My first blush was to offer Elon Musk Pac a partial defense for a shady action — dueling ads micro-targeted to separate factions of the Israel — Palestine issue, enter the field around a mosque in the Blue Wall states and your internet tracks you to one, enter a synagogue and it is the other. The defensible as is the one directed to the Jews, pointing to the fact that Kamala Harris has nice-targeted tik tok ads clipping her speeches at the “Palestine” part. If you want to remain wholly on the up and up, you should probably carry this to the Muslim population, the limited reach of the Kamala ad and give to claims of two facedness. The problem is the ad that Musk Pac has running for the mosques is just ugly anti-Semitism — the message for the ad is essentially “Kamala Harris’s husband… Is a Jew.”

Sounds reasonable. Hopefully this “dude” contingent can compartmentalize their entertainment. It is like Charles Manson — maybe on some level amused by him, to the chagrin of the Feminist Manifesto “Goodbye to All This” on the attitudes of their New Left menfolk, but when his album came into the head shops — they could not pull the plug.

I saw another Pac as for Trump. A bizarre tableau of black people shouting their outrage in various public settings against some discombulated footage of Harris praising Biden. I have look up this pac. I find a story of one of the black women in the ad — who I have no idea who she is shouting at and about what as nothing in this ad follows or is connected to anything — expressing a “what the hell am I doing in this ad?”. Everything is on the up and up in electioneering.

Low level conspiracy theory on South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, right alongside the same low level conspiracy theory for Alabama Senator Katie Britt. They debased themselves and exposed themselves to political — cultural ridicule so as to maintain a future political viability by getting themselves out of the running for Trump’s vice presidential selection. Britt had a bizarrely horrible Republican Response to Biden’s State of the Union address and Noem revealed a trigger happy dog kill anecdote. As things play out, Noem continues playing the happy warrior, tagging along Trump at an event in Pennsylvania. There is a Republican Senate candidate there, but he apparently doesn’t want to do this. So it is Noem who debased herself here, irretrievably in frame the night Trump fell off the cliff.

And she shuffles off to the side, gamely making the appropriate hand dancing on YMCA and the rest of the list after Trump does the “fuck it. Let’s listen to some music!”

Everyone straining here to go along where Trump is taking them. Question: is this worth their dignity? And I suppose someone would be in the position to do this, but it is notable that it is not the Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate — the campaign has to import from our of state South Carolina’s governor. Of course, in the closing weeks of the Biden campaign, the scuttlebutt and tell was the disappearance of political bigwigs and candidates from Biden’s campaign appearances. This was after the caveat for the case in re-electing Biden became too big. The guy was old, getting older, and all public appearances now moved the flub he would invariably make into the focus of the next news cycle. The case for Biden’s fortunes hinged on a comparison to Trump, but it was hard to focus on to the problem of Trump then.

Trump was a focal point of Ellis’s book — though, the “ruthless capitalist” model hardly figures here anymore. What I want to understand is how Greg Gutfeld can sit there now, and take this one in, after all his knocking of Biden stumbling, a “if they manage to pull this one past the finish line” Hell. Or Rod Dreher, understandably citing at Biden’s election and nomination a move into a Chernenko phase for the Democratic Party apparatus, chugging along with a fossil. Dreher did so, though, while also making the assumption that Trump was spent, eaten up his good will with January 6, and the party could move on. The thing, though, is the absurdity is the point now.

Something notable here. Harris offered up a public statement, before cameras, on a major development with foreign policy. I don’t believe it is in her official powers to do so, her statement is meaningless as this is something we should see President Biden doing right now. But she is laying out an official position. This is a ruse, a presidential action by a woman wanting to look like the President. Maybe, just maybe — like the economic summit in 2008 when Bernanke was addressing a lot of his points toward Obama as McCain stumbled in after stint campaign jabs — an unofficial official beginning of her Presidency. Though, I guess the focal point for JD Vance’s stump speech — has not worked its way into Trump’s yet — is trying to pull off a plagiarism charge that one of those non-book bullet PowerPoint political books she has released at an earlier part of her career — has material from.elsewhere. Oh, maybe.

I am mildly curious to watch Trump’s remarks at the Al Smith dinner. A weird affair, this is now. Kamala bails, though sent over a skit with an Saturday Night Live character, the better to defuse the “there is no humor in a jab on Trump’s trajectory but whatever”. Trump gives the whatever. There may be a context and frame of London can pull into that makes them funny.

