THIS JUST HAPPENED

From the official White House Twitter/X account:

"CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!"
–President Donald J. Trump pic.twitter.com/IMr4tq0sMB

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 19, 2025

The Independent (UK) reports: 

Donald Trump declares himself ‘king’ after striking down New York congestion pricing 

Pride goeth before a fall.--Proverbs 16:18

What did I tell you just yesterday about the REIGN OF TRUMP?  What more proof do you want?  And just what will the Republicans have to say about this?  Just wait and see how they twist and turn, hem and haw, and try to laugh it off.  THEY HAVE NO BALLS.

But of course, that's just what they want:  an all-powerful king to completely remake American government and society, sweeping away all opposition.  And that's what a majority voted for, too.  Oh, what weeping and wailing there will be when their fantasy turns into nightmare.

So stop trying to figure out the whys and wherefores of shithead's pronouncements:  there's only one purpose to it all, and you see it in the picture above.  He wants to be the Emperor of America, from the North Pole to the Equator.  Meanwhile enriching his billionaire buddies beyond the dreams of avarice, to use an antique phrase, and getting endless praise for himself from millions of adoring fanatics or slaves.  (Just like the dick daddy dictators he admires so much - they are the father figures whose approval he desperately craves.)

THAT is his one and only ambition - limitless power and worship to fill the gaping hole where his soul ought to be.  And the gutless wonders in Congress are lapping it all up.  No one else in all of American history would have lasted five minutes in office if they put out something like the image above.  No one else in American history would have dared even to think of it.  But here we are.

Fasten your seat belts, boys - it's going to be a bumpy ride.

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Jealous Jackass Blames Buttigieg for D.C. Crash

"He was a DISASTER!"  And Meryl Streep is overrated, too. 

 

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Randy Rainbow: A Very Stable Genius

"A brilliantly vulgar tour de force!" -- Blue Truck, Red State

For comparison, here's a review of an even more vulgar performance in Helsinki:

"Disgraceful . . . pathetic . . . a tragic mistake . . . 

No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant." -- Sen. John McCain

Bonus: The New York Times today released a hilarious animation of Trump's sickly-sweet infatuation with Putin:



I understand that some toxic little queens are up in arms about "homophobia" here. Well, I am as gay as they come, and I say it is brilliant satire. Gay romance is merely the vehicle, not the object of the humor here. It is not directed at gay people, it's directed at a monumental buffoon and possible traitor.

Besides, on every gay website, gays themselves have been making this very same comparison, with drawings and cartoons, ever since Trump first declared himself a candidate. So chill out, girls, and go take a powder: you are just waaaaaaaaaaaaay over-sensitive.

Every satire contains a grain of truth - and who among us hasn't, sometime or other, fallen for a seductive, sexy bad boy who later turned out to be a sonofabitch?  You never will be mature human beings until you learn to laugh at yourselves - and that goes for all the other chip-on-the-shoulder groups as well, at all points on the spectrum.  Grow up, people.

CBO Report: 52 Million Uninsured by 2026

Embed from Getty Images

The Congressional Budget Office today released its estimate of the effects of the assoholic Republican healthcare plan: 14 million Americans would lose their health insurance in the coming year, leading to 52 million being uninsured by 2026, the Washington Post reports.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) responded to the report:




Ezra Klein in Vox, excerpt:

The Congressional Budget Office’s analysis of the GOP’s American Health Care Act is one of the most singularly devastating documents I’ve seen in American politics. For a thorough explanation of the findings, read Sarah Kliff’s explainer. But here is the one-sentence summary: Under the GOP’s bill, the more help you need, the less you get.

The AHCA would increase the uninsured population by about 24 million people — which is more people than live in New York state. But the raw numbers obscure the cruelty of the choices. The policy is particularly bad for the old, the sick, and the poor. It is particularly good for the rich, the young, and the healthy.

