If you are an "able-bodied single male" out of luck, you are shit out of luck

 

There are all these electronic billboards in Kent and adverts on the side of Metro buses with messages telling people that it is "OK" to “ask for help.” I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that the targeted demographic are women and girls; you never see any of these public displays asking men and boys if they need help, only to lay guilt trips on them.  Now, there are resources that people can go to if they have a problem that is beyond their control. Back in the day when they still had those thick phonebooks, the government and public assistance section had endless pages of assistance programs; the problem was that they were all for women, with or without children.

There was nothing specifically for men or boys—not even the YMCA, long past the time when it was, as the song goes, a place where you can go when you are short on your dough, and no one else cared if you were alive. There are no phonebooks these days, but that doesn’t mean the programs for women are gone. This is a listing on the Seattle.gov website which has a plethora of programs to help women (with or without children) stay off the streets and get a “leg-up” on the competition for work and business: 

http://www.seattle.gov/womenscommission/what-we-do/resources

Observe also that there are 20 separate programs relating to “domestic violence” and “violence against women,” which only shows how much a political issue it is, with all these groups battling each other for public and private funding and the attentions of women who are victims—or those who are easily persuaded that they are; note in my “entertainment” post on May 18,  the commentator in the linked video about yet another “Karen” observed that white women like her seem to think that society gives them “immunity” from consequences when they are verbally and physically abusive (see Amber Heard) toward others, and then pretend to be the “victims” when the real victims of their abuse “unexpectedly” turn it around on them.

You won’t find anything specifically targeted to men. You hear a lot of talk about homeless women, but don’t see many if any on the street because they have greater access to clean, “safe” temporary facilities (like the YWCA).  Filthy homeless shelters with people who may or may not have violent tendencies, “medication” issues or people you wouldn’t trust taking your shoes off at night to be around is about as much “help” a single man in need can expect. Of course there is the state government sponsored “worksource” facilities where they send you out to be “checked out” by an employer, and who don’t have to take you.  Forget it if you don’t have a mailing address or phone number, which is one reason why a lot of homeless men just can’t get out of the hole.

Problems start early for males in this new era of gender “wokeness.” Boys tend to be slower to learn reading and vocabulary skills than girls, yet schools today start teaching reading in Kindergarten instead of the first grade, giving girls a “head start” right out of the gate. Boys are usually forced to read material that doesn’t interest them, thus slowing down the process; what this means is that the failure to help boys who need to catch up on their reading and language skills—and remember, people who speak “well” are stereotyped as being “smarter”—creates disincentives to keep trying and taking school seriously.  Unlike girls, boys have a harder time sitting still, which of course brands them from the outset of being “problem” students. Politicized female teachers bring their own prejudices and stereotypes with them to class, which is particularly important since they dominate the most vulnerable time of a boy’s educational existence, in the early grades.                        

The Financial Times wondered if gender gaps in schools are a zero-sum game, “in which education systems, schools and families have to choose whether to create an environment that promotes either boys’ performance or girls’ performance.” One female educator asked if there was a way to make classrooms more “boy-friendly” without “disadvantaging” girls, she said “It’s a tough question,..Some of education requires the self-regulation and discipline we value in girls.” An exercise in “good” and “bad” stereotyping, but also indicative of the lack of “comfort” that some teachers (especially female) have in dealing with boys. There was even one comment I came across that suggested that co-ed schools today are so geared toward the "needs" of girls that they are now essentially girls schools that boys are allowed in. Thus it isn’t surprising that some boys “fail” in school—and in life.

I’ve had some tough times too, despite the fact I have a college degree—which doesn’t mean a thing when the sight of you only raises the red flags of “concern” in others. But only once have I actually gone down to a local DSHS facility and asked if there was any “help” they could give me. The only thing was one of those EBT food assistance cards. I was informed by the agent that “We just don’t have anything that able-bodied single males are eligible for.” That is pretty much the story for “able-bodied single males,” who society assumes has an “advantage” on everyone else when it comes to jobs, but which isn’t true. Many employers prefer women and Asians for jobs that require “nimble” fingers; jobs that require manual, physical labor, or other “shit” jobs nobody wants to do, is left for many “able-bodied single males,” and those are not any easier to find than any other job. Myself, I’ve never been out of work for more than a few weeks; as a last resort, I’d just sign up with a temp agency, and I’d typically be put to work the next day somewhere, until I found another full-time “adventure.” I have no shame; I’ll do anything for an honest buck.

