It's Got Electrolytes (Great Men, Three.)

Joe: For the last time, I'm pretty sure what's killing the crops is this Brawndo stuff.

Secretary of State: But Brawndo's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes.

Attorney General: "So wait a minute. What you're saying is that you want us to put water on the crops.

Joe: Yes.

Attorney General: Water. Like out the toilet?

Joe: Well, I mean, it doesn't have to be out of the toilet, but, yeah, that's the idea.

Secretary of State: But Brawndo's got what plants crave.

Attorney General: It's got electrolytes.

Joe: Okay, look. The plants aren't growing, so I'm pretty sure that the Brawndo's not working. Now, I'm no botanist, but I do know that if you put water on plants, they grow.

Secretary of Energy: Well, I've never seen no plants grow out of no toilet.

Secretary of State: Hey, that's good. You sure you ain't the smartest guy in the world?

Joe: Okay, look. You want to solve this problem. I want to get my pardon. So why don't we just try it, okay, and not worry about what plants crave?

Attorney General: Brawndo's got what plants crave.

Secretary of Energy: Yeah, it's got electrolytes.

Joe: What are electrolytes? Do you even know?

Secretary of State: It's what they use to make Brawndo.

~From the film Idiocracy.

...

Tonight the Negro plantation worker in the Delta knows from his radio and television what happened today all over the world. He knows what Black people are doing and he knows what white people are doing. He can see on the 6:00 o’clock news screen the picture of a 3:00 o’clock bite by a police dog. He knows about the new free nations in Africa and knows that a Congo native can be a locomotive engineer, but in Jackson he cannot even drive a garbage truck. ~Medgar Evers, Speech on WLBT, May 20th 1963.

I saw this last night.

Trump apparently offered Dana White...the UFC guy...the job of White House press secretary.

It's got Electrolytes...Hey, wait a minute, this isn't...or isn't supposed to be, Idiocracy.

Well then I saw the last ad that Scott Colom did, right before the election where he walked through Medgar Evers' house and talked about the man.

Sorry, but from what I can see here, it's the Black folks, Democrats, Liberals, Muslims like El-Sayed, and a whole bunch of other people that been on the outside of things for the past couple years that are being serious, getting shit right and putting in the work.

And White Evangelical Republicans?

Not even rising to the level of the people in the Mike Judge film Idiocracy. Or rather, being far more stupid and entirely malicious about it. Call it weaponized incompetence on a national scale.

We've got to take the neighborhood back. We've got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It's right around the corner. It's standing on the corner. It can't speak English. It doesn't want to speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk. "Why you ain't where you is go." I don't know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with "why you ain't…". You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they're moving ahead on this? Well, they know they're not, they're just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you're just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out. ~Bill Cosby, the "Pound Cake" speech.

They basically want to have all the power for no better...for no other...reason than they had it before.

Decent white people...we've got to take the neighborhood back. I'm serious.

A wife-beating fight promoter as press secretary? What are you, fucking nuts??

These motherfuckers lost their ass. I'd argue at this point that Republicans deserved to lose their ass given that they've been doing a shit job not just the last couple years but pretty much as long as I can remember anything specific at this point.

And their response? Something Something Gazpacho try to take the vote away from women.

From the bottom of my heart; No, Fuck these motherfuckers.

And honestly, I didn't think it was possible to get 3/4 of America to agree on anything (especially not in this political climate) but damned near 3/4 of America just stood up and voted Republicans out, so good luck with that bullshit.

Fuck You.

And so tomorrow, as we take the campaign South and West, as we learn that the struggles of the textile workers in Spartanburg are not so different than the plight of the dishwasher in Las Vegas; that the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of L.A.; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people, we are one nation. And, together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story, with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: Yes, we can. ~Barack Obama

Don't tread on me with this shit, and leave my partner and kid alone, too.

I'm sick of this fucking bullshit. 

