Thursday, October 28, 2021

Recap: October 28, 2021

 

Stimulus. 

Or perhaps "bait" is a better word. 

Yes. Bait. Sometimes my comments are bait.

I mean, no matter what I post, it's bound to provoke someone. Q.E.D. And that's just how social media is nowadays. 

So, why not put that tendency to use? 

Thus: sometimes my comments, particularly on Twitter, are not for my regular readers so much as to poke the other side. To stimulate conversation. 

See, if I say for example: "We should pay people a living wage" most of you would respond with a shrug and an "Okay." If you responded at all. 

And where's the fun in that? 

However, if I say...

Just drove 2000 miles across the middle of the US. Everywhere I went there were Help Wanted signs. Biggest complaint heard: we can't get workers!

On the Southern border are tens of thousands of people willing to work at nearly ANY job.

The solution seems obvious.

...well, then I get a three-day long discussion of labor in America. I learn stuff. 

What's that? 

Oh. Well, yes. 

Yes, I do indeed realize that this technique may perhaps make me, in fact, a dick. 


So what else is new?


In this case, I wanted to test my own assumptions, chief among them this: 

Republicans say Americans don't want to work. 

There are Help Wanted signs everywhere. You've seen them, haven't you? Me too. I just drove 2000 miles across this country and everywhere I looked, there were signs saying "We're hiring!" Every restaurant I stopped in said, "Please be patient, we're understaffed." There were several fast food places that had closed their lobbies and dining rooms and only kept the drive-in window open due to this alleged shortage of labor. 

Don't take my word for it, go drive across the country and see for yourself. 

It's in every store window. It's on every news channel. It's in the mouth of every politician. 

We can't find people to work. 

We can't find people to do the jobs. 

There's a labor shortage. Help wanted. Will train.


And yet, weirdly, at the same time, the economy is terrible, right? 


I was traveling with my adult son. 

Just outside Springfield, Missouri, we stopped at a gas station to fill up and use the facilities. 

The place was a Shell franchise, seedy, off a little used exit in the middle of farm country. The parking lot was full of farm equipment and the store was full of old white men in rough and dirty farming clothes. 

I pumped gas while my son went into to use the restroom. 

The restrooms were locked and the guy behind the counter said: "You wana use the toilet ya'll have to buy sometin'. Goddamn Joe Biden is ruining business and we can't afford to jus let people use the bathrooms! So you gotta buy sometin' and I'll unlock it." 

My son had to go, so he bought a candy bar without comment and did his business and came back out and warned me before I went in. Also, apparently buying $40 in gas didn't count towards using the restroom. 

I held it until we reached Springfield and civilization. 

The economy is so bad that the stock market is at an all time high... what's that? Oh, now that Trump is out of office Wall Street isn't a indication of economic success? Sure, Mate, whatever you say. Anyway, the economy is so bad that every indicator of economic success, including profit, is pegging the meter and we can't find enough workers to do all the jobs and, yet, somehow, business has to extort customers just to stay afloat. 

And goddamn that Joe Biden. 

It's not this guy's poor business skills, or that his business is located in a poor location, or that he's overcharging for services, or that he's openly hostile and unprofessional to his customers, or that the Free Market he likely worships is offering plenty of better choices, or that the political ideology he no doubt embraces started a trade war and a let a pandemic get out of control -- after crashing the economy completely in pursuit of unsustainable profits in the mortgage industry. No, it's not any of that. It's Joe Biden. 

It never once occurs to the party of personal responsibility to actually take personal responsibility for their own shitty situation. No, it's Joe Biden's fault. 

And the perfect example of this hypocrisy is right there on the Southern Border. 

See, here's this alleged labor crisis that every Republican politician and pundit is outraged over. And every shitty business owner in a MAGA hat mindlessly parrots. Business is supposedly struggling to find workers and goddamn that Joe Biden, paying lazy liberals not to work, right?

Right? 

