Remember When Kayleigh McEnany Was His White House Press Secretary?

 

She was very loyal to him.

And this is what he has to say about her for the unforgivable act of misstating a poll number:

There is no one Trump will not throw under the bus if it serves him. He gives loyalty to NO ONE but demands it of all.

Poor Kayleigh? Nah. She should have known this was inevitable. 

This is how he treats everyone. 

This is the miserable human being that his cultists want back in the White House.

DeSantis this weekend said:

 

 

“I will serve two terms, and I will be able to destroy leftism in this country.”

So this guy wants to be POTUS and get rid of millions and millions of Americans who believe in an ideology that he does not like. (An entire group of people that has served in government -- state and federal -- for years, and many with honor.)

Where have we heard threats like this before? 

How will DeSantis "destroy" leftism?

DeSantis doesn't say, he just threatens to annihilate an ideology he doesn't like. Will he round us up and send us to the firing squads? Does this jackass not read history? He's threatening to destroy thinking he doesn't agree with.

Anyone?

Yeah. When someone tells you who he is, believe him. 

PS.

Imagine the pearl clutching if a prominent Democratic presidential candidate publicly said, “I want to destroy conservatism in this country."

Memorial Day, Boston, 2023

In the past, I've usually posted a photo of one of my favorite sculptures in Boston, The Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, which is installed across the street from the Massachusetts State House, on Boston Common.

"Commissioned from the celebrated American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens in the early 1880s and dedicated as a monument in 1897, the Shaw Memorial has been acclaimed as the greatest American sculpture of the nineteenth century.

The relief masterfully depicts Colonel Shaw and the first African American infantry unit from the North to fight for the Union during the Civil War. The sculpture combines the real and allegorical, and presents a balance of restraint and vitality."

I also have included with the post Robert Lowell's moving poem about the Shaw Memorial in which Lowell ties in the yet unresolved issues of the Civil War with the mindless consumerism that grips the nation in his poem “For the Union Dead”.  It is one of my favorite poems; and when I visit the Shaw Memorial, as I often do, I think of Lowell's poem that so perfectly limns the relief and its setting in the Boston Common.

FOR THE UNION DEAD

The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.
Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the crowded, compliant fish.

My hand draws back. I often sigh still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized

fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.

Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
a girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse,

shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.

Two months after marching through Boston,
half of the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.

Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is as lean
as a compass-needle.

He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound's gentle tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.

He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man's lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die-
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.

On a thousand small town New England greens
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic

The stone statutes of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year-
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets and muse through their sideburns…

Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his "niggers."

The ditch is nearer.
There are no statutes for the last war here; on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling

over a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages"
that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
when I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.
Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessed break.
The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.

                                    --Robert Lowell

YOUR SUNDAY MOMENT OF ZEN

 

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. 

What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. 

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. 

Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. 

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. 

Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. 

Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. 

As Huxley remarked in "Brave New World Revisited," the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." 

In "1984", Huxley added, "people are controlled by inflicting pain."

In "Brave New World," they are controlled by "inflicting pleasure." 

In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. 

Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. ~Neil Postman

SATURDAY NIGHT WITH TINA!

 

RIP Tina. 

She was a force of nature:

Thanks to DeSantis's book-banning laws, one parent in Florida...

 

had the power to restrict Amanda Gorman's poem, which she read at President Biden's inauguration, from elementary school children's ability to read it. 

ONE parent!

(As Ms. Gorman noted, restriction of her poem is also banning it. This is DeSantis's "Free State of Florida.)

Why is Gorman’s book facing restrictions? 

"Gorman’s poem, about the trauma of watching an attack on Washington after a the presidential election, was challenged alongside four other books, 'The ABCs of Black History,' 'Cuban Kids,' 'Countries in the News: Cuba' and 'Love to Langston,' on the complaint of one parent, according to the Florida Freedom to Read Project, a nonprofit organization focused on defending students’ right to access information at school."

The woman who complained about Ms. Gorman's poem claimed Oprah Winfrey was the author. The woman didn't even know who authored the poem, but she knew it was dangerous and inappropriate for grammar school children to read it!

Again, tell me why Conservatives/Libertarians label Liberals as "intolerant," but see nothing wrong with this absurdity.

What do Libertarians say to this?:

“That Florida has the highest number of districts banning books shows the widespread effort across the state,” said Kasey Meehan, director of the Freedom to Read program at PEN America. “The situation is chronic in Florida and worsening around the country.” Book restrictions and challenges are escalating alongside legislation in Florida that prevents the teaching of certain types of content, Meehan said.

[skip]

“The outpouring of support that Amanda and others are getting shows how out of control the book-banning movement has gotten,” Meehan said. “People are realizing that books are being targeted without regard to what is in them.”

If children are terrified in school, it's because we've made weapons of war easier to obtain than books.

