especially may this be the year where not only do we wish for a happy new year, but we take active, clear steps towards one. We know Mueller is doing exactly that

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-names-budget-director-mick-mulvaney-as-acting-white-house-chief-of-staff/ar-BBQYafP?OCID=ansmsnnews11

OK, the executioner of social security hath arrived.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/24/budget-nominee-mulvaney-to-face-questions-about-trumps-plan-for-tax-cuts-and-spending/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.483d479696bd

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-mick-mulvaney-social-security_us_58877846e4b096b4a234a4a0

There are people with their heads full of confederate and aryan dreams that they would follow trump in a revolt. The Billionaires would back it. Russia would back it.

If they do, then the next time, we trash all the part about "malice toward none, charity towards all", because the CSA has been fighting their war long after 1865.

(When in doubt, use the Bard.)

Look, I can understand wanting to stay classy, wanting to show decorum and respect for the office, and indeed, towards a human being.

That being said, the honeyed words of some pundits and press are making me want to vomit. Nos, Bush was not some lost scion of some more dignified time. The GOP was always nasty, always willing to kill or imprison black and brown people, always willing to blow more of the national treasury on a war. He does not need to be sainted, or looked at wistfully.

As bad as trump is, we cannot forget he is merely reaping the fruits of seeds Reagan and his Lieutenant, Bush planted. Yes, Bush intended his son Jeb to run the plantation, but frankly, America no longer bothered to hide the fangs under it's mask. When I am Silver haired, I fully expect to see this honeyed praise on Trump, because the next idiot will either turn this nation into a bad version of "the handmaid's tale" , A Russian owned property, a Chinese owned property, or all three.

History is not blind, and despite the depictions of her, neither is Justice.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/bill-maher-outrage-stan-lee-comments-proves-my-point-1163378

Maher continued, "Yeah, fine. I am agnostic on Stan Lee. I don't read comic books. I didn't even read them when I was a child. What I was saying is, a culture that thinks that comic books and comic book movies are profound meditations on the human condition is a dumb fucking culture. And for people to get mad at that just proves my point."

OK Bill, first off, not this does not prove any point about a "dumb fucking culture." The fact is, for all the four color paint, these comics have addressed everything from Race to religion in a way that resonates with people, as opposed to a washed up comedian who needs to say fuck every three second on HBO to seem edgy. For someone that has never even tried to be highbrow, unlike your colleagues Penn Jilette (with his atheists books even Dick Dawkins says are great" to Jim Carrey (who became a great poltical commentator, someone get HIm a show), or even Matt and trey from "South Park" (who also got a Tony award for a musical) you have NEVER, EVER gone beyond your comfrt zone, they place where you knwo you can churn out the same sloppy schitck and get paid.

let me be honest, Nancy Pelosi has caused me equal measures of inspiration and frustration throughout the years. On the one hand, she seems very ready to take things off the table, and part of me keeps asking myself "Nancy, don't you realize of Republicans are just going to take the half loaf you brought home and will lead into crumbs before any of your starving constituents get so much as a nibble?" On the other hand, anyone who says that she did not pull off a minor miracle this year is a liar and a fool. No we did not get the Senate, but no one is calling for Chuck Schumer to lose his job. Just prying one of the houses of government out of Republican hands, despite latent shading, and directly trying to appeal to the worst of people, is a miracle. Therefore, despite fear that Nancy will once again give Republicans half the loaf from the onset, I think would be foolish not to let her the speaker.

He really does not help that the people calling for Nancy Pelosi's head are people who are out right blue dogs. AOC, the bane of middle-aged centrist everywhere, is not trying to take Nancy Pelosi's head. However, the people who did go ahead and try to get Nancy Pelosi fired our people who have waste that they can "work across the aisle."

Now let me be blunt, considering that the only people who want to get rid of Nancy Pelosi are the people who thought that she was to centrist, the sheer gall of the blue dogs trying to get rid of her is insane. We know that Trump is desperately seeking friends across the aisle because frankly he has betrayed too many of them on his own side. You know that many of the blue dogs going after Pelosi are the same people who will gladly chirp

Oh yes we have to go ahead and give Trump a wall, but look at all the people we're going to feed based on his breadcrumbs." If there is one thing people can agree on on, both millennial's and baby boomers, is that we know that these Benedict Arnold's have already rehearsed their lines, with all the greatest hits of the parade: "we have to do this for greater good," or "we have to get something done." And let's not forget the ever popular "keep us in office and maybe we will do something slightly leftward, maybe."

