Simply put, the two strains of thought — one, the old isolationist impulse that we are a nation of immigrants who came here to get away from Europe’s wars a d territorial expansion (as European descendents here affix to solve the indigenous population here’s territorial wars by gobbling up their land, but never mind my simultaneously politically correct and politically incorrect statement), and two: the land of Ukraine has spent its time as Russian territory sometimes and as not Russian territory at other times and has in the past and will in the future are valid and, if correct or not in grand scheme of things — or even if just happens to be less correct, should not simply be demonized. The other line, more affixed with the claim that he is now just mouthing Putin’s rhetoric, on NATO expansion and “it’s Ukraine’s decision” predates Putin personally and lands back at geopolitical concerns as the Cold War wound down. Surely it is a rationalization and prefix, but one that has sat there for decades nonetheless.

But go ahead, blare away at Rand Paul in Huffington Post headlines and CNN gasping and forced tweet memes. Just recognize why people do not follow along with the insta- outrage… Whether or not his is the correct assessment.

The Democrats in Utah just endorsed the Republican “Never Trumper” CIA Bush stooge 2016 Got a chunk of votes amongst Mormons Presidential candidate Evan McMullin. McMullen promises that if elected, he will not caucus with anyone — Republican or Democrat — which I suppose has him joining in the tradition of Dean Barkley who haunted the halls of the Senate for two months as an act of petulance by Governor Ventura — but tends to deny him any power or clout, and probably runs into the ground in reality. Maine and Vermont have Independent Senators — Maine’s Senator easily jumping from Bush supporting governor to Democrat supported Senator against a Democrat who garnered a ten percent or thereabouts, Vermont’s wants to play Socialist. Alaska’s Democrats threw their support behind an Independent last time out. Then there is the story of Charlie Crist in Florida who, last time out running for Senate played A duplicitous game in saying who he was caucusing with to win Bob Dole’s visible donation as endorsement but in desperation as election day came had to announce he was on team D.

I do wonder if maybe McMullen may as well announce be is caucusing with the Republicans. His predecessor is Joseph Lieberman, gnabbing the bulk of the Republican vote while running to remain in the Democratic caucus.

The Republican in question is Mike Lee, who gets tapped and characterized as Trumpist even as he predates Trump and has a separate agenda. He becomes the focal point where activists can lob questions off of Mark Levin radio commentary and books on passing a new less Democratic constitution. From there I see that Bill Maher made some comments on Lee comments against Democracy, and cue the refrain “It’s A Republic, not a Democracy.”

Currently Lee is embroiled in a controversy about January 6th plots, which brings me one puzzled face round about here:

He knows that when I said things like ‘Tell me what we ought to be saying,’ what I was just trying to figure out was ‘What is your message?’ He knows me well enough to know that that doesn’t mean I will do your bidding, whatever it is,” Lee said in a 45-minute phone interview.

“Conversations I had with him at the time on the phone and in person, he knew that. He knew I was not there to do his bidding,” Lee said of his conversations with Meadows.

Lee said his texts to Meadows are being used out of context for “political motives” and were “leaked” during an important period of time in his reelection campaign. The messages were obtained by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and reviewed by CNN.

Given the state of the Republican Party, the “political motivation” may just as well be Lee himself passing the emails on to shore up his base, skeptical that he is too aligned with stringent extra Constitution Constitution rhetoric as against Trump conspiracy self serving populist.

I know the genre. The internet is a big place, all types post all types. But mostly a-normal in one manner and other. Enter “Libs of Tik tok”. Slot it next to — what was the name? — ” People of Walmart” or something like that. And it appears to be not a horrible site. Except when it is.

I suppose if they wanted to film these proceedings they would be candidates for that thing. Except they wouldn’t be — their fashion sense was not draggy enough.:

A few years’ back I was at a coffee shop in a major book store I treated a tad like a library in picking up books for reading as I drunk coffee. I was a reading a book on modern conspiracy theories and the politicians mainstreaming them. So comes a quote from a congress critter or other — that the goal of some educational program or other is to make kids as gay as possible — gays even gayer and straights just gayish.

Meantime, behind me is this group of young educators, radicals, a collection of thirty year olds one foot in some college tenure track and one foot in a radical study group. They were shifting through a bunch of books to build a syllabus. “And this one I love love love”, she says. The title is along the lines of ” The queering of the environment” (the environment referring to trees and airs and plastics). It dismantles the patriarchy, capitalism, and various buzzwords which I have heard to inter-mingle and reference as cultural affects derived from Marxism is tantamount to the Nazis reference of “cultural bolshevikism”.

“But,” the radical go-getting professor sighed. “I am afraid my students just aren’t ready for this one.” And she lightly packs it away and proceeds to find the track of books that can lead to the advanced study represented by “The Queering of the Environment”.

