Want to send a message to far-right Hobby Lobby? Shop for arts and crafts at Michael's.

By Hal Brown

Archives on Right >

Why I was banned from Daily Kos

The national arts and crafts store chain Hobby Lobby and their Supreme Court case is in the news again. This is a good thing because hopefully it will lead to a Senate investigation of the religious bias of the Supreme Court in so-called "religious freedom" cases and cases where so-called "Christian values" come into play. 

Click above to read article

If you're reading this there a good chance that you have already decided that if you want to shop for arts and crafts supplies you will boycott Hobby Lobby in favor of the other national chain, Michael's, which carries the same products or a small independent store.

If you live in an urban or suburban area like I do in a Portland, Oregon suburb, both stores are nearby. If I drive for 15 minutes in one direction there's a Hobby Lobby and if I drive for 15 minutes in the opposite direction there's a Michael's. I have never set foot in the former and have shopped in the later about a dozen times.

The staff is always friendly and helpful. If I was a good reporter I'd check out a Hobby Lobby for actual comparison. I know I am letting my bias influence my imagination, but I envision a staff at Hobby Lobby having a glazed Mike Pence look in their eyes that suggests that they are working not for their bosses but for a higher power.

By Hal Brown using InPixio and BeFunky

A side issue: It is interesting how Christians have anthropomorphized God and Christ and how depicting Mohammad in art is a major point of contention in Islam.

You can find lots of artist renderings of Muhammad with a web search. This show the very human need to put a human face and form of their deities. This notion that a spiritual higher power, a being one worships and prays do, has no actual physical presence is something many religious can't conceive of. Perhaps this is behind the basis of Christianity which is that God sent his son in the human form of Christ to be his emissary on Earth. The belief held by some religious scholars that the historical Christ was merely a prophet is considered blasphemy by most Christians. 

In the Islamic religion Muhammad is considered to have been a divinely inspired prophet whose mission was to preach the monotheistic teachings of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets.

 

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If Kari Lake is Trump's VP he better get a better food taster.

 

By Hal Brown

Archives on Right >

Why I was banned from Daily Kos

Reading this article in The Bulwark prompted my writing this:

Currently there are two likely GOP candidates for president in 2024, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. Anybody but DeSantis seems like a long shot. In reverse order here's how The Washington Post ranked them last week.

10. Sen. Rick Scott

9. Gov. Chris Sununu 

8. Mike Pompeo

7. Nikki Haley

6. Sen. Ted Cruz

5. Sen. Tim Scott

4. Gov. Glenn Youngkin

3. Mike Pence

2. Donald Trump

1. Gov. Ron DeSantis

Honorable mentions: Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.), Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.), Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, Donald Trump Jr.

 

Previously on this list, at No. 6: Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who — like many MAGA candidates this cycle — ultimately lost her very winnable race and lagged much of her party on the same ballot.

It seems to me that between the front runners only one is fairly easy to suck up to. Not that DeSantis doesn't have an overblown ego, but Trump is the most susceptible to flattery. DeSantis would see through it and select his vice presidential choice as someone who would enhance his chances of winning.

If by some cruel cosmic joke Trump won and someone like Kari Lake was his vice president she'd be very different than the pious Mike Pence whose presidential ambitions faded when he proclaimed his devotion to Donald Trump.

Anyone on The Washington Post list could decide to attempt to curry Trump's favor so they'd be his vice presidential choice should he win the nomination.

Only one, Kari Lake, jumped out at me as being sociopathic enough to decide the quickest route to the presidency is the untimely demise of the president if she was next in line to be president. President Lake, has a ring to it...

Even though Trump hates losers, he also might find Kari Lake to have charms he can't resist. Who would want looking with adoration at him. Kari Lake, Nikki Haley, and Kristi Noem might be in close competition with each other. After all Trump think's he's God's gift women.

Forget about Ted Cruz.

He'd be likely to identify with Lake's doubling and tripling down on denying both the results of her own and more importantly his election.

She'd also be someone who would make a far better opening act at his rallies than posers like his older sons and Mr. Pillow. After all she shares a television background with him and knows how to talk to an audience through a camera.

