JHB

JHB's Journal

February 14, 2020

FYI, title comes from the lyrics of a charming little ditty...

...singing the praises of Neville Chamberlain just after Munich. I think it's actually from the 1970s, either from a London play "Happy as a Sandbag" or from an Ian Whitcomb album (and it's likely they're just different covers of the same song). It was used as the opening theme for a radio program I used to listen to back in the 80s and 90s, and is an achingly appropriate anthem for the "This Is FINE!" crowd.

February 3, 2020

Trump Shows Active Disrespect For The National Anthem

National anthem at 2020 Superbowl, at his party at Mar-a-Lacky

Plays conductor, pulls his chair out to sit down halfway through, etc.

But god forbid you bow your head and take a knee.

On Edit: Original version taken down, but it lives on elsewhere (for now). I just don't like the caption. He's simply showing the true Republican spirit:

January 31, 2020

The BEST Response

https://twitter.com/BeatlesPeteBest/status/1223011877665550336

January 29, 2020

"Pearls Before Swine" salutes DU

Pearls Before Swine salutes DU
Unintentionally, unless tomorrow’s strip involves corn flakes

January 17, 2020

I can't catch the whole thing tonight, but after the first 20 minutes there's something bothering me

Maybe there's more background later on, but by starting with the 2008 campaign it erases 15 (or more) years of foundation-building, of the deliberate fostering of that divide.

Gingrich and Coulter provide commentary as if they weren't the bomb-throwing hard-right partisans they built their careers on.

Steve Schmidt, David Frum, and Charlie Sykes -- men who made their livelihoods in Republican messaging and conservative media -- comment as if they hadn't spent their careers stoking the very same resentments that Trump took full advantage of. And they did it so that Republicans could take advantage of them and get enough votes to hold power and enact their own preferred agenda.

By all means, please provide "spoilers" for the rest of it. Will we hear about Norm Orenstein and Thomas Mann -- pre-Trump -- identifying the Republicans as willfully widening that divide? Are any of the bad actors before Trump going to be revealed as bad actors?

Or will it bend over backward to be "nonpartisan", which just rewards those acting in bad faith.

January 9, 2020