Category: Politics

Give him a trophy and send him home

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Politics1 Comment

I’ve watched a lot of C-Span in the last couple of days, probably to the point where I can comfortably say I’ve spent more time watching C-Span in the last week than I’ve watched in my entire life leading up to this last week.

The problem, of course, is that the Republican Party’s one major belief for my entire life is that government is fundamentally useless and isn’t any good for anything. And when you keep electing people who believe that, you aren’t electing people who actually have any good reason to go into office and govern well. That would prove their central premise wrong. They’re not going to do that. And right now it is abundantly fucking clear that the Republicans have sent at least 20 people in to office who have absolutely no interest in anything other than claiming Kevin McCarthy’s scalp. And since in Kevin McCarthy we have someone who has no principles other than his desire to be Speaker, and the Democrats don’t quite have enough people to get Hakeem Jeffries into office on their own, well … you get this.

The usual chatterers are chattering that oh this time it looks like there’s a deal, but I’ve got C-Span on while I’m writing this, and Matt Gaetz, who didn’t vote for the shitgibbon last round after voting for him in the other rounds today, just officially nominated him, so … there’s no deal. There’s not going to be a deal. You can’t negotiate with people whose only position is that you should not exist. And the nutcase rump of the Republican party’s only position is that Kevin McCarthy shouldn’t be Speaker, so there’s no deal he can put forward that will assuage that. It’s not going to happen.

(Now that I’ve said that, he’ll win this round, of course, because I am never right about politics. But it will be super fun to watch the insurrectionists vote against the shitgibbon.)

This is round eleven, and so far we have not seen six Republicans willing to cross the aisle and vote for Jefferies, nor have we seen the necessary number agree to vote present so that the guy who has won every single round of voting so far can be named Speaker.

There’s somebody else up doing nominations right now, so the Not Kevins can’t even decide on which Not Kevin to stand up behind, because it doesn’t matter.

Whee.

Oh, sure

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics4 Comments

The richest man in the world can buy a social network relied upon by millions of people and reduce it to a flaming wreck in two weeks for the lulz, but if you publicly express the entirely reasonable hope that he dies broke, this happens:

LOL, fuck Elon Musk. The awesome thing is that this will auto-post to Twitter and the image will show up anyway.

On Ron DeSantis

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics2 Comments

If he decides to run for President in 2024, he’s an utter fucking idiot.

I’m at my aunt’s house overnight, and CNN or MSNBC has been on for literally every second I’ve been in the house, so I’ve watched more TV in the last six hours than in the last six weeks. And there’s been a lot of chatter about the coming civil war in the Republican Party between the shitgibbon and Ron DeSantis.

DeSantis is— holy shit— only 44 years old, and he’s a moron if he runs in 2024. Why? Because assuming he hasn’t had the stroke or heart attack that he so richly deserves or been locked in jail until he dies, DeSantis will have to get past the shitgibbon to get the nomination. There is every chance that if he wins that that stupid orange bastard will keep running against him anyway just out of spite, and he’ll lose.

If he waits until 2028, he will be 50– still young. And, very likely, one of two things will have happened: either Joe Biden will have finished his second term, or the shitgibbon will have finished his. Taking up the mantle as the party’s heir apparent in 2028 makes much more sense than trying it in ‘24.

Now, of course, there’s talk that Biden won’t run again. If that happens all bets are off, but for better or for worse I don’t think it’s likely. Hell, I don’t want the guy in office anyway, and for my money the best possible result would be for DeSantis to win the ‘24 R primary and then the shitgibbon to decide to run as an independent. We’d win 45 states and it would be fucking hilarious. But that doesn’t change the fact that it is objectively stupid for him to run in 2024. Keep fucking Florida, dude.

It is 10:30

On By Luther M. SilerIn PoliticsLeave a comment

…and I have not yet lost my mind.

I’ll take it.

Tomorrow

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics1 Comment

There’s a midterm election tomorrow; you may have heard about it. I voted a couple of weeks ago and other than maybe to get a Covid booster in advance of starting my new job next week and running the boy to and from school I don’t plan to leave the house. I make no predictions about anything at all other than strongly suspecting that virtually no one I, personally, voted for will win. Frankly, if anybody I voted for other than my School Board candidate (who is the incumbent and thus can be presumed to be the favorite) it will mean that the Democrats are having a spectacular night.

I would like a spectacular night, but … well, you know what my faith in America looks like right now.

I plan to spend as much of the day either away from the internet or recording Bloodborne episodes— I’m not going to be done airing them by the time God of War: Ragnarok comes out, but I’d like to have the recording finished by then. Once the polls close around here I will probably begin the process of slowly losing my mind, so go find me on Twitter, unless I manage to aggravate Elon Musk into banning me tonight.

