Not One of Our Better Weeks

The Texas legislature is about to send a bill to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk that would not only make it harder to vote; it will also make it easier for the state legislature to overturn results it doesn’t like. Way to go, Texas. See also the Texas Tribune, Texas lawmakers poised to pass sweeping voting bill to restrict voting hours and change election rules.

Meanwhile, delightful duo Margerie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz are touring the country and holding rallies to whip up violence against everybody they don’t like, including Silicon Valley …

… and the government.

No, the Second Amendment has nothing to do with allowing citizens to overthrow the government.

We’re still looking at fallout from the failure of the January 6 commission bill. Kysten Sinema is being roasted by the Arizona Republic for her role in standing in the way of just killing the filibuster already. “At some point, Sinema is going to have to realize she can’t have it both ways,” writes E.J. Montini. “She can’t support legislation she believes to be vital and maintain her position on the filibuster.” Sinema didn’t even bother to vote on the bill.

And then there’s Joe Manchin. I understand some people are still holding out hope that he will realize the filibuster has to go. If he hasn’t seen it by now, I don’t know what’s going to do it, though.

I am not feeling terribly optimistic at the moment. Well, try to do something fun over the Memorial Day weekend.

11 thoughts on “Not One of Our Better Weeks

  1. Garry Kasparov, chess champion:

    The sooner people admit that the GOP is an anti-democracy party that exists only for power, the sooner necessary actions can be taken. Dragging out that admission has already lost valuable time.

  2. OK, Matt. After you. Try an armed insurrection and then declare you have a Second Amendment right to attack cops because you’re trying to get at Democrats. (to kill them.)

    Let me see how it flies with you first.

    No offense, but I have my doubts.

    PS. Who else has tried the Second Amendment defense to insurrection?

  3. Politically speaking, Gaetz is a dead man walking. He's decided to follow the Trump playbook and shout down his upcoming conviction for sex trafficking and engaging in sex with a minor. Rather than doing the Mark Foley disappearing act, or expressing the Larry Craig desire to serve the people he was elected to serve and get back to the business of governance, he has chosen to try and deflate the wheels of justice, ala the Trump method.

     He's not going to succeed. Think about all the others who came before him proclaiming their innocence and champing at the bit for the opportunity to prove their innocence and claim their vindication in a court of law, only to end up as convicted felons.

     I guess when you're going to end up on the sexual offenders national registry anyway that the embarrassment of downplaying the offences you've committed (naughty favors) and the lies you've told to avoid responsibility for your crimes has no real impact on how you feel about your situation as you're entering through the prison gates.

     It's only a matter of time, folks. So if anybody isn't savoring that knowledge and enjoying that which will come to be, they are denying themselves the pleasure in the here and now that Matt Gaetz will pay for his crimes. Let Matt bask in the light of innocence because he will be going down.

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      • Trump doesn't have the ability to help him now. Trump is the toothless lion who squandered his pardoning powers in trying to save himself.

         Matt is all alone, and whether he realizes or not he's become a pariah. Maybe his fellow repugs aren't rallying in his defense of the accusations against him because they know he's a marked man and they don't want the stink a child molesting sexual pervert to attach itself to them.

        I don't know the particulars of Gaetz's sexual forays into the world of Sugar Daddies but, given the information gleaned from Greenberg's plea deal, it's kind of obvious that Matt is going to find himself in a world of shit. It's going to be like judgment day where Trump, like Jesus, says…get thee away from me you worker of iniquity, I never knew you!

        It all brings back a warning in wisdom that my mother conveyed to me in my youth…"When you're in trouble, you're in trouble alone." Even MTG is going to bail on him once the charges against him are announced.

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        • The world has certainly changed since I was a kid. I'm so out of touch that if I was looking to find Sugar Babies I'd go to the local luncheonette and check out the candy rack.

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  4. It was a week of pure hail, and many other four letter words.  They call such events acts of God when you farm.  I guess God works with the crop insurance industry in some sort of a strange and mysterious ways.  In my reality it is a weather event, which appear to be increasing in intensity and frequency in correspondence with the increases of greenhouse gasses on  our atmosphere.  It is a problem measured in billions of tons.  That humans are dumping billions of tons of gases a year into the atmosphere is a concept that is plenty strange and mysterious enough for me,  Hail was once a gas too, not a greenhouse gas but water vapor.  After multiple trips up and down air currents in a thunderstorm, that water vapor gets really heavy and comes down in ice balls.  It can turn a potential bumper wheat crop from an asset to a liability in minutes.  It did that to a portion of mine last week.  Others got it much worse.  I guess God had it more in for them than for me.  It could be that their farm was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  It does seem that such problems are happening to more people more of the time these days.  Let's hope it was not one of your problems last week. 

