Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Joe Biden can go out like FDR, not by dying in office, but by crushing the fascists.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

So many bastards, so little time.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Republicans would impeach Biden if he bit into a whole Kit Kat rather than breaking the sections apart.

Ah, the different things are different argument.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Shut up, hissy kitty!

Found liable for massive fraud, is required to post a massive bond, gets a break, then files a *fraudulent* bond!

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

The gop couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

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109Comments

  1. 1.

    Jeffro

    Hey, if they’ve been told (for decades?) that the nation is under threat from (insert your favorite Gingrich /Luntz adjective here) liberals, and orange nazi moron tells them for a couple months that it’s about to be “stolen” from them by those same (adjective adjective adjective) liberals unless they get in there and ‘stop the steal’…it makes sense.

    To them, I mean. It has its own internal logic, which (obvs) has nothing to do with actual reality, but still.

  2. 2.

    West of the Rockies

    Today’s Republicans are driven by pure (if madly uninformed) rage, resentment, and a ceaseless desire to paint themselves as victims. That last part is an almost psycho-sexual sort of desire. They’re forever talking about things being rammed down their throats. Most curious.

  3. 3.

    dmsilev

    What were these people thinking.

    “Our avatar, TFG, deserves to run the country forever and a day. Therefore, it must be so.”
    He was the embodiment of what a lot of them were thinking and represented the One True Direction for the country (“white conservative supremacy forever”). Him losing meant that they, and their worldview, was all wrong. And since that was unpossible in their minds, it had to be stopped.

  4. 4.

    MagdaInBlack

    I will give you the answer my late husband would have given me had I asked the same.

    “They’re stupid. Just plain stupid”

  5. 5.

    Jeffro

    @West of the Rockies: the ‘victim’ mentality is truly amazing.  It’s 110% tied to them perceiving the loss of their privilege as their loss of power, helps them justify all the abhorrent things they want/need to justify, etc etc.  But it is striking to watch both in the media a la Tucker or even in my own family members.

    It’s like you want to tell them, “You know you have value beyond just being white, right?  That doesn’t have to be your fall-back in all things?  It actually holds you back and makes you settle for less in life?”

    Sad.

  6. 6.

    Jeffro

    @dmsilev:He was the embodiment of what a lot of them were thinking and represented the One True Direction for the country (“white conservative supremacy forever”). Him losing meant that they, and their worldview, was all wrong. And since that was unpossible in their minds, it had to be stopped.

    I think this is true.  He was their ‘voice*’ after all.  He got to act out (racially, misogynistically, and otherwise) for them, say the things they know they can’t say, and promise them that all will be well, the black/brown tides will be turned, America will be made ‘great’ again, etc etc.

    *I laughed out loud when his orangeness actually said that (“I AM YOUR VOICE!”) at the 2016 RNC…and now I know it was based on Hitler’s own speeches and the Nazis’ propaganda methods.  Sick.

  7. 7.

    West of the Rockies

    @Jeffro:

    Yes, the ceaseless and enormous bigotry of rightwingers is the engine of their rage, along with misogyny and homophobia and toxic, toxic masculinity.  Big trucks, big guns, and war toys define them.  They’re constantly looking for a fight or at least pretend to.

  8. 8.

    Arclite

    “How did they go wrong?”

    MAGA.

    And owning the libs.

    And Fox News propaganda.

    And the insurrectionists not knowing any PoCs.

  10. 10.

    JoyceH

    I watched the special, and what struck me was how excited and happy they were. This was their Woodstock. Which is really creepy considering that the QAnon crowd were sure this was The Storm, and the day would be ending with public executions.

  11. 11.

    cain

    I don’t know! Let’s follow the FTNYT to a diner in upstate New York! ::roll dice:: 2d8 save vs economic anxiety..

    Well Jerry it looks like it’s economic anxiety!

  13. 13.

    HumboldtBlue

    Well Cole, grab a hold of your front porch ferns because Melissa Jo Peltier has submitted a new documentary.

