Bend Over, Kids

Because the One Big Bamboozle Bill cuts $900B out of Medicaid every year for the next 10 years, the states will have to take up the slack.

And because some states have Filial Responsibility Laws on their books, the children of indigent seniors will be held liable for the cost of the care and support of their elderly parents - plus, in some cases, whatever other family members are currently getting help from Medicaid, or are otherwise unable to care for themselves.

This could get crazy stupid bad in a big fuckin' hurry.

This Is Why You Might Be Responsible For Paying Your Parents’ Medical Debts

Some states have filial responsibility laws that let creditors turn to adult children for payment of their parents' medical bills.

As the cost of health care expenses rise, so does anxiety.

Key Takeaways

• Some states have filial responsibility laws that let creditors turn to adult children for payment of their parents' health care costs.
• Filial responsibility laws need to be triggered before going into effect, and enforcement is rare.
• Collectors may still pursue adult children for their parents' unpaid medical bills.
• Adult children should consider planning ahead for their parents' health care costs with emergency savings and long-term care insurance.
• If you’re like most Americans, handling the vast array of health care expenses is a major financial challenge. As those costs rise, so does anxiety.

A February 2024 KFF Health Tracking poll found that 74% of respondents were worried about how they would pay for unexpected medical bills and health care services for themselves and their families.

It’s one thing to cover your own and your children's bills, but in some cases you may be paying for those of your parents.

Here’s when your parents' care costs may be passed on to you, and how to prepare for those expenses even if you are not legally liable.

Filial responsibility laws were enacted to ensure that adult children will financially support their parents who can’t provide for themselves.

If your state has these statutes, technically it's possible that you would be required to pay for some of your parents' essential care needs when they are unable to do so.

Each state has its own variation of the filial responsibility law. For example, California Family Code section 4400 reads, “Except as otherwise provided by law, an adult child shall, to the extent of the adult child’s ability, support a parent who is in need and unable to self-maintain by work.”

And in Nevada, per NRS 428.070, filial liability is mandated if there is a written agreement to pay for care, the child has control over and access to the parent's assets or income and the child has sufficient financial ability to support the parent.

A couple of quick Google searches:

"Filial responsibility" refers to laws in some U.S. states that can hold adult children financially responsible for supporting their indigent parents. The term has recently become associated in social media and news discussions with a new federal law known as the "One Big Beautiful Bill" (OBBB) or the "Big Beautiful Bill Act," which passed in July 2025.

The connection is not that the OBBB created a new federal filial responsibility law, but rather that critics suggest its significant cuts to social safety net programs like Medicaid and SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) may lead to existing state filial responsibility laws being enforced more frequently.

How the Laws Interact

• Filial Responsibility Laws (State Level): These are long-standing state laws (some dating back to colonial times) that impose a duty on adult children to support parents who cannot support themselves. Most states have these laws, but they are rarely enforced, with Pennsylvania being a notable exception where nursing homes have successfully sued adult children for unpaid bills.
• The "One Big Beautiful Bill" Act (Federal Level): This federal law, passed in July 2025, extended tax cuts and made significant changes and cuts to federal spending on health and nutrition programs. Key changes include:

An estimated $911 billion in Medicaid spending cuts over the next 10 years.

• New work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents to receive Medicaid and SNAP benefits.
• Provisions that could result in millions of people losing health coverage.

The Concern

Advocates and legal experts argue that as federal support for long-term care and health services is reduced, more elderly individuals may become "indigent" (unable to pay for care). When this happens, medical facilities, such as nursing homes, might turn to existing state-level filial responsibility laws to seek reimbursement from the adult children, potentially leaving families with massive, unexpected bills.

For my home peeps:

Colorado does not have filial responsibility laws, meaning adult children are not legally required to financially support their indigent parents under this type of law. Therefore, a nursing home cannot directly sue an adult child for their parent's unpaid bills in Colorado. However, there are exceptions where adult children could be held responsible for their parent's debt, such as if they signed a contract as a guarantor for a care facility or if they jointly own assets with the parent.