Sorry, but the people calling for Nancy Pelosi to go are not noble revolutionaries, they want power, and they see that even Nancy Pelosi is getting really tired of being nice. Thus the powers that be are going to do their best to make sure that some blue dog gets in position to ensure that things cannot get done, unless they are things that what used to be called centrist Republicans would approve of. No sale blue dogs, no sale fake revolutionaries.

https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/ruth-third-party-candidates-are-killing-me-20181109/

Sample:
However, nearly 100,000 Floridians with gruel for brains also voted for a litany of fringe candidates running for governor who had less chance of getting elected to the parliament of Fredonia, much less the top job in state government.

Now it is certainly true there is no way to know if the citizens who voted for these pre-doomed vanity candidates would have turned out on election day for either DeSantis or the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, had their preferred choice of Sad Sacks not been on the ballot. Or would they have even voted at all?

What we do know is 100,000 gormless souls simply threw their ballot and their voice away. And that’s the thing about democracy, one of its perverse charms perhaps. People have the unquestioned freedom to be dumber than a sack of mold spores on election day.

https://www.seattletimes.com/life/food-drink/resurgent-south-lake-union-still-awaiting-its-dinner-crowd/


This is why, for whatever good Amazon does in letting people afford and get things, they are limited by the foolish delusions of a mad self styled "genius". You cannot engineer a community. It is not like shipping items. Jeff Bezos is angry that no one stays in the evening. Well, when you have a workforce that is in the suburbs, which is trying to not get docked for being ten seconds late from lunch, exhausted from a commute, do you really expect them to WANT to become part of your "community?" They already spend a large portion of their lives at work, do you think they want to eat dinner there too?

Some corporate cultures act like they are your family, your community, but what they really want is to replace both. They cannot whip and chain people anymore, so they try to seduce. They want to be in the same place where your home and family are, to define the very idea of self. If this was the 60's that might have worked, as people were much more susceptible to utopian fantasies. The Levittowns, the communes, all that stuff both left and right preached. Well, Jeff, you got generations x thru Z to deal with, and all of them know that the job is just the farmer that fattens chickens until they can be fried. Those people making punch cards for lunch so they can scurry back to the cubicle in time will realize even high class fast food is just that, fast food for corporate drones. As far as high end dining, hell, even the better paid ones are dealing with high damned rent; I can imagine many relatives hearing how their son or daughter paid their debt off and got a high paying job, and then they will see they have a small apartment and still have to eat ramen twice a week to stay afloat.

Even the upper middle class in America is in so many ways, poor, poor in freedom to spend and save money, but also poor in community.

By the way, as someone who comes from a restaurant background, how the HELL did these chefs get so naive? No one wants to have dinner at their work, because it usually means they get the risk of the company dragging you in for overtime! Throw in the fact that many of the worker's family are sick of the fact their loved on spends most their life at the job, and now you want them to have dinner there? And the fact they tolerate the Amazon cops making sure they cannot close their business at night when they cannot make money, that is outright fascist!

PPS: Long Island, Virginia, you are so next. Watch those Mom and pop pizzerias die, Watch those Michelin star places die too, because Amazon will try to direct traffic to their new little town.

Hello Democratic underground! Last night, I was admittedly a mess. To see the hand picked stooge of our “president” when an election was bad enough. In typical Republican fashion, the “Victor” could not get 51% of the vote, hid behind questionable practices and counting said votes, and had a lot of help from third party candidates. We had no less than four of them, all of them doing their part to make sure that their egos were flattered, and that the GOP maintains its advice on our state. It was one thing preferred party voters to act in 2016, not by really give them much grace, because even if Hillary Clinton was to make her life’s work to be the very worst president in history, she still could not done a better job of that happened Donald J Trump. For the third party folks to continue their mayhem into the governor’s race just makes it clear that these people have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, but Hamilton called “a vested interest in disorder.”

