Muttering to myself over the weekend a “what is this bullshit?”. The funny thing is the story is the Oklahoma legislator is taking up the bill of requiring the 10 Commandments get posted on all publically funded classrooms, K-university. They’ll get to privately funded institutes later, I assume. Walk into the Auto Shop garage, and you have to pin the 10 Commandments up there? At first I think “you got the state wrong. It was Louisiana.”. But then, Looking deeper – – no, it multiplies. Louisiana did it first. Texas and Oklahoma jump in from there. Every other red state will follow, I assume.

I watch a CNN or MSNBC segment. James Carville for the Democrats. I do not know who the Southern Republican is. He expresses an indifference which I find disingenuous. “I find it funny”. I think he is setting up a dichotomy — liberals have set up and pushing their agenda in the schools! “. Somewhere a school has that “Gender Queer” graphic novel that has an image of a penis — so to counteract that we gotta get this to get a better Overton Window.
For an argument the person lobs this is not religious – it is a historically important document. I am actually stuck on a simple question. Is it? Really? I am not sure it can be said to be that. I suppose History classes can toss up a poster on Code of Hammurabi next to one for The Magna Carta and on to the Treaty of Westphilia and the Declaration of Independence (which I think the 10-Commandment-heads stop at “their creator. See! It’s right there!”). Notwithstanding that the rules in the 10 Commandments are lousy ajudicating laws — not an issue in this frame of reference as the Code of Hummurabi is not anything we in the modern world wish to follow. But. Was this any legal guide-post of any variety for the governing authorities of Midevial Europe? No? So what is the flimsy rationalization on this? Why am I walking into Auto Shop class in Louisiana and needing to see the 10 Commandments next to a poster tacked up diagramming ignition parts?

Touring himself as the top rated late night show host — and in the current climate it does strike me that a weird advantage Republicans have in a double-edged sword manner is that the fixtures of late night talk show tv, Kimmel and Colbert, are way too easily sortable into Democratic fundraisers — I had a misguided long leash benefit of the doubt assessment on Greg Gutfeld. The problem I came up to was that the liberal sphere of the Internet, your Huffington Posts and Media Matters, on multiple occasions posted and alerted “outrageous” comments from him that were (1) not particularly partisan and (2) in a jocular vein, not particularly outrageous. Maybe if we make any steps in policy directions, you would have to modify it into some things more serious, but for the moment having to be earnest in all things in all times is not a way to live.

The second reason I had in punting toward a defense and assuming he is not just wrapped up as the bottom of the Fox News commentary machine was a kind of glib commentary on just how godawful conservative is, as represented by this show and especially graphics. I have gone through this in the band’s with the Babylon Bee, a sense that the only thing maybe unfunnier than it — if indeed the case — is this endless cries of just how unfunny it is and it violates these precepts of rules of funniness. In other words, it has a right to be unfunny, and be successful as something not funny, so what are the stakes here?

I had only watched 2 segments of his show. One had stupid analysis on the Republicans’ inability to get their Speaker in but whose stupidity was basically stupid in the way a Huffington Post article I saw at the time was. The Huffington Post article was that “Republicans need to do what women have always had to do — settle!” Half Clever if I squint, but just having any relationship to the situation at hand – – It was Marjorie Taylor Greene and a few others blowing the party leadership up, there was nowhere to “settle”. I can’t even recall what Gutfeld and crew were saying, but it has no foundation for analysis. The other segment I watched was a relatively well known in small circles horse shoe theory of a leftist reading off a “[this industry] gives [number] amount to Democrats, while only giving [amount minus however million] to Republicans, so I should vote Republican. [this industry] gives [number] amount to Republicans , while only giving [amount minus however million] to Democrats, so I should vote Democrat” list. I later watched him on YouTube going over his Ticket Carlson appearance, suggesting that at the tail end he friendly brought up a point of contention, though watching it I could not figure out the point in a gentle manner that allowed Carlson to wave away concern for the poor as “and it is just used as a political prop.” He is a convenient guy for Republicans to have on their shows.

