In case you missed it on the evening news, your not-so-humble narrator got his second dose of the Moderna vaccine this week and is now fully vaccinated, or at least will be in another 10 days or so. After having no side effects after the first dose, this time I got terrible chills, then sweats, then body aches all over that lasted for the entire next day. I slept a lot...like, a lot a lot...like a geriatric cat on barbiturates a lot. When I woke up on day two the symptoms were much milder, and by day three they were gone. I am thankful, pleased, in awe of science, and somehow even more pissed now about the pro-polio pinheads who will refuse to get vaccinated and the anti-maskers who refuse to wear masks...but I digress. This is a good thing, and while I'm not running out to any pinball bars yet I can't wait until I'm soup and can do so.

This is not exactly a news flash, and you're not likely to have seen it on your favorite news channel nor in your favorite print media, but there is no Republican Party anymore. It went from Brundle to Brundlefly to decomposing giant gross unrecognizable monster really fast.

What remains is a party of the white men, for the white men, and by white men. White men who want to 'conserve' what made America great for them: namely, the systems put in place to keep them at the top of the food chain, justice and merit be damned. Some know this and are now saying it out loud anyway, others like Georgia County Sheriff's Directory of Communications Jay "Bad Day" Baker, who had previously  promoted anti-Asian t-shirts, may just be as siloed/ignorant as his impossibly, shockingly callous comments before the national media appeared.

Senator Ron Johnson said he believes people who attacked, maimed, and killed cops on 1/6 are people who "love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law," which is absurd and contradictory on its face. 

Ron Johnson knows full well that his statements were born of a racist mindset and designed to delight and ignite those who would prefer that white power not be challenged by things like the law, and voting, and democracy, and demographic realities. He firmly stated that he was not at all afraid of the white people who stormed the Capitol, attacked police officers, smashed windows and doors and were coming after him and his colleagues and the then-Vice President, but that he would most certainly be afraid if those people had been Black Lives Matter protesters and/or or the right's new favorite bogeyman, Antifa. 

That is unabashed racism and gives license to other racists to be overtly racist. It fuels irrational violence against innocent people. Racism is a disorder, a distortion of reality based on the irrational hateful divisive and false notion that one "race" is innately better than others. College seniors today are old enough to remember when saying the quiet part out loud publicly like that would have led to immediate censure if not worse.

Side note: unlike some of the white supremacist and anti-government groups which led the 1/6 attempt to thwart representative democracy, Antifa's goal is to thwart fascism; unlike the groups that breached the Capitol as part of some bonkers fantasy in which the goal was to overturn a free and fair election,  BLM's goal is to stop the centuries-old practice of  criminalizing being while black.

Republican charlatans: who do we want to disenfranchise?

Republican base: people of color! (or, more realistically, some less politically correct terms).

Republican charlatans: when do we want to disenfranchise them?

Republican base: now, forever, and always, amen, 'Murkah!

Last week   all congressional Republicans voted against the broadly popular  broadly popular American Rescue Act,  lied about it, others  tried to take credit for parts of it after it passed without a single Republican vote. 75% of Americans support the bill, including anywhere from 45-70% of Republicans (depending on the poll).

This week  172 House Republicans voted against reauthorizing the broadly (excuse the sexist pun) popular Violence Against Women Act and Senate Republicans plan to try to block it again, as they did in 2018.

While Republican state legislators from sea to shining sea push 250+ anti-democracy voter suppression bills, prominent congressional Republicans are promising to fight the broadly popular John R. Lewis Voting Rights Restoration Act, which is supported by 68% of Americans including 60% of...Republicans!

Maybe some voters are still Republicans, but we are definitely mislabeling the charlatans like Ted 'What Could I Have Done Anyway' Cruz, Ron 'I Fear Black People' Johnson, Lindsey 'Whiplash' Graham, Madison 'Made Up Bio' Cawthorn, Rand 'Masks Are Theater' Paul et al. are not Republicans. They and their insurrectionist, conspiracy hawking co-conspirators represent a new political movement: the Jim Q. Crow Party of Crypto-Fascists.

Republicans couldn't possibly  vote against giving medals to Capitol Police who were left undermanned and under-equipped to hold back the people who attacked and injured dozens of them but Ron Johnson claims "truly respect law enforcement." Could they? Yeah. 12 could.

Know that unless you are a white Christian man with a gun fetish, the new Jim Q. Crow Party hates you, and you, and you and you and yo-hooo! They may pat you on the head if you behave, but they really wish you'd just go away to somewhere out of sight and let them exploit you and hoard the profits.

If you have been avoiding the news because of the Jim Q. Crow party, COVIDIOTS, and government officials so blind to what white supremacy even is that they innocently give really bad takes to the media just after 6 Asian women were slaughtered by a white mass murderer (who you just knew was white the moment you heard he was apprehended alive, didn't you?), I can't say that I blame you. 

That said, I highly recommend that you set aside 22 minutes with no distractions to watch new Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock's first floor speech which you can find in the videos section below. It made this liberal snowflake cry more than once, and it might just claw back a strand or two of your faith in humanity and Americans' capacity for it. That's something we could probably all use more of in these "entitled sociopathic asshole who refused to wear a mask in an Uber,  pulled off the driver's face mask, coughed on him, spit on him, and otherwise abused him including trying to steal his phone may face jail time" times.

To all of our Asian-American listeners, BAGeL Radio always stands with you against the ignorant hateful racists...which I can't believe needs to be said in 2021.

To our non-Asian listeners, please let your friends of Asian descent know that you've got their back, and their kids backs, and their parents backs, and that they can count on you. Thank you.

[edited to fix type-os -- thanks Shea!]