Goodbye and good riddance

Out of respect for Joe Lieberman's family, the early runs of our obituary will downplay his killing of the Obamacare public option, warmongering in Iraq, championing of Betsy DeVos, lobbying for China's ZTE, and co-chairmanship of No Labels.

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) March 28, 2024

Republicans = Nazis

Peace,

emaycee

 

Nobody gives Corporate America a hand job quite like republicans

BREAKING: In a brief re abortion, Supreme court Justices Amy Coney Barrett/Alito's Draft, said US needs a “domestic supply of infants” to meet needs of parents seeking to adopt — that those who would otherwise abort must be made to carry to term — giving children up for adoption.

— Dr. Jack Brown (@DrGJackBrown) May 7, 2022

Republican = Traitor

Peace,

emaycee

 

Betsy DeVos let men decide what rape is

My god. https://t.co/CM4BGyt1Ob

— digby (@digby56) October 4, 2021

The Republican Party Is Now a Fascist Cult Just Like Nazi Germany

Peace,

emaycee

 

DeVossing my cookies

If they offend thee, pluck them out

 It's unsurprising that Donald Trump wouldn't even show a modicum of decency in handing out pardons over the course of his remaining days.  But even I thought murderers would be a bridge too far.

Apparently not.

Earlier this week, Trump pardoned four murderers, employees of the defense contractor Blackwater (run by Erik Prince, brother of Betsy DeVos--nice payback for their family's humongous contributions to Trump's campaigns), who in 2007 killed fourteen civilians in Nisour Square in Iraq, including a nine-year-old boy.  All had been rightfully convicted for the unwarranted attack.

Interesting, though, how DeVos is always touting her Christian bona fides, including trying again and again to get American taxpayers to pay for her religious schools.  Apparently in DeVos world, that "Thou Shalt Not Kill" commandment only applies to white, American Christians. 

Trying to destroy our public education system as Secretary of Education wasn't enough for DeVos--it seems crushing America's soul by paying to have murderers pardoned in the name of her faux Christianity is also needed to satiate her cretinous ego.

What a pathetic excuse for a human being.

335,000+ Dead Americans Because of Donald Trump's Incompetence

Biden:  306 EV's, Trump:  232

emaycee

emaycee's Word of the Year

Donald Trump puts the "I" in incompetence

 Unsurprisingly, the folks at Merriam-Webster have named "pandemic" as their word of the year.  While it's hard to quibble with a word that has changed our lives over the past year more than any of us had ever imagined, I think another word that sums up much of the reason we are in such dire straits is "incompetence."

Some examples:

• Due to the utter incompetence of Donald Trump, 280,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 this year.
• The incompetence of Mike Pence in leading the coronavirus task force has led to uneven levels of mask usage, which if done properly, would have led the United States to have had far fewer cases which in turn would have also allowed businesses to open fully and Americans to have been able to spend the holidays much more safely like the folks in France, Japan, and New Zealand (to name but a very few of the nations who handled with pandemic with competence).
• Rudy Giuliani and his crack team of Bozos incompetence in litigating the election results, which has now led them to lose more than thirty cases to their lone victory, is staggering in its unprecedented record of failure.
• The stunning incompetence of Mitch McConnell and Senate republicans in realizing the damage being done to America's economy because of the pandemic will lead to hundreds of thousands of Americans to slip into poverty, go hungry, and lose their homes.  
• Thankfully, the incompetence of the unqualified and unintelligent Betsy DeVos will make fixing whatever changes she made as Secretary of Education much easier, and our public schools will once again be a beacon of this country's spirit.
• Never underestimate the incompetence of republican politicians--there is nothing good that they cannot mismanage, and nothing bad that they cannot make worse.

Judges, thank you for your consideration....

280,000+ Dead Americans Due to Donald Trump's Incompetence

Fuck Donald Trump,

emaycee

Rich white privilege, verse one

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, bought and paid for

The woman who bought her Cabinet position by making donations to Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, earlier this week said that she is rejecting school reopening plans which do not send our children back to school full-time in the classroom.  This is somewhat rich, because DeVos has absolutely zero power to do this--as we are not one of those smart countries which has a national education program and instead leaves everything to local officials, each and every school district can tell DeVos to blow it our her ass.

Unfortunately, what DeVos can do is control the funding, and she is threatening to withhold money from schools which don't bend to her wants.  While most folks agree that it is in our children's best interests to get them back to school, I think it's important to note that most of us think this should be done safely with plans in place for the coronavirus, but DeVos wants this done simply because her boss, Putin puppet Donald Trump, thinks it will help the economy and therefore his chances for re-election.

Understand that Betsy DeVos doesn't give a good goddamn about education or people's children unless they are rich or religious, and that your child's long term health or even death is a small price for her to pay as long as she and her family can keep getting richer and can keep shoving her religious beliefs down your throat.

