strange to think that in the great shipwreck that is the Republican Party, there are many of a certain narrow demographic who will flounder toward that leaky straw named Noonan. win one for the gipper!
The funniest thing, if I'm catching Noonan's drift -- and drift is the right word because it's almost like the vagueness itself is the point -- she seems to believe she's addressing young voters. Who are uninformed. But who are reading an opinion piece. In the Wall Street Journal. I mean, if that's her target audience, the only way a young person is going to see this is if she thrusts it into the hands of the DoorDash guy delivering her takeout, and insists he read it if he wants a tip.
Now, let's not forget that important demographic: "Young people who read the Wall Street Journal". Alex P. Keaton comes to mind. If there's anything that will work on those kids, it's an appeal to humility.
Those young people, who read WSJ and also have fun with insurance like on those Liberty Mutual ads, they are the most humble in our society today. I'm sure there's a line longer than any line to vote for most humble in that demographic.
I'm one of those people that the more you tell them that they can't do something the more they're going to want to do it. As you can imagine, follow up on this has worked out with various degrees of success. A lot of it depends on who is trying to convince me. If it's your typical Republican in a leadership role my instinctive response to anything they say would be " Ha Ha no fuck you!"
Turn out from the kids has been up the last couple of cycles and evidently so far this year initial response from them has been pretty good. " Pretty sure there's a lot of " Ha Ha no fuck you" connected to that. A couple years ago my daughter said something like" Anybody too cool to vote is just an asshole."
I can't imagine JD Vance appealing to anybody under 40 years old.Bump that up to 68 with Noonan .
I hate it that I get the urge too shove Nooners down some steps.
As well demonstrated, I'm a defective human being. And due to my defects, I've been smelling the GOP's lets ambivalence about democracy* since the 80s. They just couldn't fully hide their love of right wing authoritarians -- what used to be called dictators. (I suppose the Founding Fathers' OG democracy which was little more than a system for an oligarchy to make decisions of state would be about as much democracy as the GOP would accept.)
So, you know, what's been happening of late isn't so disappointing.BTW, anyone who doesn't think a SCOTUS to the right of the one that decided Shelby County isn't going to sign off on that independent state legislature thing...
And by boring old rant about the Pulitzers: They're not just rigged but double rigged. The award o one means little in any way good so, you know, Noonan got one. Feh.
In fairness, Taibbi broke through as a well-connected disrupter when he was bragging about trying to coerce anal sex out of his Russian admins. He was gifted in all kinds of ways for being toxic.
No, Taibbi did some pretty good work at the NY Press and Rolling Stone. But two books bombed, a fiction thing failed bigger, the scumbaggery came out, and then he ended up making the best money of his life as a bullshit artiste alongside Roy with Substack…
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch" is a long-running conservative thought. The "sheep" being the helpless and innocent rich folks, at the mercy of the rapacious and more numerous members of the lower classes. Now, if I could just convince one of the wolves that the election's on Nov. 15 instead of Nov. 8...
You really need a bigger readership, Roy, even if only to shine a laser beam on operatives like Noonan. Anyway, to add to your links, the one below is another terrific if incredibly depressing article from Jane Meyer that shows how voting itself is fast becoming moot, even if you get past all the obstacles to do so. David Pepper, the author of the book mentioned, "The Laboratories of Autocracy," is quoted extensively so [TRIGGER WARNING] don't read the book or the article unless you like being suicidal. It's a fine mess we're in.
As the designated mule for our precinct I have to practice depositing a bunch of phony ballots at the local dropbox. It's getting tougher with all the D'Souza-drones watching.
I'd guess Wisconsin from what I've read. But there are so many others in the running: Texas, Michigan, North Carolina, etc. All of them (at least as of a couple of years ago) had minority rule thanks to rigged districts. I'd also love to see everyone stop using "gerrymander" to describe the ridiculously doctored and distorted manipulation of the electoral maps. Most people I've encountered have, at best, only a vague idea what the word means, and not a clue how a Democratic majority electorate and vote could result in a Republican super-majority just by messing with district lines.
