What Would Chuy Do?
Congressman and former mayoral candidate reportedly pondering a challenge to Mayor Lori Lightfoot, but...
9-22-2022 (issue No. 54)
Eric Zorn is a former opinion columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Find a longer bio and contact information here. This issue exceeds in size the maximum length for a standard email. To read the entire issue in your browser, click on the headline link above.
This week
News and Views on Trump’s embrace of QAnon, renaming Squaw Island and more
The end of COVID-19? Not so fast!
Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go
Well said! Some nicely wrought passages I’ve come across lately
A promo for “The Mincing Rascals” podcast
Re:Tweets — This week’s finalists in two polls
Tune of the Week — “Hamlet in Three Minutes”
Last week’s winning tweet
My wife screamed "You haven't listened to a single word I've said, have you?!” I was taken aback....what a weird way to start a conversation. — various sources.
An oft-stolen/appropriated tweet that appears on coffee mugs and other ephemera.
Scroll down to read this week’s nominees or click here to vote in the new poll. I have also posted another of my periodical “all-politics” Tweet of the Week polls.
If Garcia chooses to run for mayor again, he’d better have a vision this time.
Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet reported Monday on a poll showing Democratic U.S. Rep. Chuy Garcia well positioned to take on Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot in next February’s election.
The poll, commissioned by Nuestro PAC — “a national political action committee focusing on Latino voters” that is urging Garcia to get into the race — showed Lightfoot and Garcia in a statistical tie at the top of a large field of announced and potential contenders.
(Amplifying the results of private polls conducted by advocates is a dodgy proposition, even when the source is disclosed. Former Tribune Metro Editor Mark Jacob lashed Fox32 on Twitter earlier this week for reporting on a poll that emanated from the gubernatorial campaign of Darren Bailey.)
Garcia told Sweet he is aiming to decide by the middle of next month whether to run.
He could be a formidable candidate. He was a Cook County commissioner in 2015 when he ran for mayor, won 33.5% of the vote in the five-candidate general election field and forced incumbent Mayor Rahm Emanuel into a runoff.
I voted for him in that election even though I didn't believe he'd yet made the case that he was ready to run the city. My hope was that a runoff election would offer a bracing and enlightening contrast of visions on how Chicago should address the issues that confronted it.
But Garcia didn't bring much of a vision to the runoff. He brought a series of gripes — the main one being that he needed more detail than the city's massive (and public) budget books provided about where the money goes before he could come up with even a fantasy solution to the budget problems.
"There are many things that need to be on the table," Garcia said in response to a question about property taxes during a debate. "However, you can't move forward until you show Chicagoans where the tax dollars are going."
About the CPS budget gap: "I can't tell you right now how I would solve it."
But, "I'm going to be collaborative and engaging," he said. "What we will have under my administration will be a set of open books that everyone can make reference to know what the true state of our fiscal situation is and then be able to make decisions moving forward."
Asked how he’d make up for the lost revenue if he was able to follow through on one of his concrete proposals and end the red light camera program, he answered, "That is part of the challenge."
He branded his blueprint for the city’s future as "bold" and "innovative," but it was little more than hopeful musings about the savings he might find by consolidating government services, limiting pensions of future employees and so on.
By leaving everything on the table, he put nothing on the table. Emanuel, who was rhetorically slippery himself, thumped Garcia by more than 12 percentage points in the runoff.
But that was nearly eight years ago. Garcia has served in the U.S. House since 2019 and presumably now has more robust notions about how best to address the various problems bedeviling the city and will have more to say than "I can't tell you right now how I would solve it.”
Meanwhile, you’ll note that I have continued my effort to liberate his name from the cage of quotation marks.
Journalistic custom has been to refer to him as “Jesus 'Chuy' Garcia," which carries with it the vague suggestion that it’s an affectionym rather than what everyone actually calls him.
Chuy is a very common Mexican nickname for men named Jesus. And it no more (or certainly no longer) belongs in quotes any more than Bob belongs in quotes when we refer to Ald. Robert Fioretti, Ted belongs in quotes when we write about U.S. Sen. Rafael Edward Cruz, R-Texas, or Jeb belongs in quotes when we refer to former Florida Gov. John Ellis Bush, should we ever need to do so again.
