The three stooges of the apocalypse

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My wife and I sat in front of the TV last night for hours, watching the results come in. As the parents of two girls, there really was no place else we could/should have been.

There was something savage and almost gleefully cruel about Republicans, overwhelmingly old, white men, coming after the right of women to control their own bodies.....the rights of the women I love more than anything in this world. There was nothing subtle about it. And there is nothing subtle about their plan, blurted out by South Carolina Trump loving Senator Lindsey Graham, that the ultimate goal is to ban all abortions at the federal level. All the blabbering about how it "should be in the hands of the states" is complete bullshit. Graham said out loud what the rest of the old crows wanted to keep in the back room. And women heard him.

Mastriano. Bognet. Oz. The contempt for women in today's Republican party was prominently displayed here in PA. The three stooges of the apocalypse. Lovers of Trump and the fetus. The child itself can fuck off. The mother never even enters the equation. She's disposable. A handmaiden. And in some extreme cases, they are fine with her dying. Oz is an actual doctor, who took a pledge to do no harm. The price of red meat in MAGA-ville apparently includes the hippocratic oath.

So yea, this mattered to us. On a lot of levels.

Gas prices. Inflation. Crime. These things matters too. Other than reminding me that they exist, you neglected to mention your plan on dealing with them, a bit of a brazen oversight methinks.

But first we're gonna deal with you diving into the uteruses of my girls. You come for them wearing muddy shoes and get my floor dirty, I'm gonna smash you over the head before I worry about my rug.

We voted by mail, fearful of an election day paper shortage or some such glitch. Our votes were counted weeks ago. It was all very modern and drama free. No lines. No proud boy poll watchers. No missing office supplies. I urge you to try it sometime.

Luzerne county rarely makes the national news with a feel-good story, and last night's county wide paper shortage was no exception. Neighboring Lackawanna county is our home, and thankfully she was prepared on the paper front....and on the women's front as well, as our county voted overwhelmingly for the candidates who won’t debase them. (There is somebody in some office somewhere, probably one of these "nobody wants to work anymore" chuds, who was in charge of paper and pens....and got distracted by something over by the watercooler. He's got some explaining to do this morning.)

Turnout was very high. It had the feel of a general election. Mid-terms are often sleepy and boring. Like an all-night card game. I can't ever remember staying awake half the night watching results of a mid-term. Or seeing long lines for a mid-term. But things seem different now. We're on the verge of something, and it can topple in either direction. It seems almost dangerous to sit these things out nowadays.

Pundits called for a bloodbath. Biden's approval ratings are in the shithouse. Gas and food prices are spiking again. Democrats were going to lose control of both the house and the senate. It was like settling in to watch your own wake.

And...yea....parts of it were bad. Florida, once a swing state very much in play for Democrats, has seemingly gone insane, a combination of Trump and DeSantis and too many hurricanes....plus way too many racist old coots moving into the Villages with their social security bounty. It suddenly seems as solidly red as Mississippi, and if Democrats spend more than 8 cents there going forward they're crazy. Focus instead on places like North Carolina and Georgia, the former because not everybody living there is batshit, the latter because even though it produced Herschel Walker, it's also where Stacy Abrams is from. And she's gonna be President someday.

But now I'm left with Oz's housewarming gift, and I'm not sure where I should send it.

Alas, lest we forget, there's the orange elephant in the room. Trump hovers over all of this, like a giant bird shitting on windshields. If he had stayed on the sidelines last night the “red wave” may indeed have arrived. But he didn’t, and many of his handpicked candidates grated on the last nerves of voters who are (possibly) growing weary of the unrelenting batshittery. And so most of them lost.

He hosted a party last night in Florida, but grew very nervous very fast....

“Well, I think if they win, I should get all the credit,” he said. “And if they lose, I should not be blamed at all, OK. But it’ll probably be just the opposite.”

That's an exact quote from a pathetically small and weak man desperate for the grift to continue. For Democrats, he's become the gift that keeps on giving. If he announces for 2024, all they need to do is buy enough popcorn to watch he and DeSantis destroy each other. Right now Trump is as toxic as Chernobyl. And he hasn’t even been indicted yet.

And Biden? In 2016 the Democrats ran the only candidate in the party who could not defeat Donald Trump. In 2024 the Republicans seem willing to return the favor.

In a bit..

--tf