184 Comments
Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

Amen, brother.

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… is the most sampled drum break in musical history.

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

Despite all the free time on my hands, I've neglected (or chose not) to ascertain the actual definition of fascism. More: I'm copping out and leave the issue as an anti-democratic state--whether in form or just function--that has, like, a siamese twin, symbiotic relationship with capitalists. A circle jerk, if I may. Not an orthodox definition IIRC but works for me.

Anyway vis a vis the masses: Not sure at all the word is relevant or useful in any way (no matter how defined, of course). Every descriptions of fascist policies, at least superficial definitions. Of course if there's a huge problem involving illegal immigrants, of course the problem should be addressed and said persons sent back home. But that's one huge if there. But on the surface, where the mainstream news media leave it as a rule, Trump's policy doesn't look as bad as it of course is. The core is being (willfully) ignored by our exceptional media; they choose to accept there's a problem.

I'm losing my focus and thread but there's that circle jerk: reporters' bosses' preferred candidate claims there's a problem and offers an extreme, vulgar solution and press chooses not to criticize or critique it thereby legitimatizing it.

So calling Donnie fash works for us parlor trick (h/t H Kurtzman) nerds but the little people? Please. Does the word have any meaning for them? Do they even remember anything about the Nazis beyond the fact that they were the big bads in WWII?

Personally, my preference is maybe just calling them scum. Simpler word with universal understanding. Fascist opens a can of worms requiring talmudic-level study.

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

More accurately "the big bads in WWII movies".

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If you want to go history-wise, then the Nazis were far more the USSR's enemy than ours.

Too, the Nazis are, in the minds of the little people, the big bads. Of course, Wall Street always had a thing for them which apparently never fully died out.

As for the movies, histories of wars and the US are insanely detached from reality, relying on the barest minimum of facts, if that.

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@KanekoaTheGreat

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon: "If you do not control the borders, you are going to destroy our country...

Now that they are sending migrants into New York... all my super liberal friends realize what a problem it is."

Migrants. In New York!!!!

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Why, I hear there's this one neighborhood in New York City where things have gotten so out of control you wouldn't even know you were in America! Have to admit that I do like the Moo-Shu Pork, though.

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Migrants! Like the pusher of booze/pimp, Her Drumpf with the awful genes! Or like the Scot girl who came to America to nail a monied husband.

Clearly, letting bad people into the nation is a very old problem even if we're a nation of immigrants...

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Plus, now your Mayor has been indicted so there is no one left to resist the dusky hoards

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Fascist is Italian for "belligerent asshole"

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Even I know that’s not the correct definition but it works for me 😉

It’s wrong yet universal…

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Defining "fascism" can be a slippery thing, primarily because they're political chameleons. If a policy gets them results now, they'll advocate it, and then toss it when it gets inconvenient. Nazis are different from Italian Fascisti are different from Falangists are different from Atomwaffen.

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The money empowers the thugs to serve the monied people yet more.

The nuts and bolts stuff is whatever works in the moment. No more principle than that.

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Fascism has a notoriously hazy definition, even among those who study it as a career. This was a central point in many blogs and stories during the reign of the Orange King, when people were trying to make sense of what the fuck is he even doing, and fascist was a good first approximation. The Boss is cutting to the chase here, its Nazi shit pure and simple. People are assuming that label has a similar weight as "racist", but I dunno. There's only a handful of people who lived through that shitshow, and Republicans are simply ignoring the word. Since they are only talking to their base, and their base doesn't concern itself with abstractions like Nazi or fascist, its up to our savior, The Independent Voter, to come to our rescue. Again.

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I always direct people to Umberto Eco's "Ur Fascism" https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism

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Just read it! I’m sold on Eco’s definition. He nails the case.

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

This is another banger, Roy.

Got to love the guy who said Trump wasn’t a fascist although he was “using fascist political tactics.” So I guess if I lift that guy’s wallet, he’ll accuse me of using the tactics of larceny, but he won’t call me a thief, right? These Milquetoasts and hair-splitters can fuck all the way off.

And yeah, some people won’t acknowledge the truth until they’ve been thrown in the back of a van. It’s a variation of leopards/faces: “I never thought all those fascist political tactics would produce a fascist police state.”

