FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: PIQUE PROTEST VOTER EDITION.

Certainly the best version.

Hope everyone had a beautiful Thanksgiving. I worked full shifts at Roy Edroso Breaks It Down this week, and a couple of items have been put on the “FREE” rack for you non-subscribers, though they’re every bit as good as the stuff people pay for. (Which you should think about doing – five days a week, $7/month; it’s like wasteful not to subscribe at these prices.)

First, I have Monday’s scene from the villain’s-lair of Elon Musk, based on what at that time was his latest embarrassment – trying to buy his way out from under his own ridiculous antisemitic comments. In real life it seemed to work on the Anti-Defamation League’s Jonathan Greenblatt, at least, though in my version Musk’s appeal to another prominent Jewish American goes in a different direction. 

(Since then, of course, Musk has further soiled himself by suing Media Matters for reporting the truth about Twitter’s infestation with antisemites. It’s almost as if thuggery and bribery are the only ways he knows to win back lost admiration. You’d think he’d settle for the devotion of the many Weird Elon Nerds who heap mega-dittos on his every tweet – but then it's conservative SOP, isn’t it, to blubber that the people you’ve been absolute shit to don’t love you for it.)

The other freebie is thumbnail biographies of some new Democratic challengers to Joe Biden. You’d think there’d be few Democrats who would fall for the old Jill Stein routine – now the Jill Stein-Cornell West-RFK Jr. routine – and file a protest vote knowing it could deliver the presidency to a fascist lunatic who openly promises to rule as a dictator. I guess you could say the lack of faith in democracy that would drive someone who is intelligent enough to find their polling station to make such a bonehead mistake is the fault of Both Sides, but talk about cutting off your nose (or enabling the Secret Police to cut it off) to spite your face! 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: HEARTS AND MINDS EDITION.

I heard this in a coffee shop playing the most coffee-shop mix imaginable.
Still good tho!

So much going on, more than I could keep up with at Roy Edroso Breaks It Down but I made a valiant effort. I dropped by the Israel rally in D.C. and saw on the ground mostly Jewish solidarity, fellow-feeling, and determination to get back the hostages. It was understandable and even moving — how can thousands of voices singing “Acheinu” not be? — and I wish it were not attached to the Israeli government’s insane and vicious bombing of the many Palestinians who are not Hamas (and hospitals and refugee camps, and probably whatever hostages were not already dead). 

Jeet Heer makes some good points about why the lies the Israeli government tells about their depredations are so cack-handed and unconvincing, but in the final analysis it’s simply the same reason that Trump lies as baldly as he does: Because the denial of reality is itself a display of power, showing the aggressor is so powerful that he doesn’t even have to make it look good. They believe in this manner they’ll get what they want (in Netanyahu’s case I frankly don’t think the hostages even figure in it) no matter what anyone else thinks, because there’s always another threat behind this one. 

 We’ll see. There have been some interesting side effects: On the one hand, lots of what usually gets called “cancel culture” applied to Palestinian advocates (can't wait for Bari Weiss' big expose!) and, on the other, guys like Elon Musk and Charlie Kirk deciding now’s the time to just say some absolutely crazy shit about Jews. Maybe recent events have convinced them that, since anyone showing any sympathy for the massacred people gets called an antisemite nowadays, the genuine article will go unrecognized. 

On a lighter note, sort of, we have Trump going even fuller fash than before and prestige media affecting not to notice. His “vermin” shtick dovetails nicely with the proffer videos of Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell (leaked by a conspirator’s lawyer!) explaining that The Boss did in fact know he’d lost the election and still intended to stay in office – that is, was planning the coup some people will tell you he wasn’t planning. I’m inclined to credit Tubby with a sense of humor here; he might come out with a little toothbrush mustache and brown uniform, and start throwing out Seig Heils, because he knows the Times editorial board will be like, “So, is this a Charlie Chaplin thing? I didn’t think red state voters liked old movies! Quick, gentlemen -- to the diners!”

FRIDAY ‘ROUND THE HORN: CRAZY PEOPLE LOSE ELECTIONS EDITION.

Still the best version.

Another week in the books, and what a week it was here in God’s Country, with people getting fired or muscled for showing sympathy toward massacred Palestinians and yet, somehow, not a peep from Bari Weiss or any of the usual cancelculture crybabies in their defense! Why, it’s almost as if the whole cancelculture thing were bullshit. 

Speaking of that, I went to last weekend’s Palestine rally in DC and my account of it is one of the week’s two (2) Roy Edroso Breaks It Down posts FREE TO THE PUBLIC thanks to a generous donation by General Dynamics. 

The theme of our other free REBID essay is Election Day and all the Republicans who got their asses kicked because their whole party be acting all crazy. As Jamelle Bouie writes it’s their whole “culture war shtick” that voters seem fed up with, as seen by the defeats suffered by the book-banning Moms for Liberty and various transphobe dickweeds. But abortion is clearly the deal-breaker – the kind of thing that gets red staters to vote against the will of their overlords as they did decisively in Ohio on Tuesday. I’m convinced it’s not just that these voters want reproductive rights – they also know that the people who are desperate to take these rights away from them are out of their minds and cannot be allowed that kind of power over their lives. 

As mentioned in my essay, it’s clear a lot of conservatives have been driven to despair and/or madness by this turn of events. Our old pal Hindrocket from Power Line, for example, headlines his post-electoral-debacle item “WHY DEMOCRATS ARE PANICKING,” which certainly is a counterintuitive take, and Yells At Cloud:

Currently, the most popular position a politician can take, even in red states like Ohio, is enthusiastic support for abortion, as often as possible up to and including the moment of birth. In several states, like Minnesota, abortion after birth–infanticide–has been made legal.