If children are terrified in school, it's because they're made to endure active shooter drills. 

If we actually cared for children in this country (we don't), we'd make sure their minds and bodies are fed. 

Instead, right-wing conspiracy nut-job adults are making our kids pawns in their never-ending culture wars.

PS. These same book-banning parents would have no problem with having a Christian Bible in the schoolroom. The Bible is full of killing, mayhem, and sexual perversity.

Someone, please, make sense of this for me.

 

"Oath Keepers' founder Stewart Rhodes was just sentenced to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy in the January 6th attack on the Capitol building. 

 Judge Mehta said in the sentencing that "Treason has been determined to be the appropriate analogue." The Judge also said that Jan 6. was "one of the blackest stains on our country." 

 Around January 6, Rhodes, called for “civil war” and told his followers to let Trump know that they are “willing to die” to defend the country. 

 Judge Mehta ruled that Rhodes' actions amounted to domestic terrorism, noting the way in which the rioters, enticed by Rhodes, attacked the capital during the Democratic transfer of power. 

 The Seditious conspiracy conviction means that there was indeed a conspiracy to attempt to stop Biden from lawfully becoming President. This is a serious crime and that's why he received a serious sentencing."

--Ed Krassenstein

Both Trump and DeSantis have stated that they'd pardon the criminals, like Rhodes, who perpetrated the attack on the United States, should they become POTUS.

Guest Post by Dave Miller

 This is where our country is.

 

Millions of Americans believe the following sets of ideals…

 

America needs Christian prayer in public schools, government funding at state levels for Christian academies, parental veto over sex education and bans on text books not deemed sufficiently patriotic.

 

Further, millions defend white rights, as opposed to equal rights for all Americans, clamor for the use of government to enforce Christian beliefs, practices and morality in public places, and venerate the inviolate freedom for the individual to do as he or she wishes economically, free from government interference.

 

They believe certain Americans have a right to a constitutional government, as they understand it, and if they do not get it, they’ll “get it in the streets” through the use of violence.

 

After a simple reading, you might be excused if you thought this sounded like a typical Trump follower or booster. But in fact, these words are from Matthew Dallek’s new heavily footnoted and annotated book, “Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right”.

 

Dallek takes us on a journey of another time in America, the 50’s and 60’s when Robert Welch and his devoted band of America First people pushed the above series of ideas that bear a striking resemblance to the political rhetoric of the unhinged right we see in politics today.

 

Here’s more, from an article by Wayne Allen Root at the Gateway Pundit and cited by many on the right across the internet over the last few days...

 

“We are living in an age of mass deception, distraction and denial, of mass brainwashing. We might as well all be living in Jonestown, Guyana and following the orders of Jim Jones.

 

It’s all Obama. It’s always been Obama. Obama is the REAL “Big Guy.” Obama is the REAL criminal mastermind. Obama was the head of the snake. Obama was the John Gotti of the US government, overseeing a massive criminal conspiracy. Obama was the head of the “Obama Crime Family.”

 

And the worst part of all: Obama’s still in charge. Obama is pulling all the strings. He’s the one calling the shots. He’s the ventriloquist, speaking for the wooden dummy puppet Joe Biden. Obama is the real President of the United States, back for his third term.”

 

What’s the response of typical bloggers to this?

 

“Obama is the monster, why he wants America destroyed, I don’t know.”

 

 

 

All the while, these folks, the descendants of the Birchers of the 1950’s and 1960’s continue as if the clarion call they are sending is the cure for all that ails America.

 

If they could even get to a platform for their preferred political party, impossible in 2020, it would surely include this list…

 

Bring back prayer to school, remove regulations on businesses across America, ban abortion nationwide, don’t speak of sex in schools, give Americans more guns and please, let’s not transition to environmentally safer energies. Oh, and arrest Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe, and Hunter Biden too for their crimes, in spite of a lack of evidence.

 

The fact is, that crowd, the deplorables as Hillary Clinton once described them, are the ones working daily to destroy America. In a few short years they have…

 

·      Turned their back on their own Christian morality in the service of electing Donald Trump in 2016.

·      Waged a war on compassion, believing that compassion, as exhibited by Jesus on the cross, is for losers.

·      Have militarized their faith in support of President Trump.

·      Called for the death of a sitting US Vice President.

·      Excused the beatings of US Capitol Police Officers.

·      Excused lie after lie by President Trump, even as they believe other political leaders should be punished for “their” lies.

 

All of that is recounted in evangelical writer Jon Ward’s newest book, “Testimony, Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed America”

 

As the indictments seem to be nearing for former President Trump, his supporters seem to be feeling the pressure. And like a defeated army, rather than surrender to the truth, they are digging in, seemingly willing to fight to the death.

