May 1, 2021

Republican legislatures all over the country are going out of their way to solve voting problems that doesn’t exist. They say that they need to restore integrity and faith in our electoral process. They are promulgating the big lie by passing laws designed to make it more difficult to vote for everyone with specific targeting of communities of color that voted Democratic. Florida was only the most recent state to follow Georgia’s example. We can all look forward to political goons looking over our shoulders as we vote.

Sadly, the United States is already close to the bottom when it comes to voter participation. According to Pew Research, only 55.72% of our voting age population actually votes. This puts us slightly ahead of Slovenia and Latvia. Of the countries tracked, we rank 32nd, which is a little better than our healthcare system which ranks last among 11 major industrialized countries. It’s a travesty that when we should be doing everything in our power to get more people to vote, we are doing the exact opposite. Republicans should be ashamed, but they have been proven to be shameless. They are clearly afraid of voting rates and voting rights.

M’aidez, M’aidez!

April 29, 2021

We are getting there. Millions of Americans have received their vaccinations, and we are administering millions more every day. It may not be until Fall, but the end is in sight. At the same time, we have hard core group of citizens, who feel as if it’s their constitutional right not to get vaccinated. The anti-vaxxers, those with vaccine hesitancy, and white Republican males are all resisting the science, which is their right. However, as a vaccinated individual, I have rights too.

I have the right to exclude you from public places. It is my right to be able to move around freely, and you are impinging on that right. I can’t go to a restaurant, a ball game, a movie, the gym etc. until I know you are vaccinated. You do not have the right to endanger my well-being. Public health is not a radical concept. It’s as old as the plague.

I also should have the right to not have to pay your medical bills either through higher taxes to support Medicare or higher insurance rates. It’s your right to get sick, but it is my right to say “good luck.” Your illness was self-inflicted, and totally avoidable. At least tobacco involves an addiction. Eschewing a free shot involves either ignorance or stupidity, which should not be covered by healthcare. This is a concept that should warm the hearts of freedom-loving, take personal responsibility Conservatives.

April 28, 2021

We are all trying to get back to normal, or at least trying to define our new normal. The reality is things will be different. We just don’t know how different they will be. Many of us want to get back to dining in restaurants, and shopping offline. We want to be with and serviced by people. Zoom and Amazon have been great, but hopefully they won’t define the new normal. As the song goes, “People who need people…” However, there is one initiative that will keep people at home, and maybe under their covers. It’s the number of states that allow the open carrying of firearms in public.

Anywhere from 15 to 45 states allow the open carrying of guns in one form or another. The last thing I want to be doing is ringing up a big tab at a nice restaurant while the guy in the next table over is brandishing a gun. There is nothing like a spoonful of gun powder to help the manicotti go down. I would rather stay home, and keep doing what I am doing, which is eating and spending less. The same goes for shopping. I would like to go to a store, but I certainly don’t need to go to a store. We are on a first name basis with all of our delivery guys. It’s kind of nice.

If the service providers who depend on the public spending money in their establishments don’t protest these outrageous abuses of the Second Amendment, they might as well give up and go home. No one wants to order off of the menu at the point of a gun.

April 27, 2021

Republicans continue to embarrass themselves with specious investigations into voter fraud in Arizona. This is a thinly veiled attempt to push the big lie about voter fraud, and institute regulations to limit voter participation. At the same time, Kevin McCarthy is balking at supporting a Jan. 6th insurrection commission unless it also includes an investigation in antiFa protests, making a false equivalency between protest and treason.

While they are at it, there are other investigations they should revive. What ever happened to Jimmy Hoffa? Conservative pundit Geraldo Rivera had a made for TV special focused on unearthing Hoffa’s remains. It did not go well, but why give up on a failed concept. It’s the Republican brand. Who killed Kennedy? Donald Trump thinks it’s Ted Cruz’ father. I think it’s worth looking into. Is there alien life in Area 51? QAnon and Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green believe Jewish space lasers are starting fires in California. Who’s to say? We need to look into it.

When you look up Republican Party in Roger’s Thesaurus, a synonym that comes up is rat hole. I am not sure how that happened, but it is certainly worth looking into.

April 24, 2021

I recently blogged a piece about blacks and guns, asking the question why more blacks are not buying guns and forming militias. Now that the Derek Chauvin trial is over and he got what deserved, I would like to say that I have a lot of sympathy for the job that good cops are faced with. America is awash in guns. No other country has anything close to the number of guns we have in circulation. Anytime there is a mass shooting or insurrection, the numbers just keep going up. When a cop pulls anyone of any color over for any reason, there is a decent chance that that individual may have a gun at his disposal.

We do not want to defund the police, and we certainly don’t want to disarm the police. Ironically, the more that gun advocates assert their Second Amendment rights, the less safe we and the police get. Crazies are armed with AK-47’s. We have an arms race going on between the cops and the citizenry. The police must be well-armed just to maintain parity with the nuts. In a scenario where everyone is packing, bad results will and do happen. We cannot excuse bad behavior, but we ask the police to do an impossible job because we are unable to police ourselves.