I have heard the up-till-birth-abortion bullshit many times, but “legal” “infanticide” in Minnesota is weirdly specific. Anyone know what he’s talking about? Also, how long after birth can you do it, because I have some suggestions.  

More ominously, I note Republican politicians are working overtime to keep voters from getting any more chances to make their preferences law by referenda -- and to take away those rights even after they're voted into law. That, too, is a thing with Republicans these days – preventing untoward electoral outcomes by force – so don’t let mere awareness that most Americans agree with you make you too confident of the outcome. 

FRIDAY ‘ROUND-THE-HORN: LET’S SEE IF THEY BLOCK THIS ONE EDITION.

News is grim these days, eh?
Let's lighten things up.

As mentioned last week, the prior alicublog F’R-T-H edition that Google unaccountably put behind a gate can be viewed without encumbrance at my Roy Edroso Breaks It Down Substack – as can all previous alicublog posts, and some selected REBID posts that I’ve released to the general public (pay full freight -- $7/month, cheap! -- and you get five posts a week).  

This week we’ve got a consideration of the similarities between the war-drum-beaters in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, and their equivalents in the Israel-Palestine war. In both cases, there was a genuine outrage (9/11, Hamas’ attacks on Israel) followed by a lot of indiscriminate overreach that the civilized world condemned, which made the belligerents declare the civilized world to be on the wrong side of the With Us or Against Us paradigm. It’s depressing to watch an ally blow up refugee camps and ambulances and get mad when you complain, but maybe more of us remember the lessons of the last propaganda putsch well enough to stand up to the present one. 

I’ve also unlocked something for fans of satire and song parodies: A Fiorello!esque number on Speaker Johnson’s weird finances. (RIP Sheldon Harnick, btw.) I’ve seen some journalists talk about Johnson’s missing bank account records as if the issue were his inability to handle personal finances, when the circumstances – specifically his being a Republican politician, a religious maniac, and a just-plain-maniac – suggest that he’s concealing his financial arrangements, not out of modesty, but because revealing them would subject him to opprobrium or possibly criminal charges. After all the mischief they’ve caused, why do we keep giving these schmendricks the benefit of the doubt?

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: CENSORSHIP EVASION EDITION (UPDATED).

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: GOP RETURN TO RELIGIOUS MANIA EDITION.

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FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: JIHAD ENOUGH EDITION.

Never a bad day for it.

Line up now, and no shoving please, for the Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies! First, Tuesday’s obligatory Israel post. I’ve heard the Hamas attacks called “Israel’s 9/11,” and since I remember our 9/11 I know the next step is war crimes and it sure looks like Israel’s fixing to commit them. You wouldn’t think opposition to the slaughter of civilians would be controversial, but alas! Among the lowest forms of human life there’s always plenty of engagement to be had by ginning up paranoia and cheering mass murder. 

One almost pities American conservatives, though – on the one hand, they love seeing large numbers of brown people killed; on the other, they have to countenance their bête noire Biden’s unequivocal support of Israel while their own hero Tubby praises the smarts of Hezbollah. Well, no harm no foul: In a few weeks Trump will sic them on some professor or judge, and they’ll forget all about this.

Also for free at REBID now: My essay on why MAGA people never cottoned to Ron DeSantis. Short answer: He’s a tryhard – straining to prove his viciousness while Trump just comes by it naturally. 

Nothing this week about the Speaker of the House yukfest, because how can you improve on the comic genius of House Republicans? It’s fitting that these backstabbing creeps are showing their ass every day – and predictable that the prestige press is still trying to bothsides it, insisting the Democrats have to walk one of these ghouls across the finish line so he can fuck them over. CNN’s David Gregory reaches a new low: 

I actually have my eye on Democrats. How long are Democrats going to stand by in the world of identity politics, and zero-sum politics, and not be part of any solution?  

One is put in mind of John Gielgud in Arthur: “Perhaps you would like me to come in there and wash your dick for you? You little shit.”

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: NOT SEE THE SPEAKER? HANG IT, I SEE TWO* EDITION.

Some of the OGs from back home, tearing it up

Listen, folks, times are tough, so I only have one (1) Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebie for you this week -- "3 Bold Outsider Choices for Speaker of the House." 

I sent that on Wednesday and predicted, accurately, that Trump, who had been floated yet again (as he has been periodically since he left office!) as a candidate for Speaker by the trollier elements on the right (and the click-hungry prestige media outlets -- never forget those!) would never go for it.
The idea was always ridiculous, for the reason I cited in that story and in the previous day's -- oh shoot, let's make that a freebie, too -- Scene from the Throne Room of Mar-a-Lago: that Trump knows his people hate politicians who actually do governing work, as Speakers are obliged to do. As Speaker Trump could not, as he does now, fill his days with the fascist fan service of yammered threats and gibberish. He would have to try to persuade and coerce legislators who have even less respect for him than civilians, and then appear before the press to explain what he had fucked up. He'd look ridiculous, like a badly brought up eight-year-old trying to operate a steam shovel, and remind persuadable voters that he is in any executive role a live menace. (He likes the publicity this stupid idea generates, though, which is why I'm sure he encouraged the latest revival of the story.)
So Tubby has endorsed Jim Jordan, one of a field of eligible frauds who will step on each other's dicks as they jockey to briefly and ignominiously claim the chair. And they and their colleagues will continue to scream that it's all the fault of the Democrats for not carrying them over their own river of bullshit -- which I also wrote about and we might as well open that one up to the public, too! Oh, and here's a prominent Republican blaming Democrats for the Speaker mess (in a bothsider way, of course) that I missed: Come on down, Michael Bloomberg! 

I disagree with McCarthy on virtually every issue, but in some critical moments this year, he showed that he was willing to stand up to his party’s right-wing extremists and take the heat.