In the past few days, I do see Gutfeld go over the bend and establish himself as just the partisan hack and back end of the Fox News message machine. He has on the G8 footage of Biden, wandering off, the full footage cropped. He rails on, that the Democrats should hope he — “that” — doesn’t win because because of by “shenanigans” Biden wins, how is anyone going to believe that “that” won? The answer is multitudinous. Enough people saw other things as well. The State of the Union speech. The contradictory message of the drugs Biden needs that will allow him to not doze to sleep in the debate. And somehow Gutfeld, sitting there in New York City, fails to see all the people who don’t like Trump. Gutfield sits on a rigorously scientific number of sixty-five percent that someone (Real Clear Politics) has of Trump winning, thinking it both irrefutable and more like one hundred percent. Today I see on YouTube an image I did not click on where the man is going to scoff at criticisms he has –there is a cringe-worthy enough phrase “adjective-fake” to situate the existence of cropped photos and out of context media. And maybe he does go to the full image in this one but suggest that it does not matter because God damned Biden looks old. But I am mostly struck by the unpleasant image he projects on this thumbnail. He really does look humorless, unpleasant, and unhappy. Different from dishonest, but now I see he is that as well.

There is a clever thing which has cropped into the Trump stump speech, that whose dynamics seem to elude the Democrats who drop it into the litany of Trump “telling us who he is”. The quotation is along the lines of “I don’t care about any of you; I just want your vote.” It is the cynical awareness of much of most of Trump’s voters – – transactional politics. Arguably in the case of “public servants” and the high-minded manner politics has been discourses the premise is a double-digit sword — one person sticking their finger in the wind is another’s listening to the public. This is not precisely what is going on with Trump — here and there it is what you have on policies of pandering with just about another president and most politicians — but its hard edged double edged sword is still the same result.

The effect is that when Biden offers one bottom-line assessment on Trump, shown in the latest ads — “Trump’s only in it for himself” — which, to be sure, is a good line of attack — no other president in American history has as all encompassing a personalized ego-driver of purpose for governance — there is an eye-rolling response for it. Yeah. That’s what he said. And it is both kidding and serious, in the guise of both kidding and serious. Such is the logic of President Trump.

I guess the more honest lowest common denominator pitch, something agreeable to whatever dearth of 2020 Trump voters that Biden feels he needs to gain, and which more weird waverers of “Biden so old” youth and inflation gaspers could comprehend — then the “Something broke” line is that Trump has lost the script. Or. Mag a has lost the script. Thinking this in terms of the dark insight of Steve Bannon — giving his listeners and followers a mission, point, storyline to their lives. Think of it back to Trump’s 2016 campaign and the fatal flaw of Hillary Clinton’s bumper sticker and campaign slogan — “I’m with her”. Trump’s 2024 line is “I’m your retribution” — which is directionally correct — “I’m for you” not “you’re with me” — but a step beyond his old message, enough to wander back to Hillary’s slogan even if it binds some supporters into followers.

Think back to some legitimate issue that your JD Vances had as something ignored and somewhat propped up by the coastal elites into the downtrodden rural Americans. The Opoid epidemic. The medical establishment prescribes drugs off of a profit motive and hooks patients to this mind-number. You can do a flow chart and dwell however deeply you desire for conspiracy to wrap it into. But it fits a script that Trump 2016 can walk into. He is still for you. 8 years later, you are needing to write all the complications into the storyline. And the question — what is he fighting for anymore on your behalf? — is unanswerable. The cause is a personal vendetta against shared enemies, theoretically, but everyone knows why Judge Merchan is his enemy — why is he yours? Do you have a traffic infraction you need him to rectify?

So goes something Biden and Democrats ought pound. The script that has some sense to it in 2016 is incoherent now.

Today we have word that Biden wandered off to say “hi” to some soldiers at a G7 meeting. The soldiers cropped out in conservative media. And, well, you can say that Biden does look old in both the cropped and uncropped version of events, as German chancellor taps him on the shoulder — to get the photo done pronto.

The question I stare at considering the “Lowest Common Denominator” line pitch from the Biden campaign against Trump — the spate of ads that has it that “something snapped” in Trump after losing in 2020 — is “To what extent do I agree with it?”. Some. Some not. The metaphor is probably off even in the “some” case, as that would suggest a clearer demarcation than what we have and what is the problem of January 6 — it could only be true if there had not been a long set up before the election to declare victory on election night, and it could only be true if Hillary Clinton’s points in the 2016 debates on his refusal to accept the results of his Reality tv award non results were not something that happened. Continuations are not breaks.

