Property crimes, which rose during the first year of the pandemic, are generally moving back toward more normal levels, with some exceptions like car thefts.
Car thefts and smash and grabs are more notable and aggravating than a business getting robbed. Years ago a bar / restaurant I frequented had been broken into, a makeshift board placed over glass so the business could continue opening. The co-owner / manager of the establishment was semi-indifferentand could piece together roughly what probably happened — at any rate, the thieves grabbed something that seemed as though it should’ve valuable but really wasn’t. In terms of police reports, this would keep getting shuffled to the bottom of the pile. He imagined when the motion activated video footage was shown, the thief would have a bandana over him and would be unidentifiable — at least, he hoped he would be as the case was not worth it and better to get the insurance money for minor repairs and steel themselves from further misdemenors.
If this crime is down while car thefts are up, that is not good and to phrase it as such is a tad tone deaf.
But regardless of the numbers, Boudin’s opponents have pointed to specific high-profile incidents as a way to bolster their case that the district attorney has failed to keep people safe: After a parolee named Troy McAlister killed two women during a hit-and-run on New Year’s Eve 2020, some residents blamed Boudin’s office, which previously referred McAlister to parole agents rather than filing new charges after some of the man’s prior arrests. Other San Franciscans argue Boudin has not done enough to hold perpetrators accountable for violent attacks against Asian American elders in the city.
Boudin’s office is also just one piece of a complicated legal system: The city’s police department has been arresting far fewer people than it used to, with its lowest clearance rate in a decade.
More sophisticated progressive analyseshas it that this is a case of one guy who deserved to be gotten rid of regardless of how other cities shape up, and I can imagine the case is… Probably. You would like elections to be taken in a vacuum, and some counter-veiling realities to permeate: Biden beat out the “defund the police” contingent to win the nomination, did he not? An ex-Republican cleared into the top spot of a “Top two” primary for mayor of Los Angeles. Good for him — though the only thing this gets portrayed as is a victory for Kevin McCarthy as Speaker in November. (Ted Wheeler, I should point out, the much mocked in conservative circles mayor of Portland, was an ex-Republican.)
Another fine moment for the Democrats comes in Colorado, as the strategy of “pick the opponent” brings up Ron Hanks so Michael Bennett will win. I suppose it is not quite as big stakes risk as Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race, but one senator who will toss aside electoral results is one Senator who will toss aside electoral results. Meantime, I note a Twitter thread from a self described “middle of the road”-er not much caring for the January 6th hearings when crime and mass shootings and inflation need addressing — this a person who, mind you, was all agog against Trump during the events. This is the dilemma of the hearings — and always would be — we live in a world of problems and that happens to be one of them, address it and less oxygen exists with these other problems. Perception wavers against the Democrats. Though it is probably not taken in with the general public, Democratic Party’s cynical actions in Pennsylvania and Colorado undercut their message on January 6, and lead into the ” partisan hatchet job” counter-attack.
Linked mostly unironically mostly taking its semi a conspiratorial analysis in as analysis: Top Gun Inspires Patriotic Fervor As Search Trends To “Become Fighter Pilot” Soar. From the messages of Zero Hedge and Alex Jones, it is an odd message: is it… Good?… that this movie is making superb Patriots of the public, in an environment where the immediate combat missions looming come out of pot commitment and mission creep for Ukraine against Russia, on behalf of “internationalists” of NATO, a war these people consider at best “not our battle” at worst a slimy “fighting on the wrong side”, resplendent in politically correct messaging coming out of the Department of Defense — celebrate pride — and articles from some liberal sources on that score sell the war in the same culture war battle that Putin is selling.
In a slightly awkward environment — say, Cold War and the original Top Gun movie — the overwhelming message of Top Guns popularity and use as military recruitment tool would be “Suck it, liberals! America, F*** yeah!”. Here, in the Alex Jones sphere — things get more blurred.
Though, it could mean Tom Cruise has escaped the popular perceptions off of Scientology based couch jumping.
Confusion reigns further afield. The liberal podcast I listen to weekly chimes in on one Republican primary candidate who takes “an anti-war stance” — good, “but” the kind of anti-war that appeases Putin. We proceed with no sense of contradictions.
