“I can be someone’s and still be my own.” — Shel Silverstein

The world of sports and politics rarely collide. That’s why I consider myself such a fan of sports. I can talk sports and follow sports without getting into a political quagmire. Aaron Rodgers entered the scene last week when it was discovered that he tested positive for COVID-19 and he hadn’t been vaccinated.

Back when the season began Rodgers said he had been “immunized” and the press at the time naturally assumed that meant vaccinated. I suppose it is a natural assumption to make. Instead he took Ivermectin and considered it good. Obviously, that didn’t work and he had to sit out a game his team likely would have won with him.

Naturally, we get into the weeds when we start talking about whether he overtly lied or whether he actually believed he was immunized. We can stay in the weeds and talk about the right to privacy as it pertains to medical decisions. Rodgers was certainly free to answer that question anyway he saw fit and we still don’t know how much the Packers knew and we don’t know if he followed protocols for unvaccinated players.

What we do know is that when asked a question about his status, he purposely gave a vague answer. Rodgers has since decried the whole situation and predictably he has lost at least one sponsor in the aftermath. Who knows if State Farm or other national brands will continue to go with him. Clearly, the vague answer was done to avoid a controversy at the time. Whether he lied or not is in the eye of the beholder.

However, the misdirection is telling. He clearly knew what he was doing and he clearly wanted to avoid responsibility. The line above from Shel Silverstein is unusually profound for a children’s author. The battle over vaccinations attempts to be simplistic, but things are never that simplistic. It isn’t as simple as doing what you want with your body. I know a lot of people wish it were that simple.

People used to understand that personal freedom also came with responsibility. When you made certain decisions people understood that they came with natural consequences. If you wanted to avoid childhood vaccinations for your child you understood that meant you’d be home schooling your children.

So, it isn’t so much that Rodgers wanted to take alternative medicines in favor of a vaccine. It’s that he knew the consequences of doing so and obviously wanted to avoid them. If you are smart enough to understand the consequences and understand that you would take a hit in public relations then you’re smart enough just to take the damn vaccine. Other athletes made the same choice and are currently not playing because of it. They at least are openly accepting the consequences of their decision.

The vaccination debate used to be a non-political debate. At least it used to run independent of left and right politics. In fact, the anti-vax crowd used to stereotypically land on the left. Somehow the party of personal responsibility has not only gone anti-vax, but also want to shirk personal responsibility. Shel Silverstein and those that read his books managed to grasp the concept that personal freedom also comes with responsibility. Rodgers still has a lot to learn.

Well, you just gotta know that anytime Majorie Taylor Greene is around, my eyes roll so much that I look like a slot machine.  She really humped Stanley the IQ Dog on this one.

Okay, so she is saying that infrastructure equals Big C Communism, when everybody knows, by gawd, that frying your hair crispy blonde is the birthplace of Giant C Communism.

So when Eisenhower built the interstate highway system, that was Communism?  You wanna know what other infrastructure is pure Communism?

Bridges
Airports
Power Grid
Water systems
Light rail

And if you wanna talk about pure communism, you got libraries, the National Weather Service, the military, Dr. Fauci, Sesame Street, the people who inspect your meat, parks, sidewalks, and congress.

I saw a guy pitch a fit on the internet machine because Joe Biden wants to “give away broadband.”  I didn’t know about that but it sounds like a helluva an idea.  We’ve got people in my county who sit in the library parking lot in the evening to use their internet connection because they don’t have one at home.

So I ask this guy, “hey, bud, wouldn’t you like free broadband connection?” I mean, if they say everybody, I suspect they mean him, too. He used all caps to yell NO.  His reasoning was that if everybody got it free then people who didn’t work would also get it for free. I replied, “Well, I don’t work but you let me use the roads anyway.” Poor guy, I think he spent all weekend conjuring up a way to make me pay a toll to use the road to the grocery store.

For them, it is not cool to have something unless you can deny someone else of it.  And that, Buster, is why they want to stop voting rights. I just know it.

Okay, when you get to a place where Trae Crowder, James Carville an AOC all agree, maybe it’s time to listen.

HOLLERIN ABOUT VIRGINIA, THE DEM PARTY, AND THE FUTURE pic.twitter.com/EWDoN5p9TU

— Trae Crowder (@traecrowder) November 3, 2021

Carville blames “wokeness,” and AOC says progressives weren’t even invited.

