That sinking sensation of a “Welcome to Hell” I feel when staring at political headlines or stories never abates. No one works in good faith. I have to squint at a Huffington Post story — describing the governor of Virginia as a “so-called Moderate” nonetheless “backing anti-choice” candidates. As near as I can tell, the governor of Virginia never presented himself as anything but a conservative Republican, with his appeals to “moderate” swing-voters an appeal from the right, interpreted by political pundits as “cultural” lines of attack even though it is the fair domain of public school curriculum. “Maga!” shouted his Democratic opponent, incessantly until it has no real meaning. (Similar to the word “woke” losing any meaning.) Now I suppose, the liberals and Democrats now can try and achieve an opposition by appealing to the “moderates” and “swing voters” from the left on Abortion — which depending on how you want to define it is a “cultural” line of attack or the proper domain of medical policy.

The Virginia governor’s campaign did did fall somewhere short on the spectrum of DeSantis’s current policy in Florida, which I guess is what makes it an appeal to moderation. I guess for whatever Republican comes up next to run in “one term limit” Virginia, it is good to have Florida setting something to fall short of in making a right wing pitch on education and moderate against some unpopular liberal education policies. Or maybe it isn’t. It may just mean the Democrat can just run against DeSantis. Which may be proper as — they make the same basic appeal, after all.

Getting to the official fact check on Tim Scott at the Republican debate that the DOJ never called parents yelling at school board meetings “domestic terrorists”, as the report is full of references to the democratic glories of “spirited debate”. I think the organization dubbed such, or maybe it was a “hate group” — was something like “Moms for Liberty”? They fall outside somebody’s Overton Window, and at the very least pepper up parents to yell at school boards. I there for mark the fact checker fact check “false” eating as “false”, whether or not the full backstory justified the memos is an irrelevancy. The best moves on. Find a different market than “false”, like “true, but out of balance”.

On a betting line, I do not blame you if given a choice of Trump and The Field of you choose The Field. But each individual — nah. We enter alternate universes where each of a handful of candidate happens, but the biggest shard remains Trump’s.

The National Review almost has me convinced it will yet be DeSantis. Despite everything. Think of it as McCain 2008. Kerry 2004. Their campaigns failed into a lot my dark stretch. And then came a reckoning. Huckabee shot down Romney and Dean was all hot air.

And yes, at the moment it is the Trump show. But Iowa and New Hampshire stare at the names and change the dynamics in a hurry. Or they don’t. See how this works? It is a hinge that Trump can collapse to his corest of core support.

Mitch McConnell freezes again. He turns into another Diane Feinstein. Maybe if I bind McConnell in together the call for Feinstein to resign and retire now won’t be met with charges of sexist double-standards? For Biden, it would be good for the mental collapses to be off the stage, even if their departures will bring immediate suggestions on “and how about you?” – – not… Quite… Deserved, but almost nearly.

Headline: Donald Trump Says President Joe Biden’s ‘Toothpick’ Legs Look ‘Terrible’ at the Beach. Hey. Cool. Trump referenced the looks of a political opponent. Not a woman. A man at the line that his insults on female politicos’ appearances are misogyny.

These are the droppings that come out of the Trump appearance on Ticket Carlson on ‘x’. Which, despite reports, did not have the viewership of the Republican debate. I think?

Hard to figure out what, exactly, is going on. I have the sense that despite everything, the lack of appearance of Trump — the most likely Republican nominee — made it a more productive exercise. We have the bunch of also-runs jostling for a position in the event of a thing that may still happen — it is not a fait accompli that Trump wins — and at any rate, as we enter into multiple court trials, the ball goes into the Republican Party electorate court — these candidates are sitting there.

Squint and maybe you find a Republican Party with policy and strategy divisions jockeying of a Trump disappearing universe. A politician guy who reaches to be the next Trump but lands on the new Ted Cruz — just as Cruz attempted to run on Trump’s right and fell flat, so does DeSantis. More successful, at the moment, Ramaswamy. The only guy who is keeping alive a vice-presidential possibility in the current Trump calculus which differs markedly from 2016. I suppose Nikki Haley is the only person else who figures at all — if the Republican Party could get together a smoke-filled room to override its electorate, they may just force her through.

So. Bring on the second debate. Reconfigure the meaning. We are aged away from the quaint complaint of Daniel Boorstin on Kennedy-Nixon — the term “pseudo-event”. This does signify something, but what — we need the real events to clarify.

Within hours of a presidential primary debate that has its major non participants over-shadowing it with criminal indictments and an appearance in a non-linear tv / internet show from a man who has privately professed to hate the guy. The two closest thing to front-runners on the stage is a governor whose campaign has comically crashed and burned and is currently getting a lot of write up on that, and some rich guy who is getting a lot of write up on comments on 9/11.