To what extent the conspiracy minded tea party politician waging against making everyone as gay as possible has his enemy in this study grouping educating someone’s mind, I can not say, except to say that they do show he is right to some degree. Sitting there at World Cup at Powells reading that while at the same time hearing that was jarring to say the least. I imagine throwing the two in the same room, just so they might

You do, though, wander into easily mistaken reference points easily decontextualized, out of the sea of crazy yahoos with dreams and schemes of a definitionally unattainable utopia. So:

Then a few days later I was scrolling through Facebook and came across a Fox News post about a professor defending/denying comments he made about “children enjoying sexual attacks by pedihiles” the headline implied. Naturally there where some FB comments that amounted to death threats against the professor. I then read the Fox story and first learned that the original source was Libs on Tic Tok. The professor’s explanation is an example of how comments taken out of context can be extremely distorting and potentially dangerous. He was speaking as part of a academic zoom meeting on the subject of helping child victim of pedihiles. As an “expert” in the filed, one sub category of child victims were those conned by the predator into thinking they were “playing” and manipulated into thinking that was happening to them was “fun”…when of course they were being raped by sick individuals. In cases like this, the professor said, when the victims have been manipulated into thinking this was “fun”, there needs to be a much different approach to first make them realize it was not “fun”, but bad. How that gets translated into the professor saying kids enjoy being raped by a pedihile on Libs of Tic Tok part is both shocking and totally irresponsible language (that is indeed protected by the first amendment). And now that professor has people commenting (in the same state he lives in) that he should be killed, because Libs of Tic Toc grossly took out of context what he was really saying. Now The Washington Post story makes sense. Like the story pointed out, this is what this anonymous account does.

Not a bad site. Except when it is. And I would hope for enough intellectual honesty to make distinctions, but I doubt it is there.

I actually do not know the details of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay bill”, but I know enough not to trust the glib framed mock name. It might be a sensible package; it might be a horror-fest worthy of its nickname — either way it will be classified as the horror-fest and get a smug celebrity on an awards’ show mocking it as so. Whether that matches any reality or not.

And I guess I should look into the details for any precise measures, but I am stuck that a “woke faction” spoils it going in.

Besides which, from the smiddling of details I have browsed past I thought it was more “don’t say trans”. In caricature at least.

Likewise, I would need to look into the details of the supposed horror crest on math curriculum, but I suffer the bizarre reality of a couple floating e hot chambers th get commented on and then comments receive commentary where reference points are missed to the point where one side’s derision gets derided easily because they missed what the original derision was. See here a supposed fixing of math curriculum springing supposedly out of an overweening 1619 Project stuffing, easily picked examples here or there that crowd right wing sources and are either seen less or seen in some more sanctified context by left wing sources. Or so is my best guess on the lay of the land in staring at these fist clenching headlines and bad late night host political jerking before examination.

Miami Herald by way of Huffington Post lets us in on a warning — Gov. Ron DeSantis Is Following In Richard Nixon’s Footsteps, Miami Herald Warns. At first I assume this is a claim of focus on cultural matters, but reading it is a claim that a target of Disney is the first step in compilation of an enemies’ list for selective political retribution, and at first we see Disney soon… Hundreds. Politicians politick. The governor of New Jersey selectively targets the NRA with sharpened laws and clever enforcement. See California for other examples. Say hello to Kampala Harris. Maybe everything is Nixonian, but it is that case that when everything is Nixonian nothing is. This being a case where the headline blades that Florida’s governor is seeking to rescind Disney’s tax exempt status — ie: A special perk and corporate privilege carved out by previous governing officials. And from there the commentary of Disney’s sanctified history as against actions made by Florida culture warrior politicians becomes wholly surreal.

Did you hear about Disney’s new conception of an immersed reality? Haven’t we been there?

Not all that impressed or startled by the image of the president falling as he walks down a flight of airplane stairs — it happens to young men sometimes and will happen to old men more often. But file it away as a reference point web n more serious

I can interpret the image of Biden shaking into thin air as he looked over at a mob gathering about Obama and then walking off a bit more generously than, say, the YouTube clips thrown by Sky News. A “shouldn’t they be streaming to see me, who is after all President?” as opposed to the dementia assumed. It is a only a bit more generous, as the game comes that everyone wants to see Obama, damnedit.

Trump was not well. Reagan was not well in time. Nixon was not well. Wilson was not well.

We can assume that the Democratic Party are trying to figure out how to steer a new candidate for 2024. And this does not even necessarily mean Biden is policy wise a failure — I am a minor fan of various one term presidents — political failures and otherwise, and with Biden the political dilemma is something that “the center cannot hold” — where a center means dragging in the remnant of some rust belt voters who are recouping to the sounds of an Alexandria O. Cortez. (Call it false consciousness if you want, and I heard a liberal podcast offer in terms of sizing up dim prospects in Ohio or Pennsylvania senate elections the need for “deprogramming” “brainwashing” in the face of, say, JD Vance.)