Here, in short, is what the AHCA does. The bill guts Medicaid, halves the value of Obamacare’s insurance subsidies, and allows insurers to charge older Americans 500 percent more than they charge young Americans.

Then it takes the subsidies that are left and reworks them to be worth less to the poor and the old, takes the insurers that are left and lets them change their plans to cover fewer medical expenses for the sick, and rewrites the tax code to offer hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts to the rich. As Dylan Matthews writes, it is an act of class warfare by the rich against the poor.

The result isn’t just 24 million fewer people with insurance: Of those who remain insured, the pool is tilted toward younger, healthier people who need help less, because many of the older, poorer people who need the most help can no longer afford insurance. As German Lopez notes, a 64-year-old making $26,500 would see his premiums rise by 750 percent. 750 percent! And with that 64-year-old gone, premiums are a little bit lower, because the pool is a little bit younger.

Let’s break that down. According to the CBO, the lower premiums Ryan celebrates (which are, mind you, only 10 percent lower after 10 years — and that’s after rising initially) are largely the product of driving older people out of the market and letting insurers offer plans that cover fewer medical expenses and require more out-of-pocket spending. This is not “lower premiums” as most Americans understand the term. . . .

But this is not fine. It is not decent, it is not compassionate, and it is not what Republicans promised. It is a betrayal of Donald Trump’s vow to protect Medicaid from cuts and to pass a health care bill that covers everyone with insurance that has lower deductibles and better coverage. It is a betrayal of Ryan’s promise to give Americans more choices — as it is only when you can afford insurance that you truly have the choice of which plan to buy. It is a betrayal of the older, rural voters who put Republicans in office and who will pay the most for heath insurance under this proposal.

The editorial board of USA Today writes:

The House GOP measure would greatly curtail the financial incentives for individuals to buy insurance on state exchanges while all but eliminating the penalties for not doing so. It would also scale back on Medicaid, the principal form of insurance for those on the bottom rungs of the income ladder.

The result would be bleak, if not horrific. One out of every 14 Americans who now has insurance would lose it over the next decade. The government's red ink would be reduced by $337 billion in the same period, but that would come largely by cutting assistance to poorer people while offering a whopping tax cut for families making more than $250,000 a year.

Given the CBO "scoring" of their bill, House Republicans ought to start over on their plan to repeal and replace Obamacare. Better yet, they should look for ways to retain and repair the current law. Instead, their initial reaction was to to blame the messenger by bad-mouthing the CBO.

Rep. David Brat, R-Va., for example, claimed that “the CBO has scored everything wrong, forever.” Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said "we disagree strenuously" and the CBO estimate is "just not believable."

Estimating the impact over time of any legislation is a Herculean task that does not always lend itself to perfect accuracy. But the CBO has long had a better track record than the Office of Management and Budget, which is under the control of the White House.

Republicans have traditionally been more supportive of the CBO, using it to counter more rosy estimates made by the Clinton and Obama administrations. What's more, when Republicans took control of both chamber of Congress in 2015, they dumped the longtime and well-respected director of the CBO, Douglas Elmendorf, and replaced him with Keith Hall, a proponent of "dynamic" scoring methods that generally see GOP proposals in a more favorable light.

Attacking the CBO now will only strengthen the argument that President Trump and his backers on Capitol Hill live in a world of alternative facts and relative truths. A superior approach would be to come up with a way to actually improve the nation’s health care system.

FYI, last week CNN reported the salaries of the top executives in the health insurance industry:

Aetna (AET) CEO Mark Bertolini received $17.3 million in 2015, the most recent year for which compensation has been reported. Cigna CEO David Cordani made the same amount. UnitedHealth (UNH) CEO Stephen Hemsley had total compensation of $14.5 million, while Anthem (ANTM) CEO Joseph Swedish received $13.6 million. Humana CEO Bruce Broussard received $10.3 million.

This is so wrong.

Sad . . . Failing . . . Dumb!

