I’m posting that picture because it made me laugh out loud when I first saw it yesterday, has made be laugh several times just thinking about it, and still makes me laugh. I’m considering blowing it up and having it framed. I’m depressed and exhausted, I’m alone in a big house missing my wife, I have a million boring, annoying things to do and no plausible reason not to do them, and whoever took this photo (and I don’t care if it’s fa; it worked) is an ethics hero in my book.
Meanwhile:
1. Confronting my biases, 2024 election edition: I’m really going to have to work at not losing respect for a lot of friends and relatives who have written and said some of the dumbest, most ignorant things over the pat several months. I think I really will treat them asif they have been suffering from some obtrusive malady, like Tourettes, making them scream out obscenities, or uncontrollable flatulence. Of course, this will depend on whether they can calm the hell down…
2. At the risk of summoning “A Friend” from Spam Hell, kind of like inadvertently using a Ouija board to loose and evil spirit on the world, I must note lawyer-blogger John Hinderaker’s excellent takedown of the email the New York Times sent its subscribers, including me (though I don’t know how much longer I can stand it). The thing really is astounding in its hypocrisy and lack of self awareness, and I salute John for saving me the time to defenestrate it. What struck me was how every single item in the Times propaganda piece was identical to the arguments of my Trump Deranged relative who doesn’t read the times. Who is spreading these talking points? From whence specifically do they emanate? The one that particularly interested me was the last item: “[Trump] also vows to avoid the pattern of his first term by appointing loyal aides who will carry out his wishes.”
How dare he! Hinderaker writes, “We certainly hope so! That is what a president is supposed to do, and what Kamala Harris surely would do, with the help of whoever it is that has been running the Biden administration and now would run hers.”
My response to this crazy complaint, as it is when my TD relative raises it (as she has for months) is that no President in history has been so routinely sabotaged and betrayed by his own staff, advisors and appointees. Trump, a true outsider, was never able to find a trustworthy advisor who could keep confidences while protecting him from his worst instincts. Yes, I would certainly prefer that Trump have seasoned, ethical, trustworthy professionals working with him and for him who wouldn’t leak conversations to the media, undermine his policies, or write sell-out, tell-all books as soon as they left his employ (like Bill Barr). But he can’t identify such seasoned, ethical, trustworthy professionals because they are as rare as Tasmanian tigers, so he has no choice but to close ranks, circle the metaphorical wagons, and somehow find people he can trust.
3. Hinderaker’s post is titled, “What Alternative Reality Looks Like,” and speaking of alternate reality, here is what “Morning Joe” Scarborough said on his MSNBC show:
SCARBOROUGH: “I will ask the question that I think is a fair question to ask. Who raised these people? Yeah, because they were not raised by anybody in my neighborhoods that I grew up, any middle class neighborhoods that I grew up in. These people were not there. They were not raised…I mean, they weren’t in the classes I went to growing up in elementary or middle or high school or college. They just weren’t there. That wasn’t the America I grew up in, where people would laugh at the idea of people, of press getting shot. Like everybody would sit around, “What’s he talking about?” Again…
PANELIST: “Laughing at the Puerto Ricans.”
SCARBOROUGH: “Other things. Laughing at the Puerto Rican joke.”
PANELIST: “My God…”
SCARBOROUGH: “…said Puerto Ricans are a pile of trash. Are laughing at his 82 year old man being bludgeoned nearly to death. That’s an applause line? That’s a laugh line? Again, who are these people? Where are they coming from and who raised them? And how did Donald Trump twist their point of view so much in nine years That the brutalization of an 83 year old man is something to laugh about? Or the shooting of press members is an applause line?”
ANOTHER PANELIST: “Yeah. Laughs and cheers when Trump suggested the press should be shot, and my friend, the legendary photographer at the AP, Evan Bucci, who’s traveling with the Trump campaign here says that as each rally goes on, particularly last night in Georgia, the threats from the crowd to the press…they’re there in the arena only growing they’re really concerned there about the security situation…”
Besides the obvious lies (the comedian’s joke did not suggest that Puerto Ricans are trash, but Joe’s President did say that Trump supporters are garbage), In the America where I was raised, an administration behaving like the Biden Administration would cause serious concerns, and the idea of a party and news media (Joe’s gang) hiding the fact that the President was demented and then switching candidates like the Politburo dumped Khrushchev would be considered a lot more significant than the jokes the other party’s supporters might laugh at.
