45 thoughts on “Democrats Have Their Reagan”

  2. bill starts out in a serious vein and makes some good points; but… 

    warning: some jokes in the end may offend 

    Larry Wilmore and Scott Galloway join Bill Maher to discuss Burger King’s “Women belong in the kitchen” ad campaign. It has a lot of people talking – and other companies are taking notice.

  5. have a feeling for some folks who want to wrest the limelight from Joe and spoil his 1st hundred days honeymoon that gov. pepe le pew is another useful diversion version of mr potato head and dr seuss books. 

    beware, dems, you’re falling into their trap.

  6. My great-grandmother said, “If there ever was a Santa Claus, it was FDR, because people were really hurting.”

  8. Admiral Ackbar is correct. “It’s a trap.”
    The timing with Cuomo is very suspicious if this has been going on for years.  
     
    Greg Abbott quickly moved to remove covid safety measures to deflect from the infrastructure crisis in TX.  When there was backlash about that, he quickly moved to the border.  
     
    If a Republican wants you to look at something, there is something else you need to notice!

  9. Not to say it was nothing, but the woman giving interviews seems like she wears a drama filter.  Everyone has a filter, be it negativity  or positivity-bias, etc. The drama filter folks are narcissistic; they are at the center of everything happening and you do not want to get sucked into their gravitational field.  I’m not saying that because she gave an interview, but because of what she said during the interview and the vibe from it.

  10. AP — Democrats find support for Biden in small-city America

    “As Democrats continue to lose votes in small towns, they’ve seen clear gains in regional hubs that dot stretches of rural America. Biden carried roughly 60 counties President Donald Trump won in 2016, many were places anchored by a mid-sized or small city that is trending Democratic. They include places like Grand Rapids, Michigan; Wilmington, North Carolina; Dayton, Ohio and Mankato Minnesota’s Blue Earth County.”

  12. turn the spotlights more on things like this from the hill when calling for resignations and stop sweating the stuff that isn’t threatening democracy and attempting to overthrow the gov’t. condoning violent mob behavior is a lot more dangerous to the body politic right now:

    “I’ve also been criticized because I made the comment on Jan. 6 – I never felt threatened, because I didn’t,” Johnson said Thursday on “The Joe Pags Show,” referencing the insurrection that unsuccessfully sought to halt the certification of the Electoral College results. 

    “Even though those thousands of people were marching on the Capitol were trying to pressure people like me to vote the way they wanted me to vote, I knew those were people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law, so I wasn’t concerned,” he continued.

    “So had the tables been turned, Joe, this could mean trouble. Had the tables been turned and President Trump won the election and those were tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa protesters, I might have been a little concerned.”

  14. So if some republican ratfuckery results in accusations and allegations against a democrat in a sensitive or key position, said democrat must immediately leap from the nearest window to his doom?
    I happen to think official channels and investigations are called for because the accusee has just as many rights as the accusers.   
     

  15. One last commentary on Mulberry Street.  I’ve been trying to rebuild my childhood library for years and remembered to look the other day.  I had bought a new copy of Mulberry Street!  Anyway, pulled it out as it had never been opened to see if there was anything more offensive than the yellow Chinese man with a queue eating with chopsticks.  STUNNED!!!  This newer copy had given him a white face and removed the queue.  In fact, every single face was WHITE.  Somewhere over the years, someone had thought to alter the original image, but didn’t think that there not being a single black or brown image would be even more offensive.  

  16. phooey and drat

    carl hiaasen miami herald: 

