Cinco De Mayo in 2019 Baby Time to Honor General Zaragoza and the Mexican Forces of Beer uh Puebla

But hey, do you even know WHY we celebrate Cinco De Mayo? Ellen's audience doesn't even know.

But Ellen's kind of right. The United States really only celebrates it because beer.

SO DRINK AND DRIVE RESPONSIBLY, WHITE PEOPLE. Sheesh.

Update: And it IS Revenge of the Fifth...

The Kids Are Alright

And these children that you shoot at /
As they try to dodge your bullets /
Are immune to your Fox Not-News punditry /
They're quite aware you're on the NRA payroll...
- Updated version of David Bowie's "Ch-Ch-Changes"

In the aftermath of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting (via The Atlantic):

What made Parkland different were the people who stepped forward to describe it. High-school students—the survivors of the calamity themselves—became the voice of the tragedy. Tweets that were widely reported as coming from the students expressed grief for the victims, pushed against false reports, and demanded accountability...

...On television, on social media, they were unignorable. Many of them called for legislation to address the violence.

“We are children. You guys are the adults. Work together, come over your politics, and get something done,” David Hogg, a student who survived the killing, told CNN...

When the conservative pundit Tomi Lahren demanded that “the left ... let the families grieve for even 24 hours before they push their anti-gun and anti-gun-owner agenda,” the same survivors, who knew the victims, responded in kind:

I think the gun nuts just fucked with the wrong high school.

...Those students understand that they live in a country that they have very little power to change—a country where, several times a year, a school for children becomes a charnel house. So when that hideous transformation struck their school, they already knew what they wanted to do. That girl in the closet, talking to her classmate, anticipated the next several days of talking points without knowing whether she would get to see those days at all. These assorted Florida teenagers knew the contours of the gun debate so well that they were rebutting NRA talking points just after emerging from their safe zones. Now, a few days later, their insistence on their own authority has gummed up the works of the otherwise cliched national debate. Their calls for action may not lead to any imminent change in policy. But they have given the country a striking symbol of what—and who—we’re really talking about when we have these debates. And they will not be the last victims to face a loaded assault rifle and think: This IS preventable. I MUST politicize this.

Then there's student Emma Gonzalez, using the aftermath to rail against the people in power (hint: Republicans) who haven't done shit to address the rise of gun violence in our schools, our public places, and our lives:

There's talk of making a nationwide boycott, of students walking out of their school on April 20 (anniversary of Columbine, what had been the deadliest school massacre until Parkland) and refusing to go back until Congress passes gun safety laws such as banning assault weapons used in most of our mass shootings and implementing Universal Background Checks.

This is the generation following us. This is the generation that grew up in the shadow of Columbine, and who were in middle school when the Sandy Hook massacre took place, and who have been living through monthly school lockdown drills their entire lives.

They are sick of it. They are sick of the NRA buying enough politicians to stop common sense safety laws passing, they are sick of angry guys with guns using them for target practice, they are sick of a status quo that has been enforced on our nation based on fear, lies, and ignorance.

And the kids are not rolling over.

And the kids are standing up.

The kids are alright.

Update: I am not the only one noting these kids are alright.

Guardian article

New Yorker article.

NY Daily News article.

P.S. some of these kids are gonna be old enough to vote this 2018 midterms.

P.S.S. ALL of these kids are gonna be old enough to vote in 2020.

You Republicans can throw all the issues at the glass - abortion, tax cuts, immigration, racial fears, what have you - in order to distract people but I guarantee you these kids are gonna be single-issue voters. They got something to rally around. They are gonna be voting against guns, and you lot sold yourselves to the NRA for far too long.

I hope to God it's an electoral bloodbath this November to match the literal bloodbaths filling up our schools.

The Only Number That Matters

(Update 12/27/2017: Thank you Batocchio for adding this entry to the annual Jon Swift Memorial Roundup for 2017!)

Keeping track of Trump's polling numbers isn't as important as keeping up with - and fighting back against - the terrible actions of his administration, but it's the canary in the coal mine that can tell us just when Trump is truly doomed.

That Trump is already underwater on the polls - starting off his tenure below 50 percent, something NO President has done in the era of modern polling (Eisenhower onward) - does nothing. Everybody knew coming into this that Trump was the least popular winner of the Electoral College loser of the Popular Vote of all time. That he's polling at 38-39 percent now doesn't mean much either.

Right now, the only way Trump leaves office - barring a full four years of his madness, or Gods Help Us he steals the re-election - is through impeachment or the 25 Amendment.

But impeachment only happens through Congress... and Republicans control Congress.

The 25 Amendment removal process only happens through the Cabinet and the Vice President... and Republicans control that.

And the Republicans are cowards.

For all the storm and fury that comes out of the Beltway media, that the party Establishment despises Trump and are just poised to toss him overboard first chance they get, the Republicans are STILL not doing anything about him.

Because for all the bad polling there is on Trump, there is only one number that matters:

How many Republican voters approve of Trump.

From the NBC News/Gallup poll recently done:

Notice the polarized numbers between the three factions of Democrats to Independents to Republicans. Of course the Republicans disapproved of the Democrats - harshly so after 1992 when the partisanship started its avalanche - for Clinton and Obama, and of course the Democrats disapproved of the Republicans from Reagan onward, and while they approved their own guys with high marks. That's not surprising.

It's interesting to note the Independents, how they tend to be approving with only Bill Clinton at 49 percent to start his tenure, and even then that's pretty solid close to 50 percent. Trump is terrible among Independents at 35 percent, that is honestly unheard of to get among the voter bloc that tends to be the less partisan and more optimistic.