It is a theory of an election. Latino and Black men and Youths are shading off from Biden. The younger cohort of Generation Alpha or Zoomers are more Republican than their older cohorts — Trump has always been the normalized for them never knowing how absurd this reality is, they became radicalized during civid playing video games, have a natural desire to rebel against their older siblings, the Democratic Party standard bearer looks his old age and is easily cropped to tik tok as in farcical ways to accentuate it, and they never experienced the Cult of Obama. The landing bridge off of a handful of 2020 Trump voters needs to be smooth. See too that the one splash of attention Biden gave during the big trial redirected attention to the case not coming — Robert De Niro was not about to dwell on something broadly viewable as “paid money to shut up a poem actress” — the seaminess a good shield from the crime, the crime of you want to bother with it a tad too white collar in nature.

The gamble of the election campaign line. Frankly, my gauge it is successful into November. But then the dumb question is — can, at long last, Trump go away, or be made to do so? I have my doubts. And we go through this stupid game yet again, with a few more of those undertones of the electorate make up exposed.

Pat Buchanan and William Safire are in a bull-session writing alliterative phrases for Vice President Agnew. They high-five at “nattering nabobs of negativity”. Somewhere along the line, Safire writes down “bleached blonde bad built butch body”. Hands it over. Buchanan stared at the paper, says “I don’t get it”, crumples the paper and throws it into the waste basket.

I throw my hands a little at one point made in Marjorie Taylor Greene. It is the effects of gerrymandering, they cry. We need to fix partisan gerrymandering, a production that has in the past two decades gotten sophisticated past anything perceived prior to this century. Never mind that Greene’s district is the same geographic area, largely, as that of Congressman Larry MacDonald, John Birch Society President. They get their congressional representative and unless we are thinking “decimate that one”, that just becomes a re-gerrymander.

I go to a Fox News story covering the latest Biden ad — headline “Robert De Niro narrates Biden campaign ad with debunked or questionable claims about Trump”. Reading over the tight three paragraphs, the story describes two items in the ad as “debunked” or “questionable”, apparently deciding to ignore the rest of it. Trump recommending drinking bleach — apparently did not happen. This is one where I had to look it up to see what where huh, and I do see a fact check website mark this famous incident as “mostly false”, and then moving into the details of the famous incident all of which should move the claim over to the “mostly true” category. It hinges on the fact that he did not use the word “bleach”, though it did describe scientists as “horrified” at Trump’s comments. I am a little bit at a loss as to what to make of this categorizing. The desire to bend over backward The other reference the Fox News article described as out of context — “bloodshed” — the familiar “he was describing the auto industry” line. Putting it in the proper context, of course, is the line followed in a speech that begins as his campaign speeches do with a celebration of January 6 criminals. So in an immediate context they have some point, but it collapses in the slightly expanded context and even more in a broader still context. There is no plausible deniability.

There is one aspect of the Trump Libertarian Party speech, somewhere in the boo-ing and energy gained from such. He did give them a single promise — he is going to commute the sentence that one jackass, the dark web Silk Road guy, Ulbrictch — a cause no one outside of this political orbit cares about, and which strikes me as kind of just looking over a list and plucking something out. Transactional politics at its best. It is, I guess, more than Biden could give them — though I find it hard to see how it should counterweight the indifference at getting another three percent in lieu of hitching their ride with a supposed “winner”, the only other item Trump offered this party faithful and one which if it was of good concern would not have them sitting there.

It is hard to recollect just what was the, quote-in-quote, “controversy” on the Obama invitation to the basically safest of safe black hip hop / rap stars Common. The Fox News hosts, Sean Hannity most prominently, ripped through his “incendiary” lyrics, ignoring that the next lines negate the incendiary-ness. The big take-away was that Sean Hannity must be at war with The Gap — as Common appeared in some advertisements for them.

Looking at wikipedia, an issue was brought up on some allusion to support for Mumia Abu Jamal, which the Obamas waved away as a disagreement. The other name referenced that a police union grit their teeth in press releases was Assata Shakur. It does not appear either was presented at this White House poetry presentation.

Today, Fox News is a flutter in pumping up a Trump rally made in the Bronx. The YouTube images and headlines get comical in its hallucinatory gushing. There is a black “law and order” “victim’s rights” anti-bail reform figure, appears to be a fixture of the Fox News sphere — and quotations “There was something ‘supernatural’ about the Bronx rally”. Also “magical”. We get some close cropped up close crowd shots near Trump himself and as rejoinder on the MSNBC and related media outposts on relative smallness of crowd, an issue as Trump claims it is bigger by a factor of 10 — “AOC is Jealous of Trump’s Crowd”. And they interview every single black supporter in the crowd they can find in what was — I see in the backed overview of the grouping — largely made up of white people, for “Media shocked by Black Trump Supporter” line.

