Drinking Liberally Montclair, NJ

12/03/2024

We are re launching a local Indivisible group on Wednesday evening in Fair Lawn. For more information and/or to register, use this link.

https://www.mobilize.us/indivisible/event/745339/

03/27/2024

Our monthly meeting. Come join us next month.

07/06/2021

What with the July 4th holiday on Sunday, and then most everyone having off today (Monday July 5), I almost forgot entirely that tomorrow, July 6, is the first Tuesday of the month and hence time for another virtual meeting of Drinking Liberally Montclair! Now most everything has opened up, and a number of other DL chapters have gone back to meeting in person, so probably we should start thinking about that -- except that I, your humble chapter host, has moved out of state in the interim, which needless to say introduces some complications. But please join the chat at the link below after 7:30 pm, and we can discuss re-opening plans!

And it's not like there's any shortage of real politics and news to discuss! We now have the exciting development that billionaires can now rent out National Guard units for their own purposes -- I'm sure only good things will proceed from that! We have the first indictments against major players in the Trump organization -- the first of many dominoes to fall, or flash in the pan? Oh, and most of the Pacific Northwest has apparently been moved to Mercury! Damn you, Chinese climate hoaxsters!

So hopefully a few of you will see this message and join online from 7:30 pm at:

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05/20/2021

Hey lefties, comrades, and working class Americans in general! Wanna do something that will really help support working people in their struggle for better wages and decent working conditions? Well check out Beau's video, and then go to the link in my comment, and donate or help in any way you can!

Support via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/beautfcThe Roads with Beau: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_x7nc3Vi4BPgmNnMsz774ACheck out the store. Sticker...

05/03/2021

Greetings Montclair Liberal Drinkers! How y'all doin' in this, month ... 14 of COVID-19 restrictions? Well, with luck, perhaps we won't have them much longer -- your humble host has received his 2nd dose of the Pfizer vaccine, and since y'all are good science-oriented lefties of the reality based community, I imagine many if not all of you have been vaccinated by now! Perhaps we should start discussing some sort of return to relative normalcy and meeting in person again online this month?

Of course, if and when the Montclair chapter resumes meeting in person at Cowan's (or anywhere else it chooses to meet), it will then also be necessary to select a new chapter organizer, as I, your host lo these past few years, am no longer an actual resident of New Jersey, and have been officially residing in Pennsylvania since the end of January! So perhaps this month's virtual discussion might also take up the designation of a new official chapter leader? I'm happy to continue organizing these virtual sessions for as long as y'all want to have them, but it's time to begin looking to the future!

But besides this sort of chapter organizational business, there's lots of nifty (and not so nifty) stuff to talk about on the politics front! What's the over/under on how long until Matt Gaetz is booted from Congress? What revelations are we gonna see from Rudy Giuliani's personal computer stash, seized by the Feds in their recent raid? Just how badly are Arizona Republicans gonna step on their own dicks with their clownish super-secretive no-girls-or-libtards-allowed election recount being run by, seriously, I'm not making this up, the "Cyber Ninjas"!?

So please join us online after 7:30 pm on TUESDAY, MAY 4, at https://meet.jit.si/DrinkingVirtuallyMontclairNJ_2021-05-04 to discuss all this and whatever else you want to bring up!

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04/05/2021

Easter has come and gone, and the ex-President sent his greetings to everyone, including all of us on RADICAL LEFT who STOLE HIS ELECTION! Oh, and Matt Gaetz appears to be going down for child trafficking, and that big ship is out of the Suez Canal! Things are looking up! ...
.. OR ARE THEY? (Dun Dun Dun)

Bring your views, optimistic or pessimistic, to the next installment of Drinking Virtually Montclair NJ on Tuesday, April 6, from 7:30 pm online at https://meet.jit.si/DrinkingVirtuallyMontclairNJ_2021-04-06!

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03/01/2021

My how time flies! Hardly seems like it has been a month since last time! Maybe that's because February is shorter than the average month?

Well CPAC has come and gone and given us further proof of the apparent non-existence of God: Republicans introduced a literal golden idol (a golden statue of their God-King Donald Trump, wearing the American flag as boxer shorts no less!) at their little hoe-down, and not a one of them was smitten by lightning, locusts, plague or the death of their first born! Jeez, where's that vengeful, jealous God when you need him, huh??

Of course those of us on the progressive left are excited to see our new Democratic administration hewing to the norm: dropping the minimum wage increase from the COVID bill while starting a new bombing campaign in Syria! Washington is truly getting back to normal, now!!

Well however you feel about either of the only 2 political parties we allow ourselves in this country, you can come and grouse about it online with friends on Tuesday evening, March 2, from 7:30 pm, online with the Montclair NJ chapter of Drinking Liberally!

https://meet.jit.si/DrinkingVirtuallyMontclairNJ_2021-03-02

02/02/2021

Holy crap -- who would've believed it? Trump is out! FINALLY!

But we're still not quite done with him yet, because now we have his 2nd -- count 'em! -- SECOND impeachment trial to look forward to! And it looks like it'll be a real pi**er since all of his lawyers bailed on him because he only wants to use the proceedings as a platform to whine how he was robbed at the polls last November! Hahahahahahaha!

Even though we're now a full two months into the Biden administration... wait, what?? It hasn't even been TWO WEEKS yet?!? Well anyway, now that we're into the Biden administration, there's still plenty to be upset about (under no circumstances should you look up Rochester police & 9 year old girl online! At least, not within earshot of children!), and even more to poke fun at -- from Bernie's mitten memes to Jewish Space Lasers!

