That’s One Polarizing Dude

It’s amazing.

It’s amazing.

From the article linked above:
A group of former Trump administration officials are banding together in an effort to block their former boss from entering office again.
The meeting of the group, announced by former White House press secretary and chief of staff to the first lady Stephanie Grisham (pictured), is scheduled for next week where they will discuss how to “try and stop” former President Donald Trump and the “kind of violence and rhetoric that has been talked about and continues to divide our country.” In an interview with CNN on the morning of Jan. 6, Grisham said about 15 former Trump administration officials — some she said, who ranked higher than her — have held informal discussions and plan to meet in person.
“I think that there were a few of us who, again, have been sitting back watching him continue to manipulate and spread this big lie and continue to harm our country,” Grisham told CNN. “And [we] started some informal chats and then started throwing around ideas of what we could do, how we could formalize it.”

Kidding aside, this is, unfortunately, the type of thing one sees in Texas.
The other day, I came across something similar from a candidate in New Hampshire, and I wrote to her, “New Hampshire??? Are you serious??? Your state ranks #6 in the nation in education. Half the state commutes to Boston. These voters aren’t ignorant pigs. If you want to succeed with hateful bull**** like this, you’ll need to take it to Alabama or Mississippi. They can’t get enough of this.”
In a report, entitled Correcting the Record: Maricopa County’s In-Depth Analysis of the Senate Inquiry, which was released Wednesday on the eve of the anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot attack, the largest county government in Arizona, Maricopa County, confirmed that the 2020 election was not impacted by fraud. (more…)

My father left college to rain bombs down on Germany’s oil refineries. Then he came home, finished school, married his sweetheart, sold real estate in the community of his birth, raised two kids, sent them to college, retired, and played golf.
Far from a unique story, it was a tale that played itself out all over the country in the middle and late part of the 20th Century.
Dad was a Republican, because of the conservative views he shared with so many others. I simply cannot imagine what he would think of present-day GOP politics and the near miss we just survived (it now appears), an attempt to overthrow the U.S. government.

Reader James sent me this, and, I have to say, it brought me that much closer to that most cynical of positions.

Anyone who has a problem with Proverbs 15:1 which reads: “A gentle answer turns away anger, but a harsh word stirs up wrath” has something wrong with him.
At the other end of the spectrum, however, we do run into trouble, as exemplified in the meme here.

In speaking with my mom last night, she thought this was outrageous. “You can’t not admit someone just because of a choice they made with respect to what to allow in his body!” she declared. (more…)

That’s the opening of a piece suggesting that right-wing extremism has brought us to the brink of the next U.S. civil war. It includes: Is a civil war really possible? One of America’s most pre-eminent scholars on civil wars and how they begin offers this blunt answer: Yes. In fact, we’re closer to one in our country than most Americans think, or are willing to believe. (more…)