Left leaning political satire and serious analysis
“Now is no time to think of what you do not have.
Think of what you can do with that there is”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
“He spat into the ocean and said, ‘Eat that, galanos.
And make a dream you’ve killed a man.'”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
At a campaign rally yesterday in Pennsylvania, Trump tried to pander to women voters, disastrously, that he’s not a threat but will be their “protector” in abortion matters, and in general:
The president who ushered in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, bragged about sexually assaulting women, and was found liable for sexual abuse now realizes that the legacy of the Dobbs decision that his three Supreme Court nominees made possible isn’t polling well. So he’s on the reassurance grift. There is a mind-set demonstrated by his “soothing” words that shows a glaringly stupid lack of understanding of even the grade school basics of what women desire in all aspects of their lives, especially abortion.
For example, his “You will be protected, and I will be your protector”: women no longer accept (if they ever did) that their relationships with men be a “protector/protectee” paternalistic bargain, freighted with exceedingly onerous obligations. For example, Trump (of all men) telling them “Women will be happy, healthy, confident and free” indicates his belief that men (specifically himself) alone by their paternalistic largesse can make women happy, healthy, confident and free. This, from Trump, a serial sex assaulter, adulterer, adjudicated rapist, defamer, and “pussy grabber.” He and the MAGA crowd simply have no overall, historical, cultural, or conceptual understanding of feminist goals. And trying to fake it just digs them in deeper and rightly alienates millions of women, and men.
And there’s this:
GOP Senate nominee Bernie Moreno (OH), at a town hall event last week but first reported yesterday by NBC4 in Columbus. As you’ll see, Moreno vocalizes the MAGA self-centered view that one’s vote ought to matter only when an issue DIRECTLY threatens one’s own life, not, for example, the lives of all women, including their daughters and granddaughters.
“You know, the left has a lot of single issue voters. Sadly, by the way, there’s a lot of suburban women, a lot of suburban women that are like, ‘Listen, abortion is it. If I can’t have an abortion in this country whenever I want, I will vote for anybody else.’ … OK. It’s a little crazy by the way, but — especially for women that are like past 50 — I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you.'”
As for Trump’s conclusion, “[Women] will no longer be thinking about abortion,” the absurdity of that in every way spotlights his utter lack of understanding of women’s daily lives. Women walk through life with targets on their chests and backs, at all ages, placed there by men like Trump and Moreno.
Trump’s Truth Social post following his very bad day started out well enough. If one was hoping for some jib to humanization, his first phrases hinted at something we’ve never witnessed before from his postings, a sense of the moment and a call for sincere unification: “As we move forward in Uniting our Nation after the horrific events on Saturday, this dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by . . .” He apparently exhausted himself with the effort:
As we move forward in Uniting our Nation after the horrific events on Saturday, this dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts — The January 6th Hoax in Washington, D.C., the Manhattan D.A.’s Zombie Case, the New York A.G. Scam, Fake Claims about a woman I never met (a decades old photo in a line with her then husband does not count), and the Georgia “Perfect” Phone Call charges. The Democrat Justice Department coordinated ALL of these Political Attacks, which are an Election Interference conspiracy against Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME. Let us come together to END all Weaponization of our Justice System, and Make America Great Again!
@realDonaldTrump Donald Trump Truth Social 10:41 AM EST 07/15/24
We should not be surprised. He’s a singularity, an irresistible force, immune from everyday – decent – emotions. It would’ve been an apt time to follow up on his opening unification theme, but we learned that he’s immovable as he jumped immediately and immodestly from “move forward in Uniting our Nation” to his idea of unification. His sense of national unification is self-referential only. His list of unifying prerequisites is entirely so, for example, his usual list, “dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts — The January 6th Hoax in Washington, D.C.” and on and on. Being shot apparently doesn’t move him to self-examination, no sitting humbly before death. How empty must he be?
In a stunning irony, at the end of his cris de coeur he wrote, “Let us come together to END all Weaponization of our Justice System.” Yet, there is no mention of the weaponization of our society, and at a moment when he must still have felt the sting of the gunshot and the sensed the whizz of the bullet from one of those very real weapons. The only weaponization he cares about, deeply, is the judicial weapon aimed at himself in a land where accountability is still – if only barely – holding on.
Survives and is “safe.” And – of course – grisly GOP/MAGA in celebratory mood, “He just won the election.”