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

Just one question

Al Qaida, the Taliban, and the DeVos family--all terrorists

If there was one question I would like to see the press ask Donald Trump is his daily bullshit dissemination conferences, it would be this:

"What do you think of the fact that the family of one of your Cabinet members--Betsy DeVos--is giving financial support to protesters who are carrying swastika signs, confederate flags, threatening the governor of Michigan with bodily harm, and waving guns threateningly as they protest desperately needed stay at home directives?"

While I'm certain Trump would give his standard response--they're fine people (they're not) and the DeVos family are good Americans (again, no), I think it's important that Americans know exactly how fucked up the Trump administration is.

Look 40% of American are going to vote for the idiot regardless, but I'm pretty sure the other 60% aren't going to be all the comfortable with a Cabinet member giving money to a fringe group of American terrorists.

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

Racist much?

Conservative Christianity at its finest...

Hundreds of people from Michigan, bankrolled by the DeVos family, converged on our state capital in Lansing today to protest Governor Gretchen Whitmer's stay at home directive.

Everything you need to know about this rally can be explained by the shirt of the man in the photo--the vast bulk of the deaths in Michigan are occurring in overwhelmingly black Detroit and the rally is strictly, completely, and totally about their racism. 

Fucking period.

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

Little piggies, part the second

Nothing more need be said

For the past year, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has been trying to rewrite an Obama era rule known as the Borrower Defense to Repayment, which basically helps students who were cheated out of money by for-profit colleges, so as to give for-profit colleges who grifted people out of thousands of dollars the fruits of their cheating.

Isn't this akin to convicting a bank robber, and then saying, "What the hell, here's the money you stole--enjoy!"

Nothing quite like the rich helping the rich to get even richer--and what an embarrassment Betsy DeVos is to everything that decent people consider proper.

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

A bad moon on the rise

Row, row, row your boat...

Last week Secretary of Education Betsy Devos had her 163 foot yacht (one of nine boats she and her husband own) unmoored in Ohio, causing the boat to float aimlessly for a short period and sustain a few scratches.

My guess is that considering the disaster that is the republican tax cut for the rich, and the growing chasm in America between rich and poor, it's only a matter of time before untying some billionaire's boat and casting it adrift as a means of protest is going to seem decidedly quaint.

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

Fuck the rich

Take your country back...from the rich

I had two takeaways from this video of Harvard students silently protesting a speech by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos:

First, it's how strong the resistance remains--from the marches on Trump's inauguration day to the travel ban protests to NFL players taking a knee to these students silently protesting a woman who got her job the rich people's way (she bought it) and the administration she represents, you have to feel that our hopes for taking back what will remain of America are strong.

The second one occurs at the end, when a student asks a perfectly reasonable question in a polite manner:  exactly how much money does billionaire DeVos, Wall Street, and other rich folks like the Koch Brothers stand to gain from turning our public education over to for profit organizations?  And at that point someone (presumably a member of Harvard faculty or one of its administrators) tells DeVos that she doesn't have to answer that question.  Why the fuck not?  It's a legitimate question and she's a public official getting paid by our tax dollars and answerable to we, the American people.

She most certainly has to fucking answer it and the fact that she didn't is entirely telling that her agenda isn't about helping America's children but is instead about making her greedy family even richer.

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

The revolution will be live

And perhaps sooner than they think...

The anger is palpable.

And one has to wonder how much more of it working class folks will take before the shit hits the fan.  To wit (and this is just the tip of the iceberg):

• The Trumpcare bill was released today, and here's a surprise:  Turns out that virtually all of us are going to pay more for healthcare (yes, even us lucky folks who have employer provided healthcare), have much higher deductibles, and it will result in millions of Americans either losing or being priced out of their healthcare...all so we can give tax breaks to the super rich.
• The Trump family is basically using the Presidency to immensely enrich itself further, and is showing no signs that it's willing to so much as lift a finger to help all those poor saps who voted for the rich white guy in hopes that he'd keep their families from starving.  Turns out there's a lot more than just one sucker born every minute.
• In a speech in Iowa this week, Trump said he doesn't want poor people making economic decisions.  Of fucking course he doesn't--if they learned how much the fat orange bastard was fucking them, they'd put his balls in a vise and keep turning the handle until his testes were as flat as their paychecks.
• And how about filling the swamp with rich people who gave millions to his campaign who are using their positions not to help the American people, but to make themselves and their families even wealthier.  Betsy DeVos?  Solely in it to make more money for her family.  Rex Tillerson?  Ditto.  Scott Pruitt?  Ditto--well that and blowing the fossil fuel industry which he seems to enjoy tremendously.  And what's even more pathetic?  For all the talk about running the country like a business, can you imagine a corporation in America who would put so many completely unqualified people in positions of authority?  I mean seriously--it would be like Bank of America taking someone who's a regional head of HR and making that person their CFO.  Even Corporate America isn't that fucking stupid.