    “The Game Is Up: Disillusioned Trump Voters Tell Their Stories”

    I kid you the fuck not.

  14. 14.

    SFAW

    How did they go so wrong?

    In no particular order:

    Rupert (and now Lachlan) Murdoch

    Roger Ailes

    Limbaugh

    Gingrich

    That Fucking Guy

  18. 18.

    Soprano2

    “How did they go so wrong?” America elected a black man president twice and they lost their minds. Things are changing,  and they feel like the changes are going to “erase” them. That’s what all the anxiety about Mr. Potatohead and BLM and Dr. Seuss and trans people and too many non-white people voting is about – they believe they are nothing if they aren’t in charge of everything.

  19. 19.

    Jeffro

    @JoyceH:considering that the QAnon crowd were sure this was The Storm, and the day would be ending with public executions.

    None of our elected officials (Dem or otherwise) are making enough noise about the fact that the day very nearly did end like that, with lawmakers (Pence, Romney, and Pelosi most specifically) dragged out on the Capitol steps and…yeah.  I know the country doesn’t want to revisit that trauma yet again but we must, and consequences must follow for those who committed these acts and for those who enabled it all.

  22. 22.

    James E Powell

    And it drives me nuts that so many of those guys are the same age and the same group I served with in the Army. How did they go so wrong?

    Back in the summer of 2016 I quit face book when it became clear that nearly every white person I went to high school & college with had turned into a racist asshole. One of the few who had not turned out like that got in touch with me by email. We wondered what was stranger, that they turned out like that, or that we did not? We could not come up with an answer that made sense.

  23. 23.

    Poe Larity

    Just to cheer you up, Trump’s appelate court appointees will not control 11 of 12 districts… until 2040.

    And then we’ll be ratfucked for 21 years.

    It does make me wonder what else the lawyers thought of, given the admin that otherwise could not shoot straight. Even David Addington and John Yoo didn’t think of this court strategy.

  24. 24.

    West of the Rockies

    @Soprano2:

    Don’t forget their murderous rage for the very white and female HRC.  It’s not all racism.  It’s similar measures of misogyny and homophobia.

  29. 29.

    JWR

    Before rushing out to Trader Joe’s, I’ll say that Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon notwithstanding, Ronald f*ckin’ Reagan really got the modern ball rolling with his folksy bullshit about the “big gubmint” being the problem, not the solution. (Good, I hated that prick.)

  30. 30.

    cain

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Let’s not give any clicks to such a piece. We’re only encouraging it. It would be better we ignore Trump supporters and whatever bullshit they are going through and give it any air – that way these asshole media will stop using it for click bait.

  31. 31.

    Bill Arnold

    They are mostly not self-aware enough to recognize when they are being manipulated, and a loosely-coordinated collection of right-wing misinformation systems are used by malevolent operators to enslave their minds.

    The Long Con – Mail-order conservatism (November 2012, Rick Perlstein), but with social media, A/B testing with rapid feedback (and other related techniques) , and more malevolence and less ethics.

  33. 33.

    HumboldtBlue

    @cain: ​
     
    You’re not giving clicks to anything other than a Twitter thread. Just putting it out there to be known.

  34. 34.

    hrprogressive

    They were lied to for between 40-60 years, and made to feel like they were the only true Americans.

    Oops.

  35. 35.

    Rocks

    How could they go so wrong? Decades of daily doses of inteelectual and emotional poison courtesy of Rupert Murdoch. The question is how to heal this.

  36. 36.

    lgerard

    What is really pathetic about these faux freedom fighters is how many of them didn’t bother to vote in the first place.

  39. 39.

    Kay

    I’m delighted that Donald Trump and his unemployable grown children are still bitter and actually grow more bitter as the months pass.

    Worst President ever and most graceless, undignified loss ever. Just new lows all around.

  41. 41.

    PIGL

    I think your rage is well founded, Mr. Cole.

