Talk About Whatever You Want

Looks like there’s nothing happening in the back room, and I thought the Fun Facts thread earlier in the week was interesting, so let’s try that again.

Here’s what I wrote on Monday.

I was thinking about all the interesting things I learned on the podcast Jack yesterday, and I thought it might be fun to have a thread where we could all share interesting stuff we have learned in the past few days from reading, or videos, conversations, or podcasts.

I thought I might call it Fun Facts to Know and Tell, and then I wondered about the origin of that particular phrase, so I googled.

Here are some more things that Google told me today:

• If you sneeze too hard, you could fracture a rib.
• Cat urine glows under a black-light.
• Like fingerprints, everyone’s tongue print is different.
• There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.

Not exactly what I had in mind!

This was fun:

If we’re going to shoot down every foreign asset in our airspace, Trump will have to start taking the bus.#ChineseSpyBalloon

— Jack E. Smith ⚖️ (@7Veritas4) February 3, 2023

Surely this can’t be true, right?  But it was funny.

In a new poll, 7% of Americans said they trust the Supreme Court of the United States.

7%.

I thought it would be lower.

— Jack E. Smith ⚖️ (@7Veritas4) February 1, 2023

So I couldn’t find any survey like that, but I laughed out loud at the final sentence.

Any fun facts to share with us?  Either real or made up?

 

Fun Facts FridayPost + Comments (268)

So. Jim Crow, hunh? There they were, sacrificing Black bodies to boost up an oligarchy, just as they did during Slavery. Laws so toxic that The Nazis reused them.

And now: DeSantis and Abbott and Stitt in Oklahoma and so many others play that same “game,” just updated for the modern era.

That update? Now-openly abuses Women, it openly abuses Trans people, it attacks the rest of the LBGTQIA+ folx. At best, it ignores the Poor, the Chronically Ill and so many more. Even “own the libs” is deployed for this effort — to gain, for a few, such power that the waves of economic pain can never touch them and theirs.

“Why should I care about the economy”, the Deep South GOPers say, “if they can never vote me out of office? If they can never stop the flow of funds to my cronies?” A tune that now finds ugly echoes in the debt ceiling fight.

For the record shows these asshole’s ancestors as Not Being About Shit:

By the 1850s, a growing group of incredibly wealthy men, born into slaveholding families of great privilege, were brazenly identifying themselves as aristocrats or oligarchs — they simply did not believe in the benefits of “pure democracy.” As the National Era reported, these Southerners deemed popular suffrage the “root of all the mischief” regarding the preservation of slavery.

The fire-eaters of the slave South, therefore, envisioned something more than just a slave-ridden version of the United States. They actually advocated a return to hereditary privilege, caste systems, and rule by the wealthy few. Some even argued in favor of primogeniture. All hoped that these measures would help curb the “scourge of democracy.”

And it played out again during Jim Crow. From what I can tell, White Supremacists literally sacrificed a growing economy to make a few wealthy over the literal bones of Black folx and Poor Whites.

I’m summarizing a LOT of history and analysis, so I’m certain you can poke holes. And yet, the core fact remains that it’s a tiny number of people who “win” when schools are terrorized into pulling books, and state officials gaslight the reasons.

It’s not the Parents brainwashed into supporting this. It’s not even the Alt-Right forces who shoot up the place if you don’t.

It’s the assholes who George Wallace they way into power. Who cannot thrive unless standing on a mountain of pain and suffering. The same playbook, of American Pain.

We must dismantle it.

Open Thread.

DeSantis: WTF does he care about the “economy”? (Open Thread)Post + Comments (156)

These were both sent to me this week.  I probably shouldn’t blow my wad by using them in the same post!  That’s okay, I’m sure I’ll use them both again.

Off to look for nyms to credit.  done!

My niece sent me this one!

This one is from Leslie.  I may just post this one in the comments every time the pedants rear their heads in the comments!

Open thread.

Wednesday Afternoon Open ThreadPost + Comments (325)

Another Republican announces candidacy for President of the United States.

Only the best people!

I would definitely make my pregnant wife stand there in high heels.

It’s real:

pic.twitter.com/KfH4m830k0

— Santiago Mayer (@santiagomayer_) January 26, 2023

Yeah, that’s who I want to be taking that 3 am phone call!

Read about his candidacy here.  (No, really, don’t bother.  No point in linking.)

Looked like we needed an open thread, and this is as good a start as anything.

h/t BC in Illinois

Open thread.

Open Thread: Only the Best PeoplePost + Comments (131)

What’s everybody up to today?

I thought about watching the hearings in GA today, but decided against it.

The judge is apparently not expected to rule today.

Also apparently, the former guy is having a meltdown about the hearings.

“You having seen the report…decisions are imminent…”

– Fanni Willis to the presiding Judge this morning.

— Jack E. Smith ⚖️ (@7Veritas4) January 24, 2023

I am including this tweet, because what day isn’t made better by getting to watch this Nancy SMASH clap clip.

He picked the wrong office to ransack. pic.twitter.com/GyzvmO035b

— Jack E. Smith ⚖️ (@7Veritas4) January 23, 2023

What is Nancy SMASH up to these days, other than forcing Ruben Gallego to challenge Sinema for the AZ senate seat?

Open thread.

 

Tuesday Afternoon Open ThreadPost + Comments (241)