152 Comments
Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

This incrementalism/denialism is standard practice on the Right. David French practices it, and so does Ross Douthat – who are now BOTH at the NYT, what a strange coincidence.

The French/Douthat progression is pretty consistent. Step One: pooh, pooh, the ladies are getting paranoid, OF COURSE we would never (fill in the blank). Step Two: OK, it looks like (fill in the blank) may happen, but it won’t be as bad as you think, because (fill in the reasons). Step Three: (fill in the blank) has happened, it’s every bit as Draconian as you thought it would be, but here’s why that’s actually a GOOD thing.

In other words, Fuck You, we’ve won. Deal with it.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

#scum yeah?

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

It astounds me that at this late date any centrists or liberals are taken in by individuals on the Right who try to pitch the #ReasonableConservative schtick, yet it still seems to work. That's why it's so devastating when more of them are given the imprimatur of respectability by institutions like the NYT.

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It doesn't astound me at all: the currency of whiteness & manners is powerful indeed...

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

This is an astute observation. But it speaks to the individual's need to reassure and delude *themselves* rather than to someone like French or Douthat being especially persuasive or cagey about what they are trying to do.

But yeah, "A polite white guy in the Times says it will be OK, I *guess* (tugging at collar, shrugging shoulders) I'll go ahead and believe him."

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Like with Trump, you don't have to be a brilliant, clever liar if people desperately want to believe you. In that case, it's a partnership: "You pretend something's true, and I'll pretend to believe you."

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Homer Simpson said it: "Marge, it takes two to lie. One to lie, and one to listen."

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Spot on. The Republicans I know always side with a polite speaker over an impassioned one, even if what's politely advanced is crimes against humanity and that's what's got the other speaker worked up.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Whiteness Manors is my new real estate venture.

You can imagine my partners...

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

My parents lived in that development.

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Exclusive and Restricted.

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Same here. But did your parents, like mine, never find themselves without a grievance - and not just against outside forces, but among their Whiteness Manors neighbors, all of whom persisted in not living up to each other's standards?

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A revolting development, one might say.

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"You can imagine my partners..."

I'd rather not, thanks.

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The alternative of abandoning the dream of a Reasonable Conservative is terrifying to the people who cling to it. Abandonment means walking in the valley of death, basically. Going to the mattresses in a war of extinction that they might lose, leading to something looking like the Handmaiden's Tale, not to mention the scattered terrorism the militias are anxious to unleash, and possibly losing their phoney baloney jobs. Pretending Ross Douthat makes sense is a small price to pay, considering the alternative.

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This was on full view in the NY Times comment section during McCarthy's clusterfuck election. "Oh, maybe six reasonable Republicans will join with the Democrats to elect Fred Upton!" (seriously, Fred Upton.)

The idea that six Republicans would never do that because they don't want to see their children murdered is literally unthinkable. That we live in a nation where the effects of terrorism are already being felt is too horrifying to contemplate, so please let's not contemplate it.

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Serious oof.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Hearted for all the usual wrong reasons.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Well, you know how emotional the ladies can be, always working themselves into a tizzy about something that's never gonna happen, like when they got all hysterical because they thought someone was going to take their gas stoves away.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

The missus is on the local Sierra Club clean energy committee and managed to get hold of a gas leak detector to check the stove in our apartment, in this really posh building. Gas Free in 2023 Is We! *so there's that...

The place we hang out sometimes on the other coast was built without gas lines to the individual units, so was always electric-stoved. We recently upgraded (well, maybe side-graded) the kitchen and the new stove heats stuff up pretty damn fast – quick as our gas stove.

*She also teamed up to test gas supply lines around the city – waving the detector at those little plates in the sidewalk you never pay attention to – and finding massive releases everywhere (but especially in the poorer parts o'town. The locals were interested in what they were doin' and when she explained it they said "Oh you need to check the one around the corner – it's a fountain!"). People know this shit. People who DENY it know this shit. THOSE people are despicable.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Republicans don't just want to dispossess women of the right to their own bodies; they basically seek to arrogate that right for themselves. It's not just about banning abortion. Republicans believe that THEY have the right to control YOUR body. A right you thought you had is now theirs. Give them time and they will confiscate your right to use contraception and marry whom you choose in order to control you in those respects, too. It really is nothing less than a new Bill of Unenumerated Rights for Republicans which empowers them to steal your rights, and assume them for themselves in the guise of GOP controlled legislatures and courts.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

We're all subservient to the special interests of the GOP and corporate (post-DLC) Dems, and the GOP are the enforcers, so here we are.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

“My body, my choice. Your body, also my choice.”