Maybe ought to take a brain pill tonight, too, while I’m at it. In the meantime … I don’t have to tell you to make sure you vote tomorrow, right?

I dunno

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics2 Comments

As if we needed a reminder that 2016 is somehow still alive and kicking, and there are more calamities yet to come, the Queen is dead.

And I have no earthly idea how to feel about it.

As a God Damn American, of course, I don’t have to feel a thing about it. We made our feelings about monarchy well known in 1776 and in my lifetime I’ve seen no reason to revisit them, and at least for me the most intellectually interesting thing about this comes from wondering what exactly would have to take place to shut down the entire British monarchy. Twitter has been on fire all day, particularly Irish Twitter, and I have no beef with anyone who has chosen to spend their day gleefully shitting all over the entire establishment. This lady, to put it mildly, bears responsibility for a whole lot of genuinely terrible shit. I don’t need to give examples; they’re not hard to find right now.

Then again, she’s been Queen for literally my entire fucking life, and if I’m being honest I have some trouble reconciling the kindly-looking old lady in the brightly colored outfits that she has been for as long as I’ve been aware of her with the History’s Greatest Monster treatment she’s been getting online, and it’s weird to me to acknowledge the fact that it feels like we’re talking about two different people. Intellectually I know better, of course. I get that that’s a weird thing to say. But it’s how I’m reacting.

I’m not in mourning; I’m not going to miss her. I spend very, very little time thinking about the monarchy. I would be happier if it were gone, but my wife pointed out during dinner tonight that King Charles, who is 198 years old, an actual vampire, and is somehow this woman’s son, is going to be the first full-blown figurehead on the throne, and that’s kinda close enough? Take most of his money, turn Buckingham Palace into a museum, and let him cut ribbons at department store openings until he inevitably dies on the throne six months from now. But I don’t think it’s unfair to say that one of if not the most influential figures of the twentieth century passed away today, and that’s worth taking some time to reflect upon.

In which you’ve got to be kidding me

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics1 Comment

My Congresswoman, an odious creature by the name of Jackie Walorski, died unexpectedly in a car accident several weeks ago. The way things work in Indiana is that if someone in office dies there has to be a special election to fill the seat no matter how little time is left in the term, but depending on the timing, the special election can be the same day as the general election, and there are no primaries– the parties just name their candidates by whatever means they choose. So the Democrats nominated the guy who already had the nomination for the general election, and the Republicans just named both a candidate for the special election (the winner will serve for about two months) and for the general. It is reasonable to assume that the same person will end up winning both, of course, but you never know.

A quick detour. You may recall a movie from the mid-nineties about a Notre Dame football walk-on named Rudy Ruettinger. Parts of it were actually filmed in my high school, and there are a handful of my classmates here and there filling out background/extra roles. Sean Astin starred as Rudy. This is the logo for the film:

The Republicans chose their candidate sometime in the last day or two. His name is Rudy Yakym. I have briefly perused his website and he appears to be a nutcase; there’s a bit on there about ending persecution of Christians, so we’re in genuine shithouse rat territory here and I’m super excited for the Republicans to be getting worse again.

Scroll slowly, here. Take a second, take all this in, and picture this guy’s campaign logo. Go ahead. I’ll give you a minute to think about it. In fact, have a song:

Okay. You ready?

This is Rudy Yakym’s campaign logo:

Literally all my dude did was turn off the bold.

Fuckin’ embarrassing.

Fucking Christ, that’s enough

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics2 Comments

Damn near all of this is good news, one way or another, and you can imagine how jubilant I am that we might finally get a perp walk for that orange shitstain sometime in the near future. But all I can think about right now is Salman Rushdie. I don’t know why I haven’t seen the phrase “assassination attempt” used in any of the media accounts I’ve seen of the stabbing attack on him today, but the latest information I’ve seen (as of 8:23 PM) is that he may lose an eye, that the nerves in one arm were severed, and that he sustained damage to his liver as well. He is currently on a ventilator but I’m choosing to not read much into that given that he just came out of major surgery, and being on a vent after something like that is pretty much par for the course.

Initial reports (which may, of course, be wrong) suggest that his attacker is an Iranian sympathizer and he does not appear to have been provided with any security at the event where he was attacked. I don’t know how that happens. If he doesn’t make it through this it’s going to be the biggest loss to world culture since Lennon was killed.

I dunno, it’s got me fucked up. I hope he recovers. I can’t deal with Salman Rushdie being assassinated right now.

Out of town tomorrow for a birthday party in Indianapolis, and I’m back to work for real on Monday, so don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me on either or both days. The classroom is in decent shape (I’ll have all of Tuesday to finish it off; Monday is all meetings) but I’ve got a lot of writing and presentations to create so if I behave like an adult for the next couple of days I’ll be busy as hell.