Drone-Mania!!

 

You know, while the quality of mercy is not strained with respects to highly performative Republican arsehats, the benefit of the doubt has been badly overdrawn, and when former PA gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano posts something like the above, well, I presume "cultural illiteracy" as well as several other kinds. The kneejerk, Pavlovian tendency to seize any passing whaaambulance in their jaws is something MAGA's will simply have to see to on their own. 

While many no doubt assume their audience is stupid, I'm pretty sure.... well, you KNOW.

But with respects to the headline-writer at The New Republic--is it the "worst"?

There is--another. Nancy Mace speculates they could be from something "outside our universe." 

The Red Wave that Wasn't

 

I very carefully treated Tuesday's returns like they weren't even there until now. I wasn't posting last night. I didn't want to hear any news. I don't do prognostication on this blog for a very good, reason--there are ghosts in the machine. and I believe in them. We shouldn't listen to polls too much, because if polls were great, why would we ever have elections? And knowing very well that returns take time, and might be illusory early on, I wanted to say less and less even as some kind of picture shaped up.

But I'm now less reticent in saying--it was a good night. It was a good night especially in Pennsylvania, where Shapiro and Fetterman came through and the State House is blue. I am extremely pleased that Mastriano (1/6 attendee) lost despite the rainbow that his "prophets" thought might foretell his victory:

I mean:

During Mastriano’s speech on pronouns, he sees a rainbow and says God is sending a message pic.twitter.com/EOHc9aSuIX

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 5, 2022

No, hon, this is the sign Lesbian Jesus sends to you to tell you why you lost.  Keep up.

The Supersessionists' Answer to Anti-Semitism

 

Doug Mastriano asked by an Israeli reporter (@nathanguttman of @kann_news) to respond to antisemitic attack on Josh Shapiro and association with Gab.

His wife Rebbie steps in and says: “I'm gonna say we probably love Israel more than a lot of Jews do.” #PAGov pic.twitter.com/Pczpz2IYgJ

— Jacob Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) October 30, 2022

When asked about the anti-Semitic attack on Josh Shapiro (who Mastriano has derided as being a "secular Jew" which is just not even his place to say anything about) and his association with Andrew Torba who is rabidly anti-Semitic, Rebbie Mastriano steps in to offer the worst of philosemitic bullshit: she and her husband love Israel so much--even more than the "fake Jews" do. I mean, no other country has Megiddo in it, she did not add. Which is mentioned in the Book of Joshua which she and her spouse are ridiculously influenced by--which is just a crazy-ass pile of smiting of heathens by people backed by God, which is totally their thing. 

But in their world, people who don't back them are the real heathens, whoever they are. So. Are they reeeaaaalllly anti-Semites? Or just all-purpose haters? Um. Why do I fucking care? These chucklefucks believe dangerous nonsense that has no place in any government whatsoever. But yes, if Jewish people are among the many people they think are part of a "problem" then yes. I would call it that.

So, the thing she said? Totally the kind of rambling we've been hearing from Trump, lately. But also a troubling aspect of the rise in people talking about Christian Nationalism. She loves Jewish people--mostly elsewhere. 

And when we see signs like this in Florida:

Anti-Semitic banners were hung over an overpass on I-10 in Jacksonville, Florida on Friday. Mayor @lennycurry and Governor @RonDeSantisFL have not yet condemned the actions of Nazis in Duval County. There are an estimated 14,000 Jews in the city.

Photo: @MelissainJax pic.twitter.com/lPlYICJT1w

— Travis Akers (@travisakers) October 29, 2022

The way they were hung just recently in LA, are we holding our breath to see how Ron DeSantis, who Doug Mastriano wants to emulate, he says, responds? When an area arena scoreboard sign is hacked with anti-Jewish messages as well? 

You cannot expect any people who have become friendly with hate to protect anyone; you cannot expect them to recognize people who they have already demonstrated they will exclude. And if seeing is believing, then what I am seeing tells me we are seeing a party taking a very dark turn. 

Reality is What Red State Governors Can Get Away With

 

NEW AUDIO: Brian Kemp says he is open to banning contraceptionhttps://t.co/8SVPoL2uT0

— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) September 15, 2022

I noted in my comments regarding Sen. Graham's 15 week abortion ban proposal that it is always reasonable to define Republicans as being just as extremist as they tell us they are--and here is another proof.

Gov. Kemp., who isn't the biggest fan of democracy, doesn't care that a lot of women do use birth control or at least feel like this is a good option for women to have.  If the Dobbs decision means he can ban birth control, despite the needs or desires of the women of his state, he feels like this is okay--because once you start culling the voter rolls of voters you don't think are with you, you stop giving a fuck about whether you are aligned with the voters' needs or concerns. You just side with the right-wing ideologues who brought you. 