We’re still waiting to hear either way about mayoral intentions from:
Anthony Beale, 9th Ward alderman
Melissa Conyears-Ervin, city treasurer
La Shawn Ford, Democratic state representative
Judy Frydland, former Chicago building commissioner
Brian Hopkins, 2nd Ward alderman
Brandon Johnson, Democratic Cook County commissioner
Martin Nesbitt, local business leader and chair of the Obama Foundation
Patrick “Pat” Quinn, former governor of Illinois
Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, 35th Ward alderman
Thomas “Tom” Tunney, 44th Ward alderman
You see what I did there?
News & Views
News: Former President Trump leans into QAnon, and his supporters respond with an eerie one-arm salute.
View: We are entering truly alarming territory here, an area that vindicates everyone who has been accused these last few years of suffering “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
The Associated Press story is alarming:
After winking at QAnon for years, Donald Trump is overtly embracing the baseless conspiracy theory, even as the number of frightening real-world events linked to it grows.
On (Sept. 13), using his Truth Social platform, the Republican former president reposted an image of himself wearing a Q lapel pin overlaid with the words “The Storm is Coming.” In QAnon lore, the “storm” refers to Trump’s final victory, when supposedly he will regain power and his opponents will be tried, and potentially executed, on live television. …
In one now-deleted post from late August, he reposted a “q drop,” one of the cryptic message board postings that QAnon supporters claim come from an anonymous government worker with top secret clearance. …
Even when his posts haven’t referred to the conspiracy theory directly, Trump has amplified users who do. An Associated Press analysis found that of nearly 75 accounts Trump has reposted on his Truth Social profile in the past month, more than a third of them have promoted QAnon by sharing the movement’s slogans, videos or imagery.
Saturday’s Trump rally in Youngstown, Ohio, was even more ominous, as The New York Times reported:
Mr. Trump delivered a dark address about the decline of America over music that was all but identical to a song called “Wwg1wga” — an abbreviation for the QAnon slogan, “Where we go one, we go all.”
As Mr. Trump spoke, scores of people in the crowd raised fingers in the air in an apparent reference to the “1” in what they thought was the song’s title. It was the first time in the memory of some Trump aides that such a display had occurred at one of his rallies.
Chris Hayes of MSNBC put it succinctly: “Right before our eyes, the de facto leader of one of two major political parties … is embracing fully a violent, authoritarian cult mythology. It’s one that explicitly imagines its political foes being killed.”
Those raised arms are reminiscent of a Nazi salute, let’s not kid ourselves here. There can be no question that Trump aspires to authoritarian rule and that tens of millions of people are behind him. Those who don’t see this are suffering from Trump Delusion Syndrome, a far more dangerous malady.
News: Car-booting in private parking lots could expand in Chicago
View: I like it! Even though I’d hate to get booted for abusing a private parking spot, I’d hate even more having to travel to where the tow truck driver has taken my car. Private businesses can already use a boot clamp to disable the vehicles of rogue parkers in 35 of the city’s 50 wards, but as a lobbyist for expanding the permission citywide put it, “Don’t compare private booting to no enforcement mechanism at all, where people can park at will. Compare it to the alternative, which is a towing company, which charges more, which takes your vehicle to a distant pound.”
He said the $170 un-booting fee is cheaper than what you’d pay to get your car back from towing companies.
But Ald. Anthony Napolitano, 41st, made a good point when he expressed concern that booted drivers would get into altercations with those installing and removing the boots.
“We don’t have enough police,” Napolitano said. “Now our officers are going to be dispatched to an argument in the parking lot over boots from an independent company, not even by a city company, which is ... going to happen. I’ve seen it happen (on) numerous, numerous occasions.”
News: The U.S. Department of the Interior has renamed Squaw Island in downstate Calhoun County to “Calhoun Island” as part of an effort to eliminate the offensive word “squaw” from place names.
View: Laughing Squaw Sloughs near south suburban Palos Park is now Cherry Hill Woods Sloughs as part of the same creditable effort. Indian Country today refers to “the s-word” and writes that, “though the origins of s-word may have several questionably confirmed sources historically, Indigenous women say that the term is offensive,” which is good enough for me not to use it outside of the context of discussing its impact.
But is “Calhoun Island” any better? The county and now the island are named for the sepulchral John C. Calhoun, who served as vice president of the U.S. under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson.
Brittanica.com says
(Calhoun) spent the last 20 years of his life in the Senate working to unite the South against the abolitionist attack on slavery, and his efforts included opposing the admittance of Oregon and California to the Union as free states. His efforts were in vain, however, and his exuberant defense of slavery as a “positive good” aroused strong anti-Southern feeling in the free states.