The Brookings Institute released a study some time ago that noted that the 1996 welfare reform law was geared to favor women and children and ignore impoverished men. It somewhat sarcastically observed that “the major favor the welfare law did for fathers was to pursue them ever more relentlessly for child-support payments. In fact, the law may have intensified the already substantial problems faced by poor fathers”—having to support two households on poverty wages.

The study noted that “Many of the nation’s most serious social problems are caused by poor young males…the strands in this complex web of causality can be thought of in two categories: the ones which young men have control and the ones over which they don’t. If young men could be helped to overcome their inherent disadvantages, and follow simple rules of behavior”—that is “Graduate from high school, don’t commit a crime, get a job and work hard, get married, and have children”—then there might be some hope for them.

However, many young males, especially black males, “are violating each of these injunctions in great numbers and, as a group, appear to be moving in the wrong direction on most of them.” They are not helped by the 1996 welfare law, that offered young mothers both sticks and carrots to “encourage” them to make the right choices. On the other hand, “The public agenda for men includes sticks and, well, sticks. Men do not qualify for case welfare, child care or Medicaid (or at least not before the ACA), and they qualify for an Earned Income Tax Credit that is worth only a tenth as much as the mothers EITC. The only major benefit for which they qualify for is food stamps—to go along with continual pressure from child support and, for many, incarceration. Thus, the carrots are missing.” The tremendous pressure on low-income men “has the effect of creating a huge work disincentive for these struggling young men.”

And many wind up on the street, where there are also those who don’t have “domestic” issues. According to a report by the High Clinicians Network, most homeless are single men, and they are more likely to experience homelessness in relation to homeless families for longer periods, and more often. Relative to the availability of public assistance and health programs to them, single men are at “increased risk for chronic homelessness.” While poverty has a great deal to do with homelessness, “some impoverished people are held more responsible for their plight than others. Discrimination between the ‘deserving and undeserving poor’ in American social policy reflects this discrepancy. For example, poor but able-bodied single adults are expected to rehabilitate themselves without public assistance. Among homeless people, most of these individuals are men, and they, of course, are expected to get by without anyone’s help.

There is also the “common assumption that many homeless men ‘choose’ homelessness as a lifestyle preference." Homeless men are “criminalized” for “loitering, sleeping, urinating or drinking in public places—activities that are permissible in the privacy of a home. This results in giving people a criminal record for noncriminal behavior, which prevents them from getting jobs, housing and needed services. 

In an article in Psychology Today, single people without children—again, usually male—are typically “left in the cold and the dark” when it comes to “qualifying” for public assistance. “People with children often get different opportunities for respite compared to singles purely because of the number of people requiring shelter.” Who wants to bother with a single male who is solely to “blame” for being where he is at? Thus another example of the tyranny of gender politics in this country.

Hypocrisy is everywhere

 

With Michael Flynn “suggesting” a violent military coup and Sidney Powell advocating for a less violent “reinstatement” of Der Fuhrer, can anything get any crazier in this country, thank to Donald Trump?  But then again, perhaps the reason why this world is so difficult to understand is that people are essentially all in some way or another selfish and self-centered. Few actions are truly altruistic; most people do “good” because it makes themselves feel “good.” When people say they are representative of a social movement, they are just a conglomeration of individuals who happen to possess the same petty, self-obsessed considerations.  

Which of course opens up that can of worms called “hypocrisy.” It’s everywhere. Disney has another movie about an “evil” female character (Cruella from 101 Dalmatians), who, we discover, is only less evil than some others, so she can get away with her evil without any suffering any consequences. And then there are some black mothers of children killed by police who are complaining that the Black Lives Movement, and specifically founder Patrisse Cullors, are making a fortune for themselves off the deaths of their sons and daughters; perhaps they feel it wasn’t fair for them not to “cash in” too (just a thought).