I note the straightening in of different materials to fit narratives every which place. The Reason magazine podcast has one of its editors flubbing information from a Glenn Greenwald editorial — mis-stating out his premise of leftists committing acts of terror not being id-d as leftist as against the partisan findings from hate acts — id-ing the man who shot Scalaise Republicans at the Capitol Hill baseball game as example — and here the Reason magazine editor misstated that the Buffalo shooter was found to be referring Rachel Maddow and the like — having to make the correction that he mixed the two up. An odd mistake, as the politics of everyone here was never in doubt or mis-stated. But he was running from a preconceived proposition, and unconsciously fit them in.
… Which, I guess, is better than the conscious re-conceptions from the Huffington Post writer and Michelle Goldberg of the NYT regarding Johnny Depp’s aquittal. It was a case I was following not at all and know only commentary and commentary off commentary — so I have no idea if justice was a mis-carriage. I suspect not, as we are lobbed with the this here thing:
Whether you like Heard or not ? hell, whether you believe her or not ? is almost beside the point.
I suppose the question on the audacity of the facile of this statement comes down to the definition of “almost”. But ” whether you believe her or not” IS THE POINT. In a case that has to be narrowly defined as meaning nothing beyond its case and circumstances — “message” be damned.
Tying the horrors of a racist shooting in Buffalo to the war in Ukraine, Diane Sare drops a load. Aiming the message at Kim Iverson. As seen here, “that dog don’t hunt”.
The thread for the shooter’s confounded belief system (which includes holding that Fox News is run by Jews) runs more in parallel with what miko dzagi is selling here:
In the wake of another damned shooting, we get some quote about the “new violence” by an instigator of the Old Violence. (Enough amends with their old punching with nun chuck bags of the cpusa for the cpusa to have attended a conference for those Chinese reds alongside the larouchies, fwiw .). And, regarding this — to be sure, this is one hellava degree into the morass belonging to the labor committees over cpi.
Hm. I prefer a diet of Marx/Engels/Lenin/Stalin/Mao as well as a hefty dose of LaRouche optimism.
I am not going to sing the praises of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, but that was a good moment she had when confronted by the crazy sputtering loon of a Larouchie. It becomes fascinating to see how it gets chunked into Larouchie lore — I am not horribly impressed by ambush politics anyways in the best of circumstances (Hi Beto!), but when confronted by seeming unstable person — you smile, nod, de-escalate.
Well, that’s one logical inference. I always found it interesting how the import of these rock bands and counter culture from UK was called “the british invasion”
And this is a tweet that must confound the Larouchies, big sellers of the “Neo- Nazi troop battalion in Ukraine!” Come charge they be — Sure, Azov has a few token Jews to show off. There is a history of clever neo-Nazi groups here in the US such as the Lyndon LaRouche cult pioneering such tactics. We’re not fooled. Meantime — Wagner Operatives, huh?
This is a good sum of splitting some “conspiracy analysis” truth from different cultish interpretations of same. I hope you understand the difference between “CIA used various fronts, Ford Foundation is one of them, to sow chaos in academia during the Cold War and enforce cultural hegemony” is different than “LaRouchies, milita movements and neo-Nazis are angry someone wrote about them”. Hot wire the conspiracy so you are at the center of it. Shave away the inconvenient messiness of history.
I await the bashing of the NYT for bringing up this: In Michigan, Ms. Mitchell’s group held a training session in May that was sponsored in part by a coalition of grass-roots groups called the Michigan Election Protection Team. The R.N.C.’s state election integrity director brought together the coalition to recruit poll workers. According to its website, the coalition includes LaRouchePAC, a committee dedicated to Lyndon LaRouche, the deceased conspiracy theorist, and Let’s Fix Stuff, an outfit run by a former Republican state senator who has promoted a theory about the 2020 election that Republican Michigan Senate leaders denounced as “indefensible.” The Rachel Marrow Show has picked up on that paragraph, so comes a newdeluge of comments. And a retooling of the “I thought he was dead / He’s still alive?” line of old.
Spiritual heirs of post election charges of fraud — Trump’s Pac charges that a 52 percent margin of a loss by their candidate hadja been fixed. Reminding me of their post election analysis when Barney Frank beat Rachel Brown — the “Vault” did something nefarious.
MEMORIES
Reminds me of Lyndon Larouche. One of his volunteers came to my house when Bill Clinton was running for re-election, my dad politely declined saying that he planned to vote for Bill again, dude got quite angry with him.