The site offers a representative quote from Calhoun, who himself claimed ownership over dozens of enslaved people: “Let me not be understood as admitting, even by implication, that the existing relations between the two races in the slaveholding states is an evil. Far otherwise; I hold it to be a good.”
Therefore “Calhoun Island” is arguably a more problematic name than “Squaw Island.” Try again, mapmakers!
Some thoughts on cash bail
The concept of bail — the justice system holding meaningful assets of those charged with crimes as collateral to assure that they show up for trial — is so familiar and makes so much sense, in a certain way, that most of us never questioned it.
How else, aside from keeping them behind bars awaiting trial, are we supposed to guarantee that the accused don’t simply skip town or go into hiding?
But there’s a glaring flaw in the concept that’s long been obvious to those who study it:
Usually only one factor determines whether a defendant stays in jail before he comes to trial. That factor is not guilt or innocence. It is not the nature of the crime. It is not the character of the defendant. That factor is, simply, money.
That was Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in 1964.
Activists have noted that the system in effect criminalizes poverty. If you have means and you’re charged with a crime, you can write a check and go back to living your life until your case is called. If you have little to no means and are charged with the same crime, you may have to sit in a cell until your case is called, an interruption in your life that stands to cost you your job or custody of your children, cause you to fall behind on rent or car payments or possibly inspire you to accept a deal to plead guilty to a crime you didn’t commit.
In that light, the elimination of cash bail in Illinois’ Pretrial Fairness Act — the most controversial and misunderstood component of the sprawling Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today law (the SAFE-T Act) that’s going into effect on Jan. 1 — is exceedingly fair and sensible.
Getting rid of bail is consonant with the presumption of innocence in our criminal justice system and in line with common practice in nearly all of the rest of the world.
The Center for American Progress reports:
Washington, D.C., was an early pioneer in pretrial reform, taking steps to eliminate the use of cash bail as early as the 1960s. The results have been extraordinary: 94 percent of defendants are released pretrial, and 91 percent of them appear in court for their trial.
New Jersey passed a suite of criminal justice reforms in 2016 that essentially eliminated cash bail and created a new pretrial services program. Since implementing these reforms in 2017, New Jersey saw a 20 percent reduction in its jail population. In 2017, 95 percent of defendants were released pretrial and 89 percent of them appeared at their trial date.
Harris County, Texas, home to the third-largest jail system in the country, reformed its pretrial system as part of a consent decree to virtually eliminate the use of money bail for misdemeanor charges. Prior to these reforms, 40 percent of people arrested on a misdemeanor charge were detained until their case was adjudicated. Experts estimate that reforms will result in pretrial release for 90 to 95 percent of misdemeanor defendants.
Republicans have been raising alarms about the change in a series of misleading campaign statements suggesting that jailhouse doors will be flung open on New Year’s Day due to “mandatory release” laws, and accused predators will be loose upon the land.
But as the Tribune’s Jeremy Gorner wrote in a recent comprehensive report on the controversy, the new law “allows judges to keep defendants awaiting trial behind bars if they are deemed a flight risk or a danger to the public. … Prosecutors will be able to argue before judges that defendants should be detained at their initial court appearance.”
In a Facebook post on (Sept. 13), downstate attorney Thomas DeVore, the Republican nominee for attorney general, made an inaccurate claim that when criminal defendants are released onto the streets on Jan. 1 and don’t show up to court, “the police can NOT go arrest them.”
The law, in fact, indicates judges can issue a warrant for defendants to be arrested if they skip court.
Injustice Watch reported, “Last year, more than one-third of felony cases in Cook County were dropped or ended in acquittal.”
The fact-checking site Snopes evaluated the claim that the new law “will make some violent crimes, including murder and homicide, non-detainable offenses prior to trial, which means violent criminals will be released without bail” and rated it “mostly false.” PolitiFact rated a similar claim just plain “false,” writing:
The law says that "all persons charged with an offense shall be eligible for pretrial release before conviction."
But "eligible" doesn’t mean every person will be granted pretrial release. Prosecutors can petition the court if they wish to keep a suspect detained, and a judge will approve or deny the continued detention at a hearing, typically held within 48 hours of the suspect’s first court appearance.
Those who are released still can be subject to supervision, such as electronic monitoring.
