Boy Howdy… WTF Montana

This dropped in my inbox last night. Hat tip to Scott McNeil at MontanaDemocrats.

Federal Delegation Addresses the Legislature: 

There were no votes held today, as both the House and the Senate held a joint session to hear addresses from Montana’s federal delegation and tribal nations. Senators Tester and Daines, Congressmen Rosendale and Zinke, and Tom McDonald, Chairman of Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, addressed lawmakers. 

In his address, Senator Tester gave the Legislature a much needed dose of “Montana Common Sense.” Throughout his speech, Senator Tester called on the Legislature to use the state’s $2 billion budget surplus to address the issues facing Montanans such as inflation, housing, health care costs, and child care costs, and to not give the rich tax cuts they don’t need. 

Throughout his remarks, Senator Tester defended the Montana way of life, by making the case that whether it is a Chinese spy balloon, their right to gun ownership, or the right to control their own bodies, Montanans value their privacy. 

Said Senator Tester: 

“Privacy and freedom are bedrock principles in this state, and elected officials would do well to respect that…Whether it’s about regulating the kind of medical care that families receive or protecting our Second Amendment rights….I’ll keep doing my level best to bring a healthy dose of common sense to the halls of Congress.”

Following Senator Tester’s remarks, Senator Daines spoke to the Legislature, but instead of calling on legislators to solve the problems Montanans are worried about, the Senator used his speech as an opportunity to spout partisan talking points and gripe about his latest Twitter problems. 

During the speech, Senator Daines rambled on about the alleged evils of the Biden administration, Democratic governors, environmentalists, and the federal courts. However, the “crowning” moment of the speech was when he displayed a poster of the photo that recently got him temporarily suspended from Twitter. He complained for about ten minutes about being “censored” which he used as an opportunity to criticize the “coastal elites.” 

Following Senators Tester and Daines, Congressmen (and likely competitors for the U.S. Senate in 2024) Zinke and Rosendale spoke to the Legislature. While Zinke used his speech to reposition himself as a more mainstream Republican, Rosendale once again set himself up to be the true MAGA Republican. The main observation from both speeches was the reception each one received from the GOP caucus. 

As Sen. Ellie Boldman (D-Missoula) tweeted, Congressman Rosendale will have much more support from Republican legislators in the inevitable Zinke-Rosendale death match of 2024. 

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Makes one so proud of their family and neighbors knowing that they keep voting for these Republican A-holes with enthusiasm just to “own the libs”. /s

I am not convinced that Daines is not a wholly owned subsidiary of the Russian Federation. He sure does not give a whit about the welfare of his constituents or the integrity of the nation as a whole. Zinke is a grifter from the word go and really could care less about anything in Montana that does not line his pockets. Rosendale is just a full blown MAGA nut. I am sure that Maryland is glad he left for the wild west.

As we fly over Ohio the view out the starboard window – Deplorables

It’s a crowded field in the Senate race to the bottom. This turd thinks he is polished.

“Dolan’s campaign strenuously denies that he’s anti-Trump. The 57-year-old state senator, whose billionaire family owns the Cleveland Guardians, has said he voted for the former president in the 2016 and 2020 elections and that he would support him should he be the Republican nominee in 2024. He has also said he did not support Trump’s impeachment.

Rather, Dolan advisers say, he is simply running a campaign that doesn’t revolve around the former president — a starkly different approach from his Trump-loving rivals.”

Trump’s latest political obsession: The baseball team owner not toeing his line – POLITICO

This is an example of what the R’s have become. Anyone who voted for the Dotard of the past or affirm they will vote for him in the future, no matter what else they say or don’t say, is a complete Trumper. Full stop.

This is an outright fascist movement. A cult of personality and a clear and present threat to the future of our Democratic Republic.

From Justices to Jesters

The United States Supreme Court is on the precipice of revealing a long overlooked truth. The courts only power for the past 232 years has been the reverence and deference to the decisions they have handed down. It was long believed that elevation to the Supreme Court was the pinnacle of achievement for the United States’ finest and most ethical legal minds. This of course has never been true, but that image and the often unearned respect handed them is what has enabled this power.

As the court embarks on fulfilling the politically driven goal of ignoring precedent and overturning a decision handed down by the court in 1973. This action is not due to legal faults of the decision, but because of a political and religious ideology that has driven the conservative movement in the United States since the 1979 alliance of the Republican Party with Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and the Christian Right. This has been the alliance that drove contrived Judeo-Christian  values as the primary rallying cry and fundraising juggernaut. They championed the gutting of our public education systems, the repeal of civil rights advancements, restrictions of voting rights, and systematically have removed the guardrails to our democratic political structure. The end result of this drive is and always has been to establish the United States as a Christian Theocracy.