The New York Times yesterday published a two-page spread listing all 281 people, places, and things that Trump has dissed (from once to many times) since he began running for president.  Remarkable evidence of a 10-year-old's mind at work.  I imagine in many circles, people are anxiously scanning the list for their own names - perhaps they will consider a diss by Trump to be a badge of honor, rather like being named on Nixon's enemies list was, once upon a time. 

Click here to view the whole list.

Who Would Jesus Tow?

The Good Samaritan, Eugene Delacroix, 1849.

From the Washington Post:

Ken Shupe responded to a woman who was stranded on an interstate in North Carolina on Monday. Shupe is a tow truck driver; the woman had been involved in a wreck, according to reports.

But when Shupe arrived, he noticed something about the woman's car — specifically, he noticed that the woman was a supporter of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, according to Fox Carolina. . .

"When he saw 'a bunch of Bernie Sanders stuff' he said he told the woman, 'very politely,' " that he could not "tow her car because she was 'obviously a socialist' and advised her to 'call the government' for a tow." . . .

"Something came over me, I think the Lord came to me, and he just said get in the truck and leave," Shupe told an ABC affiliate. "And when I got in my truck, you know, I was so proud, because I felt like I finally drew a line in the sand and stood up for what I believed."

According to Fox Carolina, Shupe identified himself as a conservative Christian who supports Donald Trump.

This Says It All

From the New Yorker, February 1:

"Bad Reception" by Barry Blitt

Separated at Birth: Bunker & Trump

Not to be outdone by the Brits, who have only a smattering of genuinely ludicrous pols, America has turned its entire electoral system into a sitcom. As witness this brilliant comparison, and I only wonder why someone hasn't done it before now.  Not embeddable, and autoplay will start when you click the link - but totally worth watching.

And don't miss Trump's magnificent campaign song, "How Great I Am," over at Wounded Bird.


P.S. - Yes, children, this really was a thing way back there in 1972 - ah, those were the days:

How Gay Obama Is Destroying America

From Free Press Houston via Joe.My.God.: anti-immigration protesters in Houston last week sound off about that homosexual boyfriend-killer Obama in league with the flood of gays, Chinese, Mexicans, and Muslim jihadists coming across the border to destroy America. A few pro-immigration protesters are also interviewed.




Why, even our embassies abroad fly the rainbow flag, and we have a bunch of queer ambassadors - isn't that terrible?! So God just might nuke America into oblivion any day now, says Houston pastor Rick Scarborough, for the evil, wicked, detestable sin of loving the gays:




Funny how all those liberty-loving, flag-waving, right-wing patriots, as soon as you take the whip and the rod out of their hands, they want to destroy "this great country" that they have always professed to love so dearly - isn't it? If they don't control it, they want to see it smashed to pieces, and then gloat over the smoldering ruins. A fine Christian attitude, ain't it boys?

The $200 Million Conspiracy to Shut Down the U.S. Government

Lucidly explained by Rachel and well worth your time, if you can stand the sheer horror of it:

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Update, 2:20 p.m.: Andrew Sullivan, via Joe.My.God.:

There is effectively no Republican party any more. There is a radical movement to destroy the modern American state and eviscerate its institutions in favor of restoring a mythical, elysian, majority-white, nineteenth-century past. This crisis is proving that more powerfully than even watching Fox. We need to see what is in front of our nose: a cold civil war has broken out between those properly called conservatives, defending the credit of the government, empirical reality, and adjustments to modern life and those properly called radical reactionaries declaring our current elected president and Senate as illegitimate actors, bent on the destruction of America, and therefore necessitating total political warfare, even to the point of threatening to destroy the global economy.

Update, 8:30 p.m.: Obama says he's "not paying a ransom" to Republicans who are "out of touch with reality":

Flag Desecration?

The good citizens of Mufreesboro, Tennessee, or some of them at least, are all het up over the display of a rainbow-striped flag at Middle Tennessee State University there. WTVF in Nashville reports:

NewsChannel5.com | Nashville News, Weather


Jesus mercy - we're still having this kind of argument in 2013.

