POST #1010: Random Observations

Here is an unrelated doodling of various comments I've made here and there, in my notebook -or out in the cybersphere. Any similarities to any persons, living or dead, is purely intentional.

1: Georgia On My Mind....

What is happening in Georgia is beyond disgusting. That fucking party needs to disappear forever. Their problem isn't with voter fraud. Their problem is that too many black people

are voting. Jim Crow is back in the south.

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2: The Unimportance of being FOCKS NOISE....

Anyone who gets their news and information from Focks Noooz has consigned his or herself to perpetual idiocy. That channel is beyond redemption. I know it should go away, but then again, I know that it will be around for a very long time. Focks Noise is poisoning the American dialogue. Walter Cronkite is dead. Walter Lippmann is dead. They're gone, and they're not coming back, folks.

3: QUOTE OF THE DAY....

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

Groucho Marx

4: Something to remember...

"In the very end, civilizations perish because the people listen to their politicians - and not their poets."

Jonas Mekas

That was just a quick one. I'm really too ill to write.

LATER!

Tom Degan, Goshen, NY

MEME MADNESS

One of my biggest regrets is the fact that I cannot draw to save my life. I would give up any other talent I have in order to do so. I always thought that I would have made an ace political cartoonist. About two years ago I acquired the technology to create memes - which is not as good but they're much fun nonetheless. Here are some recent ones:

So that's about it for the  time being. I haven't been posting on this site as prolifically as I've been dealing with a couple of minor health issues. I'll be back as fit as ever in a couple of days. By the way, last week I received my first COVID vaccine. Ain't that a hoot?

Tom Degan

Goshen, NY

Jim Crow's Comeback Tour

This is the first posting on this site in a little over two weeks. Quite frankly I needed a break from the train wreck that the American political stage still is despite the exit of Donald Trump from the spotlight. To tell you the truth I was under the delusion that things might calm down a bit now that the loony right wing no longer controlled both the senate and the White House. Wishful thinking, I know. Now it is the governors and state legislatures that are causing serious trouble. Every now and then I need to check my calendar in the kitchen to remind myself that it is, indeed, 2021.

To put it in a nut shell, the problem is not voter fraud (an they never tire of reminding us. The problem is the simple fact that too many people with dark skin are exercising their precious right to cast their ballots. Republican politicians see the writing on the wall, and they're not particularly thrilled by what they're reading. These people know that, because of the ever changing demographics of the American political landscape - and given their extremist and racist policies - in a few short years they won't be able to win national elections and longer. Instead of adjusting their worldview to fit with this new and undeniable reality, they would have us turn back the clock to the bad old days when "those people" were not allowed at the ballot box.

This is a serious constitutional crisis, people; as serious as any we have faced in a very long while.

It started a few years ago when some of the geniuses on the Supreme Court watered down the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in order to make voting more difficult to the traditional progressive constituency (minorities and young people). While they have not outright banned black people from voting (YET) they have made participating in the electoral process for them increasingly difficult and strenuous - as some cities with a high percentage of African Americans have decreased the amount of polling places drastically. In 2016 there were twenty-five of them in Milwaukee. In 2020 there were four. My belief is that had the last election been equally fair for minorities as it was for white people like me, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would have won by an even larger margin than they did.

This is not the way it's supposed to be in the United States of America. President Biden is proposing a new law (named for the late, great John Lewis) that would make our voting laws even stronger than they were before the Supremes gutted them a few years ago. America is shifting culturally - that is an undeniable fact. But while the change has been frustratingly slow, it will assume glacier proportions if the extreme right wing of this country has their way. We need to move forward - not backwards. That is why we call ourselves "progressives".

Tom Degan

Goshen, NY

SUGGESTED VIEWING:

Will Rogers and American Politics

This is a new documentary on a man whom I believe to be one of America's most important humorists. Americans don't know enough about Will Rogers. We should know a lot more. Here's a link to view it on YouTube:

Will Rogers and American Politics - YouTube 

"I never met a man I didn't like."