Joe Nation
Joe Nation's JournalThe ONLY way we'll get better politicians is to send the crooked ones to jail
I think the pardoning of Richard Nixon served only to embolden people like Trump to do whatever they pleased. They realized that any president would receive a pardon for "the good of the country". In reality, it had the opposite effect for our country and swung the door wide open for crooks and grifters to break the law as they pleased.
The wealthy, the powerful, the well connected have always had a different judicial system than the rest of us. The plea deals, the partisan pardons, the slight slaps on the wrist, have created a sense that crime is worth the costs and the risks.
Well, if Trump isn't treated like the criminal he is in a court of law after all is said and done, or if the Supreme Court somehow rescues his sorry ass, I for one am going to be extremely pissed. I just don't see him doing time no matter what comes out of these trials. Somehow, some way, he will skate right back onto his golden toilets until his flabby ass dies of a well deserved heart attack.
Rural vs Urban: The dirty little secret you were never told
After listening to yet another news piece on the views of rural vs urban voters, I am convinced more than ever that the rural vs urban "divide" in this country is just nonsense. Oh, not that it doesn't exist. It's just that it is manufactured, not an inevitable dichotomy that would arise in any political environment.
I'm in my middle 60's and have lived on farms (born on one), lived in the suburbs, lived in LA, and lived in small towns surrounded by cornfields at various points in my life. I've shared neighborhoods with people from almost any walk of life. However, there is one dynamic I keep hearing about and it sort of makes me angry.
Anytime you hear someone interviewed about their rural life, they will almost without fail say that the people in the "city" look down on the folks that live rurally. I hear this opinion constantly. I heard some young people joking to the interviewer on NPR that they all have all of their teeth as if everyone in urban America thinks they don't. This opinion is common in my experience in rural areas.
Here's the dirty little secret. People in the "city" don't think about people that live rurally and they never have. If you asked someone in an urban setting about what they think about the people that live in rural areas, they'd probably struggle to come up with an opinion at all. But don't tell that to the small-town crowd. They are convinced that everyone from the big old city looks down on them. They aren't looking at all.
Can anyone else relate to this observation or is it just me.
Two 8-year old girls talking
My wife and I are both retired and my wife volunteers as a teachers aide in my daughter-in-laws 3rd grade classroom when she is in town. The other day, my wife overheard two 8-year old girls talking about a cousin one of them has. She said, "My cousin is a girl but wants to be a boy." The other girl thought about her classmates situation for a moment and then said. "I can support that."
If only adults in a certain political party had the caring and compassion of an 8-year old, what world it would be.
Trump admits his guilt everytime he cites Clinton, Biden, (fill in the blank)
He isn't saying that he is innocent, well he is saying that he is innocent, but he is saying that he is innocent because others have gotten away with what he did.
When has that ever been a viable defense in any court of law?
***Trump whines****
"I'M BEING TREATED UNFAIRLY"
The former Philanderer-in-Thief isn't what baffles me.
Let's face it, Trump is who he is and is who he has always been. I'll credit him with not even pretending to be someone he is not. He has been the same piece of crap he has always been and will most certainly go to his grave being the same piece of crap he was raised to be. A narcissistic sociopath convinced of his own victimhood anytime he is caught red-handed on tape with photos and a signed affidavit confessing his crimes. He is so obviously corrupt and observably stupid and yet somehow completely shameless like most sociopaths. You and I get this, however...
There is a sizable portion of this country, I'll say about 30 percent-ish, that can't seem to see anything wrong with this openly criminal buffoon and support him as if he is the second coming. I get Donald Trump. People like Trump can be found at the edges of decency and integrity but never in the mix of either moral congregate because he wouldn't know how to display decency or act with integrity.
All I can wonder is how so many are so broken and oblivious to all of his failings and basic evil tendencies that they see only a leader when they look at him? I know how cults work. I've just never seen one on this scale before. His base is Evangelicals, red-necks, white nationalists, ex-military fanatics, law enforcement racists, and every other type of bottom feeder this country has produced.
