Pushback Can Win.

'TilTheLandslideBringsThem

DownVille

In April of this year a Republican state senator from Michigan named Lana Theis took a page out of her party's smear book and sent out a fundraising Email in which she singled out a Democratic colleague by name for no good reason at all:

"...These are the people we are up against. Progressive social media trolls like Senator Mallory McMorrow (D-Snowflake) who are outraged they can't teach can't groom and sexualize kindergarteners or that 8-year olds are responsible for slavery..."

Now.

While Ms. Theis may be a Whackaloon in good standing who lives, breathes and works tirelessly to play that faux game of 'Own The Libs!', she (and/or her 'team') may also have been motivated by the fact that she is facing a primary challlenge from an even farther right, Trump-endorsed, Whackaloon named Mike Detmer that involves a strange bedfellows sidebar and Betsy DeVos' billions...

Regardless, Ms. McMorrow did not take Ms. Theis' smear (or her mangled syntax) lying down. Instead, she gave a brilliant, unapologetic speech, shown above, on the floor of the Michigan Senate that included statements such as the following:

Hate wins when people like me stand by and let it happen. I won't...

..So who am I?

I am a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom who knows that the very notion that learning about slavery or redlining or systemic racism means that children are being taught to feel bad or hate themselves because they are white is absolute nonsense...

...I want my daughter to know that she is loved, supported, and seen for whoever she becomes. I want her to be curious, empathetic, and kind.

I want every child to feel seen, heard, and supported, not marginalized and targeted if they are not straight, white, and Christian...

...People who are different are not the reason our roads are in bad shape, or healthcare costs are too high, or teachers are leaving the profession...

... I want to be very clear right now: Call me whatever you want. I know who I am. I know what faith and service mean, and what it calls for in this moment. We will not let hate win.

There was quite a bit of media buzz about the speech at the time, mostly focussed on the spectacle.

However, the final whistle has blown and the score has been tallied. Clearly, Ms. McMorrow won.

By a landslide:

The numbers are in and it’s official: The attack on Democratic Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow backfired.

The Michigan Republican state senator who falsely described McMorrow as a “groomer” in an April fundraising email raised less than $300 in the days following the solicitation, according to campaign finance filings. McMorrow, on the other hand, raised more than $1 million...

{snip}

...Theis didn’t see an influx of small-dollar donations from the solicitation — her take from individual donors was just $235. But McMorrow used the response to her speech to build a data base of 11,000 donors from all 50 states, according to her husband and treasurer Ray Wert...

...Theis didn’t return POLITICO requests for comments. Her husband, Sam, hung up on a reporter when asked about the sum: “I wouldn’t have any information on that, go ahead and do a search on the database, thanks,” he said...

Imagine that!


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HST Fridays...Will The Real Raoul Please Stand Up?

AllTheDukesThat

FitVille

...“In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.” ...

Hunter S. Thompson, Rolling Stone, November 11, 1971

The Justice Department is investigating President Donald Trump’s actions as part of its criminal probe of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to four people familiar with the matter.

Prosecutors who are questioning witnesses before a grand jury — including two top aides to Vice President Mike Pence — have asked in recent days about conversations with Trump, his lawyers, and others in his inner circle who sought to substitute Trump allies for certified electors from some states Joe Biden won, according to two people familiar with the matter...

Carol D. Leonnig et al., Washington Post, July 26, 2022

****

The first quote above is one of the most oft-pulled bits from Thompson's most famous work which later became the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Personally, that's a piece I rarely re-read because unlike, say, all that is amassed in the Great Shark Hunt (or even the Campaign Trail book), I find the Vegas screed, above all, to be a lark (as it was intended to be while Thompson was unwinding/avoiding writing a massive piece for Wenner about Mexican-American unrest in Southern California called Strange Rumblings in Aztlan).

However...

