An out-of-state friend once
asked how I can stand living in Arizona, with all the political crazies running around. After last week’s election and the basically total repudiation of vile Trumpism, my answer is “quite proudly, thank you very much.”
• On Nov. 15, the day after they called the race for Katie Hobbs, I ran some early-morning errands so that I could listen to Tucson’s very-own version of Father Coughlin as he veers further and further off the rails, heading down that one-way, dead-end street that leads to Nutsville.
Of course, Kari Lake got cheated. She was going to win in a landslide. There’s no way she could lose. There’s no way that any of Donald Trump’s hand-picked, election-lying candidates could lose…except they pretty much all did.
It was quite enlightening listening to him trying to explain what happened. It was vote by mail. It was an algorithm. It was cured ballots. It was faulty counting machines. It was Jewish space lasers. It was everything but the truth, that being that the majority of Arizona voters were so turned off by Lake’s vulgar regurgitations of Trump’s lies that they were willing to vote for milquetoast Katie Hobbs.
He’s usually fairly in control when leading his echo-chamber audience through their daily regimen of xenophobia and falsehoods. But this day, he lost it. More than once, he said that Lake had lost, but then he would backtrack and say, “No, no, she didn’t lose. If you think that Katie Hobbs won that election, you’re an idiot.”
He even went so far astray as to call a Maricopa County election official “effeminate” and then ridiculed the guy by speaking in a faux-gay, lisping voice. What is this, the 1950s?
Father Coughlin is always talking about how his kids play soccer or hockey. What will happen when those kids play on a team? Every time they lose, they’ll say the other side cheated? The victory was stolen from them?
Real athletes — and leaders — when they lose, they take that ass-whuppin’ and go home. Then they work even harder so they don’t take another whuppin’ next time. Losers, on the other hand, blame the refs, the scorekeeper, the weather, the field, the crowd, the ball, whatever. A loser is not defined by losing a game (or an election), but rather by refusing to accept the loss in an honorable manner.
• One of the dumbest things to come out of Blake Masters’ failed campaign was the late push with mailers and street signs everywhere asking “Are you better off today than you were in 2020? (If no, vote Blake Masters for Senate.)”
What a stupid question. Just about everybody is better off than they were in 2020. Think about it. Two years ago, we were all walking around like masked zombies. Hospitals were overflowing, Americans were dying by the thousands every day, quacks and Dr. Oz (if you’ll pardon the redundancy) were selling snake oil called hydroxychloroquine, and the life-saving vaccines weren’t ready yet.
Restaurants were closed, you couldn’t go anywhere to work out, movie theaters were shuttered. You couldn’t find toilet paper in the stores, and if there was a slim chance of getting some, you had to get up at 4 in the morning and stand in line for two hours waiting for the store to open. And even then, all they had was the off-off-brand that might as well have been advertised as “Like Sandpaper…Only Flimsier.”
Unemployment was at 20%; doctors and nurse were being pushed to their limits; and the entire economy was in the toilet. There were no sports and schools were closed.
So yeah, we’re way better off than we were two years ago. Sure, there’s inflation, but that’s just the byproduct of an economy that is roaring along too well (which ours is).
One other thing: I ran into someone who knew Blake and me from our shared time with Green Fields basketball. She asked, “Don’t you think it’s amazing that Blake could get 46% of the votes (in the Senate race)?”
The answer, sadly, is no. You know how Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss) wrote “Green Eggs and Ham” using only 50 different words just to win a bet? Well, you could get any random white person and have him use only the words “border,” “Second Amendment,” “fentanyl,” “socialism” and “critical race theory,” and that dude is going to get 40% of the vote, guaranteed.
Blake got the other 6% by using Peter Thiel’s millions to blanket the airwaves with slick ads and by blaming gun violence on Black people. Put it all together and you have just enough to lose by six figures…in Arizona!
• I thought that Katie Hobbs was a weak candidate. The GOP could have beaten her if they had nominated a cardboard cutout of Betty Crocker. Instead, they chose to go Full Frontal Dark. Kari Lake completely bought into the hatred. She was sneering and condescending and often delusional. In the end, Katie Hobbs didn’t win; Kari Lake lost. And, in a most-delicious twist, it was Lake who lost to a cardboard cutout of Betty Crocker.
After she lost, Lake tweeted “Arizonans know BS when they see it.”
That’s true. Why do you think that so many of them voted against you?
This article appears in Nov 24-30, 2022.
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Of course, you could also pick any random Democrat and use only the words “equity, abortion, loan forgiveness” and receive 40% of the vote…
Isn’t it ironic that the person responsible for the conduct, or in this misconduct, of the Arizona elections, is going to be promoted to a job that she will f**k up worse. Hang on AZ were in for a ride!!!!
The morning radio mouth you mention is one of those guys who would totally reverse their positions if thats where the money/job was. He doesn’t believe a word of what he says. Just living off the ignorant who he feds lies to daily.
About every three months, I call into the Registrar of Contractors, just to check. The last time i called, they answered the phone before it rang. Yes, before it rang. Pushed the zero to get a live person and before it rang once, the operator picked up the line.
Over the last 25 years, that response time has varied from that zero rings to a minute and a half. Surveys of contractors and complainants show that despite the acrimony that the Registrar is forced to deal with, 92% rate themselves satisfied with the Registrar’s performance and 46% rate it excellent.