And, critically, those who are released would have previously been eligible for release if they’d been able to come up with the bail money.
There will be glaring failures — suspects who commit awful crimes after they are released. But there are already numerous glaring failures in which suspects who bond out or are released on home monitoring commit awful crimes. It happens far too often, and each such crime marks a failure of judges to evaluate the risk posed by certain defendants.
And there seems to be bipartisan agreement that the SAFE-T Act still needs some tweaking and clarification in the General Assembly. But it looks likely that we’re about to be part of the biggest test yet of the idea that eliminating cash bail will have positive downstream effects on crime rates and community stability, or at least be just as effective in promoting public safety as the system now in place.
If the idea fails the test, we can amend it or end it.
Writing -30- on COVID-19
University of Texas Health Science Center epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina would like a word with those of us who are feeling that the pandemic is at an end:
In the U.S., whispers suggest the end of the public health emergency will be in mid-2023, with signals that we are moving to privatize tests, treatments, and vaccines. (Sunday), Biden suggested on 60 Minutes that the “pandemic is [already] over”. This is hard to believe given an average of 400 Americans are dying each day. But, as I’ve written before, the “end of a pandemic” isn’t purely epidemiological, but also physiological, cultural, political, and moral. Essentially we’re collectively deciding where we place SARS-CoV-2 in our repertoire of threats. To me, this winter will be a true test as to whether we are still in an “emergency” phase, at least if we define this by deaths, hospitalizations, and healthcare capacity (opposed to infection or long COVID).
Land of Linkin’
“The GOP is leading our beloved country, and numerous of its states, to the slaughter” writes conservative commentator Rich Logis in “I voted for Trump — twice. I was a right-wing pundit. I was dead wrong about all of it.” “I say — with no qualms and no fear of being hyperbolic — that Trump is the most politically traumatizing figure in American history. His ‘rigged and stolen election’ is the new version of the Confederacy's ‘Lost Cause.’”
The Poynter Institute article, “Want to cancel that cheap introductory newspaper subscription offer once the rate has gone up? Just try.” is nearly a year old, but highlights the issue of “sneaky pay” —the way publications jerk readers around with subscription rates. The writer notes that “bad customer service along with a soupçon of deception isn’t going to help the brand.” I beg to take issue only with the inadequacy of “soupçon.”
In the oldies but goodies department, “I’m Comic Sans, Asshole” at McSweeney’s is an exuberantly profane companion piece to the seasonal favorite, “It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers.”
Local critic, broadcaster and podcaster Rick Kaempfer is helping to fill the coverage gap left by the retirement of veteran media reporter Robert Feder with a weekly “Media Notebook” blog. I like the effort but must chide him for his Sneed-like weakness for announcing birthdays without saying what age the people are. No one cares about the day outside of the subject’s immediate family! So birthday announcements without ages attached are boring, and come off as more than a little obsequious.
“Unsealed: The Tylenol Murders” marks the Chicago Tribune’s first serious foray into the podcast medium, and I’ve already subscribed: “In 1982, the nation was living in fear. One by one people in the Chicago area were dying. No one knew why — or who would be next. Law enforcement mobilized to answer the what, who and why. The what was Tylenol, laced with cyanide, placed randomly on store shelves to kill unsuspecting victims. But the who and the why? That would elude investigators for decades. If you think you know the story of the Tylenol Murders, think again. Award-winning Chicago Tribune investigative reporters Christy Gutowski and Stacy St. Clair uncover new and critical clues in law enforcement’s latest — and possibly last — attempt at closing one of the nation's most infamous unsolved cases.”
Jennifer Bonjean, the combative defense attorney for R. Kelly, Bill Cosby and the former leader of the Nxivm sex cult, has deep roots in the Chicago area, as we learned in this New York Times profile: “Originally from Valparaiso, Ind., Ms. Bonjean is a classically trained opera singer who earned a master’s degree in music and once worked at a rape crisis center in Chicago, advocating for victims of sexual violence — a stint, she said, that some might now see ‘as ironic. … I’m supposed to be some type of ambassador — a vagina ambassador … like somehow I am traitorous to women by taking on these cases.’”
“Allegations of cheating – including wild speculation involving vibrating anal beads – have rocked chess to its core,” writes the Guardian.
