North Carolina Republican Party Mails Out Absentee/Mail-in Ballot Request Forms With Trump's Picture And Plea.

-by Noah

I always love pointing out the fact that Republicans have no sense of irony. It's just so easy and it points up the limitations of the Republican mind. But, they've really gone and maximized the irony this time. They can't apply so much as an ounce of critical thinking to anything that enters their fawlty minds, not even to the blatant appearance of their own dubious actions. This time, in the middle of trying to badmouth the very idea of absentee or mail-in voting (Same thing), as led by their Orange Fascist Messiah, the North Carolina Repug Party sent out mail-in ballot request forms (See above) which doubled as campaign pamphlets to North Carolinians. The forms were apparently designed and printed by the Trump campaign itself and come complete with a picture of their Dear Leader and a campaign "Vote for me" pitch. I'm sure other state Repug Parties will copy then and do the same. North Carolina even managed to do it at the height of the eruption over the personal efforts of Trump and his third world styled Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, to sabotage the very idea of mail-in voting.

Said Chandler Carranza a Gaston County North Carolina voter:

The irony is very thick and definitely not lost on me. Trump has been saying mail-in ballots will bring fraud to the election but absentee ballots are legit. Which is ist It can't be both ways. I laughed because if the campaign actually took information from other times they have reached out to me, they'd know I won't vote for Trump despite being a registered Republican.

Speaking of Louis DeJoy, the aforementioned Trump Postmaster Commandant is a prominent citizen of the North Carolina city of Greensboro, a town best known among republicans as the site of a particularly heinous event on 11/3/79 wherein local members of the KKK and American Nazi Party murdered 5 participants of a Death To The Klan march. Notice the date? More irony. 11/3, same day as the day that is planned for this year's election; planned as long as Herr Trump doesn't follow through on "delaying" or "postponing" it. But, the real thing of interest here is that the pro-Trump ballot request mailing happened in the very state where DeJoy Boy is a prominent billionaire repug. Coincidence? You decide, based on your own naivete. Hell, the mailing even went out before all the mailboxes were removed.

Yeah, I know. the USPS Board Of Directors "advised" DeJoy Boy to stop the removal of mailboxes and sorting machines and to restore overtime until after the election. I haven't heard anything about returning the purloined mailboxes (See my Wednesday Midnight Meme to our street corners, or reinstalling the sorting machines, have you? As usual, enough was said to fool people into thinking all would be normal at the post office. The devil is in the details.

All of this makes me wonder how long before states with Republican legislatures manage to set things up so your ballot request gets you a ballot that has only Republican choices listed? They could have a Louis DeJoy republican controlled post office handle it. Our ballots are already like that in all but party name only in so many places anyway so how long before the ballots just list one name at all? Even Russia's ballots have two candidates. You just dare not vote for anyone but Putin or your vote will be cancelled and there's a real good chance you will be "cancelled" too, real permanent like. You know that's the Trump dream and the corporate masters in this country would love to move beyond our current status quo of having two major party candidates and being able to live with either even if they do slighlty prefer one over the other. Hell, I see a future where your ballot request form or the actual ballot comes with a MAGA t-shirt and hat offer or at least a Trump autographed 8 X 10. Or, how about this: you send in your ballot request form and your family Bible and it comes back with Trump's autograph?

Lastly, Wake County North Carolina voter Taylor Alexander had this to say:

My initial reaction was that I was kind of shocked, and laughed because of the irony of it, because Trump had been tailing against mail-in voting, but here his party was, promoting it, and sending out an absentee ballot request form. I think it's ridiculous that the funding is being cut and processes are being changed in the post office. Peoples life saving medications are days late, bills aren't being paid on time, and all for what? It's rigging the election."

Rushin’ To Destruction: 2019 In Review, Part 1-- Smell The Fear! All Republicans And Too Many Democrats React Badly To AOC

-by Noah

To be fair, and I’m always fair, it’s not just typical Republican goons who fear Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Conservative Democrats like Cheri Bustos and Nancy Pelosi were filled with befuddlement and consternation when AOC took over the seat that had been held by rightwing Democrat Joe Crowley, a man whose aversion to interacting with the people of his own district cost him dearly. Now, useless drags on society like Ms. Bustos are hoping to field a primary candidate that can knock AOC out of office after just one term. The DNC is desperate. The DNC doesn’t want to get out of the way of progress and societal evolution. The DNC wants to block up the hall.

