Googling about on the coming matchup between the Seattle Seahawks and the Green Bay Packers, I run into a couple of Twitter feeds full of utmost certainty and cutting off of any disagreement to the line of “racist”…

… I assume there are noxious responses in the feed that count, but I saw the hard response to some sensible enough comments before I ran into them…

The racial disparity between the treatment on Aaron Rodgers and Colin Kaeperneck. Need you say more?

Nay. Actually it is simply Superstar treatment for Aaron Rodgers, that which did not exist for the benched at the time he started protesting Colin Kaeperneck. The immediate comparison for Rodgers is the situation with the Denver Broncos last year — against that for — I think it was the Ravens. The league dumped on the not account rebuilding Broncos, forcing them to play without a quarterback, where they made all accommodations for the Ravens and Steelers– shuffling a game to Wednesday and others to Tuesday for the right now marquee teams and players.

I was thinking — as I looked at these tweets and the short circuited responses to responsrs — and perhaps shuffling my assumption that “he would have been in the league somewhere if not for his protests, just… Not anywhere he would prefer” to a “then again, maybe not”…

that the proper comparison on Kaeperneck, was Cam Newton, who burned brightly and then burned not so brightly, and is probably better than a number of starters in the league but in the quest to win Big-ly they are locked on his down-side against someone else’s upside. So he is out of the league. Unless he wants to be a back-up.

But Cam Newton was just signed again — back again with the Carolina Panthers franchise. As things go, though, he was bounced from a Patriots team wanting to go with their new guy, and did indeed fall into covid politics with his positive reading and covid hesitancy probably playing a role in no one signing him. But then again, anytime a team expressed some interest in Kaeperneck, Kaeperneck made it hard for them where clearly Newton never burned his bridges.

Checking back in on the public shout out from Richard Sherman on the matter, that “Why is Colin Kaeperneck not in the league?” call — which daw him mentioning two quarterbacks who are — Blake Bortles and Jared Goff. Sherman essentially accidentally making the point against himself — yes, you would rather play at that time (contractually, perhaps, in the first case — but they hadn’t quite given up on him) Bortles and (damned if we weren’t just entering the second year with him) Goff. Both went on to have — probably — their career years. Looking up on where are they now — Bortles is apparently the third stringer for the Packers — ( pretty bad considering their back-up was less than stellar and well reigned in, little confidence given as he chunked and dunked the whole game in) — and Goff is now suffering with the Lions. I do not know what it means for Sherman’s argument, but there one goes.

Seahawks — Packers. Hey! All right thinking people are cheering on the Seahawks, for political reasons. Howard Stern leading the charge. For whatever that represents. And I guess the former Jeopardy host tryout Aaron Rodgers is your representative for that “lower educated and higher educated, dumb and smart” polling data on who is anti-covid vaxx.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez responding to Paul Gosar and his anime refitting for a violent scene where he is the hero beating up and killing Cortez and assorted Democrats as the Anime’s refitted villains —

“White supremacy is for extremely fragile people & sad men like him, whose self concept relies on the myth that he was born superior because deep down he knows he couldn’t open a pickle jar or read a whole book by himself.” 

The insult is a tad off-kilter. The “can’t read a book” line is okay and meaningful, but the pickle jar opening is wrong. I am tempted to go “woke” and charge AOC as being “ableist”, but even that is beside the point. It does not take any intelligence to open a pickle jar. It takes physical strength, and it is not hard to picture — or maybe identify — particularly in the gentrocracy we have here in Washington — some less than physically imposing competent congress critters who have difficulty opening that pickle jar. Hell — we have all been there, having to open that pickle jar and not being able to do so. You then have to bang the jar lid on the counter to dent the opening a tad — sometimes to good effect, occasionally not. All very Irrelevant. Why is Alexandria Ocasio Cortez humanizing Paul Gosar there?

Other mis-fires and imprecisions… I trip over the line on the recent Virginia Governor’s race, seen in this Democracy Now headline…

GOP Efforts to Ban Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” Now at Center of Virginia Governor’s Race.

To explain why the word “ban” does not apply here — imagine a world where the parent in question were to offer up her recommendation for what her Smart Kid Senior class student should have on the curriculum — Go Dog Go by P J Eastman. In taken the suggestion, the school administration opts not to put the book on the curriculum. It makes as much sense to call this dropping of “Go Dog Go” as a “Ban” as what we see in this instance in Virginia — where the parent wants to “opt” his kid out of reading the Morrison book. Such word usage gets lobbed lazily about in how our classroom wars in that “critical race” — to various degrees of sane and insane measures in education, and making no judgements statements here beyond a misused word usage — chartings on how to teach the curriculum are sold as “ban”s.