Key points about filial responsibility laws in Colorado

• No direct legal obligation: Colorado does not have a law that mandates adult children support their parents financially to the same extent as states with filial responsibility laws.
• Nursing home contracts: If a nursing home or other care facility requires a family member to sign a contract and act as a guarantor for the parent's bills, the family member may become personally liable for those costs, even if the state does not have a filial responsibility law.
• Jointly owned assets: If you and your parent jointly own assets, like a house or bank account, the state may take action against those assets to recover costs paid by Medicaid after the parent's death, which could affect your inheritance.
• Medicaid estate recovery: The state's Medicaid estate recovery program is separate from filial responsibility laws. It allows the state to seek repayment of Medicaid benefits from the parent's estate after their death. This can reduce or eliminate what an adult child inherits.

States with Filial Responsibility Laws (as of 2025):

1. Alaska
2. Arkansas
3. California
4. Connecticut
5. Delaware
6. Georgia
7. Idaho
8. Indiana
9. Iowa
10. Kentucky
11. Louisiana
12. Maryland
13. Massachusetts
14. Mississippi
15. Montana
16. Nevada
17. New Hampshire
18. New Jersey
19. North Carolina
20. North Dakota
21. Ohio
22. Oregon
23. Pennsylvania
24. Rhode Island
25. South Dakota
26. Tennessee
27. Utah
28. Vermont
29. Virginia
30. West Virginia

On Politics Being Local

I grew up with an attitude that Aurora was a place for white people who couldn't afford a nicer place in the suburbs west of Denver - which is where I grew up (surprise, surprise - chauvinism takes many forms).

It was total bunk of course. Aurora was as good a place as any other Urban Sprawl kinda place. It's flat and open and treeless, and that made it easier to develop. So that's where all the fast affordable growth was happening - because there was nothing to stop it. 

Over the years, under "conservative leadership", it started to become a place where effective, community-focused government was about as abundant as wolves and prairie bison. 

When you cut funding for schools and parks and all the other stuff people need to feel involved and spiritually grounded, you don't get to act surprised when the civilizing parts of the social contract begin to fray.

Let some ignorant racist politicians exploit people's fears in order to gain power, and you've got a place on the fast track to becoming the very dystopia that those politicians always end up manufacturing by playing on those fears. And whether you do it intentionally or otherwise, you get a self-fulfilling prophecy.

People eventually get wise to the bullshit, and they'll move to make changes. Which is something we saw in a pretty big way this last Tuesday.



Aurora Ousts Danielle Jurinsky and the Council’s Conservative Majority

We named the controversial Aurora City Council rep a Person to Watch in 2025, and now you can watch her leave her seat.

Aurora has a way of surprising people.

Even for people who grew up in Aurora, it was surprising to see the city thrust into the middle of last year’s presidential debate because of overblown stories of violent Venezuelan gangs.

In October 2024, Donald Trump came to Aurora, today a city of 100,000 foreign-born residents and 160 languages, to play into the anti-immigrant fervor that emerged after an embattled landlord said Venezuelan gangs had taken over the town. The once-and-future president even named his mass deportation plan Operation Aurora. And as soon as he was re-elected, he began rolling out that plan.

Aurora City Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky had earned a national profile by sounding the alarm on Tren de Aragua, and she was knighted by Trump himself to lead the transformation of Aurora into a conservative bastion right at liberal Denver’s doorstep. As a result, Westword named her to our People to Watch list in January, calling her “the face of Aurora.”

We’re aiming to raise $50,000 by December 31, so we can continue covering what matters most to this community. If Westword matters to you, please take action and contribute today, so when news happens, our reporters can be there.

So it was surprising to see her lose her re-election bid, finally conceding on the night of Wednesday, November 5.

