The Russia Campaign Reminds Me--

 

This is what Tenet Media was broadcasting for Putin in the U.S. They support Elon Musk, Trump, RFK Jr, and violent protests. 1/ pic.twitter.com/s3C2BPCZl6

— Karen Piper (@PiperK) September 8, 2024

If you take a look at the topics above, you'll note among other things--misogyny.  This was a key part of the 2014 "Gamergate" dry run and a big part of the attacks on Hillary Clinton. It's why my ears perked up at the allegation that gamers were part of the Russian disinfo targeting for the 2024 election. (And minorities--that voter suppression technique that was used pretty well in 2016, both by Brad Parscale for Trump as he admitted and by the Internet Research Agency on "parallel tracks".) 

Flashforward to 2024, and we have Tucker Carlson, whose Putin interview and Moscow supermarket adulation were both deemed surprisingly cringey even to producers of Kremlim-inspired sludge, calling women in the US military: feces. 

Tucker Carlson is revolted by our war wounded.

He compares them to literal shit.

He will almost certainly have a position in the second Trump Administration.pic.twitter.com/5QSoyVvHjH

— Veterans For Responsible Leadership (@VetsForRL) September 8, 2024

Red Flag Warning--Who Are They Working For?

 

You know, if there are GOP congresscritters who are spouting Russian propaganda (and OMG--there sure are!) maybe we should pay attention to what legislative activity they also seem to be doing on behalf of Russia. 

When Marjorie Taylor Greene talks about Ukraine like NATO invaded it and they are Nazi or anti-Christian, she is directly aping Putin, and what she is saying is pure lies-shouldn't we be very interested in where this fool, who has yakked about Jewish space lasers and spread Q nonsense, gets her information? 

Maybe we should be more curious about why Scott Perry believes Ukraine shouldn't be supported because they can't win. I truly want to know where Tommy Taterhead is getting his extreme nonsense POV from. He seems to have Ukrainian public servants confused with Russian oligarchs. 

Did Russia Pay a "Meaningful Fee?"

 

Russian Telegram channels reported that the interview with Carlson and Carlson himself was not to Putin's liking, and the interview itself was considered a failure:

"The Kovalchuk clan sharply criticizes the idea of an interview with the American journalist Carlson. They say… https://t.co/sCql6QuhkW pic.twitter.com/iyPZDTP2JW

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) February 9, 2024

Well, I'm just throwing this bit from twitter here without knowing anything more about it--would I believe Tucker Carlson accepted a fee for a friendly interview? Let me think about that; it would be very unethical, so I'm going to go ahead and say yes, I do believe Tucker Carlson would do that. I also think he would do it for free, but getting paid if you can is so much nicer, isn't it? 

It also appears that Putin wanted to just give one of his history lectures, about which he is weird and wrong. The idea that Poland was basically asking to be invaded by Germany (and I guess USSR was just standing innocently by like choirboys) is the kind of peculiar revisionism that goes so well with authoritarian states.  There's an analogy there for Ukraine, I guess (about which Putin has his own badly contorted self-justifications) but I just think, if I were Poland, I would like Putin not to be mentioning Poland so much.

I'm not sure who exactly is fooled enough to think Putin is stopping at part of Ukraine. I mean, people might vocally express their "doubts"--I just find it hard to think they are "fooled." 

They Only Needed to Be Shamed

 

The PACT Act will be going to President Biden's desk to be signed after needless and spiteful delay on the part of Senate Republicans, who spent the weekend trying to defend their fist-bumping vote against the bill with sad claims of "gimmicks" and "pork". They got rightfully hammered for that, but 11 Republican senators still voted against--all of whom also voted against the bill in June.

This group includes Rand Paul of KY, who argued that veterans would take advantage of the program because one could not tell for sure that their illnesses were from service-related expose (that's right--he's basically accusing cancer-stricken vets of trying to pull one over on the government), Mitt Romney of Utah, generally incorrectly perceived as a moderate, and my outgoing (but not soon enough!) senator, Pat Toomey, who opposes spending money to help people or basically being useful at all, just on general principles. 