Barrage at Rest
Cannons of Fort Phoenix, Fairhaven, Massachusetts
Copyright, Michael V. Matheron
The cannons have grown silent
Were they stilled by death
Or was I?
Bob Quigley
05-09-2024, 1:54 p.m., A News Network, Pierre, SD. Governor’s Office, for immediate release.
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem released this statement:
My Dear South Dakota friends and supporters, I have recently ended my book tour which is among the most tragic events that this farm girl has ever suffered. It was caused by liars and vicious reporters in the extreme left wing commie-fascist media. Their claims about the deaths of my dog and goat that they say were included in my new book are untrue. Even the excerpts they’ve manufactured are fictitious. So powerful and sinister is the extreme left wing that they’ve managed to brainwash millions. It is, therefore, time for me to go on the offensive and attack our foes with the truth, the truth as I and God understand it.
No gross executions of my dog and goat took place. The truth is quite the opposite: In fact, it was I who was fired on first. I neither sought nor welcomed armed conflict and only did so as a self defense measure. My disgruntled 14-month-old dog Cricket and his vicious co-conspirator, an obnoxious old goat who strutted on the wrong side of the barnyard, chose to arm themselves with military grade weapons and, by trickery, ambush me for obviously Biden-inspired political reasons.
They began by secreting themselves on a chicken farm belonging to my dear neighbors. There, from their hiding places in a gravel pit, they opened fire on a dozen or more defenseless chickens, loading, shooting, and reloading 16-shot clips until they had devastated the chicken herd. When I was informed and arrived at the scene, I called out to them and asked that they cease their killing fire, instead, they turned their attention to me, their primary target, in a blood lust. They fired a dozen rounds as I hit the dirt and drew from my holsters one each of the several pistols and hand grenades I carry with me whenever I visit neighbors. I did not seek this confrontation. Yet, being a South Dakota farm girl I knew that firefights with livestock were a normal life activity, not to be shied away from, particularly by a strong governor who deserves higher office.
It was not long before Cricket began a flanking maneuver while the old craven goat laid down covering fire. I tossed a grenade, I fired my Glock, I nearly took a bullet as I ducked into the gravel pit only to be confronted by that devil goat looking for a gunfight, old western movie style. He hopped toward me, I dove to the left and drew my weapon, firing instinctively as I had done so many times before in shootouts with other farm animals. Being the kind of person South Dakotans want for Vice President in the coming election, I dropped that goat stone dead. Someone had to do it.
Meantime, Cricket had circled around me and growled that fake puppy sound that is meant to disguise their true intentions, but tells a South Dakota farmer that there was death in the offing, either for me or for Cricket. I turned on him and fired, he fired, then, we fought hand to paw, rolling in the sharp gravel that broke each of my fingernails clean off. Cricket tried the old cowards tactic of licking my face, a fake peace entreaty and far too late. A gunshot rang out. For a moment neither of us knew who’d been shot, if shot at all. After a moment I could see. And Cricket was no more. Someone had to do it.
This summary rebuttal of the vile left wing tampering with the text of my book will allow me to resume my nationwide book tour as of this evening when I will appear in Pierre’s Shotgun Shell Bar & Rifle Range, from 8:00 – 9:00 pm. Free beer for all the ladies! I am proud to be your governor until something better materializes. God bless & pass the ammo!
October 12, 2011
“I do not condone violence, There are no leaders in the building,
no rank and file members that condone violence, period.”
Eric Cantor, March 2010,
Responding to a spate of violent acts after passage of the health care bill.
This included broken windows at campaign offices,
threatening phone calls and faxes,
and a severed gas line at the home of a lawmaker’s brother.
On Wednesday, Congresschump Eric Cantor, the person the House GOP chose to represent them as majority leader, used a combination of half-truths and energetic lying when discussing the difference between the Occupy Wall Streeters (OCW) and Tea Partiers (TP). Here’s a portion of his latest performance, while speaking to a gaggle of reporters Wednesday about the TP’s September 2009 Washington, DC rally against “Obamacare”: “. . . you [reporters] didn’t hear — and some of the reports were inaccurate — you didn’t hear most of them [Tea Party protesters] encouraging any type of violent behavior. . .”
