Blaming Batman for the Joker

I'm sorry about this I-can't-sleep-rant' but I'm really sick to the both-sides crap.

It's bullshit.

There is one party who for the last 20 years who has worked hard against ordinary Americans. There is one party who has made sure anything that would help anyone one below millionaire status would fail. There is one party that has worked very hard to make sure that the economy under Obama would drag and under Trump would favor billionaires... and it wasn't the Democrats.

No, the Democrats need a swift, hard kick in the ass, god knows. They have forgotten all about the middle class while focused (on the deserving) fringes. They are way too focused on petty BS right now to get the job done. But they are actually doing things.

But there is only one party plotting to destroy democracy, one party so fixated on their legitimate loss (which they are screaming was fraud) that they are setting up plans to overthrow the next election. Democrats ate not saints, but they are trying to make sure everyone who can vote should vote.

Only one party is trying to make sure legitimate voters can't cast a ballot. And why? Because they cant win if everyone casts a ballot, and they know it.

That's the GOP. Politics is a problem, but the biggest problem for democracy right now is the GOP and has been for the last three decades.

It was the Trumpers who screamed to kill the VP, tried to kill democracy and helped kill five people on January 6th, it wasn't the Democrats.

If you say it's both sides. it's like blaming Batman for the Joker's crimes.

Here’s the Deal

Judge Amy Coney Barrett, the end-dream of the far-right move to control the courts.

Here’s the deal, as Joe Biden would say. The moderates in the Democratic Party constantly complain that the progressive wing won’t support them, won’t turn out for elections featuring moderate candidates, and complain that the moderate policies they push are, well, too moderate.

The progressive wing says that they have no seat at the table, that their ideas are consistently ignored, even ridiculed, and their support, when granted, is rarely rewarded. Why bother when they’re not listened too, are given no power in return for your support, and left out of major policy decisions?

In the past, campaigns have been won using the progressive’s ideals and style: Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign was a progressive (for its time) campaign, and Obama’s 2008, and especially his 2012 campaigns were as well. And then they turn into moderates. It’s almost a bait-and-switch. What happened?

Clinton ran hard into a wall GOP hate, constant bogus investigations, and he quickly tacked right. Obama was always more moderate than he campaigned, and was only too happy to run a center left administration. He also faced strong GOP opposition, taking too long to take their threats seriously, not believing the Republicans when they said they wanted to destroy him.

The deal is? The Republicans DO want to destroy you! Believe them when they say this, they’re serious. And they have been working towards this for decades. Denying Obama more than a hundred judicial nominees, and a SCOTUS seat, to pack the courts with far right (and unqualified) judges. It was a major, long awaited play for them and now this last rush to pack the Supreme Court is endgame, probably checkmate.

How does our moderate Democratic candidate want to address this? With a plan to take back the stolen courts with a legal expansion, to protect rights and laws that have been passed?

No.

He wants a blue-ribbon, bi-partisan committee.

Joe.

Pal…

No.  

Buddy, you’re a nice guy, I like you, already voted for you. But this is not the way to handle what the Republicans have been up to. This is pretty much what they (barring killing it altogether) want you to do. It’s like this; you know when you would ask your parents “can we go the movies” or “have pizza tonight” and they would say ‘We’ll see.” “We’ll see” was always “No.”

Always.

It’s a parent’s way of saying ‘no’ without have to disappoint expectant, hopeful faces by slapping them with a blunt declaration.

A ‘committee’ is the “We’ll see” of government.

This is just a way to get the subject off the table and kill momentum. This is exactly why the left has had it with the moderates and why the Democrats have gotten steamrolled by the right time after time. The moderates seem to think they're dealing with a reasonable, functioning GOP, and no amount of evidence will convince that they face a party of radicals, intent on destroying them and repealing the 20th Century. Haven't they been paying attention to the hearings going on right now?!

The moderates will dither, think, investigate and when they finally decided to act, it'll be a year too late. The right has no compunction to follow rules and will be throwing case after case at the now far-right SCOTUS to kill voting rights, healthcare, kill gun restrictions, and destroy protections for the LGBTQ community. They’re achieved their dream, and they’re giddy with power. They will move as fast as they can, while a bi-partisan, blue-ribbon panel meets, drinks coffee and snags Costco poppy seed muffins from the muffin basket. And talks and talks…

The GOP is seeing their electoral power shrink as the country changes and diversifies, and instead of trying to appeal to a larger majority, they doubled down on what they have, and threw themselves into a decades long quest to install their minority power in such a way that they can still control the country without being elected by a majority. Packing the courts (as McConnell himself called it) would do just that.

If the GOP insists on going forward and voting in this last attempt to killing the Living Constitution, the Democrats must take steps to reign them in, using every tool at their disposal. We have to hit the ground running, prepared to contain and repair the damage done by righting the system and restoring some fairness to institutions that have been deliberately broken.

We don’t have time to stop and think too much about it, and I doubt that are any sane Republicans who would participate in such a committee (the party would never forgive them).

It’s up to us, Joe, don’t tie our hands when we need them to fight.

If Only We Had a Leader, Not a Whiner

Pouty McPouterson, pouting.

“Oh, you libtards! You blame Trump for the pandemic!”

No. The pandemic is not his fault (not the fault of China either, but that’s another post), no, we blame him for his response to the pandemic.  The fact he wasn’t ready hasn’t helped much. I mean, firing the people responsible for dealing with a global pandemic, cutting funds and eliminating the programs that were set up to deal with a major health crisis didn’t help when one actually hit (as he was warned it might) all pretty damn stupid, and thoughtless.

Now, 165,000+ dead. Virus is burning though the country uncontrolled. Double digit unemployment, economy cratered and not coming back any time soon. Ugliness reigns.