I'd also love to see everyone stop using "gerrymander"
Never! It's vitally important to preserve the memory of Elbridge Gerry and his villainous map-making in the 1812 Boston redistricting! Surely, there is no better way to communicate the vital importance of this issue than with early 19th century political humor!
Well, the state votes about 35-40% Dem even with bad Dem candidates, but has 3 of 35 Dem Senators, and 8 of 70 Dem House people. A vote for a Constitutional Amendment to draw fairer districts failed in 2016.
I think this is a real challenge for any voter-education effort: Informing people about the barriers the Republicans have erected to impede voting can inadvertently persuade them that voting's a huge pain in the ass and not worth all the trouble. Like with Wisconsin's vote ID law, you've got to go through all the requirements (University of Wisconsin ID won't work, students have to ask for a separate "voting" ID instead) without being TOO discouraging.
About that voter ID law, I remember Wisco Republicans being so sure this would deliver all the elections to them, since then the Dems have won all statewide offices and Biden won the state in 2020. Voter suppression is half the story, the other half is good people working to overcome the barriers. It's always a close call which side will win, but we're not defenseless.
Lets tap the breaks a couple times before rushing to judgement. The WSJ editorial page has one demographic. Perhaps The Divine Ms. N. wants her audience of lockstep conservatives to step back for a moment and rethink their prejudices. She's being coy about it. (That's her trademark. She read somewhere, that's how ladies make a point.) Remember how we were always told to just give Rush Limbaugh's show a try? Maybe Peggs is hinting for her audience to look into some alternate sources of discourse about this grand old republic. She's the ally we never thought we had, working from within the very heart of the system to bring it down.
My bulb was dim enough this morning that I briefly considered Peg's shark chum more or less as you (slyly) do. But that was only 'cause I tend to offer benefits to doubt. Thing is, now the reps gonna eliminate all (non-shareholder) benefits, so no, not this time...
You know what would cut out all those uninformed voters? Going back to requiring property ownership in order to vote. Yessir, there's nothing like owning real estate to concentrate the mind on what REALLY matters.
I could imagine a modern-day version that's like the per-axle charges at the toll booth. Drive an F-250 pulling a double-axle boat trailer and you get twice as many votes as the Prius driver.
Her charming WFB anecdote is literally that. Like Hillary saying Trump loves his children (or was it the other way around, either way its a lie), the 1 good thing you can say about Republicans is that they tell us exactly what they will do.
Speaking of voting, WaPo has a Ruth Marcus piece "The Tragedy of Chief Justice Roberts." Oh, cry, cry if it makes you feel better, set it all down in a tear-stained letter, you anti-democracy life-long opponent of the common man! He's lost control of the Court he steered into voter suppression! Whatever will he do? (More speeches about how "legitimate" the Court is, dontcha know.) Marcus, in a very long piece that is 15 years too late, admits that Roberts, whatever restraints he might want to apply to his run-away fascist Court now, played fast and loose with the rules and gave us Dark Money Elections and stripped down voting rights (not to mention abandoning women to the dictates of Republican legislators whose knowledge of human biology is somewhere south of an E.coli's). But "tragedy"? Oh, "that this too too mortal flesh would melt" or "is this a dagger I see before me?" No, more, "I coulda been a contender except now I'll go down as the leader of the worst Supreme Court since Dred Scott." Not tragedy, not even farce. Pathos, Ms. Marcus, pure pathos.
To be fair, pretty much every SC justice in the last (checks watch) oh, I don't know, 230 years has voted in lock step with their corporate overlords. The voting/human rights stuff is just the frosting on the cake (if I can be allowed to fracture that metaphor beyond all redemption).