 

Conservatives, and Birchers in America, conspiratorial in nature then and now, stood against FDR’s new deal that provided millions of Americans an economic safety net. They fought against Medicare, expansion of that program to include prescriptions, the ADA and many other measures that have improved health care and the lives of Americans across the country. They also stood against the SCOTUS case that ushered in the Civil Rights era of the 1960’s, the Loving, Griswold, Obergefell cases, and the Voting Rights Act.

 

Even today, they continue to favor laws that restrict, rather that expand access to the ballot for American citizens. Think I’m wrong? Explain to me why the mostly white GOP in Missouri passed a more restrictive set of polling laws in black and minority areas of the state than in their own suburban neighborhoods?

 

These present day Birchers, like their ancestors, do not believe in a multiethnic religiously diverse society. They are mostly uninformed, racially ignorant, white “My” America Firsters.

 

Unless and until we see significant numbers of this crowd step forward and disavow their beliefs, rather than just melt quietly away into the crowd only to return again as the Birchers that they are, America will never achieve her great promise.

 

Never, ever.

"History has its eyes on us."

 

This is what happens when ignorant, hateful people are given power to make decisions that affect everyone, not just themselves. If the person who does not like Amanda Gorman's poem is offended by it, then she has the right to not read it. 

But who gave this person the right to withhold it from an entire school because of her ignorance?

Think about what's happening in Florida when you hear a Conservative complain that Liberals are destroying the country with their intolerance.

PS. Gov. DeSantis brought this on the state of Florida with his banning of anything that offended his ego. Florida will now lead the US with the MOST BANNED BOOKS AND POETRY, prohibited by ignorant fools.

DeSantis refers to Florida as "The Free State of Florida." Ha! 

The "Free State of Florida" where any ignorant person with an axe to grind can get books and poems banned on a whim.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh! FREEDUMB!!!

"Florida school bans poem read at Biden inauguration after objection of just one parent 

 The poem that was read by poet Amanda Gorman at President Joe Biden's inauguration has been banned from elementary schools in Miami-Dade County, Florida after the objections of just one parent. The Miami Herald reports that the poem, which is titled "The Hills We Climb," was removed from the K-5 curriculum in the county after local parent Daily Salinas challenged it as inappropriate for students. 

The Hills We Climb

by Amanda Gorman

When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade.
We've braved the belly of the beast,
We've learned that quiet isn't always peace,
and the norms and notions
of what just is
isn't always just-ice.
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it.
Somehow we do it.
Somehow we've weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn't broken,
but simply unfinished.
We the successors of a country and a time
where a skinny Black girl
descended from slaves and raised by a single mother
can dream of becoming president
only to find herself reciting for one.
And yes we are far from polished.
Far from pristine.
But that doesn't mean we are
striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge a union with purpose,
to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and
conditions of man.
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us,
but what stands before us.
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside.
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another.
We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true,
that even as we grieved, we grew,
that even as we hurt, we hoped,
that even as we tired, we tried,
that we'll forever be tied together, victorious.
Not because we will never again know defeat,
but because we will never again sow division.
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
and no one shall make them afraid.
If we're to live up to our own time,
then victory won't lie in the blade.
But in all the bridges we've made,
that is the promise to glade,
the hill we climb.
If only we dare.
It's because being American is more than a pride we inherit,
it's the past we step into
and how we repair it.
We've seen a force that would shatter our nation
rather than share it.
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
And this effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed,
it can never be permanently defeated.
In this truth,
in this faith we trust.
For while we have our eyes on the future,
history has its eyes on us.
This is the era of just redemption
we feared at its inception.
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter.
To offer hope and laughter to ourselves.
So while once we asked,
how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert,
How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was,
but move to what shall be.
A country that is bruised but whole,
benevolent but bold,
fierce and free.
We will not be turned around
or interrupted by intimidation,
because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation.
Our blunders become their burdens.
But one thing is certain,
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy,
and change our children's birthright.
So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with.
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.
We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west.
We will rise from the windswept northeast,
where our forefathers first realized revolution.
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states.
We will rise from the sunbaked south.
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover.
And every known nook of our nation and
every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful.
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid,
the new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
if only we're brave enough to see it.
If only we're brave enough to be it.

The Debt Ceiling Crisis is totally made up by the Trumpublicans.

 

John Oberlin: The debt crisis is a republican blackmail scheme they only use when there's a democrat POTUS. 

They raised it three times for Trump for his $2 trillion tax cuts for rich people and another $4 trillion is excessive corporate welfare. 

 Now they want to blame Dems

"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule...

 

is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist."  -- Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

That quote by Arendt aptly describes people like this who believe in and post delusional lies: 

"Monday, May 1, 2023 

This is WAR! 

It’s Day 902 of the coup, the theft of the American Government, by enemies both foreign and domestic."

To be fair, the weak-minded individual quoted above who continues to spread this false narrative is not the only one who's lost the distinction between fact and fiction.