However, despite the fact that my state showed very poorly for itself, there were some bright spots that we have to go ahead and remember, even though the GOP noise machine will try its best to make us sulk and cower. Think of the names of the people who left the stage, Brat, Kobach, Scott Walker. Yes governor’s mansions are not tasty treats Senate seats are, the part of the reason we are in our current predicament is because we did not pay as much attention to governorships, which is where politics make the leap from local to national. Also, let’s not forget that the house is indeed a great prize. I may not agree with our soon-to-be house speaker at times. There are times I really wish she would stop slamming on the brakes and hit the gas pedal! However, with her and control the house a lot of the serious bleeding and damage is going to be dealt with.

However, if we were not happy about tonight, there are two things that need to be done. First off, we need to rebuild 50 state strategy, no if’s and’s or butts. And focus on every available office in every level of government. I do not care if the office is for dog catcher South West Mississippi, we need a Democrat there, and we need an aggressive campaign. It is encouraging to see that we want more victories in places like Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin, a.k.a. the “blue wall” that frankly those were paid a lot of money to run this campaign fumbled. We need to make a very concerted effort, and by ‘we’ I especially mean those people they keep on sending email asking me for money. It is not criticism of the Democrats as a whole to look at those people whose whole job was to win elections and beat Republicans and ask them why we did not get the results that we wanted. Window of opportunity to at least stop the damage has been done to this country is shrinking. The Republicans already know that they have so far managed to steal the Supreme Court, which means that folks like Brett Cavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and heaven forbid whoever may have lined up to replace the notorious RBG, will do their best to make sure that this country actually retracts. If they are allowed to win, not only will we lose the standard of life that we are used to in this nation, but the rivals abroad will be the ones who dominate, and frankly, why can admire many the achievements of China, I definitely do not want to be under the thumbs of their leaders, especially as they have gained prosperity with out having to democratize.

This is not the great victory, but this was not a defeat by any means. We have tools that we can use to deftly make a difference and pave the way for elections to come. We cannot depend on the idea that sooner or later even the idiots will see things our way, I think my Florida Panhandle that got smashed by hurricane Michael, yet allow themselves to get charmed by Rick Scott, gave Rhonda Santos a pass for not showing up, and ignored the fact that Andrew Gillam went there. But, with concerted effort, we can make the power of these glorified clusters and Archie bunkers have less and less.

Allright: we voted for no offshore drilling and we voted to restore the felon vote. These were no small victories, especially as the felon vote is the main wall used against black voters.

But, not only did we allow Trump's handpicked stooge to be governor,
we have had the third election in a row where the governor could not even get 51 percent of the votes, and the Dem concedes.

(take breath)

OK, let's not ignore the plague of third party votes, though they did count.

It is time to realize that Trump had planted the seeds in some very fertile, and yes I mean stupid minds. Despite the fact that Gillum came from the panhandle, the panhandle, aka OLD DUMB DIXIE came out for De santis. Really?

You good ol boys got creamed by Michael, yet desantis did not show up,unlike Gillum. Yes, I can give Rock Scott credit for showing up there, but you panhandlers supported the guy that did NOT show up? Were you so eager to stick it to the Negro that you ignored the KKK robocalls? Worse, did you like them?

I wont lay all this on Dixie, as Florida sadly has a lot of New Yorkers who enjoyed the money made from their union job up north, yet refuse to play for any service here. Yeah you kid went to school up north, well, the cops, firemen, doctors and others you spend on grew up HERE.

And oh yes, that does bring me to one ugly truth, there are a lot of people who insist they are not republican, who call themselves "FDR Democrats" who nonetheless always vote for the white guy..star waiting for "Gwen Graham wuz abetter candidate" rants, even though Ms Graham supported Gillum.

As of right now, the only thing that would want to avoid a disaster hitting this state is because I am currently stuck in it. If I leave, I hope that it gets hit with something that would make the history books a thousand years from now. Yes florida has great beauty, and many good people, but it is obvious iy attracts the very worst type of American, proudly ignorant and malicious.