Agree with your first point but disagree about voting. Eliminating the chance of changing the policies (including economic) of the country in favor of social justice requires degrading the power of voting. The Founders started the ball rolling with the Electoral College and the two Senators per state (not to mention the 2/3s rule about slaves) and now gerrymandering and voter suppression (the New Jim Crow) are poised to finish the job, thanks to the Roberts' Court. Once voting no longer matters, the oligarchs can dictate whatever they wish without fear of effective push-back.
An elderly man offered me low-price insulin if I'd just vote for his party. Naturally, I immediately contacted my local Republican party about this blatant vote-buying attempt and now Dinesh D'Souza's making a documentary about it.
As the guys on the "Adventures in HellwQrld" podcast keep pointing out, D'Snooza is full of shit because anyone of dubious enough ethics to stuff ballot boxes would have taken those false ballots, gone to FAUX or OAN, and become an instant conservative hero making millions.
I'm still trying to figure out this whole "ballot harvesting" thing, which is actually illegal in some states. Nobody's saying these aren't real people who really do have a right to vote and really did fill out a ballot in accordance with state laws, but someone CARRIED THE BALLOT to the clerk's office and that makes the votes inside the envelopes fraudulent? Takes some really advanced Schroedinger's-cat-level thinking to make sense of that.
Peggy is more and more like the late Queen Margaret, a holy relic of a distant Era whose only connection to the present is that she exists. She's a great example of how the human mind can simply block unacceptable reality (if you have enough money to insulate yourself from the offensive parts). She has a column simply because she is in The Club, but it is a window into the fading WASP world that used to run the Republican Party. It's like listening to Blanche DuBois talk about walking the precinct. If you asked her, she'd bob and weave like the pro she was, but she'd eventually admit that invalidating elections that Republicans lose is a necessary evil to save The Republic from the chaos of Democracy. This is what the Republican Party has been since Teapot Dome, they're just getting stupider about it.
Always was, though. There was a passage in her first book about her one personal conversation with Reagan, which was about her personal theory w/r/t his transcendent patriotism being inspired by Jimmy Cagney tap dancing on the White House stairs in Yankee Doodle Dandy.
He had no idea what she was talking about. She interpreted that as evidence of him being a zen master of working class americanism.
Here in Kansas, they made the mistake of passing no-excuse-needed absentee voting. I guess they figured there aren't enough people on the left here to matter. All you need to vote absentee is the desire.
So much as I love standing in line with a bunch of unwashed yokels - which I freely admit discouraged me more than once from exercising my franchise - I do it all online/by mail these days. I've already voted AND checked the website to verify my ballot was accepted.
I do wish a few of those unofficial GOP voter checkers would come visit me, though. Do not doubt for a minute that I'll turn the hose on them.
On the one hand, go fuck yourself, Pegs - the GOP has done everything in its power to alienate the voters from the government, acting less as if it was "by, for and of the people", and more like the White House is an alien mothership landed to impose their strange evil will on the free people of America. Then there's the conservative assault on education and critical thinking, useful in duping rubes that the splashing they feel is just gentle rain from above, but kinda a drawback in a democracy. When you actively keep the electorate from BEING "thoughtful and informed", fed instead on lies and "optics", you (to paraphrase Lenny Bruce) cripple democracy then denounce it for limping.
On the other hand, if the American people are really so willfully blind that they'll vote for toxic mango swamp debris like Walker, Oz, Mastriano, Lake, and, locally, Zeldin, my misanthropy cuts in and says we pretty much deserve what we get. Not as if we weren't warned.
"On the other hand, if [50.1% of] the American people are really so willfully blind that they'll vote for toxic mango swamp debris like Walker, Oz, Mastriano, Lake, and, locally, Zeldin..."
