tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-118006832024-03-13T15:55:07.661-04:00The Blowhard PunditPolitical and social commentary, with a generous helping of thoroughly irresponsible yellow journalism thrown in for some spice.BlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.comBlogger178125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-8788043854599654102023-03-04T18:59:00.004-05:002023-03-04T18:59:50.941-05:00Come At Me, BroSo the latest stunt from Ron DeSantis and the Floriduh GOP -- and that's all they are is stunts -- is SB 1316, a particularly odious and unconstitutional piece of claptrap that requires any blogger who mentions a Floriduh government official in their blog, and receives compensation for it, must register with the state within five days, or face fines of $25 per day up to a maximum of $2,500.I am aBlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-73406905859256918232022-09-30T16:18:00.003-04:002022-10-07T13:27:14.267-04:00A Proposal: Immigration
A few years back I started this blog as a way of venting my spleen to the roughly three people who even looked at this thing. When trump was elected, posting here became nearly a daily occurrence by virtue of the seemingly unending deluge of vitriolic, malevolent, corrupt stupid emanating from the Republican Party. And when Biden won the election, I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that the BlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-51078565250164181132020-11-06T11:30:00.003-05:002020-11-06T11:30:59.624-05:00Next Steps
With the election of Joe Biden looking more and more certain every hour, the topic of discussion amongst my online community has turned toward the future of the Democratic Party. These conversations fall into two broad camps:
One group maintains that, in order to win elections, we have to be a more centrist or center-left party … no radical proposals, nothing earth-shaking, just an incremental BlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-76487471830463643402020-11-03T15:58:00.000-05:002020-11-03T15:58:16.320-05:00The Time Has ComeWell, it's election day. I've been laying quite low for a while for mental health reasons, but here we are. We are on track to have the highest voter turnout (as a percentage of the eligible population) since 1908.What makes this especially impressive is the fact that, in 1908, the eligible population only consisted of white males. I mean, yeah, African-Americans ostensibly had the right to vote BlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-22424725950886464162020-04-07T13:57:00.002-04:002020-04-07T13:57:17.854-04:00Ctrl-Alt-Del
I've had enough.
Today the United States Supreme Court voted 5-4 along party lines to disenfranchise voters in Wisconsin by overturning the governor's decision to extend the deadline for mail-in ballots. There are many problems with this (not the least of which is that this is a blatant power grab by the Republican Party that has been sanctioned by what is looking more and more like a BlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-27668093559241443482020-03-12T14:01:00.006-04:002020-03-12T14:01:59.326-04:00Some Factual Information regarding COVID-19
This is getting real, people.
Right now there are news outlets critiquing trump's performance last night in his address from the Oval Office. People on the right are claiming the coronavirus is a conspiracy on the part of the Chinese to cripple America's economy. People on the left are bitching about the fact that trump's travel ban has a carveout for countries where, in a staggering BlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-91924412625615311002020-03-11T16:34:00.004-04:002020-03-11T16:34:59.900-04:00Pay Attention, Dammit
I have seen a number of people today throwing tantrums, claiming the nomination was stolen from Warren/Buttigieg/Harris/Booker/et al and that they'll be damned if they're going to vote for a corporate shill like Biden. Given the hyper-polarized nature of the current time, as well as the sheer blinding corruptio and incompetence of the current occupant of the Oval Office, I thought it would be BlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-17050438908504280242020-02-20T16:07:00.000-05:002020-02-20T16:07:14.749-05:00Where They Stand ...
It is early 2020, and we are embarking on an exciting new phase of our journey, a phase in which the "consent of the governed" has been deemed to have outlived its usefulness, one in which the country is run by he who is a self-appointed king in all but name. And Democrats are, true to form, doing everything in their power to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Granted, they aren't doingBlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-48173243453583080262020-01-13T21:21:00.000-05:002020-01-13T21:21:08.756-05:00And The Reality Is ...
It has to stop.