Thelma and I are pretty near starting a beauty shop rebellion.

Every once in awhile, something invades my sacred space. Eva Guzman has done that in the mornings. I listen to local sports radio in my 15 minute drive to school every morning. Now, they are playing her ads as she attempts to unseat Ken Paxton from the role of attorney general in Texas. Paxton is the symbol of GOP excess in Texas and possibly the entire nation.

When we teach our students about irony we often bring up Paxton. He has been under indictment for nearly his entire term. You add in the obligatory example of an arsonists as a fire chief and a crook as the chief of police and you have yourself a perfect example. The fact that the number one law enforcement officer in the state is under indictment has to be a joke. The fact that voters knew he was and voted for him anyway is the cruel part of the irony. That and the fact that his trial might occur before the apocalypse.

So maybe Guzman is a better choice based purely on the fact that she hasn’t been credibly accused of a crime yet. Maybe I’m giving myself away and revealing my bias when I say yet. All I know is that 6:30 in the morning is way too early to hear about Joe Biden’s “radical agenda.” Biden has been called a number of things in and out of Democratic circles and radical comes nowhere near any of those things.

Republicans are good for two things. First, they somehow manage to label themselves as the law and order party when their politicians seem to be responsible for 90 percent of the indictments, convictions, and jail time. I suppose white collar crime doesn’t count. It is a tradition as long as life itself. Find a dedicated Q zealot and you’ve probably found yourself a pedophile. Projection is their spirit animal.

The second thing is that a Republican will call any Democrat a radical whether they be moderate or progressive. The Virginia race proves that, but we didn’t need any proof. If we are going to be saddled with the radical label whether we are radical or not then we might as well go for it. We spend half of our time muting ourselves. Obviously, they don’t have the same issue.

So, Guzman is the flavor of the month. Paxton is the perfect MAGA stooge. He is willing to do anything the master wants and he already seems on his way to jail as soon as the courts get off their duff and actually hold his trial. Why shouldn’t he be the number one law enforcement officer in the state? So, keep trying Guzman, but just lay off the commercials early in the morning. 6:30 is way too early to get my daily dose of bullshit.

Glenn Youngkin managed to find the key to unlocking electoral success for modern Republicans. The newly minted governor of Virginia won a narrow victory last night in a state that Joe Biden had won by ten points. His campaign was a campaign of half measures and lip service to the king without openly endorsing the king. It was a thing of beauty.

He refused to campaign with the ex president even until the end and yet somehow managed to convince the forever Trumpers that he was on their side all along. I suppose Democrats should be worried when they they lose a key governorship, but there is a silver lining in there somewhere.

Youngkin refused to kiss the ring. For that, you could label him a lot of things and we will label him those things before all is said and done, but he is no fool. For all his talk about winning, the ex president has never actually won. He didn’t the first time around. He didn’t in the last election and anyone significant that has ever hitched their wagon to him also has failed.

Youngkin’s stance on vaccine mandates alone is enough to make you dizzy. When it was brought up in debate he stuttered and stammered all over the place as if he were trying to solve an algebraic equation. He was for mandates for all of those other vaccines because no one wants to be on the record as the guy aiming to bring back the measles. Yet, he was against a mandate on the COVID vaccine because a majority of his base is against it.

It’s a perfect tactic if one could actually articulate it intelligently. I’m not sure Youngkin ever got there, but I guess he deserves a prize for effort. I suppose he finally settled on the point that there hasn’t been enough research done. If he had thrown out the nugget that everyone should do their own research he might have spit the bit, but he managed to walk a tightrope where he was against the mandate and for people getting the vaccine. It was twisting and turning that would make Simone Biles wince in pain.

In the meantime he just might have given Republicans the blueprint for long-term success. For all of his bravado, the ex-leader always trailed expectations by five to ten points nationally. That probably has something to do with voters that actually care how you say things and voters that actually care about the moral fiber of their candidate. Admittedly, it’s not nearly as many people as we might have hoped, but five percent can make a huge difference on election day.

What Youngkin managed to do is say enough of the buzzwords to signal to the MAGA crowd that he was one of them without uttering the offensive versions of their rhetoric that turn off moderates. This leaves us with only one conclusion. As long as national GOP politicians think they have to kiss the ring and be the biggest ass in the room then things are looking up. As soon as they discover they can ignore him and just borrow the more tame versions of his rhetoric, we could be in serious trouble.