In "Try That in a Small Town," @Jason_Aldean sings, "Cuss out a cop, spit in his face...Well, try that in a small town/See how far ya make it down the road," opposing protest and violence. Except, of course, then he totally advocates for violent protest when he sings, "Got a gun that my granddad gave me/They say one day they're gonna round up/Well, that shit might fly in the city, good luck" before the threatening chorus. So, Aldean is fine with gun owners getting violent with cops if gun laws change, but also

All of this DeSantis-is-new-Trump talk ignores one major factor in Trump's rise: A whole bunch of stupid voters liked the TV guy. DeSantis doesn't have Trump's built-in celebrity and fake billionaire rep. A lot of voters just won't give a shit about him. To everyone saying, "Florida Republicans love him," I say, "New Jersey reelected Chris Christie and he was the media's beloved bloviator going into 2016, when he deflated quicker than a punctured yoga ball."

When I was a student in a public high school in south Louisiana in the 1980s, every morning we'd start in homeroom with the Pledge of Allegiance. Then a voice over the classroom speaker would tell us, "Now please remain standing for a moment of silent prayer." I'm barely Jewish, the only one in my school, and all around me were mostly Catholics and a few various fundamentalists. They would all bow their heads and pray before making the sign of the cross.

Lemme get this right: Because the Supreme Court decided to send abortion rights to the voters, whatever party is in charge in a state can make the laws. That's just completely dumb. Let's use Wisconsin as an example. Wisconsin's 170 year-old abortion ban was still on the books, never removed, seemingly unnecessary to do so because Roe overruled it. Now, with a Republican majority in the legislature, the law stands, so abortion is outlawed in Wisconsin.

It's fascinating how scared conservatives are at this moment of violence from the left. You go on right-wing media and they're warning everyone to be careful, that we're coming to get them. Motherfuckers, we don't shoot up places because we're pissed. That's you. And before you "B...b...but Kavanaugh's assassination attempt" me, fuck off.

I've told this story before but it bears telling again: In the mid-1990s, I went to a concert headlined by folk singer Holly Near in Knoxville, TN. It was an amazing crowd of mostly women. When intermission came, I stayed in my seat. (1) In front of me were three older women with two young women. The three older women started talking about how they were students at Kent State on May 4, 1970 and they were at the Vietnam War protest where the National Guard opened fire on the crowd, killing four.

This morning on @StephMillerShow, Stephanie asked me about whether or not schools should be open. And my response was, essentially, follow the teaching. Lemme explain... Put aside for a moment the emotional and shouldn't-be-but-is controversial discussion over kids and their ability to handle Covid. What's absolutely true is that adults getting Covid need to isolate, no matter what companies or governments say.

We're not even ten months into the Biden presidency and the media frame is that it's a failure because (checks notes) everything Trump fucked up hasn't been fixed yet. I mean, voters in Virginia are talking about how disappointed they are in Biden because he hasn't yet completely transformed the country or he hasn't convinced Republicans to stop being obstructionist dickheads. Gimme a fuckin' break.

I got an email that PragerU, the website where right-wing elderdouche Dennis Prager pretends to educate people, had a short video for kids: "Otto's Tales: Today Is September 11th." The goal? "To remember what happened on 9/11 and how the country came together." Let's watch. What the hell...Otto's a person in a dog costume? To teach us about 9/11? Were puppets too subtle? What's with the crazy eyes? Otto looks like he's seen some shit.

Dylann Roof should not be executed. Sirhan Sirhan should be released. Those are the liberal stances on these cases. If we want savagery to end, we need to stop behaving like savages. Either you're against the death penalty or you're not. Either you're for making the criminal justice system more humane or you're not. You don't get to decide exceptions for the cases that make you angry.