I don't think a mid-term election has ever had a turnout as low as 25%, certainly not in the last 75 years. Also, there is no way, if Trump couldn't get 50% of the vote of the American people, that Walker, Oz, etc. could get 45% of the American popular vote
So Krazy Aunt Pegs thinks voters who aren't sufficiently informed should show "humility" and, for the sake of the nation, not vote? Cool. Has she seen the citizenry who turn out for Trump rallies? Is she familiar with Lauren Boebert and M.T. Greene? Tell ya what, Peg. We'll have our dummies sit this one out, and you have yours. Sound good?
As her WFB anecdote indicates, Peg still lives in a world where the Democrats are the party of the uneducated working class, and the Republicans are the party of the college-educated elites. Didn't get the memo, I guess.
I am reminded of a high school teacher from France who tried to explain the Vichy government to us. She was old enough to have adult memories of it, and she discussed the collaborators with wincing and a sorrow that I did not fathom at 15. But Petain, she really wanted to forgive Petain. He was so ancient, she stressed, too old to be fully aware of the world, easy to dupe, and he must have thought if he went along with the Nazis he could mitigate the very worst of it all, make things easier on France. I thought of that teacher here, of Noonan strategizing Jesus, this country is about to take a billy club to the skull from my team -- unless I step out in front and point the victims to an offramp. Simply don't participate, Democrats! That way you can avoid so much riotous conflict! That's how deep Team-R loyalty goes I guess. There's no way to change sides if you're Republican, you simply choose between being the Fascist who says Please Let Us Have All the Power and the Fascist who's excited to swing the club when Please doesn't work. And she'll comfort herself she tried. She really tried.
Another thought I had was of the crisis of student IDs not being accepted to vote in my college town in the early 90s. The law said they counted, but us kids all wanted the Green, if I recall, so poll workers loyal to the incumbent mayor (a tinpot dictator) were checking our driver's licenses, and if they didn't match, sending us to court, where a judge had to look at a tuition bill (who had one handy??) and then individually certify us and send us back. A surprise 4-hour process, minimum. I'm sure things have changed since then, it was a different era, etc etc PUNCHLINE: I just looked up the town, and our early 90s mayor is STILL the fucking mayor SO MAYBE NOT.
Glad you were here to interpret this. Yes, in case you are just too wrapped up in trivial matters of trying to make your nickel stretch, don't stress further about voting, really. Others will make the choices for you, and then you won't have to worry about making ends meet. Just surrender to a life of wage enslavement and consumer subservience. Well, enjoy!
The fact that this demented old fool has a forum on the WSJ is another QED for the complete bankruptcy of the reactionary/fascist movement.
It’s bankrupt in every sense — intellectually, morally, philosophically, ethically, spiritually, and aesthetically — except financially.
And there's our national epitaph!
"For a while there, we created some really excellent shareholder value."
We value our excellent shareholders!
strange to think that in the great shipwreck that is the Republican Party, there are many of a certain narrow demographic who will flounder toward that leaky straw named Noonan. win one for the gipper!
The funniest thing, if I'm catching Noonan's drift -- and drift is the right word because it's almost like the vagueness itself is the point -- she seems to believe she's addressing young voters. Who are uninformed. But who are reading an opinion piece. In the Wall Street Journal. I mean, if that's her target audience, the only way a young person is going to see this is if she thrusts it into the hands of the DoorDash guy delivering her takeout, and insists he read it if he wants a tip.
Ribbon candy is such a nice touch.
wash it down with a moxie!
I keep trying to read your drift there as grift.
Truth is that after a certain age, a lost mind isn't sooo terrible.
Now, let's not forget that important demographic: "Young people who read the Wall Street Journal". Alex P. Keaton comes to mind. If there's anything that will work on those kids, it's an appeal to humility.
Those young people, who read WSJ and also have fun with insurance like on those Liberty Mutual ads, they are the most humble in our society today. I'm sure there's a line longer than any line to vote for most humble in that demographic.
"catching Noonan's drift"
I believe that's the job of the butler, as she stumbles toward bed.