I've felt for a long time that eventually income inequality and the continued lowering of the standard of living for the poor, the working class, and the middle class would result in some serious ugliness toward the wealthy, but I never thought I'd live long enough to see it.

Not so sure anymore that I won't be here to enjoy it.

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

People who live in glass mansions...

A true American hero

Rich pampered airhead Betsy DeVos joked at last week's CPAC (Cretinous Pinheads and Chickenshits) Convention that she's the first person to ever tell Bernie Sanders to his face that "there is no such thing as a free lunch."

Leaving aside the fact that it really takes a special kind of asshole to make a joke about hungry kids, DeVos should be the last person to tell Bernie Sanders, a man who got to where he was through intelligence and hard work and not because his Daddy and his spouse were rich, anything that questions his worldview.

Of course, considering all the money her family spent to make her the most unqualified Cabinet member in the history of the United States of America, she probably wouldn't know much about a compassionate worldview.

Because she just uses dollar bills to pull herself up by her bootstraps.

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

I live in DeVos

Strangled by the mitten...

I used to live in Michigan.  Now I live in DeVos.

Our capital used to be Lansing.  Now it's DeVos--that's right, our legislature legislates in DeVos, DeVos.

We used to have a State House of Representatives and a State Senate.  Now we have the Lower DeVos and the upper DeVos.

Our Governor--terrible as he is--used to be called Rick Snyder.  Now he's Governor DeVos.

We used to have a republican party and a Democratic party here.  Now we have the DeVos party and the Democratic party.

People may think I'm being overly dramatic but I am not--our state has all three branches solidly controlled by republicans who are in turn solidly controlled by the DeVos family.  Whatever the DeVos family wants, they get.  And without the slightest hint of dissent--no republican member dare question them lest the DeVos family set up a well-funded primary challenger in a heartbeat.

I mention all of this because the Senate approved Betsy Devos--a woman who has no qualifications whatsoever and appears to have received her appointment due to her family's bribing of republican Senators--as our next Secretary of Education.

And anyone who doesn't think the DeVos family wants to do to America what it did to Michigan is absolutely kidding themselves.

And there's no more perfect pawn than Donald Trump.

Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee

Evil personified

Future Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos

From our next Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos:

“I have decided to stop taking offense,” she wrote, “at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect something in return. We expect to foster a conservative governing philosophy consisting of limited government and respect for traditional American virtues. We expect a return on our investment.”

“People like us,” she added archly, “must surely be stopped.”

And what American virtues would those be?  Racism?  Misogyny?  Homophobia?  How about unfettered greed?  Or psychopathy?  What about elitism?  And Nazism?  The War on Women?  The War on Workers?  The War on the poor?  How about hate crimes?  Lying?  Or plain old hatred?

I'll give DeVos credit for at least being right on two points:  First, billionaires like her and her husband, Dick DeVos, are definitely trying to buy our country, and second, even though it was said in sarcasm, she and her disgusting ilk must surely be stopped.

Democrats looking for a personification of all that is wrong with Trumpism would do well to start with the Wicked Witch of the White House, Betsy DeVos.

Fuck Donald Trump,

emaycee

First they came for the kids

Apparently not content with running the state of Michigan, the DeVos family is now setting its sights on the entire country as family matriarch Betsy DeVos today was nominated to be Secretary of Education by Donald Trump despite having no qualifications for the job other than being rich.

For those not familiar, the DeVos family is known for being virulently anti-union and big supporters of the privatization of our kids education (this piece by Mother Jones is truly eye-opening--you're probably safer with Charles Manson as your next door neighbor than with the DeVos family located anywhere within 100,000 miles or so of the United States).  They're also known for having the cleanest asses in the state--Governor Rick Snyder (you probably know him better as the man who oversaw the poisoning of thousands of children in Flint) and republican members of the Michigan Legislature have their lips locked permanently to the butt cheeks of each individual DeVos family member.

Our governor is currently being sued by seven children in Detroit because his wonderful emergency manager plan has failed to fund education so miserably that they have no other recourse but to sue just to get educated.  Governor Child Poisoner's response?  Kid don't have a constitutional right to an education, even though our state constitution expressly grants them that right.

For those wondering what else your kids are in store for under Hitler's choice for Secretary of Education, the city of Detroit currently has a 47% rate of illiteracy, the city of Pontiac has a 34% rate of illiteracy, and the city of Southfield has a 24% rate of illiteracy, all of which are a direct result of republicans running the state of Michigan (they've held the governor's mansion for 18 of the last twenty-six years and both houses of the legislature all but four of those years) with their usual policies surrounding we don't give a shit about you if you're poor.

Do not underestimate the disaster this is for our kids education.

By the way, it also signals that the institutions of our government are now officially for sale to the highest bidder (which ain't you and me).

Fuck Donald Trump,

emaycee