Something about why were there no Feds on the planes that crashed on 9/11? That is an odd one, to be sure. I can’t say that I have heard it before. Or maybe I had but just got it blurred with the other lines of inquiry.

I don’t know that the state of 9/11 Truth is such that this can gain Ramaswamy any voting bloc, even a tiny one. Then agaon, Hillary Clinton had long been favoured by ufo enthusiasts, but I get the feeling they basically swing toward Trump off of neighbouring issue clumps.

Funny thing. The “underground” viral Southern fair sensation of the moment name checks Epstein. Conspiracy theory abounds. To be sure, we get further conspiracy theorizing — the attempt to get a paper trail on who financed and platformed the song — probably the case, as all the viral grassroots sensations left and right have “astro-turf” components in them, with the left checking the right’s and the right checking the left’s.

Funny thing too. That one guy — the bald guy who is broadly referenc -able as “that guy in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul” since I only have the broadest of broad strokes on the history and doings of the Wagner Group. He lead a shady looking insurrection shadily called off at the last minute and I do not know what really happened other than it was something beyond the official Russian government story. He is dead now. Plane crash. And what do you know? Biden hints at what everyone is thinking when he says “not surprised”.

It will take years to find out if that ages into Ramaswamy’s comments, or swerves into conspiracy analysis. Not getting any credit from the conspiracy nut corner — affixed to an anti-nato line, Russia commits no conspiracies of the kind.

We’ve become numb to it.

A click-bit article headline tells us that John Dean has five words. It is not all that interesting. “This is worse than Watergate”. Yeah, but Watergate was not as bad as Watergate.

In a previous decade I heard ramblings from the likes of Rush Limbaugh to the effect that John Dean — or maybe it was Woodward and Bernstein– were downplaying the importance of Clinton’s indiscretions for purely legacy blocking reasons. But he would probably claim the same premise with this opposite approach.

I do not know what the whataboutism for the moment is, really. I see the headline at the National Review that Hillary is back and hypocritical as ever. Did she chime in on something, other than her recent Atlantic article which I guess urged young men to be less solitary and big their grandma more? (The gist I pick up second hand — I did not waste a free click on Hillary Clinton). Elsewhere, a writer for the New York Post — urging the obvious — Republicans ought get someone else in — referenced the indictments as varying in quality — the most solid the cases of the midfield carted off records which apes Hillary Clinton. And you know — just for the sake of argument — comfort a direct parallel in details. What is a campaign promise explicitly on target with this worth and why is it worthless? Think about it in relation when a Rod Blagoevich promises to sweep out the corruption of the former Illinois governor. Didn’t. And think about it when Jimmy Carter promises the most non-lying presidency ever, as against that previous previous guy. Basically did, but set himself up badly by human nature that someone in his administration will and so comes a reputation of flakiness in letting people go too quickly.

The Against Me song “I was a teenage anarchist”? The song where the singer pauses after saying his take-away message, “The Revolution was a lie.”? It is a tried true psy-ops technique. One of the same with The Beatles’s Revolution and The Who ‘s “Won’t get fooled again”. They’re telling the kids the revolution is a lie so you will Canadian and suck it!

To be sure, watching the video, I am lost instead 2, 3, and 4 of the Revolution. Step one is shop-lift, and get chased by the police. I mention shop-lifting only because it is mentioned by someone in the comments in getting disproportionate response. Step 4 is Revolutionary Anarchy — probably more of a state of being than a realized state anyway now that I think about it, so maybe the question marks in question 2 and 3 are answered right there. Anarchy is the People you meet along the way?

Funny thing, too. A comment that is snide gets a response — conspiratorial — “George Soros bot”. Horse-shoe theory at play.

Is there anyone out there commenting that the women’s US soccer failed due to them being oh so woke? Whether this is the case of not, I guess it can always be popped up to knock down and score political points somewhat. Surely someone is easily spotted as blathering about that score.

But hey hey hey —

The team looked bad—I can’t remember a U.S. women’s team playing a brand of soccer that was this unappealing, even if it was still vastly superior to that played by any U.S. men’s team in my lifetime—but they played well.

I have generally enjoyed watching the American World Cup soccer team over the years, and generally not the women’s team. The reason is geopolitical — look, here is America’s team in not America’s sport. They’ll try their best, win a couple games, take a moral victory in losing a hard fought game to someone real, and it’s all good. America gets to be the underdog for once! The women’s team? Well, they do give a sense of the reality of different country’s opportunities with women, women athletes in particular, the fact that they are a top tier team in a lower tier for the country sport gives a sign of the imbalance. There might be a political irksome point in the marketing — as far back as 1999 when some star player whose name I don’t remember but remember ed for longer than any men’s player removed her shirt and posed arms’ out-stretched for future commercial use. There was a sense they were really selling us hard on Title 9 — which, of course, seems quaint these days now that the conservative position is to Defend Women’s Sports.