There is an interesting enough quote, accurate enough, from.the sort of “marginal seat” Democratic congress critter. And that is…

No one here cares about who is governor of Virginia. They won’t in a year either.

In the grand scheme of life, not many care who is the congress member of that district in Pennsylvania. Or for that matter, who is their representative.

But, yeah, sure, Data points in electoral tapestry, and all that. I kind of wish we didn’t have to bother on even that level. The Democrats had a horrible candidate who ran a lousy campaign, and his party has emerged as tone deaf on a couple things. The Republicans –well, we do note some “due diligence”, as per the 538 live blog comments:

If the Trump/Youngkin trend Geoffrey referred to keeps up, there’s no guarantee that Republicans can replicate their Virginia strategy in the midterms. State Republicans decided to hold a nominating convention instead of a traditional primary for the governor’s race, ostensibly to prevent Democrats from participating but in reality likely to prevent a candidate like state Sen. Amanda Chase, a self-described “Trump in heels,” from winning the nomination. Republicans could get creative in other states, but in a typical primary — especially in open seats — the candidates that hew closest to Trump might have the best luck. There are a handful of exceptions — happy to get into individual races later — but it’s something to keep in mind as the hot takes begin to pile in.

But it is a thing — undeniably the result was crap for the Donkey Party, even as the near miss in New Jersey’s election is probably in and of itself more worrisome. If it is any silver lining, the results are better than those that greeted the Democrats in Election 2009. For that matter they are better for the Donkey Party than the 2017 elections were for the Republicans.

A kind of elitist purview takes shape with some left-wingers in looking at election results, and I am indeed reminded of a dictum/ refrain I keep muttering. — Everyone skips back and forth between being an elitist or a populist depending. So we have multiple people peering at the “non college degree white women” swinging from Biden to Young kin as against more educated subset of women, and this brings out a latent hand shaking.

A sort of irony with the direction of these polling results, and back to 538 commentary:

There are also issues, like whether or not to keep gifted and talented programs, that have played out in Virginia. That is related to racial inequity issues, but isn’t specifically CRT-related. Even in bright blue New York City, Democrats and progressives have had a difficult time pitching doing away with such programs to parents.

Also, Democrats saying repeatedly that CRT isn’t taught in most K-12 schools â€¦ doesn’t seem to be working as a campaign strategy.

Yeah, they all kind of get tossed in the same mix though, and with that becomes hard to disentangle. When you stand arguing and angry that a “gifted” program has been dismantled with some educational establishment’s rhetoric on how it was increasing racial inequities, you do standing next to another parent complaining that their student is reading a Toni Morrison book whose coverage of slavery is leading their fragile snowflake kid to hate their white selves. One set of political pundits focuses on the former in lambasting “woke”ness, another focuses on the latter in lambasting white fragility grievance politics and, I guess, ” Karen”s…

Weren’t they referred to as “Soccer mom”s in some prior decade? Or are we in some kind of strata sub- definition where we get to, oh, ” waitress mom”s of a decade prior?

… The irony with where this progressive voting analysis goes — damned white non college educated women! — with the issue at the thrust in this election — the parent complaining about a book read in the smart set classroom — and too, a broader defining to the array of issues — in shuttling of some “gifted” programs here and there… presumably to better set up their kid for a good university … But maybe it is the lower class looking to advance their class opportunity deprived smart kids…

Worth pointing out the odd “shoehorn” effect in anti-vaxx polling: in effect, it is the not educated and the overly educated (PhD holders) who hold the refusant position. (Basically, Either not thinking so susceptible to conspiracy theory or over-thinking and so susceptible to conspiracy theory). What does this mean for this analysis of their political problem? Probably does not signify — a data point dropped as they cannot place it into their pat worldviewthat… Um… If only all these women had four year degrees they wouldn’t be opposing praying to a White Jesus bringing them to a stand against Abortion. Though, I am a little confused. Are our non educated white women married to those lower class “NASCAR Dad” s or are they Cheerleader / Traditionalist “trophy wife” material for the upper mobile dudes?

Some nuggets of missing a few marks in Reason:

It’s not hard to see why Terry McAuliffe was so desperate to pin Trump on Glenn Youngkin. Not only was there a legitimate critique about Youngkin’s Trump-voter-courting Election Integrity Task Force proposal, but running against the former president worked like a charm for California Gov. Gavin Newsom in his recall election. Voters in deeper blue states are more likely to be on the alert for anything smacking of the Orange Man, and also more likely to approve of the kind of heavy-handed COVID restrictions Democratic governors prefer.

