By XRepublican, a Trail Mix Contributor
In 1980 I ran into a fellow, I’ll call him Bob. I’d worked with him a dozen years earlier. In the old days he couldn’t support Rockefeller because Rocky was divorced. I asked Bob who he was supporting this time around, and he answered, “Reagan’s my choice.” I reminded him why he wouldn’t support Rocky in ’68, and he nodded gravely. It was a matter of morality, the 1980 version, Bob assured me.
“Then how can you support Reagan,” I asked, “he’s been divorced.” Bob’s jaw dropped. After a bit he said, “Well, you haven’t changed. Still causing trouble.”
The moral of the story is that morality is only a barrier for the political popularity of ‘liberals.’
‘Conservatives’ are immune from the stain of immoral conduct.
More Posts by XRepublican
xr, so true. thank you.
hell, we libs here on the trail can’t even be civil to one another, slicing and dicing and dissing each others discourse, labeling our own as liars. how can we expect a big tented country wide group of us to successfully march together without ending up smashing windows of opportunity and trashing ourselves for impure thoughts? at times I envy the indies, the bernie sanders and ralph naders who are free from the burden of party loyalty.
meanwhile….
But one side is so much more entertaining than the other 😉
Wilbur Mills, Wayne Hays, President I-Did-Not-Oops, Gary Hartpence! Gary Hartpence!
Pure sliminess award goes to John Edwards ( and I supported the guy ?)
Conservatives are hypocrites by nature because that is the only way to live up to their own standards. Republicans tend to have more alcoholic related issues. Blot out reality.
Some meme fun. 🙂
……sigh….
I was hoping that I could make one person in this love/hate Bernie thing see the light and realize that it would be an advantage for the Democratic Party to come together while we watch the Republicans tear themselves apart. I can see now that I was on a fool’s mission. Oh well…. we’re fucked.
Xrep… last night on Bill Maher, S.E. Cupp said “some people’s definition of morality is different” when confronted about the morality of fighting climate change. Yup….
One of the strangest nights I had was at a transgender support meeting. I had been out and transitioned for a few years, and was a member of a LGBT lobby organization, so I was somewhat known to the world and politics. The meeting had delved into “are you really trans?” The sad thing that few of those with the purity agenda, their own agenda, was they failed to recognize that we are the tiniest of minorities. These were people who could not see that even united we failed to be a blip in the weeds. But, they had established, in their minds, that to be transgender required so many absolutes that only they could meet the threshold.
I do not know where they are now. I moved, mentally and physically.
The Republicans have embraced many absolutist cohorts, no taxes on the rich, no LGBT, no people of color, fervent and slave like adherence to far right religions, and other extremes. They cannot make the mark. The daily reports of Republican/republican, and a few Dems, in bed with someone’s wife make for good reading and a healthy dose of schadenfreude.
The sad ones are the R’s who profess to be straight and as politicians make laws against being gay, the “if the law says I cannot be gay then I cannot be gay”, being caught getting a “massage”. They not only mess up their lives, because of the power of being a legislator they destroy others too.
I consider myself a liberal, a Progressive and a Democrat. I will not sit and judge others morals unless those morals are impressed on others, including me. Right now I have to do everything possible to fight the loon in the White House. He has through his nominations and appointments put people in positions of power who have explicitly stated I am evil and their job is to destroy me as a transgender person and the people who are LGBTQ.
When you are put in the “first they came for me” category you will not feel very good. I do not feel very good.
When you are put in the “first they came for me” category you will not feel very good. I do not feel very good.
bb, take heart. there is hope as long as there are those very brave folks out there like our flatus and solar and many more on the trail who will make the abominable “theys” come thru them first, standing up in the way of “they” before they get to you.
happy earth day, everybody, while there’s still an earth to be happy about
ny times: “For First Time Since 1800s, Britain Goes a Day Without Burning Coal for Electricity”
LONDON — Friday was the first full day since the height of the Industrial Revolution that Britain did not burn coal to generate electricity, a development that officials and climate change activists celebrated as a watershed moment.
