No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind as between the internal and the external threats of communism.
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it — and rather successfully. Cassius was right. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves." Good night, and good luck. ~Edward R. Murrow
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. ~George Orwell, 1984.
I just spent the last couple hours following the debate, and the coverage thereof.By about the middle of the whole thing, I'm sitting there, mouth hanging open and stunned into silence thinking "Motherfucker..." with the ferrets looking at me like "U OK, Human??"
Full confession: I absolutely expected this debate to be a soup sandwich, for Trump, a damned-near mirror image of Biden vs. Trump back in June. This wasn't that.
This was Desert Storm and Trump was the Iraqi Republican Guard.
This was War Of The Worlds and Kamala was the freaking Martians.
Hillary Clinton wiped the floor with Trump in 2016 and...this wasn't even that.
HRC, love her or hate her, came off like a debate nerd and policy wonk, and so Trump's bad behavior became the main subject of the story...which disgusted most people but supercharged him with his then-forming up MAGA base.
She called him a liar right to his face.
And the best Trump could do was recycle the bullshit lie circulating the last couple days about immigrants eating cats in Ohio and tout Victor Orban as a character reference.
Are you fucking kidding me??
Now, "Trump had a bad night" is the best spin they can put on it...on FOX News.
Kamala Harris took Donald Trump's political main-character status away from him live on TV, beat him with it, and then jammed it up his ass and walked away laughing.
Trump was the Wicked Witch Of The West and Kamala Harris was Dorothy throwing a big bucket of cold water on his ass!
I mean, seriously, Harris was a Weapon Of Ass Destruction.
I mean, Jesus, this is probably the first damn time I've ever seen Erick Erickson lose his cool at his own damn side.
Seeing what Looney Laura looks like these days, I'm genuinely afraid to even ask what the fuck those two were doing when they were supposed to be doing the homework.
Actually, I saw a list of who was on the plane with Trump and it was a slurry of ass-kissers, hangers-on, campaign people, fucking freaks, grifters and a whole bunch of people who shouldn't have been anywhere near preparations for anything that was public or important.
Trump needed people who'd be hard-asses, honest with him, and make him get his shit together and that didn't happen.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, if Republicans could just dial the bullshit back to like Bush 43 levels and keep it there they could at least give Democrats a good run for their money and hang on to some political power.
As it was, their political and social rear-guard strategy of packing the Supreme Court isn't going to survive next year if Harris wins...because fuck, now people who couldn't have named three SCOTUS Justices in 2022 are fucking tired of Clarence and Sam and their wannabe Medieval Catholic horseshit.
Like, there's a reason the Knights of Malta don't have a country anymore, guys, because even fucking Napoleon Bonaparte wasn't having that kind of bullshit. He damned well was an Emperor but he knew he got where he was because people had gotten sick of the last dynasty of kings and theocrats and built Guillotines because of it and killed them all. And he didn't want to join Louis Capet in being about a foot shorter from the neck up.
There's a fucking reason Europe is no longer awash in powerful monarchs and Theocrats and when it comes right down to it, that reason is that the People got tired of it and gave those people a choice between surrendering their power or losing their lives.
And not only do American "Conservatives" not have that kind of Power...they were counting on *Checks Notes* Donald Trump to get it for them.
Talk about going all-in on a pair of twos, Jesus.
And it gets worse.
Like about two minutes after the debate was over, Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris.
Yeah, Trump had a bad night.
Except this wasn't a bad night, it was a nuclear wipeout.
But you still gonna have to show up...'cause 30% of America literally doesn't care if Trump is a vegetable sitting on a gilded throne, they'll worship his ass anyway.
So get after it, Be A Better Citizen.
Because even if we do it's still very likely going to come down to a fight to get rid of these assholes, drive them from our politics and get them to stop fucking with the rest of us.
You either believe in freedom or you don't.
Слава Україна!
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
When the earliest settlers poured into a wild continent there was no one to ask them where they came from. The only question was: Were they sturdy enough to make the journey, were they strong enough to clear the land, were they enduring enough to make a home for freedom, and were they brave enough to die for liberty if it became necessary to do so? And so it has been through all the great and testing moments of American history. Our history this year we see in Vietnam. Men there are dying; men named Fernandez and Zajac and Zelinko and Mariano and McCormick. Neither the enemy who killed them nor the people whose independence they have fought to save ever asked them where they or their parents came from. They were all Americans. It was for free men and for America that they gave their all, they gave their lives and selves. By eliminating that same question as a test for immigration the Congress proves ourselves worthy of those men and worthy of our own traditions as a nation. ~Lyndon B. Johnson.
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