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.

Last Post

[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."

A Better Nation. (Election 2026, Three.)

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

...

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.

...

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

I went to bed around 1:30 AM this morning having already seen that the midterms were an electoral curb-stomping for Republicans.

I stand corrected.

This was Mike Tyson getting his ass beat by Buster Douglas.

Everybody was expecting Republicans to lose.

I don't think anybody was expecting them to lose Texas.

I don't know about everybody else, but I wasn't expecting American History X level of "Bite the curb, bitch." 

This was straight-up Hungarian-grade levels of electoral violence to the regime in a country that's not supposed to have regimes, and America finally remembered that.

Even Trump seems to be in full panic mode.

Good.

I mean, they can't spin this, but I expected somebody to try it.

Such is the world we live in, I guess. I don't have to like that, and I don't.

Republicans have made a freaking point these last couple of years of shitting all over women's rights both politically and socially. This is a sore point with me for a fucking reason, I've got a partner with a daughter to think about. Neither one of them would do well in the kind of Man-centered world current Republicans envision.

Canada, the most affluent of countries, operates on a depletion economy which leaves destruction in its wake. Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money. ~Alanis Obomsawin, Native American activist and filmmaker.

The American People just rewarded the Republicans for this by electing multiple Native American women to the US Senate (and there weren't any before) including in places I would not have expected Republicans to lose, like Alaska. Minnesota didn't surprise me that way, but Alaska did.

Good.

And of course I saw Nikki Haley on News-max this morning, basically showing the world that Republicans have missed the point of pretty much everything, even as regards their own claimed beliefs.

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.

Let me specify, saw it on Threads. 

I don't own a TV and if I did I wouldn't be caught dead watching NEWSMAX.

More to the point, the overwhelming Democratic attitude about this seems to be "Hi, I'm here now, let's get at it!"

I live in Michigan, I'm proud that Abdul won.

Can you imagine the utter pomposity of even just the announcement if (for example) Ken Paxton would have defied the conventional odds and won in Texas? Even (or maybe especially) if he'd been the only one to beat said odds??

This is YOUR country, Americans.

America isn't America if we don't all give a damn and do the work.

You don't have to like it, but if you don't do it, they sure will.

Your vote isn't a gift. It's a chess move towards the world you want to live in, and that you want others to live in.

If you want a better nation, you have to be a better citizen. ~Jim Wright AKA Stonekettle.

If you have a job to do, you do it. If you see trash on the ground, you pick it up. If you witness corruption or crimes, you report them. You get what you tolerate, America. In fact, if you tolerate it, that's the only thing you'll get.

My college friend Mohammed posted something similar in February of 2011 when Egypt overthrew Mubarak during the Arab Spring. 

I never thought at that time that I'd be posting anything like that in or about my own country.

But here we fucking are.

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

I mean, I get it. I hate people like Donald Trump and Ken Paxton too, but we have to stand for something, also. If we're just against everything...what the hell difference is there between us and the fucking Republicans??

I said what I said. I have spoken.

That said, Mike Rogers can go fuck himself ALL the way back to Florida.

You should never trust a man whose wife's face looks like that all the time. It's not just he's doing it wrong, he been doing it wrong and doesn't care about doing it right in the first place.

I mean for fuck's sake just the stank-ass looks on his or his wife's faces all the time makes me think who the fuck would want these fucking people in charge of anything??

These fucking people are exactly the reason I quote shit like Bill Cosby's "Pound Cake" speech on the regular, they're basically welfare people, but they got rich because they had connections or would say whatever rich people wanted them to say. They're incapable of doing much of anything else, and they don't want to.

It's not even that Republicans don't want to do anything, they don't want anybody else to do much of anything either. 

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."

I've been saying some variation of this since at least 2008 when John McCain...despite having every qualification in the book and then some and literally possessing the force of personality, moral force and political stature to pull it off...as a veteran let me tell you one does not get to be a US Navy Captain otherwise...but he somehow managed to be less than the sum of his parts and somehow Sarah Palin became the face of the Republican Party and, I'd argue, stayed that way until Trump came along.