“While last night’s election didn’t go the way we had hoped, I am deeply proud of the work we’ve accomplished together,” Jurinsky said on social media. “I have served my hometown and all of you with every ounce of passion, loyalty and heart that I have…..Now, God has a different plan in store, and that’s okay.”

She won’t be alone in exiting council chambers. Fellow conservative at-large councilmember Amsalu Kassaw also conceded with a message on social media late November 5.

“We gave it our all, a grassroots campaign filled with heart, hope and unity. The system and the numbers are not with us this time, yet our faith, spirit, and community remain strong,” Kassaw wrote. “I’m deeply proud of my team, our volunteers and every supporter who stood beside me.”

Republican councilmember Steve Sundberg was also losing his race as of late November 5. If he is ousted, too, progressives will be in the majority on Aurora City Council.

“Right” from the start

Aurora City Council is a nonpartisan, ten-person body, so it’s hard to determine when it last had a progressive majority. The mayor, which is also officially a nonpartisan position, has a vote on council, too, and Aurora’s mayors tend to be conservative. Current Mayor Mike Coffman, for example, was a Republican Congressman.

In 2017, then-councilmembers Nicole Johnston and Allison Hiltz were labeled “liberal trailblazers” who helped flip a conservative-dominant council that also included current Councilmember Crystal Murillo. That council wasn’t decidedly progressive, though, and it suffered plenty of five-five splits.

In 2020, at the end of Trump’s first term, the council couldn’t decide whether to allow local cooperation with ICE or declare itself a sanctuary city, and Coffman broke the tie by voting against it. In 2021, the council split on votes over Coffman’s urban camping ban and a proposal to allow marijuana lounges, which caused both measures to fail.

When Johnston resigned to take a job in Colorado Springs in June 2021, half of the councilmembers wanted Democrat Ryan Ross to fill her seat, and the other half wanted Republican sports-bar owner Steve Sundberg, who was elected to the spot officially that November.

In that election, Jurinsky and fellow conservative Dustin Zvonek picked up the at-large seats left behind by Hiltz, who exited politics to focus on her family, and Dave Gruber. Councilmember Ruben Medina, a progressive, took the slot opened when conservative Marsha Berzins left to run unsuccessfully for Arapahoe County Treasurer.

By 2022, Aurora City Council had a 6-4 conservative majority, as well as conservative Coffman to break any tie.

That majority gained some padding when Councilmember Juan Marcano ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2023 and gave up his seat. Councilwoman Stephanie Hancock, who is pro-Trump and campaigned on a law-and-order platform, won Marcano’s seat that year.

In June 2024, Councilmember Curtis Gardner announced that he would change his party affiliation from Republican to unaffiliated after the Colorado GOP ran anti-LGBTQ+ ads. The move did little to transform council, though, and Gardner is still considered a conservative, if more moderate, member.

In August 2024, the Venezuelan gang rumor took off, landing Jurinsky on popular social media channels, along with Fox News and Dr. Phil Primetime . Her appearances discussing how an influx of migrants into the metro area had ruined Aurora paved the way for Trump’s visit in October.

When Zvonek left his seat this January to work with the Common Sense Institute, a right-leaning think tank, Kassaw kept the council in a firmly pro-Trump position that favored laws tough on immigration, crime and homelessness. He was open about his job as an officer for GEO Group at the ICE detention center in Aurora, and even though he kept quieter than Jurinsky, they both talked about Trump’s mass deportation plan as a way to restore law and order in Aurora.

A New Direction

On Election Day, November 4, Aurora City Council had seven conservative reps plus Coffman to overrule the three lonely progressives — Medina, Murillo and Alison Coombs — who had been hanging on for four years. That conservative majority hoped to grow with the return of Berzins, who was running against Medina for her old seat.

Before the night was over though, it looked like the conservative majority was no more. Sundberg, Kassaw and Jurinsky were all losing to progressive candidates.