The term “liberal” in the social sense is often used to imply people can do as they wish, and that there are no “traditional” guardrails that are subject to the judgment of  moral scrutiny. That may have been true in the 1960s, but that is certainly not true today, particularly in regard to gender issues. It says something about the gender politics of this country when full frontal nudity in a European film can be rated “12”—meaning “acceptable” for a 12-year-old so long as it doesn’t involve actual “sex”—yet a person up to the age of 17 in this country must be blindfolded to such things, and regard it as “unnatural” and “bad.” Isn’t it better to just take the “mystery” out of thing, like they do in a more “mature” society, as Europe pretends to be?

And yet…while it is offensive to women to depict them like this…

 

…it is “OK”  to place in prominent places in Seattle statues of completely naked men and boys:

 

Putting aside the tiny “members” on these figures just short of complete castration, some have accused the statues of the father and son as promoting “pedophilia.” But it is more emblematic of the fact the hypocrisy of social liberalism which has more to do today with who does or doesn’t have the power to impose their real or imagined grievances to the purpose of tyrannizing others. I mean, we live in a country that glorifies violence in films and yet wonder why there are so many mass shootings. Instead we have discuss such “philosophical” questions why we need to “cover” up some things, and not others.

There is plenty of frustrating activity going on all over the world these days, but on the HBO show “Last Week Tonight,” John Oliver seems to be scraping the barrel for topics that people actually care about—or don’t. For example, one recent clunker was about black people’s hairstyles, and how the people who are not black react to them. Like, who cares, except people who like being told they have another reason to feel “oppressed.” As mentioned before, some people do “good” because it makes them feel “good,” but doing things that are “bad” also makes them feel good. Take Oliver’s more recent clunker about “sponsored content,” probably his dumbest, most pointless, and least “funny” show ever. It demonstrated that Oliver doesn’t realize that you only have to be racially-insensitive against one group to be so.

The topic was apparently “inspired” by Oliver’s on-going “problem” with “Mexican” food.  He began with deriding “horrifying products” like French’s Crispy Jalapenos, the Velveeta Cheese Liquid Fountain (most likely to put on nachos), and something called Doritos Loaded; in regard to the latter, he claimed that the advertising spot lasted six seconds, which is “how long it stays in your body.” His “commentary” about what most people stereotype as “Mexican” food, even though it is created by people who are not “Mexican,” shows that ugly racist jokes are not “funny,” and a shit excuse to revolve a dumb topic around.

Of course white “liberals” are not the only hypocrites; how about black “liberals”—if that is the right word to call them. Take for example two professors named Andrea Plaid and Christopher MacDonald-Dennis, who last week co-wrote a self-serving, racist op-ed in Newsweek. They claimed that the term “people of color” should cease, because only black people apply. They admit that “people of color” is a term meant to apply to people who are “not white” or “minority.” However, they “say” that when the term is used, “we” really mean “black.” Says who? Says you, self-obsessed “victims.” Take this hypocritical, self-serving “only we matter” comment:

Take for example, police brutality. As America has come to understand finally, the police are disproportionately killing Black people. To use the term “people of color, or even the newly popular BIPOC, which stands for Black and Indigenous people of color, to speak about police brutality obscures Black people’s specific struggle against police brutality.

Of interest is that Newsweek is reporting that a “person of color” sucker punched an Asian woman in New York’s Chinatown. He was described as a “dark-skinned man” in a hoodie, but the video clearly showed him to be a black man. Now, I don’t know if he just picked out a “random” victim, but if he had slugged a white or Latino person, he would be “excused” for it because it was a “reaction” to “systemic” racism. But these days actions such as this allow Asians to be “special victims,” despite the fact that these anecdotal incidents of violence fail to address the notion of many minorities that most Asians have “racist” attitudes toward them—in fact some are more racist than white people.

In any case, if blacks are “disproportionately” the victim of police brutality, it only means that they are disproportionately the perpetrators of all manner of crime; the reality, not surprisingly, is that blacks are in fact less likely to be the victim of police abuse in proportion to their level of perpetration of violent crime, according to Justice Department statistics. White people are the victims of police brutality in proportion to their level of crime, while Latinos tend to be the victims of police abuse at an actual higher rate per their crime rate.