How about a story about vaccinated people having awesome vacations? How about a story about vaccinated people getting to visit their kids and grandkids? How about writing about those who did the right thing because they gave a damn about themselves and others? "I got vaccinated because I don't want to die or get hospitalized and because I want to go out to eat and drink and hear music and live my goddamn life. Tell the others to stop fucking that up."

Listen, racists who use MLK's judge by the "content of their character," not "the color of their skin" to justify your racism: King wasn't talking about your children. He was talking about his children. He was saying that whites judge them by skin color and whites need to change. The full line: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Stop forgetting about that first part like it's the beginning of the 2nd Amendment.

I first heard about the Tulsa Race Massacre sitting at a table at the MLA conference in 1994. I don't remember his name, but I asked one of the people sitting with me what he was working on, and he said an article about the destruction of Greenwood. I asked what that was. I felt sick to me stomach that I hadn't heard about it. I asked for details, and he told me the whole story. I told as many people as possible for a few years after because I felt so betrayed by my education (which at that point included graduate school).

Hmm. @nhannahjones has an MA and a Pulitzer and is a MacArthur Fellow. UNC hired as a Distinguished Professor Daniel Wallace, who is a best-selling author but only has a BA and most definitely isn't from a "traditional academic-type background," but he's white.

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1395524762101821440

UNC also hired Alan Shapiro as a Distinguished Professor. He also only has a BA but is an award-winning poet. Still, not "traditional" blah, blah, blah, which generally means "PhD" or MFA. And, yeah, he's white.

It's great that Liz Cheney is trying to drag the GOP into the realm of reality, but the Big Lie isn't just about Trump claiming he won. It's about states passing all kinds of laws to respond to non-existent fraud and irregularities. It's all well and good to assert that Trump lost the 2020 election, but that's just part of the job. I don't know where Liz Cheney stands on the voter suppression laws in Georgia, Florida, etc. But she did vote against HR 1

Huh. My pal @Creterman just showed me that he has a DVD bootleg of Disney's Song of the South. So we're gonna watch it. We haven't seen it since we were kids. I wonder how it's aged. Let's see... And away we go.

This has been bugging me for over a month: How the hell were they allowed to build a damn gallows in front of the Capitol? Like...you'd think someone would get out there and say, "Whoa, you're not allowed to do that." And, I mean, this wasn't some little mockup or prop. It could support at least two people.

JFC, I came across this Ross Douthat column from November 13, 2016. It's titled, no shit, "He Made America Feel Great Again," and it's a speculative piece about how wildly successful Trump's first term "was," pretending to look back from 2020, after his reelection. Holy fuck. Where to begin? How about with: "Here we are four years later, watching Trump bask in the glow of an easy re-election over the Warren-Booker Democratic ticket." Oh, Ross, how simple you are.

This is the first time I've seen Kelly Loeffler speak. Jesus fuck, what a Klonopin-infused conservabot. There's no way that creepy fuckin' thing is human. I mean, I've had fuckin' nightmares where Kelly Loeffler-like androids try to harvest my soul to power their batteries. I never thought those goddamn things were real.

I've been thinking a lot about a conversation I had with a dear Canadian friend in Calgary in January. We were talking about images of the United States and he brought up the Simon and Garfunkel song "America."

"I've always loved the hope in it," he said, "when they sing... 'They've all come to look for America.' That's how the world wants to see your country."

I said that was a lovely line, but the one that resonates most for me is "'Kathy, I'm lost,' I said though I knew she was sleeping/'I'm empty and aching and I don't know why.'"

One more thing about this statement by Mitch McConnell: He is acknowledging that the GOP not only won't Senate seats in potential states of DC and Puerto Rico; he is saying that the GOP won't even try because that would mean broadening its appeal to the non-white people.

https://twitter.com/ryanstruyk/status/1306947519268753408

Democrats are actively trying to win Senate races in red states; they are even trying to turn red states blue. That has meant compromising some things in deeply red states, as with Manchin in WV and Jones in AL. But the GOP barely makes an effort in NY or CA.