"Remember January 6th" should become as important as "Remember Pearl Harbor" in our national fight against fascism

 

The actions of the trumpists at the U.S. Capitol one year ago should never be whitewashed.

Today's True Blue Liberal Bible Lesson for the "Christians" Gathered in Orlando This Weekend

It's been too long since we posted a True Blue Liberal bible verse here on this blog, but the golden T***p statue displayed in Orlando this weekend at #CPAC2021 demands a reference to Exodus chapter 32.

 

Exodus Chapter 32

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron and said unto him, Up, make us gods which shall go before us : for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. 

  2   And Aaron saide unto them, Breake off the golden earerings which are in the eares of your wives, of your sonnes, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me.

  3   So all the people brake off the golden earerings, which were in their eares and brought them unto Aaron.

  4   And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving toole, and he had made it a golden calfe : and they said, These are thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt!

  5  And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it, and Aaron made proclamation, and said, Tomorrow is a feast to the LORD.

  6  And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings : and the people sate downe to eate and drinke and rose up to play.

This is taken, of course, from the 1611 King James Version, known here at trueblueliberal.org as "The Real Bible For Real Christians."

More video of the overstuffed golden calfe of 2021:

POLL: What's the Official Name of Orlando's QAnon Convention This Weekend?

 

POLL:
Should the meeting of #Cult45 zealots taking place in Orlando this weekend be officially known as #CPAQ or #QPAC?

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) February 27, 2021

Here's your reminder that the object of abject veneration at #QPAC 2021 (or maybe it's #CPAQ) refused their invitation in 2016 and held his own rally because he was mad at #CPAC 2016's star and favorite presidential candidate, "L-Y-E-N" Ted Cruz.

"You have lyin' Ted Cruz.
I call him.
I nicknamed him -- lyin'.
I say ly - in'.
How would you spell that?
L - Y - E - N.
Lyin'.
With a big [making double airquotes with stubby fingers while pausing to search for the big word] apostrophe."
-Donald J. T***p, Wichita, Kansas, 5 March 2016

This concludes your T***p University spelling lesson for the day.

Start learning German while you maintain social distancing this winter...

...so that you can enjoy the best COVID-19 videos; both of these new videos are from the German government: 

You can understand the story of these exceptional heroes of the winter of 2020 without English subtitles, can't you?

What America's Voting System(s) Look Like From Abroad.

 The New York Times showed some details of the archaic United States voting system(s) to residents of some of the worlds newer and less baroque (or broken?) voting systems.

Here's the resulting video:

"When we showed voters from around the world what American elections are like in practice, they weren’t impressed. But they were impressed with our resilience and determination. So, while the world’s 'oldest democracy' may be a bit creaky these days, let’s be clear: Go vote! That’s really the best way to make a change."

ONE DAY LEFT!

VOTE!

Which Trump Will Leave America First?

Donald Trump may be the first president or presidential candidate to threaten to leave the United States if he loses the election (though, if you know of a previous historical example, I'd love to hear it).

"Maybe I'll have to leave the country, I don't know." Donald J. Trump

He is also the first president to face tax problems with the IRS; legal problems with the Manhattan District Attorney, the Attorney General of New York, and others; private lawsuits from his numerous sexual assault victims; and maturing debts of at least 421 million coming due from unknown creditors around the world, all on the day he leaves office. Richard Nixon, before Gerald Ford pardoned him, faced possible federal charges after he left the White House, but the depth and breadth of his exposure was nothing compared to Trump's -- and Nixon never threatened to leave the United States.

Trump's kids, who are intimately tied to the frauds of the Trump Organization, the tax scams, the fake Trump "charities," etc., are not immune from from serious legal challenges once their Daddy leaves office, so the True Blue Liberal Poll question is this, which member of the #TrumpCrimeFamily will flee the country first?

POLL:
Now that Donald Trump has publicly admitted that he might flee from the United States if the #BidenHarris2020 team is victorious, which principal in the #TrumpCrimeFamily will likely be the first to leave the country to avoid American justice and taxes and debt collectors?

— True Blue Liberal - #BidenHarris2020 (@TrueBlueLiberal) October 17, 2020

And will they start leaving right after the election on November 4? Or will they only begin their exodus after inauguration day on January 20, 2021 (when the chances of their arrests begin to increase dramatically)?

Watch Joe Biden's Gettysburg Speech - October 6, 2020 - "Again we are a house divided"

I'm sure that I'm not the only one who missed seeing Joe Biden's speech on the Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, battlefield yesterday. It was easy for the media and voters to be distracted by the steroid-fueled tweetstorm from the recently-dehospitalized White House resident trying to divide us further with strings of short all-caps tweets while Biden was speaking about bringing us together (without mentioning his opponent's name).

I did miss the speech when it was being delivered live on a Tuesday during a work week, but the beauty of the internet is that I can watch it now -- and so can you, if you have 22 free minutes. You don't need my commentary; just watch it.