The only drawback for her would be that he might find she upstages him. She'd have to be wary so she learns the lesson of being the opening act for a major star: be good but not that good. She could learn from reading "10 Opening Bands That Upstaged The Headliners.' Most of these bands went on to become headliners but she'd have to bide her time.

Would it be that "America the Beautiful" was really America the beautiful

by Hal Brown

Archives on Right >

Why I was banned from Daily Kos

All the photos below are mine. Click to enlarge them.

______

I looked with dismay at a map of 2022 House election results in a HuffPost article which had an interactive red/blue map.  The article was featured as the main story on their website:

It was the map not so much the expected loss of all but two members of the House losing their runs for reelection that got to me.

I live in western Oregon which is a Democratic area that occasionally elects Republican candidates but is mostly blue. 

My partner and I enjoy exploring the lovely countryside around where we live in a Portland suburb. 

From the rolling hills of Oregon's wine country (above) to the small towns with unique restaurants like The Scream'n Chicken in Gaston...

... to the Washington side of the mighty Columbia River we find both beauty and reminders that in some ways we are in alien territory. I took these photos on Washington's Rt. 14 along the Columbia River:

Below: These are in the town of Aurora which is known for its antique stores all in historic homes. We often eat at The Old Colony Pub there. These are two houses in Aurora which are across the street from each other.

We sometime find ourselves in hard-core MAGA areas. Once in a small town we ate in a restaurant where we could overhear a group of men debating which kinds of guns they preferred. 

In our own district five the highly qualified liberal Democrat t Jamie McLeod-Skinner lost a tight race to Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Thankfully Democrat Tina Kotek won a squeaker beating far-right candidate Christine Drazen and would-be spoiler independent Betsy Johnson for governor. This is a result of all the right-wing voters residing not only in the very rural parts of the state but also in some of our suburban areas.

Back to the national map...

Looking at it filled me with sadness. So much red and so little blue.  I live in western Oregon, clearly a Democratic area. 

Population centers around the country are blue but many beautiful scenic rural areas vote 60/40 GOP  

The verses of America the Beautiful came to mind. It is a song I think would be a better national anthem than a song about a War of 1812 battle and the US flag.  

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!

America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea! 

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness.

America! America!
God mend thine ev'ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life.

America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness,
And ev'ry gain divine.

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears.

America! America!
God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea. 

An anonymous blogger in a 2010 post said it as well as I could

Excerpts:

This is no new movement.  Although not the National Anthem, America The Beautiful is just as widely recognized by Americans, and has been called the most beloved of all American patriotic songs.   Quoting Lynn Sherr, ABC News correspondent and author of the book America the Beautiful: The Stirring True Story Behind Our Nation’s Favorite Song says this,  “I think it’s simple, I think it’s emotional, and I think it talks about a country, a land and its people — not just about a flag, not just about a battle.  It doesn’t talk about conquest. It talks about the possibilities of this nation.”

America The Beautiful was written in 1893 by Katharine Lee Bates – a thirty-three year old English professor from Wellesley College – as she traveled by train across our great nation.   Her inspiration was her awe for what she witnessed, very much like Francis Scott Key almost a century before.

Perhaps the preference comes down to whether you’re a “spacious skies” or a “bombs bursting in air” kind of person.

I'm a spacious skies kind of person. I wish more Americans were.

Poltico reminds us of "Things Donald Trump Did as President You Might Have Missed"

Poltico reminds us of "Things Donald Trump Did as President You Might Have Missed

By Hal Brown

I don't have much time to write this morning because I have to leave in an hour to head to the dermatologist for mohs surgery on the tip of my nose. This will be my third such surgery on my face but the others didn't worry me but this one does because of the location. Worry wart that I am I wonder how much of the lesion, and thus of my nose, will be needed to be removed and if I'll need a skin graft. 

I wonder if I'll end up looking like the Lee Marvin character in Cat Balou where he played both Kid Shelleen and Tim Strawn his villainous twin with the metal nose.

Update: My nose is still intact. The entire procedure took two hours as the first sample got all the squamous cancer cells.