The accomplishment became official just before 11 p.m., when the 24-hour period ended.
Coal powered Britain into the industrial age and into the 21st century, contributing greatly to the “pea souper” fogs that were thought for decades to be a natural phenomenon of the British climate.
[….]
Some countries have already left coal behind in power generation. In Switzerland, Belgium and Norway, “every day is a coal-free day,” Carlos Fernández Alvarez, a coal analyst at the International Energy Agency in Paris, pointed out.
In the United States, where coal still accounts for about 30 percent of power generation, Vermont and Idaho are the only coal-free states, and California is close behind, he said.
BB, Pat is exactly spot on. I am here for you. I and my arsenal are on call 24×7.
Get thru your PT and back to your normal regimen of being an inspiration to others. Then you and all of us who support you will put Trump and others of his ilk in their place. This is not 1930s Central Europe.
After you and Craig and David had dinner together last year, Craig said words to the effect that they found you to be an engaging, attractive woman. Even more important, I count you as a friend and an Air Force compatriot. Now, I’ve got to cut the grass.
Thank you Flatus, patd and all. It is always good to have friends. One good thing going on in Congress is the investigation into the attempt to force Twitter to reveal the owner of a Twitter account who attacks trump. That someone thought they could do that is serious. The attempt was stopped, but now the investigation is underway to find out who started it.
No mowing grass today. A good thing is that my attempts to fill in the backyard lake has worked. After rains no lake formed.
Excerpts from WaPo today.
Democrats partner with political newcomers aiming to create anti-Trump wave in 2018 midterms
A wave of first-time candidates eager to fight President Trump and his young administration plan to challenge House Republican incumbents, giving Democratic Party leaders hope that they can capitalize on the anger and intensity at grass-roots protests and town hall meetings across the country this year.
***
Liberal activists and Democratic organizers said the key ingredient this year is the grass-roots urgency, but the hope is to combine that with organizing heft.
***
“If we’re not okay with the state of affairs in D.C., and if we’re not okay with the direction of our country,” [Jason Crow, an attorney and former Army Ranger who has decided to challenge Rep. Mike Coffman in Colorado] said, “we’re not going to fix it by electing the same kind of people with the same way of thinking than we’ve had in the past.”
BB, so well put. No thinking person believes that the religious based fear and prejudice politics and policies of repugs represent anything other than hate clothed in false morality. There are hopefully more folks like Flatus and your friends here and in your daily life who will not stand for more laws and policies that diminish the lives of folks like yourself who the white male religiofascists and the true believers who support them see as different, and therefore fair game.
50 state strategy Bring back Dr. Dean
BlueB…. thanks for the heartfelt comment. Thanks for reminding us that through all the crap and carping at one another that it’s not just feel good abstracts… it’s actual people’s lives on the line.
I wish you the best!
not just fiddling around in Georgia this time
When chickens peck one of their own to death is it because they hate, or is it because they enjoy hurting another chicken ?
Having been bullied daily, until I was in 5th grade, I am not convinced that the repub/kkk/nazi phenomena are entirely driven by hate – although we know that haters take leadership by inciting violence. For others, covetousness, jealousy, revenge, greed, generalized rage, a need to seem one of the guys, and ambition may all be motivators.
A lot of German death camp personnel stated they had no animus toward Jews, Romany, Gays, etc. They said that they were just doing their jobs, or that it was a way to get ahead. It was just routine.
Maybe for chickens, pecking another chicken to death is just a normal day at the office.
If they come for you, BB, you can let me know, and we can try to smuggle each other into Canada. However, if Canadians build their wall, we may get stuck hiding out on a reservation.
Could you get a nun’s outfit ?
I’m only half kidding. And, I’m only half serious.
“After rains no lake formed.”
No fish for YOU !
Happy Earth Day…I have my pin from 1970. I have got to grab my pussy hat and run…science march is today!
Been enjoying the posts!
It’s a gorgeous day today here in beautiful Simple Minnesota.
Happy Earth Day, Everyone !