I'd be willing to bet any amount of money, however, that those same upstanding patriots who are all hot and bothered over the rainbow would swear that the following is not a desecration of the American flag:

Demonstrators at the so-called Tax Day Revolt in Washington, D.C., in 2010, carrying 13-star American flags with a  prominent "II" in the middle of the circle, signifying a call for a "Second American Revolution" to overthrow the government of the United States - using the sacred right to own as many damn guns as you please, and as big as you please, enshrined in the Second Amendment.

Update, 10/8: The rainbow flag was stolen from the MTSU library display on Sunday, but campus cops tracked down the thief - a student - and returned the flag to the MT Lambda group on Tuesday.

It's Not Just a Political Fight - It's a Consitutional Crisis

Tea Partiers at the Capitol, 2011

Jonathan Chait writes a chillingly perceptive analysis of the constitutional crisis at the heart of the shutdown impasse - excerpt from New York Magazine:

Traditionally, when American politics encountered the problem of divided government— when, say, Nixon and Eisenhower encountered Democratic Congresses, or Bill Clinton a Republican one—one of two things happened. Either both sides found enough incentives to work together despite their differences, or there was what we used to recognize as the only alternative: gridlock. Gridlock is what most of us expected after the last election produced a Democratic president and Republican House. Washington would drudge on; it would be hard to get anything done, but also hard to undo anything. Days after the election, John Boehner, no doubt anticipating things would carry on as always, said, “Obamacare is the law of the land.”

Instead, to the slowly unfolding horror of the Obama administration and even some segments of the Republican Party, the GOP decided that the alternative to finding common ground with the president did not have to be mere gridlock. It could force the president to enact its agenda. In January, Boehner told his colleagues he’d abandon all policy negotiations with the White House. Later that spring, House Republicans extended the freeze-out to the Democratic-­majority Senate, which has since issued (as of press time) eighteen futile pleas for budget negotiations. Their plan has been to carry out their agenda by using what they call “leverage” or “forcing events” to threaten economic and social harm and thereby extract concessions from President Obama without needing to make any policy concessions in return. Paul Ryan offered the most candid admission of his party’s determined use of non-electoral power: “The reason this debt-limit fight is different is we don’t have an election around the corner where we feel we are going to win and fix it ourselves,” he said at the end of September. “We are stuck with this government another three years.”

Last Tuesday, House Republicans shut down the federal government, demanding that Obama abolish his health-care reform in a tactically reckless gamble that most of the party feared but could not prevent. More surreal, perhaps, were the conditions they issued in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling later this month. Lifting the debt ceiling, a vestigial ritual in which Congress votes to approve payment of the debts it has already incurred, is almost a symbolic event, except that not doing it would wreak unpredictable and possibly enormous worldwide economic havoc. (Obama’s Treasury Department has compared the impact of a debt breach to the failure of Lehman Brothers.) The hostage letter House Republicans released brimmed with megalomaniacal ambition. If he wanted to avoid economic ruin, Republicans said, Obama would submit to a delay of health-care reform, plus tax-rate cuts, enactment of offshore drilling, approval of the Keystone pipeline, deregulation of Wall Street, and Medicare cuts, to name but a few demands. Republicans hardly pretended to believe Obama would accede to the entire list (a set of demands that amounted to the retroactive election of Mitt Romney), but the hubris was startling in and of itself.

