Increasing Intensity…

Well, the right is CERTAIN that the left is going to start the looming civil war. And…just in case the left DOESN’T start the civil war, the right will be happy to start it for them. To that end, a one-time Green party activist turned right-wing nut-ball decided to kill Nancy Pelosi but he didn’t check her schedule and she wasn’t home when he broke in. So he tried to kill her husband, Paul, instead. His Green roots showed through, though. He didn’t use a gun, he used a hammer.

One thing I can say for SURE, right-wing media will focus heavily on his outdated, Green Party registry and completely ignore his far right rants. They’ll present it as a crazy lib and not what it was, a violent attack by a brainwashed con. The conservative bubble sucks in good people every day – and ruins them. The same happened to this poor schmuck. Now he gets to spend the rest of his life in prison because he believed the lies spewed from the conservative bubble…

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So…in the end, Elon Musk was forced to buy Twitter for 44 Billion dollars. He made them an offer they couldn’t refuse and they didn’t so HE tried to back out, knowing he had offered FAR more than Twitter was ever worth. But he took his bluff too far and had legal obligations and ended up having to fork over the money. The first thing he did was fire a bunch of the executives. Of course, he had just given them 44 Billion dollars to split on their way out the door so I don’t imagine their firing is going to harm them all that much. I DO imagine the new ownership is going to harm Twitter. A LOT.

I’m not a Twit – or whatever it is they call themselves – so I don’t imagine it’s going to be much of problem for me. But a social media web site that bathes itself in bullshit is a problem for the masses. Once he re-activates Trump’s account, the bullshit will return to being eyebrow deep – essentially useless space. No, worse than useless. It will be downright harmful.

I’ll tell you this: I just don’t think this once-great nation can overcome or survive the onslaught of propaganda. I think it was Jon Stewart who coined the phrase “Bullshit Mountain” referring to right-wing misinformation and disinformation but it’s not a mountain. It’s a glacier and it’s advancing. Bullshit Glacier has already overwhelmed much of America and the damage continues, unabated…

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Well, we missed it. The UN says we’re almost certainly going to miss the target of 1.5 degrees centigrade to prevent the worst of global warming from Climate change. They actually said there’s “no credible pathway to 1.5C in place.” Apparently, there was just too much profit to be had wiping out humanity. The people who don’t understand things spent enough time shouting stupid things based on stupid “evidence” (and these people will believe anything…), the corporations manipulating them to do so pocketed – and still pocket – rather tidy sums. Guess who will be shouting the loudest as the consequences of their political folly play out in real time. “Why, oh, why don’t the politicians save us from the corporate malfeasance?” Oh, that’s the DIRECT result of conservative positions, policies, and actions. Deregulation anyone? Citizen’s United?

I’ll tell you this: I THINK they thought it would happen slowly enough that it wouldn’t affect them personally – and a con never minds harming OTHER people. They were wrong about THAT, though, too. They ARE going to have to live (and/or die) with the consequences of their actions – or, rather, their failure to act. At least there’s that…

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I don’t mean to be unkind but I’ve got to confess, I’ve been very much enjoying Tom Brady’s struggles in Tampa Bay this year. If you know me, you likely know that I’m not at all on-board with the title of Greatest Of All Time (GOAT) for Tom Brady, current Quarterback of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Too many asterisks. But this isn’t that. I’m not enjoying his struggles because of what the struggles say about him. I’m enjoying them because of what they say about every other QB who ever hit the field, played poorly for some (short) period of time, then left the game.

Setting aside the controversies, Brady is still an incredibly talented player. The thing is, he has always been surrounded by talented teams. Even when he switched from the Patriots to the Bucs, they were ready to play. (Also, he brought along his favorite target for the first season there.) But the Bucs, the team around him, fell apart this year. They lost good players. They had a shakeup at head coach. They’re just not gelling. And there’s nothing Brady can do – as good as he is – to compensate.

So how many of those also-ran QBs came and went from the NFL, destined to be relegated to the dust bin of history, because the team around them wasn’t good? Or because they had a bad coach? Or because they were in the wrong system for their style of play? So I’m enjoying Brady’s struggles because they vindicate in some small way, every Quarterback who ever passed through the league with “You SUCK!” ringing in their ears on their way out. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t, but if a player as talented and skilled as Tom Brady can suddenly – after YEARS of success – look very, very average, it could happen to anyone. And I like vindication…

Sidebar: this is tangential to the Brady story so I’ll just mash it in, here. Everyone ripped on Tom for playing this season. People everywhere suspected that his insistence on coming back led to the breakdown of his marriage. People should consider the possibility that he came back to play because he discovered the marriage was already over. What’s the point of trying to “spend more time with the family” if the family is not going to be there?

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