17 Comments

I drive by a restaurant every day that just has the word EAT in giant letters. I've never eaten there, but I do eat regularly.

https://fastly.4sqi.net/img/general/width960/2319617_5HFejCUPFN0osvxVVrZDiJ3Kb_UzhUX1trnB8sEnyP8.jpg

Expand full comment

There's an alarming amount of "Mexican cantina" restaurants in the fairly depressing small towns between Boston and the border with NH/Maine, one of which has a light up "EAT" built into an otherwise blank brick wall.

Expand full comment

The system works. /nods sagely

Expand full comment

Having uber-conservative John Kasich, war criminal Colin Powell, and homophobic Quibi CEO Meg Whitman speak has definitely convinced me to vote for the Green Party. Great job, Democrats!

Expand full comment

I can stomach the strategy of having Kasich speak, or Quibi lady. Ok, fine. I don't think it's good strategy, but I get it. The McCain videos and tributes irk me a little more since he was hawkish on the Iraq War (to say the least) but so were plenty of other Senators, including Biden. So if I've decided I can hold my nose and vote Biden, why not put up with some McCain.

What I can't stand is the rehabilitation of Colin Powell. I'm hard pressed to fathom how anything Trump has done is more evil than the lies that lead to us invading Iraq. It was an unnecessary, uncalled for, war of aggression on a poor nation. We killed at least half a million Iraqis, but we'll never know the real count because we couldn't be assed to tally the kills.

I didn't watch Powell last night. Sure, he wasn't AS evil as the other Bush guys, but he could've put the breaks on things and stopped the war, but instead he gave his UN speech. So, I don't know if I'll vote in November. If I do, it'll be Biden. But seeing Powell up there didn't exactly inspire me to risk my health to go to the polls.

Expand full comment

Listen to the Blowback podcast. Powell had the greatest chance at stopping that atrocity and went along with the lies. He’s a real piece of shit.

Expand full comment

yeah, I'm on like ep6 of Blowback. It makes me mad so I'm slowly working through it.

Expand full comment

I was 12 when I listened to Powell's UN speech on the radio, and was just at the cusp of having the level of analytical thinking to think at the end "that sounds like a bunch of bullshit."

Only one leader in the Labour Party resigned over Iraq (Robin Cook), though obviously there were backbench members who voted against it and ones like Corbyn who spoke at the massive rallies against the war. There were plenty of times when someone major like Powell could have undercut the credibility of the march to war but chose not to, and I doubt many of them honestly believed in either the WMD argument or Saddam's connections to 9/11. Wolfowitz and all the Project for a New American Century people who flooded into the GWB administration had been talking about invading Iraq (just cause, basically) for at least a decade.

Expand full comment

I forgot about Whitman. I remember her campaign for governor in 2010, it was basically the Homer Simpson boxing episode, where she ran nonstop ads for a year until everyone got sick of her making live TV unwatchable and Jerry Brown ran a couple cheap ads on her right before the election and won easily.

Her and Fiorina running in the same state in the same cycle really underlined how terrible Silicon Valley CEOs were as politicians.

Expand full comment

I forgot about Carly. What’s a failure she was.

It’s so on-brand for the Democrats to reward 4 years of mutual aid and activism by ensuring that Quibi has a larger presence in the convention than the DSA.

Expand full comment

The DSA has a pesky habit of methodically taking down their useless mid-tier leadership and long-term incumbents. Which obviously DNC leadership feel profound empathy for, as they also haven't done much of anything in decades.

Expand full comment

My comment wasn’t explicitly pro-DSA, it was pointing out how funny it is that they are simultaneously held up as a nuisance and an example of how to organize by the worst people and the rate they’ve grown while sheepdogging people to the Democratic Party and they get ignored for Quibi.

It would be an easy soft-focus video segment for the Democrats to at least pretend like they give a fuck about people.

Expand full comment

Everything you're saying is sober and common sense but the second I see anyone try to bring it up they're called a bernie bro or trying to help Trump or whatnot.

Expand full comment

"Vote" is upper middle-class white people speak for "activism"

Expand full comment

To vote means that you are free to choose your future. Just like you are free to check out this cute butterfly necklace I just love and which I think Jill Biden wore at the ceremony event.

https://www.analuisa.com/products/butterfly-necklace-souryaz

Expand full comment
founding

I agree with the writer that issues are the substance, but I do think voting in and of itself makes a statement right now against current administration's efforts to erode our Constitution, and our would-be democracy by obstructing the fundamental human right that civil rights workers risked their lives to attain.

Expand full comment

What if....I did vote, and all I got was this lousy sense of disillusionment???

Expand full comment