Speaking as someone who defended Marco Rubio’s swig of water…

For the record, I heard “Uranian”. And this is a time where I would want to see a graph for social media on ” uranian” v “iranian”. In the old days of blogs, this charting was easy — now, someone needs to point me to something.

Typing the phrase in google, I get the two definitions — “imaginary inhabitan of the planet Uranus” — as opposed to an actual inhabitant, I suppose — and “a homosexual” — I guess derived out of uranus.

The official line from the Biden white house is “uranian”. A natural flub by the stutterer in chief. And then an assist by the vice president behind him mouthing the word with a ” k” inserted into it. As it were, I do see some right wing commentary that “the president using ‘Iranian’ does not inspire confidence. Understand, we have a president who is… older than preferable… But nonetheless I fail to see it mattering. I see the conspiratorial site of note highlighting the Harris mouthing part — which, I gather is not anything Biden could take note of, so fulfilling the ” puppeteer” role line sort of falls flat.

But never mind. Throw it into the pile of partisan debris that accumulated with each president, and works as shorthand. As soon as everyone determines which word he choked onto.

Occasionally I hit up something if a hiccup in relatively throw away details provided by foreign media describing historical domestic political considerations affecting foreign policy affecting geopolitcs. I am not sure whether the writer knows what they are talking about, or just filling things in kind of rotely. Try the penultimate paragraph of this article.

On top of that, Clinton, Kohl and the others spent years rejecting NATO membership for Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Such an expansion was viewed as too expensive, the fledgling democracies in those countries appeared too fragile and their militaries were too reactionary. But then, the reform process in Russia slowed and distrust began to grow. And the Republicans, for their part, realized that the issue of expanded NATO membership was useful for scoring political points against Clinton. Many Americans with Eastern European roots lived in the decisive swing states in the Midwest. Leading Clinton to ultimately decide to expand the alliance.

Moving a tad against my generalized understanding of where the most pronounced isolationist sentiment comes in — who stands against NAFTA or the UN, for instance. I wish to know — which state’s Senate contest in 1996 was threatening to get unglued if Clinton failed to appease the Poles or Czechs?

Curious. What Americans are hosting on the “Russia TV” outlet these days? In a prior age, I noted Thom Hartmann — who had an hour and did discuss it on his radio show — being segue into apocalyptic fantasies –, the late Ed Schultz –I noted when he died –, and a Jon Stewart inspired show planting his flag in the Occupy Movement profiled in a New Yorker article that focused on how he shut down any guests who criticized Russia’s government. If f the three, and understanding the basic programming metrics of the network — highlight to the max American societal and cultural dysfunction and align against American or NATO military actions I am a little surprised by Schultz who was a firmer Democratic Party functionary than Hartmann and rather hawkish on Obama’s military actiins.

This article brings up who’s there now.

Meanwhile, at least two contributors — a French journalist who hosted a daily talk show on RT’s French-language service, and a British reporter based in Moscow — resigned in protest of the military action. And yet a handful of American celebrities, including William Shatner and comedian Dennis Miller, host shows for RT.

Not really following the trajectory of political thought on Dennis Miller — he still have his radio show? — I gauge they rope in whatever third tier radio talk show they find. I doubt it would square with his neoconservative hawkishness back when candidate McCain declaring “We’re all Georgians” when Putin sent Russian troops to blast Georgia in 2008. Shatner is apparently throwing out “fringe science” on a “science” program —

In June, RT America began airing a science show hosted by Shatner, the legendary “Star Trek” actor, which the network promised would highlight stories “the establishment media all too often hesitates to tackle.”
Neither Miller nor Shatner has said anything publicly about the Russian invasion; representatives for both men did not immediately respond to inquiries. RT America also did not respond to multiple inquiries.

The nature of the programming, Shatner is more in the clear than Miller — how can Miller not mention current events in a current events show? (If that is still what he has.)

The third name is Jesse Ventura who, the article points out and to his credit, has expressed his opine on Russia’s incursion into Ukraine: yes bad, and yes the US government has no moral authority.

Wandering into the fog of war, where — regardless of the immorality of Putin’s military aggression the ensuing tales of Ukrainian valor and resistance and stories of Russian civilian and military opposition read as wishful thinking. It might all be true. And perhaps Putin’s imperialist dreams will be squashed. But only intermittently does any clue come out of the news coverage.