The debt ceiling turns out to be unexploded ordnance lying around the American form of government. Only custom or moral compunction stops the opposition party from using it to nullify the president’s powers, or, for that matter, the president from using it to nullify Congress’s. (Obama could, theoretically, threaten to veto a debt ceiling hike unless Congress attaches it to the creation of single-payer health insurance.) To weaponize the debt ceiling, you must be willing to inflict harm on millions of innocent people. It is a shockingly powerful self-destruct button built into our very system of government, but only useful for the most ideologically hardened or borderline sociopathic. But it turns out to be the perfect tool for the contemporary GOP: a party large enough to control a chamber of Congress yet too small to win the presidency, and infused with a dangerous, millenarian combination of overheated Randian paranoia and fully justified fear of adverse demographic trends. The only thing that limits the debt ceiling’s potency at the moment is the widespread suspicion that Boehner is too old school, too lacking in the Leninist will to power that fires his newer co-partisans, to actually carry out his threat. (He has suggested as much to some colleagues in private.) Boehner himself is thus the one weak link in the House Republicans’ ability to carry out a kind of rolling coup against the Obama administration. Unfortunately, Boehner’s control of his chamber is tenuous enough that, like the ailing monarch of a crumbling regime, it’s impossible to strike an agreement with him in full security it will be carried out.

In this context, it's also very informative to read the report just issued by Democracy Corps, entitled "Inside the GOP: Report on focus groups with Evangelical, Tea Party, and moderate Republicans." Read a short summary here, or the full report (pdf, 1.2 mb) here. Excerpts [edited by your Head Trucker to eliminate obvious typos]:

Unifying all Republicans is their revulsion toward big government. That revulsion involves three distinct strands of thinking – two of which take the Republican Party into realms of preoccupation that threaten to marginalize the party.

The first strand is big programs, spending, and regulations that undermine business. That is pretty straightforward and is hardly surprising. That is probably the dominant strand among the moderates who long for a fiscally conservative and focused Republican Party. . . . The second strand is a concern with intrusive government that invades their privacy, diminishes their rights and freedoms, and threatens the Constitution. Those worries are dominant among the Tea Party, though not exclusively. . . .

And the third is the most important and elicits the most passions among Evangelicals and Tea Party Republicans – that big government is meant to create rights and dependency and electoral support from mostly minorities who will reward the Democratic Party with their votes.

The Democratic Party [in their view] exists to create programs and dependency – the food stamp hammock, entitlements, the 47 percent. And on the horizon—comprehensive immigration reform and Obamacare. Citizenship for 12 million illegals and tens of millions getting free health care is the end of the road. These participants are very conscious of being white and valuing communities that are more likeminded; they freely describe these programs as meant to benefit minorities. This is about a Democratic Party expanding dependency among African Americans and Latinos, with electoral intent. . . .

Obamacare is the final blow. When Evangelicals talk about what is wrong in the country, Obamacare is first on their list and they see it as the embodiment of what is wrong in both the economy and American politics. In fact, when asked what she talks about most, one woman in Colorado replied, “Obamacare, hands down, around our house.” In Roanoke, it was the first thing mentioned when asked “what’s the hot topic in your world?” . . .

Evangelicals are a third of the Republican base; they are the biggest and most intense group: four-in-five are “strong” Republicans and straight ticket voters. Over three quarters are married and well over 90 percent are white. Their demographics – white, married, religious, and older – sets up a feeling that they are losing. They talk about how the dominant politics and cultures have encroached on their small towns, schools, and churches. What troubles them when they talk with friends, family, and fellow believers is Obamacare, guns, government encroachment, gay marriage, and “culture rot.” . . .

It used to be different, as illustrated by several men in Roanoke when describing their own towns.

It’s a little bubble. So everybody – it’s like a Lake Wobegon. Everybody is above average. Everybody is happy. Everybody is white. Everybody is middle class, whether or not they really are. Everybody looks that way. Everybody goes to the same pool. Everybody goes – there’s one library, one post office. Very homogenous. (Evangelical man, Roanoke)

And the point of departure for being a politically incorrect minority is what’s happening with the acceptance of homosexuality and the gay agenda.

Giving gay and lesbian citizens the right to marry the person they love can seriously harm them, and seriously harm the children that they are raising. (Evangelical man, Roanoke)

They’ve taken what I consider a religious union between a man and a woman – pardon my French – and bastardized it. (Evangelical man, Roanoke)

They believe the dominant national culture promotes homosexuality and makes this “minority” culturally “normal.” There is a conspiracy to push “the gay agenda.”

