Late again, sorry ’bout that. I could tell you I was waiting to drop a link to my story on Mellissa Carone, but in truth, we were watching “Judas and the Black Messiah” on the telly, and also, I am weighted with pandemic February shut-in syndrome, the symptoms of which are extreme inertia and an ability to stay all the way indoors for…two days now.
Also, we are having a snowstorm and I should blow away the two new inches before six more arrive overnight.
Also, I am making tacos tonight. And that’s about all the news from Lake Wobegone.
But please, start by reading about Mellissa. She could use some media skills as she starts her journey toward the Michigan House. I learned that when she is challenged — I believe I asked why she found it so hard to believe that later-counted absentee ballots from a heavily Democratic city simply outnumbered earlier results from the state’s rural areas — she is the sort of person who says, “You’re lying” and calls you fake news and shuts down further contact.
Lordy. But then, with the news from this weekend, well, what else can you say.
I gotta go out and blow dat snow. Thanks for stopping by.
Deborah said on February 15, 2021 at 2:35 pm
Great story about Mellissa. God I hope she doesn’t get elected to anything, anywhere.
We’re having another snow day in Chicago as well. I tried stepping out Friday to walk to Whole Foods with my husband, I got a block away and I gave up, too icy for me. I haven’t been outside since and won’t be going anywhere probably until Wednesday when I have a haircut appointment. I usually walk to those, but this time I’ll probably take a Lyft. Normally I’d be crawling the walls from being cooped up for so long but the virus has made me accustomed to being inside for long periods of time, I’m perfectly happy to read, listen to podcasts and watch Netflix day after day, with a little cleaning on the side.
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Sherri said on February 15, 2021 at 2:41 pm
I think people are thinking about the reality deniers all wrong. They aren’t denying reality because they don’t know, or are confused, but because because they want to be part of the community that denies reality, not the commmunity that accepts it.
They simply don’t want to live in a multicultural democratic America. They don’t believe they are racist to want to live in an America where white Christians are at the top of the pyramid. They’re just more comfortable in that world. They will believe whatever is necessary to restore and preserve that world.
So, the question is not, how do we teach them to accept reality, or how do we reach out to them, or how do we understand them. We understand everything we need to know. They don’t want to live in community with us, and they can’t be convinced, educated, shamed, cajoled, loved, or lured into wanting to live in community with us.
The question is, how do we have a multicultural democracy with these people? We can’t do it with a system that gives them disproportionate power, as our current system chock full of counter majoritarian checks does. The status quo is not a stable situation.
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Sherri said on February 15, 2021 at 2:45 pm
The more polite version of Mellisa Carrone, with better media skills, when challenged on his falsehoods, just says “I’m not a newshound” and “I haven’t followed this as closely as you” and plows ahead.
Eric Metaxas.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/02/eric-metaxas-2020-election-trump/617999/
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AnnieH said on February 15, 2021 at 3:35 pm
I’d missed “cash me outside” girl too. Feeling very very old, I have to tell you.
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Julie Robinson said on February 15, 2021 at 3:47 pm
It’s been snowing and blowing lightly all day and is supposed to pick up considerably, with another 7-12 inches by mid-morning tomorrow. Cold too, but not subzero. So once again I’m delighted we moved into the senior apartments and don’t have to face the airport runway that was our driveway at the old house.
I’ve been listening to a book about hygge, the Danish word for cozy/ warm/friendly/homey/everything. It’s inspired me to set a pretty table with candles for dinner tonight. Dennis is out grilling pork chops and I have lemon bars in the oven. We’re having Mom over and watching the Josh Groban Valentine’s Day concert, and if that isn’t hygge, I don’t know what is.
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Deborah said on February 15, 2021 at 3:54 pm
Cash me ousside howbow dah. Something is very wrong with these women.
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Jakash said on February 15, 2021 at 4:10 pm
I don’t quite understand why anybody outside of Michigan’s 46th District needs to be subjected to further information about this woman, but the proprietress does a nice job of countering her nonsense with, uh, facts.