WHEN THE FUCK WAS THIS? The closest Bloomberg gets to an explanation is to claim McCarthy was "cooperating with Democrats to keep the government open and running" -- that is, he gave them a 45-day extension, presumably so his colleagues could continue their Biden-hunting antics for the cameras, and then told the Democrats to get fucked. 

Jeffries should’ve been willing to take the same risk, by rising above partisanship to save McCarthy’s job — if not for the good of the country, then for the good of the Democratic Party.

My ass. I tell you, Elizabeth Warren did us all a solid.
* source

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: THE GREAT BOT-AND-SCROLL SWINDLE EDITION.

Nothing in this post is to be taken as a knock on Kraftwerk.

Oh boy, have I got Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies for you! Yes, I bring Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies every week, but I’m really trying to sell Roy Edroso Breaks It Down now because I’m such a hard-charging capitalist entrepreneur! 

Ha ha, OK, you all know I’m kidding – what a disagreeable old man I have become. I guess I was reminded of my lack of professional ambition by the subject of today’s REBID Fun Friday issue, which I’m releasing to non-subscribers, in which my prompt (a really shitty job experience) is answered by more-than-usually amusing comments. 

Which reminds me: Not only does Roy Edroso Breaks It Down have Fun Fridays, but also fun subscribers whose responses often outstrip my own efforts. Five days a week, friends, for seven bucks a month. If you don’t subscribe it’s like you’re cheating yourself. 

Also, here’s a freebie about the blood-chilling Meta AI launch in which Snoop Dogg and Jane Austen avatars were greeted with applause and appreciative laughter instead of screams of horror and fleeing as they should have been. I understand most of the concern over current artificial intelligence technologies that reduce creative work to amorphous “content” is that it will cost artists their livelihoods. I do sympathize – especially because the cannibalization and “reverse plagiarism” we saw just a few months ago has advanced to the point where scumbags are using real books to “train” robot authors, arguably a novel form of copyright infringement. 

But my own objection is mainly philosophical. At present almost no one who really wants to experience music, literature, and the visual arts would choose the cruddy simulacra that AI affords over the real thing. But in our hypercapitalist dystopia, increasingly the “real thing” in anything is reserved for high rollers. 

Time was the charm and coziness of bohemian neighborhoods was one of the compensations of not being able to afford anything better – but now gentrifiers have swamped those neighborhoods and raised the rent to the point where even the genteelly-poor can’t live in them. Literally no one believes the replacement of human customer service reps with robots has improved customer service for the customers themselves – yet because big money wants to maximize profits, that’s what we get. 

And we’re increasingly told by libertarian creeps that AI will empower psychotherapy bots that will make therapy affordable – when anyone who knows this rotten society can see it’ll just create shitty fake “therapy” that’ll be fobbed off on the poors as the new “telehealth” while the rich get to talk to human beings.

There are a lot of ways in which technology has improved our lives, God knows. But any sentient being must see that our overlords’ goal is not improvement of our lives – which by now is just an incidental side-effect -- but the expansion of their profit margins by any means necessary. They drool at the prospect of feeding us machine-baked mush instead of art because it’ll be more efficient – and it dovetails nicely with the closing down of all those wasteful humanities in schools. Their ideal state is one where the self-expression that has been part of the human experience since the days of the cave-painters is stamped out of existence. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: WHAT ARE YOU, MY MOTHER? EDITION.

Dig these crazy beats!

Those of us in the Northeast are feeling autumn if not autumnal. Maybe because of my somewhat recent change of address the weather shift is not exciting thoughts of death and diminution so much as curiosity – like, how will cooler weather change the pace of life in the neighborhood, and will the boiler still work? 

But whatever the season, Roy Edroso Breaks It Down goes on, five days a week, and Friday means freebies for the joy-poppers. (Get a subscription, ya cheap bastids, it lasts longer.) 

First up is one about the recent revival of the conservative “Marriage Makes You Rich” routine – you know, the idea that you don’t have to give impoverished Americans any money or job programs, you just run them through the chapel and presto, their earnings jump!   

The MacGuffin in this case is some think-tanker’s book, but I believe the wingnuts have jumped on it hard for a couple of reasons, which you’ll learn if you read the thing. Sadly I wrote it before Megan McArdle offered her contribution, which is predictably hilair:

Yet it feels nearly impossible to say “[single parenthood] is a very bad thing” as frankly — and as often — as we’ll need to if we’re going to address this critical issue, both because the first step to fix any problem is admitting we have one, and because saying “that’s bad, actually” is one of the ways that we remove risky behaviors from our cultural script.

Of course McArdle and her fellow scolds have been nagging single parents for decades, and even running marriage promotion scams based on their nagging, without moving the needle. In fact, McArdle seems to think if anything she’s been too inhibited by her fellow-feeling for single moms to nag effectively:

Yet even those of us on the center-right who privately tell pollsters that marriage is important might be reluctant to say so forthrightly in public... I cannot get through even half a sentence without an overwhelming urge to load it down with caveats, for example, that no one should ever stay with an abusive partner for the sake of the children.

So the temptation is to talk about something else, to play down the facts or, at least, sugarcoat them.

Oh, be brave, Megan! Go through the poor neighborhoods with a sound truck crying MARRIAGE MAKES YOU RICH, YOU STUPID PAUPERS!  Remember, it’s for their own good.

Even funnier in its tweetstorm version, in which McArdle answers critics who say we should help working people get jobs that can support a family first (she’s “skeptical of the power of policy change on its own,” lol) so now it’s all up to nagging and she’s tired of doing it all alone, dammit, and wants “public intellectuals” and Hollywood to help:

I’m trying to remember what the last real “marriage sux” show on TV was… “Married… With Children,” maybe? Well, now that Murdoch has left Fox, maybe at last we can get some real conservative pro-marriage programming in there! 

