“I won’t vote for Moore — ever,” said Jack Burnette, a 61 year-old financial planner from suburban Birmingham. “I wouldn’t vote for Roy Moore for dog catcher.”

If I were a municipality somewhere out there in these great United States…

… I think I would have the job of “dog catcher” up for election…

… Then I would finangle a way to have the election end up a contest between a right wing Christian theocrat and a Marxist Revolutionary…

… maybe toss in a third party Independent bid from literal used salesman (and by the way, can someone point to me to a used salesman running for election somewhere?) right then being sued for general used salesman type reasons…

Just to see how this election turns out.

On the Coming of the … new wave? …

“The thing that Roy Moore really has, and everybody thinks it’s the Ten Commandments, it’s actually taking on The Man. And that’s kind of a bipartisan thing. That’s a Trump thing, that’s a Chris McDaniel thing,” said Jeff Roe […]

Ultimately, there’s a sense of “Screw The Man by buying this record” — the late 1960s promotional ad for some “corporate rock”.

Or, to be slightly conspiratorial on that one…

Where do you think Roy Moore will be coming down on the great Republican tax plan?  Or, for that matter, on trade?

In Nevada, the son of legendary UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian, Danny, is challenging incumbent Sen. Dean Heller; in Michigan, the rebel rock star Kid Rock is entertaining a run […]

Wait.  Kid Rock?  And rebel, like… what?  Last I checked in, it was him singing over old Lynyrd Skynyrd classics.

While Ritchie hasn’t announced whether he will actually run, he’s selling shirts adorned with his campaign logo. He has also peppered his recent tour with political statements and diatribes, injecting himself into the political discussion.
While many Republicans believe Ritchie would be a strong candidate thanks to his notoriety, they doubt that he’ll follow through.

Sure.  And this meanders forward.

If you think that Trump can be beaten by a two-term governor of a Midwestern state with really good ideas about health care, or by a senator who really attracts young people, think again. The idea that a relatively conventional elected official will differentiate herself from Trump by dint of her seriousness or that an unconventional elected official can out-populist Trump is crazy. If you need to set a thief to catch a thief, you need a star — a grand, outsized, fearless star whom Trump can neither intimidate nor outshine — to catch a star. We’re through the looking glass here. America is discarding old approaches in politics. Democrats will have to do the same to match the mood to the moment.

Sure.  It’s Alton Parker versus Theodore Roosevelt all over again!

Democrats should drop  Stabenow – disregard that poll showing her with a 20 percent lead  (What did they say about Trump once upon a time, after all?) and nominate a Detroit based music star… Who?  Oh, you know… Shaggy 2 Dope.  Reconnect with that downwardly mobile rust belt base, and the idea of a performer in clown make up joining the likes of Roy Moore will capture the zeitgeist of the movement.

Roy Moore.  54 point 6 percent.  Luther Strange.  45.4 percent.  Strange, a brief stint in the US Senate, and we barely knew ye.  Now Roy Moore, the Ten Commandments Judge, goes on to his coming victory on December 12 against some Democrat or other.  Doug Jones.  AND –?

 The loudest applause Mr. Moore received during an election-eve rally came when he declared, “Mitch McConnell needs to be replaced.”

With someone who will be able to enact the policy chops of their great president, (The “Health Care fiasco”, so it is said) and his major policy goal of … um… making black football players stand up for the National Anthem?  Or will the upcoming tax cuttings amoeleriate this base?  Why, oh why, would Trump’s supporters not heed the call and not support Luther Strange, with a rallying cry like this one?

“I’ll be honest, I might have made a mistake,” he told the crowd at one point during his nearly 90 minutes of remarks. “If Luther doesn’t win they’re not going to say, we picked up 25 points in a short period of time,” he added, referring to the media. “If his opponent wins, I’m going to be here campaigning like hell for him.”

By Wednesday morning, just hours after Moore held a convincing 55-45 percent advantage in the vote totals, Trump had deleted his recent tweets supporting Strange, who had been appointed to fill the seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

… And so chimes in … er… Trent Lott?

Trent Lott, a former Senate Republican leader, was blunt: “Every Republican senator had better get prepared for a challenge from the far right.”

Maybe they can stomp the threat with well placed words of support for the legacy of Strom Thurmond?

In Tennessee, reading the tea leaves, Bob Corker has thrown in the towel.  And who does his suggest as possible successor?

A white football player with no political stances to his name!  Sounds like a winner.

Entertainment Weekly does the honors of profiling the coming season of the CW “Riverdale” series…

But then there are those changes that become social-media gold, like the romantic pairing of Jughead and Betty. The odd couple became a fan favorite, garnering their own shipper fan group called, naturally, Bugheads.

Hey!  It’s been done!  (Or, maybe it just took some 65 years for Betty’s advances to work out?)