No matter how you look it (unless you just want to lie about it), Trump has screwed this up, big time.

Simply no other way to look at it. He didn’t act fast enough; almost all of his actions have been reluctant, half-hearted, like a kid told to clean their room and after an hour they’ve picked up one sock. He ignored his own experts, he undermined their advice and when guidelines were actually put out, he immediately ignored them, recommending the opposite. Trump is so focused on his reelection that he just doesn’t care about anything, or anyone, else. And this is for a job he didn’t want in the first place….

He just doesn’t give a damn.

I was making this very argument on the Book of Face yesterday while deep in the enemy territory of a Trumper’s post, and I got one of those smarmy replies; ‘well, what would you do, it you were President? With the laws and powers available and not overstepping them.”

You see the trick here is that he would consider anything Trump did within the ‘law’ and anything done by a Democratic president to be far, far outside it (see Obama, Barack). I see this smug little game all the time, if we talk facts to Trump supporters we all see it. But, we’re in lockdown, I ain’t doin’ nutin’, so why not?

The First Week of the Tom Stewart Presidency,: (What I would do if I ran the zoo)

I would put out national guidelines based on science AND FOLLOW THEM. Weird, huh? I do this because Trump immediately undermined his own recommendations, and his doctors. He never took it seriously, at all. It was like he was trying to 'will' the pandemic away, hoping if he ignored it, it would all just ‘blow over’. My mom used to try this with the light bill. She was soon sitting in darkness.

I would have a national testing and tracing plan in place, relieving some of the burden on the states, and I would work with the affected states, making sure they had what they needed, you know, instead of pissing, moaning and complaining about them, as Trump did. Trumpy’s way really worked well for all involved, especially the 165,000+ dead.

I would also use my power to order more ventilators and PPE manufactured (Trump threatened this, but didn't do it, because of many, many reasons… I’m sure) and then I would ensure the equipment got where it was needed through FEMA and the CDC. This is instead of walking away and letting all 50 states fight it out like a pack of hungry dogs over a bone.

I would reach out to our allies, ask for assistance and offer ours in return. I would learn from them (look at S Korea and New Zealand, they could have told us a lot, if we had leadership prepared to listen). I would have used my national platform to inform the people, stepping back to let the doctors give real, unvarnished information, (not get up, lie about the efforts, undermine what they just said, push phony cures, whine about how mean people are to me, etc…)

…and I would talk about the lives lost. The people, the friends, family, husbands, wives, sons, and daughters lost to the awful pandemic, and offer my empathy and prayers to the ones left behind.

No finger pointing, no crying about the election, no name calling other countries, none of that bullshit. There’s no time for nonsense while people are suffering, and people are dying. I would try my best to be a leader. 

We don't any of that right now. In case you haven’t noticed.

Now I’m going to sort my comic book collection and pray for better times, better leaders, and better hope than the tattered one I have left in my broken heart.

The Filtered & the UNfiltered

Here’s the thing, I’m on social media waaaaay too much. On Facebook, I have my posts set to ‘public’ because I’m obviously a glutton for punishment. I get a lot of support, and a lot of well, ‘Trumpers’, (Trump supporters ya know), and they love to threaten me, or call me names, the usual crap. Sometimes these love notes are attached to posts, but sometimes, they PM me and it lands in my ‘filtered messages’ folder. Sometimes it’s spam accounts featuring busty women looking for ‘friends’ (uh huh) sometimes threats:

“Hey pussy...come to Michigan so i can kick your teeth down your throat.” (Real message, blocked and reported.) Sometimes it’s a thank you for speaking up, sometimes it just a comment. Which brings us to…

Today's unfiltered message:

"You must like to cause trouble."

Do I like to cause trouble. Nah, not really. I don't like confronting people, I don't like being an 'againster', don't really like to make waves.

But.

I was a little brother, and as a little brother, I got blamed for stuff I didn't do, and felt that the siblings above me got things I didn't (which is true, and not true), and felt that justice (my mom) was not really on my side (she really wasn't, but that's another day). So I had to form my own idea of justice. It was a powerless-versus-the-powerful view. I have that little brother view of justice to this day.

That's the key word here, 'justice'. As a kid, I was fascinated with American history, not the big stuff, but the margins, the back waters, the seedy alleys were the real history lies. I read everything contained in that rabbit hole of forgotten history. Forgotten? No, purposely shoved aside and stamped down into the darkness. I was a pain to my history teachers, wanting to know more, questioning what they were teaching and wondering what was behind Big History and the narrative it taught.

 Before the internet, I had to search, I had to go to the library, (when I could convince my mom to take me, which wasn't often) and dig through the Dewey Decimal System (970 for North American history) for things that would tell me the other history, the backstories, the behind-the-flats stories of those whose shoulders many stood on. I wanted to know what they weren't telling me, and slowly (usually pieced together through several different sources) I learned. Today, I am still learning. Thank god.

 So, no I don't like pointing out people whose arguments are canvas, paint, and paste deep, who are are coming at me through belief and not facts, who would rather address my picture and looks than my argument (this won't surprise women, but yeah, I get a lot of comments on my looks from angry white guys). Don't like any of that, causes me stress, and worries my wife, but I have to. You know?

I have to. That stupid little bother in me is standing up to my mom and saying 'nuh uh!'.

I didn't do that.

Your argument ignores the facts

Your argument ignores reality

Look around you, is this the America you wanted?

So, I cause trouble. I set up this site to try to throw a little more justice out there in the world. I have that little bother's sense of justice. I don't like it. I want a quiet, easy life, no confrontation, no worries, just let the world wash over me.

I wish I could do that, I really do.

Aw well.

Come back around, because there’s more to come.