56 thoughts on “Joy Beats Hate”

  2. A parody of the theme song from Cheers (Everybody Knows Your Name), an American television sitcom that aired on NBC from September 30, 1982, to May 20, 1993, for 11 seasons and 275 episodes – kind of popular. The parody lyrics were written by David Cohen; Performance and Video Editing by Don Caron. Executive Producers Don Caron and Jerry Pender

  3. David Horsey op ed for The Seattle Times 

    At Arlington, Trump earns a medal of dishonor
    Former President Donald Trump’s campaign staff got into an altercation with an official at Arlington National Cemetery as they attempted to take campaign photos in an area where recent military dead are buried — a section where partisan political photography is prohibited.
    Trump, meanwhile, was laying a wreath in a ceremony honoring the 13 service members who were killed in a suicide bombing when American forces were frantically exiting Kabul in 2021. It is worth remembering that this gesture was being made by the ex-commander-in-chief who denigrated John McCain’s years of tortuous captivity in North Vietnam, who skipped out on a tribute to American war dead in France and who, according to credible witnesses, referred to soldiers as “suckers and losers.”
    Chances are, Trump would have never been at the Arlington ceremony if it had not offered an opportunity to score political points against the Biden/Harris administration for the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. As it turned out, Trump succeeded in getting his photo taken with grieving family members at the restricted gravesite. In the picture, he is standing in the middle of the somber group, grinning obscenely with thumbs up.
    The pose suggests Trump counted the day as a victory — at least for himself.

  4. about joy and joy spoilers

    Cartoonist Jeff Darcy’s op ed yesterday at Gus Walz a winner: Darcy cartoon – cleveland.com

    Pride and Joy

    CLEVELAND, Ohio — Top highlight for me of the DNC convention was 17 year-old Gus Walz standing up and openly shedding tears of love, joy and pride for his father Tim Walz as the Governor of Minnesota, teacher and coach gave his speech accepting the nomination to be Vice President of the United States.
    Through his tears, Gus stood and pointed to the podium saying “That’s my Dad!” as Tim Walz told the millions watching “Hope, Gus and Gwen, you are my entire world, and I love you !”
    It was quickly reported that Gus Walz is Neurodivergent and has ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and a Non-Verbal Learning Disorder. Did not know that and don’t know why it even matters because it shouldn’t and didn’t to me.
    Showing just how sickened parts of the Republican Party have become, putrid pundit Ann Coulter was among the first of the wing nuts to grind Gus. On social media Coulter posted a screen shot of the emotion showing teenager under the caption “Talk about weird.”
    After fire starter Coulter was quickly burned by the resounding blowback to her post, she deleted it. But she did have cold-hearted followers. Like two Chicago conservative morning radio hosts, Amy Jacobson and Dan Proft, who mocked and ridiculed Gus Walz.
    Jacobson and Proft apologized on air the next morning with Jacobson saying she didn’t know Gus had ADHD. What’s really disturbing is that Jacobson is also a varsity volleyball coach at a public high school. Even worse, Proft sat on the board of a disability advocacy group ‘Envision Unlimited’ in Chicago until the board voted unanimously to remove him for his repugnant actions.
    On ‘X’ Wisconsin radio host Jay Weber was on the same cesspool wavelength as Coulter, Jacobson and Proft, with Weber questioning Walz manhood. Donald Trump and the GOP are the ones with ‘Neurodivergent verbal disorders’ in need of treatment.

  5. JDouche is becoming more Dumbasslike by the day. WaPo. 

    (…)

    A reporter at the campaign event asked Vance about an altercation involving Trump campaign staff that took place at Arlington National Cemetery, which the former president visited Monday to mark the third anniversary of the Islamic State bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members during the evacuation from Afghanistan.
     
    Federal law prohibits election-related activities at military cemeteries and as  The Washington Post previously reported, a cemetery employee tried to enforce the rules as provided to her by blocking Trump’s team from bringing cameras to the graves of U.S. service members killed in recent years, according to a senior defense official and another person briefed on the incident. A larger male campaign aide insisted the camera was allowed and pushed past the cemetery employee.

    Vance said at his campaign stop in Erie, Pa., on Wednesday that the press was “creating a story where I really don’t think that there is one.” He said the family members of fallen service members in attendance “invited [Trump] to be there and to support them.” But the Ohio senator, a military veteran, then used the question to tie the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal to the Democratic presidential candidate.

    “Kamala Harris is disgraceful. We’re going to talk about a story out of those 13 brave, innocent Americans who lost their lives? It’s that Kamala Harris is so asleep at the wheel that she won’t even do an investigation into what happened,” he asserted, though there have been extensive federal investigations into the Abbey Gate bombing.

    Vance accused Harris of criticizing Trump’s visit to the cemetery, saying: “And she wants to yell at Donald Trump because he showed up? She can — she can go to hell.”