And, yet, here's a huge pool of workers on the Southern Border, who want to work, who will happily take these lousy, low-paying jobs without protest or demand for something better...

...and Republicans don't want to let them in. 

Build a wall and keep them out, right? 

We need workers!

But not those workers. 

I mean, they could try paying American workers more, but they don't want to do that either.

The point of my original post...



..wasn't that we should perpetuate the pre-COVID business model but to point out this hypocrisy. 

See, there's plenty of labor available. Q.E.D, but a Help Wanted sign in the window too often nowadays isn't a call out for future employees, instead it's a political statement.

Business could pay American workers a living wage and evolve a more equitable model of American labor. 

Business could demand government let in immigrants and continue their current model of serfdom. 

But they don't want to do either. 

Their greed won't let them pay workers more, and their ideology of racism and white nationalism won't let them hire foreign labor. 

Hell of a pickle, eh?

So instead they blame Joe Biden and pretend it's not their own lousy business model that's the problem. 

The problem isn't a lack of labor in America.

For Conservatives and American Business, the problem is as it always was: a lack of slave labor. 


Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Travel Advisory

 

[Update below]

I will be a little scarce around here for the next week or so. 

I have to drive to the middle of Canada with my son in order to repair and retrieve a vehicle.

So, I'm looking at about 2000 miles up, some repair work in the middle of Saskatchewan -- which we can hopefully complete ourselves (we're bringing parts and tools) and not have to haul the vehicle to a shop. And then 2000 miles back.  

We're going to be moving right along, hoping to beat the winter weather, so no stopping to smooze with readers unfortunately. 

I'm hauling along my cameras and other kit, hoping maybe I'll get a some photography opportunities. I'll try to post from the road, maybe a few pictures, but no promises. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go get a COVID test and get moving. 

See you on the road. 

[update]

We have returned from 4000 miles round trip and two weeks in Saskatchewan. 

While it was a good trip, we were unable to repair the RV ourselves. 

We were,  however, able to find a reputable mechanic and shop. We were able to move the RV to the shop without much trouble -- it runs, just not well. Mechanic thinks we're probably looking at a broken valve spring or a bent push rod and I agree. Problem is that all the shops in Regina are booked solid right now and we were lucky to even get on this guy's schedule. He can't even look at the problem for another week, and then it'll probably be at least two more weeks waiting on parts and then whatever time it takes for the repair. 

So...

We unloaded the remain items from the RV and put them in the SUV (we took my wife's 4-wheel drive SUV instead of my Mini, in case of snow and so we'd have more room if we had to do exactly this). Moved my daughter-in-law's kayak from the roof of the RV onto the SUV, and headed south. 

My son has a YouTube Channel, CKW Outdoors, where he provides a bit more detail and some video of our time in Saskatchewan. 


If you liked that video, remember to click "like" and maybe even subscribe to the channel. 

2000 miles from Regina to Milton, Florida is about 30 hours of driving down through flat, flat plains states. So we drove 12 hours per day, stopping for food and exercise breaks, and stopped each night at a decent hotel for dinner and good 8 hours of sleep. 

Three days later and we are home safe and sound. 

My son and daughter-in-law will fly back to Regina when the repairs are complete in a few weeks and repeat the drive. 

I've got some catching up to do and I'll be back in the saddle tomorrow. 

See you then. 


Friday, October 8, 2021

Recap: October 8, 2021

  

Charles Ernest Grassley.

Republican Senator from the state of Iowa.

He's 88-years-old, he's in his seventh term, four decades in the Senate. He is, in point of fact, the President Pro Tempore Emeritus of the United States Senate. 

You'd think he'd be old enough to know better.


"So I congratulate you and your people."

Well ain't that nice? 

Judge Lucy Koh is an American, born in Washington D.C. She's a graduate of Harvard Law. She was an attorney for the US Department of Justice, Special Assistant to the US Deputy Attorney General, and then an Assistant US Attorney for Central District of California. She then went into private practice representing major technology companies in patent and trade secrets before being appointed Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge by then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and then appointed by Barack Obama as US District District Court Judge. 