John McCain should have been That Guy, especially against someone very well-intentioned but relatively inexperienced like Barack Obama. 

That's what I thought, anyway.

He should have been, but he wasn't.

At least from a strictly Republican perspective, Mitt Romney should have been That Guy as well. But, again, he failed to take command of the situation and his VP nominee, Paul Ryan, became the face of the Party while Mitt (I think, wrongly in retrospect) earned himself a reputation as an elitist snob because he couldn't keep his mouth shut...and then Paul Ryan did worse because not only could he not keep his mouth shut, he couldn't keep his brain connected.

So Republicans got destroyed, exactly as Lindsey Graham said they would, only about a decade too late in my opinion.

And they deserved it.

Good job, America.

It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for the country in return. ~Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr.

Two

[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."

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Please Clap (Election 2026, Two, For A Better Nation Edition.)

It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for the country in return. ~Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr.

...

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 went and voted this morning.

Fuck These Motherfuckers, I'm done, I've been done. 

The question is, why aren't you?!?!

Looks like a proverbial ass-kicking shaping up, but so far at least it's the fairly obvious. Projecting an Ossoff win in Georgia and Vivek going down in flames in Ohio because fuck that motherfucker, too.

Florida of course is predictable but I'm not surprised by anything in Florida anymore, that state is turning into a foreign hostile banana republic under our own flag, and you watch and see if it doesn't come down to exactly that.

But I wasn't expecting anything out of that fucking place. It's my people in that state and the native Floridians drowned out by a tide of MAGA retirees moving in that I actually worry about.

Now I just need Flanigan to win in Minnesota so Michele Bachmann looks like a total idiot. "40 days of prayer and fasting?" 

For politics? 

Wlliam Adama: I've been going through Cain's log and from a tactical perspective it's hard to find fault in anything she did. Or that Kendra Shaw did.

Lee Adama: They butchered innocent civilians, Dad. Come on. How can you ignore that?

William Adama: I know that I didn't have to face any of the situations that she did. I had the President in my face, arguing for the survival of the civilian fleet. I had Colonel Tigh keeping me honest, balancing my morality and my tactics. And I had you. Now...you don't have any children, so you might not understand this, but you see yourself reflected in their eyes. And there are some things that I've thought of doing with this fleet, but I've stopped myself, because I knew I'd have to face you the following day. 

~From Battlestar Galactica: Razor

God does not work that way.

I saw this when I was getting gas.

Note: I live in Northern Michigan, in an area that had a lot of Trumpers when I moved back up here in 2021-2022.

There aren't very many left, and if they are still that way, they're quiet about it.

I'm tired, the last couple days have been a whirlwind because I ended up with some money, so naturally I put most of it so far into helping my partner. But I still had to run errands and all that type of shit like usual.

Still, had to laugh seeing an anti-Trump sticker on the gas pump on election night freaking all the way out here. You have to understand I'm two hours from the nearest freeway in either direction, about two and a half hours from the nearest large city. There's whole towns up here that was nothing but Trumpers all the way down up to a few months past the start of his second term.

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

I have a feeling the Karmic Ass-whuppin is just getting started.

And yes, I absolutely voted for Abdul this morning, my bro is so Michigan it ain't even funny. He knows what's up, or at least is smart enough to play the game like he does and act like a regular damn person from my state.

On top of that he's a decent guy, and he very much seems like somebody who'll do something, which is rare enough in a congressional candidate. I don't give a rat's ass if he's Muslim although I have a feeling I know a lot more what that means (and I support that, too, Muslims have rarely been anything but a force for good in my life) than fake-pious media chuds like Bret Stephens do. 

Being anti-Israel at this point is not being Anti-Semitic. 

Israel is a secular nation, not a theocracy, it does not represent Judaism in the same way that (for example) the Holy See represents Catholicism. Their government is democratic and people (both in Israel and otherwise) have the right PER THEIR OWN LAWS to criticize their government.

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.