    Trump and his allies have been known to push past the boundaries of political norms during the former president’s nearly decade-long political career. But the type of crass language Vance used to condemn a political opponent Wednesday is particularly unusual in modern politics.

    Defense officials said the confrontation occurred when an Arlington National Cemetery staff member warned people employed by the Trump campaign that while they were permitted to take photos and videos in the cemetery, they could not do so in Section 60, the final resting place for many U.S. service members killed in recent conflicts.
     
    Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung responded to the first report of the altercation, from NPR on Tuesday, by baselessly accusing the employee of “suffering from a mental health episode.” Defense officials said the employee was trying to do her job and the claim of a mental health episode was false. On Wednesday, Cheung said the employee “initiated physical contact that was unwarranted and unnecessary.”

    Cheung also said the campaign would release footage to support his claim, but it has not. The Trump campaign on Wednesday posted a video to TikTok that was recorded at the cemetery; in it, Trump is seen at the Tomb of the Unknowns and walking among marble headstones as soft guitar music plays and the former president’s words are heard criticizing the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal.

    In an interview with CNN that aired earlier Wednesday — before Vance’s campaign events — Harris campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler said the cemetery incident was “pretty sad” but “not surprising coming from the Trump team.” The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment about Vance’s comments about the Democratic nominee. Harris, who began a two-day bus tour in Georgia on Wednesday, did not bring up the issue on the campaign trail.
    (…)

    I guess those swing state polls have the asshats in Dumpworld rattled.

  8. A change that happened in 1975 that is shown today is when the military went volunteer force.  Also it was the thirty year anniversary of WWII.  1976 was my first visit to the VA medical system, I remember sitting in the waiting rooms and seeing a couple of WWI veterans, a lot of WWII, Korea and Vietnam veterans.  Today we are nearing the fifty anniversary of those years.  The waiting rooms are full of Vietnam era veterans and a few from the Iraq wars.  The Iraq wars, including Afghanistan, did not have the sheer quantity of personnel involved, which shows in the medical centers.
     
    We went from a country that had about twenty-five percent active duty and veterans to around seven percent.  Your neighbor might not know anyone who is active duty or a veteran.  The orange idiot carries his hate from the earlier era, he might not know that his running mate is a veteran.  What the sfb did to Arlington he did on purpose. His campaign staff hold those who are or were in the military as nothing more than bodies to wipe their dirty shoes on. 
     
    My hope is that this act of disrespect kicks a few of the cult members to be reminded of their fathers or grandfathers military service and how they never step on those graves.  Just maybe one or two in each district will either not vote or vote for Harris.  There are a large percentage of active duty and veterans who are cult members, I will not gloss over that.  Just as there are people of color who vote against their own self-interest.  Just as their are those who think sfb cares about them. Sigh.

  11. i’ll be content when her numbers are over %50 and his are under %40
     
    …still need both houses to bury the ideology 

  12. i’ll go to my grave on which i hope trump doesn’t stand and smile maintaining that the Afghanistan withdrawal was a logistical masterstroke, not without tragedy, which is why we got the fuck out.
     
    Real leaders make hard choices, fake leaders contrive photo ops.

  13. Bink, that’d be great. My hunch is it stays close but around third week of October the bottom drops out for Trump. Still, worth remembering a 4pt lead is OK considering that’s what Biden got in 2020 to win 305 electoral college votes.

    Meanwhile I’m sticking to me earlier map, my prediction for 320 Harris votes in the Electoral College (270 needed)

  15. Well, i got my Biden-hater on Team Kamala, i made her case for her and the convention sealed the deal, so that’s +1 for the good guys
     
    …ain’t much but it ain’t nothing.  if i get y’all two more real votes you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise before Nov. i’ll be pleased with myself 🫡 🇺🇸 
     
    ✌️ 
     

  16. If any tombstone used by Trump isn’t one of the families that invited him, I hope the family sues the hell out of him for desecrating their loved one grave.  

  18. Donald Trump lacks any and all decency or reverence for the dead and their grieving families. He utterly lacks the human capacity to feel anything. 
    While my heart goes out to the bereaved military mother who blames Joe Biden for “murdering” her child, her grief process is not served by aligning with a cemetery desecrator, and her words and actions contribute to the pain of other mothers. 

