It is hard to decide how deeply or salt grain less it is to describe the fluctuations and fissures of the third parties. The Libertarian Party is currently controlled by the radical Mises Caucus, rowdy Internet trolls who are upset by the ex Republicans who won more votes than anyone else but have a different idea of Libertarianism. The Green Party had a tough narrow split decision to participate in the “Rage Against the War Machine Rally” dominated by right wingers and Putin apologists, which makes sense as Jill Stein is photographed dining with the man. The People’s Party — supposed off ramp for Bernie Sanders in the way the Constitution Party had been designed to lure Pat Buchanan — is just one guy’s money laundering scheme.

The real tragedy is I see no evidence that the Modern Whig Party is still kicking. They appear to have thrown up their hands electorally and gone off to other established ballot lines. The Modern Whigs havw, sadly, gone the way of the Whigs.

Sometime in the past year or two, there was this brouhaha where some celebrity of note, upset over political actions made by West Virgininia politicians, made remarks about the rubes of West Virginia and less than average standards of wealth and living. This allowed the governor to score political points by making a crude and homely response in the State of the State address, less than dignified for the occasion but I gather that is part of his crafted political image.

In the latest skirmish of political figure making hay off of less than desirous reports from a different political entity — Texas’s governor tweets on Wal-Mart departing from Portland. It becomes a little surreal in many respects. Over the past post covid era I have been amused by the alarming reports that a few Starbucks have closed up off of crime incidents and some lagging economied, which — what? Leaves people jab Bing to walk an extra three blocks to get to a different Starbucks? Wal-Mart is an especially tricky item. Over the past decades, city council have adamently been at war with Walmart incursion. The effect there have been two Wal-Marts in the city, off on the edges, but they have been kept from making incursions any deeper. Part of it lies in labor and business practices, surely, but then after and beyond that are those aesthetics. You lay waste to stretches of Hawthorne where the businesses appear to be basically short term hobbies of trust funders and lots of room to showcase their artifacts — the extreme antithesis of Bog Box Walmart.

The city is probably categorized as a weed and stripper based economy at this point anyways.

Maybe things are not all in sync with Portland, and the dis-conjunctions created the unfavorable relations for those on the edge of the city Wal-Mart’s such that they had to leave in a puff. And to be sure, I have occasionally shopped at one of them. I may go out and buy a pair of shoes — the business closure that really hurt was Payless Shoes. But I am trying to get some firm locations for a couple generally nick-named locales on the map, and what its relationship with one of this one Wal-Mart. That would be the area long known as “Felony Flats”.

Looking ashunder at the logic, limits and promises both, of urban growth boundaries and restrictions, the governor of Texas equates the lack of Wal-Mart with bad. I suppose Wal-Mart now ceases to be a politically easy cudgel for city politicians to dump on — until such time as they decide to slide back in as profits remain available –, but if the city’s citizenry largely wanted it shocked he’d aside to never to have to look at it, and now will look at it less — does it really signify great perils?

As with skipping a few blocks to get to Starbucks, I guess everyone can skip off to Vancouver?

Tucker Carlson is busy showing footage of January 6 non-rioters to insist that no riot took place. It is a strange gambit. Understand, the baseline established reality is that a riot took place. Beyond that, things are open to a little bit of conjecture and a bit of interpretation on plausible and im-plausible deniability from figures of outgoing governance — namely the ex President. But the majority of the people there did not riot. And golly gee whillikers. We have this line before, complete with the mockery of “mostly peaceful” assemblages. And imagine this — most of the people at this event, laughable premise as it came off of, were not charged with anything and are at most suffering some bit of social stigma from involving themselves in a cause of ridiculousness. Though, I guess, some aren’t. Red state / Blue state and all that. But others aren’t. The ones who stormed into the Speaker’s office and gazelles at the House chamber, for instance.

Carlson continues privately castigating Trump’s lies on the election. Sure, there is easy delineation of coming to the defense of “peaceful protesters” and the cause. But the troubles come in that was not his public stance, so the latest brouhaha just becomes part and parcel to the whole spiel.

Reportedly they have uncovered virtual farms of Russian bots hitting Twitter with mass quantities of tweets stirring the pot for Trump 2024, castigating the Democratic president and selling up the inadequacies of Trump’s Republican rivals. Interesting in noting the Bots have pretty well migrated off of Facebook, which was reportedly their center hub in 2015 – 2016. More curious the messaging is little different than callers on am (conservative) talk radio — or about identical — presumably not bots talking, though we are whatever iterations from the Rush Limbaugh “Mega Ditto”-heads of the 1990s. This is an aging group on a curious to figure but perhaps declared dead or aged media landscape likely not aping anything directly from the Twitter sphere, meaning — I do not know what the echo chamber here is or how the Twitter bot army effectively shuts down those presidential ambitions of Nikki Haley.

