Q NOTES 1223: Another Goodbye

 Some sad news this morning. Tony Bennett has resigned from life at 96.

I became a Tony Bennett fan late in the game, about the time his catalog recordings and new releases were being marketed in the digital format. Now I've collected many of his earlier recordings on compact discs or MP3 files, and have added most of his more recent recordings. Considering his age and health issues, his passing wasn't a huge surprise but it's still depressing.

As a performer and a human being, Tony Bennett was devoted to making this world a better place. Meanwhile, there are hundreds of MAGA monsters in red state governments and Washington DC who want to turn the United States into another theocracy or fascist waste dump, and a single Tony Bennett was more valuable than all of those bottom-feeders put together.

Numbers Games: Grim Reaper Edition

Recent studies show that in red areas, the COVID death rate is significantly higher than the rate in blue areas. Presumably, this is one result of the different levels of willingness to be vaccinated between areas that are heavily influenced by Dimito Assolini and areas where sanity and common sense prevail. I can live with this.

Am I reading this correctly? Is it possible that Ohio Trumplicans are redistricting Gym Jordan out of Congress? If so, can I legitimately consider this a minor act of atonement?

Another one bit the dust. Assolini is always huffing & puffing and making big scary threats about what he's going to do to punish people who don't sniff his butt constantly. A classic example is that noise he made about leaving the Trumplican Party, and starting his own third party. 

If it had happened, it would've been the blessing I've been hoping for. Instead, Assolini went 100% chickenshit, the way he always does, after he got a taste of push-back from the pros.

Rafael (Ted) Cruz, one of the sleaziest wastes of space Texas has ever produced, decided to launch a Twitter attack on Big Bird, a Sesame Street character. Now he's being ridiculed by sensible people. It reflects poorly on Texas that most voters chose this asshole to serve them in the Senate.

Closing thought for today: Dimito Assolini is keeping the Trumplican party in chaos. That's a refreshing change from those four dreary years when he kept the whole country in chaos.

Scorekeeping Update

There are a limited number of decent human beings in what was formerly known as the Republican Party, which makes Colin Powell's death more tragic. I admired him until he made the mistake of accepting the Secretary of State position during Bush 43's first term. As one of possibly three Republicans who was widely considered to be honorable and capable, his credibility was needed to sell the PNAC agenda (invasion of Iraq) based on non-existent WMD. Though I felt betrayed at the time, Powell redeemed himself later by supporting Barack Obama, and being rejected by people who are now Trumplicans.

Q NOTES # 324 Recent Losses

Cloris Leachman and Hal Holbrook were two of my favorite character actors, and both have died recently. Holbrook was 95 and Leachman was 94, so both lived long, full lives. I doubt if I could name every movie or TV show I saw Holbrook in, but the role that immediately comes to mind is Deep Throat in All the President's Men. He was equally skilled at portraying nice guys, bad guys, decent guys, and real people like Mark Twain or Abe Lincoln. Leachman got my attention as a dramatic actress in The Last Picture Show, but I really enjoyed her work in Mel Brooks comedies like Young Frankenstein and High Anxiety, and as Phyllis in The Mary Tyler Moore Show on television. Like Hal Holbrook, she was versatile.

So Hal Holbrook and Cloris Leachman are gone, and Cheez Doodle lives on.

When I started blogging in September 2007, one of my earliest topics was what I referred to as the Basic National Stupidity Rate, which I determined by simply averaging the (R) share of the popular vote in presidential elections since 2000. The last time I calculated the BNSR was after Obama beat Mittens in 2012, and at that time the national number was 47.88 percent. I always made a concurrent computation for Texas, and in 2012, the state stupidity rate was a staggering 58.25 percent. Texas was roughly 10 points stupider than the national average. 

Since the last update, we've had two more presidential elections, and El Cheezo lost the popular vote both times. Averaging only 2016 and 2020 produces a national stupidity rate of 46.48 % and a Texas rate of 52.09 %. It took the worst fucking Republican candidate in U.S. history to LOWER the national & state stupidity rates. 

