On BlueSky

Overheard

The Left:

We want to see if we can make sure everybody's basic rights are respected, and everybody's basic needs are met.

The Right:

We want to eliminate people who can't - or won't - fend for themselves, and you have no rights that aren't listed in the first ten amendments.

The Middle:

It's so hard to tell the difference - they both sound the same to me.

The Mother Of All FAFOs

It sucks. And I get it - I really do.

But here's the thing: You just flat out refused to see what was going on, and you refused to listen. So all you did was spit in your own face. You're having the day you deserve, but your fuck up means the rest of us get to suffer right along with you.

Today's Driftglass

Ode The The Low Information Voter

Because I know you are so very very busy

That you have no time to know anything at all

I will keep this brief.

I know you are far too busy driving Chinese toys and 

Cigarettes and

Pressboard furniture across the continent 

To pay attention to anything

Except double-clutching and yellow lines, and

The radio,

Which is playing Hannity and Rogan and Savage and Levin and Beck and 

Shapiro and

Kirk and 

Savage and

Prager and 

Larson, and, of course,

The game, and

Maybe you have just enough time to stop off in that Ohio diner and 

Tell to the New York Times foreign correspondents 

Permanently stationed there

About the caravans of illegals and

The price of eggs and 

Shoplifting in San Diego and yet

You are also a single mother

Raising nine kids and

Working nine jobs who

Has no time to think about anything except

Making correct change and getting the order right, and

Who is up and who is out on the Masked Singer, and

Can you believe the bullshit judging on Dancing the the Stars, and

Dropping in on focus groups to explain about how tariffs work, and

The illegals making houses so expensive, and

Why Kamala Harris cannot be trusted,

(Did you know that she slept her way to the top, and

Her father is a communist!) and

You remember hearing something about January sixth or

Maybe it was the seventh, whatever, 

You're not exactly sure what, but

Strangely you are also 24 and a dude and have no girlfriend,

Which is fine, really, fine, because you are just crazy busy all the time

With...stuff like Call of Duty and GTO and Diablo 4, and

Your shitty job where customers ask the stupidest questions, and

Bitch about everything like you're Mr. CVS, and

How come fucking Joe Biden will pay off those rich college fuckers bills, but

Won't make weed legal in your state, and

Someday you're going to be making real money with MMA

Because you practice your moves in your garage, but

It's hard to relax when everything is so fucked up, like, uh, like,

Y'know the price of stuff and crime and shit, and 

What we need is a badass MMA guy to kick some ass because,

Respect, gotta have respect,

Chicks go for that like magnets, and

You remember hearing on Twitter something about 

COVID being a scam, and somehow 

You're also a retired couple, living well, but 

You hear all these things,

On the news, and

It's all so bad,

So, so bad,

Never been so bad,

Sure you're doing ok, but out there, just over the horizon,

The country is in ruins, and

Unemployment has never been higher, and 

DEI caused the California wildfires, and 

What's going on on college campuses which is just shameful, and

Inflation is out of control, and 

Crime gangs run the Blue cities, and,

The government is giving all our money to moochers and foreign wars, and

Everyone knows Biden was being controlled by you-know-who, and

Do your own research because everything is out of control, and 

It's never been this bad before

Ever.

Today's FAFO

On November 6th, four of the top Google searches were

1. Can I change my vote?
2. Do tariffs cause inflation?
3. What should I buy before the tariffs kick in?
4. What is Project 2025?

On the day after the fucking election.

Peak Dunning Kruger

"Strategic Voting".

When you think you're being clever and savvy, but the effect is that you're being a total fucking idiot.

 

"The problem is knowing enough to believe you're right,

but not enough to know you're wrong."

Today it's Danielle Moodie

Some of the smartest commentary I've heard in a while.

If you define your best interests - even subconsciously - as WhiteCentric, then your interests align pretty closely with MAGA.

And you've got all the cover you need - again - as the media generously hands you the convenient rationalization of "Inflation Fears" (this year's version of "Economic Anxiety").

A Rant

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

Off_JaWaggon

Q & A

Q:

Want some help buying a house? $25,000 for a down payment. Or maybe we could build a few million places that are more affordable.

A:

Nah

Q:

Could you use $50,000 to start a business?

A:

Nah

Q:

How 'bout we pay for some childcare?

A:

Nope

Q:

Tax breaks for middle- and low-income wage earners?

A:Pffft

Q:

Union support and a minimum wage hike? 

A: Big whoop

Q:

Well, maybe we could go after corporate collusion and price fixing and market manipulation?

