Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

This really is a full service blog.

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

When I was faster i was always behind.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

I really should read my own blog.

No one could have predicted…

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

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Kiss My Black Ass

Friday Evening Open Thread: A Genuine Shock To Some Pundits’ Systems

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A woman with over 20 years of elected experience is being portrayed by the right as unprepared or unqualified.

A woman with a book (mostly about policy), a mountain of legal and legislative writings, and decades of policy positions that became law—yet they’re hinting she’s “light on policy” while her opponent, who’s never faced a follow-up question, gets a free pass.

This is all code speak. ” You don’t fit our model of leadership. You don’t belong.

It’s actually worth watching the whole six-minute video, though, if you want (it seems to me like) a good explanation of how pollsters are doing their mysterious jobs. (If you disagree, by all means let me know!)

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Repub Venality Open Thread: Fani Willis Edition

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USA Today headlined its capsule timeline “Fani Willis hearing: a salacious drama that could undermine Trump election interference case”, which just about sums up the Very Serious Concensus: This colored lady was having an extramarital sexual relationship with her big, Black employee — how could that *not* be disqualifying?!?

Richard W. Painter, at the Atlantic, felt called to chip in — “Step Aside, Fani Willis”:

After a two-day hearing in Fulton County, Georgia, we are where we were before. The defendants, charged by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis with conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election, attempted to make a case for her disqualification under Georgia law. In my view, they failed. The standard for disqualification has not been met, and the judge should not disqualify Willis.

But that is not the end of it. Willis is a public servant obligated to discharge the duties of her office in accordance with the best interest of the people of Georgia. In this instance, the best interest of the public dictates that she withdraw from prosecuting the case…

 
Arguing in opposition, Robin Givhan, at the Washington Post — “When Fani Willis took the stand, her fury was precise and laser-focused”: [gift link]

Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) walked into the Georgia courtroom Thursday afternoon where lawyers were arguing over whether she would have to take the stand. It was the back half of the long day’s hearing on whether Willis should be removed from the sprawling election tampering case her office has brought against former president Donald Trump and his associates. But the debate between the dueling teams of lawyers became moot when Willis announced that she wanted to testify. Willis settled into the high-backed witness chair. And then she loosed her fury.

She began by declaring that defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant had lied in court filings when she suggested that Willis had slept with special prosecutor Nathan Wade after their first meeting. She fumed that her privacy had been invaded. She reminded Merchant that, “You think I’m on trial. These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020.” And she held up paperwork filed by defense lawyers in a display of disgust. For no small amount of time, it seemed that judge Scott McAfee was a mere bystander in his courtroom…

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Alabama G-ddamn.

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(Following up on yesterday’s promise) I don’t wanna be the Black Reporter for Balloon Juice, but I think there’s unexpressed importance in the recent Alabama Asswhooping.

For those unaware: When a Black riverboat worker asked some White people to obey the laws of the place he worked, they chose violence. A very racially-charged brawl ensued.

Responses have ranged from the pride in self-defense among a number of Black folx (and White supporters), to…well, selective editing and outrage in the people you’d expect.

There’s a lot here. So I’ll focus on those eager with the “violence isn’t the answer” prompt. Those uneasy with how easy so many seem to be with the asswhuppin’. You’re right! Violence isn’t the answer to all the issues plaguing Black folx in America — much less, the issues around Reproductive Justice, or attacks on LBGTQIA+ folx, or the treatment of people with disabilities.

And yet. If we don’t all work together to resolve these issues, and the issues of so many others. If we don’t start to recognize the source of so many challenges in America…well. I mean, Dr. King said it, a few months before White violence took his life:

First, is the guilt for riots exclusively that of Negroes? And are they a natural development to a new stage of struggle? A million words will be written and spoken to dissect the ghetto outbreaks. But for a perceptive and vivid expression of culpability I would like to submit two sentences that many of you have probably heard me quote before from the pen of Victor Hugo. “If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin but he who causes the darkness.” The policy-makers of the white society have caused the darkness. It was they who created the frustrating slums. They perpetuate unemployment and poverty and oppression. Perhaps it is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes, but these are essentially derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.