I'm sick of these creepy Theo-Bro beard-o's. Get the fuck out of my face with this crap, and I say that as a Christian.

People got enough problems without these ass-clowns putting bricks in everybody else's backpacks.

I'm sick of all these wannabe "Crusaders" who couldn't tell you who Balian of Ibelin, Baldwin IV, Richard the Lionheart or Saladin was without asking ChatGPT first...and that's after they used ChatGPT to make the images for their bullshit posts. If you wanna be some kind of "Crusader" it might help if you showed any knowledge of Christianity or the Lord's Word first.

All "Religion" (or anything else) is to these CHUDs is an excuse to go out and fight somebody.

It's like these motherfuckers have never even read the Bible. Oh, wait, no. From what I hear...from what I've observed directly with my own eyes, too...it's exactly that.

America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens. Every child must be taught these principles. Every citizen must uphold them. And every immigrant, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American. Today, we affirm a new commitment to live out our nation's promise through civility, courage, compassion, and character. America, at its best, matches a commitment to principle with a concern for civility. A civil society demands from each of us good will and respect, fair dealing and forgiveness. Some seem to believe that our politics can afford to be petty because, in a time of peace, the stakes of our debates appear small. ~George W. Bush

Like apparently there's a massive surge of hate from the far-right against Indian people. I've personally seen this online, much of it directed at *Checks Notes* Vivek Ramaswamy by other Republicans in Ohio.

Which is really weird to me because I happen to know there's a lot of Indian Christians, not only here or in India but around the world. In college I was really close online friends with a Guyanese Canadian lady who was of Indian heritage and very much a Charismatic Christian of some kind. It never quite gelled into a romantic relationship but it got pretty close to the point where I really can't say it didn't either. We met for coffee once on the Canadian side of Sault Ste. Marie when she was there for work once, and since I bought us lunch I ended up getting a kiss out of it. 

I was newly divorced and skittish about getting involved with somebody that was religious. For her part she understood. We were Facebook friends for a long time until she quit that platform.

But also I know that the history of Christianity in India literally dates back to Thomas the Apostle, who was Martyred there for spreading the Word of Jesus...not "As Written" but as he'd heard it with his own ears. 

Actually, most of the Indian people that I've known personally either were Christians to start with or became Christians at some point. 

The guy who owned the Christian bookstore that was in town here for literally decades was a psychologist, from India, who became a Christian. He was also the doctor at my Mom's work. I met him and his wife (who ran the bookstore) once not long after I came back up here. Plenty of those people still observe Diwali or whatever, in the same way that most secular folks in America and even many non-Christian religious types observe Christmas in some way. It's a cultural thing. In other words, there's no excuse for this shit.

Remember when your High School History teacher said "The course of human events changes because of the deeds of great men"?. Well the bitch was lying. Fuck Julius Caesar, fuck Abe Lincoln, fuck Mahatma Gandhi. The world keeps moving because of you and me: the anonymous. Revolutions get started because people don't have enough bread. Wars start over a game of checkers. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO Series "Oz" S1, E8 "A Game Of Checkers."

But the actual Truth is, These Fucking People don't care if a non-White person is a Christian. They've been murdering and shitting all over Black and Latino Christians forever. Christianity isn't the point, it isn't a common value: For one thing, I'd argue that These Fucking People don't actually have it.

And you know, maybe it's just me but I was pretty much raised with the idea that bigotry demonstrates a lack of intelligence, prejudice is stupid, therefore if you're prejudiced, you're stupid.

And the people who taught me this were all Christians and conservatives, back when those words meant something other than that you were a monster.

I mean, according to what I was taught and as far as I'm concerned even now, if you think you know better than God, the Creator of the Infinite Universe, what makes a whole person...you deserve to go to Hell. And while I'm at it, racism tends to go hand in hand with making one's race or skin color into an Idol.

It's generally a safe bet that God knows more than you do.

There's a reason Freedom requires a bit of intelligence, and thus people who believe in Slavery want everybody to be stupid.