April 16, 2021

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Donald Trump never gave any credit to his predecessor for inheriting a healthy, growing economy. “American carnage” is what he called it. So, to be fair, he has no right to claim any credit today or tomorrow for a robust economy and a stock market that is hitting new highs. You can’t have it both ways.

The reality is that Trump did inherit a healthy economy that he needlessly turbocharged with a $2T tax cut. We did have minor improvements in employment, and the stock market did rise to new highs, but at the cost of a ballooning budget deficit. I think if you gave me $2T, I could have achieved the same results. Now we have Joe Biden turbocharging a slowly recovering economy that left many millions of Americans behind. The jury will be out for a while before we can decide if it was needless or not as Republicans claim. Clearly, businesses are reopening and hiring, but we have a long way to go to get everyone back on their feet. However, regardless as to how well or not the recovery takes place, according to the Trump playbook, Biden gets all the credit.

April 14, 2021

The Conservative blogosphere is awash with warnings of liberals going crazy as if they were on college break in Miami. We are warned about the Squad, the lefties, the Communists, and the Socialists. We are being warned about the cancel culture being promulgated by the left-wing media. Have Democrats gone too far? I don’t think so.

President Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion infrastructure package with a focus on climate change and the environment, which would be paid for by higher taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals. Is this radical? Republican President Eisenhower built the interstate highway system. Republican Herbert Hoover built the Hoover Dam. Teddy Roosevelt built the Panama Canal. Someone paid for these projects. Taking on big infrastructure projects has been bipartisan throughout our history. Investing in the future isn’t radical; it’s prudent.

Tackling climate change and protecting the environment has not been a purely Democratic issue. Republican Teddy Roosevelt started the national parks program to protect our wilderness for future generations. Richard Nixon started the Environmental Protection Agency, and signed the National Environmental Policy Act in 1970. Is it really radical to want to protect the environment? Ask anyone under 21 what they think?

The radicalized right is saying unabashedly that the radical left is trying to rig and steal elections without offering any proof. Voting rights is not a new issue being foisted on white Americans by people of color. The Voting Rights Act was passed by a vote in the Senate of 77-19 (only two Republicans voted no), and was signed by President Johnson in 1965. Who has been radicalized in the past 56 years? Are Progressives really being all that progressive, or are they just trying to protect their hard won gains?

April 6, 2021

I may be treading on dangerous territory, but why aren’t more blacks buying guns and forming their own militias? Like Senator Ron Johnson, I am just asking the question. Wouldn’t that be a rational response to the world as they see it. They see police officers putting their knees on their throats. They see a rise of white supremacists whose only purpose is to maintain the power, privilege, and position of white people. Gun sales have gone through the roof. It’s not hard to figure out who politicians believe they are protecting themselves against when they pose with AR-15’s. Blacks see white people storming the Capitol while flying the Confederate flag. They see a pandemic, that was grossly mishandled by the President of the United States, killing them disproportionately. Finally, they see an assault on their right to vote in more than forty states around the country.

I would feel threatened. Blacks do have a history of taking up arms. John Brown and Harper’s Ferry comes to mind. I remember when black students, brandishing guns, took over an administrative building on Cornell’s campus. One of them, Thomas Jones, went on to be a Chief Executive Officer of Citigroup’s Global Investment Management business. I am certainly not advocating for armed insurrection or retaliation. However, in the words of Chris Rock riffing on O.J. Simpson, “It would be wrong, but I understand.”

April 4, 2021

It may be a mixed metaphor, but major league baseball made the correct decision in taking a knee by moving the All-Star game out of Atlanta. It will hurt some local businesses, but the larger point is much more important. Georgia is aggressively attacking voting rights within its own borders, and those with economic muscle need to push back. Even though there is no crying in baseball, state Republican officials led by the Governor are crying foul.

Republicans are using the same culture war curveballs that they have been using recently in attacking Democrats. They have invoked cancel culture, which is almost laughable. They are blaming “liberal activists” like Stacey Abrams, Coke, and Delta. They continue to embrace the big lie about the 2020 presidential election. I am waiting for someone to invoke “wokeness,” Mr. Potato Head, and antiFa. While trying to “stop the steal,” Republicans got caught at second base trying to steal the next election, and now they want the umpires to check the videotape. The best thing that could happen to the Republican Party is for Congress to pass HR 1, the For the People Act of 2021. More citizens would register and vote, which would force Republicans to actually put together a platform that might appeal to the majority of voters. However, if Georgia Republicans continue to focus on exclusion rather than inclusion, they will certainly lose a lot more than the All-Star game. What Georgia Republicans have done is a disgrace to their state, and a supreme disservice to the legacy of Hank Aaron.