It is becoming absurd.
All of this uproar over the Democratic candidates ... which one beats trump in a head-to-head poll. Which one is the true Democrat, while all the others are mere pretenders. Threatening to withhold your vote if your guy (in a non-gender-specific sense) doesn't get the nomination. Demanding that your candidate hew precisely to your view of BlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-69858972139254517992019-12-29T20:58:00.001-05:002019-12-29T20:58:19.974-05:00Why Do They Follow Him So Blindly?
A friend of mine posed a question to the hive mind: is it possible to change someone's mind about donald trump? That is, can you persuade a trump supporter to become NOT a trump supporter?
The short answer? No.
The long answer? No, because of tribalism.
Regardless of your feelings about trump, it must be admitted that he knows his audience and is a master at manipulatingBlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-67655625366736319662019-12-12T20:26:00.005-05:002019-12-12T20:26:44.027-05:00Preparing ...
It's getting dangerous. Mike Huckabee is claiming that trump should get a 3rd term "due to the illegal attempts by Comey, Dems, and media , et al attempting to oust him as @POTUS so that's why I was named to head up the 2024 re-election." Republicans are referring to impeachment as "an attempted coup." Given this, what are the odds that trump will go quietly?
I'm willing to bet they are BlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-26225400089987938532019-12-06T15:52:00.000-05:002019-12-06T15:55:14.419-05:00The Problem of the Electoral College
Since the 2016 election, when the current president won the election despite a nearly three million vote deficit in the popular vote, there has been a lot of outcry on the left that we need to eliminate the Electoral College. To be sure, there is some cause for concern. After all President trump won the Electoral College with the largest popular vote deficit -- in absolute numbers as well as BlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-82402581565065185392019-11-15T13:40:00.000-05:002019-11-15T13:40:11.853-05:00Overture, Light The Lights ...
There is gonna be a lot of ink spilled about the impeachment hearings. Fox News is going to parrot trump's line that it's a witch hunt, that it's illegitimate, and so on. MSNBC is probably going to argue that the evidence is incontrovertible and impeachment must happen.
I'm not going there. Instead, I want to talk about how the hearings are presented, and what individual members are BlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-53424903536464674002019-06-27T13:09:00.000-04:002019-06-27T13:09:14.716-04:00Changing tackAbout a week or so ago I announced that I was taking a break from politics. As it turns out, this is not entirely true.
In fact, I am taking a break from two very specific things:
trump.
Mitch McConnell, and the harm he is doing to the reputation of turtles the world over.
Seriously, my focus is merely shifting from arguing about Republican hypocrisy (kinda like being upset that water is wetBlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-58163265184319793852019-06-18T09:34:00.000-04:002019-06-18T09:34:01.838-04:00There's A Reason I've Been Away
With thanks to Mark Bryan
So I've been away for a while. But y'all prob'ly already knew that. So here's why.
Every day. Every goddam day that orange idiot does something else expressly designed to outrage, to infuriate ... and to obfuscate. The result? The chattersphere gets their collective panties in a twist. On the left, gallons of ink are spilled detailing the hypocrisy of the BlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-72194312760978463622019-04-22T16:24:00.000-04:002019-04-22T16:24:43.742-04:00A Path Forward
The Democratic primaries are heating up, and I am already seeing purity tests of various stripes filtering across the intertubes. Bernie supporters are claiming they will sit out the election if bernie doesn't win the primary. Same from Kamala voters, Warren voters, Biden voters. Booker, Gillibrand, O'Rourke ...
None of that is helpful, and all of it will guarantee another four years of the BlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-13555874547200939972019-04-02T10:26:00.000-04:002019-04-02T10:27:08.216-04:00And The Oscar Goes To ...
Yeah, yesterday's column? Um ... no.
Yesterday I posted that I had undergone a change of heart, a radical shift in my political leanings, and that I was supporting trump in the 2020 election. This was partly an April Fool's gag, but also an experiment to see a) who believed it, and 2) what the subsequent reaction was.