So, what happened here? It looks like the Republicans got caught out for being spiteful hacks that literally didn't have a problem with the bill, just with Democrats.  And some of them still pretty transparently seem to have contempt for the idea that after having served and made sacrifices on behalf of this country, veterans want to be compensated for the harm done to them.

This is who they are. Don't forget it. 

And as an afterthought, although so many people worked to make this bill a law, a lot of praise goes to Jon Stewart for using humor, outrage, the superpower of celebrity, to advocate forcefully for the Seante to just do the right thing. He's a good guy. 

They Couldn't Spoil It--Almost

 

I think I could take a moment to acknowledge something really good and historic happened yesterday and really leave it at that...

But I would be a whole other person if I did not take note of the churlish, contemptuous behavior of the GOP jackaloons that still wanted to be sullen and snitty about the smears that they actually made up. The reason I can't leave it alone is that it was unnecessary for them to try and damage someone's reputation with that kind of calumny, but also the nature of it ("She's a friend tto sex fiends!") is a conspiracy theory classic from the same text as blood libel--a kissing cousin, so to speak, of QAnon.

You can't get a whole bunch of people to believe a cabal of baby-eaters is running the world--but depicting a group as deviant is not as hard a lift and can be just as dangerous. They did this to make her unpalatable by pre-smearing the people who would vote for her confirmation with a kind of guilt by association, vide MTG's despicable Tweet:

She says "Any Senator voting to confirm #KJB (sic) is pro-pedophile just like she is." Right out there for the kids who are slow on the uptake and need it spelled all the way out for them. And of course, Marginal Traitor Greed is a vicious lying extremist, but...no. I guess that really is all I have to say about that. But she has definitely articulated, baldly, what Senator Hawley tried to set in motion/ 

In any case, I'd like to think that only the far-right, already Q-enmired types would think this plausible, but I can't help but notice how neatly it folds into the new claim that people opposing the dangerous and dumb "Don't Say Gay" bills are "groomers". This tactic isn't pure politics--it's eliminationist. It uses fear to silence people and wage terror on those who don't stay silent. 

So while I want to embrace this history-making moment, I am disgusted by the antics of those who decided now was a great time to play a dangerous and stupid game with the process. 

My Nostalgia Is Acting Up

Eminem defies NFL and kneels in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick during Super Bowl halftime show https://t.co/XDI07ULqDk

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) February 14, 2022

They told Slim Shady to please stand up, but Slim Shady said God sent him to piss the world off.

There was a lot of commentary on Twitter about how this half-time show was about my generation, and frankly, we never did say we were going to die before we got old. We said don't you forget about me. And we are getting old, and I wish more of us were getting wise. 

The fucking kids aren't all right. Charlie Kirk thinks the half-time show was full of sexual anarchy. This dumb man-baby must have been peeing in his diapers through the Janet Jackson and Prince half-time shows. He literally comes off like John Lithgow's character in Footloose.  That's two Footloose references I've made this month. I may be getting old. I repeat myself. Matt Walsh, middle aged but younger than me, doesn't know "woke" means aware, and Marshall Mathers is aware he's a white guy who owes a fuckton to Black music and Black people. That he's supposedly making amends for anything else is Walsh's own bullshit. 

I'm glad the convoy asshats didn't come to LA to fuck with the Super Bowl despite what loons like Wendy Rogers and Senator Rand Paul wanted. That would have been a shitshow--all those Confederate flags in LA. I don't think those two remember how things could go, because they forget that urban America is also real America. They think it would scare the shit out of people who live in the cities that right-wing dumbasses think have been burned down by BLM. They forget riots that have happened not even thirty years ago. 

I don't, The truckers don't, either, and they probably know that unlike Ottawa or Windsor, if you go to LA or NY or Philadelphia, you might meet with an entirely different atmosphere that isn't going to wait for police action because nope. Residents will find a way. People have turned out en masse for deceased kids they didn't even know, and some jackasses want to disrupt the shelves at Acme and whether our own kids get fed--are you for real? 