    What if there is been only a few more of them; slightly better armed; slightly better organized; slightly better led?

    They could easily have carried the day.

    Maybe we can take some comfort from the fact that for all the decades of media manipulation leading up to that moment, The best they could show was a small gaggle of confused, ill-prepared losers.

  42. 42.

    NobodySpecial

    No offense, Cole, but during the Schiavo years, you went left and they went right. Had you not, you might have been in sympathy with them by 2020. I had my break with Republicans in 1988, and it amazes me how much of an idiot I was prior.

  45. 45.

    Obdurodon

    Crazy thought: they sincerely believe that the greatness of the US is inextricably tied to the dominance of a certain archetype – white, male, straight, physical rather than intellectual, etc. Like every frontiersman and cowboy and soldier in the hagiographic movies they grew up on. To their minds, such people built this country alone, and such people alone can guarantee its continued success. To them, success for anyone not fitting the archetype is not only the clear result of cheating somehow, but is also an existential threat to the country. It’s such BS that it pains me to write it, but that’s the belief (whether consciously held or not) that TFG was playing on to solicit acts that are treason by any even semi-rational standard. He was their Great Orange Hope and he led them into disaster. They just don’t know how to process that, because it’s not how anything worked in the movies.

  46. 46.

    randy khan

    @Poe Larity:

    Well, given the high quality of many Trump appointees, I predict that many of them will quit the courts well before the usual retirement age, so maybe we won’t have that much to worry about.

    Seriously, 2040 is 19 years from now.  A lot can happen between now and then.

  47. 47.

    Mary G

    In good news today, the “White Lives Matter” protests in Huntington Beach and around the country were a resounding flop.

  48. 48.

    NobodySpecial

    @cain: I was 21 and voted for McCain in a desperate attempt to keep W out. My one and only vote for Republicans in my life.

    Edit – Losing my damn memory.

  49. 49.

    randy khan

    I have to say from my social media feed that it’s amazing how little thought any of them put into anything.  Even the memes are much lamer than the average meme (which takes some doing).

  50. 50.

    Ruckus

    @MagdaInBlack:

    Your late husband was too nice.

    They are just plain fucking stupid.

    They have lost the plot, entirely, and they are living in the worst daytime TV drama ever written. And it was written by a 4 yr old who only has one color of crayon – white.

  51. 51.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Mary G: ​
     
    We may be seeing some justice in Manhattan beach.

    Bradford will introduce a state bill on Monday that, if approved, will allow county officials to transfer 6,999 square feet of beachfront land, two blocks west of Bruce’s Beach Park and adjacent to Manhattan Beach’s The Strand, to the descendants of the land’s prior owners, the Bruce family.

  52. 52.

    dmsilev

    @Kay:

    I’m delighted that Donald Trump and his unemployable grown children are still bitter and actually grow more bitter as the months pass.

    The one good thing about seeing news stories about him is that he’s clearly being eaten alive by the bitterness of losing and either can’t or won’t hide it, so we all get to take pleasure in watching.

  53. 53.

    KrackenJack

    Projection is fundamental to the latest racist, homophobic and misogynistic incarnation of conservatism. One of their core beliefs is that their victims would treat them even worse if they had the power. That fear is their self-fulfilling justification and they aren’t going give it up.

  54. 54.

    danielx

    @Kay: ​
     
    Yes indeed, judging by THG’s comments at the latest RNC ring/ass-kissing fest in Palm Beach. He will never admit he lost, because he is Donald Trump and – by definition – can never lose at anything, ever, because Donald Trump does not lose at anything, ever. Except that he did, and the bitterness of that rejection will stay with him until the day he dies. Which is actually a nice thought.

    They – his followers – believed, and still believe, everything he says and has ever said. He is the personification of their rage and fear, never mind that he has all the integrity and credibility of a three card monte dealer.

  55. 55.

