Month: July 2024

ZOOM CALL OF THE CHILDLESS CAT LADY PEOPLE

an actual United States senator

Donald Trump’s vice-presidential candidate JD Vance has defended resurfaced comments…The Senator from Ohio said the country was being run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too”—BBC.com, 7/26/24

PLACE: Anytown U.S.A.

TIME: Today

ELVIRA, QUEEN OF THE CCLP (Childless Cat Lady People): BWAHAHAHA! Welcome to the monthly Zoom call of the CCLP, where we discuss our evil plans to…wait, can everybody hear me? Well heavens, what’s wrong now?  You know, my computer is so old! Maybe I forgot to…OK, how about now?

CAT LADY FLORA: We can hear you now, Elvira!

ELVIRA: OK, BWAHAHAHA! Welcome, evil Childless Cat Lady People of America! Cat Lady Flora, what have you been doing this month to sap the virility of honest hardworking heterosexual childbearing America?

FLORA: Oh, I’ve done something pretty wicked, Queen Elvira. I donated five dollars to my local progressive-leaning public radio station!

ELVIRA: Why Flora, you are so nasty, ha ha!

FLORA: Oh, it’s even nastier than that, Elvira. I put it on autopay…I’m sending them five dollars…every month! I’m enabling them…to spread wicked lies about how the economy is actually doing pretty good and violent crime is down since Biden took office and…

ELVIRA: But those aren’t lies, Flora, that’s all true!

FLORA: Oh I know that, Elvira, but “wicked lies” sounds so much more fun than “responsible journalism!”

ELVIRA: Your report, Cat Lady Lucy Mae!

CAT LADY LUCY MAE: You will be so pleased, Your Evil Ladyship! I have signed up for weekly cha-cha classes at the local senior center!

ELVIRA: Um, ok…and that furthers our evil conspiracy…how?

LUCY MAE: By squandering valuable taxpayer money, since the classes are…FREE! BWAHAHAHA! Uh oh, looks like I frightened poor Gingersnap! It’s okay baby, that’s just mama’s evil laugh!

ELVIRA: Great way to use up public resources that might otherwise go to building a wall or reducing taxes even further on the wealthiest Americans, Lucy Mae!

CAT LADY YVONNE: Oh, can I go next, Your Serene Ailurophilic Childlessness? I volunteered to work late hours at the early voting station in November…

ELVIRA: Oh no! That means you are enabling…

YVONNE: Yes, O feline-fondling fiend! I am enabling working class and minority voters to exercise their rights as citizens without having to take time off from work! BWAHAHAHA!

ELVIRA: BWAHAHAHA, my evil infecund sister!

CAT LADY MOIRA: Oh, Queen Elvira, I have a confession to make. I have been hiding a horrible secret…I actually have children! Oh, I’m so wicked! And today I found out…I’m going to be a grandmother!

ELVIRA: Oh, that’s all right honey, we’re not real strict about that around here! Congratulations! [AWKWARD PAUSE] But you do…have a cat, right?

MOIRA: Oh yes, Sister Most Sinister! I have three! No wait, four! Cause last week the shelter called and asked if I could take a kitten just until they found someone, but it was just the cutest little thing, and we bonded right away, and I’m thinking about calling her Shredder because she just loves to…

ELVIRA: I’m so sorry, I just got a little window saying we’re out of time…BWAHAHAHA til next week!

Are You a Coastal Elite? Take Our Test and Find Out!

Coastal elite: the group of educated, professional people living mainly in cities on the western or northeastern coasts of the U.S. who have liberal political views and are often considered to have advantages that most ordinary Americans do not have. – Cambridge online dictionary

Take our test to see if you’re…one of us or…one of them! Don’t worry…we won’t tell!

1. I live in…

  • California, Oregon, New York, or Massachusetts: +5
  • Texas: -5
  • Austin, Texas +10

2. As far as religion goes, I am

  • A normal Christian: -5
  • Evangelical Christian: -10
  • Catholic: 0
  • Catholic, but one of the nutty ones who thinks the pope is a Bolshevist: -15
  • Atheist: +5
  • I don’t belong to a church, but I believe there is a divine spirit in all living things and if you want to call it God, that’s cool: +20

3. My wife and I have

  • Five or more children: -10
  • No children: +10
  • I’m wondering why this question assumes I’m male: +20