“Apologies: What, When and How” by pioneering blogger and noted science fiction novelist John Scalzi. “It takes strength to apologize and apologize well. Any jackass can refuse to apologize when they are in the wrong; indeed, refusing to admit you’re wrong, or to apologize for it, is one of the hallmarks of being a jackass. Being willing to stand up and say ‘I screwed up, I’ve wronged you and I am sorry for it,’ on the other hand, means you have the strength of character to own your actions, and the consequences of them, both for others and yourself.”
The Picayune Sentinel on the air: On Thursdays at 4:30 p.m., WCPT-AM 820 host Joan Esposito and I chat about ideas raised in the new issue. The listen-live link is here.
The Picayune Sentinel preview: Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. I talk with WGN-AM 720 host John Williams about what’s making news and likely to be grist for the PS mill. The WGN listen-live link is here.
Well said!
Yale University historian Timothy Snyder:
Post-truth is pre-fascism, and Trump has been our post-truth president. When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place. Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to defend themselves. If we lose the institutions that produce facts that are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in attractive abstractions and fictions.
Rick Telander in the Sun-Times:
The Packers’ 27-10 victory against the Bears on Sunday night makes Rodgers 24-5 against the ‘‘big team from Chicago.” Add in his predecessor, Brett Favre, whose record against the Bears was 22-10, and you get a 46-15 domination that goes back more than a quarter-century. This is a rivalry? No, it’s meat-feeding at the zoo. It’s the lion chewing. The python digesting.
Joe Revane in a letter to the Sun-Times.
To anyone who doesn’t have any concerns about Illinois politics, I urge them to read Fran Spielman’s column on Anna Valencia. After taking hundreds of hours off from her elected position as Chicago city clerk to campaign for the secretary of state job and losing, she took the month of July off to catch up on sleep, vacation and reconnect with her daughter. Working people can only dream of such a scenario.
Chris Swick in a letter to the Tribune:
As a longtime subscriber, I feel compelled to voice a complaint about Steve Kelley’s cartoon published on Sept. 12. This blatantly anti-Joe Biden cartoon should be against the Tribune editorial policy. I understand trying to show politics from both sides, but I don’t see any redeeming or satirical value to this cartoon.
The letter did not describe the cartoon, which was typical of Kelley’s scorched-earth, unfunny hackish partisan attack drawings that are well beneath the dignity of the Tribune. Here, for journalistic purposes, is the cartoon Swick was referencing:
I won’t even start with this, other than to say that Biden did not label “Trump voters fascists.” He has underscored repeatedly that his warnings about creeping fascism on the right refer to those who have embraced the MAGA cult and its false, anti-democratic notions.
Now, I want to be very clear -- very clear up front: Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.
No responsible editor at a self-respecting publication would allow a writer to say Biden had labeled “Trump voters fascists.” Giving such license to a cartoonist borders on irresponsible.
Cheer Chat
The Songs of Good Cheer winter holiday caroling parties at the Old Town School of Folk Music are now set for the second weekend in December. For the 24th year, my now-former Chicago Tribune colleague Mary Schmich and I will co-host a singalong of familiar and unfamiliar seasonal songs led by a stellar band of local musicians that consents to let us play along with them.
This year, Jim Wynton is joining our cast.
Friday, Dec. 9, 7:30 pm
Saturday, Dec. 10, 3 pm
Saturday, Dec. 10, 7:30pm
Sunday, Dec. 11, 4 pm
Tickets went on sale Wednesday at 9 a.m. for Old Town School of Folk Music members and will go on sale at 9 a.m. Friday for the general public. Call 773-728-6000, go online or visit the box office in person at 4544 N. Lincoln Ave. A portion of ticket proceeds benefits the McCormick Foundation Communities Fund.
Tickets are $50 for the general public and $48 for Old Town School members, and they tend to sell out quickly.
I regret to say that, once again, at our very first meeting last weekend, the cast nixed my suggestion of performing the country song “Happy Birthday, Jesus.” But I’m excited about some of the other nominees for inclusion and will keep you posted.
Mary Schmich bids farewell to summer
My former colleague Mary Schmich posts occasional column-like entries on Facebook. Here, reprinted with permission, is her most recent offering:
We’ll soon be done with sleeveless tops We’ll bid farewell to shorts We’ll say goodbye to farmers’ crops Goodbye to summer sports
Goodbye to wasps and flies and bees To flowers in the yard So long to green and leafy trees Goodbyes can be so hard.
But!
They say that all good things must end Besides, the fall is nice And yet—I hope this won’t offend— Enough with pumpkin spice!