    Ruckus

    @Jeffro:

    This fallacy has been playing out in conservative politics for the last 50 years. Longer actually but it wasn’t so noticeable to the vast majority. This is who they are and the only reason it is surprising is that the last 4 yrs was the equivalent to all of them being locked in a psych ward which they broke out of on Jan 6. There is no rhyme or reality here, it is a complete mental breakdown on the part of the republican party.

  56. 56.

    Kay

    @PIGL:

     The best they could show was a small gaggle of confused, ill-prepared losers.

    What GOP leaders learned is that the only people who will be held accountable when they try an insurrection are the rank and file of their pathetic volunteer army.
    None of the leaders suffered at all.
    They’ll try it again. Guaranteed. A couple of their superfans are going to jail. They could give a shit.

  57. 57.

    frosty

    @NobodySpecial: I voted for Ford and John Anderson. But also for Shirley Chisholm and McGovern. I know what my reasons were, but sheesh they don’t hold up for the Rs.

  58. 58.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Meanwhile, police in Minnesota killed another Black man in a traffic stop, and now they are trying to disperse the demonstrators with force.

    I don’t have details. I’m sure there will be more tomorrow.

    They learn nothing.

    I’m going to bed.

  59. 59.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Here’s more. Since it’s Cobb, I’m sure there’ll be a thread. Just makes me ill.

  60. 60.

    debbie

    Trump: You’re damn right I tried to overthrow the government and I’ll do it again. Also McConnell is a dumb son of a bitch.

    Press: Did you hear what he said about McConnell?
    — Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) April 11, 2021

  61. 61.

    Another Scott

    Reuters:

    BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. (Reuters) -Police fired tear gas on Sunday to disperse angry protesters after an officer fatally shot a man about 10 miles (16 km) from where George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis last May, a Reuters witness said.

    Slideshow ( 3 images )

    About 100 people, some visibly upset and one carrying a sign demanding “Justice for George Floyd,” confronted police in riot gear after the officer shot a man in his car in the suburb of Brooklyn Center.

    Some vandalized two police vehicles, pelting them with stones and jumping on them. Police fired rubber bullets, hitting at least two in the crowd, with at least one man left bleeding from the head, a Reuters witness said.

    After nightfall, a few hundred protesters had gathered outside the suburban police department, guarded by hundreds of officers in riot gear. Police set off flash bangs and sprayed chemical irritants at the crowd.

    The dead man was identified by relatives at the scene as Daunte Wright, 20, according to the Star Tribune.

    In a statement, Brooklyn Center police said officers pulled over a man for a traffic violation just before 2 p.m., and found he had an outstanding arrest warrant.

    As police tried to arrest him, he re-entered the vehicle. One officer shot the driver, they said. The driver drove several blocks before striking another vehicle to die at the scene.

    Police say both officers’ body cameras were activated during the incident.

    […]

    I only know what’s in the story, but too many cops reach for their guns far too quickly. Having an arrest warrant, or getting back in a car, is not an all-clear for deadly force to be used.

    :-(

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  62. 62.

    Ruckus

    @Soprano2:

    they believe they are nothing if they aren’t in charge of everything.

    Which is actually true. Because they will be even more fucking insane if they are in charge.  The last 4 yrs was the permission slip from the head lunatic to be and do whatever they wanted. If they get in charge they will fuck up every damn thing, worse than they ever have in the past, because they think that shitforbrains was actually a great president exactly because he is totally fucking insane. Like they are.

  64. 64.

    Comrade Bukharin

    Fatal police shooting in Minneapolis suburb. Protests ongoing. Here we go again.

  65. 65.

    debbie

    @Another Scott:

    Maryland hopefully is the first of many states to end police abuses.

    The legislation will overhaul the disciplinary process for officers accused of misconduct, allow public scrutiny of complaints and internal affairs files, and create a new legal standard requiring that police use only “necessary” and “proportional” force. Officers who use excessive force will face additional criminal penalties, including up to 10 years in prison. Also, police will be limited on when they can obtain so-called “no-knock” warrants or raid homes at night.