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Imagine how outta joint you'd be if you were a Mormon incel...yer brethren hoovering up the excess wimminz...

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Polygyny necessitates that the surplus boys be driven out of the community.

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Or sent off to Ukraine for the Glory of the Motherland, never to return...

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Party of Freedom! Mine, of course.

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"Party of Freedom, table for one. Freedom? Table for one..."

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You want to restrict Republicans' Freedoms! that's why they have to have guns…so many guns.

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Sure do -- with extreme prejudice no less.

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I mean, the ladies know, there are plenty of guys out there insisting no one gets an abortion while also insisting a specific woman get one or they'll hit her. They're the same people. They don't want no abortions, they want to decide, and you don't get a say.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

On the bright side, there will be plenty of fodder for several new seasons of “Orange is the New Black - Alabama.”

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

I'm laughing.

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Jan 19, 2023·edited Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

"phumpher"

That's the best word ever!

You're on fire Boss. This is angry and eloquent and makes youwant to laugh and cry and beat someone's ass.

Well done!

Alabama is a vile shithole. We would be lucky if a star fell on it.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

This is for you; what we wish on 'Bama:

https://neal.fun/asteroid-launcher/

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Thanks for this, I will be taking the off the rest of the day to calculate the numerous variables to smite mine enemies.

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That's fun!

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

I thought I'd be a humanitarian and send it into the ocean, only to create a 2500 foot tall tsunami. As Bender once said, it's not easy being God.

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I'd take a shot a it. take one for the team, as it were.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Curiously, I when I first encountered the Asteroid Launcher, My Native State was my first target, around Talledega...

Whatever NC's sins (and they, like Georgia, who's politics I tell myself I understand, have them, in spades) I am ever grateful Dad quit being a TVA cop and went home to the hills to run the dairy. Bridgeport, up near Chattanooga, was pretty much what a Southern Company Town looked like. I have never seen more broken beer bottles in ditches anywhere in the country.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

My home was the target the first time I played with the site, more to see how worried I should be.

Today was, like, relevant research, just questioning what it would be like in case of an appropriate act of god.

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I smote my old hometown in suburban NJ — it was immensely satisfying.

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👍🏻

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I am mighty pleased to have been hipped to this. I immediately started the process to determine just how large and fast and vertical an iron object should be to take out the wing of our building that houses the chief attorney for the loser president's next steal the steal extravaganza, while leaving our side intact and relatively inhabitable. I started with the smallest/slowest option but it isn't quite large or fast or vertical enough according to the program. So I'll be scaling up. That noise you hear from the eastern seaboard is me, cackling.

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Ugh, AL seems to be where my ex-wife —who late in our failing marriage decided she was opposed to abortion in all circumstamces— has ended up. Sounds like she'll fit right in...

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Jan 19, 2023·edited Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

My brother lived in the north corner where Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama come together . He was in Mentone, small town the other end of Lookout Mountain from Chattanooga. Pretty place. It was relatively civilized for Alabama.

We had to pay someone to stay at the house during his funeral because the Alabama tradition is to rob the house when they know everyone is away.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Heritage not hate?

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Why not both?

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Did they steal the idea from Zorba the Greek? Or was it the other way 'round?

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

All true, but then here in Ohio, just how much better are we?

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I felt right at home....

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Jan 19, 2023·edited Jan 19, 2023

Romania-bama. Under Governor Kay Ivey Ceausescu.

That said, I can't delete Alabama--Dad was born there and has retired to there.

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There are good people everywhere, and also God was a dick about that whole Sodom and Gomorrah thing. Really? Just a handful of people didn't deserve to die and go directly to hell for eternity? You did a report on everybody, right? Even the animals? No, you just listened to their reputation and smote 'em all? Asshole.

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Tough, but fair.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Broken record time: The solution is, even though the DNC is opposed to the idea, to vote the GOP out of power. Then we can do some purging of the Dems.

Meanwhile, bad as this crap from the sphincter of the homeland's heartland is, what about George Santos?? I mean, that's like most important political issue right now, it seems.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso
Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Well, it’s not like the GOP’s antipathy to any sort of functional democratic institutions is a new thing.

An interesting thing is that all the electoral fuckery hasn’t seemed to have helped them all that much.

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It helped them enough, which is why Ron Johnson is still around.

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Not sure it was electoral fuckery that put RoJo over.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

“if something sells for $100 plus $30 in tax, then it’s a 23% tax—because $30 is 23% of $130”

OK, now you've made me REALLY mad. You can completely fuck up the United States of America, but LEAVE ARITHMETIC ALONE.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

I didn't even bother to post about this 'cause I knew it wouldn't get past you. But I gotta say I laughed when I first read it up there^^^.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Santos is the poster boy for the total abandonment of morality by the Republican Party. Pick an issue, ask yourself “What would George Santos do?” and you’ll approximate the depths of the amoral Republican position. Stealing money from a disabled veteran, that’s inspired symbolic villainy!