The Big Lie and the Big Liars Telling It

 

Sen. Rand Paul linked to an interesting thing over at The American Conservative which is sort of an amazing read on how programs to educate voters about how to cast a vote in an election where there were some changes to the usual process due to COVID-19 accommodations and where efforts were made to recruit younger election workers for the same reason, are viewed in a sinister light. Paul, for some reason, chooses to characterize the following as how to steal an election: 

“Seeding an area heavy with potential Democratic votes with as many absentee ballots as possible, targeting and convincing potential voters to complete them in a legally valid way, and then harvesting and counting the results.”

The so-called "absentee ballots" are just mail-in ballots that some states just use as a matter-of-course. So that isn't sinister. GOTV is not out of the ordinary--people should be encouraged to participate in their civic duties and take notice of their civil rights! The ballots are being completed in a legally valid way. And then they get sent in and counted, and somehow, in Rand Paul's mind, this is a steal? 

But I know why-- "an area heavy with potential Democratic votes". The process is legitimate, but Rand Paul feels like the voters are not. Wow, Rand Paul thinks that, really? How not-shocked can I be?

But this thing about some voters having more rights than others is just GOP kay-fabe right now, and folks like the Schmeckle have to read statements of faith about it on Steve Bannon's podcast, for some reason. Bannon himself makes bizarre statements about "someone standing up to Marc Elias" , which is very WTF--of course there is, it's called the opposing attorneys. They just don't win if the law isn't on their side? Elias isn't winning because he has some weird advantage--he's just really good at reading the constitution and voter suppression is not good small-d democracy or very Constitutional. 

It's not new. But let's be clear--the supposedly sinister steal Rand Paul is talking about has its opposite and more contentious twin on the Republican side. The Liberty Center for God and Country went out of their way to promote the idea that the election was being stolen. They weren't alone. Maybe if instead of figuring out ways to promote the Big Lie ahead of the election, Trumpers tried to GOTV themselves, but oh, maybe they knew the polling would never make that work! Oops! Trump lost fair and square because he sucked. He was impeached and his COVID-19 response was sad. The end. It was simple. He blew it on his own merits. It really didn't require the Democrats acting in any concerted way, and thank goodness, because we barely do. 

And let's never forget, Trump spread the Big Lie early and often, before 2020. Where he went with it after losing the election shouldn't surprise a single soul, and the veracity of his claims should be as doubted as a very doubtable thing. Of course, it's a self-serving lie!  In the real world, we know, the claims the dead vote are lies. We know Trump's alternate electoral slates would have been forgeries. 

He lost. He lost fair and square. The mail-in advantage was only that legitimate voters for once weren't circumscribed by the scarcity of voting places and long lines created by state legislators trying to target voters based on their zip code, ethnicity, and social class. But the voters were still legitimate. 

Any politician claiming the Big Lie this hard, needs to go. I don't care where, they just don't need to be in office. That's who Rand Paul is. He needs to go. 

 

Sociopaths Shouldn't Be in Government 3: Rand Paul

 

Being 16 months late in reporting the purchase of a particular stock could look like a mere oversight in some regards, like if one was updating one's portfolio as frequently as, say, David Perdue did. It stands out spectacularly when the purchase of one particular stock occurs one month after having been briefed on Covid-19 and if it were the only stock that had been singularly selected almost as if one was persuaded this particular stock was going places. 

So what the whole hell happened there? Did Kelley Paul get one hell of a tip from somewhere? And where oh where could that have been? Because you know, there were all kinds of tips going round back in the day. Only, it's only Rand Paul that misremembered what took place until 16 months later. Like he thought he'd be slick and avoid investigation, or something.

Now, whoa, whoa, whoa, you might say, doesn't the article suggest that the Pauls haven't earned money on that stock?  Well, whoa, whoa, whoa, yourselves, they haven't sold it, and the Senator from Kentucky was just out here being not at all helpful regarding arresting COVID-19 spread.  Do you suppose a man with 3/4ths the lungs he was born with and even had COVID-19 himself, and is actually trained as a doctor, thinks "What the hell, vector away you free-souled little sonsabitches?" without some kind of material impetus? I dunno. Maybe he's thinking remdesivir can make a comeback.