Cantor uses the phrase “you didn’t hear [TPers] encouraging violent behavior.” This half-truth obscures the fact that many did so another way: signs and posters. We’ve seen these regularly, at the anti-“Obamacare” rallies and virtually any other Tea Party rally. My guess is that if they sponsored a Rally for Motherhood, there’d be posters like these that appeared at a rally against “Obamacare.” Unfortunately, signs and posters encouraging violence are themes at political rallies of all kinds, whether anti-war marches or anti “Obamacare” rallies. But Cantor continually maintains that Tea Partiers do not support violence in their movement.
Certainly, they have the right to create and carry signs of their choosing. The Constitution permits free speech, at least up to the point of yelling “fire” in a theatre just for fun. Yet, one of the hallmarks of the Tea party movement is and always has been their advocacy of violence should they fail to get their way. 2nd Amendment solutions. Watering the tree of freedom with blood. Whether through signage or slogan, physical threat or verbal challenge, Tea Partiers seem ready to fight at the drop of a tricorn hat. They are not a peace movement. One does not see Gandhi’s face on Tea Partiers’ signs. Rational argument is not their strength, and consequently, they resort to the threat of force against those they view as effetes, weaklings, and parasites. And the threat is palpable.
Nonetheless, virtually no one in the media labels them “violent,” or “coercive,” or “bullying.” I will. They are. To a great degree, that’s their nature, selfish, often purposely undereducated authoritarians frightened by complexity. Frustrated with the messy process of negotiation and rationality, they seek simple solutions for complicated societal problems. They imagine persecution; thus every opponent is potentially a nail for their hammer.
The People, United, Will Always Be Repeated. Unfortunately, I recall the ’60s, the 70s. Our anti-Vietnam war protests were often laced with violence. The signs and posters were just plain scarily provocative. We felt obligated to push the envelope, so disgusted were we all with our country’s leadership. And it wasn’t simply the war. Remember the spate of assassinations, the widespread riots in Detroit (still, to this day, recovering), D.C., and Los Angeles. The Kent State killings, the Yippies, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and on and on, all were endemic at the time. We marched with extreme purpose, often to provoke mayhem. We ignited easily.
So, I’m hard pressed to criticize any group for encouraging force in service of a strongly and widely held belief that their government no longer works. Tea Partiers feel so alienated and frustrated perhaps it’s a reason to excuse the signs and posters, the verbal assaults. But, just as the right-wingers among us deride the (imagined) violent behavior of the Occupy Wall Streeters, labelling them violent anarchists, unlawful vagabonds, and potentially riotous bums, we too need to more forcefully and loudly label the Tea Party’s quick resort to threats of violence, in their signage, their subtext, and their personalities.
Why do so many of us, silently, let them get away with it?
June 28, 2011
Homeland Security Mans Up and Confronts Nonagenarian. At the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) a timely new focus on the “totally elderly” is being hurried off the drawing boards. This comes in the wake of the controversial security screening of 95-year-old Jean Weber prior to her boarding a Michigan bound flight at Northwest Florida Regional Airport on June 18th. According to a Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) security officer on the scene last week, “In order to sneak onto the Michigan flight Ms. Weber arrived driving a heavy wheelchair directly at the departure gate” and she wore “an intentionally distracting hat.”
Weber’s alleged daughter claimed medical reasons for the flight, claiming that Ms. Weber has leukemia that is now life-threatening, and wanted to return home to be with her family during her final days. TSA workers, however, are expertly trained and sensed immediately that Ms. Weber was concealing “something suspicious” in her “granny socks, according to the TSA Granny Inspector who was on the scene and conducted the search. He continued, “her unconventional hat grabbed my eye too. It was unlike any I’d ever seen, and truthfully, I was frightened by it.”
These two observations, which to an untrained individual would appear as innocuous as a butterfly on an elephant, were, in the mind of this skilled TSA Granny Inspector, a signal that something was awry. He told me, enigmatically, “Sometimes granny socks are simply granny socks, but other times they conceal frightening items of mass destruction.”
In the end, Ms. Weber submitted without violence to what TSA calls “full anatomy surveillance with de-socking.” Indeed, she passed the acrobatic inspection, and was permitted to board. Her alleged daughter, however, complained – unpatriotically – to the TSA, and thus this exhaustively reported brouhaha began in earnest.
Yet, following TSA’s four-hour investigation it was discovered that Jean Weber was but one name by which the alleged Grandmother was known. Granny Weber slipped the TSA in Florida and landed in Detroit before anyone knew her true identity. As a result, “Granny” is being sought by law enforcement officials for questioning about that “other” life . . .
