Category: Beating Back the St00pid

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The Bill is Due

From John Pavlovitz:

The bill for MAGA has come due, Trump supporters.

It's time to pay up.

The deferred invoice for you selling your souls is here.

It's time to pay for every incendiary campaign boast you cheered,
every factless diatribe you vigorously applauded,
every nonsensical middle-of-the-night tweet you boosted,
every dehumanizing stereotype and slur you shared,
every callous and cruel rally insult you passionately amen-ed.

Its time to pay for every denial of Scientific evidence,
every terminated qualified conscientious objector,
every attack on factual, responsible journalism,
every vicious assault on objective reality,
every star-spangled dog-and-pony show distraction,
every lazy xenophobic caricature,
every tired racist tirade.

This is how your beloved capitalism works isn't it: someone was always going to pay for services rendered? Nothing is free, isn't that what you've been saying—no handouts? Well, dig deep friend because you are on the hook for this.

Many people have been footing the bill for a long time: migrants and Muslims and transgender people, young black men, refugees, the sick and the poor, already vulnerable communities pushed all the way to the brink—and now past it.

You were paying too of course, you were just too willfully ignorant or intellectually negligent to realize it. Over and over we tried to tell you about the cost: the civil rights you were sacrificing too, the environmental protections you were losing as well as we were, the safety and security you were relinquishing alongside us. We tried to tell you that this hardship was not a partisan expense, that his moral bankruptcy would eventually hit you hard too.

But your Fox News bubble and your white Evangelical echo chamber and your America First, Don't Tread on Me, middle-finger affinity clubs left you certain you were insulated from it all; that the only tears that would fall would be liberal ones, that the only people suffering voted for Hillary, that all of the pain would be isolated to people who vote Blue.

You felt immune from the spreading sickness. You felt invincible, because your messiah told you that you were winning and that was enough for you.

He was lying to you as he always does, but you preferred to believe the lie because it felt warm running through your veins even as it was poisoning you—the intoxicating, cheap high of making America great while owning the Libs. That was a costly drug, that arrogance—and you were slowly going broke in your addiction.

Now, in the middle of a burgeoning pandemic and a precipitous market crash and a hopelessly fractured nation, the bill is coming due.
You can't avoid paying now.
You're here with us.
I think even you realize that now.

This President didn't create this virus,
but he ignored it,
denied it,
minimized it,
joked about it,
weaponized it,
politicized it,
exacerbated it.

He systematically removed qualified people and replaced them with genuflecting, sycophantic traitors, or with no one.

He generated a steady stream of partisan attacks and conspiracy theories and abject lies created in the moment, and the kind of "I am smarter than anyone in the room" sermonizing that cult leaders bellow all the way to the terrible and tragic end.

He is culpable for the chaos and the unnecessary illness, and yes the preventable deaths because of it—and you are too.

This is the human cost of the MAGA cult delusion, and we're all paying for it now equally, however we vote and wherever we live and whatever we value. Pandemics don't choose sides or spare voting blocks or respect affiliations.

He will pay for it in November and in the unflattering, incorruptible light of History.

I hope whatever you received was worth it.

I hope you still feel like you're winning.

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He's Not My First Choice…

…but I'm liking Mike more and more with each passing day, if only because he's getting under the orange Russian Wig Stand's skin and calling him out directly:

 

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Okay, I know that technically this is a false narrative since there is no vaccine for the corona virus yet, but still, the sentiment resonated…

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Donald Trump Loses in New Hampshire

A harbinger?

From The Palmer Report:

The New Hampshire primary isn't set to take place until Tuesday, but the remote locale of Dixville Notch traditionally kicks off the voting the night before, by staying up until just after midnight. The tiny number of voters in the town – just five voters across both parties – usually makes for an entertaining story. This time around, Donald Trump somehow lost the Republican vote in Dixille Notch, to someone who wasn't even on the ballot and isn't even a Republican.

Several major news outlets are reporting that Mike Bloomberg won the New Hampshire Democratic primary in Dixville Notch, by getting two write-in votes. This allowed him to beat out Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders, who got one vote each. But it turns out Bloomberg also won the New Hampshire Republican primary in Dixville Notch by getting one write-in vote, while Donald Trump got zero votes.

All I have to say is

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If You Despise Buttigieg and Think He is the Same as Trump, You've Fucking Lost Your Mind

From BoyCulture:

WAPO: Pete Buttigieg won Iowa, and it has opened a can of LGBTQ-powered whup-ass on his LGBTQ ass. It's absurd how over-the-top the reactions to Buttigieg are, especially within our own community. In no way to I think we have to vote for any LGBTQ candidate just because they're LGBTQ, however: (1) Why do so many jump to the conclusion that his supporters are voting for him only for that reason? It smacks of the same bigotry (even from within!) that was used in an effort to shame black voters and white liberal voters who supported Obama "just because he's black" and (2) if you despise Buttigieg and think he is the same as Trump, you've fucking lost your mind. The guy is an intelligent, thoughtful, dedicated public servant and veteran who has weaknesses like any other candidate, but whose campaign is historic and whose willingness to listen to the party's progressive wing in any eventual White House stay should strike you as exciting. He is not a corporate tool. Who cares if money comes from billionaires? Which billionaires is more interesting, and is anything expected in return? Money is not instantly corrupting. If it is, then Bernie is as corrupt as all the other nominees, and he's clearly not corrupt.