Senator AquaBuddha Visits Galt's Glitch

 

Rand Paul today: “It’s time for us to resist. They can’t arrest all of us .. No one should follow the CDC.” He then says he will introduce amendments to defund any govt agency that seeks to enforce CDC guidelines, including schools. pic.twitter.com/PYOQtKDYBN

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 9, 2021

"They can't arrest all of us", but they definitely won't be arresting Rand Paul, because his shiny, likely  vaccinated ass isn't going to do anything putting himself sideways anywhere. He's encouraging dumbfucks that he is pretty certain love to be told they are wearing very special consequence-proof libertarian armor, because freedom, mom's apple pie, and the Sekret Lemon Juice Writing on the Real (TM) Constitution that you can only see when you set that bitch on fire. It's your thing--do what you want to do! Rand Paul, however, is definitely going to tell you who to sock it to, though. The CDC, The Man, and based on his regular sparring with Dr. Fauci, you know....competent medical professionals and people who actually understand what public service actually means.

Rand Paul has a peculiar idea of service--he's agin' it. Like, why are people with needs occasionally looking to people with means to accomplish those ends? (Or as we call it, a functioning society.)  Why listen to people who know what they are talking about when idiots can have opinions, too? 

TWGB: Fear, Smear, Conspiracy and Obstruction

The place I want to start with in this post is the law: our Constitution is a document that protects people. That is to say, it enumerates certain rights for the people, and defines the roles of government. You don't want a government that does too much--that reaches into people's lives obtrusively, that invades privacy, that needlessly judges personal choices that do not violate the law. But you also want accountability: government should have an aspect of accountability and dependability. If the social fabric has a warp (to the backdrop of history's woof), the rules are it. 

Trump likes to say that he's transparent. He's not transparent in actuality: in his person, he is opaque and likewise dense. But he believes that he has clothed himself in a dress of transparency by having posed himself as a straight-shooter or truth-saying SOB, or by merely repeating endlessly the formula "I am the most transparent..." And yet, that transparent cloth he drapes himself in is the Emperor's New Clothes. It is transparent because it lacks either warp or woof. It lacks threads. He is not clothed in laws, or history, or accountability, or tradition. His bare-naked ass is therefore covered by so many lickspittles. 

Enter the whistleblower, who, like the child in the story, says what everyone was fearing to say--the emperor's ass is out! 

So tell me, do: does who says the very true thing matter more than whether the message was very true? 

We are presented with a distraction, engaged by Trump out loud and personally in front of many people: he says he had some dirt on Lt. Col. Vindman, and also, he wants to know who the whistleblower is. Sen. Graham has said he'd out the whistleblower. (Outing people against their will has never been something I've been a strong proponent of, TBH.) And Sen. Rand Paul, son of Ron, claims the name of the whistleblower is already known, and he would release it. You know, unless the media wants to. Which really sounds to me like an effort to smoke someone out for a right bit of witness-tampering and intimidation. 

You know: crimes. Because all this, the threats against an anonymous person who only pointed out something they thought was hinky and should be investigated? Is a crime. What is not a crime? Doing due diligence to be sure that the government is held accountable and does its job well. Smearing people or causing them to feel threatened in their jobs or in their person is not great practice--it's basically a sign that the person doing that knows they have no other defense but bullying. That's the kind of thing Trump has left in his pocket: smear and fear. And conspiracy with those who still think the power is in his corner, and not on the side of truth or the law. And obstruction to try to prevent any further truth from coming to light. 

Freedom Pox

Immunizations work, are safe, and people should have them unless very specifically medically counter-indicated. The earth is basically round and revolves around the sun. Trickle-down economics is bullshit because the rich get richer and crap rolls downhill. 

There are a handful of things in this life that seem to me to be just obvious, but also have the benefit of being backed up with evidence, studies, and real life experience. That Vaccinations Are Good is one of those things. Once upon a time, people got things like smallpox and were terrifically disfigured or died, or they got polio and were disabled and died, or got measles or mumps and sometimes died, or were sterilized or became blind--basically, we think of history in mostly filmy costume set-piece terms because we watch a fuckton of television, but most of it was a nasty, brutish and disease-ridden hellscape. And then we learned about germs and viruses, got hygienic and developed vaccines for things, and lifespans improved a lot. 

