sarah Morris, Getty Images

Ghost in the Graveyard

In the most “in-character” thing he could do, TFG had his first ex-wife buried on his New Jersey golf course. At first blush, you’d think, “OK, makes sense, I guess.” But then we hear that this burial now qualifies his golf course as a “cemetery” and is thus exempt from property, inheritance, income, and sales taxes.

Isn’t that the most Trumpian thing you’ve ever heard of? And of course hers is a sparse gravesite, with nothing but a simple plaque on the ground, bearing her name, and birth/death dates.

How long before he puts up a tee box on this site? Or an ATM?

I would bet that when he goes to plan his own gravesite, it will resemble a shoddily built Taj Mahal. Granted, that’s only if he can figure out a way to get someone else to pay for it. But looking at how he used Ivana’s death announcement to fundraise, I don’t suppose it will be that hard.

One might think that her offspring would have had some objections to such a muted display. I mean, I’m sure Ivanka could have dropped some of her recently made fortune for a more impressive memorial site. But is it really a surprise that they didn’t? I’m sure they’re just stoked about ducking the estate taxes on the land when their old man finally kicks.

I think the state of New Jersey should revisit its laws on the subject and establish that there be a minimum number of graves on site before bestowing such tax avoidance largesse. I’m sure this wasn’t what they had in mind when the law was written. I mean, hell, everyone could try doing this… just bury Grandma in the backyard and live tax-free for as long as they have the property. They should close this big loophole before it catches on.

I like what fellow blogger Vixen Strangely suggested in the comments of her recent post, in which she hopes Ivanka turns poltergeist.

I think a good haunting is exactly what that place needs and I know just how it should be done. The ghost of Ivana should haunt her ex-husband’s golf game. She could use her powers to push all his drives out of bounds and into the woods and all his putts run short. TFG takes so much pride in his golf game, she’ll ruin it for him for the rest of his life.

Or she can just make his balls disappear. You can take that any way you’d like.

Fascist Q and A

Did you see who’s speaking at CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) this week? Hungarian authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, that’s who. In a speech last weekend, he said he “wanted to prevent Hungary from becoming a ‘mixed-race’ country and that countries with racial mixing are no longer countries.”

How very Republican of him. Do you think they’re having him there to debate his views on race relations? Or to pick up some tips?

You know it’s the latter. He’s even given them a 12-Step plan on how to attach liberal democracy.

Republicans aren’t even hiding their intentions anymore. They’re just coming out in the open and trying to erase our democracy, right under our noses.

I don’t care how aggressive some Democrats get with getting hyper-woke and bending our language in knots, it’s not nearly as bad as depriving people of equal rights under the law. When Republican apologists among us try to alibi out of this, saying, “I don’t think they’re going to overturn rights to mixed marriage or ban contraception,” I immediately remember all the people having that same conversation about Roe, and we know what happened there. Yes, they will. They’re saying they will, they’re finding out how to do it, they’ve installed a Supreme Court who will bless it, and they will do it at the first opportunity. Why else would they invite a public paragon of racial purity to speak to their convention?  And why else would he go, if he didn’t know he’d be preaching to the choir?

In these upcoming mid-terms, we need to be very cognizant of what is truly important and what is the sideshow. This shit right here is important.

Don’t Get Comfortable

As I mentioned last week, Democrats in Congress are trying to pass bills to safeguard same-sex marriage, abortion, and contraception. I hope they do, if for nothing but to make it obvious who is for what. BUT, in no way should we think it would the fight be over at that point.

If any such law passes, conservatives will begin challenging the law in court before the ink is dry. It will eventually end up at the Supreme Court and I guarantee they will find a way to nullify it. No matter how carefully the bill is crafted, (and I seriously hope they’re making this thing legally fireproof), they will come up with some kind of rationale, however shaky, to kibosh the whole thing. They’re already pretending that a couple of amendments don’t exist to justify overturning Roe.

I mean, that’s why they’re there; exercise the GOP’s will. The Constitution? The Will of the People? They don’t care. If they weren’t willing to rule this way, they wouldn’t have been on the Federalist Society’s list, to begin with. Their votes are already locked and loaded.

A View from the Crowd

I haven’t been out in a crowd for a while but when I do go, some things never change.

Last week Sweetpea and I went to see ZZ Top in downtown Baltimore and decided to have a mini stay-cation, by staying overnight at the Marriott Waterfront, which is right beside the concert venue.

The big, white, tented area is the venue, as shot from our room at the Marriott.

And hey look… Marriott is in favor of keeping abortion legal. This was on the wallpaper near the ceiling…

…Although I could be misinterpreting.