The photo of the well-matched, blonde, Batshit Barbies represents the current Republican party about as well as could be expected, I suppose.
It strikes me, though, that even the twice-impeached guy was famous well *before* he switched his career to full-time alternative-fact promotion. Those 2 blondes are getting their prolonged 15 minutes *because* they’re liars and frauds.
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LAMary said on February 15, 2021 at 4:33 pm
Trump may have had actual jobs that made him famous, but he was a liar and a fraud long before he ran for president. He claimed he was scouted by MLB when he was a senior in high school; he claimed his first wife was an Olympic skier; he claimed Marla Maples said he provided “the best sex ever” on the front page of the New York Post; he claimed he lived on floors 65-68 in Trump Tower which is 58 stories high. The list is long. And yet he managed to be elected to the highest office in the country.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on February 15, 2021 at 5:23 pm
Wait, how much did you have to pay her to get an interview?
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Jeff Borden said on February 15, 2021 at 5:23 pm
Mellissa Carone is part of the “new wave” of Republican office seekers who don’t tout their experience or education or brilliant new ideas. Nope. They’re celebs.
Ivanka tRump apparently lusts to be the senator from Florida. Eric tRump’s wife, Lara, is being touted by Leningrad Lindsey Graham as the next senator from North Carolina while he extolls her as “the future of the Republican Party.” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, one of the worst press secretaries in history, is running for governor of Arkansas solely on her ability to “stand up to the radical left and the fake news media.” And, yessir, $arah Palin herself is threatening to take on Sen. Murkowski in ‘Laska.
These are fraught times but one of our major political parties is barking mad and getting crazier. Porto, Portugal and Barcelona, Spain are looking better and better to us.
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Dexter Friend said on February 15, 2021 at 7:18 pm
Barcelona sounds great from here where northern Canada has shifted south half a continent. Miserable weather. I’ll have to dig my way out or call some snow removal crew to make sure I get out to drive to my vaccine appointment. The senior center is only 2.2 miles away, so I am grateful for that fact.
I know Biden wants unity all around, but I don’t want to discuss politics with these Lady G + Trump Maga creeps. There’s no unity, here in rural Ohio, with all these Trump-Jim Jordan supporters, and never will be. Some are as clueless as the late Tom Petty was when his concert stage backdrop was the biggest fucking Confederate flag ever. Tom later said he never thought or realized it stood for pro-slavery, to him it represented his young life in Florida and not much more. Trump -Jordan people are , among many other definitions, abject racists, “when the lootin’ starts, the shootin’ starts” crowd, but they love traitors who trash the United States Capitol , breaking stuff, stealing things, trashing the place, and hunting the Vice President of the United States of America with real, actual plans to physically lynch, hang by the neck until dead, that man.
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Jeff Borden said on February 15, 2021 at 7:28 pm
Same here, Dexter. We may get another 10 inches tonight. I’ve shoveled four times today. . .not that you can tell.
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Julie Robinson said on February 15, 2021 at 7:39 pm
Dexter, I’d definitely call ahead about that appointment before you start digging. Pretty much everything here has already shut down for the tomorrow.
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Sherri said on February 15, 2021 at 7:55 pm
We got about 8 inches of snow over the weekend, but we didn’t have to be anywhere so I didn’t bother to shovel, because the snow was going to turn to rain on Sunday anyway. It has rained all day today, and the snow is all slush now. Not going to drop below freezing for several days now, so the slush should all just melt away.
The snow was a nice change of pace from the rain and gray.
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LAMary said on February 15, 2021 at 10:06 pm
Sherri, I’ve spent time in Renton in February. I don’t know why but the company I worked for always had the week long meetings in Renton in February. It was dark and drizzling every day, every time I was there. The last time I was there the sun came out on my way to the airport to catch my flight home.
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Sherri said on February 16, 2021 at 2:05 am
Winters are dark up here, LAMary, but some are worse than others. I don’t know if it’s because the pandemic makes it seem worse or if it’s really been worse, but this winter has seemed particularly dark and dreary and rainy. I was ready for spring a month ago.