Seems great to me. Then we developed the internet, and some dumb people fucked that up. Failed anti-vaccine scientists who are not considered very good at science make propaganda, and because there are people who think reality is democratic, think this is new knowledge and it becomes really difficult to disabuse them of the new thing they think they have "learned". 

One thing that surely doesn't help is the presence of international shit-stirrers who have made a job of weakening social norms and sowing division by furthering bad science memes. But there's something I've heard a couple of times this week that really concerns the hell out of me. There are US politicians who are making the vaccination "controversy" (which should, by all actual evidence, be a "nontroversy") into a political statement about "freedom!" and "certainly not being Communist!" and "the purity of our bodily essence" or something like that.

I wish I was kidding.

An Arizona state senator, Kelly Townsend, made a Facebook post that literally calls vaccinations "communist" because they are for the collective good:

The legislator, Republican state Rep. Kelly Townsend, wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday that "it seems we are prepared to give up our liberty, the very sovereignty of our body, because of measles."

"I read yesterday that the idea is being floated that if not enough people get vaccinated, then we are going to force them to," wrote Townsend, who has written controversial social media posts in the past. "The idea that we force someone to give up their liberty for the sake of the collective is not based on American values but rather, Communist."

 It could not possibly be the case that the United States was founded on any such principles as: establishing Justice, insuring domestic Tranquility, providing for the common defence, promoting the general Welfare, and securing the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, with any collective intent, right? Except our founders seemed to have had as much in mind by creating a government with any such principles in mind, with promoting the general welfare being among those things. The idea of bodily sovereignty to a nation that had a military draft and still has a selective service seems like a laugh. As Ms. Townsend is also pro-life, it appears her notions of bodily sovereignty certainly do have a (very selective) limit, based on her preferences, not necessarily any given individual's.

But as to the fear of the collective, maybe she has been flummoxed by the term "herd immunity".  Wouldn't a rugged individualist want to be anything but "one of the herd"?

Which takes us to Crazy Nephew Liberty, son of Crazy Uncle Liberty, Dr. Rand Paul. His recent statement took a very novel approach to ideas of both liberty and security:

“As we contemplate forcing parents to choose this or that vaccine, I think it’s important to remember that force is not consistent with the American story, nor is force consistent with the liberty our forefathers sought when they came to America,” said Paul, reading off a paper.

“I don't think you have to have one or the other, though. I'm not here to say don’t vaccinate your kids. If this hearing is for persuasion I’m all for the persuasion. I’ve vaccinated myself and I’ve vaccinated my kids. For myself and my children I believe that the benefits of vaccines greatly outweighing the risks, but I still don’t favor giving up on liberty for a false sense of security.”

(Shit, I will leave the formatting, because whev. ) Since he knows good and well vaccines work because he's getting his own kids vaccinated--where's the "false sense of security"? And if he wants to talk about "liberty" in terms this broad, why even have laws? I was vaccinated as a wee bitty thing, and never felt robbed of my liberty. The actual choice never intersected with my freedom to do anything--I have never said "Well, I would attend this meeting/take a vacation abroad/marry my spouse/pursue my chosen profession, but no, I had MMR and booster shots."  It did not even affect my credit. Given that there are people in this world who find their lives disrupted by their gender/orientation/race/religion, I just can't even with Rand Paul talking about the liberty of parents who want their special version of science to keep life-saving needles out of their experimental human spawn tushies.  And he is supposedly a doctor. 

I've also seen a narrative that we need childhood diseases to toughen up our immune systems, as if measles was like CrossFit, but for white blood cells. What's next? Calling them "freedom pox"? Deciding that mumps is the new "swole"? That fevers are the new "hotness"?

This is just sheer damn stupidity--but it's worse because it's politicized. Let's get real--vaccinate your damn kids. 