Just after the bit about crime and stupidity in the Vegas screed Thompson, masquerading as alter ego Raoul Duke, also wrote the following:

It is a weird feeling to sit in a Las Vegas hotel at four in the morning – hunkered down with a notebook and a tape recorder in a $35 a day suite and a fantastic room service bill, run up in 48 hours of total madness – knowing that just as soon as dawn comes up you are going to flee without paying a fucking penny …

{snip}

This was the final step. I had taken all the grapefruit and other luggage out to the car a few hours earlier.

Now it was only a matter of slipping the noose: Yes, extremely casual behavior, wild eyes hidden behind these Saigon-mirror sunglasses … waiting for the Shark to roll up...

Which got me wondering...

If and when the going gets legally tough for the good Mr. Trump, will he turn pro or will he slink out of town unseen and unheard like Mr. Duke long before he became everybody's favourite uncle?

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The Right To Work When (Really) Young.

ThisIsTheModernWorld

WeDon'tNeedNoOneVille

Joshua Schneyer, Mica Rosenberg and Kristina Cooke have published an extremely disturbing story with Reuters:

A subsidiary of Hyundai Motor Co has used child labor at a plant that supplies parts for the Korean carmaker's assembly line in nearby Montgomery, Alabama, according to area police, the family of three underage workers, and eight former and current employees of the factory.

Underage workers, in some cases as young as 12, have recently worked at a metal stamping plant operated by SMART Alabama LLC, these people said...

Metal stamping? 

Gosh. That is not flipping burgers.

But is the practice actually widespread and exploitative?

Well...

...One former worker at SMART, an adult migrant who left for another auto industry job last year, said there were around 50 underage workers between the different plant shifts, adding that he knew some of them personally. Another former adult worker at SMART, a U.S. citizen who also left the plant last year, said she worked alongside about a dozen minors on her shift...

As you might expect, the corporate entity concerned buries this practice, and these kids (many of whom appear to be immigrants), under layers of contracted hiring services in what appears to be a bald-faced effort to avoid any accountability whatsoever in a US'ian state where labour laws are lax and unions have been effectively neutered.

Is this the new modern world we want to live (and buy cheap cars) in?



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Subheader ear worm wriggling?...This!


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Will Rare Outbreaks Become More Commonplace And Widespread?

KillingPublicHealth

ToSaveItVille

The first very unfortunate case of polio has been detected in the United States in almost a decade:

A case of polio has been detected in New York, the first instance of the virus in almost a decade.

The case was confirmed in a resident of Rockland County, about 36 miles north of New York City, the first case since 2013, according to the state and county health departments.

The patient is no longer considered contagious, the AP reports, but has developed paralysis. The patient was unvaccinated, the CDC reports.

Tests run by the state health department's lab, and confirmed by the CDC, showed that the patient had contracted a strain of polio likely derived from an oral polio vaccine, which are no longer administered in the U.S...

Will such outbreaks become more commonplace and widespread in the States?

Well, if a certain intertwined cluster of litigious conservative organizations have their way that could very easily happen:

Through a wave of pandemic-related litigation, a trio of small but mighty conservative legal blocs has rolled back public health authority at the local, state and federal levels, recasting America's future battles against infectious diseases.

Galvanized by what they've characterized as an overreach of COVID-related health orders issued amid the pandemic, lawyers from the three overlapping spheres — conservative and libertarian think tanks, Republican state attorneys general, and religious liberty groups — are aggressively taking on public health mandates and the government agencies charged with protecting community health.

"I don't think these cases have ever been about public health," said Daniel Suhr, managing attorney for the Liberty Justice Center, a Chicago-based libertarian litigation group. "That's the arena where these decisions are being made, but it's the fundamental constitutional principles that underlie it that are an issue."

Through lawsuits filed around the country, or by simply wielding the threat of legal action, these loosely affiliated groups have targeted individual counties and states and, in some cases, set broader legal precedent...

And how do the legal beagles involved justify their actions?

...Several lawyers associated with these conservative groups told Kaiser Health News they did not think their work would have a negative effect on public health. "I honestly think the best way for them to preserve the ability to protect the public health is to do it well, and to respect people's rights while you do it," said Becket (Law)'s (Mark) Rienzi...

