Can YIMBYs beat the regressives, both left and right?
Jeffrey Denny
Kudos to California for rejecting the NIMBYism that’s fueled the state’s — and the nation’s — affordable housing crisis that hurts working families, especially people of color, the most.
Golden State legislators have adopted a comprehensive package of housing affordability measures that, among the many bills, would end the long tyranny of exclusionary zoning (aka, modern racial redlining) that is helping to drive the shocking housing prices in California and across the nation.
The big challenge: Can the California legislation survive the inevitable bitter, protracted fights by diehard NIMBYs, both right and left?
NIMBYs represent a powerful grassroots…
Rebranding the Covid vax for stubborn resistors
Jeffrey Denny
To quote Kate McKinnon’s SNL character, Dr. Wayne Wenowdis, wenowdis:
Two out of five adults in America still haven’t gotten even a single Covid-19 vaccine dose.
Some can’t. But many non-vaxxers remain politically resistant because nobody’s gonna tell them what to do, what with their God-given and Constitutional liberty rights. Not even people who love them. Or doctors trying to save them, paid for by the hateful Socialist government healthcare system such as Medicare.
Meanwhile, intelligent, responsible e pluribus unum Americans who do care about their health, their friends, families and loved ones, the stressed healthcare workers trying…
The Deplorables have taken the controls. Thoughts and prayers.
Jeffrey Denny
“I’ve got the next big reality show: We put a bunch of people on a plane, fly them over the Atlantic, then Tom Bergeron comes out and reveals … that the pilot is a six-year-old boy. We call it ‘Child Hell Flight.’” — Jack Donaghy, “30 Rock,” “Reaganing” episode
Mainstream political pundits: If you’re troubled that Trumpism is destroying America, our democracy and our decency, stop blaming the Republican Party.
Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley and even the treasonous Congressional Sedition Caucus aren’t the problem. …
Be as green as me!
Jeffrey Denny
I love Earth.
It’s my home, and only place I’ve ever lived. Or is it?
Either way, naturally I worry about climate change. Especially when my basement floods and I blame climate change.
I also vote green — not GOP green, for money, but as a Democrat who wants to protect Earth’s viridescence.
Except for many beautiful Earth parts that are brown. Like the Grand Canyon. Or Afghanistan, where Republicans as usual got America into a terrible mess for Democrats to clean up and get blamed for. Or blue, like our oceans and liberal zip codes. …
Options for the sacrilegious
Jeffrey Denny
Vaccine-resistant workers are sharing tips online for requesting exemptions to the requirements on religious grounds; others are submitting letters from far-flung religious authorities who have advertised their willingness to help. — The New York Times, Sept. 11, 2021
Looking for a religion to avoid a Covid vaccination without the muss and fuss of having real religious faith?
Try these:
Latvian Orthodox
It’s a beautiful religion, not whatsoever, as Frank Costanza screamed, “Is this the group that goes around mutilating squirrels?!”
Still, according to the teachings of “Seinfeld,” Latvian Orthodox seems a little … squirrely.
Apparently, you can easily convert to…
Leveraging what a fool believes
Jeffrey Denny
Covid-19 vaccine resisters happily, even haughtily, swallow and spread whack-job conspiracy theories about the mortal dangers of the shots.
Playing whack-a-mole to beat down the vaccine lies as they pop up clearly isn’t working. The objective factual actual proven truth can never beat 20th century philosopher George Costanza’s dictum, “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”
Thus, President Joe Biden and sensible Americans are getting desperate for ways to penetrate the mulish skulls of ornery contrary people, people the Covid-19 virus calls useful idiots for keeping the pandemic alive, thriving and spreading.
But what if we paid…
It’s shore ‘nuff messin’ with us
Jeffrey Denny
Since y’all are smart, you probably know the origin of “Don’t Mess with Texas,” right?
It was a state anti-littering campaign slogan that urged Texans to stop throwing beer bottles, Taco Bell wrappers, Marlboro butts and Skoal tins, stained broken-down mattresses, loaded Pampers, mothers-in-law, and other trash out their pickup trucks on the long desert highways to nowhere.
Yep — Texans had to be told not to mess with Texas.
And of course, leave it to Texans to turn a public service message into a swaggering, bullying, overcompensating macho taunt. …
The sound of silly
Jeffrey Denny
You’ve heard it online.
Anti-vaxxers say it.
Trumpers who hate “the libs” say it.
Climate crisis deniers say it.
Facebookers whose profiles say “no education to show” confirm it by saying it.
Oxymoronically, people who’ve never done it take triumphant delight in “winning” meaningless social media fights by declaring, “do your research!”
The online ignorati, as smart as they are, confuse real research with their cognitively biased, cherry-picked “facts” they parrot from cursory Google searches and bottom-feeding media to “prove” their opinions are God’s truth.
What they unintentionally prove is their ignorance.
Utmost apologies — I don’t mean…
What to expect if you’re expecting a shot
Jeffrey Denny
As cases surge, a doctor says that some people are pleading for discretion when they receive the vaccine, worried about what their friends and families will think. — New York Times, July 30, 2021
Anti-vaxxers are being unfairly marginalized, demonized, Satanized, and even Martinized at the dry cleaners, making their clothing stiffer than necessary.
All because the vax resistors are merely expressing their personal patriotic American freedom to sicken and die from Covid, to spread disease and death to friends, families, neighbors and fellow Americans, and to stress low-paid hospital workers working around the clock desperately trying to…
Test your first-rate intelligence
Jeffrey Denny
F. Scott Fitzgerald declared the mark of true brilliance is the ability to handle cognitive dissonance.
Which means being able to “hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
You’re obviously intelligent. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this. But in case you wonder, match the following 12 quotes with who said them and see if you can still operate heavy machinery:
1. “My body, my choice!”
a. A pro-choice protestor who doesn’t want government bureaucrats dictating women’s health.
b. An anti-vax protestor who doesn’t want government bureaucrats dictating public health.
2. “Stop vaccine foreign giveaways!”
a. Trumpers who don’t…