    With or without me, Florida will always be wonderfully, unrelentingly weird | Opinion
    Let’s get it over with.
    This is my last column for the Miami Herald. I didn’t plan to write about that because there’s actual news to be covered, but my dear friend Dave Barry told me I’d look like a jerk if I didn’t say some sort of goodbye.
    So here goes. I grew up reading the Herald and what was then the Fort Lauderdale News, my parents holding this radical notion that being factually informed would help us develop into conscientious, fully functioning citizens.
    I fell for newspapers and ended up at the University of Florida’s journalism school, still one of the best. The Herald shelved my first job application, but in the summer of 1976 I got hired as a city desk reporter.
    Reubin Askew was governor, and a harmless fellow named Gerald Ford was president only because the paranoid criminal who preceded him had been forced to resign, and the criminal president’s criminal vice president had also quit after getting busted for taking bribes.
    Those were the days when all of us wanted to be Woodward or Bernstein.
    Meanwhile, South Florida was growing into an outrageously fertile news mecca — weird, violent, drug-soaked, exuberantly corrupt — and eventually I landed on the Herald’s epic investigations team.
    […]
    I’ve done this column since 1985. No idea how many. No particular favorites, no regrets. Slash-and-burn was the only way I knew to do it.
    Even the satirical pieces could be scalding, but that’s what those who betray the public trust deserve. When somebody got caught selling their commission vote under the table, or stealing outright, I felt morally obliged to write something that would make them choke on their corn flakes the next morning.
    Once I called Miami City Hall a “bribe factory,” and another time described Tallahassee as a “festival of whores.” Too subtle? Possibly.
    One time, the Legislature authorized random drug tests for state employees. Lawmakers mysteriously exempted themselves, so I offered to personally pay a big lab so that every one of them, including the governor, could pee in a cup.
    No volunteers. Wonder why.
    […]
    It would be lovely to report that other things have also changed for the better, but Florida’s wild places and clearest waters are still under assault from overdevelopment, opioids are killing more people than coke or street heroin ever did, racism thrives likes a fungal rash and corruption is more rampant than ever.
    Millions of worried seniors are still awaiting COVID inoculations because they don’t live in gated communities full of rich Republicans writing checks to the governor’s re-election committee. Then again, who’s really surprised that a resort like Ocean Reef gets special vaccine shipments while regular folks in nearby Florida City get to sit in their cars for hours, praying the supply doesn’t run out?
    As you read these words, some scrofulous tunnel rat in public office is busy selling your best interests down the road. It might be happening at your town council, zoning board, water district, or county commission — but it is happening.
    Certainly there are those with guts and unshakeable integrity in both political parties, but theirs is an uphill slog — and often they don’t last long.
    Retail corruption is now a breeze, since newspapers and other media can no longer afford enough reporters to cover all the key government meetings. You wake up one day, and they’re bulldozing 20 acres of pines at the end of your block to put up a Costco. Your kids ask what’s going on, and you can’t tell them because you don’t have a clue.
    That’s what happens when hometown journalism fades — neighborhood stories don’t get reported until it’s too late, after the deal’s gone down. Most local papers are gasping for life, and if they die it will be their readers who lose the most.
    The decision to leave now is mine. It’ll be strange not having my Thursday deadline, but I’ll never stop writing about this bent, beautiful, infuriating state. Fortunately, all the scammers and greedheads remain vastly outnumbered by caring, thoughtful people who fiercely love what’s left of this place.
    Thanks to all of you who buy enough of my gonzo novels that I don’t have to depend on a pauperizing newspaper pension. Thanks also for the heaps of mail, including the letters with prison postmarks.
    [continues]

     

    i already miss him. so he better keep writing those books of his i like so much 

  17. also from dave barry in today’s miami herald:

    Carl Hiaasen is retiring. This is good news.
    It’s good news for sleazeballs, charlatans, buffoons, blowhards and fools. It’s good news for the powerful, the pompous, the entitled, the smug and the slimy. It’s good news for those who view the Everglades as a useless swamp, or look at mangroves and see only a bunch of smelly trees blocking the view.
    It’s good news for those people, but it’s bad news for Florida. For decades this state has had no watchdog fiercer (or funnier) than Carl. He has more than earned his retirement, of course. But he’ll leave a void in the journalism landscape the size of Lake Okeechobee.
    What made Carl such a great columnist? For one thing, his temperament. I’ve known Carl for more than 30 years. I’ve spent countless hours hanging out with him, talking with him on the phone, attempting without success to teach him how to play a C-sharp-minor chord (the one thing Carl does not do effortlessly well is play the guitar). In all the time I’ve spent with Carl, I have never known him NOT to be pissed off about something. I’m not saying he’s a downer to be around. Quite the contrary: When he’s pissed off, he’s hilarious. I’m just saying he has a wondrous capacity for outrage. He simply cannot tolerate crooks or idiots. And of course Florida has an inexhaustible supply of both.
    […]
    And now he’s retiring from column-writing. We will miss his voice. Although I suspect — I hope — that he’ll still weigh in from time to time in the Miami Herald. I figure he’ll need an outlet. It’s not in his nature to stop being pissed off.
    But for now, on behalf of his readers, I say to my good friend Carl: Thank you — for caring, for fighting, for all those wonderful words. May your semi-retirement be at least semi-relaxing; may the bonefish always be biting. And may you, some day, master the C-sharp-minor chord.