4. I went to:                            

  • Yale Law school: +20
  • Yale Law school, because I wanna be just like Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and Josh Hawley: -20

5. In conversation I casually throw around words like                   

  • Transaxle: -10
  • Transformational: +5
  • Trans-anything else: +10

6. I believe that slavery in the United States

  • Existed mainly to provide room, board and vocational training for newly arrived African immigrants: -20
  • Must we keep talking about it?: -10
  • Was the economic engine that fueled the young republic, at the cost of horrific suffering by millions of enslaved human beings: +20

7. With respect to Israeli bombing of Palestinian cities in Gaza, I support

  • The Israelis, cause they’re like semi-Christian, and the Palestinians are zero percent Christian: -20
  • The Israelis, cause the other guys started it!: -10
  • Um, it’s complicated? Israel has a right to defend itself against terrorist groups like Hamas, but it shouldn’t use that as a pretext for destroying so many civilian lives: +20

8. I am voting for Donald Trump:

  • Cause that’s what God wants: -20
  • Cause he actually says what I think, but it sounds stupid when I say it: -10
  • Cause our democracy is obviously headed for the crapper and we might as well get it over with: +10

9. The economy is obviously in terrible shape since

  • I can barely afford to fill up my F150: -10
  • What’s an F150?: +10

10. I believe that the 2024 presidential election

  • Will be won by Donald Trump, if the coastal elites don’t manage to steal it again: -20
  • Will be free and fair, cause I know this lady who’s been working down at the middle school for every election and she don’t allow no nonsense: +20

11. My favorite movie is

  • Cool Hand Luke, about an individual who is crushed for standing up to the liberal bourgeois system: -10
  • Cool Hand Luke, about an individual who is crushed for standing up to the reactionary bourgeois system: +10

12. Global Warming is

  • A hoax perpetrated by coastal elites who hate ordinary hardworking oil and gas company stockholders: -20
  • Kind of annoying but driving my F150 is worth a coral reef or two: -10
  • The reason I bought a stupid overpriced Tesla from Elon [expletive] Musk: +10

Results: if your score is…

Less than zero: Take the Civil Service Exam and prepare for an exciting career in the new Great America, opening January, 2025!

More than zero: Where do you get your news from, the newspaper?

On Trump vs. Biden vs. ?

Like many of you, I watched the “debate” between Donald Trump and Joe Biden a couple of weeks ago, at least until a feeling akin to horror caused me to change the channel.

If you have followed this blog at all, you know that I am the furthest thing from an adorer of Trump. But I am also convinced that Biden does not belong in the White House any longer.

And I find it alarming that the argument over whether Biden should stay in the race or drop out revolves around whether or not he can beat Trump at the polls.  But that’s the wrong question.

Even if a Biden victory were a dead certainty (which of course it’s anything but), even if Biden were opposed by a heavenly angel instead of evil incarnate (and I classify Trump closer to the latter), the Democratic National Committee must find a way to select another candidate.

Joe Biden has been a thoughtful, effective and humane president, on everything from mitigating the economic impact of COVID on small businesses, frustrating Vladimir Putin’s land grab in the Ukraine, and coaxing heavy industry into a more climate-friendly future. But after seeing him utterly confused in the debate, I wouldn’t trust him to look after a toddler on the beach for an hour. Would you? So how can we entrust him with a fractious nuclear-armed (and nuclear-threatened) nation of 300+ million people for the next four and a half years?

To be clear, if the race remains Trump vs. Biden, I will of course vote for Biden. (Though, as a resident of Texas, my vote is rather pointless.) But if that is the case, I won’t forgive the Democratic Party.

We liberals, we progressives, we who like to think of ourselves as rational and enlightened, don’t hide the truth, and pretend that our guy is super duper when we know his mental health is in serious trouble. We don’t pretend his faults don’t exist, or that they’re just fabricated by the other side, or that they’re actually virtues. We wouldn’t actually nominate a man who we know is unfit for the job, and pretend everything is all right, because we think the American people are too dumb and would be too confused to make the right choice if we pick a competent person instead.

No, we leave that kind of thing for the other side, because we’re…the good guys. Right?

But permit me to climb down from my admittedly high horse and consider the situation more concretely. If Biden does somehow manage to win the race, we will have a dangerously feeble occupant in the White House, 8:00 p.m. bedtime notwithstanding. And if Donald Trump wins against Biden, we will have at least 4 horrific years of having to ask ourselves, “what if?”