Noting any tiny inch of a sign of a bad news on the election forecasts and prospects of Kamala Harris, piling a molehill into a mountain. A certain Democratic Party and Selfridges PTSD on the 2016 election, mainly. When 75 percent of the signs point your direction, you fear the 25 percent that don’t. It is also that sensation that a large number of Republicans in the mid level kind of does not care all that much one way or the other — two years on we will win with Harris to knock around and have at least some room to wriggle with back to where we want without Trump as an albatross. The Democrats and group of Never Trumpers are existential meaning here. Beyond a candidate who, when you can get past miles of incoherence, is evoking the 1890s Alien and Sedition Act, nineteenth century tariff policies, the 1950s immigration deportation program, and early twentieth century racial theories that died in Germany at the end of World War 2.

It has been a while since I have checked in on the Babylon Bee podcast. They don’t seem to have the group of Christian entertainment not political in the strictest d v r sense yahoos getting interviewed — and I am mildly interested in hearing them, and I think possible the one actually funny host — the guy who did Ax Cop — is gone. They have a long time in development project on the way. It is a hilarious movie mocking the hew and cry over January 6. Hilarity, all of it — what a gas. Somewhere in the past they interviewed a man with “Wak Away”, a group of Black Republicans ie: “Walk Away from the Democratic Party”. An interesting interview with a man who was at the scene — a big take-away from him though not the message he was wanting to relay: he got questioned on a few things, but not prosecuted because — while he was at the crime scene at the time of the crime, he is not a man we have any interest in. Leave feelings of persecution to the persecution.

Animating the Walk Away campaign, apparently, is… The fate and/ or quality of a Brady Bunch reboot. The mind reels. Familiar with this genre of internet videos, five or maybe fifteen minutes, complain about a highly stilted and politically unsubtle entertainment item. This thing about a Brady Bunch reboot where… I don’t know — is Cousin Oliver gender non binary? — is one hour thirty five minutes fifty nine seconds. I will say if wokeness in the form of overbearing production notes halted filming of this project, a rebooted Brady Bunch for the 2020s — Woke All the Way, Baby!

Checking in on the post liberal duo of Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn. When last I listened, they were making a drink the media is ignoring or not putting Putin / Russia’s nuclear saber rattling threats to the West over Ukraine. Today it is — hm. At least it is a dignified caricature of Biden. Or is that Bush? I have no reference point on this. A Bush-Biden mashup might make sense — maybe?

The slog toward the election continues. Media information spaces split ashunder. Some of your neighbour thinks Haitian immigrants are eating dogs and cats and school kids are acting like cats and demanding litter boxes in schools — and even if they aren’t, this just focuses is on real issues. How does one skip past this? Who knows, but it isn’t sustainable.

The demographic-splicing podcast choices of Kamala Harris vs Donald Trump — you exchange a podcast with this silly name — so mocked by good Christian humorists as “sex podcast” — for a 20 something whose shtick is that he runs up to sniff the seats of favoured guests (like Andrew Tate) after they leave — nothing sexual on that scene.

Ron Paul is still out there, commentary available for your edification. When last I checked, he was promulgating every line the Republican Party is against President and then candidate Biden — Russia hoax, responded justice department against Trump, maybe you find yourself aligned with his isolationism on Ukraine, the border the border the border. Bother to check in with Rand Paul — nothing much altered but dynamics of our politics.

Somebody has dumped red paint on the screens of all the parking meters up and down the streets, rendering them not usable. I am thinking that I hope this is a political act — a means of communicating maybe “You all have Blood on your Hands” for “the deaths of Palestinians” or “all the babies lost to Abortion”. Either one, or any number of things I can’t think of right now — though I think the climate fighters favor tomato soup. I know it isn’t — it is just wanton vandalism of public property for its own sake and the sake of jollies. Beside which, the fact that splashed red paint could signify any cause as much as not signify any cause gives away the problem of messaging.

After an hour I get bored of it and drop out. When I return I catch the bottom line right at the very end which negates just about anything of the previous so two hours — and it is up to Tim Walz to poke it toward JD Vance as he fished for an equivalency that, well may work for Matt Taibbi and there is no other means of getting by in the reasonable sounding broad political middle from the right he had managed to work his way to for the duration of his time here.

Performances were about what I expect. Walz had said he was not that good at this, a word of warning to Harris when she picked him. And as much as Democrats want to fix Vance as the man who stumbles his way through a doughnut shop and roll through his podcast interviews, there is a reason he was elected Senator — he was not going to blast his way through the rhetoric of “cat ladies” for the edification of the audience of Bronze Age Pervert and listeners — or, if we want to slide to a wider audience Tucker Carlson. What I pick up here is his one moment to get himself to the role Pence served for Trump in 2016 — if you can’t stomach Trump you can convince yourself you are voting for the undercard. The final exchange of the debate –and years from now the only thing history will remember of it — served to show how Vance would not serve as another Pence — and, as Walz says off of everyone who prepped him for the one moment in a long series of blah — why he is there in the first place.