But that's unimportant for this argument. What matters is that 87 percent approval Republicans have for Trump.

As long as Trump has that much support among the party base, there is not a damn thing the Republicans in Congress or in the Establishment can do to toss him overboard.

That level of popularity - most likely inflated as a reaction the base has towards the public hostility towards their boy Trump - translates into a lot of angry primary voters come 2018. And that means angry primary challengers (remember Eric Cantor?).

Even those Senators like McCain and Graham who won't have to worry about facing any primary challengers any time soon are wary of directly attacking Trump, lest the voter base - riled up by Fox Not-News and the whole REAL Fake News Breitbart Army - turn against the whole party and risk throwing the midterms to the Democrats.

The GOP will risk the chaos and destruction of the Trump regime because A) they need him to be the scapegoat to the oncoming budget disasters they themselves know their plans are, and B) they honestly fear his - not theirs - base.

They're still cowards. They are delaying the inevitable, and unable to fix their own house of petty angry voters they've unleashed on the electorate these past 25 years.

If they're waiting for Trump's Republican numbers to drop below say 70 percent, they'll have a long wait to endure: the Far Right voting base loves Trump exactly because he pisses the right people off, which includes the Republican Establishment. It's one hell of a Catch-22: The very reason to dump Trump - that he's insane, unstable, incapable of rule, alienating our allies, punishing entire families because of their (Mexican, Arab, and/or Asian) ethnicity, unable to moderate himself to do what the NATION needs out of a President - is the very reason his followers will never abandon him.

It's going to take a disaster worse than Hurricane Katrina - at this point, I doubt a terror strike would even help, because enough Dems and Indys were burned by the fallout of Bush/Cheney's miscues after 9/11 to fall for that again - to drop Trump's Republican approval to a level where he loses enough party support for the GOP to impeach or remove him. And by then, thousands will be dead, hundreds of thousands will be suffering, and it will all be too late.

For the rest of us, the Democrats and the Independents clearly opposed to Trump, the best we can do is keep the pressure up, and run for office. Every seat must be challenged. Every office needs be flipped to those who will fight Trump and his Far Right wingnuts every minute of every day.

Our numbers need to matter more.

Resisting the Oncoming Train Wreck: an Indivisible Guide

I'm linking this PDF page to you about what you can do to force the Far Right wingnuts in Congress and the White House to NOT destroy the whole planet like they hope to.

Indivisible: A Practical Guide to Resisting the Trump Agenda

The key takeaways:

• SHOW UP. At the local office or even spend the time to trek over to DC and bang on the office door there. Show up at every public event. Make yourself seen.
• SIT-IN. Get physical about your space being in their space. Do put bail money aside for this one.
• CALL YOUR CONGRESSCRITTER'S OFFICE. OFTEN. But make it about a specific issue, just don't call and rant in general. It's gotta be something being debated on the floor of the House (and not Senate, you CALL YOUR SENATECRITTER for that) at the moment. And be polite. Rude callers get ignored.
• GET INVOLVED. Join local organizations fighting for your rights. Even look into joining the Democratic Party and running for local - school board, county seats, state legislative - offices.
• DON'T GET INTO AGENDAS. Arguing over a 50-point plan gets messy, distracting, and tossed aside. Play DEFENSE. Just Say NO.

And if all else fails, for the Love of GOD Do NOT Vote Republican ever again and get 500 people around you to do the same.

Couldn't Stand the Weather

So here I am facing the oncoming storm of Hurricane Matthew, hunkering down while my library closes tomorrow with hope that the damage in central Florida is minimal and that things will be normal by Saturday.

And here's Rude Pundit yelling and screaming because Matt Drudge - one of the founding members of the Far Right Noise Machine from the 1990s - is being an idiot about hurricanes:

Because, see, in his Twitter feed and on his website of the godforsaken, Drudge has said that the National Hurricane Center is hyping Matthew and lying about wind speed because they want to "make exaggerated point on climate" change. He has also declared that the winds in Haiti weren't as intense as reported so we shouldn't be as worried because, apparently, meteorologists get off on gridlock and panicked people, I guess...

Drudge's original Tweet:

Here's what Drudge is selling. The Far Right has long accused the scientists pushing a political agenda - a Communist-inspired New-World-Order - to hurt our energy producers by going after the negative effects carbon-based pollution has on our global climate. Rather than accept the slight possibility that 98 percent of scientists who study and research this stuff are actually freaking out that our planet is artificially heating up into a civilization-ending extinction-level event, the media elites of the Far Right alongside the Republican party leadership try to convince enough people that global warming is a myth and that every warning of environmental disaster is exaggerated or worse.

The reason there's a controversy over Climate Change is because the Far Right WANTS the controversy. Any settled acceptance of this fact would destroy one of the key elements of their precious Conservative Narrative.

Ergo, the strength and destructiveness of hurricanes has to be downplayed or mocked: Any proof that the weather is becoming more extreme due to the temperature shifts would ruin the Far Right wingnuts.

Apparently, the Weather Channel is now part of the Vast Liberal Conspiracy alongside NASA, NOAA, Al Gore, and pretty much anybody with a degree in Meteorology, Environmental Sciences, or (insert most college degrees here).

Worse, we got idiots claiming Obama controls the weather.

NO, YOU MORONS, THAT WAS DESTRO. /headdesk

In the meantime, if Drudge questions the strength of Hurricane Matthew, he's more than welcome to head out to West Palm Beach and stand on US A1A along the beaches and measure that storm surge himself. See what results he gets.