33 Comments

The loons competed with College Football...guess the Gravy Seals stayed home. They will return when their master unleashes them again.

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The sad thing is if Trump had announced he would be there, well, there would likely have been all the worst of the worst this country houses.

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Trump is a coward.

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I certainly agree with that. The only way people follow him is he gives voice to all their conspiratorial fears and anger about their own unsuccessful empty lives.

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😂🤣Just what I thought!

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Great column; to stop these rat bastards, vigilance is key.

Media continues to drop the ball, Dems tend to be too

polite. In a civil war of goobers v smarts, persuasion and

citizenship are our best weapons; gotta do more than just vote,

we must stand tall as pissed off, and nonviolent Americans,

who reject Covid & Fascism.

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I think that even if Trump were to disappear, the GOP would continue its' descent into madness without a stop. They're beyond madness into outright insanity, where politics does not survive for long without being destroyed and reshaped into a form of fascism or totalitarianism. I don't know how to stop it, I doubt if anyone does, and I fear for this country's existence as a Republic, given that so many people have become Nazi sympathizers in mind and heart if not in deed.

It's sad that this is happening, but as often has been noted, the political winds do blow hard one way or another for decades until they stop. It's just frustrating to live through it while people lose their minds and lives to stupidity, ignorance, madness, greed and cupidity.

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There are probably far more Republican politicians supporting the rioters than there were rioters.

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Nobody showed up. Tee Hee. I grieve for my country and how easily the worst of us has been able to displace what was noble and good. If I were younger, I would be finding myself another country. I hate what has happened and it's based on every vile falsehood imaginable.

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September 19, 2021
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And I'm sure you're as sad to say that as I am.

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If the grand Republican strategy succeeds in allowing Republican state legislatures to ignore the will of the people and override legitimate vote counts, the damage to the republic will be far, far more serious than anything that happened January 6.

It will be the true end of democracy in America.

Then, there will no longer be a need for the Brownshirt stunts of the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, and on and on ad nauseam.

Then we can look forward to something akin to the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, when Hitler ordered Ernst Rohm, the closet-case head of the Brownshirts, and his top lieutenants to be murdered, confident that they had served their purpose and were no longer needed because the full might and power of the German state & military were now in his hands, and could not be removed without the massive force of arms that the world eventually had to summon to subdue him.

After that, the fascist authoritarian dream will have come true, and they can do anything they damn well please to their “enemies”.

I wonder which songwriter they will task with coming up with the Ashli Babbitt version of the Horst Wessel Lied, which all real Americans will sing, misty-eyed and pulses pounding with patriotic fervor, with their hands over their hearts and their caps doffed, every January 6th when her martyr’s death is commemorated.

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We are on the brink.

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It seems to me that the first Civil War never really ended. White supremacy/privilege is a powerful drug and those people are willing to do anything to maintain it. Their erstwhile leader is a master at fanning the flames of hatred. It's looking more and more like a cult as time goes on.

I don't know how this ends but I'm pretty sure it involves violence on a massive scale. The sane party cannot afford to lose another national election.

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Cults die when their leader takes the Jim Jones route. Jones took hundreds with him via poison in Guyana. Maybe this ends up in massive violence? Maybe not.

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The cult may never die. There are plenty of wannabe replacements for TFG, maybe less charismatic but smarter and more cruel.

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I had a feeling that with all the extra security and after seeing all the arrests from Jan 6 people these would be very wary of causing trouble and getting themselves arrested, losing their jobs,etc., like the other guys did. But I wonder what the cost was of the fencing again vall that security.

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Watching the demise of legitimate,measured political discourse south of the border has me,loathe as I am to admit it,just a tad worried.

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I think it is more accurate to say that Brayard was trying to make a case for political persecution. He seems to have failed, except for the fringe of the fringe whack jobs

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As despicable as these characters are, Lucian, we're going to have to find a way in which to quit hating one another for their political beliefs. Watching Bill Mahr last night, one of his guests likened our divided country to Northern Ireland (I had to agree). When I was 25 years old, the Irish were blowing one another to pieces with bombs. It was a horrible and dangerous civil war and worst of all it had religion at its core. They managed to end it. We need to stop---and as much as I feel strange about admitting it---and listen and make some attempt to find compromise. It may sound idealistic and naive if not outright retarded, but somewhere along the line the name calling and the open-faced hate needs to cease. What we need to do, somehow, is throw an arm around the other guy and slip $50 bucks into his pocket. And, I mean that metaphorically. I'm seeing more and more hard-left hate with people I like and respect, and more and more stupid craziness (and ideas) on the Right. As for me, I have a couple of people who passionately hate me because I "pose" as a moderate when in fact they see me as a rattlesnake worshipping, right wing Nazi lover. Or, worse. Our biggest problem is hate. Fix and end that and close down fast food! If you're going to cancel something? Start with the Kardashians and work your way through Big Brother and Atlanta Housewives. Then perhaps, we'll find a reason to stand together as one on the same page.

