The dilemma of it all is that when a politician splits or sails down in the polls, the blame accrues to “racist sexist”, when — say — your Senator Harris has her own damned faults irrespective of her status as a black women.  (The corner of the Obama coalition who was actually elected, she’s quick to point out.)

“Sure, Buttigieg is gay, but he’s still a damned white man, and mayor of a damned small city.“  He has an intersectional win and a couple losses, I suppose.

On the last bit.  Wasn’t it Sarah Palin who pointed out —

Kidding!  But actually it was Karl Rove who said a couple opposite things once in declaiming Tim Kaine’s mayoral experience and then in upholding Palin’s…

Sure, Buttigieg is coming on strong in Iowa, but can he win the blacks in South Carolina?   Who all apparently love Biden, because… um… It’d be Clinton and Obama making Biden the third black president?  Or is this the game of someone else winning the South before Buttigieg tracks on to Nevada?

In other news, I think one of the other major newspapers of national reach ran an op-ed positing Trump as “draining the swamp” overseas — I suppose leading in to Senator Lindsey Graham’s new investigation calls of Hunter Biden, and we see the whole “how the offspring of powerful figures trade off their powerful connected family” in the line of the College Admissions scandal…  Or so the line goes.  The “Never Trumpers” but probably not really “never” of the National Review herald the 1996 Democratic Presidential platform, which I suppose is fine and dandy.   And something else popped into view in the opeds that I don’t recall right now.

Looking over this American Conservative magazine outline of a Rolling Stone article about a group of men wanting to masturbate and watch porn less…

… which is to say, some information relayed second-hand…

and I keep getting gobsmacked by the sheer meaningless of the word “alt right“.

According to Dickson, the enemy is anyone currently participating in #NoNutNovember, a viral internet challenge that encourages men to go 30 days without watching porn or masturbating. In what’s become a tell-tale sign that the hip vanguard of the cultural left’s late-stage sexual revolution feels threatened, Dickson lets us know, in no uncertain terms, that those who dare abstain from porn have embraced “the ideology…of the far right”: “anti-Semitism,” “homophobia,” “racism,” and “misogyny.” He even includes Ley’s “You know who else hated porn? Hitler!” argument and goes out of his way (and I mean waaaaaaay out of his way) to name drop Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos.

The state of the culture war, as one micro-targetting of politicking on transgendered issues finds … shock of shocks… no one cares about the us the bathrooms, but across genders in sports competition — another story.

The attack takes significant liberties with the facts, making it appear as if non-discrimination laws that include say, Lesbian bisexual and Transgender people, which Mr. Beshear supports, would open the door for boys to join girls’ sports leagues just because they want a competitive advantage, not because they are transitioning.

The NYT writer is a bit too glib with his bias.  There was always a pretty simple answer to the statements made by — was it Mike Huckabee? — on “if I were a teenage boy, I’d be so eager to get into that girl’s locker-room!” — even though the responders tended toward a little too pat response not addressing the issue — the correct answer is:  you won’t be able to get away with it very long, will you?  But then we come to the next question — mind you, not one any trans-gendered person I happen to know cares not one whit about this facet of society — it was one your TERFs as too the now culture warriors of the one time conspiracy mongerers at the warriors of info — are looking out for:  are we prepared as a society to see trans-gendered females with very masculine bodies shatter a women’s body building and weight lifting.  (Am I prepared to know who the winners of said competitions are?)  (Relatively recently, one of the city’s alt weeklies spewed forth on some such controversy with some athlete on people complaining she’s hopped up on too much testosterone — responded by pointing out Michael Phelps is benefited by an unnormal for a dude amount of estrogen.  It didn’t occur to me until later to wonder — is the paper unwilling to posit the controversy as trans-gendered — too woke to address the complaints?  I have no way of knowing…)

As it were, a very conservative Democrat won the governorship against … um… Zaphod Beeblebrox, was it? … in Louisiana, and the more conservative than typical one won in Kentucky.  We’ll finese the culture battles a bit more.

We’re back at that point in Colin Kaepernick controversy where, in order to make the argument, what you have to do is dump on as many nfl quarterbacks as you can.  When last I noted this, it was Richard Sherman — then of the Seahawks — to his credit bringing the Kaepernick’s career past that “played in a Superbowl” part that becomes pat and parcel to the argument — pointing out that in his duty call up from the bench he played a good game against the Seahawks.

The two names Sherman brought up in the “Kaepernick’s not in there and these two duds are?” — were a player who in his Sophomore outing for the Rams made a jump in play and brought his team to the Superbowl the next year, and a player who was the quarterback for a Jaguars team that made the afc title that year — though never credited as the reason, and fell off from there.

Now we have Nancy Armour for USA Today putting it thusly…

“Chicago, Washington, Miami, and the New York Jets all have garbage pits at quarterback.”

Sigh.  Miami, it is claimed, is “Tanking” for a high draft pick, to pick a marquee quarterback for the future… though, they appear to have fallen off the task of being the worst team in the league record-wise.  The New York Jets are for the moment committed to their sometimes promising young quarterback, hoping he’s experiencing a “Sophomore slump”.  I guess this leaves those other teams.

Also… Drew Brees, Cam Newton and Nick Foles all have missed significant time this season.

Sigh.  Brees’s replacement went undefeated.  (Or did he lose a game?)  Cam Newton seemed to be back-sliding, and his replacement at least for a while was doing great.  Nick Foles’s replacement has garnered a cult hero status, and for the moment seems to be in that “all systems go” even if the team will “have to see”.