Noonan stumbles/Republican fumbles/Putin rumbles/Democracy tumbles
I don't wanna catch her drift, if you catch my drift.
Mask up! She's creating new variants every day.
I'm one of those people that the more you tell them that they can't do something the more they're going to want to do it. As you can imagine, follow up on this has worked out with various degrees of success. A lot of it depends on who is trying to convince me. If it's your typical Republican in a leadership role my instinctive response to anything they say would be " Ha Ha no fuck you!"
Turn out from the kids has been up the last couple of cycles and evidently so far this year initial response from them has been pretty good. " Pretty sure there's a lot of " Ha Ha no fuck you" connected to that. A couple years ago my daughter said something like" Anybody too cool to vote is just an asshole."
I can't imagine JD Vance appealing to anybody under 40 years old.Bump that up to 68 with Noonan .
I hate it that I get the urge too shove Nooners down some steps.
❤️❤️❤️
"Anybody too cool to vote is just an asshole."
The kids are all right.
Damn. Does that mean that next year I start listening to Peg? Damn.
I hate it that I get the urge too shove Nooners down some steps.
You are Arthur Schopenhauer, and I claim my 5 Deutsche Marks
As well demonstrated, I'm a defective human being. And due to my defects, I've been smelling the GOP's lets ambivalence about democracy* since the 80s. They just couldn't fully hide their love of right wing authoritarians -- what used to be called dictators. (I suppose the Founding Fathers' OG democracy which was little more than a system for an oligarchy to make decisions of state would be about as much democracy as the GOP would accept.)
So, you know, what's been happening of late isn't so disappointing.BTW, anyone who doesn't think a SCOTUS to the right of the one that decided Shelby County isn't going to sign off on that independent state legislature thing...
And by boring old rant about the Pulitzers: They're not just rigged but double rigged. The award o one means little in any way good so, you know, Noonan got one. Feh.
Greenwald got one, too, as he never fails to remind his critics and naysayers. Go figure.
Well, once upon a time, Greenwald did good work. But like Taibbi, fame and fortune are gifted them for the toxic shit they’re doing now, so…
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make libertarian.
I've gotta sock that one away in my dubious memory for future use.
In fairness, Taibbi broke through as a well-connected disrupter when he was bragging about trying to coerce anal sex out of his Russian admins. He was gifted in all kinds of ways for being toxic.
No, Taibbi did some pretty good work at the NY Press and Rolling Stone. But two books bombed, a fiction thing failed bigger, the scumbaggery came out, and then he ended up making the best money of his life as a bullshit artiste alongside Roy with Substack…
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch" is a long-running conservative thought. The "sheep" being the helpless and innocent rich folks, at the mercy of the rapacious and more numerous members of the lower classes. Now, if I could just convince one of the wolves that the election's on Nov. 15 instead of Nov. 8...
You really need a bigger readership, Roy, even if only to shine a laser beam on operatives like Noonan. Anyway, to add to your links, the one below is another terrific if incredibly depressing article from Jane Meyer that shows how voting itself is fast becoming moot, even if you get past all the obstacles to do so. David Pepper, the author of the book mentioned, "The Laboratories of Autocracy," is quoted extensively so [TRIGGER WARNING] don't read the book or the article unless you like being suicidal. It's a fine mess we're in.
As the designated mule for our precinct I have to practice depositing a bunch of phony ballots at the local dropbox. It's getting tougher with all the D'Souza-drones watching.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/state-legislatures-are-torching-democracy
“Ohio is about the second most gerrymandered statehouse in the country"
Anybody want to venture a guess as to who's first?
I'd guess Wisconsin from what I've read. But there are so many others in the running: Texas, Michigan, North Carolina, etc. All of them (at least as of a couple of years ago) had minority rule thanks to rigged districts. I'd also love to see everyone stop using "gerrymander" to describe the ridiculously doctored and distorted manipulation of the electoral maps. Most people I've encountered have, at best, only a vague idea what the word means, and not a clue how a Democratic majority electorate and vote could result in a Republican super-majority just by messing with district lines.