The other freebie, inspired by the news that Marjorie Taylor Greene is working on a book about Marjorie Taylor Greene, is an exclusive look at the book’s preface. It’s a shoo-in for a Puke-lister Prize! 

UPDATE: Rebecca Traister:

It’s not just the think-tank-economist-columnist class prescribing the marriage cure. It’s also hard-right commentators and politicians pushing policies aimed to re-center (hetero) marriage as the organizing- principle of American family life by reversing the progress — from legal abortion to affirmative action to no-fault divorce — that has enabled women to have economic and social stability independent of marriage.

Bingo. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: DON'T FALL FOR RETRO ROMNEY EDITION.

This reached #8 in the UK chart, and my home, somehow.

The Friday R-T-H is traditionally where joy-poppers get their free Roy Edroso Breaks It Down editions. My first one comes from a few years back – but it’s newly relevant as the Daily Mail has decided it has enough to report that South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and Trump factotum Corey Lewandowski are having an affair. When this first came to my attention in 2021, I thought it might be fun to see Lewandowski and Tubby engage the issue. Enjoy!  

For newer stuff, I’m unlocking my close read of that extremely generous New Yorker profile of Ross Douthat. All of the interviews are of great pals of Douthat’s, and they agree he’s the “Christian conservative who lives among liberals, writes for them, and… has their respectful attention.” Dunno whether that speaks worse of Douthat or of whomever they imagine to be liberals. They gave similar treatment to Rod Dreher, some years back, and I have to ask: Do they not simply see that these are religious maniacs trying to immanentize the eschaton with bullshit? Or has the bothsiderism that is general in what I call (with bitter laughter) the prestige press also infested the press that has (for the moment) genuine prestige? 

I might as well throw in Monday’s 9/11 sketch about the modern Republican Party’s new attitude toward that event: That is, it’s just something else to tie to the Deep State, not Islama-dama-ding-dong and whatever else they made it about back in the Early Aughts. I know there are plenty of old-timey Republicans who still do standard-issue Never Forget routines on 9/11, but the new jacks seem very influenced by Tubby’s moral relativism – as when he said about Putin, “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?” (That was probably just a play for the horseshoe numbskulls who mistake his nihilism for an actual analysis of America’s real foreign policy villainy; Trump’s not against killing, he just wants to make you think everyone else is as bad as he is.) Vivek Ramaswamy’s truther flirtations are just the latest frontier; by the convention they’ll be telling us Obama blew up the World Trade Center.

I will add something about that McKay Coppins story about Mitt Romney that everyone’s kvelling over. It’s certainly fun to see the old bastard calling out Mitch McConnell and J.D. Vance and all those other assholes. But it was fun when John Boehner did it, too, and he’s a piece of shit. I’ve been seeing people coo over what a wonderful guy Mittens is and how it wouldn’t have been so bad if he were elected President but let’s not get it twisted: Mister 47% (“who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care…” Remember?) is not a good guy. He’s smarter and maybe more honorable personally than most of the gremlins and creeps who run the party now, but he ran in 2012 on rightwing policies with the zombie-eyed granny-starver because that’s what he believes in. Also he is in his own way as much of a religious maniac as the evangelicals. And now he’s ready to retire and is throwing out some legacy bait. The prestige press may fall for it, but why should we?

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: A-HOLES AND PSEUDO-NICE GUYS EDITION.

Anybody else remember the rumor that the “pusher” was Soupy Sales?

Gather ‘round, kiddies, the man with the goodies is here!  And by that of course I mean Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies for y’all. 

The first one is another in a series about conservatives’ ever-decreasing emphasis on policy and ever-increasing emphasis on being assholes. The hook in this instance is the people who spread the vicious rumor that Burning Man had become an Ebola superspreader event, and how, when you checked these jerkoffs’ feeds, they usually were also into classic rightwing disinfo – COVID denialism, the “stolen” 2020 election, cities “burned to the ground” by BLM, etc. Because panic and loathing and unreasoning rage are what they have instead of policies that anyone would want.

If you’ve been paying attention at all, this should be self-evident, but a National Review writer named Zach Kessel seems to have missed it; he writes about the recent rightwing rage-gasm over Julia Mazur (if you don’t know, lucky you; she posted about being happy though childless, the expected ensued) as if it only recently occurred to him that this sort of thing was going on among his fellow conservatives: 

There’s plenty that could be said about the experience of a single, childless woman in her late 20s. I obviously have very little practice being one, so I’ll address something else: the sheer nastiness in [merkin-faced clown Matt] Walsh’s post. His attack on a woman who’s simply trying to appreciate what she has in life is emblematic of a broader problem on the right: the conflation of “conservative” with “jerk.” Walsh is by no means the only offender, with many other right-wing influencers solely focusing on “owning the libs.” The “owning” often stoops to bullying. 

Reading this is like reading about the Fulcrum and Lever at this point. It would be weird to read about “right-wing influencers” who were not bullies. Kessel: 

This is a real problem for conservatism. Over the past decade or so, many elements of what once constituted the movement have crumbled, especially within much of the right-wing media ecosystem. Small government? That’s old-fashioned. Clear, universal ideas of morality? So archaic. A globally engaged United States? That’s “not where the voters are,” and even if it was, America isn’t necessarily the good guy.

They still make you? Where has this guy been? Again, these concepts just weren’t pulling – everyone knows by now “small government,” for example, means tax breaks for the wealthy and the rest of us get shit – so now the con is all fascist funhouse garbage. Why does he think Trump and his less talented twins DeSantis and Ramaswamy command about 80% of Republican presidential race support, while the serious and pseudo-nice-guy candidates scramble for scraps?