As of late November 5, Sundberg was about 800 votes shy of challenger, Amy Wiles while Jurinsky and Kassaw held the third and fourth positions in the at-large race, in which the top two candidates will win. Failed mayoral candidate and former Canadian football pro Rob Andrews is leading, followed by progressive young gun Alli Jackson. Jurinsky was nearly 4,000 votes behind Jackson, a gap she conceded she could not close.

As the vote now stands, Aurora City Council is about to convert to a 6-4 progressive majority. Gardner, Hancock, Angela Lawson and Francoise Bergan are the last conservatives left on the council, but only Hancock and Bergan are registered Republicans; the other two are unaffiliated. Coffman has just two more years left in his final term.

Over the past four years, the conservative majority overruled progressive positions on issues like the appointment of Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain, the switch to virtual meetings to avoid protesters upset with the death of Kilyn Lewis (that ends November 17), declaring Aurora a “non-sanctuary” city, jail time for shoplifters, and an ad campaign to stop people from giving change to the homeless.

The incoming progressives ran on promises of affordable housing, boosting small businesses and criminal justice reform, among other issues. Campaign promises are no guarantee of the council’s direction, though, and Aurora is never short of surprises.

Red To Blue

This New Guy

Talarico could be a rising star.

In his Own Words

Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’

The far-right commentator didn’t pull his punches when discussing his bigoted views on current events

Charlie Kirk, the far-right commentator and ally of Donald Trump, was killed on Wednesday doing what he was known for throughout his career – making incendiary and often racist and sexist comments to large audiences.

If it was current and controversial in US politics, chances are that Kirk was talking about it. On his podcasts, and on the podcasts of friends and adversaries, and especially on college campuses, where he would go to debate students, Kirk spent much of his adult life defending and articulating a worldview aligned with Trump and the Maga movement. Accountable to no one but his audience, he did not shy away in his rhetoric from bigotry, intolerance, exclusion and stereotyping.

Here’s Kirk, in his own words. Many of his comments were documented by Media Matters for America, a progressive non-profit that tracks conservative media.

On race

If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 23 January 2024

If you’re a WNBA, pot-smoking, Black lesbian, do you get treated better than a United States marine?

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 8 December 2022

Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 19 May 2023

If I’m dealing with somebody in customer service who’s a moronic Black woman, I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because of affirmative action?

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 3 January 2024

If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us … You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 13 July 2023

On debate

We record all of it so that we put [it] on the internet so people can see these ideas collide. When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence. That’s when civil war happens, because you start to think the other side is so evil, and they lose their humanity.

– Kirk discussing his work in an undated clip that circulated on X after his killing.

Prove me wrong.

– Kirk’s challenge to students to publicly debate him during the tour of colleges he was on when he was assassinated.

On gender, feminism and reproductive rights

Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.

– Discussing news of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement on The Charlie Kirk Show, 26 August 2025

The answer is yes, the baby would be delivered.

– Responding to a question about whether he would support his 10-year-old daughter aborting a pregnancy conceived because of rape on the debate show Surrounded, published on 8 September 2024

We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 April 2024

On gun violence

I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.

– Event organized by TPUSA Faith, the religious arm of Kirk’s conservative group Turning Point USA, on 5 April 2023

On immigration

America was at its peak when we halted immigration for 40 years and we dropped our foreign-born percentage to its lowest level ever. We should be unafraid to do that.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 22 August 2025

The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 20 March 2024

The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 1 March 2024

On Islam

America has freedom of religion, of course, but we should be frank: large dedicated Islamic areas are a threat to America.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 30 April 2025

We’ve been warning about the rise of Islam on the show, to great amount of backlash. We don’t care, that’s what we do here. And we said that Islam is not compatible with western civilization.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 24 June 2025

Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.

– Charlie Kirk social media post, 8 September 2025

On religion

There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 6 July 2022

Farm Guy To Farm Guy

What They're Up To

Judd Gregg on with Ari Melber

When Gregg says, "The country just isn't going to go with a socialist...", I think we can hear some of what the GOP is planning.