A: Yawn

Q:

OK - so, what are your issues?

A:

We need eggs at 2 bucks a dozen, and gas at 2-fifty a gallon.

And, oh yeah - shoot a few border-crossers for us - and put that on pay-per-view.

The Undecided

Overheard

Here are your choices for breakfast:

On one plate, there's a bowl of lumpy, runny, oily hangover squirts.

On the other plate is a short stack, two strips of crispy bacon, and an egg - sunny side up.

That's it. Those are the options - but you're telling me you can't decide until you know a little more about the fucking pancakes?

Stoopid GOP Voters

I know we're not supposed to call the other side a bunch fuckin' idiots, and I promise to stop calling them a buncha fuckin' idiots when they stop acting like a buncha fuckin' idiots.

Classic - make the proposed action look like it's going to do one thing, when it's actually intended to do something pretty much exactly the opposite of what you've been telling your constituents you intend to do. By the time they start to catch on, it's too late - ain't nothin' they can do - and if your Messaging Team has their shit together, the rubes will be glad to pretend it's what they wanted all along.

The Daddy State

Fake it 'til you break it.

Don't Get Stoopid

It's Come Down To This?

Wondering if we'll still be OK after these midterms?

Got news for ya: we're not OK now.

Here we are at this end of at least 4½ billion years of evolution, and the boomers are transfixed by gadgets designed to take their money (in a place where the casino bosses have bought enough politicians to make it illegal not to take their money), using their big ol' monkey brains to poke a button - basically playing Musical Slots - staring at a screen, expecting glory to arrive any second in the form of a 100,000-dollar jackpot, financed by the half-a-million dollars these idiots are pumping into those stupid machines.

WE ARE NOT OK

Today's Brian

Brain Tyler Cohen - Liz Cheney and a criminal referral

I'd consider giving up one of my nuts if the Press Poodles would stop framing their questions in GOP talking points.

And if they're "just asking the question so the interviewee can answer", then they can issue the damned caveat - "Republicans are coming at you with this, how do you respond - assuming you think it's worthy of a response?"

- or -

"Y'know, Liz - there's a buncha really stupid people in this country who can't tell the difference between a legit legal thing and the kinda political crap many in the GOP peddle all day every day. What can you say to countervail that stupidity?"

The Nail-Biter

Shelly Simonds won her election to the Virginia House of Delegates.

But no she didn't. Not if The Republican Guard has anything to say about it.

There are at least 3 real possibilities on what this voter intended - and 2 of them tilt the race to Simonds.

• First, the voter intended what the Repubs are claiming - straight GOP.
• Second, the voter went with all GOP, but maybe they know Simonds and they were making an exception. Whatever the reason, people split their ballots all the time.
• Third, the strike-thru on the Simonds bubble means the same as the strike-thru on the Gillespie bubble.

This thing was tossed out on the first accounting, and again on the recount, but suddenly, it's magically resurrected when Yancey needs just one more vote.

It's a classic Under-Vote.

Simonds is challenging the decision in court, and I guess we don't find out what happens next for several more days.

Careerism On Steroids and Triple Shot Espresso

We're not talking about if there will be an implosion, but when.

New York Magazine:

The president is a 70-year-old child whose TV time must be closely monitored — because any news story that upsets his ego will trigger a temper tantrum followed by irrational demands that his indulgent, overwhelmed guardians will be helpless to refuse.

Or so Donald Trump’s aides keep confiding to the nearest available reporter.

On Sunday, one of the president’s confidantes told Politico that his staffers have to “control information that may infuriate him,” a task made difficult by the fact that the leader of the free world “gets bored and likes to watch TV.”

-and-

Nearly a dozen of Trump’s closest confidantes helped plant an embarrassing news story about how their boss can’t handle embarrassing news stories. Which is to say: A president who prizes loyalty in his subordinates has already been betrayed by a huge swath of his inner circle.

 

hat tip = Bob and Chez Podcast

Telling

GOP voters are begging the people they voted into office not to fuck 'em over by repealing ACA, and those representatives are high-fiving each other for moving to repeal it anyway.

What does that tell us about the GOP?

What does it tell us about ourselves?

What does it say about how fucked up it has to get before we figure out that it's fucked up?

The Anti-Elitist Lie

I'm sure you've noticed:

Trump loves to bash "the elitists", but he'll be installed as the 45th POTUS on the strength of a majority of the 538 Electoral College votes - even though he got his ass kicked by more than 2 1/2 million votes of the actual populace.

Tell me again - how is this putz in any way "Representative Of The People"?