Can this guy ever get it? Doubtful:

One only needs to look to national politics to see the impact the Right’s approach could be having on voters. Young women have only become more liberal in recent years, and it’s not far-fetched to say the “trolling” streak in some corners of the Right is a turnoff.

“Trolling” – guy, might the aggressively anti-abortion politics shared by both the asshole conservatives and the pseudo-nice-guy conservatives have “young women” convinced all conservatives/Republicans consider them rightless broodsows? Maybe, by being assholes, these guys are not distracting from their beliefs – they’re affirming them.

Anyway: Here’s a less-grim freebie from Labor Day, about how increasingly screwed Americans might just be ready to go for bread and roses again. Solidarity! 

UPDATE. Speaking of those abortion policies that Zach Kessel doesn't think affect young women's feelings toward conservatism, LOL -- from his own magazine: 

After suffering a string of electoral losses on the issue of abortion, Republican lawmakers are considering moving away from the term “pro-life” to describe their position on the issue...

“Many voters think [‘pro-life’] means you’re for no exceptions in favor of abortion ever, ever, and ‘pro-choice’ now can mean any number of things,” said [Republican Senator Josh] Hawley. “So the conversation was mostly oriented around how voters think of those labels, that they’ve shifted. So if you’re going to talk about the issue, you need to be specific"...

I know we said it was murder, ladies, and it is -- you're all murderers! But we're allowing some murders as a political calculation. There! Don't you feel better about the Republican Party?

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: BELABOR DAY EDITION.

Some homies from the old country, grinding the core.

Let us celebrate American Labor:

Some 3.6 million salaried workers would newly qualify for overtime pay under a proposed rule unveiled by the US Department of Labor on Wednesday. It would guarantee overtime pay of at least time-and-a-half for most salaried workers earning less than $1,059 a week, or about $55,000 a year.

The current threshold is $684 per week, the equivalent of roughly $35,600 a year, which was put in place by the Trump administration in 2019.

The proposed rule would transfer $1.2 billion in wages from employers to employees, mainly from new overtime premiums or pay raises to maintain the exempt status of certain affected employees, the agency said.

Like Gompers said: More! Also, like Woody said, take it easy, but take it.

Speaking of labor, here’s a few (2) freebies from the five (5) Roy Edroso Breaks It Down editions I worked my fingers to the bone on this week. First, my gloss on A.R. Moxon’s essay about conservatives who think liberals should be friends with them but who extend none of the courtesies usually extended by people who want to be friends. It’s a rich subject with many angles, which may why I’ve seen people misapprehend it, thinking it means liberals who reject the (obviously insincere) overtures of conservatives are virtue-signaling because morality, in their view, has nothing to do with friendship.   

But, for one thing, the right of free association belongs to all of us – we don’t need an epiphany nor special permission to claim it. For another, it’s not like we’re making Do Not Befriend lists – we’re rejecting the premise that throwing gay, black, trans, and other people to the wolves -- which conservatives treat as a modest concession because they don’t consider those people fully human -- is a suitable price of friendship. (Notice also the premise that only non-gay, non-black etc. liberals are even in the running for the exalted title of Friend to MAGA.)

This is made crystal clear whenever rightwingers talk about “losing their friends” over their beliefs as if those friends were bound to them by a formal contract and are unfairly breaking it, depriving the rightwingers of an audience for their slurs, as the malignant Ben Stein does here:

More explanation than they deserve, but I got time today. Freebie #2 is on its face about Tim Scott’s campaign for Vice-President, but it’s obliquely about all the coverage Vivek Ramaswamy is getting now that he’s figured out how to combine the Republicans’ desire for a See, You Libs are the Real Racist ™ black candidate with Trumpian viciousness. Scott has himself shown some skill as a panderer – launching his campaign, for example, with footage of Fort Sumter, as if inviting Republican honkeys to imagine him loading cannons for the Confederacy. But Ramaswamy’s Adderall Express runs straight down their hateful street, and it’s amusing to imagine Scott trying to match his ugliness while clinging to his Nice Guy image.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: MISHEGOSS IN MILWAUKEE EDITION.

Novelty hot dance with vocals

Another outstanding week in the End Times! I see people are hot about Tubby’s mugshot. Me, I’m not getting excited until he’s put away where he can do us no harm, but I will say this: My old buddy Steven Baker points out that Trump’s attempt at a menacing glower resembles the rendering of Big Brother in just about every film and TV version of 1984. It is noteworthy that while Trump’s fans are always yelling about freedom and liberty, their hero never misses an opportunity to act like a tyrant or a mob boss. That’s not accidental: Rule by Goon is their idea of freedom because the only thing that really makes them feel oppressed is the continued existence of people they believe should be annihilated, and they count on him to do it. That’s why MAGA peeps from the lowliest Twitter howler to Sarah Palin are calling for “civil war” over this rather straightforward legal case against their beloved: If, the original civil war being lost, they can’t have their slaves back, they feel they should at least enjoy the measure of superiority that having a Master above the law would afford. 

Anyway, some of you I know want Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies – though I still strongly recommend you subscribe and get five days a week of this stuff for the low, low price of $7 per month or $70 per year – and you shall have them. 

Click here for the one I released yesterday about the Republican debate – an event already forgotten by all except the entrail-readers of the media who seem to be of the impression that second place in the Republican presidential nomination race comes with some kind of prize. I suppose one could say Tim Scott benefited from the slight increase in media exposure, because I believe Tubby would love a POC Veep candidate for You’re the Real Racist ™ points (Nikki Haley would go for the job, I’m sure, but I’m confident Tubby II will be a no-girls-allowed affair). Generally, low as my estimation of Republican voters may be, I can’t believe even they looked at that train wreck with anything other than contempt.