(Emphasis mine – MD)

It’s also important to understand that “enjoying” this moment, in the Black community, isn’t carefree. It’s with the background of the weight of centuries of oppression, and the very real issues of the present moment that reflect in this brawl. In the people who almost certainly chose violence against a Black man because — in the American South, yes, but elsewhere as well — his life and liberty isn’t worth the same as them. And that some Black folx aren’t about losing any more liberty, without a literal fight.

As Joy Reid put it:

[Back in the day] There were no consequences for [White Folx] and deadly ones for us if we tried to fight back. Well that era is done and it ain’t coming back, no matter how many sundown-town fantasy songs their country singers make. Seeing Black folk come as a community to that security guard’s rescue, one guy even swimming over like Aquaman to help him, was a ‘Wakanda Assemble’ moment, in which a group of old school southern bullies effed around and found out.

Those “greater crimes” are not things that a whole group can ignore, forever. You cannot say that one side gets all the Stochastic Terrorism they want, and expect the attacked people to bend over and take it, forever.

I don’t know who needs to hear this. But I hope they do, and do so with a quickness.

I don’t wanna be the Black Reporter for Balloon Juice. I cannot be the Marginalized People Reporter for Balloon Juice. But Alabama might be a sign of things to come, if we aren’t real damn careful as a country.

 

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Saturday Afternoon Open Thread: Crystal Flute Flaunt, Doubling Down On the ‘Disrespect’

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Somewhere, a Very Serious Cultural Guardian started bleeding from every orifice, and they didn’t know why.

As a proud Irish-American, I have been accused of not knowing when to let go, but there are levels here.

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OH Whoopi Goldberg NO

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So, while The View team discussed the MAUS-banning school board, it turns out Whoopi Goldberg needs to be working thru her business:

[Whoopi] Goldberg continued to assert that Adolf Hitler’s “Final Solution” was not racial.

“What is it about?” Behar asked at one point.

“It’s about man’s inhumanity to man. That’s what it’s about,” Goldberg replied.

“But it’s about white supremacy,” co-host Ana Navarro retorted. “It’s about going after Jews and G*.”

Goldberg, meanwhile, claimed that “these are two white groups of people,” prompting co-host Sara Haines to point out that “they didn’t see them as white” while Behar noted that the Nazis targeted Black people as well.

[Edit and Emphasis mine — MisterDancer]

Now, I showed my ass in comments on this topic a few days ago. I’m still working thru my crap on this. So take this post with that pound of salt y’all keep in the pantry, please.

Yet: who just drops Jewish identity as unambiguously “white,” even in my relative ignorance compared to many? She should at least understand that whiteness, and the power it’s stamp brings, is a social construct. As such: it can be granted, denied, or even rescinded. Its arbitrariness is a boon to those who wield it — and Jews are so not in charge of that wielding.

And sometimes, that is explicitly laid out, in black and white.

See, Whoopi might not know this: Jim Crow and related US laws were used by the Nazis to baseline their Nuremberg Laws:

[…]American law, hard though it might be for us to accept it now, was a model for everybody in the early 20th century who was interested in creating a race-based order or race state. America was the leader in a whole variety of realms in racist law in the first part of that century. Some of this involved American immigration law, which was designed to exclude so-called “undesirable races” from immigration. In 1924 American immigration law in particular was praised by Hitler himself, in his book Mein Kampf.

But it wasn’t just about American immigration law. There was also American law creating forms of second-class citizenship — for African-Americans, of course, but also for other populations including Asians, Native Americans, Filipinos and Puerto Ricans. Not least, there were statutes in 30 American states forbidding and sometimes criminalizing interracial marriage. Those were of special interest to the Nazis.

[Bill] Moyers: And these lawyers saw America’s “Negro problem” as similar to their “Jewish problem?”

[James] Whitman: You bet they did.

Moyers: American law did not specifically target Jews, but— 

Whitman: But it certainly had a highly developed body of law targeting other groups.

Being a born-and-bred New Yorker, she might have heard about the 1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden. If she had, its implications should have been echoing in her ears as she made that horrible argument, pulling her up.

That implication? That our struggles are united. Harm done to one easily spreads to all. It’s imperative we understand the cross-currents of bigotry, lest we fail to see the warning signs.

Yes, she should know better, as should have I. I’m not going to dive into the long a painful history around Black and Jewish communities, and struggles for equality. Yet I must say: to buy into this “they both white!” bullshit is beyond merely “harmful.” And we Black folx should know that, more than most.