I'd also love to see everyone stop using "gerrymander"
Never! It's vitally important to preserve the memory of Elbridge Gerry and his villainous map-making in the 1812 Boston redistricting! Surely, there is no better way to communicate the vital importance of this issue than with early 19th century political humor!
South Dakota?
Do they really need to rig the districts in South Dakota?
Well, the state votes about 35-40% Dem even with bad Dem candidates, but has 3 of 35 Dem Senators, and 8 of 70 Dem House people. A vote for a Constitutional Amendment to draw fairer districts failed in 2016.
Well whether they need to or not they do.
Jane Mayer has delved into more depressing parts of the American empire than even Noam Chomsky. She must have nerves of steel.
I think this is a real challenge for any voter-education effort: Informing people about the barriers the Republicans have erected to impede voting can inadvertently persuade them that voting's a huge pain in the ass and not worth all the trouble. Like with Wisconsin's vote ID law, you've got to go through all the requirements (University of Wisconsin ID won't work, students have to ask for a separate "voting" ID instead) without being TOO discouraging.
About that voter ID law, I remember Wisco Republicans being so sure this would deliver all the elections to them, since then the Dems have won all statewide offices and Biden won the state in 2020. Voter suppression is half the story, the other half is good people working to overcome the barriers. It's always a close call which side will win, but we're not defenseless.
Lets tap the breaks a couple times before rushing to judgement. The WSJ editorial page has one demographic. Perhaps The Divine Ms. N. wants her audience of lockstep conservatives to step back for a moment and rethink their prejudices. She's being coy about it. (That's her trademark. She read somewhere, that's how ladies make a point.) Remember how we were always told to just give Rush Limbaugh's show a try? Maybe Peggs is hinting for her audience to look into some alternate sources of discourse about this grand old republic. She's the ally we never thought we had, working from within the very heart of the system to bring it down.
Can you tell me where you get your weed?
Noonan is just doing the kinder gentler version of "the wrong people are voting and they should stop" two step.
My bulb was dim enough this morning that I briefly considered Peg's shark chum more or less as you (slyly) do. But that was only 'cause I tend to offer benefits to doubt. Thing is, now the reps gonna eliminate all (non-shareholder) benefits, so no, not this time...
Maybe the Trophy Wife will read the column after her hubby, the Wizard of Wall Street, leaves the paper on the kitchen table?
You know what would cut out all those uninformed voters? Going back to requiring property ownership in order to vote. Yessir, there's nothing like owning real estate to concentrate the mind on what REALLY matters.
Periodic reminder that slaves were also "property".
Well, what better qualification for knowing how the country should be run than owning OTHER PEOPLE?
Republicans should get 3/5 of a vote for each one of those they own
I could imagine a modern-day version that's like the per-axle charges at the toll booth. Drive an F-250 pulling a double-axle boat trailer and you get twice as many votes as the Prius driver.
Her charming WFB anecdote is literally that. Like Hillary saying Trump loves his children (or was it the other way around, either way its a lie), the 1 good thing you can say about Republicans is that they tell us exactly what they will do.
Speaking of voting, WaPo has a Ruth Marcus piece "The Tragedy of Chief Justice Roberts." Oh, cry, cry if it makes you feel better, set it all down in a tear-stained letter, you anti-democracy life-long opponent of the common man! He's lost control of the Court he steered into voter suppression! Whatever will he do? (More speeches about how "legitimate" the Court is, dontcha know.) Marcus, in a very long piece that is 15 years too late, admits that Roberts, whatever restraints he might want to apply to his run-away fascist Court now, played fast and loose with the rules and gave us Dark Money Elections and stripped down voting rights (not to mention abandoning women to the dictates of Republican legislators whose knowledge of human biology is somewhere south of an E.coli's). But "tragedy"? Oh, "that this too too mortal flesh would melt" or "is this a dagger I see before me?" No, more, "I coulda been a contender except now I'll go down as the leader of the worst Supreme Court since Dred Scott." Not tragedy, not even farce. Pathos, Ms. Marcus, pure pathos.