Meet “Trip G” The 105 pound Grandma “Weber” has more sinister aims in Detroit than “being with her family,” if indeed she ever had a family at all. You see, Jean Weber is a known member of another kind of “family”: a vicious gang of absurdly elderly grannies who operate throughout Michigan. Those with courage who speak the name quietly whisper – the G-Squad. And – incredibly – the TSA learned from the Detroit FBI Office that Granny Weber is now the acknowledged leader of G- Squad following the recent death by exercise of 103-year-old Matilda Emily Smythe-Philips. Both the TSA and FBI are sure that this leadership change was the true reason for Granny Weber’s trip to Michigan. “She’s in charge now, the big cheese, the Capo di tutti Capi of all the 85-and-over Michigan gangster families,” observed the FBI’s Detroit Special Agent in Charge, whose name we can neither pronounce nor spell.
Known on the street as Trip G, Ms. Weber and her geriatric crew – junior membership starts at 85 – have for years strong-armed their way into many reputable Michigan businesses:
So, it’s undisputed, Granny Weber’s return to Michigan as Trip G, now the capo of the bloodthirsty klatch of insatiable and irritable grannies, means trouble. The FBI, in the face of budget cuts, has little more than it can devote to their 65 agent G-Squad Task Force. Michigan state police despair.
Watch, and for now, pray for Michigan.
June 14, 2011
Yes, They Will . . . Saying anything is not confined to admitted politicians, mind you, but everyone, including Peter Fonda, and . . . me. I’m a partisan and when I look into the mirror I see myself often saying anything. And if I do, and I know I do, please get in touch and I’ll do a posting.
We’re all politicians of a sort, aren’t we? This post about the actor Peter Fonda – known to us baby boomers as the incredible Captain America in Easy Rider – has been an enigma politically. I’d put him in the libertarian camp, but with actual concern for others. Yet, having said what he said at this year’s Cannes Film Festival makes him an excellent example of how we really will say anything.
I’ve always internalized things — from the beginning.
Peter Fonda
Mr. Fonda, In This Case, Internalizing Is Good. How did Peter Fonda make the grade as one who will say anything? Well, saying anything, in this case, is about how we shoot off our mouths without thinking of our pasts, without remembering how we portrayed ourselves. In some cases we do so we threaten our own truthfulness about that past portrayal, and teeter on the brink of hypocrisy. Fonda’s wrathful hyperbole is where he makes the grade for induction into the TWSA! “Hall of Saying Anything.”
Background. Fonda, at the Cannes Film Festival this year, opened his mouth a bit too wide. An avid environmentalist, he was – understandably – upset about the Obama administration’s handling of the Gulf oil spill, and their permitting BP the upper hand in the clean-up, as well as their suppression of the Coast Guard and their reporting on the spill. Fonda himself had been turned away when he tried to view the damage at the Gulf beaches. Turned away by BP clean-up personnel. Referring to this, he told a Cannes crowd that he had sent an email to President Obama calling him a “fucking traitor” for allowing “foreign boots on our soil [BP personnel] telling our military – in this case the coastguard – what they can and could not do, and telling us, the citizens of the United States, what we could or could not do.” O.K., so far, no real damage done.
What he said to make the Hall of TWSA! Speaking four days later to the Telegraph’s Richard Eden, Fonda went one anything too far . . . Here’s what escaped from his mouth:
“I’m training my grandchildren to use long-range rifles,” said the actor, 71. “For what purpose? Well, I’m not going to say the words ‘Barack Obama’, but …”
Why does this qualify? Fonda’s words are unlike any I’ve heard for their sheer self-immolating audacity, for their skirting the possibility of arrest by the Secret Service, and for their unvarnished intent. He held nothing in reserve. He has not retracted or re-phrased.
Why, though, is he now a candidate for the Hall of TWSA!? Lots of people say crazy things about Obama. Yet Fonda has allied himself with another attitude throughout his life: anti-violence. Simply watch his take on sudden, unexpected violence in his 1969 masterpiece Easy Rider. There, all three characters are killed by utterly senseless acts of extreme violence by men who simply could not abide something foreign to them: the Rider’s unapologetic statement of personal freedom.
Thirty-two years later, in Fonda’s Cannes statements, he seems to have forgotten that, unless one believes (as some do) that implicitly condoning the assassination of President Obama is an exercise of his freedom of speech. To me, against the backdrop of epidemic gun violence in our country, his words are more like yelling “compassion” at a Tea Party rally – mass mayhem as everyone races to the exits.