She deserved not just the pushback on the show, not just the callout from the ADL, but a lot more, besides. And it’s something to not just throw vitriol at, but to learn from and strive to avoid.

I don’t have a great ending for this post. Just a promise that I’ll try to do right by y’all — and a fucking great heap better than Whoopi.

(Also, too: I get The View person trying to correct Whoopi via incorporating the other groups targeted. Yet Romani is a much better term to use; something else I learned the hard way. Those folx are to this day getting the short end of damned near every stick there is, and deserve at least a modicum of respect.)

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A Reason to Sing.

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[EDIT: Yes, this is Woodrow/Asim, in my new nick!] Nothing pisses off The Right, like actually enjoying your life, even when that life holds pain and sorrow.

So let’s talk late 90s’ pop tunes!

Specifically: how one of them came to be played at the Inauguration…and how it reminds me, of the emotional richness from singing Gospel, many years ago. A richness that can help, to push back a bit of the darkness.

Let’s start with the song — “You Get What You Give” by the New Radicals, aka Beau Biden’s “theme song” as he fought cancer…:

…and a One-Hit Wonder. Yet, despite it’s seemingly ephemeral nature, so many of us who heard it at that time, kept it close to our hearts. As a struggling dancer myself, it was a massive uplift for me.

And for a Beau Biden who, years later, would struggle with something much more serious in his life? It became a balm, one he passed onto his “old man” — a man who is now our President, and who had the band come back from the dead to play the song at his Inauguration.

But why this song? And what the heck does any of this pop pablum, have to do with the long and treasured history of Gospel Music?

So let’s dive into Joy…and Pain. How “life is more, than mere survival.”

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Surprise, Bitches!

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Well, that’s how I was planning to make an entrance. Thanks for ruining it for me, John! *packs away the feather boa*
Some of you know me (in the internet way), some of you don’t (that’s fine). I’ve been a scurrilous member of the Balloonitariat for an unreasonably long amount of time that it’s best I don’t mention for fear of wondering what the heck was I thinking, loitering on internet corners that much instead of becoming a rich tech sociopath and undermining democracy for funsies.

That, by the way, is what I’m wondering about beloved blog host, JC, who must have been on some industrial grade crack to let me have the keys to this place. Ah, well. Too late now! On to the briefest of synopsis on me, your newest blog chew toy.

I am a Kingstonian, born in Jamaica, raised in the wilds of the Queens suburbs of NYC. Which makes me fussy and cynical. Skip ahead a couple of decades – whoa, the things you guys are missing out on. Like, wtf, Georgia? I studied photography & printmaking, becoming one of the first people using computer art, process cameras and silkscreening/photolitho and multiplate monoprints way back in the 1800’s or whenever. I put myself through college by working overnights in print shops and started up as a designer.

Things fall apart, as they do and suddenly I wind up in San Francisco. I was not granted a bikini and blond hair upon landing, which was surprise 1 & it was fucking cold, surprise 2. Started the design and production thing and that went on very well for a while until the economy went ass over teakettle under George “I only seem less horrible now, but I’m still horrible” W. Bush. So tits up everything went and hello, here I am in northernly NorCal that’s not quite so north I have snow, but northern enough that I wear sweaters.

I’m in a relationship with 2 weird cats who were rescued from a local parking lot as little feral kittens. They’re very pretty, a touch headstrong, but loving. Fun fact, I’m convinced all cats are really Japanese so mine tend to have Japanese names.

I woke up like this
Good morning to Hime fans & Hime fans only!
Odo is severely unimpressed
The handsome, majestically floofy Odoriki demonstrates floof in repose for his students.

I’m under/unemployed at the moment, which means I spend a lot of time either looking for voiceover work, or hunting for design or video work. I’m the lead in a sci-fi audiodrama podcast, Ostium and seem to be accruing more podcast roles at a fast clip.

Right now, I’m participating in Script Dash, the screenwriter version of NaNoWriMo. So I won’t be very visible here unless I’m mad, bored while televising a local gov meeting or avoiding writing my script. Mostly, I’ll try to keep threads from getting musty, maybe say something useful or amusing and be boringly analytical. That’s all I got for now because I’m determined to log 10 pages tonight so I’m caught up auditioning for next month’s work while applying for work. Here’s an open thread, have at it. No nudity in the comments please. But if your boss says it’s ok at work, go for it.

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