Speaking of which, click here for the one about debate cynosure Vivek Ramaswamy, or rather about the effusion of media interest that comes from being the “Look At Me, I’m Crazy” candidate while Tubby sits it out. To me, Ramaswamy is just the latest iteration of the GOP Business Prick candidacy – previously held by Steve Forbes, Mike Bloomberg, Ross Perot, and Herman Cain -- which slot Trump managed to break out of. With Trump still hogging the cockpit there’s no chance for Ramaswamy to move up and, as a pure political calculation, there’s no percentage in Trump unbalancing the ticket with an obvious lunatic for VP (there’s a reason why they foisted the Bland Boy of Indiana on him last time). I imagine given Bloomberg’s history the Republican Party of some city with a tech-heavy overclass and low standards may push him for mayor, but my guess is Ramaswamy’s more interested in using his new fame to cultivate financial markets in, say, Russia.  

SATURDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: PROMOTION OF THE PUTZES EDITION.

Poison fishes and they're freakin' me out, man/
They're so delicious and it's freakin' me out

Yeah, a day late and many dollars short. But look, I have free Roy Edroso Breaks It Down posts! They make great icebreakers at parties, assuming you still go to those. 

I already came across in the previous post with a freebie on the Trump defense taxonomy, so now I’m releasing the PragerU “Slavery as Vocational Training with Frederick Douglass” outtakes to gen pop. Anyone with any sense can see that Florida’s employment of the uncredentialed rightwing bullshit factory PragerU to help teach alternative history to schoolkids is a cynical con job designed not only to misinform the kids but also to discredit the very idea of education (because conservatism thrives on ignorance, and how better to promote ignorance than by turning schools into indoctrination centers that no one, including the kids, can take seriously). 

But what really gets me is that the gig fell to Dennis Prager, truly one of the stupidest wingnut factota around. I still remember his 2008 articles (yes, more than one!) arguing that women who didn’t feel like having sex with their husbands should do it anyway because, well, because daddy horny, that’s why. As I observed at the time:

And here's an analogy that should really win the ladies over: "Why do we assume that it is terribly irresponsible for a man to refuse to go to work because he is not in the mood, but a woman can -- indeed, ought to -- refuse sex because she is not in the mood?" That's why it's called a blow job, girls.

Even more disturbing than his argument is his sheer doggedness in pursuing it. I can understand begging, pleading, emotionally manipulating, and even dressing up nice, buying dinner, and pretending to be a nice guy to obtain sex, but writing two columns for Town Hall is where I draw the line.

Over the years I’ve gotten perverse pleasure from his ravings, the absurdity of which often increases with age as whatever bat was banging around his belfry when he wrote them passes out of living memory (e.g., “If the most left-wing major city in America starts arresting Jews who have their children circumcised there, some American Jews might awaken to the threat to Jews posed by the Left”). I assumed the conservative establishment would have found Prager too bizarre and unstable to entrust with big jobs like the destruction of public education, yet here we are. Well, we saw what chaos The Best and the Brightest wrought on public policy – I guess it's time to find out what The Worst and The Stupidest can accomplish.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: THEY'RE NOT BIG FANS OF DEMOCRACY.

Hell yeah, Chrome Dreams is out.

Only one Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebie this week, and it involves the Ohio vote I discussed here on Wednesday. I see what’s good about this latest pro-choice victory, but it reminds me that Republicans are not at all about the Consent of the Governed anymore, as their actions in Texas and Florida and elsewhere have shown, so we have to be prepared for some egregious shenanigans as the voters keep telling them to fuck off. 

Now, that doesn’t mean they can’t be beat – as one of our REBID commenters reminds us, if there are any honest actors with power in a state’s government (which obviously doesn’t apply to Abbott’s and DeSantis’ satrapies) the people may yet be let to rule:

That state Supreme Court bit was a big factor in Michigan voters being able to flip the state. By the 2022 election, the Court had thrown out every GOP effort to block new maps drawn by an independent re-districting commission. No-reason absentee ballots and same-day registration had passed by referendum in 2018, when Whitmer was elected governor, along with Dems in Secretary of State and AG offices. A series of sane Court actions, a hell of a lot of grassroots work, and Dobbs blowback led to the 2022 trifecta.

But they're gonna go down swinging. Another commenter alerts us to this, from the Alabama Daily News:

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – A number of high-profile Alabama Republicans expressed their growing concern Saturday over the impending ruling on the state’s new congressional district map, which some warned could be “precedent setting” and threaten Republicans’ prospects to ever hold a majority in Congress again.

“This doesn’t just affect us, this case is precedent setting,” said Paul Reynolds, the national committeeman of the Alabama Republican Party during a crowded state party meeting in Montgomery.

“Louisiana is right behind us, they’re facing the same problem we are. They’re next in line, and what is decided in our case is going to hit Louisiana right between the eyes”…

“Let me scare you a little bit more; Texas has between five and ten congressmen that are Republicans that could shift the other way,” he continued. “How could we win the House back ever again if we’re talking about losing two in Louisiana, and losing five to ten in Texas? The answer’s simple: It’s never.”

In other words: They can’t win if they don’t cheat. And it’s no shock they’re saying this out loud, because for today’s Republicans it's too late to even pretend anymore – their cover is blown and they’re just brawling with the cops now.

Their descent into lawlessness has Republican electeds like Michigan state rep Matt Maddock openly fantasizing about civil war, and lower-level choads increasingly playing it out – like Craig Robertson, who fucked around and found out and is now getting the Horst Wessel treatment from the internet’s leading fascists.  This isn’t politics as usual; be ready. 

UPDATE. Jumped in to fix a typo and figured I'd add this: "Wisconsin: 'Vos says lawmakers may consider impeachment if Protasiewicz doesn’t recuse from redistricting cases.'" We get a couple like this every week, it seems. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: DeSANTISMANIA!