Given the radical transformation of the US'ian judiciary recently this is a very scary situation, indeed.

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It will be most interesting to see if things in Canada move from the scream-a-thons to litigation anytime soon...Not sure such a strategy will gain as much traction here.

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HST Fridays...Why Smear Now?

SmearEarly

SmearOftenVille

"He was sunk in despair. He was desperate... he called his equally depressed campaign manager and instructed him to.....accuse his high-riding opponent (the pig farmer) of having routine carnal knowledge of his barnyard sows, despite the pleas of his wife and children... His campaign manager was shocked. 'We can't say that, Lyndon,' he said. 'It's not true.' 'Of course it's not,' Johnson barked at him, 'but let's make the bastard deny it.'..."

Hunter Thompson, on Lyndon Johnson's 1948 Congressional Campaign.

****

Well, whadd'ya know...

Kevin Falcon got a local proMedia maven to bite and try and force David Eby to deny a baseless smear recently.

Charlie Smith has the story in the Georgia Straight:

In a recent Global B.C. News interview with Paul Haysom, NDP leadership candidate David Eby was asked to respond to a quote from the leader of the B.C. Liberals...

{snip}

..."If you look at crime, for example, his catch-and-release program, you know, he's been running as attorney general since day one has been a disaster," Falcon declared...

Of course, this is ridiculous on its face given the role of the Attorney General in this province as Mr. Smith clearly points out in his piece.

But that doesn't mean that Mr. Falcon will cease and desist:

...The B.C. Liberal leader reiterated this message today (July 21) on The Early Edition on CBC Radio One.

Again, he used the phrase "catch-and-release" to describe Eby's record as attorney general...

All of which begs the question, which is 'Why?'

Not 'why' as in 'why is Mr. Falcon doing this?', given that the smear is has been part of the BC Liberal Party stock and trade for some time now.


Instead, I think the real question is, 'why now?' given that Mr. Eby has not even been elected BCNDP leader yet?

Is it possible that Falcon is out on the hustings bleating demonstrable codswallop precisely because Mr. Eby is the horse the BCL braintrust (still?) fears most and thus wants to face as the real, actual Dipper leader?

If that was the case it could explain Mr. Falcon's Canuckletteresque 'catch and release' /'soft on crime' strategy.

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One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other.

ThisDeanIsNo

MoriarityVille

After writing a column describing David Eby's efforts, and numerous accomplishments, as an MLA, first as a member of the opposition and later as a member of the cabinet, Vaughn Palmer has the following to say, sans receipts:

"...Like other brilliant, driven individuals, Eby does not come across as a team player..."

In contrast, Charlie Smith, brings those missing receipts, all 48 of them:

"...David Eby became the first candidate to enter the B.C. NDP leadership race. And he has the support of 48 members of his caucus, making it practically inevitable that he will succeed John Horgan as party's leader..."

Imagine that.



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Shrewdness Or Conviction?

BattlingTops

OfThePoliticalPopsVille

Writing in the Georgia Straight yesterday, Charlie Smith suggested that a provincial election race between David Eby and Kevin Falcon could become a battle of Millenial vs. Boomer voters.

It's an interesting piece, although it does leave out any analysis of which way the Alex P. Keaton vote will swing (there, I fear, Mr. Falcon may have the advantage). 

Regardless, the one graph in Mr. Smith's piece I do take issue with is the following:

"...Eby, more than anyone, is shrewd enough to realize that many millennials are far more interested in racial and gender equality than preceding generations, who sometimes mouthed all the right platitudes but retained control through their mostly white old-boys’ clubs..."

Why do I have a problem with that?

Because, based on Mr. Eby's track record, I think his views on equality have much more to do with conviction than shrewdness.

Which is just one of the reasons this boomer would (will?) likely vote for him.



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Subheader....Given that Eby was born the year punk broke and Falcon in '63, I reckon that, despite the age gap, they both must have played the greatest first day after Christmas (because that's how long it would last) game of all times at least once (It's all  in the wrist action!)...