But all Grassley saw was an Asian woman. 

It's right there in his own words, "your people." 

Your people. 

You think he would have said that if Koh's ancestors had come from Western Europe? 

Somewhere right now, congressional staffers are patiently explaining that's it's not 1950 to Chuck Grassley and he's just shaking his head and saying, "I don't get it."

Of course when I said that on Twitter, well...

He's from a different generation where his comment was a compliment.

Oh.

Tell me, which generation was it where "yer one of them 'good' minorities'" from an old white man in power wasn't condescendingly racist?

What context makes that okay? 

When this person says "put history in context" what they mean is whitewash it so they can pretend that doesn't exist.

But that's it, isn't? 

That's the goal. Erase that history. Pretend it doesn't exist, until it doesn't.


The history of racism in America is painful. 

It's shameful. It's embarrassing. 

It should make all Americans of conscience feel bad. 

It should make them want to be better. 

That's the whole point of history, to learn from our mistakes, to learn from the atrocities of the past, and therefor do better in the future. 

Since the hysteria over Critical Race Theory began a few months back, I've watched my feeds for examples of the sort of unconscious and embedded bias CRT attempts to educate people about. Grassley's comment above is an obvious and egregious example. Of course he's not the only member of Congress, my erstwhile boneheaded dinosaur of a Congressman Don Young comes to mind. As does Donald Trump. 

But it's not just members of government.

Here's an example from my Twitter timeline yesterday.



I know this person thinks she's being woke and aware and whatever word we want to use, but look at that. Look at the embedded unconscious bias. What if people in "poor" countries don't die from malaria, how will we feed them all? 

She'd likely be aghast if I'd said: We should restrict medical care to only those people who can prove they are productive members of society or who are rich enough not to be a burden on the rest of us if they live a long time. 

But she is essentially saying the same thing, only couched in a manner of concern for some imagined  future "humanitarian crisis" in "these very poor areas."

Very poor areas that just happen to be inhabited primarily by people of color.

It's not a generational thing.

It's a perpetuation of bias and racism in our thinking from one generation to the next. 

If Americans are ashamed of their past, then they need to face it, change the present, and create a nation future generations can be proud of. 



Tuesday, October 5, 2021

Recap: October 4, 2021

  

I am suspicious of any ideology that deals in absolutes. 

I am suspicious of any cause whose sacred principles require others to make a sacrifice. 

But we'll come back to that. 

Facebook went down without warning yesterday. 

To be honest, I was busy and didn't really notice until I started getting messages from various friends and family asking what was going on. Yes, I'm that guy. I've got a couple of degrees in CompSci and nowadays I make a living via the internet, so I'm the one in my circle people call when they're having problems with The Google. 

I looked into it, mostly by checking other social media sites, and assured them it wasn't on their end. Likely things would be back to normal in a few hours or so. 

But, it got me thinking about my dad. 

When he was young, my dad was the most active guy I knew. He was a veteran, a Navy man, restless, always going, full of energy, he had a million friends, and he was always eager to learn new things. 

But you get older. 

The horizons get closer and closer as the years go by. 

You live long enough, you start to lose people, friends, family. You lose connections. Your eyesight goes and your hearing. You hurt. Goddamn, how you hurt after a while. The world speeds up and you slow down, things change, complexity increases, it gets harder and harder to keep up until you just can't any more. You become more and more distanced from the world. 

His health went to hell. The things he used to love doing, he couldn't do any more. 

But there was the internet. 

Social media. 

Birds. 

Wait, what? Birds? 

Yeah, birds. 

