Gimme Somethin' To Break

A Rant

I don't know this guy - he's new to me. Good rant tho.

Off_JaWaggon

Another Tune

Carsie Blanton, live at Red Rocks

Rich People

Today's Warning

The guy who tried to sell us on the idea of having Sarah Palin as VP is telling us not even to consider Trump because Marjorie Taylor Greene could be right on his coattails.

I think I can take him at his word on that one.

Today's Brian

Brian Tyler Cohen - Dan Crenshaw shits on a girl.

First - it would seem that girl is plenty capable of standing up to a bully. She held her own in good shape. Her question was bullshit (IMO), but I can get behind anyone willing to stand up and punch back.

Second - and the really important part: when a politician tries to prohibit you from questioning something about him or his policies or whatever, it's time to get as far away from that Nazi asshole as possible - rapidly.

Jan6 Stuff

Taking it seriously is what compels us to do the work necessary to find and appreciate the humor in it.

Jordan Klepper:

Andy Borowitz

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Sean Hannity has informed the congressional committee investigating the U.S. Capitol insurrection that swearing to tell the truth would be a violation of his contract with Fox News.

In a written statement, Hannity said that taking an oath “to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” would be “a betrayal of the solemn vow I made to Fox.”

“The members of the committee would no doubt require me to swear on a Bible,” he said. “However, I answer to a higher power: Rupert Murdoch.”

The committee members attempted to reassure Hannity that he would need to tell the truth only to them and not while he was doing his show, but he remained steadfast in his refusal.

“Telling the truth is a deal breaker,” Hannity said. “If I am seen doing it even once, it could destroy my brand.”

What's Goin' On

Millennials are our children. If they're turning out to be less than the perfect people we think they should be, then we have to look at ourselves first and stop blaming everything "on the schools" or "participation trophies" or "excessive self-esteem" or whatever bullshit we keep hearing from any side of the political fence. We made this world what it is, and we need to stop expecting our kids to react to it in a way that doesn't fit the facts they're confronted with out there in that world - like right fucking now we need to stop.

Sure, some of them are spoiled, over-privileged little shit bags. So name me a time when that wasn't the case for some people. Go ahead - I'll wait.

Here's the point: We've tried "helping them" by taking a giant dump on their heads at every opportunity. 

And when they don't respond well, we clutch our pearls and wonder where everybody else went wrong.

Let's trying helping them by helping them.

And we can start by listening to them.

Cody Johnston - Some More News:

(it's almost an hour long, which is pretty impressive all by itself)

if you think people should suffer,

cuz you suffered and you turned out OK,

then you didn't turn out OK

History Lesson

Today's guest lecturer is Amber Ruffin.

"On The Ones And Threes Elementary" - fuckin' brilliant.

Today's Beau

Justin King - Beau Of The Fifth Column

People who thump their chests about how they won't toe the line complaining bitterly about a guy who won't toe their line.

Here's the Garth Brooks tune in case you're interested.

We Shall Be Free

Today's Trae

Trae Crowder on the Texas Follies

About That Vax Denial Crap

John Oliver

And again I have to ask: Why is a once-a-week comedy show doing more journalism than most "news" organizations?

Perspective

NYT OpEd from a 20-year Navy veteran.

Being Willing to Die for This Country Can’t Protect Me From It

By Theodore R. Johnson
Mr. Johnson is a retired Navy commander who has written extensively about the politics of being Black and American.

I can’t remember the exact moment it occurred, but at some point early in my 20-year career in the U.S. Navy, I picked up a survival tactic. It wasn’t a novel technique for handling being stranded at sea or navigating out of a dense jungle in enemy territory; it was how to survive an encounter with American law enforcement.

The maneuver was quite simple: Each time I was pulled over by police officers and they asked for my license and registration, the first thing I gave them was my military ID.