Not bad for movie music!

Over at Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, our two freebies are DeSantis-centric.  (Face it, the guy's just hot copy!)  There’s the funny one, imagining what his strategy sessions must be, given not only his own fash politics but the congenial home he gave to the Nazi-riffic edgelord Nate Hochman. (You’d think Hochman having bylines in the New York Times and National Review would be a tip-off, but there is none so blind etc.) 

There’s also the more serious one about DeSantis’ “Slavery: A Land of Contrasts” curriculum. It’s pretty clear to everyone what he and his racist buddies are up to, so I spent some time on the conservative propagandists who thought it was a good idea to pull the “me or your lying eyes” bit over it.

Today there was also a good opportunity for a REBID flashback: for not the first, nor the second, but the third time, the Wall Street Journal has given Supreme Court Justice/corrupt old hack Sam Alito space in the paper to cry that people misunderstand him just because he takes gifts from people who have business before his court – indeed, the first of the two journalistic cat’s-paws in this instance (the second being the longtime rightwing operative who got Alito in the first time, James Taranto) is David Rivkin, who himself has a case on the SCOTUS docket. Talk about balls! 

Anyway, the routine is predictable – people who find his frequent Journal blowjobs improper “are really after ideologically congenial rulings,” though if that were the case it would seem more efficient to bribe rather than criticize the guy. Also Alito sometimes rules slightly differently than Clarence Thomas – and his jurisprudence is distinguished by “an emphasis on historical context,” i.e. homos can’t get married. All Alito’s findings that comport with the Federalist Society wish-list are explained as a product of his intellectual discipline, and those that don’t comport with it – just kidding, none of them don’t! 

The authors rub their hands over the prospect of overturning Chevron, which they call “increasingly disputed” because Leonard Leo wants it dead, and Alito, nervy to the last, compares resistance to himself and his fellow SCOTUS wingnuts to the resistance to the Warren Court over Brown v. Board of Education – which would be your tip-off, if you hadn’t already figured it out, that Sam Shady isn’t trying to convince anyone – he’s just trying to show you how far beyond giving a shit he is that he’s been caught red-handed. 

Anyway, as we used to say back in the day, I caught his act.

I will also add something I wrote elsewhere about the artist who recently left us:

Sinead O’Connor... was magnificent and died too young, but she lived and worked the way she wanted to, or rather the way her muse required, and you can’t say that about many. Whether that was worth all the hardships is not for me to say. What I will say is that she was done dirty after she ripped up that asshole pope’s picture — I always hated that son of a bitch — and I am pleased to see people acknowledging at this moment that she was right, and I bet the message carries better now that more people are educated about the savagery we’re all up against – or, to use the simple term, woke. There was a lot wrong with the 90s, and the general reflexive contempt for the weak and those who defended them was the worst of it. It took me a long time to get it myself.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: JULY 21, 2023.

I was just thinking about this guy. Cool tune!

Yeah, I've done a few posts this week and already dished out the Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies therein. (There are other unlocked items at the website, by the way, and even if it's been a few weeks or months or years they're still good readin' because, like whatshisname said, literature is news that stays news. OK?) But I figured I'd make an appearance because it's Friday and I'm sentimental!

You may have heard that the Michigan AG did what more Democratic motherfuckers should do and indicted a bunch of local Republican operatives -- including a former Michigan GOP co-chair and a Republican national committeewoman -- who tried to submit fake electors in the 2020 presidential election as part of Tubby's criminal scheme. Good. These idiots seemed to think they were going to get away with it and here's hoping the Finding Out stage of the proceedings will be instructive to them as well as to other crooks, current and would-be:

Funny sidebar: A lot of the rightwingers are complaining, not because they don't think the AG has them dead to rights (well, some pretend to think that, but they're too ridic), but because they suggest the culprits are too old to be indicted. "Michigan Charges 16 Elderly 'Fake Electors' With Felonies," says Fake Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge; "The average age of these legitimate electors is 70-years-old. They could face up to 94 years in prison," cries a typical choad. The average age of the indictees is 69; Donald Trump is 77.

But elsewhere outrages continue: 

Florida’s public schools will now teach students that some Black people benefited from slavery because it taught them useful skills, part of new African American history standards approved Wednesday that were blasted by a state teachers' union as a “step backward.”

The Florida State Board of Education’s new standards includes controversial language about how “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” according to a 216-page document about the state’s 2023 standards in social studies, posted by the Florida Department of Education.

Other language that has drawn the ire of some educators and education advocates includes teaching about how Black people were also perpetrators of violence during race massacres.

One is tempted to laugh because it's so insane -- as are the conservatives defending it, like the rightwing pennysaver Washington Examiner, sticking up for Florida's requirement that, when teaching about racist pogroms like the Tulsa massacre, schools must assert that black people share some of the blame: 

When discussing incidents of racial violence, such as the four mentioned, the state wants teachers to include any known details about violence committed by both groups. Are we supposed to believe that whites were never among the casualties? Again, these are just relevant, neutral pieces of information.

Also, did you know that in World War II, Jews sometimes fought back against the Nazis? Our kids aren't getting the whole story here. And at Newsbusters:

It is just a fact that many of the skills, especially agricultural skills, that these people acquired while working on plantations probably benefitted them immensely when they gained emancipation and were able to work their own land and earn money for themselves.

See, it wasn't all bad! And wait until we tell you how slaves were fed and clothed. Shoot, my boss doesn't do that for me! 

