Category Archives: The Contrarian

Angst Off The Port Bow!

A clear US election result will calm investor nerves | Financial Times

I keep expecting my TV to short out.

attractingly What with all the Sturm and Drang on the 24/7s, I figure it’s only a matter of time before beads of perspiration roll down the flat-screen as my set electrocutes itself.

I’m not sure what everyone is so stressed about. The election is already decided.

This is not to predict any specific races Tuesday, including the presidential one. What I’m saying is that the results are largely moot, because America began juking to the left the day Donald Trump was elected president. The moment we, as a nation, discovered that the candidate who claimed power actually lost by 3 million votes, we have been pushing against that power. It’s just America’s way.

It’s hard to accept, because Trump is so lecherous and his cronies so loud. It’s easy to believe that groups like white militias, QAnon and anti-vaxxers represent the United States. A major news corporation needs you to think that, because fear keeps its lights on.

But look at the liberal victories that have punctuated the Trump administration:

  • Women took to the street by the millions to help lead the 2018 blue revolt that captured the House.
Midterm election results 2018: why Democrats' blue wave wasn't bigger - Vox
  • A conservative Supreme Court ruled that the LGBTQ community was protected under the Civil Rights Act.
Supreme Court's ruling will grant protections for LGBTQ workers in Texas | The Texas Tribune
  • Black Lives Matter and #MeToo have opened serious dialogues on race and gender for the first time in America for a half-century.
The key issue Black Lives Matter and #Metoo have in common - U.S. News - Haaretz.com

And liberal victories are continuing all along the march to Election Day. Just two days from Nov. 3, at least 93 million people have already voted – about two-thirds of the total votes counted in the entire 2016 general election.

Don’t take our word for it. Just look at what were once impenetrable conservative strongholds: Texas and Trump rallies. Today, the Texas Supreme Court rejected a Republican petition to discard almost 127,000 votes cast via drive-through sites in Harris County, where Houston is located. In that state, more people have already voted absentee in this election than voted in all of the 2016 race. The question has become when Texas will turn blue, not whether.

And look at Trump rallies. CNN and MSNBC love to bitch about how the rallies violate the rules of social distancing, which is true. But look at the crowds. Notice how many are wearing masks. Yes, they’re still calling for Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to hang for closing bars and gyms during COVID. But now they’re screaming through cotton. Pandemics will do that to shuttered minds.

Watch the Trump Rally from Reading, PA - Coal Region Canary
At a Pennsylvania rally this weekend.

Obviously, there are still stakes. The Affordable Care Act, abortion, even gay marriage may be at risk.

But the reason Republicans didn’t rescind Obamacare is because America didn’t want to give it up. The ACA — along with gay marriage and legal abortions — may still disappear, especially with the latest Supreme Court justice thrust upon us.

But the country will not like it, and such outcomes will only delay the day of reckoning awaiting Republicans who have painted themselves between a rock — science, technology and a blended population — and a hard place: The Trumpian narrow mind.

Or simply look within. I hate the word “woke,” but ask yourself: Since Trump’s election, are you more or less enlightened about:

  • Racism?
  • Sexism?
  • Climate change?
  • Policing?
  • Health?

Has that knowledge (or lack thereof) moved you further left or right?

So don’t stress, southpaws. Conservatism works against the very laws of physics: The Second Law of Thermodynamics mandates constant change in the universe — a core liberal tenet. That change may not come Tuesday, but it’s coming.

Just imagine what life must be like for those on the other side of the political aisle. Imagine having to defend a virus-denier, which will one day draw comparisons to other denials.

Change is coming for them, too. Except for them, it will feel sudden.

The Voting Empowerment Act

5 Ways to Defend Voting Rights this Election - Unitarian Universalist Service Committee

To: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

From: The HollywoodBowles

Dear Speaker Pelosi,

First, an admission. I freelanced for another. I wrote a column Friday calling for the Quarter-Million Campaign, but sent it to the Lincoln Project instead. They just do commercials better. I stand by my decision.

But as an olive branch, I’d like to offer you something better. It’s called The Voting Empowerment Act, and I think it would serve your party well and, more importantly, the people.