And therein lay the reason you can not blame “wokeness” on the failure of the women’s soccer team. Because by the definition, a woke women’s soccer team would have some trans-gender women on the team. Ringers, if you will. Which, to be sure, would kind of be hilarious in a culture war head rush fight.

The cross currents in how we discuss these with the electoral politics. I think the women’s team was talked up going into 2016 in the same eagerness as a Hillary Clinton presidency. But then things ran aground with the Ghostbusters movie. If only that Ghostbusters movie has been any good, we could avoided this whole President Trump thing. Today we have a Barbie movie that is bigger than big. It is too bad no woman is running for president in the general, though — but then again maybe it is just as well — the failure of the women’s soccer team is likely overpowering the success of the Barbie movie. On the score of opportunity lost, if we could only transport the Barbie movie back in time to aid Hillary Clinton’s defeat of Trump and flip it with the Ghostbusters movie for today where it would do no harm.

Question: should I be reading the Huff Post articles on how we need to take our 15 year old sons to Barbie so they can learn not to be like Ken?

There is, in the polling, a smidgen of reason to believe the Republican Party can move on from Trump. Of course, this is out -weighed by the reason to believe they won’t. But it is nonetheless there. The question on — then who? — arises, with the answer that it is in a pile of shares — believe in mind of the cast of characters running — or none can be odds on favourites for the scenario.

A little bit lost in the legal technicalities, as in — some things hinge on whether Trump believes his own crap. At least in theory. From this score the criminal charges become political — the viewer watching can believe the Trump defense which happens not to be flattering to Trump.

In the 2016 elections, there was that moment of an urging to dump Trump in the wake of the Access Hollywood video footage. It was not going to happen. In 2024 I have to at least broach the possibility that the Republicans a top can lifeline their Trump nominee in the midst of a trial. And I guess this is where the veep selection has its advantages. Tim Scott — hope and optimism — a second selling for chance to transcend our racist history — if he can pivot from Trump and sell the referendum on the old man in the White House and cultural frustrations. Pence, of course, is dead for this beat — and I gather that is why he now can dismantle some small place against Trump with quoting him as saying Pence is “too honest”. Not a likely sell, but the only sell he has. Just as with Scott and my ponderence of veep to pres — not likely, but likelier than Pence’s.

For anyone who considered John Dingell a hero, your hero ‘s reputation just took a whack. Duplicitous was his name. And —

… Yeah, there isn’t anyone anywhere who considered John Dingell a hero.

All right. I note news coming out of Florida in the “banned book” week department, and at least a consideration of how hard I ought to pound the quotations of the book as I mock the honorific. Arthur the Aardvark was in a book where “Spin the Bottle” was played. Some guy complained. Filed a protest. In Desantis’s Florida, so that gets a bit of play political-wise. And at first I want to throw the quotations in full force, roll my eyes at the next big “Banned Book Week Jamboree! Including Arthur! Right next to that Gender Queer book with the dirty pictures and award attached to it!”. But I can tap the quotations pounding just a tad as – – well, at least the claimants of exaggerated book burning sightings have one thing with him — the guy’s the head of a political advocacy organization. That is worth something in the discussion. I can downgrade it to half an eye roll.

It will go without saying that the National Review will drive me batty. Today we get the “if you ask, you have your answer in the premise” equivalence “whataboutism” headline topper of “Are Trump’s or Biden’s lies worse?”. Floating below that is an article thing the imminent nomination of Trump to the past Democratic three time nomination of William Jennings Bryan — not a bad warning heed for the party, but missed the mark with the equivocating setting on Trump against Biden. It strikes me that the Biden bashing can be done in parallel with Trump bashing in separate articles, and not comingle, if the magazine and website wanted to hold steady with detailing the whole array of problems of Trump while retaining an anti-liberal politics.

It is a funny matter. Trump could have proudly sailed into the sunset and justifiably done a victory lap, raspberry in hand, after the 2020 election — his conservative and right-wing party now re-assembling their politics in light of his term in office. But he didn’t. He contested reality, and does not have a big picture take on politics beyond his self-aggrandizement.

George Will chimed in with the prediction that Trump would not be nominated. This is taken as wishful thinking. Today I see a bolder prediction out there — Trump and Biden won’t be nominated. At the last minute and at the convention, Biden — after collecting the delegates — will step aside and let someone else have them — shoved the party has maneuvered them to. I suppose as his political success identity is he defeated Trump this gets special playing if in fact Trump is not nominated — Biden’s political purpose ceases to be. Mitch McConnell just did Biden no favours by sputtering into a public stroke, and Diane Feinstein once again stumbled to a curt “cast your damned vote!”– the dammable reminders that – – our political leaders are damned old. And unfortunately for the Republicans, their chief challenger to their party old senile guy standard-bearer misread the public and its public on just where it stands against “woke” — opposed surely, (for where ever this means) but not where “the cruelty is the point”.