Karma Still Has Some Work To Do.

Last week was a heavy news week. OK, that's an understatement. There was a figurative open firehose of political news blasted at us all week long, and there's no indication that the pressurized flood of information overload will lessen between now and the election taking place in thirty days.

However, among the stories that need to be remembered are the actions of the #TrumpCrimeFamily at Tuesday's first (and possibly only) Biden/Trump Debate in Cleveland, Ohio. Anyone who was watching on television saw Trump's third wife, adult kids, spouses, and Junior's girlfriend, walk into the hall as a group, wearing masks, and saw them remove their masks in unison as soon as they sat down, breaking the rules of the Cleveland Clinic and the Commission on Presidential Debates that were being followed by everyone else inside and outside the hall. We were all told by masked television reporters that the only exceptions to this ironclad rule would be Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and the debate moderator Chris Wallace. The family obviously couldn't claim ignorance (even though ignorance runs in the family).

What we didn't see on live TV was the following video of a Cleveland Clinic employee offering the Trump team masks after they sat down. They declined.

Since then, we also found out that members of the Trump family, campaign team, and White House staff on the trip openly disobeyed a mask mandate at the InterContinental Suites Hotel Cleveland in advance of the debate. "ABC News spotted Eric and Lara Trump, White House adviser and the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien -- who has since tested positive for COVID-19 -- walking around the hotel lobby without masks."

The "Law And Order" campaign obviously only believes that laws apply to other people.

In coming debates (if there are any) the Commission has strengthened their rules to address those who have shown that they never honor "honor systems," stating that “Those who don’t comply will be escorted out.”  That would be fun to see, but the real punishment for not wearing a mask should be administered by the laws of karma.

The Perfect Lesson On the Correct Usage of 'Literally' and 'Figuratively'

I love Joe Biden, and I'm obviously going to vote for him and Kamala Harris exactly one month from now on November 3rd, but Joe does have a linguistic glitch that has figuratively driven me crazy at times, his constant use and misuse of the word 'literally.' (Full disclosure: I spent part of my early working years copyediting and checking the copyediting of books and I have a number of grammatical pet peeves, of which this is only one.)

First some video examples of Joe using his favorite word:

Now here is the perfect lesson in a single sentence to help Joe remember the difference, based on the largest events currently dominating the news: I don't literally want to see Trump buried because of COVID-19, but I figuratively want to see Trump buried under the largest landslide in American history.

Is Russia Still Targeting American Blacks on Social Media?

And will we only find out the details years after this November's election?

One of the most shocking conversations I had in the days after the election of November 2016 took place over a lunch with two African-American co-workers, one male and one female, both in their forties. I spoke (ranted?) about my horror of the new White House resident planning to move in on January 20, 2017, and both of them told me that they had not voted, even though they were registered and had voted in 2008 and 2012. When I asked why, the short answer was that "Hillary Clinton would be just as bad as Trump" and "her emails" were somehow proof that she was just as dishonest as Trump. Neither one of them was a heavy consumer of television news or a reader of the New York Times (our local paper), but they were both watchers of popular entertainment (including the Apprentice shows) and active on social media. As more and more has come out about targeted Russian propaganda aimed at American Blacks through Facebook (as addressed in the following 2019 video from Senator Kamala Harris), I have to believe that some of their attitudes about Hillary came from that blizzard of lies, even though we were not living in one of the swing states that Trump's Campaign Manager Manafort had told the Russians to target.

Today’s bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russia confirms what I talked about back in August 2018: Russians targeted Black voters and attempted to suppress Black voter turnout. pic.twitter.com/8tjDdy0t4o

— Kamala Harris (@SenKamalaHarris) October 8, 2019

With only 41 days until the election, what lies are currently being told to Black voters (and other key groups) about vice-presidential candidate @KamalaHarris in targeted social-media posts? What lies are being told about @JoeBiden to suppress voter turnout in 2020?

Remembering Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dead at 87

Video proof that Donald Trump knows nothing about American election systems.

Anyone who believes that Donald Trump is actually an expert on voting by mail, or voting in person, or voting at all, should watch this video of a very short-tempered Trump voting in person (or attempting to vote in person) at various locations on the Upper East Side of New York in November 2004 ... with a camera crew and Billy Bush (of Access Hollywood tape infamy) at his side. While he does finally vote (or at least fill out a provisional ballot) by the end of the video, this still doesn't inspire a lot of confidence about his knowledge and familiarity with the mechanics of the process that he is now questioning every day as we approach the 2020 election (just as he had prior to the 2016 election when he believed he was going to lose).

The frame of this video is interesting too. Billy Bush and his co-host Kit Hoover are in the Access Hollywood studio on election day of 2012 looking back at Donald's antics of 2004 and giving an update about Donald's current (2012) racist attempt to get Barack Obama to release his college transcripts and passport documents.

"Your vote is one vote. His vote is a GIANT vote." --Billy Bush, Election Day 2004

______________________

NOTE:

An earlier version of this was posted here on the True Blue Liberal blog on October 21, 2016, because plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose in Trumpworld.