And three more names for you.  Over the last three years, Nathan Peterman, Derek Anderson, Chad Henne, Brandon Weeden… all have gotten jobs.  It’s just a little too easy — just go to the bottom of the nfl quarterback pile and say “THESE GUYS?”  What’s interesting is that if the bottom of the nfl quarterback pile were somehow topper-notched… they argument would still be make-able.

Indeed, Kaeperick would have a job… if not for the things.  I point this out in some amusement more than political argument — one way or the other — I suppose they’re all professionals, and getting paid big bucks, but it is amusing to get called by another professional making less great bucks in a different profession a “garbage pit”.  Note that the qb for the Patriots and the qb for the Cowboys, when the qb for the Jets was caught on mic making a statement that’ll follow him in infamy about how much he was sucking out there — defended him and stated that they’re glad some of their bad games weren’t mic-ed.

Michael Coudrey, an entrepreneur and activist with more than 180,000 Twitter followers, posted a message on Wednesday that Kentucky had switched to machines that scanned votes and provided no paper backup, and “oddly enough the entire state turns blue.”

He’s like a Democrat after 2004.  Randi Rhodes shouting “What happened in Ohio?”  Black Box Voting.

Still, he later deleted the tweet after it became apparent that Republicans had scored significant wins in the state.

The Illuminati only wanted the governor gone.  But weren’t going to pay for a landslide.

What a weird news story. Of all the hidden messages a politician can relay. Relayed in the most cryptic of fashions. Sent to all those twitter followers to be picked up by right wing news sources paying attention. Hardly any plausible deniability to fall back on. Impeach him, I say. Paul Gosar has to go!

Though, I have one second thought. How many members of congress are there — 435? Eccentricity needs to pop up somewhere in there. Democracy needs representation for everyone. Everyone! And, to paraphrase that Johnson era Senator — don’t the needs need representation too? Does everyone need to be a stuffed suit, the topper of the popper?

The state of British elections, everybody!

Elsewhere in the Midlands, the Labour leader, Jermy Corbyn, drove home his counter-message: that Mr. Johnson would sell out Britain’s state health system to a predatory Mr. Trump in a trade deal.  “We’ll never let Donald Trump get his hands on our National Health Service,” he thundered.

Mr. Corbyn painted a dystopian picture of a Tory-led Britain that would mimic Mr. Trump’s America.  “They’ll slash food standards to match the U.S.,” he said referring darkly to rat hairs in paprika and maggots in orange juice, “and they’ll put chlorinated chicken in our supermarket shelves.”

I understand the morphing of Boris Johnson with Donald Trump and the electoral appeal, and the calls of the danger of laxing standards to the almighty dollar… but What the Hell is he talking about?  Apparently…

For tomato juice, the FDA limits up to five fly eggs and one maggot per 100 grams, the equivalent of a small juice glass. Up to 15 fly eggs and one maggot per 100 grams is allowed for tomato paste and other pizza sauces. Mushrooms are granted more leeway – 20 maggots “of any size” per 100 grams of drained mushrooms or 15 grams of dried mushrooms.’

Hm.  Did not know that.

Oh Yeah well… We all eat bugs, because… our food comes out of places that are surrounded by bugs and… bugs remain …
It does present the interesting question of the natural food people in the equation of the Labour Party’s electoral coalitions… but maybe that’s left to the “wine track” Lib Dems.

From David Sheilds’s Nobody Hates Trump More Than Trump, a collection of quick blurstings… page 127-128…

An acquaintance tells me that, according to a data mining firm at which he works, I am Irish, a Republican, conservative in my social orientation, opposed to raising taxes to support social security, a gun owner, a supporter of military interventions overseas (more concerned with fighting terrorism than protecting civil liberties), don’t believe income inequality is a major problem, not particularly concerned about Trump’s “possible” conflict of interests, fervently believe the media has overplayed the Russia scandal, and am opposed to the impeachment of Trump.  Ruh-roh.

The internet cookies probably show he likes ball sports, maybe some country music, maybe shows a complaint about “political correctness” — maybe does some hunting and goes to the outdoors…

The depressing thing about our politics — it’s subsumed by cultural impressions, and if the cultural impressions and entertainment choices differ or gets eclectic (live in a couple or a few different social mileus that contradict politically) – you’ll be box you in anyways.

The Democrats in “blue state” and the Republicans in “red state” have a good tendency to run as though it is all against Trump, where the Democrats in “red state” and the Democrats in “blue state” … don’t.  So, I guess, it appears in Kentucky… Beshear beat Trump on one level — as the Republican was running by clinging to Trump, but not so as the Democrat did so by not running against Trump… because, after all, the Republican incumbent was really unpopular and only came close to winning because of partisan tabs and by clinging closely to Trump.
NOW it’s safe for the likes of Bernie Sanders (oddly enough, not a Democrat) to weigh in.

In Mississippi, the Democrat lost to the Republican… the “I drive a pick up truck and own a gun” shtick not able to overcome the partisan advantage.  I’m looking forward to whoever replaces Blumenauer when he retires to win with the same “pick up truck and gun” ads.  (Apparently not enough to win in Mississippi?)
Next up, the exciting Louisiana race where a rare anti-abortion Democratic incumbent — and, I suppose, good on him — this isn’t a national electorate, so the terms of debate are different, aren’t they? — will see if he can withstand some Republican running as though he were Trump.

I suppose the hardening of partisan identifications everyone’s talking about doesn’t quite come to pass… “Is the Kentucky governor’s race a forecast of 2020’s race against McConnell”?  Only if McConnell became somehow more distanced from Trump and the Democrat more distanced from the Democratic party, I guess.