It was no guarantee that the stop would go smoothly, but when you’re a Black man and those swirling blue lights cast a shadow of yourself in the car, it’s wise to stack the odds in your favor as much as possible. The military identification card was a communiqué that I was neither a threat to the officers nor to the society they police. And I have no doubt that the ID card with my uniformed picture and rank on it encouraged nearly all the policemen who stopped me to extend a little more grace.

But watching the video of Army Second Lt. Caron Nazario being pulled over, held at gunpoint, pepper-sprayed, and handcuffed — all while in his military uniform — was a stark reminder that not even a willingness to die for the country can protect you from it.

Seeing chemicals temporarily take Lieutenant Nazario’s sight, tears from pepper spray rolling down his face, I was reminded of the blinding of Isaac Woodard, a World War II soldier who was in uniform and on a bus ride home when he was beaten by police at a stop in South Carolina until his eyes permanently failed.

The ordeal also brought to mind World War I Army Pvt. Charles Lewis, who showed police his enlistment papers when they demanded to search his baggage and was jailed for assault and resisting arrest after arguing with officers about his innocence. That night, 10 days before Christmas, Lewis was lynched by a mob in Hickman, Ky., and the next day, the town found him hanging from a branch in his olive-green Army uniform.

For longer than there’s been a United States, two things have been true: Black Americans have served in all their country’s wars, and racism has prevented them from tasting the fullness of the very freedom many of them died fighting for. In the earliest conflicts, including the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, Black people escaped enslavement to serve in the military, only to be returned to bondage once the conflicts subsided. The benefits made available to service members and veterans throughout the military’s history, including the early 20th century’s transformational G.I. Bill, were largely withheld from Black Americans who served.

And our enemies knew it. On battlefields from World War I to the Vietnam War, Black troops were peppered with leaflets from enemy forces essentially asking, “Why are you over here fighting us when America is attacking your people at home?” Adversary nations didn’t have to look far for such material; Black Americans have been asking the United States variants of this question for centuries. And we heard it again from Lieutenant Nazario, who asked while being assaulted, “I’m serving this country, and this is how I’m treated?”

The military service of Black Americans has long been part of a deliberate strategy of superlative citizenship, a “twice as good” for civic life and a means of making a direct claim on all the rights and privileges of being an American by taking on one of its important responsibilities. Superlative citizenship draws its power from challenging a national hypocrisy, demonstrating that the country is more wedded to the appearance of holding certain truths as self-evident than to a steadfast commitment to ensure every citizen enjoys the rights that spring from them.

Superlative citizenship is also an explicit counterargument to the racist tropes that have been used to justify why Black people have always experienced a lesser version of America than many others. It asks a stubborn nation how it’s possible that a people historically deemed biologically, intellectually, culturally and socially inferior can be exemplars of the American spirit, performing the excellencies of citizenship even though the nation has not delivered on its promises.

It’s because of the prestige military service confers that few things challenge America’s conception of itself like a Black American in a military uniform. The differing societal statuses attached to race and to service in the armed forces create tension between Blackness and the uniform — the former long perceived as incompatible with being a real American and the latter suggesting the fullest embodiment of it.

Of course, as body camera footage of Nazario’s detainment clearly demonstrates, superlative citizenship exhibited by Black Americans is insufficient to avoid surveillance and violence. This plays out in many ways, large and small, from lethal confrontations to life’s smaller but consequential indignities. While in uniform, I was trailed for more than a half-hour by a department store’s loss prevention employee in the mall across the street from the Pentagon, as if I’d risk my career or my freedom for a polo shirt on clearance. And when telling my graduate class about seeking some sense of safety during a traffic stop by showing my military ID, one of my active-duty Army students told me how he’d tried that once and was quickly told, “That’s not going to help you, boy.”

And yet, though insufficient to stop racial discrimination, the violation of a Black American in uniform can be instrumental. When President Harry Truman learned of Mr. Woodard’s blinding and the violence exacted on other Black veterans, it led him to sign the historic executive order desegregating the military in 1948. Would the nation care about the video of Lieutenant Nazario, causing a cop with poor judgment to be removed from the force, if he hadn’t been a military officer in uniform? Would Lieutenant Nazario even be here to tell his story, or would he have shared the fate of Philando Castile, George Floyd, Daunte Wright and Eric Garner, whom Lieutenant Nazario called his uncle?