Now to my subject. 

You hear Republicans being asked in the media about their opinions of Trump and while many of them lament his style they often praise his policies.

I wondered just what he and his administration actually did while they were in office. A simple web search came up with the Politico article from 2021:

30 Things Donald Trump Did as President You Might Have Missed

Trump’s presidency may be best remembered for its cataclysmic end. But his four years as president also changed real American policy in lasting ways, just more quietly. We asked POLITICO’s best-in-class policy reporters to recap some of the ways Trump changed the country while in office, for better or worse.

I don't have time to read it carefully but thought it was worth sharing. What jumped out at me was that among the anti-democratic and inhumane policies he foisted upon us there were some good things. The good things often happened inadvertently. 

There's an old saying that even Mussolini made the trains run on time though many elements of this have been debunked.

I woke to the nightclub shooting on TV: Thoughts about the MAGA demonization of being woke

I woke to the nightclub shooting on TV: Thoughts about the MAGA demonization of being woke

By Hal Brown

I try to write something every morning but may not post something until later if I post at all today. I have to leave soon to go for mohs surgery on the tip of my nose.

This is how Mirriam-Websters defines being woke:

Woke is now defined in this dictionary as “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice),” and identified as U.S. slang. It originated in African American English and gained more widespread use beginning in 2014 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. By the end of that same decade it was also being applied by some as a general pejorative for anyone who is or appears to be politically left-leaning.

By chance they used the image of the clock above. I literally woke to this news as I turned on my bedroom TV. I thought about the new meaning of woke.

I thought about how MAGA politicians campaign against "woke" and how it suits them to play into the hate fueled prejudices of bigots. They can use anti-LGBT code words and dog whistles but Republican governors with Republican legislatures can actually pass laws.

If you are the presumptive alternative to Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination everything you say or do will gain national media attention.

More than any other politician, and this includes Trump, Ron DeSantis epitomizes the anti-woke movement. Consider this HUFFPOST story:

This is from June, 2022:

After spending the last year attacking LGBTQ people, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) claimed that the state “will not tolerate hatred towards the LGBTQ” community “of any kind” as part of his proclamation on the anniversary of the Pulse shooting.

On June 12, 2016, 49 people were killed and 53 people were injured when a gunman opened fire on the LGBTQ nightclub in Orlando. June 12 has remained Pulse Remembrance Day in the state. DeSantis ordered flags in the state to be flown at half-mast.

From the LGBTQ Nation story:

DeSantis is the ultimate hypocrite. He happily signed the "Don't Say Gay Law" while saying that “the state of Florida will not tolerate hatred towards the LGBTQ and Hispanic community of any kind, and together we stand united against terrorism and hate of any kind."

This is how DeSantis described his lopsided victory over Charlie Crist in his gerrymandered state:

“We fight the woke in the legislature. We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die.”

If the Colorado Springs shooting happened in Florida like the Pulse Nightclub shooting, I wonder how DeSantis would have been parsing his words in order to condemn it while sending the message to his anti-LGBT supporters that he didn't mean what he was saying.

I suppose he could dust off what he said after the Pulse Nightclub shootings and order flags to be flown at half-staff.

It is a shame worth crying over that the notion that "woke" has been applied to the political left because I'd like to believe that there are many people who consider themselves to be non-MAGA Republicans who believe in the percepts of being woke.

Feeling people are proud to be woke.

Update:

This was on Fox News:

Fox News expert links gay club shooting to 'elementary school' in wake of GOP 'anti-woke' laws

Excerpt:

"How do we tamp down hate crimes across the board?" Neville wondered. 

"I think it begins in our schools, our educational system," Rogers explained. "We have to do a lot of educating in elementary school with regard to, yeah, people may be different in your eyes but they're people, they're American citizens and they deserve to have the constitutional protections that all of us have."

"So, it begins at the elementary school level and we have to make sure that it continues throughout our entire lives," he added. "We need to stop the hateful rhetoric on the internet, by our politicians, by everyone! And we need to bring the temperature down and understand that, you know, we're all God's children and we have to respect each other."

And then there's her expression of feigned sympathy:

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