It's a Goddamn Shame, Lady

Rand Paul's wife says she keeps loaded gun by her bed over fear of liberals https://t.co/cStwIhC4Ts pic.twitter.com/SYSxWlYQsZ

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) October 9, 2018

I'm so old, I remember when Robert Dear shot up a Planned Parenthood,

when George Tiller was killed in front of his church,

when James Alex Fields Jr. ran into Heather Heyer with his car,

when Dylann Roof shot nine people in a church,

when Taylor Michael Wilson tried to take over a train,

when Nikolas Cruz wore a MAGA hat,

when a Sikh gurdwara was shot up because a white supremacist only knows they looked foreign,

when a horrible Canadian mass shooter was a fan of US right wing voices,

and so on, and so on, but I guess the thing that really sticks out for me is when a mob of Rand supporters curb-stomped a journalist,  while Rand Paul himself was cozying up to people with names like the Southern Avenger.

Because "Meh? Sometimes white supremacy, deep thinking, right?"

But no, really, even though I know there was this one guy that shot Steve Scalise a bunch of times, the angry young men of the right have been sending death threats and pictures of rape and shit to people all the time.

I guess instead of embracing the gun, you could encourage your man to get out of politics. I think this would be most salutatory. Because then he, and by extension Mrs. Rand, would culture war no more.

Look Who Shut Down the Government

The US government has shut down (again) but Congress is working overnight to reopen it. The last shutdown was 3 weeks ago https://t.co/VhjSV43Vx5

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) February 9, 2018

Did Rand son of Ron Paul also vote for the tax cut bill that promised to increase the almighty fuck out of the deficit (and thereby, the debt?).  He sure the hell did. Doesn't this mean he's just being self-aggrandizing right here? Yeppers.

Unless he's pretty much decided a shutdown was going to happen one way or another, so he might as well get weird and put his name on it. But this technically makes this a Republican shutdown.  After Trump went out of his way to insist he was cool with a shutdown it is really great to see his fellow Republican pitch in this way. Of course, this has nothing to do with DACA.

Nancy Pelosi had some things to say about DACA, but of course, she has no power to make a shut down happen. She just thought it would be great to talk about some fine undocumented but totally American folks for a handful of hours in her four inch heels.

Now, some kind of budget will get passed, and DACA might get shut out--but Dems stood for them and will remain there. It's Republican self-owning that keeps the CR a thing and the regular bickering over what should be easy choices alive. The GOP majority looks like "Rand Pauls" all the way down to us libs, anyway.

UPDATE: We've got six more weeks of government!

Grandstand for Brand Rand!

Senator Rand Paul of KY and also a presidential candidate, has expressed an intention to filibuster the bargain struck between House leadership and the White House to raise the debt ceiling, referring to the bill as "a steaming pile of legislation", which must have been the most dire words he could come up with for it. This would not be the first time he has used the filibuster--he did so at the confirmation of John Brennan as CIA Director over drones (John Brennan became CIA Director, we still use drones) and over the NSA surveillance program. "Stand with Rand" is a great slogan because of the rhyming.

I get it, but why filibuster this particular deal? Part of me thinks, well, he's in a tough primary and just wants to announce a filibuster before that ratbastard Ted Cruz comes up with it. But it also strikes me as a way to get back to Brand Rand. See, he's trying to take himself seriously in this presidential primary, and that might be part of the problem. If he tries to veer too middle of the road, he loses all his hipster cred. Staying weird and being anti-establishment reinforces Brand Rand.

Whoa! You might be thinking, but how does this help his actual electability?  Well, I dunno. See, he's running for Senate and President. Now, a reasonable person might ask if it shows good "optics" for a candidate for president to show that he doesn't believe in bipartisan compromise, and it might actually be terrible optics to contribute to continued Congressional dysfunction. But as a fundraising gimmick for selling "Stand with Rand" swag? Da bomb.

You know, he gets prickly when people point out that his made-up quotes or plagiarism devalue his ideological output. Deep down, I don't think he wants to be president. He wants to be a blogger and make dope money at it. Pshhh. He is dreaming. I blog 'cause I love, and money don't mean a thing.


(Update: It was 19 minutes.)

There was a Presidential Debate Tonight!

A presidential debate--yayayayayayay!

A GOP debate. Oh. Well....