Back in 2002 or 2003, a news article from some paper of record recorded that with Iraq, Bush enters period three of his presidency — the first one ending at 9/11 and dealing with his domestic agenda (a tax cut and no child left behind). I suppose we can possibly say that now Biden’s administration moves into his second period of his administration — foreign policy and the circumstances of a geopolitical cold war moving to the front — I see National Review declares it a failure everywhere and anywhere, I see the Washington Monthly pointing to an economy as going great despite inflation, and I hear a liberal podcast I listen to kvetch on the dividing of the infrastructure bill with “build back better”. (That last one buggering the question — in a Senate where nothing will pass without Joe Manchin — you didn’t want that in fracture bill to pass? Understand, the most likely outcome come November will be the title of ” Most Powerful figure in the Senate” moves from Manchin to Mitch McConnell — so those podcasters can enjoy that one.

Yeah, don’t forget the hub ub over President Trump eating well done steak with ketchup, the mirror image of conservative focus on meaningless crap of the Obama Administration.

And, sure, I hate to play the “bothsider” game, in a field where things were focused on to fill 24 hours of Fox News coverage, and then a smattering of things to fill up 24 hours of MSNBC coverage. Certainly there were things focused in on with Trump that actually mattered — oh, the attempted and ongoing slow motion coup thing. And then there are one or two I guess I can fake — no one ever explained to me what there was with Stormy Daniels I was supposed to care about, but it did do wonders for her career — I… guess?

But I go back to the well done steak thing and a New Yorker article on why it matters and give the two word rebuttal: “It doesn’t”.

Alabama Republican Party removes four legislative candidates from primary ballot

They supported Democrats. I do not know how recently. The story does not explicate. The question is… as recently as Trump did?

In GOP embrace of truckers, some see racist double standard…

The “whataboutism” too easily flipped, and indeed is in other articles from the other partisan side. I suppose the partisan angle gets doubled over by the racial angle, but that is just how it skips over.

So far as I can tell, two people with some wikipedia notability level of fame made disparaging comments on the Superb Owl Halftime show. Charlie Kirk — the late twenties wunderkind of “next generation of conservative talk radio”, and whoever the neck the other person was. By any accounts, the halftime show was a hit — reached a sweet spot for late thirty early forty somethings, represents the furthest of mainstreaming of hip hop and comes with some fuzziness of a grand racial celebration of black artists (and Eminem) without a heavy load the Beyonce performance of several years’ back. I bring that last one up only because of how the two ” disgraceful” comments read to the inevitable headlines of “Twitter smashes Charlie Kirk and (other guy)” collection of batch of tweets that… smash Charlie Kirk and other guy”. Damned racist. Where was he with the Rolling Stones retro show of a number years back, which surely made some sexual allusions of some kinds but are now lost in constant airplay over supermarket background music, and this isn’t even politically pointed as one was a few years’ back, and this is the guy making “cancel culture” commentary on “trigger” ing and “leftists politicizing everything”.

The problem is always a kind of… You can always turn the channel to the Puppy Bowl. But then… Who is standing there, coaching one of the teams of too cute puppy dogs? Snoop Dog. Damnedit, the rappers have Charlie Kirk coming and going!!!

In less famed people, random commenters in the bottom half of the Internet make the dumb line about how “not the core football audience”, missing the point of the broadening purpose of the spectacles around the Superb Owl game — the core football audience is, by definition, watching.

The question of why anyone cares to note a couple complainers on the halftime show with a blaring headline and collection of tweets — well, it is an easy job and the headline was already written.

A bad night for Jared Goff.

A reasonable and necessary point, but one that Pence just had to tag with a partisan chaser.

“Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election. And Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024,” Pence said in Florida.

I guess it is needed for any Trump adjacent Republicans in the base to swallow — that one word “when” — appropriate in electioneering and campaign circumstances, stated by many a political loser (You could hear the guffows when McGovern started using it). In this setting where the very question of democratic legitimacy is being threatened — a little less appropriate. What happens when (if) the opposite happens?

This gets slippery and a little quarrelsome:

Did former President Donald Trump really clog White House toilets by flushing official documents? His aides certainly thought so, journalist Maggie Haberman reports in her forthcoming book. Trump denies the story. But the anecdote rings true — if only as a metaphor for his misbegotten presidency.

Metaphor Smetaphor. And, yes, I do recall commentary after an obnoxious act by President Trump that “this is the first time I thought the pee tape might just be true.”. Or it might not. But I do not want to deal with it as a symbol. So as so goes the flushing of records in the toilet — if he did it, great — throw it in the record of Trump misdeeds. If he did not or nothing provable, great — there is enough ” tearing of the records” to charge him in whatever venue we charge him. But we can not throw it on the pile and say “but it’s the perfect metaphor”.