Is voting a right or a privilege? (2 letters)

What’s great about the VEA is that it works regardless of next week’s election. In fact, it may even work more effectively in the case of defeat, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

The VEA is simple. It would mandate that every county in America establish a minimum of TWO polling places. You could get downright aspirational in higher goals: a 10% increase in every county; a low-income mandate; county-wide voter initiatives, etc. But a seismic first step, as you know, would be requiring just two polling places per county.

Live Updates: We're Tracking The Vote And Voting Problems | FiveThirtyEight

There are really no need for statistics for the passage of this act, which I think is part of its beauty. All you need do is tell voters: “We all saw the horrific lines our citizens had to endure, just to be heard. In the middle of a pandemic, no less. It’s time we follow the Founders’ spirit of law, not just the letter of it.”

Long lines at Baltimore voting centers as many opt to cast ballots in person - Baltimore Sun

As I said, the VEA works regardless of election outcome. If Democrats were to take power, what better first step, what better administrative introduction than to put power in the hands of the public? They largely align with your views anyway.

Should you lose, the VEA makes a great sword upon which to fall. You could propose the bill, whisk it through the House, and allow the GOP to suffocate it in a public execution. Just watch what happens should they choke out the Affordable Healthcare Act.

Don’t do it for the Party. Do it for the Republic.

I know it’s a lot to ask, bringing sanity to D.C, particularly now. And putting power in our hands may be fool’s folly. God knows we actBut hell, die nobly for a cause if you can’t live humbly for one, right Madame Speaker?

The HollywoodBowles

ps: Can you believe Giuliani dropped his drawers for Borat?!?

A Quarter-Million

“The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” — Stalin

To: The Lincoln Project

From: The HollywoodBowles

To whom it may concern,

First off, a caveat and compliment. I wear the liberal title proudly, and am ethically opposed to most of what you represent: non-choice, non-diversity, non-tolerance, non-science, non-environment. That makes your party a non-starter for me.

BUT. You make great commercials! Much better than anything we libtards can concoct. I don’t know why, but we suck at catch-phrasing. As the president would say, it is what it is.

And it’s in that spirit I offer you a new campaign in the presidential homestretch. It’s not nearly as clever as your brilliant Wake Up ad, but it beats the hell out of “Lock Her Up” or “Sleepy Joe.”

I call it the Quarter-Million Campaign. As you know, the U.S. will be approaching 250,000 American casualties from COVID — around the week of the election, perhaps a few days later, if rates and estimates maintain.

There are not many political leaders who get saddled with the word “million.” And when they are, it’s never positive. Stalin, Lenin, Castro, Hitler, Mussolini sported the figure, too.

And soon, Donald Trump. His handling of coronavirus — more than his affairs, finances, Russian collusion, government shutdown, etc. — synopsize in just three words (two if you drop the article) his incompetence. The virus has exposed just how out of his depth Trump is, from handling crises to calming a nervous nation to providing citizens with basic medical information.

An effective ad wouldn’t even need all of the words used in the above paragraph. Simply an ever-rising Johns Hopkins fever chart of casualties, played to the soundtrack of Trump’s rosy forecasts for the pandemic: “It’s going to be gone in summer”; “It will magically go away”; “If we did less testing,” yaddy. Then fade to a black-and-white photo. Maybe something like this.


You could probably run an ad as long as Wake Up, given how much snake oil we’ve been sold in the last eight months. My favorite is his latest: “We’re rounding the corner.” Like, into an alley?

It’s not fair to lay 250,000 deaths at his feet, I know. In truth, we are as much to blame for the catastrophe as he, if not more. Even in my own state, an allegedly educated one, even my friends, even my own mother — my mother! — seems determined to play with fire when it comes to a global pandemic. Because, you know, it is what it is.

But the president trades in hyperbole, so let’s speak his language. The beauty of the concept is that it’s evergreen: It will last well beyond the election, far into 2021, when the courts are being lobbied over how to call the race. You’ll want public opinion in your corner in that final dash, and A Quarter-Million can be easily modified as the body count rises. It’s a self-working magic trick: Each new title — A Half-Million, A Million — is more astonishing than the previous.

A Quarter Million. We’re not rounding the corner. We’re rounding off.