Trump offers people a goddamn circus show.

That's Trump's idea of being a "Great Man."

Scott Colom gives us a history lesson.

Think about that for a second.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

[Kuiil and Mando have successfully repaired the Razor Crest with the parts recovered from the Jawas]

The Mandalorian: I can't thank you enough. Please allow me to give you a portion of the reward.

Kuiil: I cannot accept. You are my guest, and I am therefore in your service.

The Mandalorian: I could use a crew member of your ability. And I can pay handsomely.

Kuiil: I am honored. But I have worked a lifetime to finally be free of servitude.

The Mandalorian: I understand. Then... all I can offer is my thanks.

Kuiil: And I offer mine. Thank you for bringing peace to my valley. [leaves the ship and mounts his Blurrg; to Mando] And good luck with the Child. May it survive and bring you a handsome reward. I have spoken.

~From the Star Wars series; The Mandalorian, S1.E2 "The Child."

Two

The Holy Quran says it, "Pilgrimage to the House [of God built by the prophet Abraham] is a duty men owe to God; those who are able, make the journey." (3:97) Allah said: "And proclaim the pilgrimage among men; they will come to you on foot and upon each lean camel, they will come from every deep ravine" (22:27). Every one of the thousands at the airport, about to leave for Jeddah, was dressed this way. You could be a king or a peasant and no one would know. Some powerful personages, who were discreetly pointed out to me, had on the same thing I had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun intermittently calling out "Labbayka! (Allahumma) Labbayka!" (Here I come, O Lord!) Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair -- all together, brothers! All honoring the same God, all in turn giving equal honor to each other. . . .That is when I first began to reappraise the "white man." It was when I first began to perceive that "white man," as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions. In America, "white man" meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about "white" men. ~Malcolm X.

Leeroy Jenkins! ("Great" Men, Two.)

Yes, we're tired. Yes, there is no relief. Yes, the Cylons keep coming after us time after time after time. And yes, we are still expected to do our jobs! ~Saul Tigh, Battlestar Galactica (2003) S1.E1 "33."

...

[Henry Jones Sr. and Indiana Jones have stopped their motorcycle at a crossroads.]

Indiana Jones: Half the German Army's on our tail, and you want me to go to Berlin? Into the lion's den?

Henry Jones, Sr.: Yes! The only thing that matters, is the Grail.

Indiana Jones, Sr.: What about Marcus?

Henry Jones, Sr.: Marcus would agree with me!

Indiana Jones: Two selfless martyrs. Jesus Christ- [Henry Sr. slaps Indy]

Henry Jones, Sr.: That's for blasphemy! The quest for the Grail is not archaeology; it's a race against evil! If it is captured by the Nazis, the armies of darkness will march all over the face of the Earth! Do you understand me?

Indiana Jones: This is an obsession, Dad! I never understood it. Never! Neither did Mom.

Henry Jones, Sr.: Oh yes she did. Only too well. Unfortunately, she kept her illness from me. Until all I could do was mourn her. ~From Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

I saw this last night. 

Faced with the electoral defeat of Republicans, which is still continuing to escalate, Trump fired Susie Wiles and appointed Stephen Miller as his White House chief of staff.

I'm sure somebody somewhere was planning out some kind of rational next move, or some shit like that...just because there's always at least one person who's going to try and figure shit out somewhere.

Trump doesn't do that. He just said "Fuck It" yelled "Leeroy Jenkins!!!!" and charged off into battle, intent on doubling down infinitely on the shit that has caused this problem in the first place.

Which, from what I hear, has a lot more basic Republicans fretting about their electoral futures. Rats are already fleeing the ship. I'm pretty sure this is gonna be over a lot faster than in two more years, not least because Trump picked an incompetent screechy-voiced screaming Nazi as his fucking point man.