4. Not that the Right doesn’t have its deluded wackos: Here’s a quote from the conservative Not the Bee: “If you missed the murder of Peanut the Squirrel at the hands of tyrants…” Murder? Tyrants? As I already noted, the P’Nut freakout by conservatives is almost as desperate and silly as the “Trump wants to shoot Liz Cheney” nonsense. Every single social media attack on an innocent X-user who stated correctly that “IT IS ILLEGAL TO HAVE A SQUIRREL AS A PET IN NY. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH POLITICS” is a rationalization. Like: “How many crimes went unpoliced in New York while a dozen agents served that warrant?” Moron. That false argument could be used to argue against enforcing any law, including speed limits, public nudity and urination, and parking violations. Speaking of speed limits, another responder to the original tweet wrote, “It’s illegal to drive more than the speed limit but I see it done all the time and not enforced.” “Everybody does it,” Rationalization Numero Uno! Then there’s the logic of people like this idiot:
If there ever was a dumb hill for conservatives to die on, an illegal pet squirrel has to be a classic.
5. Which reminds me that this election will be decided by the poorly informed, the gullible, the dim-witted and the ignorant. We can only hope that the wisdom of crowds prevails.
Ethics Alarms 
Someone asked how many times I had voted. I joked that I should be allowed to vote in Michigan as well. I used to be allowed to vote in Michigan (as a resident), so why can’t I now. Isn’t that discrimination?
Michigan has 7.9 million people over 18 years of age. Some of those are felons and/or noncitizens.
Michigan has 8.3 million registered voters. That is because the Republicans sued and they had to remove over 600,000 voters from the rolls this summer.
Even with such inflated rolls, Wayne, Monroe, and other counties usually have 110-120% voter turnout. That is the reason that one woman hesitated to certify the results in 2020. She had the raw numbers and they exceeded the registered voters by a significant amount. They didn’t have any other data to share with her and she wasn’t sure she should vote to certify it. They fixed the issue. In this year’s election, the election has to be certified no matter what happens. If anyone refuses to certify the election for any reason, they go to jail.
So, why can’t I vote their still. I am somewhat confused.
My brother updated his status on Facebook to “Garbage” before he voted. Admittedly, I’m not brave enough to do that, but I did take my free sticker and write “Garbage” on it before affixing it to the front of my shirt.
And the dog photo is adorable. Thanks!
I’ve seen it mused that from the perspective of each party, this is an election of Stalin vs. Hitler.
Price controls, socialized medicine, support via narratives of oppression. Check.
Nationalism, superiority complex, populist support. That checks out too.
I think the biggest difference is the left’s depiction dissolves into nothing if you ask them to identify a Hitler-ish Trump position that was not also expressed by Clinton, Obama, or Biden twenty years ago.
Re: Populism as an “evil of the Republicans” –
The Democrats have been institutionally populist since at least as far back as FDR. Merely mainstreaming their populism and normalizing it has made it stop being populist. So on the surface, that cancels out from your list of Republican problems.
Anyway, a real analysis of the political bent of the DNC will make it out to be far closer to the Nazi analogy than the GOP is. But then again – Nazis and Commies are really just sibling ideologies.
And going even further back, William Jennings Bryan was a populist with a huge following. And he resigned as Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson because the U.S. entering WWI conflicted with his pacifism.
Yep. But Bryan’s populism hadn’t been solidified into what FDR wrought. But it was definitely getting there.
Though the more I think about history the more I think getting into WW1 might not have been the best course of action.
Maybe, maybe not. WWI was one of those conflicts people rethought after it was done. On the one hand, the Germans didn’t much care if the U.S. was dragged into the war because they thought it would take us too long to prep and arm ourselves. Also, they did engage in sabotage that resulted in the Black Tom explosion, killing people and damaging the Statue of Liberty.
On the other hand, the conflict was really, beyond all that, none of our business. If Georgie, Willy and Nicky could have gotten along, it might have been different.
“Merely mainstreaming their populism and normalizing it has made it stop being populist.”
…has NOT made it stop…
…has NOT….
Erg.
I’ll take a moment to weigh in on the P’Nut incident. There is something about this that mirrors the “Let’s Go Brandon!” chant. Just like the chant isn’t just a euphemism for profanity, the P’Nut is more than just the killing of a pet squirrel illegally kept in a NYC apartment. The “Let’s Go Brandon” chant ignited because people have been sick and tired of the media covering for the administration, sick and tired of the Jumbo’s the media expects them to swallow. The P’Nut incident has ignited because it is an example of the lawfare being wielded against the deplorables, the undesirables, the garbage, and so on.