Someone should have figured the reason for the opening statement. Hey the “I’m a hick out of Appalachia, son of an Opoid Addict” / “Coach and teacher from Minnesota” out of the way, so a Question about Iran and Israel is not filibustered with all that. After that, Grand take away of anything I see any mention of in the discourse. I don’t exactly know what the Tiananmen Square story is, but I am fascinated by the idea of the Bulwark crew barking about what a bad answer he gave and how he should have answered it — and giving the suggestion of the answer he effectively gave. Vance barks out “you are not supposed to fact check” as the hosts clarify that the Haitian migrants are legally so. Walz clearly avoided dogs and cats, and I guess people don’t like his lowest common denominator approach in calling out demagoguery here. Vance got cute by half and laughable in framing Trump as “saving” Obama’s ACA healthcare. And Walz made a funny boo boo in saying he has been friends with school shooters, which to be sure as a teacher these days and at the point in time he had been you are probably tasked with guiding kids away from such.

I do have the sense the man opened the door back up for his 2028 run, the door that had seemingly closed with cat ladies and doughnuts. Sure, we have good reports of MAGA faithful not much liking him — but remember, Kamala Harris “is a cop”. And if we see Vance not much bothering to distance from the Trump election denying here, recall Ronald Reagan was a vociferous supporter of Nixon throughout Watergate. Things turn, Vance can push it aside and complete his formation into Vance version number four that this debate served to start him out as —

Entering the last full month of the election and Trump’s hair now has this purple floral it. The irony is that his base of support attached purple hair to that which is wrong with America — the indoctrinated youth with woke gay marxist hair dye. Or maybe it is the hair color of some his base — some old blue hairs.

Jason Linkins insists that the Democrats he is speaking out a face on the miseey Trump wrecks. Apparently the face is that of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Which is. A regrettable placement of image to headline, I assume. We wander into the deep cynicism of the immigration politics where JD Vance bluntly states the dogs and cats thing is a lie to get the focus on their topic, and where Harris can’t run against a stated “mass deportation” — a horrible idea even if you can justifiably stand to move right on the border — because polling shuts it out.

Hey! Iran strikes Israel! And this probably is actually about the biggest issue of the next president, even as there are no pat solutions and even as it polls nowhere.

A warning. This vote is rigged. When you push down to click a vote for the left choice, it takes you to the same link as the right choice.

Looking for a hero in a rhetorical sense if you have a sympathy toward “tilting at windmill”s figures amongst the third party candidates, you are forced to skip past Jill Stein. Pretend that is nothing untoward with the photograph of her dining with Putin, the symbol of just how everyone views her — Captured by Russia, main point of a campaign to undermine NATO and has a strong double talk hypocrisy in an ability to call Netanyahu a war criminal while qualifying anything with Putin. Individually, you can make policy arguments on what the US ought behave with respect with Israel and what the US ought behave with respect with Russia — it is just that when you lay it side by side it becomes revealing. But Jill Stein is then asked a rudimentary American government question. How many voting members of the U.S. House of Representatives there are. Her answer — “600”. Question mark inflection.

The big perennial candidate names of the past slotted as left-wing voices — Eugene Debs and Ralph Nader — they knew the House count.

This leaves us, probably, with the Libertarian’s Chase Oliver for any sense that something is right with no shot third candidate voices of conscience. A bane of the comments section of Reason magazine’s blog who are a bunch of Trump fans. They should love him, as his vaguely cultural left effects and disruptor of the dominant Mises Caucus overtakes make him more likely a draw for a couple otherwise Harris voters than a couple otherwise Trump voters.

Looking down ticket, the Libertarian candidate in Montana has a question — Why is Trump leading Biden in Montana by double digits while @SheehyforMT is tied with @jontester? He presumes to have an answer but his answer doesn’t account for the fact that he is way behind both of them not answers why he is tied with the Green Party candidate.

I don’t think the latest news-headline claimed “assassination attempt” oughta count. Or, if you count it, you are now obliged to count the myriad of not close attempts that came to all the other presidents, and then quickly flipped out of the news — the car that crashed into the White House gate in the Clinton Administration, the wacky message board announcement on plans against Obama at his inauguration. Maybe these are one and two steps back of the golf course assailant, but the golf course assailant is one and two steps back from the man who got to Trump’s ear — so I mark it as — oh, something the Secret Service has to figure out — even if the figuring out here is figuring out how to talk Trump into a more private golf course — but not more.

