TUESDAY, MARCH 25, 2025
...Fox News would have to invent her: Those of us in Blue America are facing a serious problem:
As a general matter, it's very hard for us to see ourselves as we actually are.
We're convinced that we're the very smart people. As a matter of fact, we aren't. That brings us to Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), and to her latest remarks.
As reported by Mediaite, her latest contribution is recorded below: She was speaking in Los Angeles, last Saturday night, at the annual dinner of the Human Rights Campaign.
Early on, she said this:
CROCKETT (3/22/25): I have to say, it is an absolute honor to be here tonight with all of you people I love. My friends, fellow fighters, and yes, the fashionistas too.
I want to start by thanking you so much for inviting me here tonight. I don't know that you all know what you got yourselves into by doing the invite, but nevertheless...
Uh-oh! That almost sounded like a warning about what was likely to come. And sure enough! A few minutes later, Rep. Crockett delivered the goods once again.
The "Morgan" to whom she refers in the passage below is Morgan Cox, a Dallas-based member of the HRC Board of Directors. Rep. Crockett was in her element now. Once again, she was lighting the way for Blue America on the political road to perdition:
CROCKETT: I can tell you that Morgan has always been one of these people that will ask, "What do you need?"
You know, a lot of people see you out front, fightin', but nobody's really asking you what do you need to maintain that fight. So thank you so much, Morgan, because we in these hot-ass Texas streets, honey.
[LAUGHTER]
Y’all know we got Governor Hot Wheels down there! Come on now!
[LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE]
And the only thing hot about him is that he is a hot-ass mess, honey! So, um, so yes! Yes, yes, yes.
You can see videotape of those remarks as part of the Mediaite report. As you may know, "Governor Hot Wheels" is Texas Governor Greg Abbott. He's in a wheelchair because he was paralyzed at the age of 26 when hit by a falling tree.
He's also the person who ate Blue America alive when he started busing migrants to northern cities. At that time, our self-impressed tribe was too dumb to see where this was going to take us.
We were also too dumb to realize that there was no obvious reason why a handful of states, Texas included, were supposed to bear the financial burden of all the migration while we Yankees sat up north acting like none of this should ever devolve upon the greatness maintained by us.
Governor Abbott proceeded to eat us alive. Last Saturday night, our next big thing was at a dinner for the Human Rights Campaign mocking him for the fact that he's in a wheelchair.
Crockett has been doing this sort of thing again and again and again. Our tribe is too dumb, and too wracked by counterproductive racial guilt, to tell her she needs to stop.
Instead, it goes on and on and on and on, and then it goes on some more. Tonight, that video will be all over every show on the Fox News Channel. Her endless examples of loudmouth behavior are already a reliable staple on that heavily watched "cable news" channel.
In our view, the Fox News Channel is an unholy corporate mess. On the other hand, those of us in Blue America are too dumb and too self-impressed to tell Rep. Crockett to stop.
There is no sign that she ever will, or that anyone except Bill Maher will ever be willing to say that she plainly should. Here's the report on that.
There is no cure for human! We've said it again and again.
"Governor Hot Wheels" is in his chair! Over here, in Blue America, we're so dumb that we're enjoying a good solid blue tribe laugh!
Charles Downs says "I just left Capitol Police headquarters in DC where I filed a police report against Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett for assault, battery, and theft of my phone simply because I respectfully asked her to condemn the violence she has been inciting at Tesla showrooms."
ReplyDeleteShe stormed over and shoved the journalist, pushing his camera against his face as he asked her questions. There is something wrong with Democrats.
Republicans have more than our share of embarrassing performative and ridiculous congresswomen. Nancy Mace has turned out to be one of them.
DeleteSlapped around by a lady, and crying about it in public.
DeleteRepublicans are pathetic.
With pushovers like Downs, and grotesquely obese President Bonespurs protecting us from the scary outside world, it's no wonder the people think they need to own a gun.
Anonymouse 3:41pm, why are you suggesting that Crockett should be allowed to grab Down’s phone and to shove a reporter simply because she’s a woman? Should Downs have just decked her like a real man rather than calling the authorities?
DeleteIf she's running for elected office, there is no need to involve the police. The people can decide if she's guilty at the voting booth, like the Constitution says.
DeleteThis sounds like a trifling incident exaggerated into an assault claim by Laura Loomer for political purposes. No harm was done to the reporter and the video does not show any damage, but rather a bit of chaos while the reporter was accosting Crockett who was walking down a hallway with her staff.
DeleteThis is a nothing-burger, manufactured by Republicans in order to attack Crockett, who has been particularly effective in addressing Republicans in colorful ways. What Downs is doing (pushed by Loomer) is:
"When an athlete pretends to be injured or fouled, it's often referred to as "diving" in soccer or "flopping" in other sports, and it's generally considered unsportsmanlike behavior. "
Anonymouse 4:32pm, you’re halfway right. If Crockett (with all her performances) can’t stand this level of heat, she should get the hell out of the kitchen.