The thing to note here is, like the original World Of Warcraft Leeroy Jenkins, Trump doesn't actually give a shit if everybody else dies in your basic gaming Total Party Kill, as long as he's got chicken.

We've got to take the neighborhood back. We've got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It's right around the corner. It's standing on the corner. It can't speak English. It doesn't want to speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk. "Why you ain't where you is go." I don't know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with "why you ain't…". You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they're moving ahead on this? Well, they know they're not, they're just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you're just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out. ~Bill Cosby, the "Pound Cake" speech.

That's the essence of this whole Trump Thing. It's a total refusal to give a shit about anybody else, least of all the people on your own team...and I've seen how this works and These Fucking People are like this at all levels from my Partner's idiot relatives all the way up to Trump himself.

My ultimate view on this is, if Miller makes it a full Scaramucci before he pisses off somebody that can't be pissed off or gets ganked by the system, I'm gonna be surprised. He'll yell at the wrong person and get beat the fuck down or stabbed in the back literally or metaphorically and at best be the next one who gets fired. The real world is reasserting itself, guys.

I've seen so much of their bullshit come flying apart in just the last five days that I've concluded current "Republicans" cannot even fucking function without a massively stacked deck, owned regulators and total hegemony of one sort or another.

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. ~2 Timothy 4:3

I mean, for fuck's sake the Cybertruck got canceled. 

And I can remember when "Conservatives" used to be the ones to preach against exactly the kind of bullshit that's going on right now.

I guess that was just easier when Bill Clinton was the one doing it, and on a vastly smaller scale?

Speaking of the 1990's I don't understand how they got this way because honestly, when I was still a pretty dedicated conservative Christian Republican back in the 1990's I was used to feeling outnumbered and really didn't expect much else. As a more-conservative Democrat, yet one who refuses to knuckle-under to this bullshit like Chuck Schumer, I still feel that way.

And I get it now, a lot of these Evangelical Republicans were basically neither by any kind of classic definition. 

They were just stuck in a holding pattern waiting for somebody like *Checks Notes* Donald Trump.

Seriously "Conservatives" have been hoping every candidate with an "R" next to their name has been this since Barry Goldwater. Hmm, I wonder what could have been the cause of that?? Civil Rights, maybe?? They really thought it was gonna be Nixon.

Firstly, if you think Trump is your Lord and Savior, you deserve exactly the Hell you're going to get. 

Secondly, I'm seeing a hell of a lot of Cope and rationalizing from these idiots but at the end of the day, they're still losing in *Checks Notes Again* Mississippi.

Part of it is, Basic Democratic Voters were willing to do the fucking work, Republicans were trying to outsource basically everything to Trump.

Of course for the last year or so that, too, has been pretty much disintegrating. I'll note it's been about that long...since the stuff in the Epstein files started trickling out...that I haven't heard any "Daddy Trump" talk from these idiots.

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of their own household. ~Matthew 10:34-36

They might be stupid, but they know who the authoritarian fathers, creepy uncles, handsy older-boy cousins and Youth Pastors are...and they know these people aren't liberals. They just hoped you didn't and that they could project the Sins of their own group onto other people. Same as it ever was.

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen. ~Ezekiel 16:49-50 (NIV)

And they thought they were somehow magically gonna ride all this Bullshit to segregationist Glory.

I don't think it's gonna work.

Because it's not just that These Fucking People don't know what they're doing. They don't seem to want to know, either.

I see Peter Thiel wants to try to set up Nashville as some kind of Protestant Fundamentalist version of the Holy See in Rome. Dude's obviously never been to motherfucking Nashville. 

Not only is it one of the blackest, gayest, and most liberal cities I've ever been to, but there isn't much of a Venn Diagram between "Aspiring Country Gospel Singer" and "Member of the LGBT Community." It's entirely normal for some Fundamentalist Nut wannabe-singer to also be a regular at Menscape Nashville. I mean I get why Peter Pan Theil is Okay with that. I'm just sayin' a lot of his target audience probably won't be. Also Protestantism doesn't work that way.