  67. 67.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    @dmsilev: ​
      Not only losing, but he’s been exiled (he can’t return to his playground of NYC) and is clearly the target of two different prosecutions.

  69. 69.

    gwangung

    @Another Scott: I just can’t understand what happened to the use of lethal force standard. I remember that it was only be used if there was imminent danger to the public or officer…and there are FAR too many cases where you couldn’t possibly argue that—yet the cop walks free.

  71. 71.

    mrmoshpotato

    How did they go so wrong?

    Racist, fascist trash gonna be racist, fascist trash.  Dump gave them the ok to be open about it.

    ETA –  It’s great seeing the arrested ones being whiny ass, fascist shitbag babies.

    “WWWWAAAAHHHH!!!!!! I DON’T WANNA BE IN JAIL!  WWWWAAAAHHHH!!!!!!”

  72. 72.

    NobodySpecial

    @frosty: John B. was my representative when I was a kid; my dad used to mow his lawn. One year he cleaned out his kid’s old toys and gave them to my dad. Kinda formative to my impressions of Republicans, and his opposition to Reagan was probably the start of my turn to Democrats.

  73. 73.

    smith

    The core of decidedly violent seditionists on 1/6 was greatly outnumbered by the cosplayers living out their fantasies of being on reality TV. Outside of the relatively few MAGAts willing to commit acts of terror in support of their hero, most I think are in it simply for the performative value. Trumpism seems to be mostly manifested on Facebook, Twitter, and at rallies, and not much else. If they really had a profound commitment to a fascist takeover, there would be a LOT more violent action than we’ve seen: 1/6 was pretty much it, and that was in part an Astroturf production.

    As a hypothetical contrast, imagine the R legislatures had succeeded in setting aside enough Dem votes in enough states to award the presidency to Trump. In my opinion, we still would have been on the streets  now; the country would have been ungovernable. Their side imagines that something like this did happen to them, and we’ve seen one ragtag riot, and then… pretty much a damp squib.

    I don’t want to minimize the criminality of 1/6 — there definitely were people involved in it who intended to carry out political assassinations, and they should  feel the full force of the law on their heads. But I don’t think we are the edge of a hot civil war, either, because it seems to  me a lot of the actors on the other side are just showing off.

  74. 74.

    rikyrah

    As a Black person, I live with White Privilege everyday being thrust into my face.

    But, the one thing that I can’t get past is just LETTING THESE MUTHAPHUCKAS LEAVE.

     

    They weren’t marched onto busses, on their way to jail.

     

    They just phucking left.

  78. 78.

    Morzer

    Conservatives have been discarding inhibitions, principles and ideas for 40 years – and we are now at the point where it doesn’t matter to them WHY they hate. All that matters – and all they have to offer – is hating the “right” people and causes. That’s all it takes to be a conservative and all there is to being a conservative.

  79. 79.

    Chris T.

    How did they go so wrong?

    Was that a rhetorical question?  (For that matter, is this a rhetorical question? And—as a rhetorical question—what is a rhetorical question anyway?)

  82. 82.

    LeftCoastYankee

    They stayed on the same course they were always on. You were the one who said, “damn that looks like a cliff…” and put in the effort to change.

    It’s always been this way. Most people change when it hurts, some before, and some keep pretending they’re steering long after they’ve plunged off the road.​

  83. 83.

    patrick II

    @debbie: ​
     
    Is that an accurate Trump quote? Parkhomenko is the only person I see who has even discussed it. It seems like it would be bigger news.

  86. 86.

    TriassicSands

    How did they go so wrong? — J. Cole

    Perhaps you left the military mindset behind and they didn’t.

  87. 87.

    TriassicSands

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    I’ve argued for years that they need to change the standard from “justified” to necessary. Apparently, the sight of a young Black man driving away made the police officer fear for his own life. Justified!

  88. 88.

    Ascap_scab

    @madeleinebaran

    @daviss

    @Angry_Staffer

    @NickAtNews

    • Are locals on the scene of Brooklyn Center.
  89. 89.