They were very active in my area prior to the Occupy movement. I have many anecdotes about interacting with them… but people always think I’m exaggerating. They would aggressively heckle and troll Ralph Nader or Green Party events… and after inevitably being kicked out, they would regroup outside and sing Christmas carol style songs about how evil Nader is and how good John Kerry is. I once spent a lunch break eavesdropping on their members doing publicity on a street corner. One was trying to explain how LaRouche was correctly predicting a future steel-shortage that would crash the economy (unless LaRouche was elected and built a bunch of rail.) … he kept pointing to a graph on their magazine saying “saying, see how this line shows how there will be a steel shortage.” The pedestrian he was talking to just said, “but what data is this from?” The LaRu smugly corrected and said: “it’s not a graph, it’s an animation!”… 3. I was radicalized by the US invasions after 9/11. My first larger political experience was the Iraq war and I was very new to the left. I met some LaRouche people and tried to network for an anti-war thing I was doing and gave them my number. … they left increasingly hostile and threatening voice mail for weeks and weeks. Doing like good-cop bad-cop strategies on my voice mail. One would call and scream and then another would call and leave a message apologizing but also heavily moralizing me.
I grew up camping in Mich-mostly at state parks & all over incl UP. My Dad & bro went 2 Isle Royale. I sat that out. NO interest in straining water 4 parasites lol. My dad told us of sovereign citizens/militia & Larouche loons. We heard stories.
Been in Virginia 40 years now, Tidewater area for half that. It’s always been Delmarva. DMV is where you go to be harassed by Lyndon LaRouche supporters.
One time I got dragged to a Lyndon LaRouche meeting because somebody said they had a telescope to look at Mars. At the meeting they were disparaging public school education, pointed at me and said they bet I couldn’t draw a line segment with a length of the square root of two. I took their ruler and made an isosceles right triangle, with side length one. They acted surprised and asked me where I had seen that before, and I said: “public school.” Nobody talked to me afterwards and the telescope was disappointing. 20 years later and still bothers me.
I think this is an allusion to, say, the mayorial candidate in LA on a “law and order” kick. Nothing terribly wrong with this party maneuvering particularly on the municipal level — It is not the same as the Larouchies or the White nationalists in Idaho this year.
Long list of third party candidates — andthe classic line of “the Dems shoulda gone with Henry Wallace!” told in jest. (More on the problems when counterfactual history mingled with the conspiracy mindset: He literally thinks reason why Russian Revolution didn’t spread to USA is because of Oregon Treaty of 1846, a year before Treaty of Cession, even though boundaries were defined in 1818. Fits a narrative, I guess. Then there’sNapoleon Bonaparte and Chinggis Khagan were proto-communists. If you don’t understand this, then you aren’t a socialist. That is a joke, right?)
About as much coverage as they garner, this is about how most “what’s on the ballot” articles address the Australian Citizens Party::
The Citizens Party (formerly the Citizens Electoral Council) has a predominant focus on all things economics and business. Their policies are focused on big banks, making a “public post office a people’s bank” and rejecting the “hysteria and alarmism” associated with climate change.
They also want to help the population “rise above” addictive violent video games, dangerous drugs, mass-produced Hollywood movies and banal popular music. Yep, you read that right.
They have candidates in Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and New South Wales.
Making the pitch: ACP policies, claims Isherwood, “oppose the tyranny of those who wish misery on the world by reducing human beings to less than beasts, inducing them to accept less than their true human potential, and denying justice, in all its forms, to those who need it.” “This”, said Isherwood at the party’s campaign launch on Feb 10 this year, “does not make us popular.”
This candidate receives his greatest applause when backing protectionist economic measures. He never mentions China, Russia, Ukraine, or Britain. And he equivocates a tad when confronted by opposition to nuclear power.
No, I can’t say that I am looking for podcast reviews of Edgar Allen Poe that include “Larouche interpretations”, but depending — I am not totally against the lark. So, Kings Cast edition 11 — to these podcasters — beware of an email from out of LPAC or out of LORG.
Apparently a good jumping to point (archive dot org has old Michael Billington interviews), Diane Sare hit Ang Ating Katipunan on Radio DZAR. Nothing came out of it.
Meantime… The best story the Bay Area press missed out on in the #CAPrimary: Ned Nuerge, running as a REPUBLICAN against @RepBarbaraLee used to head up the Lyndon LaRouche contingent that routinely got elected to the @AlamedaCoDem Central Committee #Eurasianlandbridge Cc: @eastbaycitizen
More Salesmanship
Subscribe to a patreon for thingy:. Also subscribe to see an ” unfolding personal meltdown manifesting itself as increasingly unhinged posts about Lyndon Larouche. “. I have no choice but to take the word for it.