And the results are in: very few people bought it.
This was kinda what I BlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-63109093553049883142019-04-01T12:19:00.004-04:002019-04-01T12:19:53.211-04:00The Time Has Come
Well, it's happened.
Let me start by saying, despite it being April 1, this is not an April Fool's gag.
There may be one or two of you out there who have been wondering where I've been and why my usual firebrand style of liberal rhetoric has been quite blatantly missing from my posts. The reason for this?
I have been having doubts.
This has been fueled in large part by the Democratic BlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-88644545893623784492019-03-25T14:41:00.000-04:002019-03-25T14:47:50.017-04:00So Here's What Happened ...
For those of you who don't already know, I spent a couple of days in the ICU over the weekend as a result of collapsing during one of the performances of a play (it happened at intermission, in the green room). It turns out to be physiologically a bit interesting ...
So the events transpired thusly:
On Thursday, March 21, I was performing as Verges in the Steel River Playhouse production of BlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-84414141914756070302019-03-23T13:35:00.001-04:002019-03-23T13:40:35.275-04:00When A Song Gets Stuck In Your Head ...
So for the past several weeks I have been posting semi-regular updates about the music that has appeared unbidden in my noggin, often with absolutely zero relevance to what has been going on in my life at the time. A couple of been monumentally annoying, others have been sublime, and most of them have been simply enjoyable.
What has been surprising to me is the relative under-representation BlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-30035252437670103402019-03-06T14:15:00.000-05:002019-03-06T14:15:26.246-05:00A No Politics Post
Sunday night was a rare event: the entire family was home for dinner at the same time. The general consensus was that we were going to have lasagna, but there was a problem: my stepdaughter has a pretty severe sensitivity to tomatoes. The last time we had lasagna she was miserable for hours afterward.
So we tried something new: chicken pesto lasagna, and it was amazing. In fact, it was so BlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-15117723316859245112019-03-04T15:46:00.003-05:002019-03-04T15:46:59.929-05:00The First Proposal
A short while ago I announced that I was running for President in 2020. This has garnered widespread support from my legions of imaginary followers, but I'd like to maybe get a few real people on board. With that being said, let's begin ...
There is a lot of ink being spilled, airtime being used up, and online arguments IN ALL CAPS about the failings of our government and who is to blame. BlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-33672841648049764042019-02-04T14:51:00.000-05:002019-02-04T14:51:21.940-05:00Oh, Fer Cryin' Out Loud ...
Republicans have taken up a new battle cry, that Bernie Sanders was screwed out of the election in '16 by the DNC. This apparently is being used as proof of how corrupt Democrats are, to which I will offer the following rebuttal.
Well, duh.
What is interesting is that GOP bleating about Bernie ramps up a notch every time new information about how crooked, devious, corrupt, and generally BlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-35974531184273970672019-01-14T17:40:00.005-05:002019-02-04T13:59:51.861-05:00My Farewell
Well, it's finally happened. The end of my life approaches ... not with a bang, but with a cough, wheeze, and whimper.
For those of you who don't yet know, I have contracted HTVPFMDFFH (Highly Toxic and Very Probably Fatal Martian Death Flu From Hell1). The prognosis is not good ... I will probably be dead within days.
Once that day comes, I have a few simple requests:
My wife is going toBlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11800683.post-88985460949138048592019-01-04T11:59:00.001-05:002019-01-04T11:59:56.464-05:00Let's Do This
I will never lie to you.
This rather ordinary-looking fellow in the rather fuzzy photograph (taken at my wedding on a cell phone) is me. Dave Naples, aka the Blowhard Pundit. For a couple of years now I have been venting my spleen on the internet, throwing shade at various and sundry failings of our government and our society. These have run the gamut from issues as trivial and unimportant BlowhardPundithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09929222888184669323noreply@blogger.com0