Today's Tweet

"I just wish that I had not voted."— Trump supporter despondent over Mnuchin, who's bank foreclosed on her home: https://t.co/WZASUp9D5Z pic.twitter.com/k720708Y6h

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) December 2, 2016

So yeah - you got butt-raped with your pants on, and because you're just too fuckin' dumb to sort thru the obvious bullshit, you're forcing the rest of us to share in that little Personal Growth Opportunity. Thanks and fuck you so very much, you ignorant twat-waffle. I hope you enjoy a long and miserable period of well-deserved self-loathing, cuz you earned it, lady.

Almost forgot - generations yet unborn wanted me to pass this message to you:

(Ed Note: I guess I'm not quite ready for a lotta forgiveness and reconciliation just yet)

Today's Eternal Sadness

Just the latest in the parade of carnage that accounts for the death of a child every three days.

PAYSON, Ariz. (AP) — A 3-year-old Payson boy shot and killed his 1½ -year-old brother after the boys found a handgun in a neighbor's apartment and took it to another room, the eastern Arizona town's police chief said Wednesday.
Police Chief Don Engler said his department's investigation of the Tuesday shooting will take about a week. Results will be forwarded to the Gila County Attorney's Office for a decision on whether to prosecute anybody, he said.

"What we're taking a look at is the circumstances regarding the securing of the weapon" and how the boys were able to get ahold of it, Engler told The Associated Press. "We are continuing our investigation, and we haven't ruled out criminal charges at this point."

He said it was too early to say what recommendation his department might make to prosecutors.

The boys and their mother were visiting the 78-year-old neighbor in their apartment complex when the shooting occurred in a bedroom.

The brothers found the semi-automatic pistol somewhere in the living area where it was not in plain sight, the police chief said without elaborating. Neither adult knew the boys had the weapon, Engler said.

The boys were playing when they found the gun, police said. The weapon discharged, and the toddler was shot in the head.

Engler said the mother was just entering the bedroom when the shooting occurred and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

The younger boy was rushed to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Names of those involved were not released.

Engler said he didn't know whether the 3-year-old grasped what he had done.

"That'd be a difficult stretch for me to make that assumption," the police chief said.

However, he said the shooting was a tragedy that was felt by many in the community, including members of his department. Payson is about 90 miles northeast of Phoenix and has a population of approximately 15,000.

Engler noted many of the department's young officers have children of their own. "Certainly it's difficult for our officers in those circumstances," he told KPHO-TV.

But hey - freedom ain't free, so we'll need to continue these little sacrifices because what's good for the Ammosexuals is good for America.  And besides, your dead kids don't trump my constitutional rights.

Check this out at Pacific-Standard:

Since 1996, when a small CDC-funded study on the risks of owning a firearm ignited opposition from Republicans, the CDC’s budget for research on firearms injuries has shrunk to zero.

The result, as we’ve detailed, is that many basic questions about gun violence—such as how many Americans are shot each year—remain unanswered.

 And this at The New York Daily News:

Guns kill 32,000 Americans a year, but not one penny is given to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to find out why.

Victims of gun violence can thank the National Rifle Association for squeezing off that funding.

The NRA began lobbying Congress in the 1990s to limit the CDC’s funding after the agency gave financial backing to an independent study that found that keeping a gun in the home was strongly associated with an increased risk of homicide.

The pro-gun behemoth succeeded in ramming legislation through in 1996 that forbade the CDC from using federal funds for studies that “advocate or promote gun control.”

Whenever it becomes obvious that you have a real problem - and when that problem seems pretty obviously epidemic and systemic - then certainly the last thing ya wanna do is find out what the fuck might be causing it.

And finally, from The Onion, here's the checklist for enacting gun control legislation:

• Write gun control legislation. Pass gun control legislation.
• Before voting on gun control bill, try, if you can, to remember any recent examples in which guns have been used to kill innocent people.
• Acknowledge that it’s going to be hard to buck the pressure of the high-powered gun lobby, but not that fucking hard, dumbass.
• Consider if overwhelming public support for a particular measure is something you want to be associated with or not.
• Inform your decision by researching whether guns are good or bad when placed in the wrong hands.
• Muster everything that’s left in your black, desiccated heart to do something that might actually be of service to someone other than yourself.
• Carefully assess the other side of the argument wherein mentally unstable people can buy weapons at a gun show with no problem whatsoever, and then realize there is no other side of this argument.
• Put on your stupid little suit, run a comb through your greasy hair, go to the U.S Capitol building, pick up your fancy little gold pen, and pass a fucking gun control bill.