  20. Jonathan Lemire said today that “Democrats must win Georgia and Republicans must win Pennsylvania, sort of…”  while the general sentiment on the show was that if Harris wins Georgia, she wins the election. Trump is trying to mend the fence he established between him and Governor Kemp.  Who knows how that will go.  
    That article features the tired old theme I heard all through my career job and also other jobs I had along the way including the US Army. When someone succeeds on merit and is promoted the naysayers and haters always trotted out “It ain’t who you know, it’s who … ….”   .  Harris will soar over this degradation-soaked hate speech.  
    Vance is appearing more and more like he’s worse, much than Dan Quayle’s potato-potatoe flub years ago.  His attack on childless women is generating so much hate towards him and exposing him as such an imbecile that a Kennedy replacement move by Trump would make sense. Huh?  Yep. Vance is a heavy anchor who may just make Trump actually choose: battery charged sea water or A Shark Named Vance.  Vance is a US Senator in the state I live in.  Sherrod Brown is our other Senator.  Brown has new commercials featuring him standing in a field around 3 farmers and some heavy-duty tractor/combine machines.  The voice-over fades, cut to Brown alone in this huge field, and he says twice how he is now and has been “working with Republicans to help out farmers.”  He and my Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur both reiterate they do not work for Democrats or Republicans, they work “for the people of Ohio”.
    This means they are begging for independents, surely, but also they both need Republican cross-overs.  This is scary stuff. Bernie Moreno is Brown’s opponent, a car salesman.  Kaptur’s opponent is Derek Merrin, a crackpot nutcase Trumper who is on my TV screen screaming how “I am going to finish Trump’s wall!!” Also, he wants the roundup of all brown-skin folks to begin with instant deportations.  This guy is dangerous.  Kaptur’s people contacted me to spread the word over here by the Indiana and Michigan borders.  I am calling, posting, yelling for the re-elections of both Kaptur and Brown.
    Trump’s appearance at Arlington, so disgraceful in it’s purpose as a campaign stunt, reminds me of the great Elvis Costello anthem about Margaret Thatcher.

  22. get us Ohio, Dex
     
    i know, i know, but y’all voted for Obama twice 
     
    Also, people respect you!  Ain’t nobody carrying my groceries for me.  You got this 🫡 🇺🇸 

    Like, the residents of a state where service is so respected that people volunteer to carry a veteran’s groceries might not want to elect a guy who stands and smiles on the graves of the fallen. Let’s get Ohio! 🦅

  24. Folks have chaos fatigue.  Those who, somehow, are still undecided or who “aren’t political” are fed up with the MAGAt hate and nonsense. As for the folks with the radio show making fun of a young man being emotionally proud of his dad, Proft has been removed from Envision’s board…and I wonder if the sponsors for the show will change to MAGAty businesses? 

  25. i want Kansas, too
     
    Democrat governor, unexpected electoral rebuke of anti-choice zealots, can’t think of a 3rd reason, let’s get Kansas!  🇺🇸 
     
    ok pardon me, let’s gooooo, have an inspiring day!  Like, you do the inspiring! 🫡 

    (i realize one may think me being silly or unrealistic, but observe i’m not being so absurd as to call for Texas or Florida. i do think there are gains to be made in the “heartland” if sound messaging and strong contrasts can be effectively employed)

  26. Buncha polling averages from Phil Bump at WaPo.
    What jumps out at me is that with the exception of Georgia and North Carolina, in each of the charts Harris is above 45 and SFB is below 45.
     

  27. This is what Narcissistic Collapse looks like, and it’s only going to get worse.

    Washington Post: In just a period of 24 hours “Donald Trump amplified a vulgar joke about Vice President Kamala Harris performing a sex act. He falsely accused her of a staging a coup to secure the Democratic nomination and faulted her without evidence for a security lapse that enabled a rogue gunman to try to assassinate him. He shared a manipulated online image of Bill Gates in an orange jumpsuit and a call for Barack Obama to face a “military tribunal.” He promoted explicit tributes to the QAnon conspiracy theory. He hawked digital trading cards in an online infomercial along with pieces of his debate night suit. (“People are calling it the knockout suit.”) His campaign feuded publicly with Arlington National Cemetery over their visit.” 

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/08/29/trump-false-attacks-q-anon-harris-suit/

  31. It would have been totally righteous for the Arlington officer to “push back” and defend the ground in which the honored dead lay. 

    “The Army is defending an Arlington National Cemetery official involved in an incident with the Trump campaign this week at the national memorial, saying the woman was “abruptly pushed aside” and “unfairly attacked” by the Trump staffers and its surrogates.”

    The unidentified female staff member has declined to press charges due to concern over retaliation, and the Army, which runs national cemeteries, said in a statement Thursday morning that it considers the matter closed.

    https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/29/donald-trump-arlington-cemetery-army-employee-00176729

  32. Seems the Army isn’t amused at the Dumbass team and their (typical) lies about the incident. Someone needs to ask the family if they’ve been provided the video.
    Ooh, and fuck JDouche. 

  33. Cremated remains of Vietnam War veterans are eligible for inurnment in the columbarium at Arlington National Cemetery: 
    I have been thinking of having this service when my time comes, since I’ll be 75 soon.  This latest Trump episode there made me furious. Even as the family of the deceased invited him to come, the thumbs-up-smiling Trump was highly off limits. The columbarium area is a beautiful resting place for veterans.  I only took a virtual tour so far.