Remember when your High School History teacher said "The course of human events changes because of the deeds of great men"?. Well the bitch was lying. Fuck Julius Caesar, fuck Abe Lincoln, fuck Mahatma Gandhi. The world keeps moving because of you and me: the anonymous. Revolutions get started because people don't have enough bread. Wars start over a game of checkers. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO Series "Oz" S1, E8 "A Game Of Checkers."

Seriously I've been down there and stayed enough to learn where shit was a few times, and also been down there for a quick trip to rescue my ex-wife twice. She had the bright idea to try her luck down there in 2001-2002 (and since we were still hooking up at that point I went to visit) and again in 2005-2006 and I had to go down there and save her ass both times when shit fell apart because nobody else would do it. Also in the spring of 2006 she ended up staying with me for a few weeks 'cause she didn't have anywhere else to go and it took that long for her to find a job and convince her Mom to let her stay there until she got up enough money to get her own place. 

By the end of that, I just wanted her gone.

She still tries to make me the bad guy because I didn't want to work it out. Well it wasn't too long after that, that my partner (who I already knew as a work-friend) and I started to become close friends.

You can take a lot of things away from a man. Cigarettes, the gym. You can take his freedom, his legs, but not his feelings. Not his feelings. A man loves a woman. Don't matter what kind of man he is, if he loves her, he wants her. He wants her body. He wants her to want his. So you say to him, "you can never make love again. You will never touch her in that way again. This is the last time. The last time. Forever." If that's not cruel and unusual punishment, I don't know what is. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO series Oz, S1.E2 "Visits, Conjugal and otherwise."

Life goes on and it seems to me like, at the end of the day, it's only a certain kind of conservative that has a problem with that.

And that's exactly what they thought was going on here.

They thought Trump was gonna be their "god" and somehow magically hold back the future none of them really believed in, but were all terrified of, anyway.

There's more, but even starting to deal with that requires acknowledging the fact that all this stuff is bullshit and most of these idiots can't or won't talk about what the real agenda is.

I got people to think about, I can't mess with that shit.

You want to stop this shit??

Start with not being afraid, or at least controlling your fear.

That seems to be the other thing they also can't or won't do.

And that's why they're going charging in screaming "Leeroy Jenkins" because they hope they can overawe somebody with a show of force, but there's nothing behind it. All they have left is intimidation. All the rest of us have to do is exist and resist.

They thought "Great Men" were gonna save them, but then they couldn't even be bothered to pick good men.

You either believe in freedom or you don't, and you're either willing to fight for it or you're not.

Слава Україна!

[Henry Jones Sr. hands his suitcase to Indiana Jones, pulling out his umbrella like a knight drawing a sword, and uses it to scare a flock of Seagulls aloft and into the path of an oncoming Nazi Bf-109 fighter plane, which crashes due to birdstrikes] 

I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne, let my armies be the rocks and the trees...and the birds in the sky. ~Henry Jones, Sr.  [He walks away with his umbrella, strolling like a man at the park as Indy looks on in amazement.] ~From Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

One

During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug) -- while praying to the same God -- with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the "white" Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana. We were truly all the same (brothers) -- because their belief in one God had removed the "white" from their minds, the 'white' from their behavior, and the 'white' from their attitude. I could see from this, that perhaps if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man -- and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their "differences" in color.

With racism plaguing America like an incurable cancer, the so-called "Christian" white American heart should be more receptive to a proven solution to such a destructive problem. Perhaps it could be in time to save America from imminent disaster -- the same destruction brought upon Germany by racism that eventually destroyed the Germans themselves.

They asked me what about the Hajj had impressed me the most. . . . I said, "The brotherhood! The people of all races, color, from all over the world coming together as one! It has proved to me the power of the One God. . . . All ate as one, and slept as one. Everything about the pilgrimage atmosphere accented the Oneness of Man under One God. 