First, Ari shoulda pushed back on the "Bernie's a socialist" thing. There may well be a few "socialist" aspects to Bernie's philosophy, but I haven't heard him espousing anything that sounds like "the people must seize the means of production" - and that's kinda the big one.

Anyway -

The obvious part is that Cult45 want to run against Bernie. We've seen efforts from more than a couple of "conservatives" to push Republicans to vote for Bernie in the open primaries.

But I think it goes beyond the usual divide-n-conquer and scare-mongering they always use against "liberals" and anyone who shows signs of getting people together in order to resist the Daddy State. 

I think they have mountains of rat-fuckery shit they were planning to use against him if he'd pulled it off in 2016, and knowing the bellicose propensities of these clowns, I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude they're champin' at the bit, obsessing over the phrase that always haunts their subconscious: "An unused weapon is a useless weapon".

They've been running the same plays this time. They're tearing away at Biden - and the others too - but leaving Bernie more or less unscathed, except for a few potshots, and the usual needling of the anti-Bernie factions in the Dem coalition, which makes the Press Poodles salivate and put out the latest installment of "Democrats in disarray...".

If Biden gets the nomination, he goes into the general election wounded, and they can keep pimping the resentment and victimhood bullshit that the Bernie Bros stewed about the whole time in 2016, and are still muttering about.

If Bernie gets the nomination, they'll pull out every little piece of shit they've been stock-piling for the last 5 years, and you know it's gotta be pretty fuckin' awful.

(some of the shit I've seen, just with a little light browsing on 4chan and Gateway and Breitbart, is bad enough that I won't put it up here even with quotation marks and *s - it's bad - it's really fuckin' bad)

And actually, I think Gregg has probably had a bit of a firsthand look, and knows a little something about what they're planning, and what's likely to happen this time around no matter who the Dems nominate.

So I'll listen to the Never Trumpers, and the ex-Repub rat-fuckers, and the "conservative brain trust dweebs" but like Dick Nixon said: "Don't count on the fella who made the mess to clean it up."

Here It Comes, Kentucky

Looks like we might get a good one goin' in the Democratic primary to pick who'll have the privilege of trying to kick Moscow Mitch outa the US Senate.

Mike Broiher:

Amy McGrath:

And there's some reporting that says Charles Booker (State Rep) is considering jumping into it too.

Here's hoping for a candidate who stomps McConnell 'til there's nothin' left but a greasy spot on the rug.

The Buzz Man

You've heard it before, and here it is again:

Of all the wealth generated in the world last year, 82% of it went to the Top 1%.
None of it - NONE OF IT - went to the bottom 50%.

And there's a very good rundown of what's been happening in the Mueller investigation, and the bit about the use of bots and American social media.*

Buzz Burbank - News & Comment:




*BTW -

Why Fake News Targeted Trump Supporters - The Atlantic from last year.

‘Fake News’: Wide Reach but Little Impact, Study Suggests - NYT this month 

(I think this guy's conclusions are a bit silly, because we know that moving even a low percentage of voters makes a huge difference)
Here's the study

Abstract: 

Though some warnings about online “echo chambers” have been hyperbolic, tenden- cies toward selective exposure to politically congenial content are likely to extend to misinformation and to be exacerbated by social media platforms. We test this prediction using data on the factually dubious articles known as “fake news.” Using unique data combining survey responses with individual-level web tra c histories, we estimate that approximately 1 in 4 Americans visited a fake news website from October 7-November 14, 2016. Trump supporters visited the most fake news web- sites, which were overwhelmingly pro-Trump. However, fake news consumption was heavily concentrated among a small group — almost 6 in 10 visits to fake news web- sites came from the 10% of people with the most conservative online information diets. We also find that Facebook was a key vector of exposure to fake news and that fact-checks of fake news almost never reached its consumers.
Happy Friday!

