Who the Hell is Charlie Kirk?

 

Imagine someone in their teenage years won a whole fucking Star Search category for Mediocre White Male and thought that actually made them sufficient in their own right to judge someone who spearheaded a movement for civil rights, and said, aloud, "Nah, who's that?"  because maybe, just maybe, he knew exactly how to speak to people not of his milieux about whom they should and should not admire--and he wanted them to vote Republican. 

You know, to the extent his party wants Black people to vote at all or have their votes counted. 

Anyway, when I think of this big-headed manchild with a bad gum-to-chiclet ratio, I recently think about how his quotes about the estimable Ketanji Brown-Jackson sums up everything in this worldview: He doesn't realize that successful Black people were saying they got the foot in the door they needed to demonstrate they could do the work. 

Tempest in a Very Peculiar Teapot

 

The discussion of SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas' benefactor's unusual collection of Nazi memorabilia amongst his other bits of art are probably most charitably described as tacky and eccentric. Amusingly, he received vociferous support from a variety of conservative pundits, who he had also cultivated and collected over the years. 

In the words of Upton Sinclair, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."  If that doesn't describe a lot of right-wing media, I don't know what does. 

When I was a kid, I had an uncle who got me interested in numismatics, and I collected things like buffalo nickels and Mercury dimes. The little coin shop where I poured over affordable collectibles sometimes had antiques--small historical artifacts, like medals and patches from someone's grandaddy's old footlocker. Anyway, I remember one time there was a patch with a swastika, and I just wanted to see it for a minute. 

The owner asked me did I know where it was from, and I was all of ten or eleven and I knew. Would I like to buy it?  And I decided it was interesting, but I didn't want to own a part of what it was. I was fascinated that I could touch it and handle a symbol I knew was associated with a great evil. But actually bringing it into my parents' house would have felt like doing something wrong to me. I knew what it was; that was enough. 

This Sums Up the Day For Me

 

You signed a bill last year eliminating the requirement for Texas schools to teach about MLK’s “I have a dream” speech. https://t.co/Lm8m1cXazN

— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) January 16, 2023

All Republicans who have promoted anti-CRT (which is so nebulous it might as well be "anti-Black History") curriculums and also who have gone out of their way to support voter suppression and create hateful divisions among people based on race and creed have no business putting Martin Luther King, Jr.'s name in their mouths--but they do try. And they do it in a way that tastes like an insult, to be honest. If they are going to stand for everything the man fought against, they could just as well choose to stay quiet and let their actions speak for themselves, because that's what will actually be remembered of them, anyway.

UPDATE: More of this, actually:

delete your tweet rand. https://t.co/KzovVTcQOW pic.twitter.com/NettLrb0HQ

— Annie Wu (all socials: annie_wu_22) (@Annie_Wu_22) January 16, 2023

We all know the senator changed his mind in an election year and supported the act he previously blocked.  But we don't forget a lot out here on the internet. 

Fox Mushroom Farm Has Really Been Spreading That Fertilizer

 

The things you will see on Fox News! (I have called them the mushroom farm which is terribly unfair to actual mushroom farmers and I still like my analogy.)  Apparently, Barr's appointed US counsel in charge of making the Russia investigation look like it wasn't great (despite the multi-volume Senate intelligence report on same) has filed a thing that isn't actually shocking--someone related to the Clinton campaign mentioned to a government agency that a thing they noticed should be looked into, and they never explicitly pointed out that they might be tangentially associated with that campaign, which was over at the time of their being asked. The thing was DNS traffic, and my god, anyone hyping it should have to spell out what they think analyzing DNS traffic means. Because it is actually really boring, and not actually spying or wiretapping. 

The October 2016 news story was so dull I called it "too good to be true" at the time and I'm an obsessive re: Trump/Russia. That's how not a big deal it was. But that doesn't stop the premier propaganda cable news network from bolstering Trump's claims that pointing out a fairly nerdy and easily dismissible propinquity regarding Trump Tower and a Russian bank based on web traffic should result in the electric chair. 

Like, look up things that are publicly available and render an unfavorable conclusion and apparently, that is way too much for our society to bear. That is what this mishigas is about. Someone noticed something in the Trump milieux and not realizing His Nibs was sacrosanct, mentioned it. This got enlarged to supposedly spying on the Trump Administration, and no--the period involving White House traffic was the Obama Administration. Like, maybe Obama can get wee-weed up about it, if he was the type. But I think not. And this is in no way analogous to Trump being "wiretapped!" 