“RUAwakeyet 1984 World” tries to sell Larouche to conspiracists opposed to his mass of policies.
Jacques Cheminade knocking on doors. Maybe you can time a meeting so he can be meeting with you when the Jehovah’s Witnesses come knocking and arrange for a meeting of the minds.
Meghan Markle makes a quick unannounced at not noticed jaunt to a memorial for Uvalde. A good deal of in jest comments abound that … She’s running for office and… Cue any variation on the Simpsons line. The feeding frenzy shapes up in The Spectator, premise picked up by prominent Twitter Larouchie, and… Hm. To be sure, a concerted photo does not require it announced at the time of the photo op-ing. Beyond that, I remain mum.
I skip over to see the headline at The Atlantic, “No, Ann Coulter. I am Not Responsible for The Great Replacement Theory”. Robert Brownstein, who a quick Google search to recall a vaguely recognizable name I see wrote a book with a title excoriating Obama as ” Worst President” and a failure, and another on the looming Civil War. At least in parts he should be sympatica with Counter –who probably has the sin of characterizing Brownstein as work in a way he doesn’t like or cherry picking from his theses, or subscribing political analysis as what is desired. I right now do not know if II is worth one of my free five monthly articles for this magazine web site to find out. (This is as opposed to my certainties that I can skip the headline “Only a Broken Society Would Focus on the Police Failures in Uvailde” as I can more or less write his script and yell at it in my head, only uncertain on one or two points in his argument — the last line of defense needs to be a line of defense, whatever the more nebulous first through twentieth lines of straightening out society are.)
When I hear of the, quote in quote, “Great Replacement Theory”, the innocuous description that cones to mind — and one of a celebratory description — is the book from the early 2000s by Judis and Ruy Teixeira called ” The Emerging Democratic Majority”. They furiously had to explain why 2002 and 2004 didn’t matter, and then stood smug with 2006 and 2008. Last I saw, one was holding onto his premise where another had abandoned it. Checked in later, and I saw that he has forlornly offered that the Democratic Party message is all wrong, and not in any way compelling or appealing. The suggestion is losses loom on the ballot; his script has been dashed. His Great Replacement dream has been thwarted. Hey! If the right of center party cannot find votes from immigrants out of a culturally conservative Catholic country of Mexico, or from refugees of a Cuba and Venezuela, they are just guilty of political malpractice.
And, granted quite a bit more comes out as important than whether someone with a ‘d’ or someone with an ‘r’ holds a majority of elected offices. So, turning to other “great replacements” — and there are great replacements everywhere you look. Taking stock of one of the states Judis and Teixeira had and seems to have largely taken the Democratic shape — Virginia, as the urban Washington suburb grows and the rural countryside suddenly sees an influx of people in a neighboring community coming with an influx of politics that may, for instance, take their guns away. Resentment or frustratiom is understandable, though in party politics the losing party should be able to find its footing. Gentrification. Granted, the biggest problem is the long time residents getting priced out of their longtime neighborhood, but in all descriptors of the events the antagonisms land on cultural changes — a history ripped out and replaced by something else — the local tavern is gone and now we are saddled with a damned Whole Foods.
What this has to do with a jackass racist shooting a bunch of black people is a tad difficult. Somewhere other than The Turner Diaries or the pronouncement that “The Jews will not replace us” lies a reality of cultures clashing against each other that warrants observation, and can’t be shoved in as a single racist conspiracy theory you automatically glom to acts of hatred. And I can’t quite tell whether it is relevant that the killer’s droppings charging Fox News — the boogeyman that is now being blasted for mainstreaming his hate concepts — charges the network as being the tool of the Jews. I could go either way on whether that is important. At the very least it slides the viewers of Tucker Carlson into some other category, or if on the same category far down the slide.
Watching a handful of innings of a handful of games from the Seattle Mariners, I represent a fair weather fan of sorts in that I quietly turn away with the recent horrible road trip — a road trip that invariably happens but if the team is any good — good enough for their first playoff appearance since 2001 — needs to land as the low point of the season and not qualify as one of multiple low points.
I see that they recently had a promotion — a bunch of fans paraded on the field dressed as the 1995 Mariners. The Mariners history is depressing enough that the fan base hangs onto the two magical years — 1995 and 2001 the distant second — neither of which have a World Series in them.