    JWR

    @Ascap_scab: From one of those posters:

    Another black man was murdered by police today, just minutes away from where George Floyd was killed.
    Duante Wright was reportedly pulled over for having an air freshener obstructing his mirror.

    1/3

    — Angry Staffer (@Angry_Staffer) April 12, 2021 

    Wow. Having an “air freshener obstructing his mirror” while Black. Again, this sh*t’s gotta stop!

  90. 90.

    JWR

    Good piece in The Guardian on the tension between James Clyburn and Joe Manchin regarding the filibuster:

    Clyburn offers Manchin history lesson to clear Senate path for Biden reforms

    Jim Clyburn, the House majority whip, said on Sunday he intends to give Joe Manchin a lesson in US history as he attempts to clear a path for Joe Biden on voting rights and infrastructure.

    […]
    Clyburn has assailed Manchin for promoting a bipartisan approach to voting rights and refusing to endorse the For the People Act, a measure passed by the US House and intended to counter restrictive voting laws targeting minorities proposed by Republicans in 47 states and passed in Georgia last month.
    “You’re going to say it’s more important for you to protect 50 Republicans in the Senate than for you to protect your fellow Democrat’s seat in Georgia? That’s a bunch of crap,” Clyburn told Huffpost this month, referring to Senator Raphael Warnock’s 2022 re-election battle that supporters feel has become much harder due to the new voting laws.

    Yes, but will Joe listen? That, is the question.

  91. 91.

    Tony Jay

    @gwangung:

    I just can’t understand what happened to the use of lethal force standard.

    Honestly, from the outside it looks a lot like decades of mainstream entertainment in which any restriction upon a Police officer’s freedom to impose immediate and unrestricted ‘authority’ upon any situation via force = bad things will happen to good people had an effect on the way real-world policing is viewed.

    When was the last time anyone saw a cop on TV, other than the obviously corrupt bad apple who inevitably ends up stylishly killed off in the closing act, who wasn’t constantly  stymied in his (it’s always his) vocational pursuit of justice by ‘defence lawyers, cowardly brass and all that PC bullshit’? Millions and millions of morons came to think that torture was a legitimate and effective tool because “it works in 24”, so you can multiply that by some very large number when you ask how generations of pro-rogue cop representation might wash away a culture’s ability to tell the difference between what works as fiction and what that means in the real world.

    Mix in a lot of racism, political exploitation, and a good old dollop of “Kneel before Zod” male insecurity and you get an ouroborus of fail where cops are routinely encouraged to go up to 11 in any situation because “it’s a war out there” and if they don’t impose their god-given authoriteh on the law-breaking mob with demonstrative applications of lethal force then civilisations will fall.

    tldr – Damn You, Starsky and Hutch!

  92. 92.

    Gvg

    @Ruckus: I saw a new to me crayola product “colors of the world” which is 24 people flesh tones ranging from very pale to very dark. I thought about how many coloring page teaching pages early elementary kids get, and how helpful if all the schools had those crayons on the table.

    As a white girl who was artistic at an early age I can tell you the old standard flesh tome was always inadequate for even drawing mostly white people. Add in pilgrim and Indians stories and a lot of other fundamental history lessons, they should have had these crayons out 50 years ago. This is great.

  95. 95.

    debbie

    @JWR:

    I Googled around and didn’t find anything similar, so I agree. But what does it say when it could be true?

  96. 96.

    Patricia Kayden

    Leaders from more than 170 corporations condemned Georgia’s new law, saying, “We stand in solidarity with voters 一 and with the Black executives and leaders at the helm of this movement 一 in our nonpartisan commitment to equality and democracy.”— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) April 12, 2021

  97. 97.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Soprano2: I’m reading CASTE which lays out how deeply racial stratification is embedded in American history. Those who benefit from that can’t imagine what life would be like without that caste structure.

  98. 98.