El Cheezo's latest team of ambulance-chasing assholes may be slightly more competent than the others we've been exposed to since last November, but that doesn't mean they're elite prize-winners. One part of their defense: The Democrats should exclude any existing video that clearly shows El Cheezo committing the crime he's accused of committing. Another part: The Constitution protects his right of free speech, so anything he said on January 6th must be okay.

Most people who saw Lindsey Graham's TV interview interpreted his remarks as a threat to bring in the FBI to testify if Democrats insist on witness testimony as part of the El Cheezo impeachment trial. I watched the video excerpt and got a different impression: Lindsey wasn't threatening to include FBI testimony; he's hoping to avoid anything like that.

If I'm understanding the reports, El Cheezo's impeachment defense isn't that he didn't do it, it's that he was entitled to commit the crime because he won the election. That should work.

The RepubliQan Party? Okay. 

Odds and Ends

Mitch McConnell's life is turning to shit. I don't have a problem with that.

Hugh Hefner just died at age 91. I started buying Playboy when I was in high school, and even tacked a few of the choicest Playmate centerfolds to the ceiling over my bed. I collected 12 issues per year for decades. Last summer, I got rid of them because I needed the shelf space.

If it was left up to me, I'd bring Hefner and Don Williams back by trading Beauregard Sessions, Roy Moore, Rafael (Ted) Cruz and Danny (Goeb) Patrick for them in a two-for-one deal.

Speaking of Roy Moore... fuck Alabama and the crackers who vote for people like him.

Scoring Update

Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church is dead. That doesn't offset the losses of Roger Ebert and Kurt Vonnegut Jr, but it's a step in the right direction.

Joe South

Back in the sixties, songs by Joe South were all over Top 40 radio. Even people who weren't born yet in the 60s have probably heard songs that were written or performed by him, though they may not know his name. Joe South was ubiquitous. He had a fairly brief fling with stardom, and today his records are difficult to locate except as expensive imports. You could say I was a Joe South fan. He's now resigned from life at 72. Heart problems.

Looking on the bright side

Being eternally optimistic, I think I've found the silver lining in the dark clouds of trash being written and spoken about the late Senator Ted Kennedy by rightwingers suffering the discomfort of hemorrhoids: When a fat, lazy conservative icon like Limbaugh finally keels over after years of sloth and gluttony, I can piss all over his memory and never feel a single twinge of guilty conscience. The behavior of the yahoos this week has freed me to unleash the dogs the next time the score is tied. What goes around eventually comes around.

Another Kennedy departs

Sen. Ted Kennedy, brain cancer, age 77 years. Those clinking sounds you hear are right-wingers toasting the good news.

Now departing... Robert Novak

When I was younger, I enjoyed watching political talk shows on the cable news channels, plus The McLaughlin Group on PBS. I rarely missed Crossfire on CNN back in those days, when Robert Novak was the spokesman for the conservative viewpoint. For some reason, Novak never irritated me as much as the assholes on AM radio and at Fox News Channel did, at least during his Crossfire days. I was surprised to discover that, unlike most Republicans, he never seemed to be an enthusiastic supporter of the invasion of Iraq. His columns were regularly carried in the local paper, and I read almost all of them. Unlike Krauthammer, Novak wrote in a manner that made me want to read what he had to say, and he was enough of a D.C. insider that his reporting was usually accurate.

I suppose, in retrospect, Novak was more like William F. Buckley than Glenn Beck. Brain cancer finally got him at 78.

Scorekeeping

William F. Buckley died yesterday at age 82. He was supposedly at his desk, writing, when he passed away. In my book, that would be a nice way to go. Buckley is widely considered a progenitor of the modern conservative movement, but on my scorecard, I can't add him as a point for the bad guys. For some reason, I don't think of Buckley as being in the same category as Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, Dobson, Falwell, Rove, DeLay, and the other familiar names in that crowd. It probably has to do with his style and the fact he was obviously intelligent. Sometimes he would write something I agreed with.

All factors considered, I can't count him as one of the good guys, but he wasn't one of the bad guys either.