Georgians, check your voter registration. If you are not on the rolls, you have until October 11.  Your governor does not care about your choices and wants to take them away. 

I hate governors who want to take rights away. This is why I am dead-set against Doug Mastriano in my neck of the woods, who is the same or worse. He scoffs at "my body, my choice", too. And I will live with my body my whole life, but I won't live comfortably if I didn't fight against someone who wanted to make choices for everyone else without considering their whole life experience and reality. Or rather, just keep government out of it. 

It's not their right. And they should not be in a position to pretend it is. 

UPDATE: Because we are not ever finished with radical Republican, woman-hating ideas, I have two related stories to add. First, there's a Michigan candidate for Attorney General who thinks Plan B should be treated like fentanyl. Yes, Plan B, the "morning after pill"--which is an emergency contraceptive. If life starts at conception, preventing conception would be, um, not taking a life. Don't worry, though, because the gentleman would do this having no idea how any of that works. He is just really certain that if you were the recipient of unexpected penis, you need to deal with unexpected fetus. And carry it all the way through. Why yes! He is a Republican. (My beloved friends and acquaintances let's don't ever have GOP AG's. They really are the worst.)

The other vicious nightmare of a potential Republican future is criminal penalties for abortion patients. They want to imprison people who terminate pregnancies, or worse.  Probably the death penalty. After all, if you want to say abortion is murder, what better way to signify that you are "pro-life" than to put someone to death for ending a pregnancy? And I can easily imagine people on death row for miscarriages, because why wouldn't someone with their head up their ass about the "miracle of life" add miscarriage of justice to the tragedy of potential life lost? 

The SCOTUS Dobbs decision has legitimized the logic of the clinic-bombers into law. To my mind, the vagaries of human sexual intercourse and development of human embryos are such that the law should back the whole hell off of trying to codify what is collectively right and leave a space for pregnant individuals to be respectfully treated as unique private persons with their own moral, physical, mental, economic realities. There was a lot of wisdom in the Roe decision, and today's partisan court totally lost the plot. 

There Was a Rally in Wilkes-Barre

 

The picture above isn't from the rally Trump held in Wilkes-Barre, PA for Doug Mastriano (insurrectionist) and Dr. Oz (snake oil salesman) but from May of this year, when it was all about the primary. Sure, Trump was already a one-term, twice impeached former president, who incited an insurrection riot and had already had 15 boxes of stuff taken from his Mar-A-Lago country club/domicile at the time. But his support was enough to boost Dr. Oz over the top in the GOP primary. 

Trump has since had a lawful search warrant served back in August to have even more classified and other documents horked out of his increasingly dodgy-seeming resort, once referred to as the "Winter White House". It might look bad, and I suspect the reason why is bad. But why would Mastriano and OZ turn down such valuable assistance? 

The Confederate and the Commonwealth

 

This is gubernatorial hopeful Doug Mastriano, an actual insurrectionist, whose thesis was about a left-wing insurrection (that never happened) and who participated in an attempted right-wing coup. He's wearing a Confederate uniform. That's quite a choice for a person who is already understood to be an anti-Semite who wanted to throw out the votes of black voters in the Commonwealth. 

Sometimes people are exactly who they represent themselves to be. This is that guy. He isn't covering up one damn thing, but is reveling in his White Christian Nationalist identification. 

He really wore a Confederate uniform and wants to represent the Commonwealth where the Gettysburg dead lay hallowed?  Maybe this chuckleheaded culture war signifier needs to wake up and realize that if he wants to represent some "Florida of the North", he might get his wishes more immediately by just making like a New Jersey snowbird and winging his ass to Florida--for good and being a part of the South that he wanted to represent. 

Screw him and his rebel ass. 

Ron DeSantis and the "Florida of the North"

 

FL Gov. Ron DeSantis, running for his second term, came to Pittsburgh yesterday to help out another GOP gubernatorial hopeful, the insurrectionist, theocrat and anti-Semite, Doug Mastriano. Now, some people might think damn, why does DeSantis want to do that? Isn't he concerned some of Mastriano's bad political karma is going to rub off on him? After all, this is someone who clearly is intending to run nationally, but local faith leaders in PA. are out condemning this. He might not even be helping himself in Florida, right?

I genuinely don't think that's it though. He didn't come to Pennsylvania, one of the contested states in the 2020 election, to hang out with an insurrectionist theocrat in spite of the optics. He's doing it because of the optics. Remember, when there were Nazis running around Orlando, this is the man who was absolutely not going to baited into trash-talking them. 