So join us online after 7:30 pm on Tuesday, February 2, to celebrate the End of an Error, or to plot the downfall of the neoliberal corporatist world order, whatever floats your boat!

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01/04/2021

It's a New Year, and it SUCKS ALREADY! So let's Drink, January 5!

We have finally bid farewell to our own national Annus Horribilis, 2020, and are approaching the date for the first meeting of Drinking Liberally, Montclair NJ chapter of 2021, on Tuesday, January 5! But we cannot let our guards down for an instant, because we're in the very first week of 2021 and things look to suck as bad, if not worse, than they ever did at any point in 2020!

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'll be aware that Tuesday also happens to be the Senatorial runoff election in Georgia! I mean, no big deal, it will only decide whether President-elect Biden will be permitted to actually govern or not, depending on whether the two Democrats in the race (Jon Ossoff & Rev. Rafael Warnock) can eke out a win meaning the makeup of the Senate would then be 50/50 Democrat/Republican (and hence, per our glorious Constitution, the Vice-President would cast tie-breaking votes as President pro-tempore of the Senate, which would then be Democrat Kamala Harris)! But if even one of the corrupt Republicans running (David Perdue & Kelly Loeffler, both of whom have profited via insider trading from the COVID pandemic) wins, then Moscow Mitch McConnell will remain as Senate Majority Leader, which of course means no measure proposed or favored by any Democrat will ever be brought to the floor of the Senate! So we'll probably be able to learn the fate of most of the Biden Presidency by the end of our meeting (hopefully)!

But the real fun will then come the very next day, as the votes from the Electoral College are delivered to the Congress and officially counted! Now for centuries this has been an entirely anodyne, perfunctory ritual where the Vice-President simply counts the electoral ballots certified by the states, and the Congress then certifies the President-elect. But not this year! We have a gaggle of Republicans in both the Senate and the House of Representatives who plan to object to the certification of the votes from every swing state where Democrats cheated our glorious Leader, Donald J. Trump, out of his victory by cravenly getting more votes! Plus, assorted Proud Boys, Q-Anon cultists, MAGAt zombies, and other lowlifes plan to be marching in Washington D.C. the same day to, ahem, encourage members of Congress to do the "right" thing, and throw out all the millions of Democrat votes from states they don't like!

So it's looking like 2021 is shaping up already to be one wild & crazy ride! So strap yourselves down, put your head between your legs, and kiss your ass goodbye -- and then join us online after 7:30pm on Tuesday night in Jitsi to drink and commiserate with your fellow liberals!

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12/18/2020

Why the institutional Democratic party must be destroyed, part the umpty-thousand (h/t Crooks & Liars):

I dunno, if my political party had someone young, talented, and apparently popular (certainly compared to the bland, soulless functionaries like Henry "I fundraise for Republicans" Cuellar mentioned in this saga) I would not throw obstacles in that person's career path. I'd be thinking more like "How do we fast-track this person to a position of prominence?"

But, this is how they do it, and the track record of the Democratic Party led by people of this mindset speaks for itself.

Henry Cuellar and centrist Democrats mutiny against progressives in a key committee fight.

11/30/2020

It's hard to believe that this Tuesday will be a full month since the national election, considering that the Trump Administration is still filing lawsuits trying to get the votes of tens of millions of Americans thrown in the trash -- because Freedom and Democracy are sacred, don'tcha know??

Let's get together Tuesday evening to point and laugh at the clownish debacle that is the post-election follies, from the epic press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, to Rudy Giuliani's hair melting on live TV, to Sidney Powell being suddenly disowned by Rudy 9/11 and the Trump campaign, and her inability to spell when she "releases the Kraken" in her silly lawsuits that would get a first year law student thrown out of school!

Of course there's serious news to discuss as well -- from our military leaders apparently barely managing to talk Trump out of a last-minute offensive attack against Iran, followed by the mysterious assassination of that country's top nuclear scientist, to Trump's rear guard actions to try and eliminate expertise all across federal agencies by reclassifying and then firing permanent employees before the Biden administration can come in.

Bring your issue of choice, and links to your favorite election videos (the one in the first comment is mine, considering I was born a Philly boy!), and join us anytime after 7:30 pm on December 1, at https://meet.jit.si/DrinkingVirtuallyMontclairNJ_2020-12-01!

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11/03/2020

I started thinking about an election eve video playlist 2 weeks ago, and I remembered this little video that I had edited together in comemmoration of the 2008 election of Barack Obama. I had not watched it in years, and had long since marked it private on my Youtube channel (in no small part because of my disappointment at the letdown of the election of Trump).

But going back and watching it again after 4 years or more, after having forgotten much of what was in it... it amazed me how well it holds up.

Admittedly, we now have different dramatis personae, but really a very simple search & replace of the names yields something that's still 100% accurate: from the armies of Democratic lawyers at the ready to counter the omnipresent (and publicly announced!) plans of Republican vote suppression, to the aftermath of George Floyd and BLM, still hoping for the promise of this nation to be entirely fulfilled for African-Americans.

It simply wasn't worth the time to re-edit the whole thing (and I no longer have the original movie elements files anyway), so just do the following search & replace in your heads, and enjoy:

Karl Rove --> Mitch McConnell
Tom Delay --> Steve Bannon, Bill Barr, Jared Kushner
Dick Cheney (Sauron) --> Donald Trump

"This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning!"

As both a movie and history geek, I kept expressing my internal monologue on how this election is working in movie references, so I decided to edit several o...