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Dexter Friend said on February 16, 2021 at 2:18 am
My appointment is not until Thursday afternoon but this snow is piling up…my covered porch had a half-foot or more up against the front door 5 minutes ago when I walked Pogo a short few steps to do her business. The driveway is again snowed shut and the car on the street is half-buried by the snowplow. I’ll get there for my shot unless some higher power stops me somehow. We don’t have Lyft or Uber or taxis here, had a taxi until the driver had to quit because of sickness.
“Judas and The Black Messiah” was so damn painful to watch. I was a young man, a soldier, when that movement was at its zenith. Angela Davis, the UCLA professor and Bobby Seale were constantly in the news, then later in 1971 the Jonathan Jackson robbery at a Cal Bank of America took the headlines. “Free Bobby” graffiti was everywhere, on walls, on toilet stall doors, on buildings. Most of you readers certainly remember some of this…then in Chicago, this Fred Hampton assassination. I used to get leftist publications regularly mailed to me and I remember the details. It was even more brutal than this movie depicts. I was only 1 hour 45 minutes from Oakland where The Black Panthers were HQ’d. Regular people were invited to visit and see how the free breakfasts, the food giveaways, the basic health clinics ran, and folks could lay a few bucks into a bucket to help. I did not visit; two of my army buddies did, and came back amazed at the organizing, the friendliness, the excitement in the air at this aspect of The Panthers. Of course, a lot more was going on, as there was tremendous hate against the whole concept, and authorities wanted to eliminate The Black Panther Party. Knowing Chairman Hampton’s fate, it was very difficult to sit and watch.
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Dexter Friend said on February 16, 2021 at 3:32 am
https://progressive.org/dispatches/judas-black-messiah-must-see-biopic-rampell-210211/?fbclid=IwAR3WWt9h_nf8QeWzt2voj2LbG_7OWiGQ284JnbLaPV5LbuvxHlXAiZ676Cs
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Suzanne said on February 16, 2021 at 8:59 am
I don’t even remember Fred Hampton. I was 11 when he died and as my parents were very conservative, my relatives all were very conservative, I went to a conservative parochial school, and probably in 1969, had never met a black person, I was completely oblivious. I remember hearing about the Black Panthers but what I heard was all bad.
It’s really amazing to me that I am now, in my 60s, only really understanding how much my view of life & history has been filtered by my upbringing and my race. To me, that right there is the definition of white privilege—I didn’t really understand this because I didn’t have to.
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alex said on February 16, 2021 at 9:51 am
Suzanne, what strikes me most about these strange times is how Fox and right-wing media have poisoned the well of everyday life. People here may have been conservative but they were still relatively apolitical. This is a state that used to vote for Democrats for governor, state legislators and congress — person over party. Gerrymandering can’t account for this shift when it comes to statewide votes, although it certainly explains the statehouse supermajority.
In the 1970s, this was a state where legislators who voted to acquit Nixon were voted out of office immediately afterward, where Earl Butz became an embarrassment for running his mouth. I thought the editorial in the J-G this morning about history remembering our senators Braun and Young was naive. Those two douchebags got where they are by primarying others from the right and they’re terrified of being challenged by candidates willing to act even nuttier.
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Julie Robinson said on February 16, 2021 at 10:51 am
Alex, unfortunately, I think you’re right that none of our Indiana idiots have any cause to worry about reelection. And Suzanne, my childhood was mostly white and conservative, but my parents were passionately interested in politics and Dad was a journalist. The stories of the day were almost the only thing we talked about at the dinner table.
I’m constantly amazed that my same-age husband doesn’t know anything about political figures or events from his childhood, when I have vivid memories of the stories unfolding. Of course, it was all filtered through their eyes, so the Black Panthers were considered evil. I’ve had to learn the more nuanced side on my own.
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Bitter Scribe said on February 16, 2021 at 3:24 pm
Mellissa-two-Ls is a hero for our time, her boundless self-confidence untrammeled by any sort of knowledge or awareness.
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