You see, fellas? Once again, it's all OUR fault. Of course.

You guys who don't live in a deep red state as I do should go read the whole report. It really lays bare the thinking of all these millions of your fellow citizens who are cheering as the government of the United States crumbles - the quotes could have been taken from any of my neighbors here out here on the prairie. It's not that modern culture is without flaws or above criticism - your Head Trucker has voiced his criticisms any number of times here in the Blue Truck -  but they seriously want to turn the clock back to a lily-white, straight-arrow, Bible-thumping, one-size-fits-all 1950 - and they will, too, if only they can find a way.

Just read it.  Before you wake up one morning to find yourself trapped in Mayberry.  Without a laugh track.

Show and Tell

Your Head Trucker has been given to understand that these particular images are very popular on that Facebook thing now, which I suppose must be something like television, only with still pictures, maybe? Never have used it myself, and see no need for it, but these are worth a look:

 

 

Anderson Cooper Exposes Pat Robertson

Earlier this week, televangelist and granddaddy-of-all-homophobes Pat Robertson said on his TV show that teh evil gays wear special rings that will cut your finger when you shake hands with them, giving you AIDS - which of course is murder. The clip was on YouTube, but Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network had it yanked after a furor arose over his shitheaded comments.

But now the essential part of the clip - and some other choice moments of fatuous bigotry - have been preserved forever in this edition of Cooper's Ridiculist:





Jonathan Capehart, columnist for the Washington Post, says it's time for real Christians to speak out against this kind of homophobia and tell Robertson and his ilk to "stuff it":

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Christianists Boo Gay Marine Vet Eric Alva

I am so fucking tired of these ignorant, self-righteous creeps who spew their hate and bigotry in the name of God.  From the Dallas Voice:

Anti-gay protesters reportedly booed a gay Marine veteran who lost his leg in the Iraq War while he was speaking in favor of a nondiscrimination ordinance at a San Antonio City Council meeting on Wednesday night. At a prayer vigil outside City Hall before the meeting, about 300 people protested the proposed addition to San Antonio’s nondiscrimination law that would add protections for sexual orientation, gender identity and veteran status.

“Let them vote ‘no’ to this ordinance, and ‘yes’ to the reign of the kingdom of God,” Pastor Charles Flowers said at the rally. About 200 people signed up to speak at the City Council meeting for and against the ordinance. Alva, a Marine staff sergeant who became the first U.S. soldier injured in Iraq when he stepped on a landmine, was booed by the crowd when he spoke in favor of the ordinance. Alva lives in San Antonio.

“To all you people that preach the word of God, shame on you because God loves me, like the day I laid bleeding on the sands of Iraq and that’s why he saved me,” Alva said before he left the podium.

Alva wrote on his Facebook page later: “Well I just left city council chambers and I feel like crying. I have never seen a city so divided and hateful towards each other. All of man kind should be ashamed. I already spoke and even some of the religious groups even boo’ed me as I spoke. Such disrespect as they preach the word of God.”

The City Council is expected to vote on the ordinance on Sept. 5. A Change.org petition calls on San Antonio city council members to support the ordinance.

Below, Alva talks about losing his leg and coming out, on an episode of the Chris Matthews show in 2010:




Update, 6:15 p.m.: From Gawker via Joe.My.God., San Antonio city councilwoman Elisa Chan and her staffers caught on tape in a major homophobic rant, equating the "disgusting" gays to bestiality, incest, pedophilia, etc., etc. I listened to just the first two minutes, that was enough.

Why the Republicans Are Failing

Senator Graham's comment to the Washington Post, August 29, 2012.

Excerpt from an excellent post by Josh Marshall at TPM:

The Republican Party has a problem, but it is not one candidate; it is not packaging or branding; it is not messaging that is sinking the GOP. It is the core beliefs of the vast majority of Republicans.