Where's the Biblical Citation for the "God-Given Right" to Brandish Guns?

During last night's opening session of the Trump Crime Family Reunion that is officially known as the Republican National Convention, the McCloskeys of St. Louis, Missouri, spoke about their "God-given right" to brandish firearms at Black Lives Matter protestors outside their home.

This is not the first time that this outlandish claim has been addressed on this blog. Last September I asked about Press Secretary (#2 of 4) Sarah Huckabee Sanders' tweet stating that "we have guns because it's our God-given right enshrined in the Constitution." And back in June 2012, in a discussion of a Texas Republican Party Platform with a number of very strange planks, I also asked about the origins of a claim that Texans had a right to own guns and "their God-given right to carry that firearm" (incidentally, when you see how much bizarre crap the Texas GOP was able to cram into its platform, it was probably good that the national party punted on the process at the 2020 RNC). 

So, to get to the point, there's still an open question. Where in the Bible is this "God-given right" enunciated? I was able to find a September 2019 article in Politico from National Review editor Rich Lowry titled "Yes, Gun Ownership Is a God-Given Right" that cites John Locke and Noah Webster and the Declaration of Independence, but no sources dating back to the Torah, Koran, or Bible. Maybe we have to get America's leading biblical scholar, the Bible-verse-tweeting @MarcoRubio, involved to find the answer to this nagging question. If he can't find the biblical basis, then maybe Republicans should stop repeating this lie.

Who Should Headline President Biden's First White House Correspondents' Dinner?

 

POLL:
When the White House Correspondents' Dinner reconvenes next year with a president who has a sense of humor, who should provide the comedy entertainment, @RandyRainbow, @sarahcpr, or someone else?

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) August 17, 2020

Here are the latest videos from both Randy and Sarah:

"They Are Dying...And It Is What It Is" -- Donald Trump's Memorable Quotation on the #TrumpVirus

'The Buck Stops Here'

'Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You'

'I Am Not A Crook'

'Nothing To Fear But Fear Itself'

And now we've found the quotation Trump's presidency will be remembered for:

'They Are Dying, That's True, And It Is What It Is.'
https://t.co/Da0lhcQj6Z

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) August 4, 2020

For those of you, like me, who don't subscribe to HBO, Axios has posted the entire interview that Jonathan Swan conducted with Donald Trump on YouTube as a public service:

This Swan/Trump interview may not be remembered as long as Frost/Nixon, but it certainly should be studied by every other interviewer who sits down with the Prevaricator-in-Chief to see how follow-up questions should be deployed when Trump tries to lie or (more frequently) change the subject.

Trump's Approval Ratings Envy - "Nobody likes me; it can only be my personality."

Which does Trump care about more, his approval ratings or 150,000 American deaths from the #TrumpVirus?

Before you answer, watch this statement from this afternoon's press conference in which he whines about his approval rating vis-à-vis Dr. Anthony Fauci's:

 

...and he's got a high approval rating, so why don't I have a high approval rating with respect and the administration with respect to the virus? We should have a very high....

Now you can vote in this Twitter poll:

POLL:
Which of the following upsets Donald Trump more?
150,000 Americans dead from the #TrumpVirus or the fact that he is much less popular than Dr. Anthony Fauci?

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) July 29, 2020

John Wayne illustrates Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's "La propriété, c'est le vol!"

It's amazing, but the clearest video representation I've ever seen of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's famous slogan, "Property is theft!" (first formulated in French as "La propriété, c'est le vol!") is found in Howard Hawks' classic western, Red River. I had posted this movie back in 2011 with the same message, but that earlier clip had been removed from YouTube. Here's the key section of the film again, courtesy of Fandango MovieClips.

The movie ends with John Wayne a respected large-scale landowner, rancher, and all-around successful capitalist asshole. Here he is very early in the film, beginning his Texas real-estate and cattle empire with a murder and the brazen theft of Mexican land that formed his original ranch on the north side of the Rio Grande. I don't think any further explanation is needed to connect the dots to Proudhon's thesis.

Happy Ash Wednesday

Courtesy of T.S. Eliot.

Joni Mitchell is 75 today.

Who is the greatest English-language songwriter of the 20th century?
Discuss among yourselves.



"Sitting in a park in Paris, France 
Reading the news and it sure looks bad 
They won't give peace a chance 
That was just a dream some of us had"


I can't express how much I love Joni's words and music and voice.
I hope she's having the happiest of birthdays today.

R.I.P. Marty Balin, January 30, 1942 – September 27, 2018

Paul Kantner and Marty Balin both gone now. I can't imagine how Grace Slick feels tonight.



I remember in Grace's autobiography that she wrote about sleeping with every member of the band except for Marty, but she made love to him every night on stage. That's so obvious in some of these duets. The Slick/Kantner mix has one kind of magic, but the Slick/Balin blend of voices was the early Airplane sound.