~Malcolm X, Letter following the Hajj.

Tired (Great "Men," One.)

Remember when your High School History teacher said "The course of human events changes because of the deeds of great men"?. Well the bitch was lying. Fuck Julius Caesar, fuck Abe Lincoln, fuck Mahatma Gandhi. The world keeps moving because of you and me: the anonymous. Revolutions get started because people don't have enough bread. Wars start over a game of checkers. ~Augustus Hill, from the HBO Series "Oz" S1, E8 "A Game Of Checkers."

...

My black face fades,

hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.

My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night slanted against morning. 

I turn this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke. 

I touch the name Andrew Johnson; 

I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

~Facing It, by Yusef Komunyakaa, US Army Veteran

...

And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.

How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she said in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.

Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judges her.

And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,

Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. ~Revelation 18:1-10

I saw this last night.

Two things; 

Democrat Scott Colom retains a narrow but steadily widening lead over Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, in one of the few major midterm races that remains uncalled. Also, Michigan was a sweep at the statewide level and at least as far as this Senatorial race is concerned their map down in Mississippi looks more Blue State than ours does.

And Erick Ericson just completely bitching about how Republicans let too many weirdos into the Party. LOL. I have to admit, I agree with Erick here, but not for the reasons he might think I do. He's right, but not in the way that he thinks he is. 

He's mad because the Trump cultists ran away with the show. 

He's not mad that Southern White crypto-segregationist assholes like himself enabled this bullshit for 50 years, gradually stealing the Republican Party right out from under the likes of Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Bushes greater and lesser, and John McCain and Mitt Romney until Trump was inevitable and a regular guy, even of that type, couldn't get elected as a Republican (but the weirdos could) so they started having to run as Democrats.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~George Orwell, 1984.

Erick's mad that the stereotypical Southern Georgia Tech Football-and-Rush Limbaugh blowhard bro types can't win as Republicans anymore. 

Not that most of the guys like that I've ever known in 50 years (like my late uncle, who being an Army veteran had the sense to know fucking with the Iranians was a terrible idea 40 years ago, and who having served in Vietnam thought War was something that should be avoided if possible...we had that conversation) would have made it in today's Republican Party either. 

For that matter the Susan Collins white Yes-Woman types can't make it either.

We've got to take the neighborhood back. We've got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It's right around the corner. It's standing on the corner. It can't speak English. It doesn't want to speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk. "Why you ain't where you is go." I don't know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with "why you ain't…". You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they're moving ahead on this? Well, they know they're not, they're just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you're just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out. ~Bill Cosby, the "Pound Cake" speech.

Meanwhile, Republicans ended up with *Checks Notes* people like Lauren Blowbert, until they didn't because she lost too. 

Not people who are Believers or convincingly even believe in much of anything...but rather, a certain type of person who weirdly idolizes "Belief" itself. They don't want to really talk the talk, much less walk the walk of being anything in particular...but they grab onto and idolize the "Idea" of being a "Christian" like that shit is a fucking sports team or something. It's little more than an excuse to fight and "Win."

Never mind what you're actually "winning."

Again, I've got a partner and a kid to think about, I can't afford to live like this.

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. ~2 Timothy 4:3

In fact most of the traditional Christian people that I know who identifiably are that, are Democrats now.

As are those whose spiritual lives are basically the remains of being that, people like me for example.

Even people like my ex-wife can't keep this shit going anymore, from what I've heard and seen. She was never MAGA (which actually kind of surprised me) but from what one of our mutual friends told me even she got tired of this shit. 

I suppose it didn't hurt that she's some sort of a support person for a social services agency now. I'm not gonna lie, the first words out of my mouth were "Bitch has a job?!?!?!"

My...honestly former...friend couldn't really argue with that assessment. 

But then he's tired, too. And this is somebody I fell out with 20 years ago over my loss of support for Bush 43...not because of my ex-wife who we both happen to know and that whole mess a few years earlier.