Today's Told Ya So

From 2014 in PoliticusUSA:

During the protests against America’s involvement in the Viet Nam war, it became very popular for warmongers and so-called patriots to tell young men facing losing their lives in a worthless war and those protesting to save them that this is “America, love it or leave it.” The implication was that since Congress adhered to the Constitution in waging war, regardless the devastating consequences, the American people were obliged to either show their love of country and support the war or get out. There is a segment of the population today that hates America, its people, and the nation’s founding document, but instead of packing up and leaving the country, they have tasked Republicans to punish the entire population by legislating that all Americans suffer their lifestyle founded on poverty, bigotry, ill-health, and religious ignorance. Although there are Americans who hate this nation across the country, it is the former Confederacy that is punishing the people because they failed in their attempt to destroy America of their rejection of the United States Constitution they claim to love.

Southern states are still resentful they were unable to rip America apart because the Constitution forbade them from keeping dark-skinned human beings as livestock, so they spent the past 149 years punishing different groups of Americans based on their religion’s instruction manual (Christian bible). Over the past thirty years, angry southerners began electing Republicans to strip everything from the people until they relented to a government by bible that drove their attempt to restrict other Americans from their Constitutional freedoms. Republicans have happily accommodated southerners to bring down the rest of the nation to their level of poverty and distress that southern red state voters embrace so long as they have imaginary enemies who believe Americans deserve more than slave wages, sickness, dire poverty, prayer, and firearms.

Keith

The GOP has to be held to account on this.  They don't get to pretend they had nothing to do with what many of us knew would happen eventually.

Trump became all but inevitable by 1992 with Pat Buchanan's scary prime time tirade at the GOP convention in Houston.

Just a friendly reminder:

This didn't get all fucked up yesterday, and we won't be able to un-fuck it by tomorrow.

Stay focused

Work together

Get shit done

Yow

45* lies. A lot. Everybody knows that, and about 20% of us are still with him, while the rest of us are wondering what it's gonna take to peel the rubes away.

Prob'ly not likely to happen.

Scientific American, working out the differences between White Lies, Black Lies, and Blue Lies:

Blue lies are a different category altogether, simultaneously selfish and beneficial to others—but only to those who belong to your group. As University of Toronto psychologist Kang Lee explains, blue lies fall in between generous white lies and selfish “black” ones. “You can tell a blue lie against another group,” he says, which makes it simultaneously selfless and self-serving. “For example, you can lie about your team's cheating in a game, which is antisocial, but helps your team.”

- and -

Around the world, children grow up hearing stories of heroes who engage in deception and violence on behalf of their in-groups. In Star Wars, for example, Princess Leia lies about the location of the “secret rebel base.” In the Harry Potter novels (spoiler alert!), the entire life of double-agent Severus Snape is a lie, albeit a “blue” one, in the service of something bigger than himself.

That explains why most Americans seem to accept that our intelligence agencies lie in the interests of national security, and we laud our spies as heroes. From this perspective, blue lies are weapons in intergroup conflict. As Swedish philosopher Sissela Bok once said, “Deceit and violence—these are the two forms of deliberate assault on human beings.” Lying and bloodshed are often framed as crimes when committed inside a group—but as virtues in a state of war.

This research—and those stories—highlight a difficult truth about our species: We are intensely social creatures, but we’re prone to divide ourselves into competitive groups, largely for the purpose of allocating resources. People can be prosocial—compassionate, empathic, generous, honest—in their groups, and aggressively antisocial toward out-groups. When we divide people into groups, we open the door to competition, dehumanization, violence—and socially sanctioned deceit.

“People condone lying against enemy nations, and since many people now see those on the other side of American politics as enemies, they may feel that lies, when they recognize them, are appropriate means of warfare,” says George Edwards, a Texas A&M political scientist and one of the country’s leading scholars of the presidency.

When we see each other as enemies - you and your team over there, trying to fuck things up for me and my team over here - it gets pretty easy to rationalize doing whatever it takes to "win". Because in that bumper-sticker-binary mindset, winning means everybody else has to lose.

