tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89869797555390214482024-03-08T13:25:45.165-05:00The Inside PoopA survey of current political issues and opinions out there,<br> on the web and elsewhere.Rick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.comBlogger250125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-15876399656100086392021-04-14T19:18:00.000-04:002021-04-14T19:18:13.844-04:00Response to Those Pointless Wars Always Lost(See: Just Above Sunset / Those Pointless Wars Always Lost)Are others besides myself pleasantly surprised to see this alleged mumbling bumbler and over-the-hill old fart president actually doing the good things he promised he would do if elected?One of the main reasons I backed Biden over the rest of the Democrats was his clear-headed thinking, ignored by everyone else back then, on what to do Rick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-75792472662636397442021-03-31T22:47:00.000-04:002021-03-31T22:47:18.672-04:00Response to Choosing the Reckoning(See: Just Above Sunset : Choosing the Reckoning)"Other Republicans have used more inflammatory rhetoric, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) calling the passport idea 'Biden’s Mark of the Beast' and some conservative activists comparing it with Nazi policies to identify Jews.”“Mark of the Beast”? First of all, isn’t a “beast” considered any animal life form except human being?For Rick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-50237414816707032002021-02-18T23:18:00.000-05:002021-02-18T23:18:07.129-05:00Response to Gone for Good(See: Just Above Sunset : Gone for Good)Hey, so whatever happened to “never speak ill of the dead”?I should remind you that because all these chubby purveyors of right-wing outrage, at some point in their lives, must cross paths, it was natural to expect Rush Limbaugh and my old boss Roger Ailes to collude, which they did from 1992 to 1996, when Ailes produced Limbaugh’s ill-fated TV show. Rush Rick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-40479669945231732212021-02-15T18:54:00.005-05:002021-02-15T22:23:43.393-05:00Response to Our King in Exile(See: Just Above Sunset : Our King in Exile)We’ve all been looking forward to putting Trump behind us, but the plain fact now is, this still ain’t over.I’m not even sure it would have been over had Trump been banned from ever running again, since that would just have made it obvious to his underground army that they will need to achieve their goals with guns rather than even bothering Rick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-81061588071210670842021-02-03T00:44:00.000-05:002021-02-03T00:44:43.414-05:00Response to Finally, American Fascism(See "Just Above Sunset : Finally, American Fascism")“But what’s next?”We could start that discussion with what is apparently Trump’s gift to American politics:If nothing else seems to work for you, go radical! Try outright bald-faced lying! It worked for Trump — or at least it almost did.Pick some ridiculous lie — like that Democrats eat little children — and repeat it over and over!ItRick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-44231980321725145572021-01-27T00:14:00.000-05:002021-01-27T00:14:51.008-05:00Response to The Formalities(See: Just Above Sunset : The Formalities)First, a little Q&A:Q: Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said Monday that Democrats, in pursuing impeachment against Trump, were being “sore winners” and said there were not enough Republicans who would vote to convict him.“Why are we doing this?” he added.A: For the same reason we customarily arrest lawbreakers in this country, Rick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-78816294460198643872021-01-05T01:59:00.000-05:002021-01-05T01:59:21.836-05:00Response to Just Ruin Things (See: Just Above Sunset : Just Ruin Things)On voters moving away, and then later, back again to Georgia:“Really? How many people do that?” Trump said. “You mean they moved out and then they said, ‘The hell with it. I’ll move back.’ That does not sound… very normal. You mean they moved out, and, what, they missed it so much that they moved back in?”