Newsom was also running against Larry Elder. If McAuliffe were running against Larry Elder, he would have won too — in the same “less blue more purple” Virginia — even with the same “running against Trump” message — even if the same “broadened beyond any actual definition of the term” “critical race theory” confluence as an issue (currently leading to a recall election against several San Francisco school board members)… That… May or may not intersect or cover for a pile of other issues, but come in as issues people have need to redress, available for a politician to run… Was brought into the focus point.

This election comparison means squat and nothing.

…..

There are word uses lobbed all about wrongly, and I do not exactly know how to propose to keep them held. A few years back, I was sitting in Eastern Washington and noting how Eastern Washington school districts were handling the big “National Student Walk Out” for gun legislation after the Parkland shooting. A bunch of school assemblies “salute to first responders” pre-empting any canned able walk-out. Meanwhile in urban and metro centers, the walkout was basically assumed and smiled upon by those school administrations. So I am stuck considering two smug school administration political stances, pushing politics as assumed I would not agree with in high school. Could I remain seated as everyone else in class walks out — including the teacher — to support gun control measures, and end up taking a stronger stance than I care to as well stand out completely? Could I treat the assembly the same manner I did pep assemblies — ie: Skip, drive off, call it a school day? (There, I suppose, I may be assumed to be in some small congregation of gun control advocates joining the national thingamajing.)

On this score — What I always want to know is… What is the history that peoples — partisans on either side — think is being taught? I venture to guess We end up with up with some caricatures that occasionally resemble some forms of reality, and are indeed championed by real people — A 1619 Project with some false notes in it was met by Trump issuing a 1776 Project with that presents the false history notes. Both devolve into caricatures, that at times hit correctly as an actual focus worthy of scorn and at other times simply exist as a figment of an active imagination. No one is teaching that George Washington knocked down a cherry tree and refused to lie about it… Except for where someone is doing so.

A few baselines to comprehend whatever the Virginia gubernatorial election results turn out as–

The last time he won. Media reports have the line that his competition was more easily portrayed as a far right wing crank than his opponent this time out. So we can check this as a “no Republican statewide victory in the last decade” streak against the new bell-weather tonight.

2013 Virginia Governor’s race

Democratic Party Terry McAuliffe 47.8 percent
Republican Ken Cuccinelli 45.2 percent
Libertarian Robert Sarvis 6.5 percent

The count re-election results that swept Bob McConnell to massive victory four years prior was overturned, and I guess that itself helped solidify a 2.6 percent victory as signifying a new “blue state”.

Next up to show the mettle of the Democratic stronghold state against the harsh climes of a bad national environment — 2014 and a popular incumbent versus… Erm… Republican Insider writ large.

Democratic Mark Warner 49.15 percent
Republican Ed Gillespie 48.34 percent
Libertarian Robert Sarvis 2.43 percent

(Blink) (Rub eyes.)

2021 sees a “Liberation” candidate of “Princess Branding”, good for point two percent points — currently a darling of conservative web sites.

But sure — Biden won by double digits. But, see, Biden was running against Trump. I guess so is McAuliffe, but therein lies the accidental genius of Youngkin — who (er) is running locally. It may get him to the percentage range Cuccinelli plus Sarvis or Gillespie plus Sarvis got to in this last decade.

It is a little easy to slumber through an off off year election, a jibber of jabber of localized election contests which theoretically should proffer nothing beyond their localized focal points but which pundits wrap around into an extended narrative.

Virginia forces a discomfitting question: I thought we defeated Clinton and their political apparatus in 2008 with Obama’s primary. And whatever the resultant effects, 2016’s general election provided an end point. And, okay, maybe the 2014 – 2018 gubernatorial service of Terry Mcauliffe had its virtues — I admit in checking in from afar I was moderately impressed by of focal on working to promote some rather unsexy industries — seemingly a good step away from the trappings of party line political fights — but we are still stuck on the echoes of staring at Bill Clinton’s unsavory money holder — which one can look away from with help from one of Virginia’s electoral quirks: no re-elections… a quirk which has the definite virtue of allowing politicians’ weaknesses to slide away, because what does it matter? — S/he’ll be out before they matter. McAuliffe served his time. Why is he back again? Virginia Democrats are left asking the state electorate to throw away the biggest asset they have built into their election system (Notwithstanding however it has played out historically — in undemocratic terms basically a long standing US Senator Harry Byrd plugging in a new no name governor each four year increment to squad any unionization and uphold segregation).

