Actually, that’s not a road at all … it’s a long hard wash. Especially if you’re riding it uphill.
Holy hell — here we are, on the last Hump Day before Election Day, when we should get some idea about who’s going to get humped for the next two years, how, and by whom.
Doomscrolling is never a great idea, even in the best of times, which these are not. I do it anyway, of course, because once I was a journalist of sorts, kinda-sorta, and old habits — especially those of old scribes — die hard. This is particularly so when there’s a blog to feed.
Anyway.
In my wanderings around the nation’s main streets and back alleys I find a great deal of optimism about the midterms. Lots of celebration with time on the clock and yards between here and the goal line.
Keep hope alive, y’all. But let’s get to that end zone before we start dancing in it.
Consider this an open thread. Give us your hopes, dreams, and fears. But first — vote.
Not a great photo, but it gave me the idea for the headline, so … winning?
Ah, October in Duck!Burg. The temps have dropped, the rain has stopped, and the streets are alive with the cars of eejits.
I enjoyed a near miss on a fast descent the other day. I was braking (and signaling) for a left turn when a motorist halfway-rolls the stop sign at the street I planned to enter, glancing only to her left.
Well, shit. I’ve seen this movie and I don’t like the ending. Couldn’t turn in front of her, as I could have had she yielded the right of way at the stop sign. And I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of ripping the turn on her right side, because while she appeared to be about halfway into a left turn I couldn’t see if she had the left blinker on. The right most definitely was not on. And nobody in this town uses their turn signals anyway, not even the cops.
So I hit the binders, come to a stop, and shout “HEY!”
Well, then she saw me, if the deer-in-the-headlights look she pasted on her face was any indication. I was signaling my turn, wearing bright colors, and rocking a bright headlight as per usual, but if you don’t fucking look at me you won’t see any of that Sammy Safety shit.
I’m not big on driver education, what with everyone being armed these days, so rather than doing a war dance in my broken-down old Sidis I settled for the Universal Headshake of Disappointment — left, right, left, mmm, hmm, hmm, you stupid, stupid motorist — and went about my business. A cyclist has to keep the Third Eye wide open and way out on its stalk in these parts. Periscope up!
Speaking of feckin’ eejits, early voting began yesterday and we’re looking forward to receiving our ballots via uniformed federal employee and casting the moneychangers out of the national temple.
Unlike the Swamp Thing besmirching the Oval Orifice with its wet Mickey D’s farts we do not vote by mail, we just get our ballots that way. Then we fill them out at the kitchen table, screeching blasphemies as though the candidates were dumbass motorists rolling stop signs.
“Yeah, fuck you! Eat shit and die! That’s right! Go get a job in the private sector, you Brooks Brothers butt-kisser! Oh, wait, you can’t, because the private sector expects results!Boom! Now, piss off! Die, die, die!”
Etc.
Then we walk our ballots up to the neighborhood polling place and thank the workers for their service.
This year the herd-thinning process will be a breeze because anyone still claiming to be a Republican after two years of Swamp Thing v2.0 is not only a taco short of a combo plate but a clear and present danger to what little remains of the Republic. Christ knows the Democrats are bad enough.
But we don’t want to be hollering like that at our polling place. We don’t want to frighten any fainthearted types from the other team who may be coming, however belatedly, to their senses. The Republic needs all the help it can get.
A cold snap this week brought us a soupçon of snow and temps in the 20s, a superfluous reminder that mid-November is not always shorts weather, even in The Duck! City.
Speaking of truths that should be self-evident, The New York Timeshas a piece this morning explaining that calling elections rigged and their results fake probably isn’t the best way to drive your base to the polling place.
Casting doubt on the legitimacy of elections might be an effective tool for galvanizing true believers to participate in a primary — or, at its origins, to storm the U.S. Capitol in order to overturn a losing result. But it can be a lousy strategy when it comes to the paramount mission of any political campaign: to get the most votes.
“If you tell people that voting is hard, or voter fraud is rampant, or elections are rigged, it doesn’t make people more likely to participate,” said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonpartisan group that works with election officials to bolster trust and efficiency in voting. “Why would you want to play a game you thought was rigged?”