“Really” Indeed!! Rick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-66822460629812406732020-12-14T19:17:00.002-05:002020-12-14T20:01:10.073-05:00Response to Fed on Fantasies Forever(See: Just Above Sunset : Fed on Fantasies Forever)You still hear people claiming that Trump was, at one time in the vague past, a Democrat, but given the fact that he’s apparently willing to demolish the whole "self-governing" part of how our country picks its leaders, I would argue that he’s never been a Democrat, nor even been a small-d democrat.I think these people may be confusing the Rick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-2998115220076828832020-12-10T18:10:00.000-05:002020-12-10T18:10:55.758-05:00Response to As Good as Gone(See: Just Above Sunset : As Good as Gone)If all goes as it should, yes, Trump is as good as gone, but that’s becoming a really big “if”.For example, if Texas scores a surprise win in SCOTUS — or worse yet, if Republicans somehow prevail in that joint session of Congress — I can’t see any way of this country surviving as a nation state. Can’t you already hear the Rick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-45230076696032134102020-12-04T17:56:00.000-05:002020-12-04T17:56:42.034-05:00Response to No More Pretending(See: Just Above Sunset : No More Pretending)First of all, from the Washington Post:At a rally Wednesday in Alpharetta, a few miles north of Atlanta, pro-Trump lawyers Lin Wood and Sidney Powell cast doubt on the legitimacy of any election held with the equipment and rules used on Nov. 3. It was, essentially, a don’t-get-out-and-vote rally...“As far as I’m concerned, lock him up,” Wood Rick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-33534390641387014102020-11-28T00:54:00.000-05:002020-11-28T00:54:38.279-05:00Response to After Thanks(See: Just Above Sunset : After Thanks)Okay, I’m no lawyer, and please don’t judge me, but after having now read the Supreme Court opinion, plus Roberts’ separate opinion, I find myself more or less (gasp!) siding with the Republican majority!Except that I don’t think the dispute really has much of anything to do with religion at all — although if it’s not about religion, it Rick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-63840989139378911892020-11-24T00:35:00.002-05:002020-11-24T00:35:59.096-05:00Response to Too Crazy Even for This President(see: Just Above Sunset : Too Crazy Even for This President)Aha! So it turns out Trump was shocked by the election results!And this indicates something we've known all along — that he isn't all that smart after all!If he were smart, he would have seen it all coming and known what to do about it. And he would have seen it coming if he didn’t surround himself with yes-people. A smart Rick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-20071692812209326302020-11-14T23:58:00.000-05:002020-11-14T23:58:56.214-05:00Response to Incompetent, Delusional and Retaliatory(See: Just Above Sunset : Incompetent, Delusional and Retaliatory)"Ah, but there was that rainy December day in Paris twenty years ago, when the world was a better place. That’s something to hold onto.”No, it wasn’t really, and no, it’s not.We didn’t realize it at the time, but your 1950s-esque film-noir memory — which I can’t help but picture in black-and-white, with some cheesy Rick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-6650421773638384172020-10-21T01:43:00.003-04:002020-10-21T02:15:42.173-04:00Response to Simply General Defiance(See: Just Above Sunset : Simply General Defiance)This new muting-the-microphones debate rule doesn’t really seem like enough to stymie Trump’s plan to keep Biden from making sense, since it only applies to the first two minutes of each 15-minute segment, the rest of which will be a free-for-all format.I’m not looking forward to the debate, assuming it even happens, but if the Trump people want Rick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-57877682324694022872020-10-18T01:38:00.005-04:002020-10-18T01:40:40.751-04:00Response to The Crazy Uncle(See: Just Above Sunset : The Crazy Uncle)* Phillip Halpern: “This career bureaucrat seems determined to turn our democracy into an autocracy.”No, no, he misses the point about today’s bureaucrats! Although “bureaucrat” is usually a derogatory term, it shouldn’t be under Trump.I see “bureaucrat” as another way of describing someone in the so-called “Deep State” — that is, a Rick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-52320815710630265362020-10-05T01:31:00.000-04:002020-10-05T01:31:12.052-04:00Response to This Weak Man(See: Just Above Sunset : This Weak Man)(Hey, you think this is Schadenfreude? Naw! Try karma!)Trump has a choice. He can either try to look like a strong guy, or look like a smart guy. I think he chooses the former because he has learned through experience that if you’re strong enough, you can overpower all those smart people, so much so that you can make truth itself Rick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-29695274515144041232020-09-23T03:52:00.001-04:002020-09-23T03:52:52.500-04:00Response to The Real Loss Now(See: Just above Sunset : The Real Loss Now)The following little tale was written for Huffington Post by Aaron E. Carroll, Director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research:The