Maybe It's Just Me

From a distance, and if you squint just a bit, the GOP Convention logo looks kinda like an advertisement for The La Brea Tar Pits.

Just sayin'.

Charlie Gets There

Charlie Pierce, attempting to give a us a look at things to come. 

It is my considered opinion that, as far as the simple process of voting goes, the World's Last Great Democracy couldn't organize a two-car funeral if you spotted it the hearse. The primaries on Tuesday night were an endless carnival of blunders, cock-ups, and general mayhem. This is the first election cycle we've had since John Roberts declared the Day of Jubilee and gutted the Voting Rights Act. These two things are not coincidental. The good folks at the SEIU have done a great job aggregating the various atrocities.

For example, Native Americans, the last Americans to obtain the right to vote, face a staggering array of obstacles. In Alaska, for example, Native villages can be as much as 150 miles from a polling place, and that only by boat or airplane. There is no consistent national policy on whether or not tribal identification cards are recognized under the spate of new voter-ID laws that passed in the wake of the 2007 decision upholding an Indiana law and that became a flood after Roberts and the Court declared the Day of Jubilee seven years later. The isolation of many Native communities often prevents people who are trying to vote from receiving the legal advice they need to protect their right to the franchise. And that is only the most extreme example of the chicanery that is going on.

This election ought to be a landslide that rightfully sweeps away the GOP and shames them out of their stoopid reliance on an Authoritarian and Hypocritical Bait-n-Switch brand of politics. But instead, it promises to be another close one - another great example of the media-generated, ad-revenue-fueled myth of a closely divided nation, sponsored by smart corporate money that wants more tax dollars funneled into their coffers while making sure the Coin-Operated Politicians have the rubes pissed off at anybody but the Rent-Seeking Corporatists.

Here's how I think it's supposed to work. 

People are turning away from the GOP in droves, and probably, while a lot of them intend not to vote at all, a nice big bunch (who would usually vote for them) intend to vote against the Repubs like they did in '92.  If you can keep a significant percentage of them from voting at all, you'll probably still lose, but it'll look really close, and that's what matters now.

And even if you can't keep enough people away from the polls to make a big difference in National or State-Wide races, you can prevent the balance being tipped in the very important "small stuff" races like County Supervisor and DA and State Legislature etc. So if the GOP can keep a handle on that level, then they can go on pretending they have a case to make about "big, far-away government tellin' the little guys what to do yada yada yada".

Remember always that elections get decided by about a dozen votes per precinct. 

The key is maintaining balance between the 2 competing sides. If the Red Group has 49%, and the Blue Group has 49%, that means I can throw in my 2% to support whatever candidate promises me the biggest tax breaks or subsidies or military protection for my investment holdings in FuckedUp-istan, or whatever. This is the old game of Divide And Conquer, but with a heapin' helpin' of Henry Kravitz Corporate Raider thrown in. 

(And don't you dare start thinking we aren't being distracted while certain politicians are working hard to sell everything in this country to the highest bidder and take us back to the glory days of 1750, but that's a slightly different rant - closely related, but that comes after a few more rounds)

Voter Suppression is all about not allowing "the divide" to get so big that the 2% loses its oomph.

But also too, remember that the GOP is very much on the defensive:  

1) makes it all the more dangerous

2) they're just looking to survive to fight another day, and that means: 

3) the Dems have to dominate. They have to win big. And when was the last time they managed that one - and more to the point of my theme here, when was the last time they were allowed to do that?  Hillary seems to be the perfect fit for the occasion - ie: she'll win, but not by enough to upset that delicate and finely-crafted balance.  And that also is a slightly different rant.

And BTW - if you think it looks like a mini-series on network TV, you ain't wrong.  The game is totally reliant on distraction and misdirection, and we've been thoroughly conditioned to  get caught up in the gripping drama of real-life events as they unfold blah blah blah, so that we stay frozen in place, allowing "our betters" to make the important decisions for us while we pretend to be well-informed and involved.