Gross pumpkin spice is everywhere In lattes, cookies, pies A plague that makes a girl despair There’s pumpkin spice in fries!
Still, here’s to change—the key to life— To autumn’s coming chill As summer leaves, we face the truth: Our lives do not stand still.
— Mary Schmich
Minced Words
Neil Steinberg joined host John Williams and me for this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast, which began and ended with Trump talk but touched on a lot of local news topics in the middle. In the pre-roll video WGN has censored the word “Goddamn.” Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. Or bookmark this page. If you’re not a podcast listener, you can now hear an edited version of the show at 8 p.m. most Saturday evenings on WGN-AM 720.
Re: Tweets
In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor and so can’t be included in the classic Tweet of the Week contest in which the template for the poll does not allow the use of images. Subscribers vote for their favorite, and I post the winner here every Thursday:
The new nominees for Tweet of the Week:
Now that the queen has been laid to rest, come on down to Crazy Larry’s Mattress Emporium and get some rest of your own. — @DurtMcHurtt
What part of this blank, scalding stare did you take as an invitation to talk to me?— @michikoconuts
“Dry clean only” is a fancy way of saying “This is going to be dirty forever” — various (often attributed to the late comic Mitch Hedberg)
Mathematically, most people are not “suckers.” Worldwide, about four people are born every second. If a sucker is born every minute (as legend declares) then only one in 240 people is a sucker. Just sayin’. — @neiltyson
I typed “babysitter” on Pornhub and wasn't that impressed with the work ethic. — @Lisabug74
I want to party with that fifth dentist. — @Shade510
My car has JPS. It's just Jean-Paul Sartre's voice explaining the pointlessness of my journey. — @frankieboyle
If I were a hometown sports announcer I would be saying stuff about the opponents like "These are evil people, these are not good human beings." — @Richard57941301
I typed my symptoms into DadMD and it said, “You’ll live.” — @mommajessiec
Just once I'd love to turn over a shampoo bottle and see directions that said, "No, you got this, we have faith in you." —@BoobsRadley
Vote here in the poll. I have also posted another of my periodical “all-politics” Tweet of the Week polls. Finalists are:
People have asked me my opinion of President Biden's criticism of "semi-fascism." Well, I can't overstate my disapproval of the inappropriate use of "semi." — @sfmnemonic
Is there anything Trump could do that would get him arrested? We’re already past fomenting insurrection and stealing nuclear secrets. He could wander Mar-a-Lago, soaked in blood, wearing someone’s intestines as a boa, and the news would lead with “In another norm-defying move…”— @gknauss
When the FBI searched Trump’s safe at Mar-a-Lago they found three more of Herschel Walker’s kids he forgot he has. — @smirnoff_sprite
This isn’t like getting Capone on tax evasion. This is getting Capone for wandering down State St naked while throwing bricks through hardware store windows and grabbing paint to huff. — @petersagal
I don’t have student debt but I believe in student debt forgiveness. I can’t get pregnant but I believe abortion should be legal. I’m straight and cis but I am pro same-sex marriage and trans rights. Welcome to It’s Not Always About You 101. — @OhNoSheTwitnt
The party of Nazi dog whistles and defending treason wants you to stop being so divisive. — @Jake_Vig
“If you enforce the law against our leader, there will be violence! Because we are the party of law and order!”— @AmishSuperModel
We are on the precipice of losing our democracy and the head of one of our two major political parties led a cult rally this weekend, but sure... let's spend 24/7 covering the death of a 96 year old woman from another country on our news stations. — @Redpainter1
If we cancel all student debt, people will want medical debt forgiven. If we cancel medical debt, they're going to want free healthcare. If we give them that, they'll want us to house the homeless. Then everyone's going to want a living wage. The whole society will fall apart. — @anthonyzenkus
Of course Ted Cruz supports crypto. It wastes a lot of energy while producing nothing of value. Game recognize game. — @gknauss
For instructions and guidelines regarding these polls, click here.
Tune of the Week
Just a bit of useful fun this week as performed by Michael Cooney. High school students studying the Bard will find it useful to memorize these lyrics, as I once did.
Consult the complete Tune of the Week archive!
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EZ -
Liked this weeks crop of Political tweets, but the regular tweets this week were "meh". Agree with you on the "Chuy" Garcia observation about how news organizations refer to him.
"Enough with pumpkin spice!"
Mary, I couldn't agree more.