Deletehttps://x.com/lauraloomer/status/1904547920608710822?s=42&t=oYvKLjVc8YzJIvwKoQTYBQ
Made up stories are not "heat". They are lies. But it hasn't been Crockett whining, it has been Loomer's puppet.
DeleteWomen should not hold political office.
DeleteAnd yet they do…
DeleteAnonymouse 6:13pm, I linked to video of Crockett pushing a phone into a guy’s face while being questioned.where’s the lie?
DeleteThe video doesn’t show that. It shows Crockett amiably walking down a hallway talking to a man beside her, then it shows her hand covering the phone taking the video which then stops filming her and goes sideways showing nothing meaningful. There is no image of her shoving any man. She pushes the phone aside as it is held up to her, interrupting her walk and conversation with someone else beside her. There is no sound and no image of whoever was filming her. It proves none of Loomer’s allegations. She brushes it aside. There’s no evidence it hit anyone or went backward. It is suspicious the sound is omitted.
DeleteLoomer is excrement.
DeleteThe reporter was being a dick with a - when did you stop beating your husband - question. She should have kicked him in the yutz.
Delete"Blue America averts its gaze!"
ReplyDelete"Blue America won't watch Fox!"
"Blue America won't fight back!"
"OK, so Blue America is paying attention and isfighting back...but they're doing it wrong!"
Our Host is the hardest man in the world to agree with. No matter what, one is never quite doing it properly.
The election results suggest that we Blues aren't quite doing it properly, wouldn't you agree?
DeleteNo. It is acknowledged that Harris ran an excellent campaign. We still don't know what happened to produce the outcome that Trump won. How were those $280 million that Musk donated at the last minute used? Absent corruption, I think this result will be chalked up to covid-anger or temporary insanity, not Democratic failure to get their message across. There is certainly plenty of buyer's remorse now, but that isn't because "we Blues" are suddenly doing anything different.
DeleteSomerby has never been very specific about what "we Blues" have been doing wrong. It is a mantra he repeats but he has never proposed alternatives or told us what he thinks Harris should have done better (aside from not being black and female) or addressed whether Biden might have won had he not been attacked by both Democrats and Republicans. We may find out that Pelosi was paid off (or extorted), for all I know. But no, the election results don't prove we Democrats did anything wrong. Especially not when the problem was low turnout and not vote-switching to Trump.
QiB, that is an accurate critique. Bob is very exacting. We all know that coming in. You are not an unreasonable sort, you’re not doing biweekly 1000 word screeds on the waste of time… that is Bob Somerby. Yes. What you see is what you get.
Delete"We may find out that Pelosi was paid off"
DeleteMaybe the person who is paying off Pelosi is the same person who is paying off Somerby! The evil conspiracy is deeply rooted!
Actually, the conspiracy is pretty much out in the open since Trump was elected. Musk isn't hiding anything and neither is Trump.
DeleteHistorians will tell us why Biden was removed from his ticket after winning the primaries.
Wait a minute! I thought it was Putin paying off Pelosi and Somerby. But it's really Musk?
DeleteOnly they know where the money comes from.
DeleteI pay Putin.
DeleteI haven't seen domination like Abbotts over Blue America, since every immigrant who came to this county got a job over a white person.
ReplyDeleteThose strawberries are not picking themselves!
DeleteElon Musk is an immigrant who was here illegally, working on a student visa. Melania illegally worked on a tourist visa, then fraudulently obtained a genius visa she was unqualified for, lying on her application.
DeleteThat’s how much Republicans care about illegal immigration.
DeleteIf it ain't bigotry, it ain't worth a damn to Republican voters.
Delete"He's also the person who ate Blue America alive when he started busing migrants to northern cities. At that time, our self-impressed tribe was too dumb to see where this was going to take us.
ReplyDeleteWe were also too dumb to realize that there was no obvious reason why a handful of states, Texas included, were supposed to bear the financial burden of all the migration while we Yankees sat up north acting like none of this should ever devolve upon the greatness maintained by us."
Here we see Somerby blame us liberals, we in Blue America, for Abbott's stunts affecting the lives of migrants (such as shipping them to cold climates with false promises of jobs and housing, and without coats). We were too dumb not to recognize that Abbott was suffering the entire brunt of migration, Somerby says. Is that even true when more than half of illegal migrants come off airplanes in major cities and overstay their tourist visas? Is it true that Abbott wasn't receiving help from the federal government to deal with the border problems his state was experiencing? Somerby doesn't know and he presents no evidence that so-called Blue America was doing nothing to help Abbott. Meanwhile, Abbott has pulled a variety of stunts to hurt other states and his own state's residents, based on his right wing politics. It is almost as if Somerby doesn't care who Abbott is or what he has done, or perhaps he approves of such behavior. Today, Somerby seems to be defending Abbott from Crockett's attacks on him -- for being a Republican asshole, not for being paralyzed.