The finale of this election campaign leaves an ugly taste. Sure, “it’s politics”. The Republican makes hay of a parent complaining that their smart kid is reading a Toni Morrison book that has sex in it — you mark this to the problem of something I heard from Steven Pinker that one ought practice the opposite of setting up straw men in arguing and, if you want to get at rational meaning in discourse build up the most solid argument in the opposition and argue against / with that — Here, there lay reasonable public policy problems Youngkn’s end, but damned if he isn’t here gratifying the problem of a parent flummoxed by an advanced student asked to read advanced literature.

Meanwhile, there is a linguistic problem inherent in some media coverage of (sigh) when a bunch of activists with the “Lincoln Project” showed up donning the khakis of the “tiki torch” Charlottesville riot mob to “endorse” Youngkin. The conservative media and twittering goblets label this stunt a “hoax”. It is not a hoax — from my vantage point the members of this greeting never had any intention for this set-up to be mistaken for the actual item of Richard Spencer and crew. We note that there is an actualBlack man in the picture. No — this is roughly analogous to the man dressed in a chicken who followed George Bush on the campaign in 1992. Or perhaps more closely the organization ” Billionaires for Bush and Gore” who refactoring worked on behalf of Nader in 2000, making themselves pests at Bush and Gore campaign functions, before refashioning themselves as “Billionaires for Bush” and chasing after Nader in 2004. The problem with this group and this stunt that they are stuck in a bit of an enclosed bubble, and assume their message will automatically signify to the casual observer. Something like… We must defeat Trump again, and Trump means the Charlottesville marchers — a message which may get Macaulife to victory (though not this stunt), but is necessarily weakened by its very definitions — degrees of separation do indeed exist whether you admit it or not. The other problem is it is hard to take costumed . We land in a land of hypocrisy — the very same partisans complaining that Republicans like Senator Cruz are defending people at school board meetings throwing Nazi salutes (a crude sarcastic political message) are positioned to defend dressing as white supremacists. In a perfect world, they would lose no matter who wins the gubernatorial race.

Nothing else is on the list of great elections. There is a curious and familiar intersectional trip wire in Seattle’s mayoral race worth digesting — you get the feeling a Hail Mary Pass by the “Progressive, Stranger’s pick” Gonzalez blew up in her face. The real question is what is everyone to do to shovelling tax incentive favors and kick-backs to get the Sonics back in town?

Our politics are dumb, but everyone already knew that. And I am stuck on a “pox on every damnedable house that is about”. More the Republicans than the Democrats? Maybe. More the Democrats than the two Democrats that every Democrat hates right about now? Possibly.

When you have a bill that is best described as a “Whole Pile of Things Act”, you cannot single out a popular item with “cross partisan support” to bludgeon an opponent or compromiser when it topples over. Joe Manchin killed Paid Family Leave, as the bill gets scaled back to meet his budgetary threshold, and his and Sinema’s revenue (taxing) restrictions — you say — and this a measure that has the support of basically everyone to the left of Ayn Rand? Great! Whip up the bill and pass it then.

I myself am a fan of paid family leave. Less so another popular measure tacked into the “Whole Pile of Things Act” — the make or break bill for President Joe Biden — universal pre-school. Maybe I ought love it — expanding formal schooling a couple of grades. Maybe I need to put myself into the three, four year olds’ shoes and admire the facts of the ground — damned if the paste don’t taste good and there’s plenty of playdo available to munch on! — But all this vets drowned out in my memories of the early educational experience — the teachers always had the worst taste in kiddie literature and movies. But now they insist that we expand the mixed horror of it all a couple years.

Nonetheless, despite these differences I have to come to President Biden’s defense — and sticking at this fox news headline — Biden briefly ‘stumbles’ during speech at McAuliffe rally, critics seize. The stumble? “In fact, we’re taking a page from Terry’s book when he was governor and when he’d be governor next time,” Biden said. “We’re emerging from this pandemic…we want to expand pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds — millions of [inaudible] students.”. The Republican National Committee posted a 15-second clip of the video and wrote, “Huh?”. It strikes me as completely coherent in this transcript form. Am I missing something here? I guess I have to understood — it is kind of an auto script working — excerpt any and all long pauses and claim incoherence where there is none.