fable, as it is told, involves a scorpion and a frog. The scorpion needs to cross a river, so he asks the frog to carry him on his back. The frog is skeptical; after all, scorpions Rick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-54777183171868008532020-09-19T02:23:00.000-04:002020-09-19T02:23:18.375-04:00Response to The Same Mistakes(See: Just Above Sunset : The Same Mistakes)Down South?"Deep in their bones they know they lost that Civil War – that’s rather obvious…”I’m not convinced of that. A friend of ours down here in Atlanta who grew up mostly in Macon, Georgia, once told us she was never taught in school that the South had lost the war! She said it wasn’t until her family moved to Ohio when she was in high Rick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-15576850927032879392020-09-03T16:30:00.000-04:002020-09-03T16:30:57.278-04:00Response to Those City Folks(See: Just Above Sunset : Those City Folks)Donald Trump may or may not be a "stable genius", but if so, why does he have such a hard time understanding the simple concept of not putting “the-cart-before-the-horse”?For example:1. Racial unrest in America is what is behind all this so-called "violence in the cities" — except, of course, for that which is just made up by Fox News.Trump Rick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-47914476231930453162020-08-18T03:08:00.001-04:002020-08-18T15:59:25.052-04:00Response to Nothing Left To Stop(See: Just Above Sunset : Nothing Left To Stop)Concerning this Post Office business:Something I wish we all were discussing is, shouldn't the United States Post Office go back to being a regular department of government, like it used to be? Maybe Biden should tout that idea, or even campaign on it.My belief is that, before we choose whether a service should be performed by government rather Rick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-6508596456527468442020-08-12T16:23:00.000-04:002020-08-12T16:23:59.067-04:00Response to Hurting God (See: Just Above Sunset : Hurting God)Jason Mulder, an evangelical Christian in Sioux Center, Iowa, says:"I feel like on the coasts, in some of the cities and stuff, they look down on us in rural America. You know, we are a bunch of hicks, and don’t know anything. They don’t understand us the same way we don’t understand them. So we don’t want them telling us how to liveRick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-55742022466560174722020-08-05T16:46:00.000-04:002020-08-05T16:46:26.489-04:00Response to That Interview(See: Just Above Sunset : That Interview)No, Trump's problem is not his staff, or even that he “doesn’t have control” over his reality.His reelection problems all spring from the fact that he was (1) elected accidentally, and (2) elected as a “minority president”, which he still is.Donald Trump won in 2016 because his particular schtick appealed to a small bunch of voters who were annoyed Rick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-64422442873440330932020-06-27T16:58:00.000-04:002020-06-27T16:58:59.460-04:00Response to Wishful Thinking Got Us (See: Just Above Sunset : Wishful Thinking Got Us)
Why should all Americans, even the ones that like him, refuse to vote for Trump in November?
It’s really quite simple. We have three huge simultaneous crises going on right now, and all of them caused by him, mostly because he likes to be in control of everything, which is why he doesn’t seem to ever recognize any problems that are not of hisRick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-79980124025040061792020-06-16T23:46:00.000-04:002020-06-16T23:46:50.286-04:00Response to Ending Some American Carnage(See: Just Above Sunset : Ending Some American Carnage)
About those recent Gallup numbers:
The percentage of Americans expressing extreme pride in the country has been declining over the past 20 years, especially recently. Just over half, 55%, felt extreme pride in the initial January 2001 reading, prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In the three subsequent years, between 65% Rick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8986979755539021448.post-6798699267638809192020-06-03T01:18:00.000-04:002020-06-03T01:18:39.852-04:00Responding to Finally Losing It All(See: Just Above Sunset : Finally Losing It All)
Maybe he should have said, "I’m your president of 'Law ad Order, Criminal Intent’”. After all, it’s hard to think of Donald Trump without also thinking of some sort of criminal intent. (Maybe he could follow that with, “Check local listings.”)And while it’s been characterized in the media as some sort of "photo-op" of him holding a bibleRick Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08913040491471669004noreply@blogger.com0