Insults were part of Trump's campaign in 2016 and the public chose Trump over civility. I don't see the remark as particularly insulting. Is Abbott pretending he is not in a wheelchair? It would be like calling trump President Red Tie or President Spray Tan. It is nothing like calling Biden President Poopy Pants, is it?
"Here we see Somerby blame us liberals, we in Blue America, for Abbott's stunts"
DeleteI honestly don't understand this critique at all. How is Somerby blaming Blues for what Abbot does? It seems to me that Somerby is saying that we Blues are too unskilled to effectively respond to Abbot's stunts, not that we're somehow responsible for those stunts.
How is it possible to claim that we did not respond effectively when Abbott shipped immigrants to Martha's Vineyard, for example? Volunteers on that island rallied to provide the displaced people with clothing, housing, food and support while officials sorted out how to deal with them. This was unexpected and the Blue and Red people of Martha's Vineyard rose to the occasion. That is admirable, not a failure to cope.
DeleteWhy was Martha's Vineyard chosen? Because the Obamas have vacationed there and because it was in a Blue state. Targeting blue states with stunts that hurt people is wrong. Any child can see that. Those migrants were lied to but Democrats helped them. In Red eyes, that makes the Democrats seem like fools, since we expended resources to help others. And it made Blues look like migrant-lovers (something that only seems bad to conservatives). There are no political repercussions to Abbott for stuff like that, but there should be.
The problem is that Somerby's sympathies are not with the migrants or the people who had to deal with an influx without warning, but with Abbott, because Somerby's views on immigration and not liberal but conservative.
In contrast, the small towns along the TX border with Mexico are not flooded with immigrants, not overwhelmed, not surprised by any influx. There are govt systems in place for dealing with illegal border crossers as well as legal migrants and asylum seekers. There are non-profit orgs that help the migrants in TX. The migrants go elsewhere almost immediately. The state does not bear all of the costs of dealing with them, although I do believe Abbott conflates legal Hispanic children and adults who are in schools and use hospitals with illegals -- they are all the same to him and to the right in general (and to Somerby). There are many Hispanics in TX who are not illegal and are not recent immigrants, but who have lived there for centuries, not just decades.
Somerby is ignorant on the topic of immigration, but he doesn't discuss it in his blog, he just expresses attitudes, as when he blames Harris and Biden for not addressing immigration when their efforts resulted in historic lows in border crossings by the end of Biden's term. So Somerby makes accusations that are not supported by data and then attacked Harris on the basis of his wrong views, gleaned from excess Fox watching. And that makes him as bad as any Republican and not anything like a member of Blue America.
"How is it possible to claim that we did not respond effectively when Abbott shipped immigrants to Martha's Vineyard, for example?"
DeleteIt's simple to claim that. The stunts served to raise the salience of an issue - immigration - that favored Republicans. The fact that the Republicans won the election, largely because of this issue, demonstrates that we Blues did not respond effectively.
We do not yet know why Republicans won the election. It seems more likely to be a form of covid backlash, given the results of elections worldwide. Harris did things right and analysts do not fault her campaigning. It may be that unacknowledged bigotry among Democrats caused them to stay home instead of voting for Trump. Trump did not gain votes from Democrats. His misogyny did bring out young male voters. That is nothing for Democrats to emulate but it may have hurt Harris.
DeleteThere are many migrants in Denver, CO, the blue state where I live. There are also organizations for helping migrants and resources for settling them. And no, Tren de Aragua did not take over Aurora. That was a total fabrication, denied by the mayor and governor. This idea that only Abbott had to deal with immigrants is factually untrue. Southern California has been dealing with migrants from the time it first became a state, but it doesn't have the issues Abbott created. Abbott put barbed wired in the Rio Grande, forcing drownings. He allowed vigilantes to patrol the border to commit violence against people there. His abuse of migrants and his production of lies for political gain, are not examples of effective campaigning. They are venal. If the worst he is called is Hot Wheels, he is getting off too easy. Somerby should know that you cannot believe what he says on any topic. But urging Dems to become as xenophobic as Repubs is not the answer.