This morning I got a reminder that the ultra right Conservatives love the Bernie/Dem hate fest when a so far right he’s clinging by his fingernails to the edge of the flat earth tweeted me.
I don’t have to love Bernie and I don’t. I think he is a major hypocrite of the highest order more interested in money and notoriety than he is in helping Democrats, but I can vote for the issues where we agree. That will have to be enough. I just wish that when his acolytes boo people like Mr. Perez appearing with him that Bernie would at least have the grace to tell them to cool it if only because we care about the same things.
Hahaha……chickens…….had this club owner friend in Denver who explained to me once that Moo-jicians was just like chickens in a barnyard (I knew plenty about chickens in a barnyard cause we raised many a drumstick all during my yout…..) “Yeah,” he says, “They’re just like chickens in a barnyard…..you ever notice how they’ll pick one out amongst em and just peck him to death? Well, Moo-Jicians is just like that.”
I loved that old dude……..his other dictum was ” Moo-Jicians is brain damaged.” He borrowed that one from a Bill Cosby tv special.
He was an incorrigible gangster, but had seen a whole shit-ton of musicians pass thru his several joints.
he had this one joint on Colfax called the Gold Nugget Country and Western Disco where we spent a lot of time playing…….always dudes passing thru wearing leather trench coats up and carrying briefcases who would disappear up into the office, in a room over the bar. This one time we had a large table full of rock and roll lovers and so we were playing to them a bit when the club owner’s brother walks in…….pauses on his way up to the room, and then walks up to the stage and says, “Play country.” So Andy, the drummer, tries to explain to Norman that when we play rock and roll, people don’t leave. Norman looks at the ground, then looks up and says, “So, humor me”.
He axed me oncet if I knew the most important thing about life and so I said no, what?
he says, “Knowing how to get along.”
The Big Joint on Sheridan and Morrison………
we were the free hot dogs………
Although, it must be said that “getting along” to Archie meant seeing it his way……..lol…..he had this Texas thing about simply never being able to call someone by their name…….if a guy was Newvahner, he called him Newhouse…….a certain bass player became known as Sniffles. If a guy’s name was Nyman, he called him Niles……I was Mr Jones, from a Big Al Downing record.
He quit school in 9th grade to take care of Norman but he could be devastating with a handheld calculator and could look at the room and tell you very closely what the hourly take would be……he sat on a hard stool in the lobby and every hour on the hour Marge would come from behind the bar out to the lobby and hand Arch a folded slip of paper with the take on it. If he didn’t come some night, Marge would phone it in, every hour on the hour.
Arch was like, I don’t know, 12-15 years older than Norman…..sent Norman to college at University of Mexico in Mexico City where he garnered a couple of degrees in serious business and oil stuff and god knows what all, and then Norman came back to being the world’s most perfect Right Hand Man. Both were absolutely fearless and had that famous GET SHORTY stare which Elmore Leonard used to speak of.
Slow roasted then grilled baby back ribs with a bourbon and brown sugar rub, ranch beans and onions, macaroni and cheese for dinner with root beer floats for desert – followed by “Hidden Figures” on the wide-screen.
Beat that!!!
gopnik at the new Yorker: The Persistence of Trump Derangement Syndrome
When I first got to Denver, it was to work with Dale Gilley, Mick’s cousin, who had actually played steel guitar in Jack Ruby’s joint at one time. He didn’t talk much about it. He had a family band type operation and had a booking agency so I ran into a good many Denver players. Denver players like to kind of look askance at players who come there out of Nashville, but anyway, the Refrain I heard over and over was, “Man, stay away from Archie.” “You don’t want to get tangled up with Archie” etc etc…….So naturally, I went to apply for a job in Archie’s big joint. He took me into the office for an interview and axed what I’d been doing and all that, expecting me to be like all the other Nash-villains who’d passed thru there, and when I explained my last job in Nashville being putting bands together taking the rubes out on the road. ie, those people from all over the country who would come to Nashville to pay to make a record, and the ones who paid enough, like making a whole album with high-end super pickers, would sign a management contract at so much a month and get booked out on the road for as long as they could hack it, which is where I came in. Good story about the very last one, after which I moved on to Denver.