Stunningly, the experience is similar at MVD. Yes, MVD. They open at 8 so I showed up 7:45 to get a head start, only to find out that they had changed their hours to 7:30. When does a government agency change their hours to improve service? I was greeted at the door by a person who was working to make sure I had the proper paperwork and knew exactly what to do. Five minutes later, I had my business done and was walking out the door.
Unbelievably good. And, unbelievably inexpensive. Arizona has the second least expensive state government in the nation.
A friend of mine went to the New York MVD. People literally had sleeping bags with them. Some of them were experiencing their 3rd day in line and were engaging in an all out screaming rampage to vent their frustration.
New York has the second most expensive state government in the nation.
Now, the question is: will Tucson city management take over state government. Will we sink into the the New York/Tucson hell hole of expensive and ineffective government.
Katie Hobbs now is facing down a looting mob who want to replace all those effective managers with looters and loiterers.
That’s what they do in Tucson, New York and Chicago. They regard these positions not as dedicated servants of the public but as looters. A salary not to be earned but as loot to be captured, a position not demanding of intense work from 8 in the morning to 7 pm at night but sinecures.
Tucson no longer surveys its citizens. Once you sink to only 8% rating their neighborhood an excellent place to raise a child, why survey? Once you hit an all-time record for murders (2021, Tucson) why care? Once you have 380,000 miles of cracks and potholes in 2,450 miles of street, why even pretend?
One evening, my cell phone rang. It was a vocational education teacher from the Holbrook School District. He had just been told that his vocational ed certification wasn’t in order and his last day would be next Tuesday.
Jan Pentak, our incredible director of Teacher Certification was still there: 7 pm at night. The teacher was certified that evening. One of the proudest moments of my 32 years in public service.
I still have the slips from Citizens rating Chandler City Government when i was on the Chandler City Council. Every comment gave me guidance as to where to put my energy. We went from a 13% exellence rating in 1983 (yes 49 years ago) to 55% in 1995.
First amendment to the constitution, the right to petition your government, the most neglected clause.
Now, we get to see what this mess is going to look like.
Don’t get too excited just yet. We’ve got two Arizona counties that are dragging their heels and basically telling the people who voted in these bastions of the GOP, “We don’t trust you voted the ‘right’ way.”
If there is one thing I have learned from the new Republicans, it is they are loyal to a fault or is it loyal to the faulty? It doesn’t matter, right or wrong, they will stick to their guns, boy will they stick to their guns.
Look, too many places in the world are going to hell, some of them right here in the USA, and we have got to stop sniping at each other and pull it together before we become just another shit-hole country run by a bunch of loudmouthed pretenders lead by someone more interested in power and wealth than the American people all of the American people.
It is not going to be easy. We’ve been doing a pretty good job of tearing each other down thanks to the perfect storm of unbridled social media, a world pandemic and the main-stream media egging on both sides while they sit back and air the mayhem and political porn 24/7 with commercial breaks and know-nothing “personalities” that have more in common with snake oil salesmen than journalists.
I may not like your politics and you may not like mine, but I have sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States for all Americans. We don’t have to see eye-to-eye to stand shoulder-to-shoulder to protect this country we love from charlatans and thieves who would use us against each other to take this land from “We the People.”
I’ve been a poll worker for 15 years.
When I have explained the myriad safeguards that keep our elections from significant fraud, I often hear this from those who have been convinced by misinformation that widespread fraud exists:
“Well, you’re honest, but not everyone is.”
That’s precisely why we have so many safeguards, and that’s why a democrat and a republican poll worker, or representatives from each party, work together or observe the process EVERY STEP of the way.
I encourage everyone, especially the doubters, to sign up to be a poll worker in 2024’s primaries and general elections.
You’ll be impressed by just how committed everyone is to keeping our elections free and fair and amazed at all of the safeguards that have been in place for decades.
Are you better off today than you were in 2020?
Let’s ask the thirteen solders who were guarding the Kabul airport during the botched pullout of Afghanistan. Oh, wait, we can’t, they’re dead.
“Are you better off today than you were in 2020?”
Let’s ask the millions of illegal terrorists that entered the country in the last two years. Of course, they will say yes.
Now ask the suffering taxpayers who get to pay for them being here. If they don’t pay there are going to be 87,000 more gun-toting IRS agents who will make sure they do.
Looks like Governer-elect Katie Hobbs (in true Biden style) made requests to twitter to censor and remove posts that she did not like.
Think that’s a problem?
Looks like we deserve the feckless and corrupt leadership that we elect.
Smith sez: “…we become just another shit-hole country run by a bunch of loudmouthed pretenders lead by someone more interested in power and wealth than the American people all of the American people.”
We already have that, it’s the Biden administration.
ski sez: “Looks like we deserve the feckless and corrupt leadership that we elect.”
No, we don’t deserve Biden, Kelly, Hobbs, et.al. We didn’t elect them, they cheated their way into office and everyone with a functioning brain knows it. Maybe not Danehy, but everyone else.
wes s – good point – I should have said, “…we deserve the feckless and corrupt leadership we “elect”.”
Our voting procedures suck, and when abetted by corrupt county officials (i.e., Pima and Maricopa), they ‘elect’ whomever they want.
Li’l Tommy is a hoot. He gets paid to type this drivel whether he believes it or not. ANOTHER media hack with an opinion intended to be divisive 😷