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Roberts Rules of Hitler is a keeper. I can picture the morning editorial meeting: “Should we capitalize nazi when we’re just talking about Trump’s young fans on 8chan?”

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

"Who brought their German to English dictionary?"

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I speak jive, does that count?

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What constitutes a quorum for our Nazi debate? And did we get a second for the motion on the floor? No? A motion to table the discussion for later? Seconded? All in favor? Motion carried. Next order of business: Is protesting literal genocide rude and upsetting?

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Yeah, Donnie not only wants to deport the nieblankes "flooding America" (I can barely get to the garage for all the migrants standing in the driveway!*) but wants to evict the foreign students involved in the college protests.

* I mistyped "farage" here - an apt mistake.

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I wondered why Nigel got a tingle...

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Oh, I'm makin' plans for Nigel. Specifically, the plan is to drop him and JD Vance off in downtown Port Au Prince without any money or identification and see if they can find their way home.

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And Prince, dead all these years, unable to help...

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Sitting their in their Safe European Home. Way to go

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xgwXkULDCs

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

For way too many people, it simply CAN'T be fascism unless there are goose-stepping goons in Hugo Boss uniforms parading through the streets and giving stiff-arm salutes.

And even then, they might characterize it as celebrating heritage, not hate.

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

Yep. Far too many people sputter "but...but this is AMERICA!" and think the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and the lyrics of the national anthem operate like some kind of impenetrable force field. They don't, they're just words on paper. It requires the efforts of people to enforce those principles and keep them alive.

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

And it helps if you read and understand the words, but that's a lot of egghead stuff.

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

I am once again begging every American to watch the 2001 film "Conspiracy" starring Ken Branagh and Colin Firth. The law -- the words on paper -- can be changed in one meeting when there are complicit judges who will give those new laws the nod.

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I can name at least two of the judges.

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The German version of the film is called "The Wannsee Conference". Germans being studious record keepers, much of the dialogue is straight from the minutes of the actual meeting.

I watched it again a while back and was struck by the sheer banality of the administrative planning for mass murder. (Boy, did Ms. Arendt get that one right!)

The most interesting choice the producers made was the character of the stenographer. A pert, efficient gal-Friday who occasionally interrupts the proceedings to ask for clarification. At one point, one of the more earthy Nazis goes on an obscenity-laden tirade, much to the displeasure of Reinhard Heydrich. One does not use such language in the presence of a young lady!

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Said Trump's supporters: "I do Nazi, but I Wannsee."

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One has to be principled when one is planning the most efficient mass murder, after all.

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Oddly enough, if you actually read stuff about fascism, you see the parallels! Wild.

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

The Guardrails(TM) will hold. And then we shall all to brunch.

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

[whispers] don't look now but at least half of the guardrails are already gone and they are busily working on disassembling the rest.

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[Dick Durbin forlornly averts his eyes]

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Susan Collins says its regrettable, but they've learned their lesson.

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I know, that horrible woman Kamala Harris is threatening to dismantle the greatest protection for democracy the world has ever known, I speak, of course, of the filibuster.

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[Recoils in horror] not the Holy Grail!

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As it is a Senate Rule, she has no ability to do anything but recommend to the Senators to dismantle

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Also it’s helpful for them to forget that the Nuremberg Laws were literally taken from Jim Crow legislation, Zyklon-B was first used on Latine border crossers, & the America First movement sprung up around the same time as Nazi takeover.

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Coincidentally, NONE of the above are jack-booted. Jackboots are for show – wingtips are for go.

And in that vein, there's Mussolini's old standby definition. Fascism is Corporatism.

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Also have seen more than a few "Person in the street" interviews where our fellow Americans say it might be time to suspend the Constitution -- just for four years, so we can really "solve our problems."

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Sure, what we need is a strongman, who can solve all our problems (and especially the brown-skinned ones) unfettered by rules or laws or the need to vote on stuff.

There should be a name for that sort of thing.

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They say this about white supremacists as well. Not bald & in red bracers? No Klan robes? Well then you must be “racially-tinged.”

Perhaps I could suggest, “Served with a racist reduction & facist drizzle, as well as roast new potatoes.”

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

It's not white supremacy without the Klan robes, it's only sparkling authoritarianism with a soupçon of racially-charged rhetoric.