Of course, if Mr. E. manages to mobilize the Z's, province-wide (which he has done locally in the past), well...

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Don't Know What You've Got Till It's Gone.

NotAllParadisesNeed

BePavedVille

_______

Update: Thanks to reader Graham for pointing out that the Cambie store is still very much alive as 'Video Cat'

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littler e. came by the house on the weekend to clean up a few remnants left behind in the closet of her old room.

Heckfire.  I should probably do that at my own parents' place where we left a bunch of stuff thirty years ago when C. and I took off for the Excited States with nothing more than that which we could stuff into the back of a 1981 Mazda GLC.

Anyway, while she was here e. found the following...

She figures I gave it to her so that she could ride her bike over to rent something a few (or more?) years ago.

I wasn't so sure about that but we did agree that somebody should have headed over to cash in on the free one we had coming...

Because it's too late now.

Darn.

We really should have gone sooner.

(and more often)

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One good thing...Black Dog's podcast is still going...The last in-store looked at 'High Fidelity'.


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Alberta's Happy Shiny Bauble People.

Alberta is putting taxpayer dollars down on the shiny bauble that is carbon capture and sequestration.

Meghan Potkins has the just barely above press release stenography story in the Financial Post/Postmedia:

Emissions Reduction Alberta (ERA) announced this week it would provide more than $40 million to 11 carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) projects across the province through its Carbon Capture Kickstart fund.

“What we’re really trying to do is catalyze a lot of the technical work that needs to be undertaken (to) actually see carbon capture technologies deployed,” ERA CEO Justin Riemer said in an interview with the Financial Post...

And why would the 'let the market decide' obsessed Alberta government (ostensibly) do such a thing?

Well...

...Nearly a dozen carbon capture projects from Alberta’s oilpatch and industrial sectors will receive an injection of cash from the provincial government aimed at accelerating the deployment of more than $20 billion in capital spending on emissions reduction...

But, as reader Bruce noted recently, it would appear that carbon capture, writ large, is worth pretty much absolutely nothing when it comes to reducing atmospheric CO2 emissions.

In other words, it's make-believe wrapped in PR speak designed to extend the life of fossil fuels, pure and simple.

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Down To The Water With Dogs.

AllYourSticks

'RHersVille


One lunch time in the third grade I 'forgot' my coat in the cloak room and tried to make it home in a downpour without getting soaked by sprinting from tree to tree up Monterey Avenue.

They're bigger now, but even back then there were many large, leafy oak and chestnut trees along that stretch of road.

Thus, I figured that my logic was impeccable and that my plan was perfect.

Boy, was I wrong on both counts - and my mother was not amused.

****

That memory came flooding back this morning while the Whackadoodle-II and I were well into our beach walk.

Suddenly, the ceiling came down, the sky grew dark, and it started pouring like it rarely does around here in mid-July.

So we sprinted for the trees, and the canopy kept us relatively dry...

For about three minutes.

After that, we gave up and I threw fetching sticks out into the water as we strolled back toward the car.

Boy, did we get soaked.

__________

The squall had pretty much passed as we approached the parking lot and came across the couple with the two big dogs that we see most weekends...The woman, who is very nice, said that both the W-II and I looked a little 'bedraggled'...Good word that, sounds like what it means... 

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A Harder, Meaner Gilead, Part II

SomeStatesRights
MakeWrongsVille

From Frances Stead Sellers and Fenit Nerappil in the Washington Post:

A woman with a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy sought emergency care at the University of Michigan Hospital after a doctor in her home state worried that the presence of a fetal heartbeat meant treating her might run afoul of new restrictions on abortion.

At one Kansas City, Mo., hospital, administrators temporarily required “pharmacist approval” before dispensing medications used to stop postpartum hemorrhages, because they can also be also used for abortions.

And in Wisconsin, a woman bled for more than 10 days from an incomplete miscarriage after emergency room staff would not remove the fetal tissue amid a confusing legal landscap ethat has roiled obstetric care...

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Part I is here...The prequel is here.