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Nah, he just learned the hard way in 2020 that being Trumpy is a huge plus.

What the Santos affair does show is the media’s obsession with bullshit and, when it comes to political stuff, reporting as dishonestly as possible.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

It seems that what George Santo might do is put on a sparkly dress, a wig, some stilettos and false eyelashes and lip-sync in Portuguese.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Que coisa mais linda!

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Well he'd lie about it, is what. So you still have a decennial* quandary – which lie will it be this time?

*Seems to have got bigger since last time.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Have you heard about Santos pocketing the money from a Go Fund Me for a dog with cancer? This may finish him. If there’s one thing Americans can’t stand, it’s someone being unkind to a dog (sarcasm/off).

I’ve been a big booster of Congressman Zelig strictly for his comedic value, but now he’s moving from George Costanza territory into Mustachioed Villain terrain. How long before we hear he tied a woman to the railroad tracks, evicted a widow with 10 kids, and drowned a sack full of kittens?

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Tying a woman to railroad tracks and evicting a widow with 10 kids would make him an exemplary Republican. The kittens might raise an eyebrow, but the aforementioned eviction would make up for it. I mean, it's not like he shot anyone on Fifth Ave.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

True. And those kittens must have been asking for it.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

What were they wearing?

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

2 marks!

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Fur coats, of course, and there's the quandary, due to the lib-triggering effect of those coats.

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The current version of this, apparently, is "They were probably just vaxxed." Trump could shoot someone on fifth ave, and the red hat brigade would assume the vaccine killed them.

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PROBABLY? They'll swear under oath they heard it from the jabber personally. Or at least read it on his/her Twitter. Because that's how they do, these days, the medical profession -- vax'n'tell.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Whatever happened to personal responsibility, huh? If that dog didn't want to get cancer, he never should have taken up smoking.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

See above (or below – I can't keep 'em straight) re: who's the carcinogen.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Sorry. What's the unkindness – stealing the money, or acting as a canine carcinogen?

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

The dog won’t be enough even though it died because the promised funds didn’t materialize.

Only way Santos (if that’s his real name) is leaving office is by criminal conviction or, if that’s not resolved by November 24, enough voters being done with him. Of course, Republican voters are by and by addicted to his kind of crap.

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author

I've heard this argument made, and I understand it, but I can't escape the feeling that a sizable number of people would be okay with animal cruelty to Own The Libs.

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A sizable number of people are already okay with *human* cruelty to Own The Libs.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

It's a new record!

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There's a fifteen percent chance Santos is a serial killer, I just want to make the point that I'm dead serious about that. I give most people a 1-5 percent chance, but Santos is hiding way too much baggage to rule it out.

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This could be true, can't know if it disqualifies him from being a Republican congressman until we know the race, gender and sexual identity of his victims.

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Cynical, but fair.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Prosecuting doctors but not women -- at least for now? Allow me to bang this drum one more time: They do not genuinely believe abortion is murder. They just want to feel good about themselves and (same thing!) for ladies to do what they say. Because not one of them ever would advocate prosecuting a hitman but not who hired the hitman. So this "abortion is murder" belief, like every belief they ever claimed as dear and deeply held -- is not held at all. It's sham heroism. It's why they go all in on cartoonish insanity like Comet Pizza and the Hunter Laptop Investigation and will insist the Civil War was not about slavery.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Actually, it's a tough nut for them to crack. In their purported view*, women are empty vessels prone to being misled by the evil abortion industry and thus in need of godly male guidance. If they admit that women are responsible for the decision to abort, that means women are actual people who can make moral decisions on their own. That is getting very close to the slippery slope that can only lead to women having human rights.

*A simpler version is that they just like having women as domestic servants, kept docile by being kept financially dependent on their male owners, I mean, husbands.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Okay, this resonates with observations I've made over the years, regarding acquaintances from the South in particular, who do love their mothers and wives but also view them as incompetents in all areas except cookery and babycare. She goes into a shop on her own and has been gone 7 minutes? "I better go check on her." That sort of thing. Like she is not a fully functional adult capable of handling the worst this strip mall can throw at her.

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she could be in there stripping!!111!!1

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Jan 19, 2023·edited Jan 19, 2023

This is an old-movie trope too, that all women go weak in the knees for the latest-style hat. Can't resist, out comes the checkbook, you know how the ladies are, amirite? Not sure what's replaced that since ladies stopped wearing fancy hats.