  19. Sturg, law and order? Investigative process?  Rights of the accused? And all before the lynching?  And for a Democrat?  Unheard of. 
    And sorry to hear Carl Hiassen is retiring. His columns never really made it to the rag in East bumfuck, but thanks to the miracle of the Internet I got to read him from time to time. Sorry to see him gone.

  21. Pepe Le Pew…  WTF??!
     
    patd…  during this past crappy February, I needed something to pick me up.  So I went to the library in search of something lighthearted to read…  I hit the jackpot with Hiaasen’s latest tome, “Squeeze Me”.  One of the major characters is an effing huge snake…  I hate snakes!…  but still had a rip roaring time reading the book!  I highly recommend it to Hiassen fans.

  22. last week in tampa bay times:

    Last month, a high-end community that Republican fundraiser Pat Neal helped develop was chosen by DeSantis to host a pop-up vaccination clinic nearBradenton. Only people from two ZIP codes were eligible to receive the vaccine at the Lakewood Ranch site, and names were chosen by Manatee County Commissioner Vanessa Baugh, who included herself on her vaccine selection list.
    Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried and Senate Democratic Leader Gary Farmer on Thursday urged the U.S. Department of Justice to look into whether the $3.9 million in contributions made to the governor’s political committee since December were connected to favorable treatment for vaccine distribution.
    “If this isn’t public corruption, I don’t know what is,’’ Fried said.

     

    CNN headline:

    DeSantis denies involvement in vaccine drive following revelation of $250,000 PAC donation from former Illinois governor

  25. lipez at wapo did a review back in august:

    Nearly all of the dozens of Carl Hiaasen’s hugely popular satirical novels, young people’s stories, nonfiction books and column collections — mainly about political corruption and environmental despoliation in the state of Florida — have been all too believably, even depressingly, topical. But by the evidence of the scabrous and unrelentingly hilarious “Squeeze Me,” the Trump era is truly Carl Hiaasen’s moment. It’s as if Mastodon, as he is known here only by his Secret Service code name, had actually been hatched in Hiaasen’s febrile brain as one of his most farcically outlandish characters, and then in some “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”-like transmogrification, Trump actually turned up in real life — and now he is back in Hiaasen’s novel. (The POTUS here loves the Mastodon moniker and asks an agent to be taken to the zoo so he can see a real one.)

    One unnerving aspect of “Squeeze Me” is that it’s set in post-pandemic Palm Beach and Trump is still president. It will be useful for any pro-Biden readers to view this not as pessimism on Hiaasen’s part but simply as some additional deeply mordant humor. Just dive in and have a wonderful time.

    [continues]

  27. patd….  yeah…  I forgot to say that any trump lover will hate the book…  which is one reason why I and others here will love it.  One of my favorite things from the book…  he doesn’t call Mar a Lago by it’s name….  he calls it… Casa Bellicosa…  perfect!

  29. during that hiaasen interview, starting at 6:14 minuets in, the interviewer points out carl’s talent in portraying interesting women characters.  good discussion on subject followed. 

  30. It’s nice to be back on Twitter connected to my music and entertainment folks.  Doing some political but staying on the gentler side of things.  The Trolls and Bots aren’t as prevalent and I’m making sure not to engage.

