Archives for 2024

Decades ago I read a book.  No idea who the author was, no idea what the title was.

All I remember is the suggestion that if you are going to “What if…” you should do it for both sides of the equation.

So in this thread, can we “what if?” to the good side?

What if our hard work pays off, and we win?

What If?Post + Comments (216)

Is Missouri the South?  In attitude, it certainly seems to be.  These signs were everywhere in southern Misery.  Some varieties had a little infant in the lower left corner, but they all had the mom bouncing her 6 month-old baby.  Lots of them on church lawns, and many were paired with Trump signs (not on church lawns).  I’m sure there’s some loophole that allows churches to advocate for issues not candidates, and if not, 6 Supremos will make it so in their next term.  [ETA: Amendment 3 would establish a constitutional right to abortion in the Missouri constitution, so “Yes” is the right vote.]

Part of the right-wing ratchet, whereby they keep getting their unpopular, retrograde agenda into the mainstream, is driven by “respect” for churches and the asinine beliefs peddled within.  (How dare you try to criticize stormtroopers, don’t you know they’re god-fearing churchgoers?)  I’m sure I’ll be ashes before it ever happens, but I’d love to see some Democrats start talking about taxing churches — not the charitable part, just the big, empty, useless chapels.  With both Harris and Walz checking the box of going to church (Kamala mentioned her pastor in last night’s CNN Town Hall, Walz talked about his faith in the debate), I’m thinking that day is far away.  No criticism of either Harris or Walz implied here — you do what you must to win, and maybe they even believe that stuff.

Once I escaped Missouri and Kansas (even worse that Misery), I stopped to fill up at a truck stop in Eastern Colorado — Boebert’s newly adopted district — where I saw a grandpa marching his three little granddaughters into the back seat of his pickup with a Trump/Vance bumper sticker.  People like him are the target of the “Protect Children and Families” nonsense — he knows that those little girls will grow up and probably move to the cities of the nearby Front Range to get a job. (In his part of the world, these jobs are going boy, and they ain’t coming back.)  But if they’re baby trapped after some homeboy knocks them up in the back seat of a pickup on prom night, after contraception and abortion have been outlawed like gramps wants, at least his family is protected.  If, by “protected”, you mean that he doesn’t have to experience the rejection of kids moving to the cities because they’re full of opportunities and great experiences, even though Fox tells him that they’re hellholes.  I’m hoping (and expecting) that the Front Range will vote “yes” in massive numbers on Amendment 79, which puts abortion rights into the Colorado constitution, so those little girls have a choice when they get older, even if the assholes grandpa supports get elected.

Anyway, those are my bitter musings on the current state of the country.  I’ve pretty much stopped looking at polls and even reading much of the election coverage, because everything’s within the margin of error, and most of the discussion is noise about polling noise.  I still think we’re gonna win, but who knows by how much.  It is notable that the grandpa I saw in Colorado didn’t have a Boebert sticker on his truck, too.  So maybe there’s a little hope for even that benighted part of God’s green earth.

Checking In From The Dirty SouthPost + Comments (240)