The conservatives who run the Democratic Party should be thankful for AOC. She’s a breath of fresh air. She’s a gift, but they fear the potential change she represents almost as much as the goons across the aisle. The Democrats should celebrate the arrival of AOC, not just for what she stands for, but also for the fact that she, and some of the others from the 2018 freshman congressional class show the world that the Democratic Party, or at least a part of it, would like to move the party into the 21st century. AOC has the energetic support of younger voters and minority voters who she is attracting into the party. The corporate, right-of-center element of the Democratic Party should take off their self-imposed blinders and see that as a plus. In committee and on the floor of the House, AOC is a force of righteous while also demonstrating that she knows how to pragmatically buy time for her agendas. You can’t storm the city if you trap yourself outside the gates.

Note to the DNC: We are now 20 years into this 21st century. It’s about time you embrace it! But, no, the DNC has stuck its feet deep into the muck of 1980 and they think we should all be happy there. How else does one explain a party that insists on foisting living fossils such as Hillary Clinton, Joe Crowley, and, yes, Joe Biden upon us. They even expect us to be enthusiastic about their backwardness. That’s rich.

Perhaps the term “living fossils” is too harsh but when I use that term, I want to make it perfectly clear that I’m not being ageist. After all, Bernie and Liz are 70+ so it’s really not down to chronological age. It’s more about intellectual stagnation and atrophy and the worship of, at best, the current status quo and, at worst, a return to the comfort level of the status quo of 1980. It’s a sad thing that the DNC would rather reanimate Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis, or, Joe Biden and present them as the party leaders and “fresh faces” than go with what AOC and “The Squad” and other new and vital Democrats, real Democrats, have to offer, i.e. real Democratic ideas, the kind the party likes to say it stands for but doesn’t like to really push because that might offend those who line their pockets and purchase a controlling interest in them.

Ah, but the Republicans! This is where it really enters the realm of crackpotopia! Forget 1980. They long for 1950 or maybe 1850. Earlier this year, a Republican I know who lives in AOC’s district literally told me “AOC terrifies me. I’m afraid.” When I asked why, he had no answer, at least none that he would tell me. I laughed at him and told him “Boy, FOX 'News' has done a great job of programming you.” Later, the same lost soul, and a group of his Republikook friends swore to me that Trump isn’t a racist. One of the walking brain dead chimed in out of nowhere, totally unrelated to the rest of the discussion, and mocked the Parkland students, by blurting out that their “15 minutes of fame are up.” I asked if he meant David Hogg. He replied, “Who’s that?” I’ve encountered an endless polluted stream of these people and worse in the last year. Trump has emboldened them to reach for new lows. When I speak to them at all, I feel that I am really just conducting some sort of anthropological survey of a group of closely related primates from a slightly lower branch on humanity’s family tree.

Lefties like myself may judge presidential candidates like Cory Booker and Kamala Harris lacking on the basis of their corporatist positioning. Republicans skip right past that. They just look at the picture and/or the name. This past summer, at one of Trump’s mini-Nuremberg wannabe rallies, Little Donnie Nazi mentioned the surnames of the members of “The Squad” to his faithful. One by one, they jeered at just the sound of their names as he over-emphasized his pronunciations of their names for effect. Cortez (he shortened it after saying her name is too long), Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, they all got vociferous jeers and boos. The funniest thing was when Donnie Nazi got to Ayanna Pressley. They didn’t jeer or boo. The confusion was palpable. You could see what they were thinking: Pressley? You mean like Elvis Presley? I can’t boo that!

I’ve deliberately put myself on a lot of Republican mailing lists just so I could see what they’re saying and thinking. In the cases of Harris and Booker, my email was flooded with non-stop racist memes of each of them on the days that they each announced their candidacies. Facebook pages were the same. It was pictures of Obama carrying a watermelon off of Air Force One all over again. With AOC, it’s every bit as bad and she’s just a freshman congresswoman. Like the clown I mentioned before said, she terrifies them. Laughably, GOP attack ads directed at AOC blow up in Republican faces. It’s hard to say which ads are the sickest and most ludicrous but one run during the third Democratic Party debate was particularly over the top. It equated AOC to the Khmer Rouge. Yes, wackadoodles walk among us, and they wear red hats.