Their problem is their war on women; war on gays; war on minorities. It is their war on science and math and logic and education and reality. It is listening to nuckle heads like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter and Donald Trump. It is allowing entertainers to determine the direction and policy positions of a major political party. It is following the teaching of extremist religions leaders like the US Catholic Bishops.

But most of all, it is the GOP’s utter lack of respect for anyone who is not like them; supporting an idiot obscure congressman who shouts “You lie” at the President of the United States during the State of the Union Address. Not repudiating truly crazy people who cling to the thumbless notion that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. It is supporting an insane governor who waves her finger publicly in the face of the President because he rejects her lunatic positions. When the GOP allows or supports these actions, they are condoning disrespect for the majority of Americans who are not aging white men.

Ultimately the Republicans now show Romney the same disrespect and loathing it has for anyone they don’t believe is part of the “Real America.”

That is why the GOP is failing. Not because Romney ran an unsuccessful campaign.

Lubbock Prepares for Invasion by United Nations

Well boys, the state of the world, and of this great country in particular, is mighty grim, yes it is. But there's one bright spot amid the gloom: the great metropolis of Lubbock, Texas, will not be caught napping in the event that all the forces of evil are unleashed by Obama's re-election this fall. I know you all are as worried about that as I am.

County Judge Tom Head, who presides over the county commissioners' meetings, is asking residents to approve his proposed increase in property taxes to hire more deputies to defend the county on the day when those blue-bonneted U.N. storm troopers come rolling across the plains. Here he is, speaking on the local Fox News channel:



Judge Head says he was quoted out of context, but danged if he didn't make the same remarks earlier in the week in a discussion with local talk-radio host Jeff Klotzman. Here's a transcript in English, for those of you who don't comprende the Texan:

Judge Head: "As County Judge I am the emergency management coordinator. As emergency management coordinator I have to think about the very worst thing that can happen and prepare for that and hope and pray for the best, OK? And in this political climate and financial climate, what is the very worst thing that can happen right now? Obama gets back in the White House. No. God forbid."

Jeff Klotzman: "That's the political aspect of this."

Judge Head: "OK. What's going to happen. Now I'm going to tell you my opinion, OK. Obama has put executive orders and whatever other documents his minions have filed. And regardless of whether the Republicans take over the Senate, which I hope they do, he is going to make the United States Congress and he's going to make the Constitution irrelevant. He's got his czars in place that don't answer to anybody. He's got his documents in place. They're going to be irrelevant.

"He is going to do what he wants to do. Now what do you think he is going to try to do in this next term? One of the things, my opinion. One of the things is he's going to try to give the sovereignty of the United States away to the United Nations. What do you think the public is going to do when that happens? We are talking civil unrest, civil disobedience, possibly, possibly civil war, OK? Now what happens? What happens? Now I'm not talking just talking riots here and there. I'm talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms, get rid of the dictator. OK, what do you think he is going to do when that happens? He is going to call in the UN troops, personnel carriers, tanks and weapons."

Jeff Klotzman: "I hope you don't have like a crystal ball you're looking into."

Judge Head: "Hey I've got to look at the worst case scenario, OK. I don't want UN coming into Lubbock County, so I'm going to be standing in front of their personnel carriers and say, 'You're not coming in here.' And I've asked the Sheriff. I said, 'Are you going to back me on this?' And he said, 'Yeah, I'm going to back you.' Well, I don't want a bunch of rookies back there who have no training and little equipment. I want seasoned veteran people who are trained that have got equipment. And even then, you know we may have two or three hundred deputies facing maybe a thousand UN troops. We may have to call out the militia.

But not to be outdone, them slick-talking Noo Yawk reporters ran over and got a-holt of the head honcho of the Yoonited Nashuns and asst him what time the invashun was a-going down. Well, not the head man, eggzackly, but one-a his gang members. An' he said:

"It's absolutely ridiculous," said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman, Martin Nesirky, when asked if the United Nations had any plans to invade Texas.