Dipping into the gubernatorial race in Virginia — and some offshoots of Virginia politics into the national scene of Republican Senators yelling at Attorney General Merrick Garland — it becomes immediately apparent a lot of hogwash gets floated from a single statement from Terry MacAuliffe. Narrowly speaking, the parent is complaining that an Advanced Placement Senior English class is reading a Toni Morrison book. It is difficult not to slip into a bit of derision at this parent. So goes the current MacAuliffe campaign — Obama in tow… Biden cause he is obliged to throw him in somehow or the optics would be off-kilter, but we will be a little more quiet on that one… Of dumping free copies with an anti- Youngkin bookmark marking him (fallaciously, but these things get thrown about a lot ) as a “book banner”.

Still, it would indeed be political malpractice for Youngkin not to campaign against that quotation. And broader issues are brought to bear that are not as simply defined as “one good, the other bad” — even as… One stands next to chuckling yahoos. I guess the good news is I can skip away from the line on Ted Cruz — where we have headlines that “(Gasp!) Cruz defines Nazi Salutes thrown at council meetings!” and move to Ben Sasse, who I have already established I think is a decent enough Republican Senator — and bark that… actually, the issue here is in making the Nazi saluting “you’re a fascist!” yelling Hotheads a federal case, with the new side issue in the knowingly false suggestion that these particular cases are Nazis being defended by Cruz and Sasse…

… The Cultural Wars proceed apace…

Yes, I suppose the thing marks bigger issues beyond the specific case. It is the tricky matter that… The role of a parent in their child’s curriculum is necessarily going to be about notta if they are (for instance) arguing that the science curriculum needs to be covering Creationism. You have more subjectivity in the Arts and Literature department, but damned if you are not coming across as a philistine fool in complaining about about upper level smart kids tackling real literature with real issues in them… complexity becomes R-rated. But feel free to storm about and find what graphic novels with more explicit than you would like gay sex referenced in ’em are available for one and all in school libraries.

All right, seeing what everyone has a tizzy over these days. Hm. Revenge fantasy...lobbed up in a Twix commercial… Yeah, an anti evil lying message framed in the guise of a proxy school shooting from the Pagan outcast. Seems to be what Twix is selling there. Odd.

And… Hm…

I am left a tad puzzled by how this one is fed at us. The article seems to be describing some hypocrisy — Where Netflix changed their algorithm on a film that could perceivably be viewed in a noxious way by pedophiles so it would not be seen by peoples looking for “steamy” material. Good for them, unless I am reading the article wrong. Yet… This is brought to bear against the current Dave Chapelle controversy, which… I do not know what the argument is or is supposed to be. Understand, whatever algorithm I have here threw me a bunch of clips from his special the other day. About what you would expect from him on Jussie Smollett’s hoax and Caitlyn Jenner being named a “Woman if the Year”. So I gather the issue had is by people who want to bury it, plain and simply… But… the implication for how the problematic but defendable “Cuties” was marketed on the fly (away from people looking for titillation) against that for this straight ahead all on his sleeve bloviating show from Chapelle is supposed to be… What?

Following a marketing dictum of meeting the customer / audience where they are — in virtual space one where at the start of the oughts you realize that a message board is pointless, and maybe you fumble about with a blog before not finding any monetizing technique and throwing it away so in the mid-oughts you move to a MySpace page before moving to Facebook before going to a batch of platforms — probably still facebook, but Twitter and YouTube are more useful —

Well, maybe the time will come when everyone needs a pornhub account.

A Taiwanese math expert who goes by Changhsu has found the ideal venue for teaching audiences calculus, and that venue is, of course, Pornhub. To date, the teacher has uploaded 226 videos, none of which feature anything more erotic than the smashing together of numbers. […]

Though his online presence was already solid, Changhsu started his Pornhub channel last year since, in his words, “very few people teach math on adult video platforms.”

I guess that may change sometime soon… or late.

Going to his site, I see a wide discrepancy on “thumbs up” percentages for his videos. I hasten to guess the differences between those getting 30 percentages and those getting ninety percentages.

Now that I was at pornhub scanning math tutorials, I typed “portland” into the search function — and was tossed back to … That time a top less woman walked by, and I was left speculating there was a hidden camera. For pretty good reason as — yep! There she is, with a bunch of videos posted at pornhub — probably elsewhere too. Clicking about a couple of this exhibitionist salesjob, I half think I recognize someone walking by — but he resembles any number of people so this is only a “half think”. I imagine if you look through enough of this — I guess it is not actually porn — you may find me, or someone you know — never given permission — at pornhub.

A little weird that I accurately the set-up.