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I don't know why I am the apparent object of this comment, Mike. I didn't write any "hate" into my column, because I don't feel any hate for republicans, although I don't respect them and in many ways, I hold their political beliefs in contempt. I think most of the "hate" in this country at this moment has to do with racism. It's sad to have to say this more than 50 years after the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, but racism is alive and well in this country, and it is mainly alive in one of our two political parties, and it is not the Democrats.

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Trump unleashed this hate and is totally incapable of managing the now and future.

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Lucian: I honestly didn't mean you at all. And if I mis-directed, apologies. I'm a die hard fan of yours. I was mostly reacting to the entire spectrum and while reading your piece I landed on Bill Mahr and the division we all feel must right now. On the road with the Trio, especially the last week, you can almost FEEL the "something's wrong" sensation everywhere, right up to the check-in counter or registration desk. It's almost like an infection, but in this case an infection of spirit. The last thing I would read into your writing has anything to do with hate. However, it's everywhere and it's being weaponized instead of cauterized.

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I don't know but I thought we were all "hating" the sin and not the sinners. And grieving what we see as the demise of democracy.

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I have never understood how one can separate the sin from the sinners.

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Well, it is a special trick isn't it?

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My sympathies embrace the victims of the sinners. Having been the victim of a sinner who impacted my entire life, I have no qualms about hating him. When I allowed myself to acknowledge that hate, the intensity of it dissipated over the years, but I will never relinquish my honest sense of hate for him. No special trick warranted.

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Mary and Andrea, that is indeed a tricky subject to try to fathom: Take Trump for example I think he is a despicable human being. He appears to have no redeeming qualities at all. In fact he is a destructive force extremely negative, Now, do we hate the person, or do we hate everything he stands for, Can we separate the two? In other words is he responsible for his actions or is it that he is so ignorant that he doesn't know he's a bad man. A form of mental illness, self delusional. Robert Burns said once, God give us the gift to see ourselves as others see us. We often don't recognise our own faults but others see them. Yet the mystery to me is that in Trump's case about a quarter, maybe more, of the population don't see his many faults at all. In fact just the opposite! Thwy admire him> How do we figure that one out? And worse, those same people think we are the bad guys. I was saying to some coffee acquaintances the I questioned the character of Trump supporters/admirers, that they must be cut from the same cloth as him. And that their criticism of main stream media was unjustified, I said that they were the normal sensible people, smart, intelligent and were seeing the world as it really was, not the distorted view that the far right had. "Oh. no, they said. "just the opposite." Frankly, I think that when many of these Republican robots were manufactured, their brains were inserted backwards :) Here is an example you simply won't believe. This GOP denier dies of Covid, and his cohorts blame the hospital and still cling to their conspiricy theories:: " Just a day after testing positive for COVID-19, a Florida Republican official who battled against mask mandates, attacked the vaccine, and railed at CDC officials has died in Tampa.

Gregg Prentice, who was 61, led the Hillsborough County Election Integrity Committee—and his sudden death has sent the local GOP scrambling as it no longer has access to essential campaign finance software without his help.

In a Sept. 14 letter to the Federal Election Commission, the Hillsborough County Republican Executive Committee reported it might not be able to file its monthly financial reports as required—because only Prentice knew how to do it.

“Gregg’s software converted data from our Quickbooks software to supply the information needed by the FEC,” it states. “Unfortunately, Gregg passed away suddenly from Covid-19 on Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021. Gregg did not share the software and instructions with our officers. We will have to enter the August data manually, and according to the information we have received from our FEC analyst, Scott Bennett, we may likely have to re-enter the data from our first 7 months of 2021.

Unvaxxed Teen Councilman Who Attacked Mask Mandates Now Battling ‘Terrible’ COVID Pneumonia

“We will be struggling to get all of this entered in the proper format by our deadline on Sept. 20, but we will try to do so with our best effort.”

Along with others in the Hillsborough County Election Integrity Committee, Prentice was a vociferous critic of the vaccine, mask mandates, and COVID-prevention measures. He railed against top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, vowing in a Twitter post to “end Faucism.” He also insisted the U.S. needs “more socialist distancing than we do social distancing” and that the pandemic was created to destroy small businesses.

A spokesperson for the Hillsborough Republican Executive Committee has reportedly said that Prentice’s wife and daughter have also caught COVID-19.

Meanwhile, as the local party reels, Prentice’s associates have spread their own wild conspiracy theories—presented without evidence—on how the official died.

Friend Jason Kimball blames Tampa General Hospital for the 61-year-old’s death, alleging staff “illegally intubated” Prentice the day before he died. During a Sept. 13 Tampa City Council meeting, Kimball requested an investigation be launched. However, members of the City Council denied any wrongdoing or mistreatment from the hospital.