My dad became a birder. A bird watcher. He loved birds, always had. It was something he could do.  Something he could still enjoy without reservation. He'd walk slowly downstairs every morning in his old ratty Navy sweats (later riding the chairlift the VA installed in my folk's farmhouse when he could no longer manage the steep stairs), and shuffle out to the sunroom to see who might be visiting his feeders. I think he spent more on food for those birds than he did on feeding himself. On cold Michigan mornings when he hurt too bad to do it himself, my mom would fill the feeders for him. There he'd sit in his old easy chair, watching intently. He knew them all, the various species, the colors, male and female, their songs. When he was able, he'd sit out in his woodshop and make birdhouses. He could talk about birds all day and my folks' property was often a riot of wings and color and birdsong. 

He had my old film cameras set up inside the glass. And he'd spend the day happily snapping away. He'd get the film developed and laboriously scan in the images to his computer -- why not a digital camera? Because he knew how to do film and that's what he was comfortable with and what business is it of yours? 

And then, well, then he'd spend hours sharing those pictures with other birders on social media. 

He was one of Cornell University's legion of bird watchers, carefully tracking migrations and sightings and another data points in a vast global web of science and information. In the last years of his life, it was what gave him joy. It gave his life meaning and purpose. It mattered to him. It was something he could do. Every day. He looked forward to it. 

But see, there's something I haven't told you. 

My dad was prone to depression, as a lot of older people are.

When he was cut off from those things that mattered to him, it affected him badly. When his internet connection was down or the software didn't work or he couldn't connect to the things that gave his life joy, well, it was depressing. He'd muddle on, find something else to do, but still it hurt him. 

And that's what I was thinking about yesterday when Facebook went down. 

My dad's been gone for longer than I like to think about now, my mom lives alone in the old farmhouse. She's a thousand miles away. We talk. She's got her friends, a lot fewer now than there used to be. But there's been a pandemic for two years now, social distancing, services shut down, the things people like her do to maintain their social lives have gotten a lot harder in recent years -- and it was already hard enough before.

If you live long enough, loneliness becomes a looming ghost in your life.  

And so social media, Facebook, is important to a lot of people. It's part of their lives. Just as other forms of technology are, TV, phones, electricity. 

Now, I can already hear the righteous rage, because people have been righteously screaming rage at me for going on 24 hours now. 

So, before we go any further, I suppose this is where I have to make a disclaimer: 


Facebook sucks. 


Yes, it does. 

Facebook sucks giant festering donkey balls. 

I'm not talking about Facebook the platform, though that sucks too. 

I'm talking about Facebook the monstrous, multi-tentacled, poorly managed, juggernaut of a company.  

Those who have followed me for more than a few minutes know, or should know, my opinion of Facebook. And Twitter. And massive global multibillion dollar corporations in general. 

And that opinion is not high. 

Facebook, Twitter, et al are very often churning cesspools of the very worst of humanity. 

I have said so. Many times over the years. 

I moved my content back to here because of it. 

I've written over and over about the damage these unregulated platforms are doing to our civilization, about how internet billionaires like Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg are essentially spoiled maladapted children who've been handed a loaded machinegun, and about how our enemies are demonstrably using these communications systems every day to wage information warfare on our democracy in a manner most of our leaders are ill-equipped to even comprehend let alone counter with any degree of effectiveness -- I mean, you only have to look at Senator Blumenthal on your TV right now doddering on hysterically about the "The Finsta" to see that. 

But...

And there's always a but isn't there? 

But, the very things that make these platforms so dangerous are also the things that give meaning and joy and purpose and opportunity to many people. 

People like my dad. 

They aren't trying to destroy the world, they just want to talk to other people who enjoy looking at pictures of birds. 

And in that regard, well, Facebook is their world.

And that's what I was thinking about yesterday when Facebook went down and I said on Twitter: 

I'm literally texting with older family members right now who are suddenly isolated due to FB being down. It's hugely frightening for them to be cut off from their primary means of social interaction. 

I don't think some of you really understand what this is like for some people.