But what is particular despicable about this piece is that it ignores the fact that the white media laps up black grievance for its own self-serving, hypocritical reasons, and in general society pays more attention to black grievance because of the fear of violent action, whether it happens or not. Latinos have also been oppressed, the victims of legal and extra-legal violence and lynching, and  discriminated against in this country for almost two centuries, and their fight for justice predated that of blacks. Yet this history is virtually unknown, because between white and black prejudice and ignorance is a hard place.

George Floyd’s name has become a standard bearer for police brutality, but he isn’t the only one who has died in a similar fashion in the last year or two. In San Diego, Angel Zapata Hernandez died while handcuffed, and one officer knelt on his neck for more than six minutes. Never heard of it? Neither did the BLM protestors in San Diego. In Antioch, CA Angelo Quinto died after suffering a “mental health crisis,” and an officer knelt on his neck for five minutes until he lost consciousness.

In Tucson, AZ Carlos Ingram Lopez died a “gruesome” death after he was detained by police for wandering aimlessly around train tracks. Lopez was handcuffed, left face down on the ground while the officers kneed his face into the pavement for 12 minutes until he went into cardiac arrest and stopped breathing—despite his pleading for water and crying for his grandmother, and telling the officers he couldn’t breathe (there is now a belatedly-released YouTube video of the whole incident from the police bodycam). 

 

 

None of these people were black, and if you listen to people like Plaid and MacDonald-Dennis, that is the reason why their lives don’t “matter.” We can also assume that the “people of color” victims in the recent San Jose mass shooting who were clearly targeted because they were such don’t “matter” because none of them were black.

Still, we can’t let “conservatives” go untouched, since hypocrisy is their main “game.” Stephen Miller and Mark Meadows, who formed a far-right “legal” group called—what else—America First Legal, managed to secure their first “victory” in a far-right judge’s courtroom in the Northern District of Texas. They managed to “convince” the judge that the COVID-19 debt relief provision for “socially disadvantaged” farmers and “prioritizing” grants to restaurants owned by women, veterans and “socially disadvantaged” groups “discriminated” against people who were not in those groups, meaning people who look like Miller and Meadows.

The problem here is that the “socially disadvantaged” have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic. One study showed that “active” black-owned businesses declined by 41 percent, Latino businesses by 32 percent, Asian businesses by 26 percent, while white businesses declined by “only” 17 percent. It is apparently not coincidental that most of these businesses are located in minority urban areas where COVID-19 has disproportionately affected the population, and their business. Thus it does show that there is a much greater need for businesses owned by “persons of color” for assistance to get back on their feet due to the pandemic, and the relief bill is, after all, supposed to help people like this. Yet here we see people like Miller and Meadows who have made plain their racist inclinations, able to get their way before a probably racially-insenstive judge.

It is too bad that we can’t leave the hypocritical bullshit to the likes of Fox News, where on their “Media Buzz” show they whined and complained that the “liberal” media was all “abuzz” about news of grand juries being impanelled to hear evidence of criminal acts by Trump and his stooges, and extremist-right commentator Mark Levin doing even more bitching and moaning about how a “Democrat” city (New York) is attempting a “coup” to remove “our president”—that is “his” used-to-be “president.” Further down the sewer, Michael Flynn is in fact “suggesting” a violent Myanmar-like military coup to reinstate Trump. This is where Trump has taken us, when clearly mentally-disabled people are still allowed a forum in which to expectorate dangerous nonsense.

Once let out of the bag, the only thing that can stop psychotic characters from infiltrating the political "mainstream" are fickle voters

 

After the 2016 election, CNN editors bemoaned the fact that they had given so much airtime to Donald Trump’s white nationalist populism, which merely excited voters who were looking for something “different” and were swayed by Trump’s “feeling good about feeling bad” propaganda that demonized groups vulnerable to nationalism, xenophobia, chauvinism, bigotry and racism. Most of the “experts” thought that Trump was going to lose anyways, but they underestimated the strength of the white pity-party despite the fact the economy was getting stronger. It certainly is possible that if the network had simply highlighted statements that reflected Trump’s unfitness to be president, and not his “populism” which deceived many voters, there was a chance that states that flipped with just a few votes to spare would have delivered the “expected” result.