“My public comments are really going to be about Tampa General Hospital,” Kimball said at the council meeting. “There’s a dire situation going on right now... that I don’t think anyone is aware of, and I have firsthand knowledge of it. They’re intubating everyone entering Tampa General Hospital as a first line of action. They’re using fatality-treatment protocol, and I think that the city council really needs to do an investigation... They’re intubating people illegally... When you call 911 and you go to that hospital, you’re going into a bad situation.”

Councilman John Dingfelder quickly shut down Kimball’s comment, blasting it as “dangerous.”

“Though we respect the First Amendment rights from everybody who calls in... I think it’s an extremely dangerous comment to be spreading to the community that they shouldn’t go to Tampa General Hospital... [It] is the top one or two hospitals in this community... There’s no finer place. Doctors and staff are dedicated to saving lives, and if I was sick with COVID... I would go to Tampa General Hospital,” the Democrat representing Tampa’s Third District said.

After praising the medical center, Dingfelder went back to bashing Kimball’s remarks: “That was a very dangerous comment from that individual... People listen to ridiculous comments without doing the right research.”

Other council members chimed in, agreeing with Dingfelder.

That hasn’t stopped Kimball from speaking out on Facebook, where he’s continued to perpetuate the myth that COVID-19 is a “medically engineered virus.”

Kimball has acknowledged that he is not a doctor. A LinkedIn profile using Kimball’s name and picture lists him as a pharmacy technician at Walmart. He previously worked at South Lake Pharmacy in Zephyrhills, Florida.

After Prentice’s death on Sept. 11, he posted: “FOR THE VIRUS - we have a genetically engineered virus spreading around Florida. We lost Gregg Prentice, a mentor to many in Hillsborough County, due to the engineered virus. ....Do not mess around with this engineered virus - as soon as you even feel weird, get on a treatment protocol. If you are ill or dealing with brain fog, make sure you have a hospital / inpatient clinic to go to where you can actually get treatment in case you get worse.”

In response to Kimball eulogizing Prentice, a follower wrote, “I can’t believe of all people that have been MURDERED in this way, that Gregg is now one of them. This is one heck of a loss for the Tampa area, Hillsborough County, every patriotic person around, and of course his family... I wish the people who have done this get held accountable, but it’s up to us to spread the proper treatment protocol in hopes this doesn’t happen to someone else. Sad day.”

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I think we need another name for what once was the "GOP." It's now a full blown white supremacist fascist party. Perhaps we need to just call it what it is.

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What was the head count? Nonetheless, law enforcement should be able to identify those in attendance as potential domestic terrorists. J6 ogasimics have a way of clumping together. They're not guilty of any specific crime (as far as we know) but they are persons of interest who voluntarily self-identified with insurrectionists for what it's worth. As far as I'm concerned, that's as good as wearing gang colors. Seriously. Claiming that those arrested in the J6 insurrection are political prisoners, that's been litigated before. It's like they're claiming to be a white-rage version of Hughey P. Newton, with bedsheet Klan costume optional. They expect the rest of us stupefied stupefied by their waving the First Amendment at us, and Saturday's march-around was intended as a provocation to violence on the part of law enforcement. Nice try, assholes. I'm hoping that law enforcement will track them down to where they live and who they know and associate with, whose name and contact information are on their cellphone and social media accounts.Then, if they don't cooperate, they can swap out that fantasyland alternative universe they live in for a jail cell if we find out that they've been playing footsie with the people who are planning violent revolution here. And insurrection is a serious crime, let's not forget.

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450 demonstrators.

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I have a shameful secret to confess: Fighting these scumbags is, essentially, pissing in the wind. As stupid as they are, I think they might actually have accomplished their purpose, which is to create a new normal in which every single election is going to be "negotiated" the way Trump "negotiated" the 2020 election by just declaring "If I lose, it's fixed." The old default, which was to "trust the system" and accept a loss, doesn't hold anymore. On that level, they might have won. On a bad day, I find myself grateful that 1)I'm 72 and won't have to deal with this shit a whole lot longer and 2)I don't have any kids to worry about. This position is, I realize, a defeatest one. Which is why it's a "shameful secret." Sorry, but every day's headlines indicate that I'm probably right, although I do seem to be compulsively qualifying everything....

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Repugs need a figurehead to follow, and none of their politicians showed up. . . They didn’t dare. And meanwhile! Insurance companies are going to quit waving co-pays for Covid patients—and it’s high time! Don’t want to wear a mask? Pay some hefty hospital bills.

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USA Racists are steaming with anger. They have hundreds of thousands of AR15s with advanced optics. Millions of rounds of ammo. Peruse a magazine like Guns and Ammo. Democrats are kinder and more polite. And generally unarmed...

Hope for the best. Support your local Sheriff.

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