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Like "babycare" is easy

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Tricky...

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

I drove past the Matt Gaetz Camp for Wayward Women on Sunday. There was a weathered sandwich sign outside the front gate that read "BABIES FOR SALE" in faded stick-on boat letters. When I rolled down the window, I could faintly hear the mingled sounds of women and babies crying, punctuated irregularly by a male voice yelling "SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

And the Good Lord's work continues apace.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Matt could boost his profit margins by taking in laundry.

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Soon to be a minor immobile picture.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

"they had better flail and phumpher and insist"

Yes, hadn't they...

And yes, Flail, Phumpher & N.Cyst, ESq. IS my attorney firm...why do you ask?

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

The health and safety of our citizens—women and children included

So now fetuses are both citizens and children. Got it.

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Amendment XIV is clear on this point. "Born or naturalized."

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I just realized "Born or naturalized." is the sort of phrase I'd imagine reading on a Dr Bronner's jug.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

I'm left wondering, yet again, am I an innocent but dumb mommy-in-waiting easily snookered by evil men of science and haggard baby-hating feminists, or am I a wanton slut who accepts any and all comers (if you know what I mean and I think you do), but not the sacred consequences, which will only get in the way of my rollicking penile rodeo? One or the other.

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Madonna or whore? Sorry, ladies, those are the only two choices available today.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Every day. Until you hit crone (at what? I think it's around 36 now).

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Or as Goldie Hawn put it, for purposes of Hollywood casting: “There are only three ages for women: Babe, District Attorney, and Driving Miss Daisy.”

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I've been a Crone since age six. Hasn't stopped me from being a baby killing whore, though. You have to keep your priorities straight.

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Jan 19, 2023·edited Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Resisting hearting...it was hitting the crone that I just couldn't...

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Wanton Sluts, Unite! Really, it's amazing how conservatives come up with every bizarre theory under the sun rather than acknowledge women are adults with agency who want to determine the course of their own lives and have their own individual agendas, hopes, and plans.

I think I saw Rollicking Penile Rodeo at CBGB's back in the late 70s.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

As if they are, dare I say it? -- human beings.

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Carry on, carry on...

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Careful. You're perilously close to another 2 marks.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

"It was first reported Saturday by 1819 News."

Public statements by ALL Republican officials should be reported in the 1819 News.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

And all you smarty-pants liberals who keep asking, "And when exactly was America so great?" now have your answer.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Ah, 1819...

"Spain cedes Florida to the United States, in exchange for the American renunciation of any claims on Texas that it might have from the Louisiana Purchase, and $5 million."

Good times...

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Fast- forward to 1836. Spain: "But you RENOUNCED!"

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The common thread between the two was, of course, slavery. . .

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I sent Marshall a message through his website saying I didn't think a sister-fucking hillbilly like him was up to the task. Oddly enough, he failed to respond.

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Jan 19, 2023·edited Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

It was just a thing. They had a checklist.

"Someone to watch the house" was on the checklist.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso

Sounds like someone else had a checklist, derived from the local obituary page.

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Interested in the implied claim that these mooks wrote a new criminal law but forgot to mention who their "real beef" was with.

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Of course the purpose of a government of laws is to enshrine your "beefs"...

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The Cattlemen's Association Lean, Mean Fartin' Machine Hall of Fame wants a word...

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There is a special place in Hell--I know; I called in the reservation--for these reactionary shits who use the term "common sense" to mean "what I, in either my ignorance or misogyny, want." Most of the time it's the former: "The government should be run like a business, but its budget should be managed like your family's budget. That's just common sense." With these AG's, the latter.

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Hearted for your foresight to get that reservation in early.

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Jan 19, 2023·edited Jan 19, 2023

Closely related: "If I don't understand a thing, then it's the thing that's wrong."

In fact, being hard to understand is just a trick certain things pull to make you feel stupid. Oh, quantum physics could be easy to understand, it just doesn't want to because it likes to feel superior. Likewise all foreign-language speakers, they could speak English any time they want to, but they've got to stick to their furriner language just to be annoying and inscrutable.

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Hell, even I would love to be able to speak English when I'm grabbin' a cuppa coffee with my English perfessor friend.

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I'm frankly surprised the GOP isn't all "Republican Revolution!" all over again, but I think it's because they're getting some pushback this time as greater society seems unwilling to play along as they did in 1995.

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(Reminder that the former dominant, conservative party in Mexico is named the Institutional Revolutionary Party.)

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You mean the Pink Splash? Not that totally underwhelming results would stop them from claiming a mandate from THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

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