What do these people hope to achieve from their support of this lying sack of crap? What could they possibly think this maniac will do for them? Again, I understand the sick puppy that is Trump but where have his supporters brains gone?
I witnessed a murder this weekend while visiting a friend in Minneapolis
It turned to be about a dozen crows fighting over the contents of a discarded fast food bag in a parking lot.
In retrospect, I may have merely witnessed an unkindness.
After all, it is hard for most of to tell the difference between crows and ravens.
A quiet trend in blue state Higher Education
Talking to an old friend at my former university recently, he mentioned that one of the trends he is now seeing and his colleagues are seeing in other blues states is a wealth of LBGTQ applicants for open positions from states like Texas and Florida. Call it a red state brain drain or simply LGBTQ people not feeling safe in red states even at the higher education level anymore.
The trend is highly noticeable since many of these job searches have until recently, produced very little in the way of viable candidates over the last decade. The pools of applicants just haven't been all that great until republican governors like DeSantis began declaring war on higher education.
This also extends to students unwilling to apply to schools in red states as a result of laws like DeSantis' Don't say gay law and restricting what can be taught and what can't be taught.
As the red states trend dumber and the blue states benefit from idiotic laws, both sides have something to feel good about, if only a little.
There is only on way to end gun violence in this country at this point
No law is going to save us. Nothing Congress will do will ever prevent this horrific slaughter of our sons, our daughters, our wives, our husbands, and all those we love. No one is coming to save us. We're alone unless we act together and we have a plan.
It is far past the hour we needed to act but it isn't too later. We need to stop being shielded from the carnage. We all have cameras on our phones and we need to have the unbelievable courage to use them. At every single mass shooting, the camera phones need to be documenting the carnage and then plastering the internet, cable news, and newspapers with as many scenes of dead children, dead grandparents, dead babies as possible.
It is a horrific ask I know. But these victims can't speak for themselves anymore and we have to. We have to until something is done. Inaction isn't a choice anymore. We have to do the unthinkable or we have to accept that we'll never end gun violence.
Demand MSNBC, CNN, the NYT, and every other news outlet publishes graphic images of the carnage in America. Let the world see what we live with until nobody would even consider taking a trip to this country. If it were me or my child laying in the bushes with our faces blown off, I'd want the world to see what republicans have brought us to.
Have you noticed Repukes changing the word "insurrection"?
I first started noticing it online in chat forums and then started hearing it in republican controlled State Houses across the country. They have two reasons to change the meaning of the word. The first is to muddy the waters so that when someone uses the word insurrection, it doesn't just refer to the January 6th insurrection but anything they choose to call an insurrection. This effectively mutes the criticism of their ilk's behavior by attempting to inject many instances of insurrection and making their insurrection just one of many, whether or not the latter instances are even remotely related to the term insurrection. If you speak out against Repuke policies, you're an insurrectionist. If you protest against Repuke policies, you're an insurrectionist.
The second thing it does, is give their ilk a talking point that they can throw back in the faces of those that point out that they tried to overthrow the government after losing an election. Never mind arguing with them that protesting policies in no way equates to an insurrection and that public protest is a Constitutionally protected right while insurrection is treason. They don't care as long as they have something to use in one of their loosely based in reality arguments.
The reason any of this matters is because in any fascist authoritarian autocratic movement, the meaning of words begins to change. The definition of insurrection is a violent uprising against an authority or government. Any protest in opposition to their agenda is now considered violence in their world. The right to protest is likely the next casualty of this anti-democratic cabal.
Here is something you've never heard of but probably are exposed to every day
The term is: Reverse Validation. It is when a politician or a leader or a media organization takes an issue like birth control, gay marriage, or even child labor laws, and publicly sows doubt and controversy where issues such as these seem to most of us to have been settled already. Why do this? Because it releases lots and lots of energy in the population it is directed at.
"The war on Christmas" is an example of a seasonal reverse validation. A kind of hybrid use of this ideology. Reverse validation quickly angers people around some issue and once the energy has been effectively used up, another issue is introduced and another and another keeping the target audience either angry or on the edge of anger all of the time.
You might have an easier time remembering this dynamic if you simply call it the Fox business model.
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