What are some answers: (1) get money out of politics by repealing Citizens United and reinstating campaign financing limits on donations by billionaires, (2) reinstate equal time regulations in media, (3) perhaps keep campaigning out of social media, (4) get foreign govts out of politics by rooting out money laundering in campaign donations and in-kind help, (5) prosecute the kind of grifts that Trump engages in routinely, where he keeps the proceeds, (6) disallow paying voters for votes or petition signatures, (7) prevent billionaire owners of media from using their publications to campaign for preferred candidates who show them favors after election -- that is corruption, (8) institute ethical standards for judges so that wrongdoing by powerful people can be addressed in the courts, (9) reintroduce civics as a required course in both high school and college, (10) set up an independent fact-checking board and create an environment where being caught lying is a scandal or disgrace, perhaps by allowing citizens to challenge the right to pursue candidacy by those who are found to lie too much.
Dogface George,
DeleteHow would you have handled the lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets?
Hopefully, better than the Democrats who lost an election because of it.
6:48,
DeletePublicly-funded only campaigns/ elections, FTW!
6:48 - Somerby is not “urging Dems to become as xenophobic as Repubs.” Why do you make this shit up?
DeleteThose of us who were alive when there were no border crossing limits and people could come and go between our neighboring countries, at will, also recall that there were not serious crime problems or fear of immigrants like that promoted by Trump and Republicans and echoed here by Somerby (who was among the outraged over Laken Riley, even though her killer was legally in the US). The fear of foreigners is part of the problem, because such people are often legal residents and citizens, not illegal border crossers, but inciting people to be hostile to them is counter-productive and unfair in a country founded by immigrants.
ReplyDeleteLiberals have tolerance and acceptance for those who are different. One way to be different is to speak English with an accent, like they do in TN and TX (the white cowboys, not the Hispanics). The hatred ginned up by the right wing is dangerous and harmful to our nation. Somerby should oppose it, not encourage it the way he does by siding with the wrong impulses in politics. Somerby doesn't like black people, gays, women, immigrants, but he loves the South and the confederacy and racists, misogynists, sexist, homophobes, and bigots of all stripes. That's a primary reason why he is not likely to be liberal, no matter what he claims about himself. His gut reactions to every issue tend to be wrong-headed and wrong-hearted. Liberals don't defend Roy Moore when he follows young teens around at the mall, to the point where his colleagues in the D.A.'s office were concerned about him. Liberals don't call Stormy Daniels a grifter when she is the victim of Donald Trump, the biggest grifter to ever hold office (yes, worse than the bosses who openly stole).
We tend to see immigration as a manufactured issue used to threaten and scare gullible voters into supporting Trump, who is incapable of doing anything real about immigration. Sending hapless tourists to El Salvador is not a solution to our nation's immigration problems (if they are actually problems and not solutions to our labor supply needs). Trump is a fraud and immigration fears are how he conned the public into voting for him.
If we did have an immigration problem, it would appear as refugees crowding our streets, displacing the homeless currently living there. Our homeless are people who cannot afford housing, not foreigners without work or a place to live. Our immigrants are helping our economy, not living on the streets -- that is where the veterans and drug addicts and poor people live -- not the people who have brought skills and hopes and hard work to our nation.
Somerby is an asshole who is now elderly and willing to believe whatever Trump tells him, except the obviously crazy parts about sharks and Hannibal Lecter. Why should Somerby believe Trump when he talks about immigrants and gets the numbers hugely inflated and doesn't know what "asylum" means in terms of citizenship, and says immigrants are all criminals, when even illegally crossing the border is a paperwork issue and not a crime. Somerby has no right to be so ignorant about immigration while insisting it is a huge issue that lost the Democrats the election. No serious analyst thinks that. When you hear someone say that Kamala didn't discuss immigration enough, you know they are either lying or a Republican, not someone who followed the election closely, knew what she was speaking about in her appearances, and knew what she and Biden actually achieved during their term in office. Somerby is just repeating a right-wing talking point when he bleats about immigration. And that makes him a fool, not a liberal, not much of a blogger and not anyone following politics seriously any more. If he is not actually being paid to write tripe by the RNC, some billionaire donor or a Putin troll and stooge. Only Somerby knows what his problem is. If he is lucky, it is just his own touch of dementia.
Lakin Riley's killer was a registered male.
Delete7:10 - “Trump is a fraud and immigration fears is how he conned the public into voting for him.”
DeleteAlso 7:10 - “No serious analyst thinks that [immigration is a huge issue that lost Democrats the election.]”
I guess you’re admitting you’re not a serious analyst.
I’m not a serious analyst.
DeleteThe kind of rhetoric used by Rep Crockett is unconscionable and it must be chastised. Unless Donald Trump does it. Then it is good politics/comedy gold, like that time trump mocked a disabled person himself. The Republicans loved it. So did voters, apparently.
ReplyDeleteIt was clearly a compliment, "Hot Wheels!!!" Not like she called him a Nazi bitch on wheels.
Delete