Our politics are dumb, but everyone already knew that. And I am stuck on a “pox on every damnedable house that is about”. More the Republicans than the Democrats? Maybe. More the Democrats than the two Democrats that every Democrat hates right about now? Possibly.

When you have a bill that is best described as a “Whole Pile of Things Act”, you cannot single out a popular item with “cross partisan support” to bludgeon an opponent or compromiser when it topples over. Joe Manchin killed Paid Family Leave, as the bill gets scaled back to meet his budgetary threshold, and his and Sinema’s revenue (taxing) restrictions — you say — and this a measure that has the support of basically everyone to the left of Ayn Rand? Great! Whip up the bill and pass it then.

I myself am a fan of paid family leave. Less so another popular measure tacked into the “Whole Pile of Things Act” — the make or break bill for President Joe Biden — universal pre-school. Maybe I ought love it — expanding formal schooling a couple of grades. Maybe I need to put myself into the three, four year olds’ shoes and admire the facts of the ground — damned if the paste don’t taste good and there’s plenty of playdo available to munch on! — But all this vets drowned out in my memories of the early educational experience — the teachers always had the worst taste in kiddie literature and movies. But now they insist that we expand the mixed horror of it all a couple years.

Nonetheless, despite these differences I have to come to President Biden’s defense — and sticking at this fox news headline — Biden briefly ‘stumbles’ during speech at McAuliffe rally, critics seize. The stumble? “In fact, we’re taking a page from Terry’s book when he was governor and when he’d be governor next time,” Biden said. “We’re emerging from this pandemic…we want to expand pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds — millions of [inaudible] students.”. The Republican National Committee posted a 15-second clip of the video and wrote, “Huh?”. It strikes me as completely coherent in this transcript form. Am I missing something here? I guess I have to understood — it is kind of an auto script working — excerpt any and all long pauses and claim incoherence where there is none.

Dipping into the gubernatorial race in Virginia — and some offshoots of Virginia politics into the national scene of Republican Senators yelling at Attorney General Merrick Garland — it becomes immediately apparent a lot of hogwash gets floated from a single statement from Terry MacAuliffe. Narrowly speaking, the parent is complaining that an Advanced Placement Senior English class is reading a Toni Morrison book. It is difficult not to slip into a bit of derision at this parent. So goes the current MacAuliffe campaign — Obama in tow… Biden cause he is obliged to throw him in somehow or the optics would be off-kilter, but we will be a little more quiet on that one… Of dumping free copies with an anti- Youngkin bookmark marking him (fallaciously, but these things get thrown about a lot ) as a “book banner”.

Still, it would indeed be political malpractice for Youngkin not to campaign against that quotation. And broader issues are brought to bear that are not as simply defined as “one good, the other bad” — even as… One stands next to chuckling yahoos. I guess the good news is I can skip away from the line on Ted Cruz — where we have headlines that “(Gasp!) Cruz defines Nazi Salutes thrown at council meetings!” and move to Ben Sasse, who I have already established I think is a decent enough Republican Senator — and bark that… actually, the issue here is in making the Nazi saluting “you’re a fascist!” yelling Hotheads a federal case, with the new side issue in the knowingly false suggestion that these particular cases are Nazis being defended by Cruz and Sasse…

… The Cultural Wars proceed apace…

Yes, I suppose the thing marks bigger issues beyond the specific case. It is the tricky matter that… The role of a parent in their child’s curriculum is necessarily going to be about notta if they are (for instance) arguing that the science curriculum needs to be covering Creationism. You have more subjectivity in the Arts and Literature department, but damned if you are not coming across as a philistine fool in complaining about about upper level smart kids tackling real literature with real issues in them… complexity becomes R-rated. But feel free to storm about and find what graphic novels with more explicit than you would like gay sex referenced in ’em are available for one and all in school libraries.

All right, seeing what everyone has a tizzy over these days. Hm. Revenge fantasy...lobbed up in a Twix commercial… Yeah, an anti evil lying message framed in the guise of a proxy school shooting from the Pagan outcast. Seems to be what Twix is selling there. Odd.

And… Hm…

I am left a tad puzzled by how this one is fed at us. The article seems to be describing some hypocrisy — Where Netflix changed their algorithm on a film that could perceivably be viewed in a noxious way by pedophiles so it would not be seen by peoples looking for “steamy” material. Good for them, unless I am reading the article wrong. Yet… This is brought to bear against the current Dave Chapelle controversy, which… I do not know what the argument is or is supposed to be. Understand, whatever algorithm I have here threw me a bunch of clips from his special the other day. About what you would expect from him on Jussie Smollett’s hoax and Caitlyn Jenner being named a “Woman if the Year”. So I gather the issue had is by people who want to bury it, plain and simply… But… the implication for how the problematic but defendable “Cuties” was marketed on the fly (away from people looking for titillation) against that for this straight ahead all on his sleeve bloviating show from Chapelle is supposed to be… What?

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