Saturday, May 1, 2021

Riot Party, Table For Three


Climate. Extinction. Injustice. We've got problems and we need action. Republicans, responding to the charge that they stand for nothing but obstruction, have banded together to invent entirely different problems. In the face of mounting challenges presented by the seemingly wanton exercise of the rights to vote, assemble, and protest, they have produced a multi-state Voting And Rioting Omnibus Bill that large numbers of liberals can be thrown under.

Many state legislatures hope to expand on Florida's Freedom From Braking Act which seeks to eliminate impediments to acceleration, in the event a patriotic motorist encounters a crowd of protestors. It has become the unfortunate norm that lovers of liberty have increasingly been forced to confront groups of people carrying signs they don't agree with, and the Act confers civil immunity in those cases when a reasonable person has no choice but to stomp on the gas and barrel through the opposition. Furthermore, in the particular instance that said driver is accelerating into a crowd that is attempting to deface a Confederate statue, it is no longer incumbent on the driver to remain at the scene. "That could be a safety issue," observed Gub'nah and Florida Man "Ron-Boy" DeSantis.

One state legislator withheld his "yea" vote until a provision was added to require a sternly worded pamphlet be distributed to citizens who inadvertently plow their cars into people carrying fetuses too small to determine their party affiliations. Another amendment specifies that a car may be driven into a crowd of people with whom the driver disagrees as long as the driver does not intend to offer water or snacks.

There are limits. The Freedom From Braking Act does not extend its protections to drivers plowing into people exercising their First Amendment rights about Second Amendment rights.

On the national level, Republicans maintain their stout objection to any definition of infrastructure that goes beyond the traditional construction of highways or bridges upon which a car might be driven into a crowd of liberals.

The Florida bill, widely admired in GOP circles, also defines "riot" as consisting of any group of three or more people ack'n' up. A group of this size might be encountered, for instance, in the vicinity of a ballot drop box in those states that have capped the number of such drop boxes to one per county, or that have severely restricted polling places in poorer communities. Upon encountering groups of three or more people hanging around in a gang outside of a polling place in certifiably blue counties, a rampaging driver should feel free to gun it, gun it, gun it, without ascertaining the crowd's actual positions, as long as they feel personally threatened by their perceived votes and opinions.

Meanwhile, the ongoing effort to purge voting rolls of dead people will be much aided by the new requirement that first responders at the scene of a car-plowing incident immediately send notification of any fatalities to the elections division. "We intend to be proactive to thwart the growing zombie vote problem," said the Gub'nah.

The Gub'nah furthermore hopes the severe restriction in the number of polling places will result in crowding sufficient to justify almost any amount of homicidal driving.

The Secretary of State, candidly admitting she is "old-fashioned" about the legality of murder by Buick, blondly suggested preventive safety measures such as restricting the hours polls can be open to between 5am and 5:23am Brunei Darussalam Time (please consult time zone conversion table on the state website) and limiting locations to areas that can be accessed only by Hummer. For those for whom this might be inconvenient, an absentee ballot may be requested along with identifying information such as the name of the voter's financial advisor or a recent property tax statement.

20 comments:

  1. “Ack’n’up” is pure gold!

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  2. Love this! What a funny coincidence that this should appear -- just this morning I read a Washington Post article about the Virginia gubernatorial candidate whose aide pulled an AR-15 pistol on a motorist. This candidate, Amanda Chase, calls herself "Trump in Heels"..... https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/amanda-chase-gun-road-rage/2021/04/30/4560389e-a942-11eb-8d25-7b30e74923ea_story.html

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    1. This country is going insane. I read that story: red meat for her constituency. I wonder if it even happened.

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    2. I have tried to convince many people that "chum and offal" would be a better metaphor than "red meat," but it never caught on.

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  3. Are you shittin' me? The Freedom from Braking Act is really a thing? I thought I heard everything, although I am experiencing brain-fog from my second Covid shot, this sounds like something only my feverish imaginings can think up.

    Um... just curious: can one also speed up and run over Republicans? Just asking... for a friend. Yeah, that's it. I would NEVER do anything like that!

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    1. Here is an article that explains things. I have had a very hard time using hyperbole for the last four years.

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    2. Parody/satire can be challenging when reality is so over-the-top. (See, e.g., SNL.)

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  4. This reads a bit too Oniony to not be satire, the next thing I know you'll be telling us of cyber-ninjas recounting votes for the umpteenth time while Donald paces Mar-a-Lago waiting to be declared Dictator for Eternity! Oh Murr, you're a wonderful writer but c'mon...

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  5. My, my, my, dem GOPeepers are fairly selective about what parts of the Bill of Rights they hold dear and sacred, aren't they. Idiots. They die on the hill of the 2nd Amendment, and skip right over the 1st, which guarantees the right of the people (and not just the far-right-wing-loonie-tunes-choir-members) to peacefully assemble.

    I don't know, but back in the Pleistocene, when I was a sprat in West Texas, carrying a sign didn't constitute a crime punishable by half-ton truck or certain of my relatives would have been axle-dragged for parading with their, "Repent, the end is nigh!" and "Sinners, Come to Jesus!" signs in front of the local whorehouse on Saturday nights. (I don't talk to that right-wing of the family any longer.) Gummint be stranger than fiction these days. Will Durant wrote; "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within." I think we're on the edge of destruction - who was it that sang that? Barry somebody?

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    1. They die on the hill of the second half of the Second Amendment, to be precise.

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  6. "The lamps are going out all over E̶̶u̶̶r̶̶o̶̶p̶̶e̶, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time."

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  7. This was so very painfully funny. I appreciate your giving us the irony and allowing us to laugh in the face of madness.

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  8. Perfect summation of the absurdity.

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