Now we are hearing similar misgivings about Marjorie Taylor Greene. The other day Anderson Cooper “reluctantly” mentioned her name in regard to her comparing mask-wearing to the Holocaust, but vowed never to speak her name again. Others on CNN also expressed “reluctance” to give her more of what amounts to as free campaign spots that her supporters gobble up no matter how outrageous. Fox News—even its “hard news” hosts—tend to avoid mentioning Greene, since almost everything that comes out of her mouth only highlights the dangerous nature of the network’s far-right political and social agenda. Is Greene “smart” for playing the “liberal” media like a fool, or just a psychopath suffering from dementia, which explains her inability to control her most insane fantasies from escaping the darkest corners of her mind?

One thing for certain is that people like Greene have “influence” on the news cycle far in excess of what could be deemed their actual worth, but also have the effect of being in opposition to prevailing social politics. For example, Shannon Watts and Joanna Lydgate have an op-ed in The Hill in which they talk about “misogynists” who are threatening women who are “saving our democracy.” Which of course is self-serving feminist horse-pucky, because some of the most dangerous and crazed characters threatening our democracy are women—and while Liz Cheney may have paid a price for her failure to support Trump’s election lies, it still must be remembered that she is still a reliable far-right agenda vote. Who is behind Arizona’s crazed and incompetently-conducted Maricopa County recount that is certainly to be controversial no matter what the result? State Republican chairperson Kelli Ward, National Committeewoman Lori Corbin, and President of the Senate Karen Fann. Whose is putting up a lonely battle against this fanatical Trumpist trio? Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, and now, belatedly, Jack Sellers of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors; both are Republicans

What can be done to marginalize voices like that of Greene? She still has a Facebook and twitter page. After Kevin McCarthy finally woke-up after five days and issued a tepid “condemnation” of her comparing mask wearing to the Holocaust, one of her fiercely-crazed supporters tweeted that McCarthy was a “moron” and a “feckless cunt,” and Greene thanked him for his profound "insight" into the matter. Greene only minutes later deleted her own comments, but too late given that her social media pages are monitored 24 hours a day since she is liable day or night to suddenly get the urge to comment on whatever infests her mind. Certainly we can say that her social media pages only attract “deplorables” and the merely curious, but the question of whether responsible media has a “duty” to either warn the country of the dangerous nature of such people and the harm they can cause before they break into the national consciousness, or to simply ignore them in the hope they will remain mostly unknown fringe figures seems almost a moot point, considering the absolute shamelessness of such people.

It was certainly easier to keep such people from a wider audience in the “old” days, before the Internet, social media and cable news. In the old days, firebrands with crackpot ideas tended to stay local. The only media outlet that could spread the “word” about such people were newspapers and pamphlets, and later the radio. Until the advent of cable television, network news programs tended to be self-policing, and people with crackpot ideas almost never were allowed to appear on television, or seldom commented upon unless to poke fun at them. People on the far-right (and far-left) fringes upset a well-ordered, civilized society, and there were more important issues to discuss on a 30-minute evening news broadcast.

It is also troubling to note that an ever decreasing number of people in Congress have the slightest notion of lawmaking, and even less interest in making them. Today, less than 40 percent of House members have any training in the law, which is part of an ongoing trend away from a time when people with law degrees were actually the preferred candidates. Some people think that “diversity” of backgrounds is a “good” thing, but that is a matter of opinion. What we see now are people elected to office who have no clue of or respect for the process of making laws; their only agenda is getting elected in order to be obstructionist and becoming “celebrities” on cable news shows.  They not only are a waste of taxpayer’s money, but they each “represent” a tiny fraction of the population that tends to be ill-educated and focused on insular concerns—and, like Greene, they are usually little more than a face from that crowd who spoke a little more loudly and with less shame.

It is too late to put the genie back in the bottle. Facebook and Twitter can’t ban everyone who is a danger to this country, and the Internet is just too big to control, In the past some people came out of left field to threaten the “establishment,” but they typically flamed out once people saw there was little in the way of substance. That isn’t true anymore; as we have seen with the QAnon “movement” and “stolen” election scams, in which outlandish conspiracies theories without a shred of evidence have a way of infiltrating the Internet “mainstream"--even if for a brief time--can cause incalculable damage to a democracy.  