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Don't forget to add a twist of Economic Anxiety!

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Served on Klean-Klan Linen table settings.

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Hearted, but I was hoping this place would not degrade into a recipe blog...

I HATE to cook.

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As Roy said, when they're in the back of a police van maybe they'll say, hey, I think there's fascism afoot.

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Fine people on both sides.

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

Oh my heavens! (Flaps hands rapidly in front of face) You are so *shrill* Roy Edroso! Why, you’re almost as bad as that nasty Clinton woman with her deplorables and all. If you can’t learn to speak civilly I will have to insist on seeing a manager!

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I went with Nasty, Noxious or Nincompoop. Oh and Numbnuts.

Do the "B word" next !

When you got some guy named Dylan writing for some online news source (excuse me - "media conglomerate")with some made up word (Politico), or some Latin word(vox) or some real word that the spelled wrong ( "semafor"? What the fuck?) as a name most likely the article is bullshit.

Especially if the media conglomerate has ever had anything to do with that hack Ezra Klein.

Instead of tattoos I think they'll try and chip the migrants like they do dogs. Leon Musk will get the contract for 6,200 bucks per person. That puts the bill for 20 million migrants somewhere north of 124 billion dollars and that ain't cheese! Coincidentally, the Super PAC Leon setup for this election will pay Melania $450,000 a month to give a monthly speech to new hires at Tesla.

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

What else could he have meant with the "serial numbers"? I'm sure every legal immigrant has some kind of file, which is no doubt identified by a number already. Wonder where Melania's serial number would go.

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Good point, the legal immigrants would be MUCH more easy to round up than the illegal ones. And, given that Tubby is profoundly lazy and wants fast, fast results with minimal effort, that's what he'd do.

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Yup. In lieu of a social security number there is a Tax Identification Number (TIN). Which means that legal immigrants ARE PAYING TAXES. Not that this matters to Nazis.

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Only if the employer is following the law. Which seems unlikely since they are hiring people that are not supposed to work

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That ^^ is the sort of wondering I try mightily to avoid, but I'm glad SOMEBODY does it...

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You know on their social platforms, when described as Nazis, these Nazis complain that others are calling them “the N-word.” Which makes me want to park a 1953 Oldsmobile right between their upper & lower palate.

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Obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=260hXID0Yo0

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Damn! Another Hitler reference!

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I always refer to "Semafor" as translated from Russian, because that's likely where the money comes from.

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I would have thought Elmo would have charged 14,880 per person.

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

They are indeed. And they need to be treated as such.

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

[Wow — I just posted Roy's essay on FB and it was booted off in less than a minute!] But I will do it again —

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using the hashtag “whitesupremacy” on TikTok will get the offending language auto-removed.

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author

REBID gets results! Let me try.

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

II heard that slogan read in the voice of John Madden holding up a tube of athlete’s foot cream.

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author

Ha ha they blocked me too. What a bunch of squares!

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Well, I'll be damned: I objected and FB restored Roy's essay! https://www.facebook.com/robin.cisne/

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Now you take back all those mean things you said about Mr. Zuckerberg.

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Hmmm...tricky that...

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[Marvel supervillain voice] NEVER!

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You're getting all Meta

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"though he didn’t say whether these would be tattooed on their arms."

Under the New Regime, the numbers will be laser-printed on their retinas.

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And this policy will be pushed by the exact same people who rave about the government forcing everybody to wear the Number of the Beast in order to buy or sell at market.

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Everyone will be happy if we let the states decide!

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I will never understand how the Let the States Decide crowd believes that is more responsive than the federal Let the Individuals Decide policy... ohhhh unless it isn't about anything except being the little tinpot dictator of all the pretty girls.

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Sep 25·edited Sep 25

Ah, but your Social Security number is used to give you government BENEFITS. See the difference? As long as you're HURTING people, number away!

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Don't tell them, but those numbers? They're Arabic!

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The more u know...

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Before the Arabs, I knew nothing. Since the Arabs, I know zero.

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Correction: You didn't know nothing

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I sit* corrected.

*Woulda filed a brief on my behalf but the court ruled I don't have standing...whaddya gonna do, amiright?

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I thought Bern was doing Sergeant Schulze

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

I ask the NYT et al: is Fascist Wannabe so much better?