Marianne Williamson, preparing for the long haul of no good election returns, has kvetched that the DNC has rigged everything for Joseph Biden. Possibly. There are ways around that, as Bernie Sanders never quite grasped, which is to win this over that black electorate in South Carolina — seemingly the greatest obstacle for someone not the Establishment choice to win the nomination especially after Sanderistas successfully jettisoned the super delegates past the first round so they aren’t any longer strategically pushed into news casts of where Clinton sits.

How does she go about that? In the 2020 election I saw some tweets from Bernie supporters complaining that Biden’s message for the black electorate was essentially that he had a black friend. It turned out they misjudged it in that they thought it sodas Obama when actually it was Clyburn. In the 2024 run of things, I do have the thought of slicing her self help books to various demographics and falling flat in the “diversity” spell.

If Biden doesn’t run, someone else will. And it will be awkward as s/he smiles less past Harris.

Drat.

Well. At least John Sununu’s in it.

Much ridiculed, a Florida state legislator introduced a bill requiring bloggers — bloggers who make money off of this blogging — to register with the state if they cover the governor or the governor’s employees and bureaucrats. It is but one jackass who did this, and not the governor, which in one way puts the bill on the level of the random “give 16 and 17 year olds half a vote” legislations that sometimes slide into the corner of the news. On the other hand, this is seemingly on the behest of a governor trying to sharpen cultural matters for a presidential run, so I grasp the idea — “Is he copying Hungary’s Orban?” headline.

I am reminded of an explanation on how the Russian Duma works under the current Putin regime. Someone works to outdo someone else in legislation by introducing, say, the “Ban the Goths and Emo Act”, so as to give a fiery speech about how George Soros is working to destroy the Russian youth by dumping the Western subcultures of a goth and emo. Shuffling about the frightening Russian government / Russian Orthodox Church production Children Versus Wizards, I grasp a basic message. From there, not much happens, because they just fulfill a role of forwarding Putin’s last barn burner speech.

The bill spotters around, dead on arrival. But I guess it might have pleased DeSantis, and follows comments on strengthening libel acts?

Several weeks ago, a n allegation erupted that George Santos had once been a drag performer of some kind or other. It made sense in terms of what I understand of the man’s biography — upper or upper middle class and homosexual and of appropriate places for such things. The fact that he denied it suggested it may just be false — why deny y something so innocuous and trivial when bigger stuff are frying your political career? As it turned out, some photos came out and he accepted the past and I guess move on to the real stuff that, at the very least, marks him as a one term congressman.

I see new allegations springing up, and I guess they will do so from here on out, that some conservative Republican politicians voting for some such legislation curbing and regulating drag performances in age appropriate manners dressed in drag. The photos appear to be fraternity or school pep assembly material. And this makes sense as well, if I follow some biographical assumptions of from whence conservative Republican legislators sprung: the type that dabbled in high school pep assembly crap and the type who did stunts with frats. I do not know where the hypocrisy claim comes in — the regulations of drag performances and in attempting to disallow minors from seeing essentially strip acts may go too far and leave minors from not being allowed to see essentially clown shows, but the intent remains pretty clear and has nothing in common with a Power Puff Football contest or that one yahoo dude who stuck two basketballs under his shirt and play fondled them as he awaited for whatever that pep assembly show was my Freshman year — one of a few things I remember of high school pep assemblies as I did not go to very many.

I guess we will be getting more Republican drag regulators with photos of basketballs stuffed under their shirt. I am assured it means something.

I never understood what was so completely conspiratorial about “it originated in an experimental lab in Wuhan”. The virus originated in Wuhan. They were doing experiments with viruses in Wuhan. It made as much sense as anything else. The denial of the possibility, and declaration that speculation on it was racist, leads to conspiracy theorizing, beyond the scope of the actual conspiracies of a number of competing governing agencies shutting down the speculation as a matter of different purposes and motives — where when and if it comes to pass that it was the case, the conspiracy theories will claim confirmation beyond this one item. I never understood why this was supposed to be racist — it is not declaring the virus creation and leak inherent in Chinese racial characteristics, or even cultural practices, and to the extent which the virus was causing an uptick in hate crimes to Asian immigrants it was doing so without any regard to theorizing on lab origins. Hell — the only alternative origin, some less than desirable practices at open markets, was probably worse for the effect.

I am stuck on this weird confusion of stated inferences. I never much had the problem with “Wuhan Virus” until its social rejection left it the providence of a-holes. But that is easily intellectually scuttled — I am not tied to the name. The dilemma of the social rejection of “lab leak theory” is it remains an intellectually honest concept that was never disproved by the facts on the ground, even as its social rejection left it the providence of 9/11 truthers and qanon-ers.