Is there a way to talk about dangerous characters like Greene without the danger of making them “martyrs” or folk heroes? Should they just be allowed to remain fodder for late night talk shows? One thing seems ominously unknown, and that is we don’t yet know what the people who voted for such people actually feel about them now, and that won’t be known until the 2022 midterm elections. Do voters realize just how abnormal these people appear to be—or are they really “representative” of their views? Do they even care that their “representative” is a fringe outlier who is respected by few of even her own colleagues—save those like Matt Gaetz, who needs a “friend” because of accusations of sex trafficking—and generally regarded as an embarrassment to the party? Or since the cat is already out of the bag, and will bite, scratch and claw to stop from being put back in, will the fickleness of the voters be the only thing that can be counted on to stop these people?

Aaron Rodgers puts his expected self-serving “spin” on the state of affairs for the benefit of himself and his apologists

For Kenny Mayne’s swan song for ESPN, he might as well go out with a “bang”—meaning coaxing the biggest story of the sports year thus far onto his show, and so it goes that his Royal Heinous, Aaron Rodgers, finally makes an appearance and puts his two-bit in for the edification of the world, and for Packer fans like myself who have seen it all over the years, when the “bad” was just as entertaining—if slightly more frustrating—as the “good.” Rodgers may feel like he “cleansed” himself, but he’s leaving some Packer fans feeling as if they had just been shit on. What transpired was the following:

Self-serving statement number one: “With my situation…it’s never been about the draft pick.”

Rodgers is referring to Jordan Love, who he claims is a “great kid” and “loved” to work with. This is at odds with what has been the talking point in the media since the moment Love was drafted. Why didn’t the Packers draft a wide receiver in the first round, since Rodgers was clearly not able to maximize the talent already on the team? That’s right, the “elite” player who is supposed to play “elite” never has enough “weapons”—except when he is “forced” to use them. In 2019 Rodgers had his best 3-game stretch without his number one receiver, Davante Adams, in the line-up, throwing for 1,017 yards and 10 TDs; he only had 14 TDs in the 12 games when Adams was on the field.

In fact, Rodgers had his best statistical game of his career in 2019 against the Raiders, going 25 of 31 for 429 yards and 5 TDs—his first, and only, “perfect” passer rating game. Yet two games later he threw for just 169 yards on 35 pass attempts in a blowout loss to a 3-5 Chargers team. Want to take a flying leap over a cliff assuming which game Adams actually played in? Adams did catch 115 passes in 2020, but he wasn’t the team’s deep threat; his yards-per-target was just 9.2. Marquez Valdes-Scantling was the team’s “deep threat”; thus he had a lower target/catch percentage, but a higher yards-per-catch and yards-per-target average (20.9 and 11.0).

Self-serving statement number two: “Love the coaching staff, love my teammates, love the fan base in Green Bay.”

Yada, yada, yada…isn’t that what everyone says when they are trying desperately not to look like the real villain of the story? Yet the truth is that Rodgers’ grudge game disrespects all of those entities. Packer management indulged him by dumping Mike McCarthy even though they knew that it was Rodgers who was principally responsible for creating the toxic atmosphere between them, and got him a new coach and “philosophy,” one that saw the team improve from 6-9-1 to 13-3 despite little noticeable improvement in Rodger’s play overall in 2019. He disrespects his teammates by refusing to acknowledge their role in making him—what was that, “elite”? Rodgers completed 70.7 percent of his passes last year and yet he had no “weapons.”  He disrespects the fans who supported him despite the fact he has let them down every year since 2010 by not playing straight with them and giving them bullshit reasons why he doesn’t want to play in Green Bay anymore.

Self-serving statement number three: “It’s just about a kind of philosophy and maybe forgetting that it is about the people that makes the thing go.”

This is all about a raging narcissist. He’s the only “people” populating his world. He is the one who makes “the thing go.” The question is “where,” exactly, since he is the “team.” Playing just good enough to make the playoffs? Is that it—because that is all we have seen from him. What “philosophy” is he talking about, anyways? The coaching “philosophy” that he just said he “loved”? If it isn’t just some “hard word” he just threw out there for kicks, all we can assume is that it is about his “philosophy,” whatever the hell it is.

Self-serving statement number four: “It’s about character, it’s about culture, it’s about doing things the right way.”