TWGB: Meetings of the MAGA Minds

 

It's been a weird Trump World kind of day for a day when a scheduled 1/6 Committee Hearing had been postponed, but we nonetheless got very good 1/6 information. In my heart of hearts, I feel like the postponement isn't just some technicality thing, but probably is (fingers crossed) something more interesting, but I will take what I can get. 

I think the penny being dropped on Rep. Loudermilk's 1/5 Capitol tour is pretty interesting because of all the different stories he had about it. Does someone tell several different stories and file an ethics complaint against people trying to tell the truth on them just to get showed up like this, ever? Someone needs to be Whey Quieter, am I right? Ok. That sucked. I am having one of those days. And I do not believe that some totally innocent people are just super-excited about sconces. I remember a lot of people had stories post 9/11 about law enforcement getting freaked out about people taking photos at out of the way places around national landmarks. In the criminal vernacular, these folks are casing the joint--

(Although they didn't apparently take note of security cameras?) 

Now, interestingly, this idea that people expecting to go "wild" on 1/6 would infiltrate and occupy government buildings was backed up with a document, "1776 Returns", that was filed as a part of a Proud Boys' sedition case. Here is the meat of it:

The nine-page document, filed in federal court Wednesday, lays out a plan to fill buildings “with patriots and communicate our demands." Its stated goals include maintaining control "over a select few, but crucial buildings in the DC area for a set period of time" and getting as "many people as possible inside these buildings." 

 “These are OUR building, they are just renting space,” the document reads. “We must show our politicians We the People are in charge.”

Loudermilk's tour group was casing the area for the benefit of people like this, who wantedto do domestic terror to accomplish deeply misguided (because Trump lied to them about the election) goals. And the 1/6 Committee says there were other tour groups, and since at least one member Tweeted "This is 1776" I would be very interested to know more. 

As it was, we had people like this guy and his son and their Confederate flag showing up where they had no business being. 

That image will never fail to rouse something in me--maybe about how the past isn't even the past--but maybe about how we need to put the ghosts of the past all the way down if we want to move forward. 

Does it seem, after all this, gratuitous that we learn that the committee has emails showing that Ginni Thomas and her husband's former clerk, John Eastman, corresponded? Or should we have already fully expected as much? I would think that additionally raises the likelihood that the current Supreme Court Justice should try and make himself a former Supreme Court justice, because his foreknowledge of his wife's interference in the lawful transition of power seems awfully likely. If he wouldn't do that for the benefit of the dignity of the court, at least he could consider it for his own historical legacy? 

What I am seeing here is a meeting of the MAGA minds--people so far gone that the law was no longer a barrier to trying to continue Trump's reign of error because they felt they were at active warfare with the existing government for simply--not substituting actual reality with their own, warped version. 

It's like Pete Navarro's perverse idea that people who disagreed with him were part of the "deep state"--a charming (not!) idea that people who maintained the rule of law and acted as guardrails against the mayhem of abuse of power were just being...meanies. Their insistence on the law applying to all was the real way Nazi Germany got started! (Extreme and painful eyeroll.) 

And yet--there is a paradox to what should look like the obvious story that the 1/6 shitfit was ugly and out of pocket. When Ryan Kelley got picked up for his involvement in the 1.6 insurrection attempt, my first thought was, ok, next do Doug Mastriano. (His Reichstag theory is amusing because I think something similar--except the GOP wanted to blame antifa to take over the way the Fascists blamed Commies--and I think I have the right of that one, TBH.)  But I am not so sure anymore, because the way butthurt Republicans deal with adversity is apparently to circle the wagons. (I don't want to belong to a party that acts like a cult, but when Democrats are in a little trouble why aren't we more like this, right?) 

I understand why Merrick Garland is staying quiet--I do. But the answer isn't to not prosecute these SOBS anyway. You only just have to get enough of them to make them know the law is the law. 

Shit. The Theocrat Won

 

New from our news team: Mastriano, winning the GOP nomination for governor, vows to 'reignite torch of liberty' in Pa. https://t.co/XtZTHoRqUi

— LNP | LancasterOnline (@LancasterOnline) May 18, 2022

I don't trust this guy even more than I don't trust most (ok, any other) Republicans. There is a sense some people have about Republicans electing crazies during their primaries that really insists on us assuming that the crazies can't win a general election. I am not a person who is going to make that assumption. He is a threat to democracy in my state, but also a harbinger of the increasingly Dominionist turn the GOP seems to be making. 

UPDATE: Oh.

Oops! https://t.co/wnorfEKa9K pic.twitter.com/Py3wyxbtL5

— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) May 18, 2022

Like I said--I don't assume that the most radical candidate is going to lose.