As a 10-year-old girl is wheeled into the delivery room to deliver her rapist's baby, let's not forget who the REAL victim is here.
To be fair, pretty much every SC justice in the last (checks watch) oh, I don't know, 230 years has voted in lock step with their corporate overlords. The voting/human rights stuff is just the frosting on the cake (if I can be allowed to fracture that metaphor beyond all redemption).
Agree with your first point but disagree about voting. Eliminating the chance of changing the policies (including economic) of the country in favor of social justice requires degrading the power of voting. The Founders started the ball rolling with the Electoral College and the two Senators per state (not to mention the 2/3s rule about slaves) and now gerrymandering and voter suppression (the New Jim Crow) are poised to finish the job, thanks to the Roberts' Court. Once voting no longer matters, the oligarchs can dictate whatever they wish without fear of effective push-back.
not to mention the 2/3s rule about slaves
Do you mean the 3/5ths rule?
Now with 6 2/3% more slave power!
Bonus points for quoting RT, Dr. BDH.
"Maybe your false friends offer you drugs to vote. Just say no!"
Not me! I tricked 'em! I secretly voted early, then assured them that if they proffered all the statins I need I would sit out the election – genius!
An elderly man offered me low-price insulin if I'd just vote for his party. Naturally, I immediately contacted my local Republican party about this blatant vote-buying attempt and now Dinesh D'Souza's making a documentary about it.
As the guys on the "Adventures in HellwQrld" podcast keep pointing out, D'Snooza is full of shit because anyone of dubious enough ethics to stuff ballot boxes would have taken those false ballots, gone to FAUX or OAN, and become an instant conservative hero making millions.
I'm still trying to figure out this whole "ballot harvesting" thing, which is actually illegal in some states. Nobody's saying these aren't real people who really do have a right to vote and really did fill out a ballot in accordance with state laws, but someone CARRIED THE BALLOT to the clerk's office and that makes the votes inside the envelopes fraudulent? Takes some really advanced Schroedinger's-cat-level thinking to make sense of that.
Maybe that's where all the infrared Antifa fentanyl went - they were saving it for Election Day.
Peggy is more and more like the late Queen Margaret, a holy relic of a distant Era whose only connection to the present is that she exists. She's a great example of how the human mind can simply block unacceptable reality (if you have enough money to insulate yourself from the offensive parts). She has a column simply because she is in The Club, but it is a window into the fading WASP world that used to run the Republican Party. It's like listening to Blanche DuBois talk about walking the precinct. If you asked her, she'd bob and weave like the pro she was, but she'd eventually admit that invalidating elections that Republicans lose is a necessary evil to save The Republic from the chaos of Democracy. This is what the Republican Party has been since Teapot Dome, they're just getting stupider about it.
"I have always depended on the kindness of Rupert Murdoch."
Always was, though. There was a passage in her first book about her one personal conversation with Reagan, which was about her personal theory w/r/t his transcendent patriotism being inspired by Jimmy Cagney tap dancing on the White House stairs in Yankee Doodle Dandy.
He had no idea what she was talking about. She interpreted that as evidence of him being a zen master of working class americanism.
Wait. What about Ronnie's darlingly shod feet?
Here in Kansas, they made the mistake of passing no-excuse-needed absentee voting. I guess they figured there aren't enough people on the left here to matter. All you need to vote absentee is the desire.
So much as I love standing in line with a bunch of unwashed yokels - which I freely admit discouraged me more than once from exercising my franchise - I do it all online/by mail these days. I've already voted AND checked the website to verify my ballot was accepted.
I do wish a few of those unofficial GOP voter checkers would come visit me, though. Do not doubt for a minute that I'll turn the hose on them.
