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.

Well see, the QAnon people are coming to Dallas because there’s gonna be a slamdinger of a show!

Some staunch believers of QAnon think that JFK Jr is in fact alive and well, and plans to make a return to public service and announce a tilt at the White House as vice president on the ticket of Mr Trump, who has not yet announced a 2024 run but is widely considered by many to be the favourite to win the Republican nomination if he does so.

And it’s not just JFK, Jr – it’s the entire Kennedy clan showing up. However, it’s not clear if it’s all of them or just the dead ones. Word is that they are meeting on the grassy knoll, except they spelled it grassy noel, which in Texas translates to Christmas in the wheat fields.

And if you’re wondering who comes back from the dead to be vice president, you need only look as far as Mike Pence. So there ya are.

Texas: where QAnon gets even Qyer.

UPDATE: Through the miracle of modern journalism, we are able to bring you shots of the crowd. If you look long enough, I’m sure you’ll find your Aunt Erlene.

You can open it up to see the giant one.  I looked pretty hard but I did not spot any Kennedy, living, dead, or zombie.

It's now past 12:29. At 12:29, the crowd recited the Pledge if Allegiance. No JFK Jr. yet. pic.twitter.com/CskJ5oAxNE

— steven monacelli (@stevanzetti) November 2, 2021

There are moments when things seem to occur to me in bunches. They are relatively small moments. We were told as soon as we got this virus under control then things would return to a sense of normalcy. It’s been nearly two years now and things haven’t gone back to normal.

It’s when you add all these moments up and realize that the world might never go back to the way things were. It’s similar to the taking off of shoes at the airport. It’s just a small change that serves as a reminder that things will never fully be the way they used to be. That’s a relatively small thing that only comes up in isolated and focused events. COVID seems to be effecting more than that. Beyond the death, illness, and economic devastation, it is the little things that seem to be the not so gentle reminder that life will never be the same ever again.

When I was a kid, I loved to read choose your own adventure books. I used to read them about sports. There was one in particular where you got to coach a team in the Super Bowl. So, I pulled the quarterback to see what would happen and then went back and didn’t. I’m sure every kid that had that particular book did the same thing. Kids are fascinated with the idea of seeing where things will go if you make a different decision.

Life doesn’t work that way. We don’t get many second opportunities to make a different decision. It’s looking more and more that COVID is not a thing that happened to us, but something that is happening to us. The distinction might seem like a fine one, but it is simply a reflection that the decisions made in December, January, and February of 2019 and 2020 are still impacting us today. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say the decisions that were not made.

I had lied to myself and told myself there was no way of knowing how bad this would become, but it is a lie. As a nation, we saw how bad it got during the Spanish flu. Moreover, we saw how much grief and loss we avoided during H1N1 and Ebola. We’ve seen pandemics handled badly and we’ve seen them handled well. We know exactly what happens when you idly sit by and do nothing. We knew exactly what to do and our leaders did what they do best. They fumbled the ball and tried to tell you none of it really happened.

This wasn’t a bad hurricane the government failed to clean up afterwards. This wasn’t a tax cut gone awry. This wasn’t a war that seemingly went on forever for no reason. Those are bad enough and those impact entire generations or regions of the country. This impacted every region. This impacted every generation. This will continue to impact all of us. We aren’t going “back to normal” and the sooner we realize that the better.

In the backdrop of all of this, the man that did all of this won’t go away. Not only does he not have the sense of shame to hide in his isolated greenside bunker, he continues to say he won. He says he will win again. The architect of the single biggest health catastrophe in our nation’s history won’t go away. Like the societal changes due to COVID, I guess he can’t. Maybe nature will do us a favor on both counts.

You know, Republicans have been all out of sorts since we made them quit using the N word.  And they were to a lesser but important degree unhappy about not being able to use bitch, gal, little lady, or honey when referring to coworkers.

So, you know, they have gone into a frenzied delight over being able to say Let’s Go, Brandon! because everybody knows what they mean is F*** Joe Biden.  They get the F word without actually saying the F word.

I thought I had seen it all, but nobody had taken the cake yet and made Let’s Go, Brandon! a religious sacrament or an act of baptism.

Until Governor Greg Abbott.  I’m going to give you the link, but I want you to prepare yourself. Governor Abbott sent out an email to his supporters and unfortunate people who got signed up for his emails because some damn Republican thinks that’s hysterically funny.  The email claims he’s in need money real bad because he’s all that stands between an army of lefties overtaking Texas and killing the memory of Donald Trump, the greatest man who ever lived.

So, he’s selling Let’s Go, Brandon! wrapping paper for all your Christmas needs.  It even has Christmas stars and little wreaths on it. What a wonderful way to welcome the Christ child on Christmas morning! The F word always gives that warm feeling in your bowels, you know.

And since they have trademarked the word Christian, you gotta wonder if this is the new Christmas robe for the clergy.

And to make this very special, only if you look closely do you begin to realize you’re making a monthly pledge of at least $35 in order to get this charming Christmas wrapping paper.  So, not only is it snazzy, it’s swanky.