The Content of Their Character Is Showing

The family of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and their supporters marched in Washington urging passage of a law to protect voters from racial discrimination https://t.co/5NvZYMy5St

— Reuters (@Reuters) January 18, 2022

Yesterday, a lot of politicians were "busted" quoted MLK, Jr.'s words while doing nothing to support the goals of equality, even some who actively work against them. In order to participate in the day, it would appear that a sanitized and color-blind version of King gives them comfort, but they misconstrue the body of his work. Were he alive today, their criticisms would be similar to those made of today's Black Lives Matter activists--and we know this because we can read the criticisms from that time and compare them.

(There are also people in this country who seem to think "sanitizing" bookshelves will somehow improve upon race relations--a version of "not seeing color" that means not seeing the work of or knowing about the lives of people of color.)

But to put it simply, it's very duplicitous to praise someone for articulating a dream and then working against what would make it a reality--such as equal access to the ballot. In actuality, I would consider it very revealing of the character of those that would do so.

"Nevertheless, she persisted."

It strikes me as fairly interesting that an obscure US Senate rule was used to shush MA Senator Elizabeth Warren as she was about to read into the Senate discussion on Sen. Jeff Sessions' confirmation to US AG a letter from Martin Luther King Jr's widow, Coretta Scott King, which had been written to encourage against a Federal judgeship for Sessions many years ago. Sen. McConnell indicated that this letter was being used by Senator Warren to impugn a fellow Senator.

I guess we have a kind of difference of opinion about what it means to impugn a person's character. For example, an epithet might be delivered that unfairly labels a person's activity. Or, one could just be straight-up describing the actual activity that a person engaged in, with the hope that the hearers decide for themselves what that conduct reveals. I think the reference to the letter is in keeping with the latter description of Warren's words, and that she should not have actually been told to hush up and sit down.

Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, to his credit, picked right up where she left off. 

The Senate Dems are at a distinct disadvantage in trying to deny the placement of Trump's cabinet picks. Tuesday, Trump's choice for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, was confirmed by Vice President Mike Pence acting as Senate tie-breaker. This occurred after unprecedented citizen feedback against her confirmation (Sen. Toomey might think PA residents aren't going to remember this six years out but, I dunno. We might.) But despite President Trump's somewhat disingenuous whining about how long it's taking for his cabinet to be complete (Obama had it worse--of course!) he is liable to get all his picks confirmed in pretty good time, despite how awful they are, because the GOP doesn't mind letting them in--

But to be quite realistic? How in the world does anyone not realize that what the Democratic base wants from our representatives is a fight? I want people like Senator Warren to persist their hearts out. I want the GOP in congress to look like hypocrites backing up scoundrels every damn day, and I want them called out by Democrats for it.

Every damn day.

So, thanks, Senate Dems, for persevering and persisting. I hope we enlarge your ranks the next election. Thanks for sticking up for civil rights and opposing an AG candidate that would not support them adequately.  It means a lot.

Can Trump Take up This Cause?

President-Elect Donald Trump may have missed visiting the African-American Museum (if he ever was going to go there), but he did meet with the son of Martin Luther King, Jr. This comes after making negative statements regarding civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, who I believe was just responding quite emotionally and truthfully in calling Trump "illegitimate" from his perspective as a Clinton supporter and having heard out the intelligence regarding the level of Russian assistance to the Trump campaign. If any of my gentle readers are Trump supporters, imagine how you might respond if the shoe was on the other foot, and it was Clinton herself who was the beneficiary of foreign-influenced news-fuckery. Rep. Lewis's outrage makes a lot of sense to me. It is how I feel, too. Trump came by his win under dodgy circumstances, and from here on out, his respect needs to be earned by showing he can relate to all his citizens.

We need leaders who will meaningfully counter voter ID laws that discriminate against ethnic and LGBT groups. We need leaders who will address poverty and how to raise up people by getting them not just jobs, but jobs with good wages and opportunities to advance, save money, afford healthcare.

All of these things have nothing to do with Trump's current cabinet choices or many of his stated policies. I don't think he has it in him, and while I know he is accepting people to "listen to", I don't even know for sure what he hears when they speak. I'd like it if I thought he would work with minority or marginalized populations in the US, but since he built his campaign on demonizing those exact people, I just doubt it.

Governor Huckabee is Ridiculous About MLK

Sometimes, the signifying political candidates will do is absolutely astonishing. It's forced, calculated, ad-worthy, forgettable, and possibly forgivable when you consider that rude salesperson-techniques are sometimes necessary for a politician to get heard. And sometimes, you just understand that such and such a person is venting their hot ignorance again before their cranium blows from the steam pressure of the rotting garbage that is their thought processes.

The sulfurous bloviations of Mike Huckabee seem to provide a case in point:

He's pretty sure Martin Luther King Jr. would not like the BLM protestors in the way they highlight racial disharmony.

Because effective civil rights agitation would mean something like never actually pointing out that people are somehow treated differently? Um, Gov.? Have you ever even read the man's work?