    SFAW

    @Patricia Kayden:

    As we used to say in the old country (i.e., NYC area), “That, and a buck, will get you a ride on the subway.” Although I guess, to be fair to them, they could have waited until EVERY Rethug-controlled state had implemented vote/voter suppression laws. So there’s that.

    Courage: how do it work?

  100. 100.

    LiminalOwl (formerly The Fat White Duchess)

    @Tony Jay: And NYPD Blue, which my mother watched daily and obsessively (multiple episodes, reruns) in the last few years of her life. (And probably  “Law & Order,” which afaik she didn’t.) She had always been a liberal on most issues, and I didn’t understand at the time why she was getting more and more conservative…

  101. 101.

    JDM

    How did they go so wrong?  First I heard of you, John, you were headed that way too.  Maybe a  good answer would be another question: how did you go so right?

  102. 102.

    J R in WV

    @MagdaInBlack: ​

    I will give you the answer my late husband would have given me had I asked the same.

    “They’re stupid. Just plain stupid”

    It’s more than just stupidity — it’s malicious stupidity at work. Too dumb to know better; willing, nay anxious to do bad things anyway.

  103. 103.

    way2blue

    The fact that so many of the Jan 6th loons arrested to date express befuddlement at being in trouble with ‘the law’ indicates to me that they expected to win.  To install Trump in a second term and celebrate their victory over the ‘libs’…   They’re now getting a basic civics lesson.  Thankfully.

  104. 104.

    J R in WV

    @cain:
     

    shiit.. at 16 I knew what a ratfucker, Reagan was. Fuck that guy.

    Hell, at 18 Nixon wanted me to go to ‘Nam and fight his dirty illegal war for him. Made me a far left liberal for life!

    While I was in the Navy, serving in Florida back when it wasn’t a punch line for a million jokes, they showed film of Navy jets bombing tiny towns in Vietnam while they played the national anthem… now THAT was a learning experience!

    And if you didn’t respect the flag by standing and putting your hand over your heart, you were arrested. Ask me how I know!

  105. 105.

    Mike in NC

    @J R in WV: Sometimes I would go to a movie theater where they would play the National Anthem before they ran coming attractions. Some people stood up and some didn’t. I hated that crap.

  106. 106.

    J R in WV

    @Mike in NC:

    It wasn’t the national anthem that pissed us off — it was the film of Navy jets bombing tiny Vietnamese towns they showed while playing the anthem soundtrack.

    No excuse for bombing little rural villages in N Vietnam, ever. Rice farmers aren’t part of the war machine!

    War crime committed by Nixon and his minions. Grrr.

  107. 107.

    VFX Lurker

    @rikyrah: 

    A select few items from Brown Sugar Bakery ship nationwide; I ordered the sea salt caramels and torte assortment as a special treat to myself last Saturday.* I get my first dose of Pfizer this week, and the chocolate will help me celebrate. ?

    *I also wanted to support this bakery in the face of their recent racist harassment by jerks.

  108. 108.

    debbie

    @way2blue:

    indicates to me that they expected to win.

    It tells me they are stupid sheep with no ability to consider the consequences of any of their actions. A mob of Carls and Karens, so to speak.

  109. 109.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    And it drives me nuts that so many of those guys are the same age and the same group I served with in the Army. How did they go so wrong?

    Well, one thing to keep in mind is, if they trusted Trump, they “saw” a “landslide” victory stolen away, with everyone fully aware that was what was happening.
    And, face it, if person listened to, and believed, right wing noise, they’d already be a little bit primed to try to fight the system, and those evil, freedom stealing, religion bashing, Republican hating liberals.
    Of course, one thing to keep in mind is, the Republican Senators said, of the insurrectionists, that they weren’t fighting for their country, they weren’t fighting for what was right, they were not fighting for the Constitution and freedom, and they were not patriots; no, they completely ignored Trump, and mounted an insurrection because they are bad people. As people start going on trial, and receiving prison sentences, I think that just might be the thin bit of the wedge that will peel off the people who will listen to reason.

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