The great thing about being a northwest sports fan of a not serious stripe — and key in on the late 1990s as when such comes to fruition — is that as one sports’ Seattle representative inevitably dies in bitter frustration, you can just skip to the other sport. So, it does not much matter that the Sonics die in the second round of the playoffs, the Mariners are marginally competitive until the offensive show power gets overwhelmed by a pathetic bullpen. But then the Seahawks pick up … and are marginally competitive. That season dies with a bunch of weird wins and weird losses and a pathetic special teams, by which time — Hey! How ’bout them Sonics again?
By any accounts, your casual Seahawks fans will now disappear — largely already have anyways — and the league itself has decreed it so — there is a Monday Night football matchup against the Wilson lead Broncos to open their season, after which the team disappears from any national spotlight. So the team is relevant for one week. But there is fun in this. Run through YouTube for Seahawks games and — there are a lot there. Obviously the NFL itself posts a pile of “relevant” games of the last two decades — though notably the games of the oughts tend to be there as fodder for the history of other franchises — Tony Romo botches a playoff game winning field goal snap. But beyond that, the 1983 victory against the Miami Dolphins is interesting — notable as the biggest victory for the Seahawks until 2005. After that, well — there is a 1988 final week essentially “AFC west title game” win against the Raiders which serves as the biggest win for the Seahawks until 1999. You can kind of shadow this in terms of the Seahawks right now — maybe brace yourselves for a sorry decade? Or, maybe not. Who knows, and ultimately — do you really care?
But things do get kind of amusing there. The game oft cited as the “Worst Game in Monday Night football history”, but a high point in the career of quarterback Stan Gelbaugh as he leads a comeback against a Broncos team not lead by Elway. The problem is that it does not get counted in the ” win column” for career wins for poor Gelbaugh, as he came off the bench to relieve Stouffer. But I suppose all works out well because when the man did come around to get a starting win it was in a game won by someone else — the great Gino Torretta in the last game of the 1996 season, the greatest game of his pro career. So, balance is restored for Gelbaugh and he gets cited for a win he deserved credit for elsewhere, even though justice slopes off for Torretta — never granted a victory.
An entertaining game — of a sort. The announcers introduce the game as a “Carbon Monoxide game”. The two quarterbacks starting — one has a career record of 0 – 11, the other 0 – 4. The Seahawks’ QB gets benched off of injury — and instead of turning to a Rick Mirer the team is aiming to ship off as quickly as they can they throw it to their fourth QB on the depth chart — Gino Torretta. The Raiders bench their QB and go down to their next guy seemingly just for the hell of it. Round about the third quarter the commenters remark that the game has the feel to it of a preseason game. And they spend a decent amount of time talking about other games not happening here — the Jaguars make the playoffs off of a Morton Anderson missed field goal! (and, yes, someone has that game on youtube) — and are bored by whatever the heck this is on the field. The question becomes, though — does Gino Torretta pull this game out with great frequency — watching for his one go-ahead and eventual game winning touchdown pass to Joey Galloway — as … I guess ” his personal Superbowl”? (Though, not counted in the record books as a career win).
I suppose theoretically there would be opportunities for this kind of game with a good team — had sealed off a definite playoff berch and nothing else to play for — but it never quite happened in this last decade.
I suppose the most controversial choice of the Democratic Party “machine” was the backing of Henry Cuellar, an election that comes down to a 50 / 50 split. Jessica Cisneros does not appear ready to hop aboard the re-elected Cuellar train, and maybe she is right to not — from both her political and policy purposes and for her future career hopes. I imagine the same would be the case with Cuellar if Cisneros came out ahead.
But I am always fascinated by the turn of frames, how such or such represents Democracy thwarted. Somehow if 50 percent plus one come out and cast their lot with the choice of “Third Way” advertisements and roll behind the get out of the vote rallies of James Clyburn, this is dirty pool against the holy cleanliness of the “Justice / Progressive Democrats” advertisements and the get out the vote rallies of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.
Then again, the right wing choices of the Democratic “machine” was shown in the Democratic governors’ race in Pennsylvania — what ought be considered the most controversial move of the party apparatus, even if fewer murmurs surround it. They picked their Republican opponent. And maybe the thought comes in that Overton Window is too far gone with the “mainstream” Republicans nibbling about to humor / patronize Trump and the base on election fraud — so what does it matter that they throw the “beatable” choice in and we now have “30 Mules” poised as a basis for election policy up to run the swing state? Understand, though, the Republican “machine” would have been strong enough in shuffling money and electioneering resources to defeat him. At least, in a vacuum.