Republicans now have a full-blown obsession about AOC. The presence of a progressive young woman of talent in Congress has them freaked. President Trump has looked at AOC’s skin and name and told her to go back to the country from which she came even though that country is this country, the United States of America. Trump knows he speaks for republican voters when he tweets such hate. They have reciprocated with death threats and attempts to paint her as a “stupid girl who doesn’t know her place.” Judging from the number and content of their memes and tweets, their fear of this particular strong woman has soared way beyond bigly and tremendous. Trump and his supporters, aka the Republican Party, never wanted to see a United States that includes people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a position of political prominence. Yes, she terrifies them, just as my acquaintance said.

Geriatric nursing home escapee Ed Rollins, a Repug strategist from waaaay back, teamed up with crackpot (or is it crack-smoking) Lou Dobbs on FOX “News” in January and called the 29 year old AOC “the little girl” because her tax ideas affronted their greed. AOC can more than handle such comments though. She tweeted that Rollins is a walking argument for a 100 percent tax on misogyny. Rollins also happens to be the Chaircretin of the pro-Trump Great America PAC.

The idea that Republicans obsess about AOC being "a socialist' while they themselves avail themselves of all the benefits of socialism they can get their paws on is bad enough but the Republican obsession with AOC is particularly unhealthy when it even extends into the area of classic repressed Republican psycho-sexuality. Conservative writer Ed Scarry posted a photo of AOC’s rear end on his twitter account rhetorically asking if “a girl who struggles” should be wearing a black pantsuit. Perhaps we lefties should start asking publicly and loudly whether real, actual lardasses like Sean Hannity, Devin Nunes, Rush Limbaugh, and any one of a huge number of genuine Republican tubs should be wearing the suits they wear. Hey, Republicans, you want fat? Look at your god, Donald J. Trump! How much ya wanna bet that Ed Scarry keeps a poster-sized blow-up of his prized AOC photo on the ceiling above his bed?

Meanwhile, a Republikook who professes to be a “proud Christian dad” anonymously posted a film clip of AOC… wait for it… dancing when she was in school. Yup, dancing, I hope that the guy doesn’t have any daughters and, if he does, they’re not in danger. The clip was a big hit on FOX “News” and still gets play in Republican circles. There were other kids in the video and none of them were even touching each other in any way. Just the motion of young dancing students itself sends Republicans into a tizzy. It’s a mesmerizing shiny object! They can’t look away!

Tucker Carlson’s white supremacy oriented Daily Caller went so far as to post nude selfie fake revenge porn of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez just hours after she was sworn in. Turned out it wasn’t really AOC but of course Tucker and crew probably knew that, deep down at least (if there is a deep down with such people). No doubt Carlson and his staff just wanted it to be her so bad! Anyway, that whole episode says more about Tucker Carlson and people like him than it does AOC. Whatever floats your boat, Tucker. Keep in mind that these are the same kind of people that still repeat made up stories about Hillary’s pizza parlor pedophile ring.

Polls show that AOC is the most hated Democrat. I guess she must be doing something right. Number 2 is Rep Ilhan Omar. Number 3 is Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Number 4 is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the one time number one target of the most deranged. As much as Republicans hate Hillary Clinton, they have, unbelievably, even more hate for “the squad.” That AOC is currently number one points up the Republican obsession with her. In fact, AOC is more well known among Republicans than Democrats. That is most likely due to FOX “News” and other extremist media who spit out her name as if it represented the most fearsome and vile thing they can think of. That it may be.

To the Republican mind, and only to a miniscule lesser extent, conservatives in general, AOC is the worst kind of threat. The Cheri Bustos cranks of the world are angry that she came along and upset their applecart even though all she has done is breathe on it. Their kind didn’t see the inevitability just as they once didn’t see women getting the right to vote. They didn’t see African-Americans getting the right to vote either and they are still fighting against that one. But, they are shoveling their own shit against the tide.

Conservatives look at people under 30 and either fear them, don’t see them, or, just disregard or bully them. Greta Thunberg isn’t even an American citizen and they are apoplectic about the very existence of her and what she represents. President Mental Case proved that when Greta was named Time Magazine’s “Person Of The Year.” The goons at FOX “News” went bonkers over it. Conservatives feel entitled to set the conversation so it favors their agendas, bank accounts, and mental and moral maladjustments. But with typical republicans it’s more than just that. In the case of AOC, she is young, smart, female, strong, and maybe worst of all Latina. As do people like Gretta Thunberg and David Hogg, AOC signifies a growing demographic reality, one that Democrats should embrace and one that scares Republicans shitless.