Plenty of people already think that their vote carries no weight, makes no difference. Maybe they’re blue voters in a red state — hey, been there, done that — or vice versa.
But when you make voting more difficult than it needs to be, tell the electorate that their ballots might get shitcanned to Area 51 by the Illuminati, and just generally waffle-stomp your own dingus into a thin paste, well … this doesn’t exactly encourage folks to take a seat at the table and ante up.
And if you don’t play, you can’t win.
On a related note, turnout might trend upward if some parties fielded candidates long on defensible policy and work ethic rather than screeching psycho knucklefuckers, pistol-packing “Red Dawn” wanna-bes, and vengeful bored man-babies.
Some movies you only need to watch once. Sequel not required.
“Only a bonehead would try to predict what happens next. So, yeah — ‘Reply hazy, try again later.'”
“What do you think about the election?” the waitress asked.
“I’m glad it’s over,” I replied.
It’s not, of course. And it won’t be for a while yet, maybe not until just before the 188th Congress gets sworn in on Jan. 3, 2023.
When we finally get there, more than a few of the noobs — and plenty of the holdovers — will kick off the session by lying through their artificially brightened teefers as they take the oath of office.
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
But before we cross that crumbling bridge over the Styx we have many a long, hard mile to walk, through a wall of sound that even Phil Spector would deem overwrought. Enduring the media’s dissection of the 2022 midterms will be like trudging through an animal shelter that takes in only werewolves, banshees, and howler monkeys, and whose keeper is La Llorona.
The National Kindergarten for the Criminally Insane may change hands after Jan. 3, but you probably won’t get bitten if you keep your hands away from the cage.
If the inmates do wind up in charge of the asylum, Sleepy Joe will get carpal tunnel from ripping their frantically scribbled Crayola fever dreams off the Capitol refrigerator. But he has a generous medical plan. And once he’s past the first few impeachments the rest of his shift shouldn’t be any worse than a casual lunch with Hannibal Lecter.
Speaking of lunch, the green chile chicken enchiladas at El Patio were delicious and the service cheery and superb, all as per usual. I paid my tab, left a preposterous tip, and took the scenic route home through the North Valley, with a brisk autumn wind robbing the trees of their gold.
“Bad morning, Mr. O’Grady. We trust your wait was unpleasant and overlong. Sauron will see you now.”
Looks like Mordor out there, doesn’t it?
High cloudiness robbed us of our full moon/total lunar eclipse this morning, and the Repugs will take everything else this evening, if you hew to the conventional wisdom.
Kevin Drum, who is a reasonable fellow for a lefty blogger, argues from time to time that the United States is a center-right country and that Democrats “need to moderate if they want to win over centrist voters.”
Maybe. But I think the Donks have been trying to be Repug Lite for a while now, to no particular purpose, and no matter how far they tiptoe to the right, they will always be at least one long goosestep behind.
“You got to put the kibble over where the slow dogs can get some,” as Roy Blount Jr. advised in “Why It Looks Like I Will Be the Next President of the United States, I Reckon.”
And the Donks do, bless their hearts. But it’s generally a sprinkle of some vegan non-GMO Oregon Tilth Certified Organic small-batch free-range hemp kibble, in a bespoke ceramic bowl, with 10 percent of the profits divided among Planned Parenthood, PETA, and the ACLU. And the marketing thereof — why this is a good thing and not just a stone saucer full of sawdust and spider webs — is polysyllabic and ponderous and even harder to swallow than the chow.
So the slow dogs bite the hand that feeds them, and then they scamper over to where the loud fella with the red tie is th’owin’ the raw meat on the ground.
Well sir, before long the slow dogs aren’t feeling so good and the national yard is a monument to canine intestinal distress and the loud fella with the red tie has wandered off somewhere to holler into a microphone about how everything’s gone to shit and the libs are to blame.
And so the libs trudge into the national yard with shovels and bags, clean up the mess and doctor the slow dogs while the loud fella with the red tie hollers at them through a bullhorn from the other side of the fence because that’s where the shit isn’t.
And before you can say “FREE DUMB!” the only thing any of the mutts can think about is how good that raw meat tasted.