Grass rooting jumping in all over. The semi ironic thing about Marcy Kaptur who, roughly speaking politically is like Dennis Kucinich in a dress — and I first became aware of way back in 2002 when she threw her hat in the ring for Democratic Party House Leader. It was where Harold Ford was running basically to establish a right “centrist” positioning against Nancy Pelosi for his future statewide election in Tennessee. And Kaptur ran, as one major newspaper put it, “from Mars”. But her speech about how the Democrats need to quit taking corporate money and start fundraising with bake sales received gushing reviews from In These Times and The Progressive magazines. Well, such things come in her background, today in her rejiggled district (interesting — The Republicans after 2010 threw her up against Kucinich in a ” cram all the Democrats in these lines” district — after 2020, they draw the lines for her to face Republicans) — she goes up against a Republican who came to fame locally with annoying lawn painting. (He is Marjorie Taylor Greene in a suit?)
We receive word that George P Bush’s defeat represents an end. Well, wait a couple decades. Kennedys still represent in political office — surely a Bush will get a dog catcher gig or something.
Two notes on “five thirty eight”‘s live blog on Cawthorn’s primary election loss.
That’s looking increasingly likely as the night progresses, Sarah. But should we be surprised by that? Part of the reason why Cawthorn’s reelection chances are even in limbo is because he’s been mired in scandal since he was first elected in 2020. The headlines haven’t slowed down recently, either: In April, he was briefly detained after he brought a loaded gun into an airport. That same month, Cawthorn was accused of participating in an alleged insider trading scheme and was also forced to respond publicly after photos emerged of him drinking while wearing women’s lingerie at a party.
Actual thought I had when reading this last night: “and yet, ultimately, the only thing that mattered, the reason he lost… the photos of him in lingerie. Nothing else on the list was enough to boot him.”
Later, another poster at fivethirtyeight chimed in with the observation:
It’s worth pointing out here in the conversation about Cawthorn that it appeared the opposition research against him was at the very least trying to hint that Cawthorn may be closeted. Voters may be reacting to that as much as any of his scandals. The most graphic leak was a video in which a naked Cawthorn thrusted his pelvis toward a man’s head while lying in bed. The president of a PAC aimed at removing Cawthorn from office filed an ethics complaint that gifts and loans to Cawthorn’s scheduler were not properly disclosed and a video also leaked of the scheduler’s hand on Cawthorn’s crotch. There’s also a photo of Cawthorn wearing women’s lingerie on a cruise. I have absolutely no knowledge of Cawthorn’s sexuality, but it doesn’t take a genius to see what this opposition dump was intimating.
Cawthorn paints it as fraternity hi-jinks, but then there is a reason the public looks askance at as “weird homoerotic subtext”. And it is worth pointing out on this score the line from the Alex Jones website — desiring to play up his conspiratorial fighter status against the ” neo-cons” and also wanting to give credence to his statement about orgies on Capitol Hill — to the line about unleashing a full-scale hit job neither here nor there and comes indifference if he is a closeted gay man — which would just put him right alongside much of those neocons he is fighting against.
One note on the primary election victory of Doug Mastriano, who had he had the position he seeks of Pennsylvania governor in 2020 would have been able to muck up his state’s electoral votes won by Biden as against the conspiracies he subscribes toward. Should he win in November, we owe it to the Democrats, politico by way of National Review.
Viewing him as the easiest Republican to defeat in the general, Shapiro and the state Democratic Party sent out mailers boosting him, our Holly Otterbein noted, helping him rise above other GOP candidates, including former Rep. LOU BARLETTA (R-Pa.).
And while Mastriano spent less than $370,000 on TV ads, the Shapiro campaign pumped more than $840,000 to air a spot that attacked Mastriano as too conservative for voters, an ad which actually boosted him on the right, our Zach Montellaro reported. Case in point: The ad called him “one of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters” — which, to many GOP primary voters, is a feature, not a bug.