By definition, any hope of a center holding for long was in trouble. The center is too old.

If it makes one feel better, he is in better shape than Diane Feinstein. Say you want about James Inhofe, but at least he knows to retire before he hits 90.

Protecting the president. Or, I guess, not. I sense if one wanted to, they could backtrack some details to lazily hypothesize on the JFK assassination, or project such an idea onto a Trump contingent chipping about secret service jobs in the Biden years.

Conspiracy theorists, UFO hunters among first to flock to Obama’s once-secret presidential records. Sure — who else is interested in such dry materials except people seeking dots to connect in prearranged shapes?

Wait. Haven’t we heard this one hereabouts? Four people were arrested in Germany and weapons were seized in an investigation into suspected anti-government extremists who allegedly planned to cause a long nationwide blackout and kidnap well-known figures including the country’s health minister, authorities said Thursday. Michigan governors have a word of comparison here — unless, as some believe, that was the FBI leading in on it.

Reportedly Donald Trump had a burner phone, used presumably, inferentially, or allegedly to organize the events of January 6. Surely, though, as events and details are disentangled to … No one’s satisfaction… We can refrain from presumptions of scafflowing (back in the day, keepers were assumed the province of drug dealers and pimps, right?) — and we can still maintain a place for burner phones and throw up that slogan — “When Burner phones are outlawed, only outlaws will have burner phones”.

And maybe I am giving too much credit in this here binary political culture, but I really don’t think there is a contradiction with this. To a Federalist article — “Cancel your Disney Vacation and go to Bollywood instead” a tweet barks out:

Cancel your Disney vacation and support *checks notes* proud queer icon and longtime supporter of LGBTQ rights Dolly Parton

A supposed “gotcha” in the culture wars. And it depends, I guess, on what precisely one is “boycotting”…

… Whether accurate or not not the issue at hand in claiming “hypocrisy”…

Sure, and Dolly Parton crafted her image off of cheap hookers, and her exaggerated features seem to borrow gay culture in the form of echoing drag queens. But then what is the song “Joline” but some cluster fuck of accepting a smugly cheating husband and accepting herself as blame-worthy? A fear seems to be that the corporate creation of art will shutter meaningfully problematic art such as that with definitions of problematic set by someone else.

Or, you skip to this:

A polling story comes out. Weird headline. Big support for the gays. Half support for the trans. Whatever the heck the terms get set on and are supposed to mean when things comes down to finessing elementary grade education and smirking at athletic disparities.

See where it takes the culture, I guess.

Heh.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said lawmakers on the Jan. 6 House select committee are deeply interested in the 7-hour gap in former President Donald Trump’s White House phone logs on the day of the Capitol riot, saying it seems to be “suspiciously tailored” to the period when the unprecedented assault took place.

Raskin, who’s a member of the panel, told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that lawmakers had been able to piece together some details about who Trump spoke with that day, but were still missing key information.

“It’s a very unusual thing for us to find, that suddenly everything goes dark for a 7-hour period in terms of tracking the movements and the conversations of the president,” Raskin said.

A number of differences between Trump and Nixon. Nixon’s tape was missing 18 and a half minutes — all very disappointing that Rose Mary Woods accidentally deleted it as the audio would have possibly wholly exonerated Nixon —

— or maybe revealed the information about the aliens —

But this missing information comes from a different direction. It is a sheet of paper. Someone accidentally spilled a bottle of ink on it. Or maybe it is a log file on the computer, corrupted by a virus so sadly had to be deleted.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

A fine line between the two categories in assessing on cultural high pronouncements of wok ish statements of “why Trump won” and “why Hillary lost” — things with no meaning in policy but where a vote is the clearest way of saying “go away” —

I gauge the following headline in the latter category — “Why Hillary lost”, attached as it is to gender but with no bravoda in it:

Petromasculinity is the leading dealbreaker for dating app users, OKCupid says. Here’s what that means.

(Tap tap tap)…

Is this story even worth reading? Deconstruct the appeal in the “drill baby drill” line, find phallic symbolism in perpendicular shapes pounding the ground — too bad no mounds to complete the imagery.

When it comes to the environment, 90% of users care about it, and women are 7% more likely than men to care. Reynolds acknowledged that responses across the country were pretty similar and made OkCupid “a progressive app.”

I suppose the article could serve as a tip meter for pick up artists for purpose of lying to get laid — and thus serves your “toxic masculinity” men. Otherwise, I wait to see what preface we can stick in front of “masculine” — “chemo-masculinity”.