Now, I have seen a LOT of concerts in my day, 108 to be exact, and I always seem to have the same problem. There’s always some jackass standing right in front of me.

Now, I don’t mean when everyone else is standing, that’s normal. I mean when there’s no one else in the area standing up, but there they are, directly between me and the object of my attention.

I call this out in the Book of Bluz, particularly Bluz 3:24, “Whether it's at a ballgame, a concert, or whatnot, if you're the only one standing up, you're an asshole.  A complete, self-centered, self-absorbed, inconsiderate, flaming asshole.  Everyone else who bought a ticket didn't pay to see your back all night.”

The last time I was here was to see Boston in 2014. And there she was, one lone figure planted between me and the stage.

This night, our seats were pretty good, in the middle of the pavilion, behind the soundboard, with about 4 empty rows in between. (Why these rows were empty, I have no idea. They weren’t available for purchase when I was ticket shopping, that’s for sure. So I thought we’d be golden.

But then there was this guy, part of the event staff, who spent about half the show standing behind the people working the soundboard. He wasn’t acting as Security, working the board, he wasn’t doing anything but standing there watching the show. Right in front of me.

Occasionally he would be joined by a security person, who when she wasn’t making people who stood behind the sound area move along, stood right there beside him.

Most of the time I was able to look around the blockade, but it was irritating, especially since they were staff. They should know better than to block the view of paying customers.

The show itself was fine, albeit short. They started their encore songs after an hour and the show was over in 78 minutes. I don’t expect every show to run as long as a Springsteen show, but Bruce’s first set used to run longer than this. With a band that’s been around since 1969 and a huge catalog, they could have played another hour easily, and the crowd would have still known every song.

But while they were playing, it was fine. The bass player filling in for the late Dusty Hill was OK, but he just didn’t seem to have that same synch with guitarist Billy Gibbons that his predecessor did. They used to move together like they were tied to the same string.

It just seemed like they were going through the motions. It was the 5^th time I’ve seen them, but the last time was 28 years ago. I guess we all slow down.

I was hoping to produce a couple of decent pictures but alas, when I read the fine print of the venue rules, they allow small cameras, but none with a lens that extends over an inch. Mine does, when it’s zoomed. While I considered bringing it in anyway, there was a risk. I didn’t really care to bring it back to the room, and I certainly didn’t want it confiscated. So that left my cellphone camera, which in the iPhone 8, just isn’t as good as the ones in the newer models. This was the best of the bunch:

By comparison, this is a shot I took of Boston’s guitarist and founder/genius Tom Scholtz, with my regular camera in the same venue:

I don’t know if they had this camera ban in 2014… maybe I just missed it and got lucky.

But anyway, it was a nice night out and something we haven’t been able to do in several years.

Maybe we’ll catch them again in another 28 years.

Odd Bits - The Dead Pool Edition

Let’s talk about some things that happened:

The Mitch is Back

I saw that Mitch McConnell thinks the labor shortage will end once people run out of stimulus money. He said: “You've got a whole lot of people sitting on the sidelines because, frankly, they're flush for the moment. What we've got to hope is once they run out of money, they'll start concluding it's better to work than not to work."

Right. The $1400 they gave out a year ago is keeping unemployed people from getting jobs. People talk about politicians being removed from the common man but this guy embodies entitled ignorance. How far does this guy think $1400 goes when you’re not working for a year or more? Even considering that some states paid out higher amounts in unemployment, and that stopped ages ago.

No, Mitch, people are tired of scraping for loose change earned by doing shitty jobs. People can’t get child care for less than they’d make doing menial part-time work.

Mitch just pines for the good old days when people would flop all over each other trying to pick up the tidbits tossed out by the rich, like so many carp in an amusement park pond. He couldn’t be further removed from the average Kentuckian if he was assembled from a kit and lived in a crate under his desk.

“Did I Do Thaaat?”

Big surprise… That guy whose plight was carried by all the right-wing “news” outlets because his garage was burned and defaced with spray paint saying “Biden 2020”, and blamed it on Antifa and Black Lives Matters, actually staged the whole thing himself. It was an attempt to scam $300,000 out of his insurance company, $61,000 of which was actually paid out.

See, this is why conservatives’ first reaction to any obvious malfeasance on their own part is to claim it was a false-flag operation. Why? Because that’s what they do, over and over again. The longer I observe, the more obvious it becomes that whenever Republicans make accusations against Democrats, it’s something that they’re already doing.

I presume TFG, down in Mir-a-Lago, asking if he can get this guy on the payroll.