So, I could seriously analyze it--but let me start off by saying the format where there's an undercard "kid's table" debate is starting to seem really insulting and like a rotten waste of time. So why aren't these people dropping out of the race so they can stop wasting our time? It's not that they have no right to run--they just have no reasonable expectation to win anything. But even the main event debates seem like maybe they are a little too populous. I don't think Mike Huckabee is really looking to be president. I'm kind of wondering what Chris Christie really thinks his odds are. And again, the outsiders, Carson and Trump, say really odd things that make it questionable whether they have the firmest grasp on policy.

The winner and loser of the debate seem to be above. Rubio was capable of dealing with questions with reasonable political instincts and impressed people watching the debate. Bush didn't do a lot of talking, and frankly wasn't about being there.

General impressions:

Rubio: Polished like a finger nail, and about as deep. But his debate coaching must be immaculate. But gosh he seems young. You know how sometimes a parent is asked if maybe their kid should have another year of kindergarten? Sort of like that. But sheesh--he's so tired of the Senate kindergarten.

Fiorina: She has no regard whatsoever for the facts, and says things that are completely wrong with utter confidence. How has FOX News not picked up on her yet? Also she will simplify the tax code to three pages--and that was when I realized she was about that grift, ladies and gents. She also said all of Obama's policies and all of Clinton's policies are just the worst. FOX News, are you listening?

The Rand Paul Campaign Is a Thing

You could go ahead and let somebody like Erick Erickson tell you that Rand, son of Ron, Paul, should pack things up or rather, take this campaign into the backyard and shoot it. (There is precious little overlap between me and Erick Erickson--there's "People shouldn't be sexist towards Megyn Kelly", and "Eric Cantor wasn't shit for his district anyway", but for the most part, we do not front for the same shit.) But let me tell you--while Rand Paul is pretending to run for Senate and the US Presidency at the same time, there is a discrepancy here--

Who wants him to be president, and who also wants him to be the senator from Kentucky? He can't be both, and his place in the presidential polls suggests that getting to be president is a hard row to hoe. If something spontaneously moved him up like crazy in the presidential poll, yeah, this would justify his staying in. But his poll numbers are basically on the decline. Part of his campaign has definitely suggested he is not a "Happy Warrior".

But he's taken a break to imply he wants to be KY Senator, and he also fundraises for Senate. Then he turns around and puts money from his surer thing Senate campaign to the weirder and more whimsical Presidential campaign. Nah, really:

Rand Paul clinging to his presidential dreams. The Paul campaign spent more last quarter than it raised, bringing in $2.5 million and spending $4.5 million. They’ve only got $2.1 million left. The FEC filing shows Paul moved another $57,000 this past quarter from his Senate reelection fund to his presidential campaign, bringing the total transferred to $1.6 million so far. Federal law only allows one-way transfers. A Paul adviser says that saying the campaign transferred funds is an oversimplistic reading of the FEC report. Paul has a joint fundraising account that lets him raise money for both his presidential and Senate campaigns, called “Rand Paul Victory.” The money transferred from that fund was the presidential campaign’s share of joint events or donations. The Kentucky senator has insisted that he’s not dropping out of the presidential contest anytime soon, even though he continues to seek reelection in the Bluegrass State.

I bolded the interesting part. He's moving funds from his plausible Senate Campaign to his less-plausible presidential campaign, and I don't know how "yay, Paul for Senate" people feel about his also trying to be "get into the White House people". If there's a group that likes him pretty well, but don't like the way he's duplicitous and not-staying, there could be issues.  I think there certainly should.

I Would Rather Use a Microwave TBH

This does have the makings of a viral video because it has two of the things Americans really love--guns and bacon! But I just don't really know about the fit here. I mean, I think of bacon as mostly a breakfast food, and firing guns is really loud, so...that won't work in the morning. (You might get return-fire!) And how sanitary is that, really? Gun oil on my bacon, bacon grease on my rifle. Ick. Oh Ted Cruz! You rise above your Ivy League education and lawyerly reputation like a circus clown shot out of a cannon!