He later added: "No one, not even the United Nations, would ever mess with Texas."

Hmmm.   Them names sounds mighty suspishus to me, don't they to you?  And oh wow, think about this - a Russian guy speaking for a Chinese dude.  Dadblamed if that don't sound like somethin' straight out of Revelations!  It all fits perfect, don't it?  The Great Beast and the Image of the Beast.  Whoa! 

Of course you fellas are probly thinkin' whut I'm thinkin' - he would say that, wouldn't he? Iffen they really wuz plannin' on a invashun. Whooee boys, hang on to your hats! No tellin' whut's a-gonna happen next.

Goddamn, I'm just proud as I can be that we got one good man in Lubbock a-lookin' out for Texas! Yessiree bob. You got to get up purty damn early in the mornin' to fool a Texan. I tell you what.

Talking to Meteorologists

Via Towleroad, which reports on a brand-new Tumblr dedicated to this sort of thing: Talking to Doctors.


Update: Republicans Move Convention to Seventeenth Century.

Mr. Dorrinson added that despite recent controversy involving the U.S. Senate candidate Representative Todd Akin (R., Mo.), there would be no modification of the Party’s official platform: “After we ban abortion in cases of rape and incest, we’re going to focus on America’s spiralling witch problem.”

Middle Class Is Un-American

The New Yorker reports on the arrogant, thieving, high-Tory mindset of today's Republican Party, and their Orwellian attempts at corrupting the meaning of plain English - emphasis mine:

On the floor of the Senate this week, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican Minority Whip, criticized President Barack Obama for talking about the middle class. The mere phrase “middle class” — that most anodyne of demographic terms, the category to which half of all Americans polled identify, and into which Mitt Romney is always trying to shoehorn very, very wealthy people like himself — emerged, in Kyl’s evocation, as some kind of crazy-lefty bumper-sticker slogan. By alluding to “what he calls ‘the middle class,’ ” Kyl said, as though Obama had come up with the phrase, the President was “pitting these Americans” against the wealthy, “spreading economic resentment, and weaken[ing] American values and ideals.” Kyl went on: “We don’t need the current American President touring the country and defining every American’s values and status based on a class system that he’s made up. I don’t think there’s anything called middle-class values. I just think the whole discussion of class is wrong. It’s not what we do in America.”

Increasingly, it isn’t. Not if we’re in office or running for office, and especially not if we’re Republicans. America perpetuates a class system — and an income-inequality gap growing faster than that of most other countries — but American politicians try not to speak of it, because if they do, they get slimed. “What you could do for me,” President Obama told a group of Presidential historians in May, 2011, “is to help me find a way to discuss the issue of inequality without being accused of class warfare.” A year later, it takes even less to attract that particular charge, even as it takes more rhetorical chutzpah to get around the reality.

It’s remarkable how far to the right the acceptable political discourse about the haves and have-nots has shifted — or perhaps it’s just moved into the realm of denial. In the not-so-distant political past, it was considered reasonable for Republicans to allude to inequality and even vow to try to remedy it. In an excellent recent article in Rolling Stone about the contemporary Republican party’s extreme attachment to tax cuts for the rich, Tim Dickinson quotes a 1985 speech by Ronald Reagan, a speech that somebody — maybe Kyl — would surely be calling “class warfare” talk until he heard who’d made it. “We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share,” Reagan vowed, adding that they “sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10% of his salary—and that’s crazy." . . .

Why Everybody Says "Thank God for Mississippi"

Everybody in neighboring states, that is; Mississippi makes them look good by comparison.  Fifty years ago, as your Head Trucker well recalls, and perhaps even forty years ago, this would not have been news at all in most parts of the South:  just bidness as usual.

Yet though times have changed drastically for racial equality across the length and breadth of Dixie, there are even yet some pockets of resistance, as in Crystal Springs, a small town near Jackson, the capital of Mississippi.



If they feel that way about the blacks, just imagine how they feel about the queers.