But laughter is insufficient; even apart from sympathy for the poor Floridians who will have to live with this nonsense, we should consider that this is what conservatives want for all of us -- not just this inversion of historical fact, but the normalization and promotion of slavery. (They will be helped in this by bothsider prestige press headlines, like Reuters' "Florida introduces new guidelines on teaching Black history, critics give poor grade" -- wow, wonder what the hubbub is about; guess people just like to complain!) We all know how prices on housing, food, and other necessities are getting jacked up, how earnings are becoming increasingly insufficient, and how the corporations that sell these goods and services get ever richer; the endgame for this is a slave state, and don't think for a second they're sentimental about preserving any illusion of freedom for you. They just have to lay the groundwork first by removing slavery's stigma by teaching in schools that it wasn't so bad.

THAT OLD KENNEDY MAGIC.

Yeah, there was no 'Round-the-Horn last week -- apologies, the new-house stuff is still an enormous pain, as is trying to figure out where things are both in and around it. Yesterday I spent 45 minutes on a bus to Marshall's downtown in search of socks and underwear. Thanks to the new American retail "Wait Till Everything Runs Out to Restock" strategy, I got three pair of socks and counted myself lucky. 

(Also had occasion to revisit the comically insufficient Baltimore Metro. On my first trip I couldn't figure out how to use the CharmPass on my iPhone -- I waved it at the gate readers to no avail -- and there were no attendants to assist me, so I just walked in and rode; at the exit gate I found an MDOT MTA employee and asked her how to use the CharmPass; she said, "You just show it to us." Apparently they don't have any way to connect this digital pass to their system. Maybe they'll figure that out by the time the Red Line gets done.)

But don't worry, there's some stuff at Roy Edroso Breaks It Down for non-subscribers -- like today's thing about RFK Jr.'s peculiar theories on how the COVID virus was weaponized to attack "Caucasians and black people" but leave "Ashkenazi Jews and Asians" alone. 

I said this should be the end of the crackpot Kennedy's ridiculous campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, but the sad fact is, even though he has no chance in hell even as a spoiler, the prestige press and Republican ratfuckers have too much at stake to let it go. So we're still getting stories about him as if he's viable. For example, some Washington Post editor gave Philip Bump's pretty good story about the consequences of Kennedy's mouth-fart the headline "Democratic Party rushes to disown Robert F. Kennedy Jr." -- as if the real news is that Democrats were abandoning the erstwhile RFK Jr. juggernaut instead of (as Bump's story shows) mainly ignoring it. 

And Rupert Murdoch's New York Post just goes on as if there's something else to discuss: "RFK Jr. shrugs off Biden family corruption allegations: Won't be a 'spear tip to my campaign,'" they report. Yeah, bold strategy, guy; more likely we'll just hear how Fauci mixed the COVID cauldron with Hillary's broomstick. Because RFK Jr. has nothing else - he's the anti-vaxxer candidate for people who are too misogynist to vote for Marianne Williamson, and all his other positions, such as his anti-Ukraine yak, are nothing you can't get from J.D. Vance or indeed from your average GOP chucklefuck -- pseudo-populism meant to sway the weak-minded. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: JULY 7, 2023.

Let's class the joint up a little!

Last week I skipped ‘Round-the-Horn – AGAIN. Apologies. The move that never ends formally finished with the clearance of our last effects from our previous home, but the house remains unsettled as the missus applies the Klotski method to her goods and chattels, plus we still have in-laws aboard. Leisure is at a premium. And they told me old age would be mainly a matter of finding ways to fill my time! 

But though I come late I also come laden with free Roy Edroso Breaks It Down editions. For one, there is the resumption of Sam Alito’s Wall Street Journal column, answering the complaints the thin-skinned old bastard, in my imagining, could not help but notice after the shit decisions he and his fellow wingnuts lately foisted on America. I expect to see him on Joe Rogan one of these days, sputtering over the loss of respect SCOTUS has suffered, and how unfair it is, when all he and his mates have done is rule so that, were the 18th-Century slaveholding plantocrats who founded this nation to come back from the dead, they would feel right at home.  

The next is inspired by the coke cache found in the White House, and how a certain onetime habitué might interpret its meaning. (Fans of the “Formula” series may appreciate the callback.)

On to other outrages. I’ve been telling you people for years that David French is a fraud, a rightwing religious maniac whose winsome NeverTrumper act has fooled many centrists including the ones who hire columnists for the New York Times, and his latest column runs true to form. He inveigles non-MAGA readers by agreeing once again that Trump is no good, but then goes on about how his deluded fans feel not merely “rage” but also “joy” at Trump's events, in his presence, and even gazing upon the insane videos and memes that celebrate him as a buff avenging American Messiah. The dread-and-circuses “give MAGA devotees a sense of belonging,” French says. 

This may seem to some of you like a clever angle – we talk about how crazy they are, but let’s bothsides this, can’t we just admit that they’re also full of joy! (And let’s not refer to it as “mania” or a “mood swing” because that would be Very Bias. Also, these are French’s neighbors and friends back in old Tennessee, so it would also be impolite.) 

But as usual with French this is just a sneaky way to pitch liberals on giving in to the obnoxious ideas that he and the Trumpkins actually share (i.e. most of them, stripped of the unpleasant frankness of MAGA viciousness), and ends with something resembling a plea for understanding and more: 

During the Trump years, I’ve received countless email messages from distraught readers that echo a similar theme: My father (or mother or uncle or cousin) is lost to MAGA. They can seem normal, but they’re not, at least not any longer. It’s hard for me to know what to say in response, but one thing is clear: You can’t replace something with nothing. And until we fully understand what that “something” is — and that it includes not only passionate anger but also very real joy and a deep sense of belonging — then our efforts to persuade are doomed to fail.

What “something” are we supposed to offer these people? The lives of one of our more vulnerable minorities? A do-over in states where he loses next time? Furthermore, why should we offer them anything? They advocate terror, treason, and bigotry. They represent a third of the country and demand violent reprisals against the other two-thirds. Fuck those guys. They want to kill me. There's nothing to discuss.