Humble Talent has remarked several times about how insane the United States is about its laws. There is a staggering numbering of laws in the United States, to the point that no one can keep track of everything they need to know. When we moved to Ohio, it turns out we should have read the entire set of Ohio statutes, and then all the statutes for the counties we were considering moving to, and then all the ordinances for every municipality where we might have ended up. That’s months’ worth of research and reading and trying to make sense of everything.
Complicating this problem is that so many laws on the books are no longer enforced. People have written dozens of books on laws (like Dick Hyman’s 1979 “Crazy Laws”) to amuse people with all the outdated, but still enforceable, laws they might be violating. There are laws that everyone breaks every day without realizing it because they made sense in the 1850’s, but not in the 2020’s. Unless a law becomes a major problem, legislatures seem to have no interest in cleaning up defunct laws.
This leads to the lawfare problem. We have seen the IRS wielded against conservative groups. We’ve seen what has been brought against Donald Trump. We all know someone who knows someone who was impacted by a law far more than they should have been because of a power-hungry DA or biased judge. One of the great hopes of the United States of America is equal treatment under the law. Instead what we feel we’re seeing is the law being unevenly enforced to target undesirables. The P’Nut episode is one of those incidents where the legal response to the issue is so disproportionate that it brings to the forefront the reality that those in power can selectively enforce laws, hitting hard those they don’t like, and letting even more egregious violations of the law skate because the violator is favored. When you then realize there are many, many laws on the books we don’t pay attention to, then you also realize that those in power can come after you for any of them if you happen to get in the way.
Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime, indeed.
Ryan wrote, “The P’Nut episode is one of those incidents where the legal response to the issue is so disproportionate that it brings to the forefront the reality that those in power can selectively enforce laws . . .”
I think that is right. The issue isn’t the squirrel or raccoon; it is the fact that somewhere near 10 animal welfare people descended on a citizen’s home with a search warrant, entered the home, searched it for 5 hours (!!! – overkill much?), confiscated a squirrel and raccoon (resulting in one officer being bitten so the squirrel had to be killed to see if it carried rabies – when a simple vaccine record would have answered that question), and killing family pets, all for what amounts to a fine.
I get that these are wild animals and NY has certain laws relating to wild animals. My question is this: Why was it so urgent to obtain a search warrant and send animal welfare officers to a private and search it for 5 hours? From what I read, the owners posted regularly online about the animals’ activities and there were no prior incidents with the animals or animal control. It just boggles my mind that animal control would do this, especially considering the US and its culture regarding pets and animals.
jvb
For me to accept this, you will have to cite me the case where someone with an illegal pet squirrel was not apprehended and cited. Otherwise, its irrelevant to the selective prosecution problem. Laws that are easier to enforce are always more likely to be enforced than laws that are complex and likely to face obstacles. The action against P’Nut can easily be explained and justified as making an example out of a high profile offender. That is often a valid reason for selective prosecution.
On a slightly different note, I’m reading a story from ‘Spiked’ that starts out “‘The adults are back in the room.’
That was cringeworthy back in 2020, and it hasn’t gotten better with, ahem, age. 🙂
#5 As Dan Crenshaw will say – the average IQ of Congress is 100. The same as society. That, as a matter of fact, the House of Representatives is actually representative. Some of you may shudder over that observation. But I think we can also calm down and realize that in our nation’s multi-century existence we’ve had over 11,000 representatives – easily a 1/3 of which were complete miscreants or dimwits. So a little less than 4,000 or maybe more than 4,000 AOCs and MTGs…
Why should we not fret? Because we don’t even know about them or their existence and the nation plodded on. We only fret because mass communication and connectivity let’s us think AOCs and MTGs are more prominent than they really are.
I would really like to think that the AOCs and MTGs were not nearly as numerous as that, but undeniably they have always been with us.
On the other hand, the membership of the House has also included such as Abraham Lincoln and John Quincy Adams, James Madison and over a dozen others who later became president, including by golly Millard Fillmore.
It averages to 100 IQ
Here’s some low information voters:
https://x.com/statisticurban/status/1853838365558243780?s=46
I am sure many want to know the winner, this first Tuesday in November: it was Knight’s Choice, ridden by Robbie Dolan.
OK, this is about the 20th time I’ve gone back to the dog & sheep pic, and I still laugh every time. It’s helping with election count stress.
Good. That’s my reaction too. And I have so many questions. Is the dog happy, panicked, or insane? How did he get there? How was the photo taken?