The 45th POTUS, Donald J. Trump, began this delusion as he saw the presidency slip away from him after election day in November 2020. 

Since he lost, Trump has continued to push the Big Lie that the election was rigged and that he actually won -- pushed it despite losing 60 law suits adjudicated by judges even Trump himself had appointed:

“Trump uses social media and terms like ‘fake news’ and ‘witch hunt’ and his power there to create the illusion of popularity for ideas that actually have no basis in reality,”  

“Often what this does is create a bandwagon effect for supporting false or misleading things, or more generally attacking institutions, which may include health care, science, education, and the government, in addition to the media."

Trump wants to be POTUS again, which should be unthinkable. There are Trump-supporting Republicans who are hoping to win the nomination, but so far, Trump has a strong lead for the "Republican" nomination.

Nikki Haley who, when Trump first announced he was running for POTUS in 2015, said:

"Donald Trump is everything I taught my children not to do in kindergarten."

Haley did an about-face, embraced Trump, and worked in his administration. Now she's running against him.

YOUR SUNDAY MOMENT OF ZEN

 

SATURDAY NIGHT DANCING

 

File under "WTAF!"

 

We can thank Trumpublicans and Trumpublican politicians for this idiocy.

This is what happens when weak-minded bigots and chowderheads (especially the ones with firearms) buy into stupid rightwing lies about drag queens, LGBTQ+, and transgender Americans :

The Advocate:

"A Vermont father was arrested and charged with harassment in New Hampshire on Tuesday after allegedly threatening his daughter's school. The man said if his daughter were exposed to transgender students or drag queens he would commit a mass shooting, according to authorities." 

 KETTERING, Ohio (WKEF) --  "A man is behind bars on Wednesday evening after inducing panic and threatening violence at a local high school. Around 9 a.m. on Wednesday morning, 42-year-old Brandon Moore called Kettering Fairmont High School and threatened the safety of students who identify as LGBTQ+, according to Tyler Johnson, Kettering Police Department Public Information Officer. A news release from Kettering City Schools said that the threat was not directed at anyone specific, but was a broad safety threat. Following district safety protocols, Fairmont’s on-site School Resource Officer was made aware of the phone call, according to Kettering City Schools."

Nothing happened at these schools this time. And we're thankful for that. 

But this is a catastrophe, waiting to happen again, that was instigated by fearful, ignorant, and hateful people against "others" they don't know nor understand and who appeal to others who believe just like them.

***********************

For the chumps who still get their "NOOZ" from FAUX NOOZ:

Homeless Vets Story Eaten Up By Fox News Turns Out to Be Spectacularly False 

"The Mid-Hudson News — kudos to this local paper for some tremendous coverage on this story, by the way — reported on Friday morning that seven homeless men had come forward to reveal that Finch approached them at a shelter this week, offering to pay them in cash, food, and alcohol to pretend that they were veterans who had been kicked out of the hotels to make way for migrants. 

The New York Post followed up with a report on their story falling apart. An editor’s note has been affixed to the original front-page story. 

It reads: 'This non-profit CEO has since been accused of misrepresenting the veterans who have been displaced for migrants.' 

 Fox News has yet to issue any correction over the story. The network did not respond to a request for comment."

And for the biggest Chumps of all, prizes go to these idiots:

"Post columnist Miranda Devine said Biden 'should burn in hell for this.' Kevin McCarthy called it 'shameful.' Nikki Haley said the tale was 'liberal insanity at work.'"

Interesting report from Axios

 

And very encouraging!

“In the 11 months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Republicans have underperformed in federal, judicial, statewide and local elections across the country,” 

Axios reports. “Abortion isn’t the only factor driving their election woes, especially in local races. But a toxic party brand can easily trickle down-ballot, and the GOP so far hasn’t been able to navigate the voter backlash that began with a New York special election last August.” 

Aaron Blake: “Democrats have overperformed the 2020 presidential results by an average of six points across 18 state legislative races this year. (And again, that was a good election for them.) They’ve also beaten their 2016 margins by an average of 10 points.”

And this:

Driving the news: Jacksonville on Tuesday elected its second Democratic mayor in 30 years, with Donna Deegan upsetting Daniel Davis — a Republican endorsed by Gov. Ron DeSantis — in Florida's largest city.

• It was the first major election in Florida since DeSantis signed a six-week abortion ban — which a March poll found 75% of Florida residents oppose — in a private ceremony close to midnight last month.
• In Colorado Springs, Colorado, independent businessman Yemi Mobolade was elected the first non-Republican mayor since 1979 — a "political earthquake" in a conservative stronghold, according to local media.
• In Pennsylvania, Democrats held on to their one-seat state House majority by winning a special election in the Philadelphia suburbs, allowing them to block a GOP-backed referendum on limiting abortion rights.