Of course, the uniform comes off; race doesn’t. This is why before letting Lieutenant Nazario go after not charging him with anything, according to the lawsuit he filed, the policemen who violently accosted him threatened his career if he spoke out about the stop. The implication was clear: Once the uniform is off and the military ID taken away, he is just another Black dude in America — a sober reminder that to too many people, the uniform matters more than the Black life it clothes.

Opinion

Trump's main "contribution" has been the re-popularization of the Out-n-Proud Racist American Asshole.

Gene Robinson, WaPo: (pay wall)

Opinion: Ron Johnson’s racism is breathtaking

It has become perfectly acceptable in the Republican Party to just go ahead and say the racism out loud — and to do so with apparent pride, and with no fear of consequences.

The most recent proof came from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who said last week that he “never felt threatened” by the overwhelmingly White crowd of insurrectionists that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, chanting, among other things, “Hang Mike Pence.” But, depending on who the protesters were, Johnson said, well, it might have been a different matter.

Johnson made the comments on conservative talk-radio host Joe Pagliarulo’s nationally syndicated show. “Now, had the tables been turned — Joe, this will get me in trouble — had the tables been turned and President Trump won the election and those were tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa protesters, I might have been a little concerned.”

But Johnson described the White mob this way: “I knew those are people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law, so I wasn’t concerned.”

As anyone whose brain is not addled by white supremacy recalls, the rioters showed how much they “respect law enforcement,” with their actions leading to the death of one police officer who was defending the Capitol and the injury of some 140 others. One policeman was beaten with a pole bearing the American flag, which is a strange way for his attackers to demonstrate love of country.

Johnson should have been pilloried by his GOP colleagues in the Senate, but none spoke up in outrage — or even mild disagreement. Asked Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” about Johnson’s comments, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) mumbled something about how members “speak for themselves.” That’s not the way it works, though. When it comes to such unambiguous racism, Republicans have only two choices: denounce it or own it.

This was not the first foolish and irresponsible thing Johnson has said about the Capitol insurrection. For a while, he tried to claim the violence was somehow sparked by leftist provocateurs just pretending to be supporters of then-President Donald Trump — until FBI Director Christopher A. Wray testified under oath that there was no evidence of any “fake” Trump supporters in the crowd.

But the racism of Johnson’s latest words is breathtaking. As far as he is concerned, a White mob at the Capitol that overruns police lines, smashes windows and ransacks offices isn’t breaking the law. In Johnson’s view, the millions of Americans who participated in Black Lives Matter protests do not “love this country.” And according to him, Black people who demonstrate against police violence and structural racism do not “truly respect law enforcement.”

Anyone who knows anything about American history will recognize this mind-set. I was reminded of something another prominent Republican said many years ago:

“I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the White and Black races — that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and Black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race.”

The speaker was Abraham Lincoln in his fourth debate with Stephen A. Douglas, which took place Sept. 18, 1858, in Charleston, Ill. Lincoln’s views on race subsequently evolved, and so did the views of his party. But today’s Republicans have radically devolved — and are becoming increasingly frank defenders of White privilege and position.

Keep Johnson’s words in mind when you hear GOP officials claim that the scores of voter-suppression bills making their way through Republican-controlled state legislatures are merely attempts to guarantee the “integrity” of our elections. If they were — if they had any intent other than to keep Democratic-leaning Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters away from the polls — then surely we would hear Republicans across the land making clear there was no place in the party for views like those Johnson expressed. Instead, we hear only guilty silence.

And sometimes, silence is enough to get the message across. On Jan. 6, when Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) raised his fist in solidarity with the crowd gathering at the Capitol, he didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to.