    @SanMari94112926

     

  33. So, i reviewed the Cuomo allegations: if true (there’s a picture of one of the allegations, the woman looks terrified) they amount to purported sexual harassment, rather than sexual abuse.  That’s not to excuse the former, but if Cuomo wasn’t so arrogant, he could have gotten out in front of the scandal, with copious mea culpas and commitments to self-education.
     
     
    Again, not to dismiss sexual harassment, but it doesn’t seem like he managed NY’s COVID response competently or honestly, either.

  34. been disappointed with the media on the sen. johnson insurrection mob observations.   they’re misinterpreting – IMO – his “this could mean trouble” aside.  they’ve been assuming he meant the obvious racial slur aspect. read the whole train of thought

    “So had the tables been turned, Joe, this could mean trouble. Had the tables been turned and President Trump won the election….”

    i think he meant he’ll get in trouble for acknowledging out loud that youknowwho DIDN’T win. such a thing said publicly is forbidden by his crowd more than saying something racist. 

     

    glad though that they are at least covering it and causing him some pain.

  35. Cuomo’s daily, covid pressers looked so good, in part, because SFB’s 5 o’clock specials were were profoundly terrible.  

    TT & Flatus – Please check in.

  36. Remember when “Take the doors off your discarded refrigerators”  was a thing?   Waaay back.    I wonder if there were people who refused to remove them because, “Freedom”.

  37. sturge, and how many of them insisted on going barefoot and bare chested into establishments with no shoes, no shirts no service signs? 

  38. not enough to grift goofy GOPers, the mob is now making money off of mutts 

    huffpo:

    A dog rescue charity with links to Lara Trump has spent as much as $1.9 million at former President Donald Trump’s properties over the last seven years and will drop an additional quarter-million at his Mar-a-Lago country club this weekend.
    According to a permit filed with the town of Palm Beach, Florida, Big Dog Ranch Rescue estimates it will spend $225,000 at the club where Donald Trump has taken up full-time residence since leaving the White House. All the profit from that spending winds up in his pocket.
    Internal Revenue Service filings show that the group has spent as much as $1,883,160 on fundraising costs at Mar-a-Lago and Trump’s golf course 18 miles north in Jupiter starting in 2014. Lara Trump, the wife of Eric Trump, started being listed as a chairwoman for charity events in 2018, and the group’s president, Lauren Simmons, visited the White House in 2019 for the signing of a bill addressing animal cruelty.
    […]
    The charity briefly pulled back from using Mar-a-Lago immediately after Trump’s 2017 remarks praising the racist, anti-Semitic protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, but ultimately held its March 2018 fundraiser there anyway, even while many other charities abandoned Mar-a-Lago for good.
    […]
    Daughter-in-law Lara Trump has been advertised as a “chairwoman” of the charity’s fundraisers over the past several years. The spending by a charity she is associated with at her family’s businesses mirrors practices at Donald Trump’s now-shuttered Trump Foundation and Eric Trump’s Eric Trump Foundation, which also spent donor money at Trump properties.
    The self-dealing by the Trump Foundation was so egregious that New York state Attorney General Letitia James cited it as the reason the charity could no longer operate.
    [continues]

  39. above story also at wonkette today who noted:

    Lara Trump Helps Dog Rescue Give Away $2 Million … To Her Father-in-Law
    […]
    It’s one thing to, in the service of trying to do a good thing, take money from people you might otherwise find objectionable. I would not fault any non-profit for taking Lara Trump’s money. Take all of the her money, please! Take money from all of the terrible rich people.
    However! Giving money to crap people is a whole other story, particularly when it’s not the only option. Palm Beach is, I am pretty sure, where you go if you are the kind of rich person who goes to charity events all the time and wears a lot of Lily Pulitzer. Probably every place there offers discount rates for charity events.

    BTW, said grifteress is said to be interested in running for senate.

  40. After scaring crap out of me Bama put Tennessee away in the SEC semifinals. Love to see them win tomorrow and take both regular season and SEC tourney wins  for the first time in umpteen (30 if they win tomorrow) years. 

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