Let’s Go Brandon
I agree that this is hilarious, though I believe it’s a prank or a joke, rather than a legitimate expression of grief over the Republicans’ poor performance at the midterms.
Tagged with: Let's Go Brandon
MAGA “Triggers”
Clever, but I’m surprised the artist didn’t include “environmentalists” and/or “climate change.”
Tagged with: environmentalists
Election Denying May Be Dead, Thank God
It appears that the practice of election denial may have run its course here in the U.S., as those who make baseless claims of massive voter fraud performed very poorly in the midterms.
Tagged with: Election Denying
Let the Market Call the Shots Wherever Possible
Perhaps environmentalists are cheering over the news presented here. But why use the power of government to accomplish something that the market itself would have implemented?
Are there people in France whose TGV trains run at 220 mph who want to go through airport security and wait an hour for their flight to circumvent a relatively short train ride?
Tagged with: environmentalists are cheering
Trump’s on His Way Out, and That’s a Function of Money
Twain’s thoughts here apply nicely to U.S. politics in the era of the Big Lie, QAnon, and all other related points of stupidity in American life. And, for a while, it appeared that this is what was keeping Trump afloat in our politics.
Now the issue seems to be less about arguing against idiots, and more about money. Here’s a theory: the reason that Trump is now, all of a sudden, being expelled from his position of power in the Republican party is that more money can be extracted from GOP donors in his absence than from his presence.
He’s sucked his MAGA donor base dry. Hateful morons contributed to his building the wall, to his baseless litigation of the stolen election, and now to his criminal defense, as he’s about to be ground into the pavement with dozens of different felony charges. But all that this has done is left tens of millions of idiots bereft of whatever money they had coming into this catastrophe.
Billionaires and huge corporations aren’t out of money. What they’re out of is patience with a political figure who has brought the Republican party to its knees.
Game, set, and match.
Tagged with: MAGA donor base
Then and Now
It’s true: the last 40 years have made us much safer in many ways that are quite important.
Sadly, this is counteracted by growing levels of ignorance.
Had COVID come along in the 1980s, we wouldn’t have had millions of people falsely claiming that vaccines were often lethal and part of a government plot to weaken the nation and enslave the population.
Tagged with: government plot to weaken the nation
Human Trafficking Solutions
I was recently asked to join the board of Human Trafficking Solutions, a group committed to eliminating modern-day slavery. Though this scourge on human civilization often goes unnoticed, it’s estimated that there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 million people globally who are illegally held against their will and forced to work in some capacity.
As a marketing guy, my job is helping the organization formulate and disseminate its message. Though I have no experience in this space whatsoever, marketing, in its essence, means the same thing in every application: Articulating how we address the unmet needs of the public.
Among people who are aware of it, slavery/sex trafficking is probably the single most repugnant feature of our world today. I’m quite certain that we can fashion a description of ourselves that awakens this outrage and translates it into positive action.
Tax Policies
Conservatives like this metaphor, because they don’t have a problem ignoring U.S. history and the unprecedentedly high standard of living that Americans had after World War II, when the tax rates for corporations and wealthy individuals were 90%.
Until Reagan changed all this in 1980, we had great schools, and a powerfully affluent middle class that enjoyed pleasant vacations. Now, three out of five Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
America First
Conservative forces in the United States have always sought to separate Americans as a people from those living in the rest of the world.
As we entered the nuclear age, many of our brightest minds pointed out that this was a terribly dangerous and stupid position to take.
Here we are, 75 years later, coming to terms with the fact that nuclear annihilation is no longer the only mass tragedy that can beset humankind; we are faced with a climate emergency that will, if left untreated, render vast regions of the planet uninhabitable.
Dealing with both these challenges require recognizing our common humanity, not “making America great again,” whatever that means.
Trump and the Republican Party–Going Separate Ways, But When?
My mom, a life-long Republican, asked me what I thought of the midterm election results, to which I replied, “My take is that the GOP is in an awkward transition period as it expels Trump and tries to re-establish itself as a sane and honest voice for traditional conservative values.”
That’s about the very nicest and most optimistic thing that can be said on the subject. It’s not untrue, but it’s wishful thinking in that it doesn’t take into account that:
• GOP leadership, though it is clearly turning against Trump, is insanely far to the right, and shows no signs of relenting. Anything that is remotely good for the common American gets 0.0% backing from congressional Republicans.
• Trump is having a tough time, but he’s far from gone. He enjoys immense levels of support in deeply red states, which means that the cowards these morons elect continue to be forced to back the traitor and pretend to believe the Big Lie. The cartoon above makes this like a fait accompli, but there are others that depict this in a different light altogether. My favorite: Siamese twins, Trump and an elephant, with a surgeon delivering the bad news, “It’s too late for separation. You’re going down together.” I expect the truth is somewhere in the middle.
• Of course it’s speculation, but is seems that Trump’s legal woes aren’t going to simply evaporate. The utter chaos that is going to accompany a bushel basket of criminal indictments is a wildcard the size of Alaska.
We’ll have to wait and see.
Tagged with: Trump and the Republican Party