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If Only…

strolling-in-the-moonlight:

5 states in the US have banned abortion from the point of heartbeat detection. Following that logic, I propose two additional policies:

1. Child support starts at the same point, including 50% of all medical bills

2. If the mother dies in mandated childbirth OR the child is stillborn, the father and doctor are charged with involuntary manslaughter.

3. Pregnant women can't be in jail because the fetus would be in jail, and since it's a full human you would be punishing an innocent person

See how keen they are on their "Pro-life" horseshit then.

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So one million moms is off by a factor of 999,999

Hilarious. (And as we always suspected.)

From The WOW Report via Truthspew:

We all witnessed the yo-yo drama with The Hallmark Channel pulling their same-sex kiss Zola commercial (and then reversing their decision) temporarily buying into the threat of the scarily named, One Million Moms. But as many suspected over the years, their numbers were WAY exaggerated. Now we find out it's really just One Meddling Mom with an agenda.

Her name is Monica Cole and according to GLAAD,

She is the one and only person who appears on their petitions, as well as the one and only person who speaks for them to the media. She is the mom. Her. Solo. One person, supposedly representing one million.

One Meddling Mom has issued so many calls and condemnations over the years, it's become easy to tune them out. As GLAAD has arduously detailed, OMM has gone after everything from recent blockbuster Toy Story 4 for including a seconds-long clip of a supposed lesbian couple that quite literally no one but them noticed, to Chips Ahoy for a Twitter ad featuring a Rupaul's Drag Race star. Basically if a company hires, recognizes, features, or in any way supports an LGBTQ person, One Meddling Mom will issue a petition, claim to have millions of supporters behind her, and then start cranking the AFA machine in hopes of getting some sort of press for her campaign-of-the-week. OMM even uses a conservative PR firm, Hamilton Strategies, to help spread this message to a wider public.

But, Ms. Cole and her tiny task force (masquerading as "millions") does get people fired up.

Here's some more evidence GLAAD compiled,

  • The Internet ranking site Alexa (not to be confused with your in-home listening device) gives OneMillionMoms.com a ranking of #1,133,944 in global internet engagement. That is extremely low. For comparison's sake, GLAAD's own page has a ranking that is ten times higher ranking than theirs.
  • One Million Moms has only 4,200 Twitter followers. Sure, not everyone uses social media, and it might even be fair to say that OMM's target audience uses it at a lower rate. But 4,200 followers? For a squad of supposedly one million? That follow rate doesn't add up.
  • Searching social media, it is really hard to find prominent voices speaking out in favor of OMM's campaigns. You can find all kinds of pro-LGBTQ people pushing back against OMM, in ways ranging from funny to snarky to serious to whatever unclassifiable thing Cole Escola does. But even though Social Conservative Twitter is a reliably outspoken bunch, it's pretty tough to find any sort of goodwill support for OMM. That would not be the case if they had anywhere near the support base they claim to have.
  • American Family Association petitions have been skewed for years. Regardless of how you fill out an AFA petition, they will count you as a supporter. So if you weigh in with pushback, thinking you are going to open their eyes and change their minds, you will simply get a "Thank you for supporting us!" and your reply will be counted as support. I still get emails addressed to "Mr. Stop Hating," the name I used for an AFA petition that I "supported" (read: trolled) a full fifteen years ago. So whenever they say they have X number of signatures, you can be sure that a sizable percentage are people who wanted to deliver a message on a forum where the petition is the only open communication channel.

Because of these her "victories" here and there, Mommy Cole and her PR firm's bark is bigger than their bite really. She's able to make her teacup Poodle seem like a Great Dane.

So, it's not an army of Karens who want to speak to the manager, it's just one Monica.

"Sorry, Monica, the manager isn't here. Can I help you…?"

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Shade +100

From The Palmer Report:

Earlier today, Donald Trump reminded us of just what a fragile, insecure, pathetic, jealous loser he is when he launched a psychotic attack on teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg. Trump clearly couldn't handle the fact that Time Magazine chose her as Person of the Year, so he went apoplectic. But it turns out Greta had the perfect response to him.

Donald Trump posted this tweet about Greta Thunberg being named Time Magazine Person of the Year: "So ridiculous. Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!" We've already spelled out why this tweet was so disgustingly awful. But Greta handled the whole thing far better than we could have.

Greta Thunberg simply changed her Twitter bio to this: "A teenager working on her anger management problem. Currently chilling and watching a good old fashioned movie with a friend." That's right, she's cleverly throwing the turd's bullying words back at him. That's why Greta will go further in life than Donald Trump ever will. She's going to save the world. He's going to prison for his crimes.

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Witchcraft, Obviously

What do you think they were doing in the basement of that pizza parlor, anyway? Do you think they were just sacrificing babies to Satan? C'mon, people…