Already, progressives wish they could vote for AOC or someone very much like her for president, but, she’s 29 and you have to be 35 to be president. Republicans are smart enough to know that that day is rapidly approaching. That day should have happened 50 years ago but we as a species are a lot slower, and a lot dumber than we give ourselves credit for. We’re way, way too tolerant of our politicians too. A Be Best World requires a fleet of Vikings sailing up the Potomac, nothing less.

There will be more and more Greta Thunbergs, American ones, and there will be more David Hoggs and more and more of them will run for office. The leaders of both parties would like to smother AOC and those who think like her with a pillow long before that inevitable day but they can only put off the inevitability for so long, not forever. If it isn’t AOC, there will be another and another and another but only if enough voters support them, district by district and state by state. Some of them will disappoint us. Some will sell out but there are solutions for that, if enough voters lose the affliction of tolerance and pay attention and give a damn. That’s the big if. Running away from it all is not a viable solution. Washington is a disease that thrives from our inaction and acceptance of bullshit. That’s on us. It’s all on us. Otherwise it’s an endless parade of clones of Cheri Bustos and Gym Jordan until the country dies.

Lastly, if you know little or nothing about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, this clip is a good place to start.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

The last time I appeared before Congress, I came to protect Mr. Trump. Today, I’m here to tell the truth about Mr. Trump.
-from the opening statement of Micheal Cohen as he appeared before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2019

In all my life, I have never met a Republican who has a sense of irony. The Republicans questioning former Trump attorney Michael Cohen are a maximum case in point. As one Democratic rep (Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland) intimated during Wednesday's hearing, republicans are obviously more upset that Cohen has stopped lying to cover for Trump than they were when he was telling the lies for their leader that got him convicted of lying before Congress. Then they go before the national television cameras and try to knock down Cohen's credibility, as if they have the credibility of their own to do so. At that point, it's no longer about Cohen's shaky credibility but their own. The issue isn't even that all politicians lie. For politicians, the ability to lie is as important as a football wide receiver's ability to catch the ball. The issue is that you think your lies don't matter but the lies of the person before you do.

As I always say, the Republican mind is a thing to behold. Perhaps, someday, a scientist will discover that there is such a thing as, for lack of a better term, mental DNA. Perhaps scientists will one day be able to map out a genome for the Republican mind. They might even find a cure. Until then, it appears that we will have to settle for the idea of the Republican mind just being more reptilian and lacking the intellect or capability to develop a sense of irony. That certainly matches up with other Republican characteristics such as off the charts greed while pushing Jesus. It's all about living in that instant; no consequences.

In the case of the republican members of the committee questioning Michael Cohen, the disconnect is staggering. It's an attribute of the mentality of all cult members. The Manson girls had it. The Jim Jones cultists had it. Jim Jordan his fellow Trump-loving cultists have it. It's the same thing. I just wish they would fast forward to the part where they drink the cyanide-grape juice cocktail. For me, that would be "Must See" TV.

I couldn't watch the entire day of hearings. I'm not that much of a glutton for punishment. There was Jim Jordan, taking time out from his day dreaming about high school wrestlers. There was some church lady type from the hills of West Virginia who, thankfully did not use her whole five minutes of allotted time but spoke just long enough to reveal an IQ that may reach up to 70. May. I'm feeling generous today, as you can tell. Let's just say that I hate the idea that she may have a drivers license and be legally allowed to get behind the wheel of a truck. But, of all of the proceeding that I saw, I was especially struck by the 5 minutes that Republican Rep Jody Hice of Georgia got. He used his whole 5 minutes in an attempt to impugn Michael Cohen's credibility as a witness. Hice is best known for his stated beliefs that New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a real witch and that her presence in Congress is best explained by his delusional idea that New York City is under the spell of a "well-known" coven of witches. Of course, for Republicans, that makes him very credible so...

One last note on this for today. Cohen himself pointed out that none of the Republicans on the committee bothered to ask about President Trump. In other words, despite their concerns about Cohen lying, they weren't at all interested in getting to the truth, or at least having it spoken, since they already know the horrible truths about their idol and are very, very, very comfortable with those horrible truths. Said Cohen to the Republican law makers:

I did the same thing that you're doing now. For ten years. I protected Trump for ten years. The more people that follow Mr. Trump, as I did blindly, are going to suffer the same consequences that I'm suffering