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”.

One of the things about so-called “cancel culture” is that it tends to be pretty easy to just cancel the cancellers. So your country music guy with angry political lyrics now slides somewhere underground, kind of. Cool. I guess. At any rate, an audience remains so even if I side with him, It is impossible to situate him in a victim narrative. Other figures do have the problem that once relegated as offensive, they track into that place of offensive ness, so what was once one facet of a fuller repertoire becomes the main focus, and the problem then is mainly of expressiveness or directness more so than offensiveness. I sense that is not at issue with this guy — just this generation’s Tobe Keith.At

It is here that I am a tad torn. I am moderately curious to look in and see what the core controversy, but I sense the song and video were manufactured for controversy. The effect is that when I next deign to a “let’s listen to some songs and culture that have been deemed by the culture in some way as jokes or noxious” — maybe then I will take a ganxer. See if I am as bored and disinterested as with Robin Thicke. Or if it is defendable or indefendable it’s mix of “bad politics, but sure is catchy!”

I guess you can excuse Marjorie Taylor Greene as encased in a bubble at T-Pac (not CPAC). So she gives a speech with a list of the scary tthings President Biden is attempting to do. The Biden Presidential campaign immediately takes this list, crops out the words “Socialist” and “Big Government” and tags on the “And I approve this message.”. All good fun, and every Republican operative watching dreaded this inevitable cutesy ad. What I am stuck on is Taylor’s next act. She dropped Hunter Biden’s penis into the Congressional record. We are in incoherency. Maybe there is something with Hunter’s affairs that actually do matter – – maybe the reference to… What was it? “The Big One”? … actually refers to and thus implicated Joseph Biden. And from there we imagine that Marjorie Taylor Greene is just employed by the Biden Campaign. Actual c rap is about to fall, so obscure the issues with Hunter’s junk, so the populace will only shrug.

In other political news, the National Review has a Harvard left wing professor chomping at the bit openly writing that Biden ought ignore Supreme Court rulings. This might suck. But Trump does Biden about two or three better. He is stating that he will ignore court rulings. Biden’s degrees of separation is maybe three or four. Trump’s is zero.

The Democratic Party states at the setting up of “No Labels” over to its right plank and the Democratic primary candidacy of Robert Kennedy Jr in tandem with the Green Party candidacy of Colonel West on the more or less but not entirely left plank. I gather they assume Kennedy will get nowhere — we can all swallow uncomfortably a 33 percent get in some Oklahoma primary — but will highlight wherever they can when Kennedy — situating himself as he is firmly and unequivocally in the conspiratorial void — rumbles over to the line about The Jews.

Dick Gephardt has popped in to lead the fight against No Labels. Hysterical. Yes Labels! It is an item of curiosity, as Joseph Lieberman hovers in to get himself Secretary of State job in a Joe Manchin / Jon Huntsman administration — just out of curiosity — if you poll the nation and identify no parties (labels, if you will) — might Manchin beat Trump and Biden? Perhaps. Only because no one knows Manchin who isn’t paying attention.

Structurally we are in that odd spot where the President will have low opinion ratings no matter what. In one sense, I never understood why he ought have high approval ratings — ever. I can’t figure out how you can shuffle the deck for a more popular figure to pop in. From a personal perspective, I won’t be able to answer what my opinion on President Biden until sometime after he leaves and I can assess it — poll me and I got nothing. The politics of the moment leave me flummoxed. There is junk that is manoeuvring its way into defecto Democratic Party orthodoxy I want to see cut out of the Overton Window but see likely a list cause. Reparations — a good way of bankrupting a state and municipalities in the name of Social Justice. “Gender affirming care” on minors — as though double mastectomies sound like great thing for thirteen year olds. On the latter I see Ron Desantis runs a laughable ad — somewhere to the right of President Bush who greeted a transgendered college classmate warmly during his time in office. On Trump, we are stuck with that expansive of “Trumpism” that ignores few actual policies are that far afield from orthodoxy — and the day will come when Democrats will cite Trump on, say, trade issues in arguing against some evil disagreeable Republican policy proposal that goes too far. (Just as had been done with Robert Taft on public housing, Goldwater on some things, Nixon as the last liberal president, Reagan on immigration and things, and I just referenced Bush as against Desantis. Republicans did this in finding new favour with Clinton on welfare and used McGovern as a cudgel on some Labour issues).