The extreme right-leaning court has been a primary goal of the conservative movement in the United States to enable the legitimization of theocratic reasoning and interpretation of the United States legal code. What seems difficult to rationalize is how such well-educated legal minds can miss that the politicization of the court will result in its obsolescence. The court has no mechanism or authority to enforce any of their rulings. Past rulings have only been followed based on reverence, tradition and the selective enforcement through the executive branch. As the rulings being handed down become based on political and theocratic ideology and not secular legal interpretation of the U.S Constitution and U.S. Code, states and individuals will begin to view the rulings of the court as Kabuki Theater and disregard the court decisions out of hand, and nothing can be done to stop them.

Why can’t we beat these guys?

Charlie Sykes – Politico 2021/11/03

The Republican Party — populated with cranks, crooks, clowns, bigots and deranged conspiracy theorists — has spent five years alienating women, minorities and young voters.

The party — and its entire leadership from the grassroots to Congress — remains in thrall to a disgraced, defeated, one-term president, who is reduced to issuing increasingly crazed screeds from his exile in Mar-a-Lago. Every day we learn more about Republican complicity in the events of Jan. 6 and their attempts to whitewash an attempted coup.

The GOP is the party of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz and Louie Gohmert.

Sane Republicans are heading for the exits, even as assaults on democratic norms have become a litmus test of loyalty.

So, now, Democrats need to ask themselves this rather urgent question:

Why can’t we beat these guys?

Why can’t we beat these guys?

Because the voting populace in the United States is populated with Cranks, Crooks, Clowns, Bigots and Deranged Conspiracy Theorists. This is a defining aspect of the US and always has been. The difference now is that they are across both major parties and significant portions of the independents. People vote their fears and affiliations, not policy or logic. They don’t vote for their best interests because they no longer can identify what those are. They vote for the candidate that makes them “feel validated”. They hate the same people or things I do so they are going to get my vote, positions and policies be damned. The rest stay home and don’t vote. 36% voter turnout is not how positive change happens when the Crazy’s vote and the rest stay home. Democracy requires involvement by informed voting to survive. Anyone who stays out of the vote because “their candidate” isn’t in the race or to “protest” or because they couldn’t be bothered, are doing nothing but aiding the Fascists in their destruction of our Republic.

Keith Olbermann Gets It

9/11 pushed us off the cliff with the help of Bush and Cheney. Nixon’s Southern Strategy set the stage that gave us Reagan, and we never should forget that it was Reagan that aimed us toward that cliff.

20 Years of Plastic Patriotism

In 2012 I had to suffer through another 9/11 commemoration sponsored by my employer. At the time I wrote down some notes to use for my portion and I had always intended to go through them and expand and refine my thoughts. I never got that done and while thinking about it this week I decided to just put the notes out as I wrote them.

What is my 9/11 Aha! Moment?

How did it change me? 

What is my perspective of how we absorb and obsess over the 9/11 event.

Thoughts…..

Is this when I finally severed my last thread to religion?

Why do I not feel an obligation to mourn?

Why do I feel that it is unhealthy for a nation to cling to tragedy? Is our obsession to the attack a major factor in the harbor of distrust and prejudice we hold as a nation toward our world neighbors?

When will we as a nation learn from the past and understand that we caused our own tragedy? Or obstinate and oppressive domination of the world stage invites distrust and animosity against us. We tend to approach “foreigners” as beneath us and not as good as us.

We feel that our “democratic” nation is superior politically, philosophically and morally to other forms of government, when our own citizens don’t even understand our own county and what our form of government is.

We treat our nation like we treat our religion. We are right and everyone else is wrong.

We are good and you are not.

My religion will get me to heaven and since you are a different religion obviously you will not get into heaven.

I am good, you are evil!

From my observations of Americans it becomes apparent that the higher the religious conviction of an individual, the lower the adherence to logic and reason.  Basically devout fundamentalists will believe anything negative they are fed by the leaders of their prospective demographic group, true or not. It is also observable that the devoutly religious members of society are prone to embrace discriminatory and prejudicial beliefs even if those beliefs are not specifically championed by the leaders of the religious organization.

Obviously rampant education is not a problem in the United States. Ignorance and superstition are still the reigning champions of American society. We care more about the foibles of celebrities than learning and knowledge.

A point I would like to add is well said by Richard Dawkins in his Feb 2002 TED talk. It was his closing statement:

People are always going on about how did September the 11th change you. Well here is how it changed me. “Let’s all stop being so damned respectful.”

I don’t think anyone has ever summed up my feelings about it so closely as that.

Here I am 9 years after I wrote these notes, and the only thing I think I would add to them is the hate. 9/11 ushered in the era of escalating political and social hatred. It has always been there but once we embarked on the 21st century we accelerated down a path of hyper-polarization and hate.