You probably expect me to comment on the Iowa caucuses last night, but you’re in for a surprise.  The only thing I have to say is that there was no surprise, and that the Iowa caucuses are the least democratic of the entire election process.  If you are disabled, have health problems, don’t drive, work nights, or cannot find a babysitter, then you don’t get a vote.  No ballot boxes, no online or mail voting, no early voting … you either show up by 7:00 to register and fill out your ballot, or you have no vote.  In addition to being unfair and biased, they are pretty much meaningless except to stroke egos – the last three primary elections were lost by the winner of the Iowa caucuses that year.  And contrary to what he claims, Trump did NOT win in the 2016 Iowa caucus – Ted Cruz did.

Now, on to things that actually matter …

More than eight million children will be left out of a new federal food assistance program for needy families this summer because they live in one of the 15 states, all led by Republican governors, that refuse to participate.  Why are those 15 governors turning down federal funds that would help feed hungry children?  Here are a few of their excuses …

• Mississippi governor, Tate Reeves, says that he rejects “attempts to expand the welfare state.”
• Nebraska governor, Jim Pillen, said “I don’t believe in welfare.”
• Iowa governor, Kim Reynolds, claims “an E.B.T. card does nothing to promote nutrition at a time when childhood obesity has become an epidemic.”

Our very own Marie Antoinette who famously did not actually say, “Let them eat cake”.  I would really like to see these governors live for one month on naught but a minimum wage paycheck!

Republicans really don’t like D.E.I. – Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.  Just in the last few days, Fox host Jeanine Pirro said that DEI is “just a rebranded version of hating white people, hating people who are part of this country, part of the West.”  Worse yet, another Fox persona, Laura Ingraham, claims that DEI is responsible for the recent Boeing plane incident … “Boeing recently bragged, not about being the best in the business, but about surpassing its diversity quotas with 92% of interviewees they say being diverse. Oh, goody. But then, not so good, a door flying off of one of Boeing’s 737 Super Maxes.”  So, I guess she thinks Black or LGBTQ people can’t build planes as well as white people?  And the worst of the lot is a group in Houston, Texas, holding up this sign on a highway overpass last Saturday …

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day in the U.S., honouring the late Dr. King, a man who preached nonviolence, brotherhood, and resilience, and who sought to extend the most noble elements of this nation’s rights and protections to those from whom it had been long unjustly and brutally withheld. Meanwhile, down in North Carolina, a Republican candidate for governor in that state spoke his mind, such as it is, saying that Martin Luther King Jr. was just an “ersatz pastor” and a “communist,” and the 1960s civil rights movement was “crap.”  This is candidate Mark Robinson …

Any questions?  I wonder if he realizes that without the Civil Rights movement, he probably never would have come as far as he has, that Jim Crow would still be alive and well, and that he’d still be relegated to the back of the bus?

Apparently in Trumpworld, free speech means “freedom of speech for me, not for thee.”  Donald Trump went batshit crazy because “Fox and Friends” had the unmitigated gall to interview the three remaining competitors for the Republican nomination.  I knew he had never read the U.S. Constitution, but surely somewhere along the line he has heard of “freedom of the press”?  Or perhaps he thinks he is now Rupert Murdoch and owns Fox?  Who knows how his mind works, but that’s yet another sign of his dementia in my view.