Claire McCaskill won a term by boosting her Republican opponent on to a primary victory. But it did not work for Pat Brown against Ronald Reagan. I daresay the stakes if McCaskill misfired were not up to the level if Shapiro proves to misfire in a world with six buck gas and no baby formula. I suppose this ad is almost fair enough — you are working the general election — but it would be interesting to gauge if any slams against the rest of the Republican field was essentially empty — not able to run against their basic conservative Republican positions that are getting slid into the mass of “Trumpism” and “War against Democracy” when the real thing is staring at them propped up.
Apparently the new phrase during jour, “ultra-maga” came out of a concerted political study. And we understand and to some degree do agree with political strategy in running against a Trump who is not on the ballot — a dividing or defining line is the question of “True or False: Biden won the 2020 election” — a divining question to figure out who is terminally lost in too closed an epistemology for salvaging or dealing. Because after that, the politics of the individual become — for good or bad, for good and bad — ordinary.
But no. The defined maga characteristics are policy and perhaps even some of the petty acts of demagoguery that do indeed predate Trump, and frequently are representations of real travails in the electorate’s lives. We have the the Virginia race again — where the candidate is blasted away with the Never Trumpets incoherently making a stink about Confederate marchers — leaving a public scratching its head as they instead lean in to focus on the Republican candidate’s political mix of honest and dishonest discourse on school curricula. (Yes, the graphic novel “Gender Queer” has too graphic images for laying about the school library. BUT No, Toni Morrison’s book is not too much for your Advanced Reader class kid — and McAullife’s impolitick response was in essence correct in this matter.). Matters that predate Trump, one time pro-choicer, as Joseph Biden, one time Abortion rights fudger, makes the claim that these antiabortion people on the cusp of a victory they’ve been openly seeking these past five decades represent some new scary maga thingy.
The new boogeyman of maga is … Um… Rick Scott. Alrighty then.
For the word “ultra-maga” to have any meaning, it needs to get splayed more circumstantally. Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate Primary race lends itself to a case study. The “Maga” candidate, by definition of Trump’s endorsement, is Mehmet Oz — also “maga” defined by the lines of candidacy sprung out of show business celebrity and hucksterism. Except that at a rally, Trump’s introduction of him was met with boos. Not maga. So you have to move into “ultra-maga” territory to meet the Maya hordes — surging in the polls is Kathy Barnette. Running afoul of the party as a whole, a party that Biden is campaigning as having been “taken over” and “it’s the maga party now”. But if such is the case, who in this Senate race is maga and who is “ultra-maga”?
Well, make the case every which way. Currently the Trump backed candidate is blasting Barnette for past tweets — tweets that whatever else you can say about them, would suggest she would be Foursquare behind Trump’s policy in limiting and excising immigration from a bunch of Muslim countries. Very Ultra Maga. And an attack not becoming of maga from the “Maga King” selection. Political correctness run amok. And what does this mean?
While Oz has been viewed as a top contender for weeks, especially after the Trump endorsement, his surrogates have increased their attacks on Barnette in recent days. Fox News host Sean Hannity spent significant time criticizing Barnette on Thursday night, arguing that her controversial tweets — including one calling former president Barack Obama “a horrible gay Muslim” — could possibly make beating a Democrat in a general election difficult.
Maybe. Or maybe she is the new Trump. Note too, only in that this slides a bit of shade on identity politics presumptions.
Ric Grenell, an Oz supporter who was Trump’s acting national intelligence director, has criticized Barnette’s old tweets suggesting that the conservative Christian is homophobic.
“Unfit for office,” Grenell, the first openly gay person to serve at a Cabinet level, tweeted on Wednesday.
It has been a recurring question — what the heck does a figure like Roy Moore (again, politics predate and exist outside Trump) — who in the ecosystem came to be a thumping cause against Republican Party establishment by some sort of “maga” hordes — have in common with some trolling figures for Trump — other than support from Steve Bannon?
And did the money poured into political strategy dump “mega maga” as being akin to putting a hat on a hat — destructive in its alliteration? “uber-maga” unusable due to litigation threats?
Ronny Elliott "Mr. Edison's Electric Chair"
Bobby Short "Don't Bring Lulu"
TV On the Radio "Dreams"
Archers of Loaf "White Trash Heroes"
Murray Attaway "Fear of God"
Fountains of Wayne "I Want an Alien for Christmas"
The Divorce "Yes"
The Bluetones "Mudslide"
Black Box Recorder "Brutality"
Meat Puppets "Leaves"
Gorillaz "Clint Eastwood"
Neil Young "Keep on Rocking in the Free World"
The Louvin Brothers "The Great Atomic Power"