On the one hand, go fuck yourself, Pegs - the GOP has done everything in its power to alienate the voters from the government, acting less as if it was "by, for and of the people", and more like the White House is an alien mothership landed to impose their strange evil will on the free people of America. Then there's the conservative assault on education and critical thinking, useful in duping rubes that the splashing they feel is just gentle rain from above, but kinda a drawback in a democracy. When you actively keep the electorate from BEING "thoughtful and informed", fed instead on lies and "optics", you (to paraphrase Lenny Bruce) cripple democracy then denounce it for limping.
On the other hand, if the American people are really so willfully blind that they'll vote for toxic mango swamp debris like Walker, Oz, Mastriano, Lake, and, locally, Zeldin, my misanthropy cuts in and says we pretty much deserve what we get. Not as if we weren't warned.
"On the other hand, if [50.1% of] the American people are really so willfully blind that they'll vote for toxic mango swamp debris like Walker, Oz, Mastriano, Lake, and, locally, Zeldin..."
FTFY
More like 50.1% of 25% of the electorate, but point taken.
I don't think a mid-term election has ever had a turnout as low as 25%, certainly not in the last 75 years. Also, there is no way, if Trump couldn't get 50% of the vote of the American people, that Walker, Oz, etc. could get 45% of the American popular vote
So Krazy Aunt Pegs thinks voters who aren't sufficiently informed should show "humility" and, for the sake of the nation, not vote? Cool. Has she seen the citizenry who turn out for Trump rallies? Is she familiar with Lauren Boebert and M.T. Greene? Tell ya what, Peg. We'll have our dummies sit this one out, and you have yours. Sound good?
As her WFB anecdote indicates, Peg still lives in a world where the Democrats are the party of the uneducated working class, and the Republicans are the party of the college-educated elites. Didn't get the memo, I guess.
I assume our Pegs is also not voting because she is ignorant of what is going on politically
So many thoughts while reading...
I am reminded of a high school teacher from France who tried to explain the Vichy government to us. She was old enough to have adult memories of it, and she discussed the collaborators with wincing and a sorrow that I did not fathom at 15. But Petain, she really wanted to forgive Petain. He was so ancient, she stressed, too old to be fully aware of the world, easy to dupe, and he must have thought if he went along with the Nazis he could mitigate the very worst of it all, make things easier on France. I thought of that teacher here, of Noonan strategizing Jesus, this country is about to take a billy club to the skull from my team -- unless I step out in front and point the victims to an offramp. Simply don't participate, Democrats! That way you can avoid so much riotous conflict! That's how deep Team-R loyalty goes I guess. There's no way to change sides if you're Republican, you simply choose between being the Fascist who says Please Let Us Have All the Power and the Fascist who's excited to swing the club when Please doesn't work. And she'll comfort herself she tried. She really tried.
Another thought I had was of the crisis of student IDs not being accepted to vote in my college town in the early 90s. The law said they counted, but us kids all wanted the Green, if I recall, so poll workers loyal to the incumbent mayor (a tinpot dictator) were checking our driver's licenses, and if they didn't match, sending us to court, where a judge had to look at a tuition bill (who had one handy??) and then individually certify us and send us back. A surprise 4-hour process, minimum. I'm sure things have changed since then, it was a different era, etc etc PUNCHLINE: I just looked up the town, and our early 90s mayor is STILL the fucking mayor SO MAYBE NOT.
Hearted for "Is this a great country or WHAT?!"
Glad you were here to interpret this. Yes, in case you are just too wrapped up in trivial matters of trying to make your nickel stretch, don't stress further about voting, really. Others will make the choices for you, and then you won't have to worry about making ends meet. Just surrender to a life of wage enslavement and consumer subservience. Well, enjoy!
So far, so meh!
Can't remember a time in human history when "Trust the rich, they know more than you" didn't work out JUST FINE.