Now, please note that I did not say: Facebook is awesome! 

said that for some people who I was talking to, the sudden unexplained outage of their primary means of social interaction was terrifying, disorientating, depressing

But I didn't say: hey, Facebook is awesome and we should have more of it and please let me gargle Mark Zuckerberg's tiny hairless balls. 

What I said did not seem controversial to me. 

A day later, it still doesn't. 

I said that for many people, ordinary people who have little other means of social interaction, Facebook is important. And maybe a lot of us don't realize just how important until it goes down and they call you up worried that they did something wrong. And those people are not monsters, they just regular folks, old, confused, lonely. 

And that, predictably, did not sit well with a lot of very, very righteous people. 












There were more. Hundreds of comments more. But that's probably enough to make the point. Well, except for this one, my personal favorite:



I'm eager to watch this person spend the day talking 90-year-olds through the download, installation, and setup of Zoom software, along with the requisite video conferencing hardware, and get them all connected and chatting via some sort of coordination process that doesn't involve social media or long distance international charges and yet somehow magically functions on a global scale. 

But it's more than that. 

Do you see the assumption in that comment? Start a zoom party! Set up video conferencing! This assumes everyone can not only access the necessary technology and can afford it, but that audio and video are suitable mediums for them. I guess if you're hearing or vision impaired, you're just shit out of luck. More, it assumes everyone you socialize with is online at the same time you are. Oh, and here's a thing you might not be aware of: not everybody has the bandwidth. My mom? That farmhouse I mentioned? Rural Michigan. Farming country. No cable service. No fiber. No broadband. You can't even get copper DSL anymore because it wasn't profitable for the local phone companies. So, she accesses the internet via a cellular connection and she's lucky to get that because the cell tower in the cornfield behind her house is only a few years old -- a lot of areas near her don't even have that. So, she's got a cell connection and a limited number of bits each month. And beyond that things get very expensive very fast. Even in the local town, access is limited. Remember when Biden was talking about broadband as infrastructure? That's why. Because there's a lot of America, probably more than you care to imagine, just like this. 

Some people can't just go outside and "meet people in real life," and it takes a hell of a lot of unconscious privilege to think that's some sort of solution for everyone -- especially when you're condescendingly suggesting it on social media.

Some people can't just easily switch to other platforms. They don't know how. Or those platforms don't work for them. Or those platforms don't connect them to the world they need -- not you, not your needs, theirs. 

And then there's this idea, shouted at me over and over these last 24 hours about how people existed before the internet, before Facebook, they can do it again. Like my 90-year-old mom is going to roll outside in her walker because Facebook is down and take up skydiving or something. Oh, man, if only I hadn't been socializing on The Facebook all these years, look at what I missed! Woohoo, Imma try some rodeo next! 

And it's worse than that because for the last two years we've been telling these people to stay home, to avoid physical contact, to isolate. And now -- now -- here you are shouting for them to go outside and meet people? 

I mean, can you even hear yourselves? 

A lot of these people lived full lives. Some of them were skydivers, or racecar drivers, or scientists, teachers, pilots, doctors, adventurers, veterans... But, here you are telling them to go outside and do stuff because it's just that easy when you're 90 years old and dragging an oxygen tank behind your walker. 

Again, if you live long enough, the horizons close in and there comes a day where you just can't anymore. Before the internet, before social media, when that happened a lot of people just sat and waited to die. No matter how attentive and caring, their families have lives of their own. There can't be someone there all the time. A lot of their friends are gone. Their spouses. Their families. There can't always be someone who understands. Who shares your interests and experiences. Social media, Facebook for good or ill, provides a means to connect to others who do share your history, a place to still be able to interact and be part of the world. These things matter

Those who are suddenly cut off from that, well, it's frightening, it's lonely, it's unsettling, even if it's "only" for a few hours and it shouldn't take a lot of empathy or imagination to see that. 

Should there be a better way? A better company? A better platform? One that's not destroying the country too? 

Sure. Of course. Why not? 

But here's the thing: Facebook is like a coal-fired power plant. 