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HST Fridays...The Rolling Never Stopped For Sisyphus.

AsYour

AttorneyVille

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain... and it rolled right back down on us."

Hunter Thompson, New York Times, January 1, 1974.

****

The left cannot let go of Jan. 6. Indeed, it has fixated upon, exploited and exaggerated the riot to discredit and destroy the Trump presidency in the history books and to prevent Donald Trump from ever running or being elected president again.

Patrick Buchanan, Sioux City Journal, January 11, 2022

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And yes, I know Mr. Acosta when I see him, bare-handed or otherwise...It's just that I always thought that the Docktor's (real, non-Samoan) lawyer bore a vague resemblance to a certain Nixonian speechwriter.

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The Expediency, It Burns.

OManningMyManning
NotWhitmanVille


And here you may have thought that Mr. Poilievre was the most craven of all the CPC leadership candidates...

Link

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And, yes, you did read that (literally) right...Public policy pronouncements of one of our country's major political parties are now being funnelled through the 'Epoch Times'....



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A Harder, Meaner Gilead.

DystopianUberAlles

WannabeCommanderVille

In the run-up to the US'ian Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, I wrote a post called 'A Kinder, Gentler Gilead'. In that post I pointed out how a Republican-linked media wurlitzer organ published a piece in which the authors argued that, instead of prosecuting women and throwing them in jail for getting an abortion, they would instead subject them to mandatory psychiatric custody.

Well that was then (i.e. a month ago) and this now:

"Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita went on Fox News Wednesday night to say he is looking into the Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Caitlin Bernard, who provided a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio with an abortion.

“We're gathering the evidence as we speak, and we're going to fight this to the end, including looking at her licensure,” Rokita said. “If she failed to report it in Indiana, it's a crime for — to not report, to intentionally not report.”..."

That report was from Lizzie Kane et al. published in the Indiana Star at noon on Thursday.

Last night the paper posted the following update:

Late Thursday afternoon, IndyStar received a copy of the 10-year-old's terminated pregnancy report from the Indiana Department of Health. It shows that Bernard reported the abortion before the state's reporting deadline, and that Bernard indicated the 10-year-old had suffered abuse.

So.

To recap...

A young girl suffered the worst kind of abuse, one of the consequences of which was that she became pregnant.

Due to the Ohio law that was triggered by the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade she could get no help in her home state. As a result, her parents took her to Indiana where the law there made it possible for Dr. Bernard to help the young girl get the healthcare she needed that will make it possible for her to start moving on with the rest of her childhood. 

And the Attorney General of Indiana went after the Doctor concerned over an imaginary reporting infraction in an effort to demonstrate his bogus bonafides in New Gilead?



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He's Their Pusherman.

NeitherSuper

NorFlyVille

Whatever they need he'll get it for them.

Because he's their Pusherman.

And when it comes to the big lie, it turns out he's still pushing the hard stuff:

Former President Donald Trump is now desperately attempting to snatch Wisconsin from the jaws of his defeat by suddenly claiming he won the state in the 2020 presidential election.

He didn’t.

His reasoning? Since the Wisconsin state Supreme Court issued a ruling Friday sharply curtailing the number of drop boxes for absentee ballots, that must mean all the votes in those boxes in November 2020 were somehow fake — and apparently were all marked for victor Joe Biden...

Please note that the dateline on that story, from Mary Papenfuss in Huffpo, is July 8th, 2022 (i.e. last week).

****

Meanwhile, the Pusherman is sending his goons out to the most sketchy of media street corners to make sure that the customer base knows that the next batch of 'stuff' will have the biggest kick of all...

Trump’s attorney Christina Bobb tonight says things are in the works to overturn the 2020 election and possibly reinstate Trump. She says the plan is for 3 states to decertify their results and send resolutions to the next Congress after the midterms to overturn the results. pic.twitter.com/su99w9VmzW

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) July 9, 2022

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Regarding the header/post theme-induced earworm...Now is always a good time to listen to a little Curtis Mayfield.



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