Not displayed here is anything for the two musical performers Trump brought into the stage.

Williams faces charges over an alleged conspiracy to commit murder and Chambers has been charged as a co-conspirator in a sprawling 140-count indictment, according to a news release by the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office and court documents. They have pleaded not guilty to the charges. Williams and Tegan are two of 32 alleged gang members who were named in the indictment, which includes charges of murder, shootings and assaults.

Did they come to support Trump by weighing possibility of pardons?

There is no story on the “Unified Reich” business. It is not even the case of shoving aside through wormhole apologetics the “bloodbath” comments — implausible plausible deniability — “he was talking about the auto industry!” – – or “good people on both sides” — by the point in the game, any actual “good people” should have been able to see they should skip this march. And it is not even what I first assume the story is — the edgelord Trump supporter sneaks the phrase into the video. No. A computer program with a backdrop of historic newspaper fodder. Barely noticable. It was an amateur production put before Trump, so the blathering I hear in Joe Trippi’s podcast on professional ad making does not mean anything. You can practically see the kinescope logo on the video. If you must place the trouble on keeping it up for 15 hours, keeping the neo-fascist Steve Bannon “no enemies to the right” contingent, then maybe you can go there, but otherwise I just want to see a pivot to everything else and get this one dropped.

And I watch an MSNBC harping on Donald Trump speaking before the Libertarian Party Convention without pointing out one thing. They did indeed invite Joseph Biden. He just had nothing political to gain from speaking there, as Trump and Robert Kennedy Jr do. There is a story about the entryism takeover by the “Mises Caucus”, though this MSNBC segment and interview with deposed former delegate fails with any specifics on the story so does indeed get the broader based story wrong. There is something in the surreality in reading Reason magazine and seeing a disconnect to maga Trumpers in the comments section — a heavier variant of what is seen at National Review, and as for the Libertarian Party — the invitation to Trump and even unappealing there is not the issue of story, but this Bob libertarian Trump merchandise selling at the convention is and it is the story they seem to think Trump speaking there is.

Ted Cruz. On CNN. Dizzying spectacle of an interview, dancing off from the question of “accepting results of the election” with the call that they never ask that of a Democrat. Such a line I am familiar enough with — Sore Loserman anyone? — but I am stuck on his answer of proper 2020 election protocol, what he had in mind in challenging the election results to weed out the fraud. The 15 person panel that determined the 1876 presidential election. The one decided on a party-line 8-7 vote for the Republican Hayes over Democratic Tilden. Generally history records as a fraudulent result, except with some relatively recent points that the black freedman vote was suppressed so it is democratically speaking more of a wash them you think. The one that the (Southern) Democrats were happy to make a deal with Hayes on in favor of the end of Reconstruction and the move toward Jim Crow. Maybe there are nuances I miss, details out of place, but for the last bit my understanding is this has been how history has been taught — at first with it presented favourably then not so much. Just to place Ted Cruz’s idea on how 2020 ought have gone and 2024 ought go forward — and knowing I would have to gird myself for the onslaught — I do want to hear Ted Cruz’s at least five minute history lesson on the 1876 election controversy and a maybe one minute post-script thing it in to present day.

Who hasn’t flown an upside down American flag? Or maybe Samuel Alito has emerged as a fan of latter day Johnny Cash, flying the recording label logo for his last albums.

It does occur to me that round about 2003 and 2004, one of the other of the liberal mags — In These Times or The Progressive — was running thev”McCarthyism Watch”, reporting on this or that firing or infraction levying or neighbor dispute turned fistfight on an upside American flag, the “universal distress call” of America in crisis. The problem in figuring it to any protest march in the lead up to the Iraq War is that this cohort of the populace kind of did not have all that much interest in the American flag — we talk of flag burnings but it kind of does not match their anti-nationalist ideology.

So on two scores, Samuel Alito emerges as more radical than the more radical bloc of the anti-war marchers. One is he flies a flag symbolically against proper flag waving protocol. Two is he does so in service of either the proper election of one guy over another, charitably, or, D’Souza’s 30 miles dumping game ballots into the mix.