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Not bad, actually. These Junior 88's aspire higher.

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Do we usually draw a big moral distinction between "rapist" and "attempted rapist"?

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I say, good sir, this is editorializing at its most intemperate, recklessly raising the temperature of the water in which all of us frogs are boiling.

PS) It chaps my taint that Fash rhetoric has made most commentators & pols accept the Nazi premise that undocumented immigrants don’t deserve social or legal protections. “Of course I want to protect _legal_ immigration,” they’ll say, desperate to have you believe they’re _reasonable_ for cripe’s sake. As if crossing some shitty border makes one the worst kind of criminal, surely deserving to be brutalized, separated from one’s family (still going on, y’know), exploited, trafficked, what have you. “Of course I don’t condone Herr President Trump’s new initiative of hanging the naked, dead bodies of border crossers on the outside of His Glorious Border Wall as deterrent. I prefer burying the slaughtered in unmarked mass graves near the wall, which as all onlookers will note, is a _much more_ moderate position,” these liberal chud-fucks will say in the near future.

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Is this before or after they demand landmining the border?

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Liberals would demand the crocodiles in the border moat be vaccinated against COVID...

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I let in a few, but they got uppity so I demoated them...

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The US Constitution does not distinguish between citizens and non-citizens with respect to their rights

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Tell that to the Fascists, or the liberals who have already ceded so much ground to them...

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

MSNBC's Alex Wagner was in Michigan talking with idiots about the election. Younger men were leaning toward Trump. Union guys. These are low info voters. If I were not a dispassionate scientist, I would deport them all.

Since I am neither dispassionate nor a scientist, except when watching cable news, I shall take no such extreme action.

On the other hand, no one seems to have a problem or even question calling Democrats commies. Let's talk about that.

Red baiting and anticommunism are a religion still in the US. I call BS.

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Did they say THE ECONOMY?

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Sep 25·edited Sep 25

I don't have a fucking clue when it comes to football, but if I was forced to rank all the positions on a football team in order of importance, I guess I'd start with "Quarterback"? Yeah, nobody can fault me for that choice, whew, I almost looked stupid there.

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I dunno...the guy who lets the QB stick two hands up his butt must be worth a sympathy vote...

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Ah, but what's he called? I wouldn't want to give away that I don't know anything beyond "Quarterback." Nope, I'm staying with the safe choice here.

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I'm told there used to be a saying among business types, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." Updating to today's polling: "Nobody ever got looked-at funny for saying 'The Economy'"

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The butt hands guy is the Center

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He who cannot hold.

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

Parody song: Rush Limbaugh sings “I’m a Nazi”

https://youtu.be/gq7nxvAPS-c?feature=shared

This just in: Rush Limbaugh is still dead. /SNL

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

I first saw that when Bartcop linked to it back in the day. Boy, remember Bartcop? Those were the days.

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

Tequila and Shirley Manson (Garbage).

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

I heard Randi Rhodes play it on her show.

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

I used to have all the lyrics memorized!

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

Word.

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

Most excellent piece, Mr. Edroso

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author

From you, that's gold! Thanks.

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Vox, 2020: "using fascist political tactics"

NYT, 1922: "... several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler's anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded, and that he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line for the time when his organization is perfected and sufficiently powerful to be employed effectively for political purposes."

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“… to enact said anti-semitic policies.”

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

One wonders what political purposes the 1922 NYT believed would be pursued by a party kept aroused and enthusiastic by anti-Semitism.

The NYT seems to have a real hard time then and now calling a shovel a shovel. If a big chunk of the American electorate supports a convict who sicced a violent mob on vote-certifying to stay in power while lying outright that he won the election, is currently planning to steal the next election, and has announced intent to rule as a dictator on behalf of racists and neanderthal theologians, the headline is never justifiably "Perhaps these people mean well."

I'd like to see "One quarter of Americans are fascists: Why, and how to fix them," but I'd settle for "Trump is a fascist and Republicans choose to empower him."

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Sep 25Liked by Roy Edroso

Maggie Haberman shakes a stern finger at you for "undermining faith" in the press.

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Hmmm... makes you wonder Whose Side They're Really On...

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The NYT is on the side of their money and Trump running close brings in the money

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