One last wrinkle: those astoundingly shitty Anti-Civil-Rights laws passed recently in Georgia and North Carolina? That's this year's version of The Big Wedge designed to motivate the "Christian Values Voters".  The GOP will likely flack the fuck outa that one, screeching that the valiant "conservatives" are trying to protect Real America from The Homo, and if you don't go vote, then the police will have no choice but to break down your doors and force you to Gay Rape your house pets. You know the drill.

Up on your hind legs, kids. Stay together. Work together. Get shit done.

Today's Bernie

Bernie really gets it sometimes.  We've allowed ourselves to be suckered into thinking that a kind of selective (if not arbitrary) authoritarian crap is what our Justice System is supposed to be about.

Be honest, @BernieSanders hated the Crime Bill. Spoke against it passionately & repeatedly.

Watch this.

POWERFULhttps://t.co/69F4R7IQkI

— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) February 27, 2016

And BTW - it's a pretty simple parlay to connect the fucked-up-edness of our legal system with the total FUBAR of the Corporate Prisons Industry.

Stay in line or they'll fuck you up - just because they can.

Down To Five

And Governor Dumpster Fire bites the dust, proving once again that as a political prognosticator, I make a pretty good floor wax.

With that in mind, I might as well let my freak flag fly:

Maybe I'm just die-hard and stubborn, but I can't stop thinking this isn't the end of it.  With very small (and fading fast) hopes that Trump won't get the nomination, and knowing pretty well what a monumental cluster fuck is brewing if he does, the GOP has to be scrambling behind the scenes to bring in a ringer.

And there seems to be way too many giddy Dems wandering around thinking the dissolution of the GOP isn't at least potentially a catastrophic systems-level failure.  With so many Repubs in charge of state and local governments, a thorough fracturing and break up of an entire political party could easily spell even bigger trouble for our little experiment in self-government.  We ain't seen nothin' yet, kids.

Take The Higher Moral Ground

Here's a picture of "their" guys:

And here's what "they're" doing about it:

And here's a picture of your guy:

And what are you doing about it?

Something To Remember

By way of an interesting piece at Yahoo Politics:

But Trumpmania may be telling us a lot less about the dominant mood in the electorate at large than we think. As one of the more astute liberal bloggers, Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum, points out, Trump has been drawing the support of less than a quarter of Republican primary voters, who in turn make up less than a quarter of the voting public.

I suck at math, but I'm OK with 'rithmetic, so even I can figure out that ¼ of ¼ = 6.25% of the total vote.

So that means Hillary will win in 2016 by whatever substantial margin our Corporate Media Manipulators allow, which will be a landslide at about 52% - 48%.

Fair Warning - watch out for the Both-Sides crap that pops out near the end.  It's mild by current standards, but it's there.

Illusory Things

Carlin said it: "...we're given the illusion of choice..."

We see 22 different names on bottles of bourbon, and 30 different names on bags of potato chips, and 18 GOP candidates running for POTUS, and and and.

How pissed are the Teabaggers gonna be when they figure out they've been punked into pimping for Big Gubmint all along?  Just kidding - this is possibly the only place you're ever likely to find "Teabaggers" and "figure out" in the same sentence, so the rubes will remain safely encased in their Igno-rama-tron®, keeping the rest of us "safe", at least in terms of not being splattered by flying body tissue when the baggers' "brains" explode.

BTW: as always, just in case anybody's trying to take what I say and turn it into a Both-Sides thing - bullshit.  There's a difference.  And if you like to pretend you're above it all - stop it; just fucking stop.  

If you like the way things are; if you prefer having everything fucked up and getting more fucked up pretty much every day, then stay home and be the asshole who could've done something about it, but made a conscious decision not to.

About CPAC

There is some common cause to be made - it's just ridiculously difficult to get anybody to drop their guard long enough to hear what "our side" is saying.

Jib Jab on YouTube