Entertainment Weekly also does the new Star Trek series…

This is darker Star Trek than tv audiences have seen before.

We’ve been there with pretty much every franchise.

For Trek traditionalists

Those with “Loyal to Kirk” bumper stickers around 1987?

there are still rousing self-contained adventures along the way (such as an episode that plays like Groundhog Day in space.)

(Rub eyes.)  Done in the Next Generation, wasn’t it?  As well as Voyager.  Sort of spoofed on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Sheesh.

Probably to appear on that weird fan fic series by Seth Macfarlane.

I’ve posted a time or two some — perhaps moderately controversial — opines on Colin Kaepernick — “good that he wants to be bigger than the game, because he isn’t big in the game right now” — and generally understand what Trent Dilfer is saying when he says his protests aren’t in keeping with the role of a backup quarterback in helping and aiding the team.

Protests aside, he would be on a team right now — probably at some point find his way starting a game or three.  That aside, it was amusing when Richard Sherman in condemnation of Kapernick not having a job, which to do so requires an implied insult to some quarterbacks with a job, do so by explicitly naming some.  (Which unless you’re blasting beating a rival who’s considered on par with the star — Crabtree?–, a pro sports player I’d think tends to identify with the hard grueling road they’re putting in to get lombasted by fat assed armchair qbs who at best were stars in high school.)

So.  Trump chimes in with comments that have some alleging he should just skip to the word he really wants to use — (“n”), shows his managerial role — (really, that working white class who voted him in oughta take note), and ensures no one on championships for other sports leagues would much want to bother with their customary visit.

And Trump takes another route to just another conservative talk radio host – blasting opinions for… no real reason.  (Weighing in on a Senate race in Alabama?  Why, or why does some protesting athletes have anything much to do with it?)

— Better non visits than any cause celebres for conservatives who skipped out on Clinton…

New variations of the Bechdel test proliferate.  The Stranger adopts the same basic editorial direction as its sister publication in Portland, which has come out swinging against the Barenaked Ladies.

It does make it easier to write movie reviews.

“Sorry.  I didn’t spot any trans-gendered female characters in this movie.  So, I’m not going to review one way or the other.  Neener neener neener“.

(Shrug.)

Three groups protested in the nation’s capital this last weekend.  The alt right, what with their copyright infringed frog mascot, under the auspices of this era’s George Lincoln Rockwell…

… and, yes indeed, they do parallel…

Currently trying to align President Trump’s recent compromises with Democrats with their need and desire to keep themselves as the Vanguard of the whole Trump Movement… (And on to the regular “right“]

… Maybe Steve Bannon has a point in chiming Trump’s moving to be Schwarzenegger?  (At first a stealth Pete Wilson, then slid into Bloomberg.)… [He also doesn’t have a point.]

And wherever the, quote in quote “alt right” assembles, they will be met with force by the antifa group, who in smashing a Starbucks window here and there and punching Richard Spencer and shouting out Ann Coulter … in their quest to take out the alt right tend to give the Weimar Republic comparisons a holding.

And the third group protesting in Washington DC.  Fans of the Insane Clown Posse, Juggalos, who’s interest are entirely self-interested and cross these last two administrations.

Several hundred Juggalos, as fans of Insane Clown Posse call themselves, gathered at the Lincoln Memorial. They were protesting their designation as a criminal gang by the FBI, and some said they were uninterested in the left-right political divide on display at Saturday’s other protests.

A very specific problem, and a very specific redress.  The problem…

Much of the problems stem from 2011, when the FBI released a Gang Assessment List placing the Juggalos alongside the Crips, Bloods, and MS-13. ICP first laughed at the FBI labeling. “It wasn’t a 9/11 moment,” Violent J recalled in an interview prior to the march. The gang label seemed too absurd to be serious. “Somewhere in America, there’s a serial rapist out there that loves [the band] Bush!” Violent J pointed out.

Manson dug The Beatles.

As enormous media attention grew around the Juggalo March, other groups had latched onto its cause. A week before the March, President Donald Trump’s on-again/off-again advisor Roger Stone had an associate reach out to me to connect him with ICP. Jacobin, the intellectual socialist journal, endorsed the protest. A pro-Trump rally was happening down the street, and leading up to the March people tweeted things like, “I dream of a world where juggalos and antifa literally scare Nazis shitless to the point they never show their faces in public again.” ICP and the Juggalos’ fight with the FBI has evolved Juggalos from the world’s most mocked fanbase to a serious cause, but the Psychopathic community is uninterested in being civil rights heroes.

Their music probably contains enough bad messaging for various leftists, loosely moving around, in, and out of the “antifa” label, to protest.  (See The Mentors, who performed to a small crowd in Portland a protest greeting of commiserate size.)  Even some of their face-painting may provoke accusations of black (or white) face.  So I suppose on that sense, they’re on no one’s team.