Yeah, Rodgers shows a lot of “character,” doesn’t he, where every imagined instance of "disrespect" sticks to him like a tar-baby. Rodgers being responsible for creating the toxic “culture” between himself and McCarthy from day one showed a lot of “character.” How could Packer management know that Rodgers was the kind of person who once he starts a grudge, is too immature to let it go? Is that thinking straight and “doing things the right way”? I think not.

Once the media throws around superlatives, players’ heads inflate to the point they float away in some stratosphere where they lose all contact with reality. They never blame themselves; it is always someone else’s fault when they make egregious mistakes and choke under pressure when it most counts for them to play big. That is not showing “character.” Just like in all the other big games from previous playoffs, Rodgers didn’t man-up to the horrible interception he threw late in the first half in the past season’s NFC championship game that allowed a real clutch player—Tom Brady—to throw a TD pass with just seconds remaining.

Rodgers didn’t “man-up” about throwing three terrible passes after first-and-goal with the game and a Super Bowl appearance on the line, instead allowing Matt LaFleur to take all the “blame” for his choking. Even if Rodgers didn’t run the ball in on that third down play, he certainly would have gotten the ball close enough for make the next decision more palatable; after all, LaFleur trusted Rodgers in the 49ers game last season, and he only got burned big time.

Self-serving statement number five: “It’s about the people, and that’s the most important thing.”

Rodger’s went on to put himself in the same category as Curly Lambeau, Vince Lombardi, Bart Starr, et al. He doesn’t deserve to be put in the same category as any of those greats. He probably doesn’t even deserve to put in the same category as Brett Favre, despite being a more “efficient” passer who made fewer mistakes. But make no “mistake”: Favre played to win, which meant that he frequently made forced, hair-pulling throws that cost the team wins. Packer fans had to accept that from a player who at least put them back on the football map. Rodgers, on the other hand, too often played like he is more interested in his passer rating than in winning. Sure he throws fewer interceptions, but in order to do that he just threw away passes instead of making the tough throw, which usually led to long periods of three-and-outs that put the team in a hole it couldn’t dig out of.

Self-serving statement number six: “I think sometimes people forget what really makes an organization. History is important, legacy of so many people that build foundation of those entities. I think sometimes we forget that.”

Does Rodgers even know what he is talking about here? I don’t think he does, frankly. “Philosophy,” “culture”—if you asked him to explain what he means by those terms, and this is all he can come up with? He is clearly talking about his nonsensical “beef” with the front office and GM Brian Gutekunst, who is yet the latest person he holds a stupid “grudge” against because he needs a scapegoat to paper-over his own failures.

You know what? I think that to most Packer fans, living up to the “Titletown” moniker is what the team’s “legacy” is about, and for all the superlatives people throw at him, Rodgers just isn’t the guy anymore after so many failures in championship games. The Packers’ front office spent a lot of money laying the foundation around Rodgers in the expectation that he would lead the team to the promised land, and since 2010 he has repeatedly failed. He has “forgotten” that if you never live up to the “elite” status others claim for you, you are no longer part of the “foundation.”

Rodgers was the league MVP three times; how many of those seasons did he lead the team to the Super Bowl? None, zero, nada. Rodgers went on to claim that the Packers only want him back because he won the MVP award. That doesn’t mean he will play as well this year, does it? I personally think that if Rodgers does choose to suit-up in the green-and-gold this season, he should be thankful he is getting another chance to prove he is not the choke artist he has shown himself to be year after year—and that he is deserving of being an important part that Packer historical legacy. If he doesn’t, then don’t let the door hit you too hard in the fundament on the way out.

Oh, and by the way, why doesn’t someone ask Shailene what she thinks about Green Bay—the town and the area, not the team. We could probably learn a whole lot more about this “situation” from her answer than all this self-serving bullshit that Rodgers expectorated last night. 

In opposing January 6 commission, Republicans are scrambling like rats in the dark from fear the light will shine on the guilty

 

The images from the January 6 insurrection by supporters of Donald Trump speak for themselves. It happened after months of Trump’s refusal to accept defeat with grace and furthering the evidence of his unfitness for office, and while his “legal team,” Fox News and some Republican senators and most House Republicans gave sustenance to wild conspiracies about a “stolen” election. After the last of the insurrectionists were removed from the Capitol building, 140 House Republicans still voted for to contest the election based on the conspiracies they themselves had aided in peddling, and thus were themselves equally culpable for the events of that day.