    It was also a bad week for democracy, suffering losses on several fronts.  The bankers got to visit our nations capital this week,  These big bankers with huge salaries had big praise for capitalism, but seemed quite unconcerned as to  the state of our democracy.  Good that Elizabeth Warren did the accounting for them on how much of their profits came from overdraft fees during the year of the pandemic.   It seems the gusher up economic theory they ascribe to works well in times of customers distress and misery too.  

    I wonder how some seem to think that capitalisms will survive with the emergent insurrection politics of the corruptly criminal wing of the GQP.  They must think they can disenfranchise at will and keep things running with a ragtag army who's defense is that FOX made me do it.  At least they don't try to blame the grocery store tabloids or A.M. radio.  No judge or jury is going to buy into that crap.  Faux news, however, seems to be addictive to a good number of people, and they (pushers and junkies) like it that way.  It works by the same principle as watching outdoor channels constantly is a good sign that you are a stoke victim I think.  I am sure chronic Faux news watching is linked to multiple physical and mental disorders,.  From the ads, you can tell a lot of their viewers have gone gold buggy and suffer from digestive tract issues.  You would think that ads for broken BS meter repair would  permeate their broadcasts, but their status as royalty makes them ineffective, as Queen of Denial syndrome is a common viewer malady.  

    It's just been another week of trying to get your job done and fight with those who have parasitic ways.  These are inspirational times for Blues singers and songwriters. Soon they will emerge from their pandemic holes and tend to our woes.  It won't fix anything but it is a hell of an effective temporary treatment for many.  Until then, one has the meager offerings of commercial media to survive on.  I sure picked a bad time to be on the wagon, that's all I know.

  5. Matt Gaetz will make someone a real "purty" prison wife.

    For a long, long time. 

    And as if having sex with a minor isn't already bad enough, add "selling" that minor to others.  Gaetz will be lucky to survive.  Many prisoners have children, and can imagine their child being dealt with that way by other wannabe Gaetz's.  So, why not send a warning to those other wannabe's by making an example of the original?!?

    Having taught in a state max-security prison, and hearing some stories of a sexual nature, I certainly don't condone prison rape – and all that goes with that (this happens much more often in American prisons than in other countries – but that's a subject for another day).

    But it still happens.  You can't suppress human sexual urges completely.

    And if it's going to happen, I can think of very few people who'd deserve it more than that entitled scumbag.

    As a matter of fact, Gaetz WILL NEED a powerful prison husband to protect him from the other prisoners, and the many ways they'd love to degrade a guy who thought his and his family's status would protect him, no matter what he did.

    Karma, bro.  Karma.

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    • Gaetz better brush up on prison courting rituals. When he finds that Chico has placed a candy bar under his pillow I hope he understands that it's not been placed there in the same spirit of generosity and altruism that he extended to his sugar babies. With a 10 year minimum staring him in the face, Matt might not have to worry about prison rape, he just might go with the flow when he realizes that to satisfy his overactive libido it's only game in town.

  6. Oh please everyone.

    Matt isn't going to go to jail. The wealthy take care of their own. His daddy has plenty of money to spend on lawyers and media to smear the mud around. He has strings to pull, and favors to call in. They haven't even begun to smear his accusers. Odds are he gets a slap on the wrist, a year out of the media in the penalty box, and has to make nice. Give him a couple of years, perhaps not even that long, to 'season' and he comes back tanned and refreshed. 

    Worse case, he has to take up housekeeping in Argentina. Where he can diddle young girls to his hearts content. Yes, you have to pay off the cops and family but the bribes and honor money is small potatoes. OTOH there is some chance someone puts a bullet in him if he shows his ass too often. There is still a vestigial honor code.

    Greene isn't going anywhere. Her constituents love her for her 'directness'. She talks like they think; not very well, or very effectively. The GOP loves her because she makes the rest of them look smart, and reasonable, and educated. She is an expendable smoke screen of talking points that obscures the dirty deeds the GOP is really serious about. Clowns are handy that way. So lots of Mercer money coming her way. The best government money can buy.

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