Yeah, it's terrible for the environment. There's going to be consequences. It's poisoning people. It's destroying the future. It's polluting the air and water. It is. No argument. But, it also provides power. It keeps the lights on, it keeps thousands of homes warm in the winter and cool in the summer, it provides the juice to run industry and schools and hospitals. Without it we'd freeze or starve or have to squat in the dark and shit in a hole. We need that energy. People die without it. 

What?

Oh. 

Right. You're that guy. The one up above in those tweets. People existed before technology, they can do it again. Learn to grow their own food, pump their own water, milk cows, make candles, ride horses or walk, live their allotted time and die. Life was better then. Right? 

Civilization existed before electricity. 

We could go back to that time. 

But there are unpleasant side effects and quite frankly I don't want to live in the fucking Stone Age. 

Could we do better than burning coal to power our civilization? Of course. Obviously. There's something between caveman and murder the planet. 

But you can't just burn down the powerplant without having an alternative in place. 

Well, I mean, you could

In point of fact, that's exactly what certain people demanded of me yesterday. Shut it off. Burn it down. Old people were fine before Facebook, they'll be fine without it now. LGBT people found ways to communicate before social media, they'll go back to that. Shut-ins should just get up off the couch and go outside, learn to skydive, make their own candles, tan leather, meet real people! Shut it down. Do better. 

Do better. 

Yeah, that's not better. That's not a plan. That's arson and people die in a fire.  

It's not just old people. 

It's not just disabled people and the shut-ins.

It's not just those who use social media to keep in contact with loved ones deployed overseas and who have family far away. 

It's not just the introverts or those with crippling social anxiety. 

It's not just those who have reason to hide their identity in the real world for fear of violence and hate and who without social media would have no social interaction where they could be themselves. 

It's not just those who find joy in a larger world they would have never known outside of an online global community of people who share their interests -- like birds. 

It's not just people who have built businesses and a living around these platforms. 

It's not just about writing letters or using a phone or reading a book or going outside to meet people. 

It's all of those things and much, much more. 

And if you can't see that, then that says a hell of a lot more about your lack of empathy and imagination than it does about those who use Facebook. 

Can we do better? Can we regulate these companies? Can we limit the power of those like Zuckerberg and Facebook? Can we prevent these platforms from becoming weapons aimed at the head of our Republic? And can we do it without marginalizing those who need it most? 

Of course we can. 

But burning it all down isn't how you do any of that. 

When I described an analogy on Twitter yesterday similar to the power plant metaphor above, this guy showed up:



Sorry about the people, but my principles are more important. 

Collateral damage, someone else said. Dismissing those innocents who might be lost when we bulldoze that big polluting company. We've got to think about the bigger picture, the country, sacrifices have to be made. 

Sorry about the collateral damage, but this is war

It's funny, ironic, that those liberals who are most eager to sacrifice others to their crusade against Facebook are the very same people, almost name for name, who were outraged when the Republican Lt. Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, suggested those very same old people should be willing to sacrifice themselves for the economy. 

Ironic, indeed. 

I pray to the gods of technology to grant me the confident assurance of every mediocre tech bro on Twitter. 


I am leery of any ideology, left, right, or other, that deals in confident absolutes. 

And I am suspicious of any cause, no matter how noble, that requires others to sacrifice for your principles. 

If you want a better world, be a better human being. 





Sunday, October 3, 2021

Recap October 3, 2021

 

Fox News headline this morning. 

Democrat -- DEMOCRAT -- Tammy Duckworth hasn't paid property tax on her Illinois home since 2015, report says.

Why, that cheating bitch!


Except disabled veterans are exempted by law from paying property taxes in Illinois. 

Yeah, except for that part, you know. 

And Fox News actually does know, because they actually spell out that Duckworth is fully 100% entitled to her exemption in the actual article under that inflammatory headline: 

In Duckworth’s case, the 53-year-old U.S. senator pays zero in property taxes because she is a disabled U.S. military veteran with a 70% or higher disability rating, as determined by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

She and other similarly disabled veterans in Cook County who own homes get the tax break regardless of their income level, the Sun-Times reported.