Nevertheless, last week 35 House Republicans voted to approve an independent commission to investigate the cause of the insurrection. Ten Republican in the U.S. Senate had voted to impeach Trump for his role in inciting the insurrection, seemingly enough to head off a filibuster. Yet now we are to understand that the Republican leadership is now desperate to block any investigation into responsibility for the insurrection, with many Republicans who voted for impeachment now suddenly more concerned about party over country. Republicans who were all talk in condemning Trump for inciting the insurrection are now suddenly behaving like rats which prefer to operate in the dark where their crimes are hidden, and are now are scurrying for cover once the bright light of the truth threatens to shine on them. This promises to be not just media reports here today, gone tomorrow, but an official accounting of their crimes in horrific (for them) detail.

House minority leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy and his counterpart in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, represent a hypocritical front that insists that it isn’t “fair” to simply focus on the insurrection; what about last year’s BLM and Antifa protests? But that isn’t even an apples and oranges comparison. Those kind of protests over police abuse have been going on many decades, at least since the Rodney King incident 30 years ago. Nobody ever claimed that those protests were aimed to overthrow an election or government. Last year’s protests were not only fueled by an increase in cases that were captured on video, and by people with too much time on their hands because of the pandemic lockdown, but also by Trump because of his total absence of personal moral capacity to even make an effort to calm the nation. If anything, Trump only exacerbated last summer’s protests because of his racist dog-whistling and total absence of sensitivity to those outside his guilded cage.

So Republicans have no real reason to oppose the commission save for one: they are fearful that an investigation will drag on into the 2022 midterms, and more and more evidence will come to light not just how Trump and his stooges in front and behind the scenes sought to inflame passions with conspiracy claims they knew to be false—just look at how Sidney Powell is now “defending” herself by claiming she didn’t actually “believe” the conspiracies she was peddling everywhere—but many Republicans in Congress were also directly involved in stoking the flames of insurrection, and possibly even aided in the invasion of the Capitol. 

Yes, some Republicans like McConnell and Lindsey Graham pretended to act like statesmen after the insurrection, but talk is cheap; but being “men” and not boys when it is time to correct a wrong even when it means that some of their “friends”—and even themselves—will be revealed to be less than heroic in the drama is quite another thing. In doing so, these Republicans will reveal themselves to be on same “level” as the insurrectionists themselves. As political commentator Kurt Bardella tweeted, “Asking Republicans to investigate 1.6 is like asking Al-Qaeda to investigate 9.11. The people who helped plan/promote the attack aren’t going to be partners in the investigation.”

Most Republicans insist on being tied to the hip to a man who is nothing more than representative of a cult of personality, like Jim Jones, and who may soon be indicted on criminal charges. Those who tried to “reason” with Trump—like McCarthy—during the height of the insurrection know the truth, but outside of those Republicans who are just as crazy as Trump (Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, Rand Paul, Josh Hawley, et al.), the only thing that really matters is pleasing his white nationalist/nativist base.

But there is a limit to how useful Trump is to Republicans, which is why they oppose the commission most of all. Any investigation that even goes skin deep will prove that Trump is batshit crazy with conspiracy thinking, engaging in far from what one would call “presidential” behavior, and only listened to a sycophantic lunatic fringe fearful of his wrath. On the other hand, you can believe that there will be a long line of witnesses to Trump’s crimes willing to clear their consciences under oath. What this means is that the “stink” of Trump will rub-off on Republicans running for office in contested races in 2022 who claim to be his most ardent supporters. Voters in the middle will wonder why they should vote for Republicans who have tied themselves not just to an insane man, but a man facing criminal charges.

This is why this commission is needed; a recent poll states that 48 percent of Americans are “satisfied” with the present FBI investigation, but they shouldn’t be. The FBI is only investigating those physically involved in the insurrection; they are not investigating those who incited it. Those political and media figures who incited the insurrection are not just equally guilty—but even more guilty. And that is why they don’t want this, and why we need to do this.