Today's Trae

Trae Crowder - Liberal Redneck

On the silliness of the British crown.

About Yesterday

There's a thousand or two thoughts rattling around my brain because of that stupid little stunt that President Stoopid cooked up in DC yesterday.

In no particular order:

One of the terms I'm hearing most is "humiliating". I kinda get that, but this particular shit's been going on for 5 years, and here in USAmerica Inc, humiliation is just part of the deal to begin with.

We play big, and we win big, and we lose big. And we're supposed to do it all out in the open.

By way of example, I grew up watching NASA fall on its face for all the world to see. For every Mercury-Redstone 3 and Apollo 11, there was an Apollo 1 and a Challenger.

We did WW2 and eventually followed it up with Vietnam - we are not unaccustomed to either triumph or humiliation.

But we do have a tendency to set ourselves up for trouble because we mis-identify insurrection, and then fail to respond to it adequately.

BTW, the BLM protests and the Women's Marches were not the same as that crap we saw in DC yesterday. You can fuck off with that shit right now.

BLMers want changes in the policies that are getting citizens of color injured, killed and generally fucked over - which translates to all of us, and eventually threatens all of us.

Some smart guy said: None of us is truly free until we are all free.

So the point is to make the democracy work for more than just the privileged.

The MAGA bunch on the other hand, have been bamboozled into thinking they're all about "freedom and their god-given rights", but the people pushing them into the fight are using them to shit-can democracy altogether, which of course will strip them of the very freedom they think they're fighting for. That nonsense yesterday showed them all up for the phony manipulators and useful idiots they are.

When you need the straight skinny - go to the late night comics. 

Seth Meyers:

He wanted it, he directed it, incited it, encouraged it and supported it.

What does the law have to say about the shit that went down?

On "the left", this story will probably play like, "They got one of their own killed", but as wrong-headed and misguided and gullible and even stoopid as I may consider her to have been, she was one of us. And Qult45 will not be forgiven for what they caused to happen to her.

When a group of pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol and smashed windows on Wednesday, a woman jumped onto a pane and started through.

Seconds later, a gunshot rang out and the woman, who had a Trump flag tied around her waist, tipped back and fell onto the marble floor as blood spilled from her shoulder.

“They shot a girl!” someone yelled as the crowd ran out of the southeast entrance.

She died later that day, police said. She was one of four fatalities from the violent rioting that wreaked havoc through the halls of Congress on Wednesday, halting the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral victory. Three others died of unspecified medical emergencies during the chaos. 

Looking forward a bit:

Nicolle Wallace

Killer Mike

We have a metric fuck ton of work to do, so we can't afford to think we're all good now because we squeaked thru with a few big wins. 

We can't let up, thinking we did it, so now we can slump back into that comfortable bullshit where we relax and take little potshots at the silly old Democrats as they disappoint us once again, because they aren't winning everything in sight, because we put 'em in office and now they're suppose to do some kinda magic and make it all better and blah blah blah.

Shut the fuck up, get off your fuckin' ass, and try to help for a fuckin' change.

This is democracy 

You do the work or you get the fuck out.

Today's Commentary

Joel Haver - Hear Me Out

I have no sympathy for comics like Joe Rogan and Bill Maher when they spend any time at all bitchin' about "how sensitive everybody is" and how hard it is for them now when they run up against the cultural resistance to their style of humor.

Wanna know about censorship and the hazards of performing in an atmosphere of repression and narrow-mindedness? Ask Lenny Bruce or Redd Foxx or Mort Saul or or or.

Fighting restrictive norms and pushing the social envelope - that's what comics do, ya buncha fuckin' cry-babies. Get to work.

Today's Farewell

Van Vuuren Bros

The Undecided

College Humor

What you idiots sound like to the rest of us.

Breakin' It Down - Again

Trevor Noah - The Daily Show

(the money bit starts at about 9:40 - a classic takedown)

I worried when Jon Stewart left, but they chose well. The thing is in good hands.