And by the way, the only reason most of these media jerkoffs and Republicans are essentially repeating Israeli propaganda (which I expect is gonna be reduced once Bibi is out) is right-wing ideology and money. 

In a few cases it's possible they actually believe in Christian Zionism. You know, the kind that's basically fattening up Israel as a sacrifice for Republican Murder-Jesus. 

Most of these fucking people hate actual Jews.

I'm serious, it's gross.

And all this shit is, mostly, is people using each other in the most cynical ways you can possibly imagine, or maybe you just don't want to.

[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."

But that doesn't change what it is. 

Some people are just bad people, and pretending or wanting to believe otherwise will not help you.

No, there is not "Good" in everyone. I don't give a royal rat's ass what Marianne Williamson told you back in the 1990's.

I have spoken.

And while I'm at it, it's been my actual lived experience that nobody lives down to their claimed opinion of Humanity and the World as being evil and sinful and Fallen than the Evangelicals do.

There is a reason I don't consider Evangelicals to be Christians anymore.

In Oz, the guards lock the cages and walk away, and the predators rise, take control and make the rules. But in Em City, the guards are with us 24 hours a day. There's no privacy. Everybody sees what everybody's doing. Eyes everywhere. McManus' eyes. See, in Em City, retribution gives way to redemption. Timmy boy believes he can save every one of us, from each other, from ourselves, from the system that dumped us in here. Only thing he don't get is, you gotta wanna be saved. ~Augustus Hill, From the HBO series Oz, S1.E1 "The Routine."

But let me tell you something else. I have hung in there and fought instead of checking out because there absolutely are, proven-over-time decent people in this world and I do what I can to help the ones I can help.

When they'll let me, anyway.

You don't have to like it, or understand.

I know.

And that's all that's needed.

From daydreams on the road there was no waking. He plodded on. He could remember everything of her save her scent. Seated in a theatre with her beside him leaning forward listening to the music. Gold scrollwork and sconces and the tall columnar folds of the drapes at either side of the stage. She held his hand in her lap and he could feel the tops of her stockings through the thin stuff of her summer dress. Freeze this frame. Now call down your dark and your cold and be damned. ~From Cormac McCarthy's The Road (Book.)

But let me tell you, just for example; The Kiddo is almost 15, she wants to get a job. She wants to work. She has goals, she has a plan. It's a bit idealistic but you want people to be like that at her age. There's a reason I do what I can to make her life a little better specifically too.

If she learns to be a bit of a bitch and a princess like her Mom was when we met all those years ago, and develops the cleverness to manipulate guys and shit because of me, good. Her mother has already taught her to defend herself, if it ever comes to that. I've been present for discussions of Rules Of Engagement when they thought something was gonna happen. Don't mess with that kid.

My ex-wife's oldest son, by contrast, the one she had when we were married, is 30 and doesn't even have a job, or seem to want to.

You want to see what people are, who people are, look at their kids and how the kids conduct themselves and what the kids want to do. I'm sorry, but everybody that can work needs a job.

I know that's hard for some people. Those people should be accommodated as best we can.

I don't make the rules.

But the truth is people who have issues often want to work harder than some of them what don't. 

I just wish our system put more into helping the people who were trying to do something and gave less to manipulators who could give a shit about anyone or anything but themselves.

If we want a better nation, we have to be better citizens.

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

It's too bad that so many people had to Fuck Around and Find Out before learning that. We could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble doing the right thing 2 years ago.

You either believe in freedom or you don't.

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

One

"I will not trash talk. I will not be a divider in chief or an agitator in chief. I won't be out there blowharding, talking a big game without backing it up. I think the next president needs to be a lot quieter but send a signal that we're prepared to act in the national security interests of this country — to get back in the business of creating a more peaceful world."

[Silence. Two big burly guys push a heaping-full trash-cart with a squeaky wheel across the hall in front of Jeb! Silence.]

"Please clap."

~Jeb! Bush, February 2nd, 2016

(Michigan has not been called yet, but here we are.)