Duckworth lost both of her legs and some use of her right arm after the helicopter she was piloting was hit by a rocket-fired grenade in Iraq in 2004. 

The article also mentioned that Duckworth paid more than $16,000 in property taxes on a second home she owns in Virginia -- because even though Virginia offers a tax exemption for disabled vets, it's not her primary home and so she doesn't quality. 

So, she didn't pay taxes she wasn't required to pay. 

And she did pay taxes that she was required to pay. 

The outrage! 

Fox News is literally attacking a 100% combat disabled veteran who was severely wounded in the service of her country for not paying taxes that she doesn't owe and for paying taxes where she does. The article literally describes Duckworth's valor and then somehow implies that same Senator, a combat veteran who is a hero in every sense of the word as defined by Fox News and its viewers, as somehow doing something wrong because ... something. 

And if you read the comments under the article you'll see that Fox's conservative viewers agree, even if they're not quite sure why they're certain Duckworth is somehow up to no good. 

Republicans love Veterans and tax breaks until it's a decorated combat veteran who happens to be a woman of color and a Democrat.

I'm not a politician. 

I am however, a disabled veteran. 

I make a decent living. And you'd better believe I take every veteran related tax break I'm offered. 

Why wouldn't I? I earned it. 

Why wouldn't you? 

Why shouldn't Duckworth? 

I mean, what's the logic here? If you make some arbitrary amount money, as determined by random Republicans on Twitter, you're not really a veteran any more? A real combat hero should live in poverty? How much is a pair of legs and an arm worth anyway? 

I really enjoy that part where this guy thinks people should just volunteer to pay taxes they don't owe. 

Trump, a rich coward who got out of serving his country by faking a crippling injury via a doctor that his daddy paid for, once crowed about how smart he was for not paying taxes and his supporters cheered and enthusiastically agreed -- just as they did when he and his Republican cronies slashed taxes on the wealthy and multitrillion dollar megacorps. 

But the very same people are now mad because a combat veteran didn't pay taxes she doesn't owe

It's not just Fox News:

That's Chicago Sun Times yesterday. 

Which is, no doubt, where Fox News stole the idea from. 

It's funny how the Sun-Times article leads off by attacking disabled vets in general and Duckworth in particular, yet the Senator's property is not some palatial estate but rather a 1600 square foot home worth a modest $250,000 and the others mentioned in the article make vastly more money than she does. Not only that, but the article specially says that property tax exemptions for disabled veterans and senior citizens are a "tiny sliver of the $1.5 billion in all real estate tax exemptions granted to Cook County homeowners this year." 

A tiny sliver.

And yet the Chicago Sun Time is pretty sure it's somehow Duckworth and other combat wounded veterans who are the villains here. 

This isn't anything new, of course. These same people, all who profess to love the military are who are utterly outraged when a black man kneels during the National Anthem in what they see as the ultimate insult to veterans, were the very same people who mocked John McCain's combat disability and who went after Bob Dole, who attacked Gold Star families because they didn't vote for Trump -- a guy who openly mocked a disabled reporter and called veterans "losers" and "suckers." 

Republicans tell you they love and respect the military. 

But that's not true. 

What they actually love is the idea of an obedient all-powerful unstoppable force they can use to crush their enemies and threaten into subservience those they see as less than worthy. 

Most of all, they see the military as a projection of their own manhood and the right arm of their mean bitter religion.

They despise the idea of a military made up of actual people. 

They are actively revolted by veterans who might have been damaged in the service of their country, mentally or physically, because to them any disability is weakness and any veteran who is less than a comic book hero in their eyes lessens their manhood and makes mockery of their small miserable selfish god. 

This country doesn't deserve heroes like Tammy Duckworth. 

And yet, there she is, still serving.