The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty. ~Ronald Reagan

I could be wrong, but it's looking more and more to me like the whole damn Republican thing was just completely dependent on a total Magistracy of Bullshit that literally depended on total Republican control of the government and of regulators and on the idea that the average person was going to keep buying the whole hog when it came to all this stuff, every day, basically forever.

I couldn't do it, I stopped doing it before any of this was ever a thing.

Never mind most of us couldn't do it simply because they couldn't or wouldn't even keep that shit at a basic level...or even a plausible level of Crazy. They couldn't stop, constant escalation of everything and an ever-widening circle of enemies is eventually just going to wear people out and make them give up if it doesn't cause them to snap first. Not everybody is wired to be a fucking Cultist.

Shit had to keep getting bigger, louder, more brassy and obnoxious, in your face and up your ass every fucking day until you just didn't even wanna see that shit anymore, and again I say this as a former Republican.

And then you have to figure, these fucking people don't actually want to participate in government, or their own legal defense, or even much of anything else past whatever they think is "fun" or "looks cool" and they quite openly don't give a shit about how anything actually works.

Like I'm sorry but this bit by Greg Bovino, who pretty much said he'd rather sit there day drinking than show up to defend himself in a congressional hearing just pissed me right the fuck off. As an Air Force security forces veteran I happen to know, if they say you're going, you go. You show up on time, look regulation, answer honestly, do what you gotta do and then you leave. You don't have to like it, but if you don't go they will come get you. It's not just that the consequences for shirking the system are potentially apocalyptic. It's...I mean what the fuck are you even doing there if you don't believe in what you're doing enough to show up??

Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen. ~Ezekiel 16:49-50 (NIV)

Then why do it?? Why do the actions if you don't want to show up to defend said actions later??

Legal participation even for the accused and the right to face one's accusers and defend oneself under the Law is a RIGHT. 

It's a thing people killed and died for, because there was a time when we didn't have that and they could just try you in absentia, and soldiers could show up and just kill you and be done with it and people might not even have had the right to know why it happened. 

Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinking Indian
Or the marine that went to war
Gather 'round me people
There's a story I would tell
'Bout a brave young Indian
You should remember well
From the land of the Pima Indian
A proud and noble band
Who farmed the Phoenix Valley
In Arizona land
Down the ditches a thousand years
The waters grew Ira's peoples' crops
'Til the white man stole their water rights
And the sparkling water stopped
Now, Ira's folks were hungry
And their land grew crops of weeds
When war came, Ira volunteered
And forgot the white man's greed
Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinking Indian
Or the marine that went to war.

~The Ballad of Ira Hayes, by Johnny Cash.

These fucking people love the capricious Power of the State when they're the only ones that have it, and then only with complete unaccountability. When they don't have that, they'd rather just sit there and get drunk.

Our system is our system because our Founders, having lived under something else, were well aware that unaccountable Power wielded capriciously and cruelly by people who don't give a shit tends to lead to bloody Revolution...and having led and fought in one of those themselves...they knew that it was always possible that they could face the same. Hence, a carefully-constructed system of laws.

People fought and bled and died for this stuff. This didn't happen by Magic, and it's not myths and legends. You can go and you can see where it happened and you can study that history and so on.

But Republicans stopped caring because it wasn't them.

Going to suggest maybe we ought to disallow shallow vapid Narcissists form being in our government?

And it's funny how these idiots and their "Great Men" theory of Everything simply couldn't and didn't account for that people would just get tired of this shit and vote it down.

I'm tired of this shit. I helped vote it out.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

Слава Україна!

You get freedom by letting your enemy know that you'll do anything to get your freedom; then you'll get it. It's the only way you'll get it. ~Malcolm X.

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[Cassian plays Nemik's audio diary]

Karis Nemik: There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they've already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire's authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try. 

~From the Star Wars series Andor, S1.E12 "Rix Road."