It's only 2015, and this 2016 race is already kind of cuckoo bananas. Some folks would blame Trump for it because he makes everyone have to get louder and weirder but I am not so sure. You can only bait people to get as crazy as they are willing to go--then it's on them.

I've seen that one of the candidates made a point about the decorum of the office. We'll have to see if he resists the urge to, I dunno. Wrassle gators or the like. This primary is still young.

(I'll note that Gov. Bobby Jindal manages to stunt and front in a more low-key, signifying way, that will neither help himself in the race and will probably just actually harm some low-income Louisianans for whom Planned Parenthood is the most available point of medical access. Neither of the LA PP clinics do abortions. Cruz and Paul for sure are also for defunding Planned Parenthood all over--but they can't do it by executive fiat.)

George Will Writes a Good One

I usually have deep reservations about what George Will writes, and not altogether on the sole basis of the lack of overlap between our respective ideologies. I've found him impossible on the subject of climate change and in general don't agree with him on most (but not all) economic issues. But regarding former AR Governor Mike Huckabee, I think he voices what is also my chief concern with him:

Huckabee was unsurprised when a lunatic murdered 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012: “We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?” So, the slaughter was a consequence of the 1962 Supreme Court decision against government schools administering prayers? Was the 2012 massacre of 12 people at the Aurora, Colo., movie theater caused by insufficient praying at America’s cineplexes? (Gosh, that part is apt--Vixen)

Today, Huckabee says, “We are moving rapidly toward the criminalization of Christianity,” and he asserts a biblical duty to pray for the Supreme Court justices pondering the matter of same-sex marriages. Politico recently reported that Huckabee told some conservative pastors that “he cringes whenever he hears people call a court decision ‘the law of the land.’ ” He added: “This is not that complicated. There are three branches of government, not one.” To radio host Hugh Hewitt, Huckabee further explained his rejection of the idea of “judicial supremacy, where if the courts make a decision” it is “the law of the land”:

The Fire in Baltimore this Time

There's a "disaster porn" aspect of looking at protests gone off the rails like the protest in Baltimore did last night. The more peaceful aspects of the conflict get underplayed (well, mostly). Following a lead about possible gang violence, the Baltimore police stopped mass transit while schools were being let out, leaving a lot of young people on the street, with not-unpredictable results. 

It's a dumb game though, trying to point out why things went the way they did. Baltimore's protest, like Ferguson before it, and others, is triggered as much by the past as by the latest injustice. Freddie Gray was arrested because he had a knife on him, which isn't in itself a crime. After being placed in the police van, he wasn't belted in and did not get prompt medical care when he expressed a need for it. His neck was broken and his voice box crushed. It looks like he very probably was the recipient of what is sometimes called a "joyride", a "nickel ride", or a "rough ride"--a kind of nasty way of letting police brutality happen "accidentally on purpose". (As opposed to "on purpose-on purpose" which has also been a problem.) And by the numbers, this neighborhood was in trouble.

Childe Rand to the Galt House Came

There's not much I have to say about the official entry of Senator Rand Paul to the 2016 GOP primary since he went and declared his old quotes "off-record"--because goodness knows there's fun to be had mining that pile. Of course, just as there was some statement to be wrung from Senator Cruz' announcement at Liberty University, the choice of Galt House seems like it could be symbolic--Galt Goes White House? Or maybe it just seemed like a fitting staging ground (I know, I'm stretching) for a planned assault on Washington, as a loose interpretation of "Defeat the Washington Machine" and the little torch logo might imply?

He's got a few new old ideas, like term limits--which I'm sure makes his father, former 12-term Representative from TX, Ron Paul, proud, and a balanced budget scheme, which is probably not ever going to happen and is stuffed with bad ideas. But his real problem is that, as a freshman senator, he has to demonstrate some kind of consistent political philosophy--I'm not sure he does that, so far.  He's also got to figure out a way to not come off as a prickly britches when someone points it out. If his views can be "mischaracterized", as he might put it, so regularly, perhaps he hasn't done a great job articulating himself?

Otherwise, if his plan is bits cadged from his old man's two runs for president and the 1994 Contract with America, one might wonder exactly what new thing he brings to the race?