  35. I know maggers with recently departed loved ones interred in Arlington. I’m keeping my ears open for any murmurs from among them. Sadly, I’m not expecting any minds changed. 

  37. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4854344-senator-vance-heckled-firefighters/
     

    “Upon taking to the stage after Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez (R-Fla.), a former firefighter, Vance drew some boos from the crowd.”

    “The Ohio senator received boos at another point in his speech moments after he argued the Trump-Vance ticket was the “most pro-worker Republican ticket in history.”

    “At the same time, Vance also received applause from the crowd at various points, including when he said Republicans would defend peoples’ right to free speech, “including your right to speak out about unconstitutional COVID vaccine mandates.”

    If you don’t believe in public safety, you should get out of the business.

    “He also drew applause from saying a Trump White House would respect workers’ rights to engage in collective bargaining and for his mention of Corey Comperatore, the volunteer firefighter who died during the attempted assassination against Trump in Butler, Pa.”

    There are either plants, idiots or both in that crowd. Adolf is not pro-workers’ rights.

  40. Re-watching West Wing and currently midway through season three which was 23 years ago.  Every single issue is still the same.  Hope Kamala has at least one or two new ideas.

  41. Draws a nice contrast between her and the Orange idiot whose “values” (as if he has any) only change with the wind and a whim.

  47. https://www.texastribune.org/2024/08/26/texas-voter-registration-election-ken-paxton-investigation/

    “Officials in a North Texas county debunked claims made by a Fox News host that migrants were registering to vote outside a state drivers license facility west of Fort Worth — an unsubstantiated claim that appeared to spark an investigation by Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office.”

    “Both the Parker County Republican chair and election administrator said there was no evidence to support the Aug. 18 social media post made by television personality Maria Bartiromo, who previously promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.”

    “Paxton’s office announced it was opening an investigation into “reports that organizations operating in Texas may be unlawfully registering noncitizens to vote” Wednesday.”

    “In announcing the investigation, the attorney general’s office said investigators confirmed that nonprofits had booths set up outside of license offices to offer voter registration assistance, though it did not state specifically where these offices were located.”
     
    “Gabriel Rosales, Texas state director for the League of United Latin American Citizens, said he viewed Paxton’s investigation as an act of intimidation to keep Hispanic voters from voting, adding there was nothing wrong with people providing voter registration assistance outside of drivers license offices.”

    “I don’t think it violates anything by having them out there,” Rosales said. Republicans ” see the writing on the wall,” he said. “They know that if the Hispanic vote comes out, they lose.”

    So, was there collusion between Fox Noise and Paxton’s office, to give cause for the investigation/intimidation?

     

     
     

  48. https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/29/us/gateway-church-scandal-texas/index.html

     “Gateway Church draws an estimated 100,000 people to its weekend services and has more than 560 employees at nine locations in Texas, and two others in Missouri and Wyoming, according to the church.”

    “Summer was off to a tumultuous start when allegations of child sexual abuse surfaced on a blog dedicated to Christian survivor stories. This time, the man involved had gone on to lead one of America’s largest megachurches.”

    “Robert Morris, who founded and led Gateway Church for nearly 25 years in the affluent Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Southlake, Texas, resigned after the scandal came to light in June. His exit sent thousands of evangelicals into a season of struggle that has lasted months.”

    “Last week, a pastor who oversaw all of Gateway’s campuses departed amid an undisclosed “moral issue,” becoming the latest in a series of changes for the church: The cancellation of its annual conference. The departure of Morris’ successor. The renaming of its Houston campus and an exodus of worshippers.”

    “The church has seen a decrease of 17% to 19% in weekend services attendance, a church spokesperson told CNN.”

    OK, allegations of CHILD sexual abuse and multiple changes in staffing, but over 80% of evangelicals at Gateway’s churches are sticking with it? Uggh, these are tRUMPsky’s uneducated zombies.

  49. The Jews and Arabs are pausing a war to give infants Polio vaccine.  Here we have idiots like Elon and Kennedy encouraging parental options.

  50. Poobah, re your 4:52, he ain’t speaking to people who have a clue. He’s talking to the dumfucks who’ll believe anything he spews on X or “Truth” Social (which BTW you can buy for a song.).

  52. We’ve seen enough of Dana Basher. 

    She has no personality and what there is, is crass.

    Kamala is doing great considering she’s being questioned by a cold dishrag.

  53. I want to hear more details about the difference between in vitro fertilization and artificial insemination. Melania?? 

  54. Watching clips of Trump is like being stuck with a never-ending episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Show. Those kept me up all night in fright when I was eight. 

  55. Harris: NO REPUBLICANS IN YOUR CABINET!  That party is gone. It is Trump Nation and keep them the hell away from your selected brain trust.

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