but anyway, Archie liked that and I soon moved up to Most Favored Piano Player status, sitting there playing the pye-anny while the bands came and went around me. He took to calling me every morning around 7 am and would invariably ask, “What’re you doin’?” And then, “Come and have some coffee”. So I spent most mornings having coffee and breakfast with Archie (who steadfastly refused to eat in ANY restaurant) while he worked the phone and regaled me with all his tall tales. My favorite was one afternoon on my day off he calls me up and says throw a jacket on, I’m taking you out to eat. So we’re riding he says he’s got to go to the club and get the free hotdogs started. He’s futzing around behind the bar and finally comes over to me and says you ready to go eat, I says yeah, so he leans over the bar and says, “Whatchoo want on your hot dog?
Operation get Sturgeone to hang out at the bar on his day off an unqualified success. But the liquor was free so what the hell…..
The way his mind worked……..at one point while not playing there I mentioned to him that I’d been offered a job over in Commerce city but my piano was in the shop so I was about to tell them I couldn’t do it…….Archie says you can use my piano from the Round-Up……I says I can’t move a damn full size console piano strapped to the roof of my Olds 98….. He says I’ll let you use my pottery shop van. So, I say what the hell.
so when I show up to pick up the van at the pottery shop he owned across the street from the joint, he says, “Look…..I forgot that I’d sent Miguel to pick up some roofing tin yesterday and that rascal took off without unloading it, and it’s still in the van. I guess if you could unload it there’d be room for the piano.”
He had run out beforehand and picked up like a two foot thick stack of roofing tin and gotten it unloaded for free. Which made his day.
Sturgeone – I lived in Aurora and know Colfax very well. Gold Nugget, Zanzibar, Sid King’s, Red Door and a bunch of others were not my haunts (that is just in case someone who knows me is reading). Anyone who lived in the Denver region knows Colfax and the fun it was. Later in life, and single, several smaller bars, Rear Inn for one, became my place to meet people (hint: L bars).
Denver always had some interesting characters running things.
Stayed at the Evergreen Motel in Aurora when I first got there…….then found a furnished flat just off the corner of Madison and Colfax behind the Greek restaurant, which was only a few blocks from both Archie’s on Clayton and also the spot where Alan Berg was gunned down by some nutso white supremacists from up Idaho way.
About 45 years ago I was taking a couple of month course at Lowry. Kumcho and the kids were stock in panama with the dog and both cars. There was a place that advertised having classical musical. Couldn’t find anyone with a car who wanted to go visit and I wasn’t about to go by bus or taxi.
Did make decent money playing poker, etc. in the bncoq.
Here are a few of the old timers still hanging around Denver. I can vouch for these, or at least a while ago I could. I left Denver (for those who have never lived there, Denver covers a lot of other cities and towns) about seven years ago. I don’t offer too much advice as to where to enjoy things there, most of the bars are as good or better than any bar on earth. They have to be because they are One Mile High.
Trump’s irrelevance: Even his navel has stopped listening.
Trump’s irrelevance: Not even the Constitution gives a shit about your bull shit.
Trump’s irrelevance: If he opens his mouth and no one hears it anymore does it make a sound?
If the Times declares him irrelevant ie unfit to print
just a thought Dems, find yourselves a progressive born-again Baptist. Worked in ’76. Carter’s Playboy interview sold more issues than any to date in magazine history.
Here is the bio of one that is possibly a boss.
here’s one that XR can vet in person
Renne’s one of those deplorables- with the Sessions seal of approval no doubt. I’m thinking that we can compile a list of drumpf’s deplorables.
I could qualify as a Progressive Baptist. According to my pastor, however, my born-again credentials are in dispute. He thinks I’m a Methodist mole.
lady faire
And then there was the summer when it was so dry the Baptist were sprinkling and the Methodist just slapped them with a damp cloth.
};-)
Jack
Yep, Jack. Last summer, as a matter of fact. 😉