Jersey Cuban emigres and their votes. I suspect that he’s written off Florida.

IMO the Miami Cubans have helped turn Florida into a red state. They’ll never vote Democratic and as a group, Democrats owe them no favors. Let them sit and stew the way the old “ China Lobby” had to do after Richard Nixon started dealing with the People’s Republic of China. Chiang Kai Chek will never return to the Chinese mainland, and the emigre Cubans-turned-Republican don’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of winning a free and fair election in social democrat-minded Cuba.

rights. Not that I sympathize with them, but the largest single voting block in the Republican Party, particularly in red states, is the anti-abortion faction. Not only are they a large block, but they are well-organized and extremely demanding. If you’re an aspiring or incumbent Rethugly politician, you toe their line and you toe it exactly. If the anti-abortion leadership croaks “frog!”, you start hopping around or try to catch flies with your tongue. If they say no exceptions for rape, you remove exceptions for rape. If they say no exceptions for incest. If they say no exceptions for the health of the mother, you remove those exceptions. Otherwise, they’ll cut off your funding or have you tossed out in a party primary.

Republican politicos let these people come in over a generation ago. They not only constitute a large and vital voting block that means the difference between electoral victory or political oblivion. These are people that Republican politicos HAVE to placate. They HAVE to toe the line.

Do I sympathize with those Republican pols?

I don’t.

Not.

One.

Little.

Bit.

stone cold indifference to their claims off “political persecution.”

It’s very simple, really. Many of us remember the sheer hell the Republicans put Bill Clinton through.

the Forced-Birth fanatics. The pressure has spread from anti-abortion voters going to the polls and primarying any pro-choice candidates. It’s gone well beyond that: the anti-abortion block now controls the state party’s party machinery. Any would-be candidate has to toe the anti-abortion block’s line very carefully and very exactly or their political race is dead three steps past the starting chocks.


I think that Republican Party is hopeless. The only way citizens of Idaho will be able to get decent healthcare for their wives, their daughters, the sisters and their granddaughters is to stop voting for Republicans. I repeat: Stop. Voting. For. Republicans.

There is no other way.

I am not proud to admit that back in October of 3020 I hoped that the Donald would flat-line. I thought he was the worst President in US history (James Buchanan move over!) and dreaded what would happen if he won a second term. I still do.

I still loathe Agent Orange. I still think he’s a wanna-be dictator. But considering who else is out there in the Republican field (Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, Kristi Noem, Ted Cruz, etc.) I’m hoping that he has enough health and enough mental marbles together to last all the way through to Election Day 2024.

There is no such thing as a moderate Republican and pundits, reporters and professional consultants still trying to make the rest of us believe that such folks are there are pushing a line of (excrement).

I admit that I am not a true-blue diaper Democrat. My family leaned Republican, but it was the sort of Republicanism common nearly half a century ago. I have argued with several posters here and there whether such Republicans were really moderate back then and we still disagree.

However, I think whatever the controlling beliefs and politics of Club Pachyderm might or might have been half a century ago, it is very clear to folks here as well as other folks making efforts to stay in the reality-based community that that sort of Republican Party NO LONGER EXISTS. It has been subsumed by right-wing extremism since the 1990s and the folks who once had the numbers to bring the Republicans back to sanity have aged out, forced out, or sold out. The only choices in today’s Republican Party are between hyper-extremist and slightly less extremist. The moderate Republican Party that (clueless) senior editors and the executive suits still believe in is as dead and gone as the giant ground sloth and the Sabre-tooth tiger.

The argument for privatizing infrastructure was that (supposedly) the private sector could run these utilities more cheaply and efficiently than a state-owned enterprise. While I have yet to become a red banner-waving socialist, it’s become clearer that while such MIGHT be possible if the enterprise was overseen by an unfriendly, activist regulatory body that saw to it that client safety and environmental protections overrode higher profits to the stock holders and debtors, it is increasingly clear that in practice, increased payouts to stockholders and debt-holders come before any responsibilities towards clients and the folks who live downstream from these outfits. In short, the idea of privatized utilities seems to be failing as badly in practice as state-ownedMarcist-Leninist socialism.

If the idea is a dud, the people and their representatives should throw it out. Sewer socialism seems to work better in practice, and real-life practice ought to trump tweety-bird blue-sky theory.

This was along US 183 and US 84 northwest and west of Cedar Park in Texas’ Williamson County. Not so many as there were last year or even this spring. I suspect that the discovery of Agent Orange’s federal document stashes at Mar a Lago was enough to frazzle some of the Orange One’s faith in their idol. Finding out that Donnie was hanging on to top secret documents relating to national security might have been one donut too many for some of his followers. They might still hate the libs, they might still pitch fits on cue at the Three G prompts (God, Guns, and Gays), but their faith in the Trumpster has seriously corroded.

I doubt we’ll make progressives or sane centrists out of these people, but their love affair with the Donald is over.

Let the Republican Party die. Leave the extremists, the loudmouths, the ivory-tower ideologues, the sectarian fanatics, and the wanna-be fascists out in the wilderness. Let’s not repeat the errors of our forebears and let them into our ranks.

For that matter, let’s not let any (allegedly) repentant Dixiecrats rejoin the Democratic Party. They showed who and what they were when they joined the GOP. We don’t want them back.

Many of us who remember the Cold War not only remember reactionaries and other right-wingers hammering anyone to the left of John C. Calhoun as tools of the Kremlin but also those Republicans who erred on the side of decency and bipartisanship. Many of us also remember the incredulity and disgust many of us centrists and progressives had for the real-deal left-wing shameless apologists for the Soviet Union.

We thought it was wrong then and we still think that being a willing tool of Purim’s Kremlin is still a Very Bad Thing.

Here’s looking at you, Tucker.