And Speaking of TFG…

Who had Ivana Trump in the death pool? That was kind of a surprise. And the timing of it, right before The Donald and his spawn were due to testify under oath? I’ve seen a small undercurrent of liberals wondering if maybe she was “helped” down the stairs as a way to keep kicking that “under oath” thing down the road. But there’s been nothing from the big players.

Can you imagine if the pump was on the other foot and something similar happened to Hillary before ex-President Clinton was supposed to testify about something? The entirety of the right-wing political and media apparatus would be howling about it being evidence that Clinton is an evil, murderous, mastermind. Hell, Rush Limbaugh would come back from the dead just to get in on that feeding frenzy.

Come to think of it, maybe the authorities should look into this situation more aggressively. It totally IS something Republicans routinely accuse Democrats of doing (mostly the Clintons), and as I just posited above, they’re not blaming if they’re not already doing it themselves. I wonder if they still have a tap on Roger Stone. This seems like his kind of dirty work.

Now Hear This

The January 6^th Committee just keeps stacking the bricks, don’t they? Last week they brought on a 2-pronged offensive. First, Pat Cipollone basically confirmed everything Cassidy Hutchinson said the week before, and I presume much more. They only presented him confirming prior testimony but said they’d feature him more in the next hearing. So we have THAT to look forward to, which is nice.

They really raked Sydney “The Kraken” Powell over the coals, and deservedly so. She seemed nuttier than a shithouse rat, and that was based on recorded testimony. Who knows what kind of crazy is released behind closed doors.

The telling thing to me is that when she was defending herself against the Dominion lawsuit, she said, “No reasonable person would think what (she) said was true.” But there she was, selling that bullshit to the President and his legal team, right there in the Oval Office. So obviously we can conclude that TFG isn’t a reasonable person, although there’s a lot more than just this incident on which one can make that assessment.

He actually wanted to put her in charge of analyzing the fraud charges they were drumming up, despite her having zero applicable experience. The only qualification she needed was being a complete toady, who would draw conclusions first and then make the facts fit later on. Had she been the Georgia Secretary of State, she definitely would have found those 11,000 votes he was looking for.

The other prong was the testimony of two outsiders, one guy who worked with the Oath Keepers, who testified to their essential nature. (White nationalism and racism.)

The other guy was just a random schmo who showed up in DC for the rally and followed the crowd into the Capitol building. He said he really believed the election was stolen because that’s what he heard on Fox “News.” But by doing further investigation, he realized that he’d been lied to. (Imagine that.) All it cost him was his job and his house.

When asked if he learned anything from his experience, he said, "Take the blinders off and see what’s going on.” That will never happen to anyone who continues to rely on Fox for their information.

I hope these guys got into the Witness Protection program when they were done because they’re just regular guys who don’t get a security detail. Both of their lives are going to become a living hell of harassment, intimidation, and death threats. I wish them well.

The Voting Bluz

Tomorrow is Election Day for Maryland’s primaries. Sweetpea and I have already turned in our ballots. We got them in the mail a few weeks ago, and once completed, we submitted them at a drop box about a mile down the street. You can also mail it but I like that finality of putting it in the box ourselves. I wish every American could vote that easily but judging by all the barriers erected by the Red States, that’s the last thing Republicans want.

Sweetpea and I know we're fortunate that we live in a state that works to make it easier to vote, rather than suppressing it. We signed up online to have ballots mailed to us in perpetuity. (There was also an option for just this year but we like this method of voting and plan for it to become our norm.)

Primary Day is the de facto BIG election around this reliably Blue state, except when it comes to the governor’s race. You never know who’s going to pop for Governor. In the recent races the Republicans won, I thought the Democratic candidates were empty suits, devoid of personality. They were aggressively unmemorable. One was a woman, and another was Black. Neither characteristic drove people to the polls.

There was a whole slate of Democrats running for the nomination. Frankly, I’d be happy with several of them. I ended up voting for Peter Franchot, who is our current Comptroller. He’s not the most inspiring but I figured he knows how State government runs and should be able to step in and be effective right away. Tom Perez would also be a fine governor, but former Obama cabinet members don’t seem to have much juice when running on their own. Wes Moore is backed by the teachers' unions, so I’d be OK with him too. Having a solid Education guy would make Sweetpea (the elementary school teacher) happy. I haven’t heard any of them speak or debate and you can’t really go by their commercials, so I have no idea who may be a stiff and who is not.

It’s kind of a cage match on the GOP side, with Trumper Dan Cox vs Gov. Larry Hogan cabinet member Kelly Schultz. I think the Democrats are involving themselves in this one to promote Cox because he’d be much easier to beat. Larry Hogan won two terms because he’s a non-wingnut Republican (who knows he has to deal with a veto-proof legislature). I’m sure things will clarify long before this November.