Good news! Allan Lichtman and Bill Maher have each declared Harris will win. No need to sweat anything anymore! And I guess the logic comes through. Maher passed by a reference to the Joseph McCarthy as means of historical comparison of a passing of a darkness. “They are eating the dogs; they are eating the cats” apparently analogous to when the generals turn. I can’t decide whether JD Vance’s role here — dipping in and holding further to “if we have things up” to get the media to pay attention to Springfield — an admission he has to scramble to cover up — moves me off of “want to have a beer with” idea or solidified it. Maybe I am still trying to figure out something with this guy, but it is hard to say I would get it. A new old podcast chat from him dropped. He is talking with someone, apparently I am told an Alex Jones lawyer — very much holding onto his claim to an avatar of the Appalachian hill-billy, though an avatar stripped of any humanity. Whether many of the new gawkers of the podcast interview know it or not, he is taking off the “Nine Nations of North Americ”, useful in thinking of regional political alignments, but as presented by Vance rather deadening. The takeaway people seem to take from Vance on his hillbillies of Appalachia being the swing vote on the plantation Southerners and the New England Yankees, insufferable wokes — is a puzzled “is this a defence of slavery?” – – and on to “where do the other parts of the nation sit in this?”. The book probably gets a recommended for Amazon purchasers of, say, Thom Hartmann’s favorite, Strauss and Howe’s Generational Turning books — the same ball park and something that may explain something but nothing on a person’s decided approach on public policy. The map is not the terrain. You don’t want color commentary on your political prejudices and biases. Might be why he underperformed the party ticket in his Senate campaign?

What percentage of the vote is Mark Robinson getting? 42?

2016 and I walk by a bar with a Hillary Clinton – Donald Trump debate on, and the crowd reacting. I catch a response of “that’s right!” to a parry of Hillary Clinton to a Donald Trump name-drop of Bernie Sanders over – – it would seem — trade issues. I get a sick feeling on this — the missed point as they cheer on Hillary Clinton dousing Trump because obviously Sanders is — however shakily — supporting her. It misses a point that Trump is reaching a set of rust belt Sanders or Sanders sympathetic voters in this one. The debate answer works in Trump’s favor, the post show punditry and theater review poll analysis showing Hillary with a win be damned. A threshold holds up for Trump for a section of the that belt electorate — the poll question on “who won the debate?” is as meaningless here as Romney’s smashing of Obama in 2012.

2024. Light years away from a Trump who held it together at key points of 2016. The previous debate had the pre-chatter of a Biden plan to “rattle” Trump, lay out the bait and let Trump show himself to be Trump. Biden, at the end of his effectiveness for the presidency and past the end of effectiveness for performative aspects for the presidency, was not up for it — the big take away is a visual of Biden staring befuddled by Trump’s beguiling mendacious barrage and then Biden unable to weave a response out of it. And that was the end of him. I can deliberate on the meaning of the bad performance, but a good cross-section of the electorate will view anything other than “he’s senile!” as stanning for Biden. The trouble is if the lowest common denominator ask for a vote on Biden over Trump is “normal” versus abnormal, the pointers against that frayed greatly against him now.

There is this desultory feeling I get wading about the political spectacle going into a presidential debate. The key, the staff of political campaigns past say, is to have your one liners and singers at ready. Wait for the moment it comes. Then throw it out there. And! Blam! “You are no Jack Kennedy!”. And with that, meet the next vice president, Lloyd Bentsen.

In the aftermath of the big show, joint appearance with infectious person and one not serious man taking up the issues, I look about the clips of cable news figures. The hackiest of hacks, Fox News’s Jesse Waters, chimes in that Trump got in the lines everyone will know. “See Spot Run” apparently amongst them. A little hard to get there, as Trump moved into the hyper-Internet space of dogs and cats eating Haitian migrants, and that was the end of everything.

Memo to Erik Erikson: your culprit is JD Vance. Further memo: they are running with this one. They got the cop backing it up!

At the risk of doing a hint of that thing Rod Dreher hates for left-wing culture war goal post shifting … Even in the insane scenario that there was some handful of cases of Haitian immigrant cat eating totalling five or so — why should that in the national conversation of immigration issues? Also, aside in that Dreher vantage… What ever happened to slamming Trump for January 6 as the “Beerbelly Putsch”?I

The big line from the “Right” has long been “the left can’t meme”. Sure. The right can meme all right. And if this is “meme-ing”, why would the Left want to bother?

I guess we sit to see how much this skin is back to the ground of “addressing illegal immigration”, and the appeal to those five cross current Pennsylvania voters that will decide the election.

Lost in the sea a bit are a couple other great items. Transgender surgeries for illegal immigrants in prison. Funny that, I would think that would be in the Republican platform — don’t dare cross the border (jump over that wall) or you will face the consequences! It is also interesting to dissect the “Venezuela on Steroids” — on that spectrum that has transgender surgeries for illegal immigrants in prison — what does Venezuela’s government do that falls short of that? Also worth noting, Trump rhapsodized about leaving to Venezuela to Elon Musk. So… He is fleeing to a Hellhole?

A quick jump over to Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn. I see that their line on the latest DOJ droppings on Russia TV – paid personalities. Taibbi is somewhat hilarious, as he appears to be the big bugaboo for a Bulwark personality — intimating sinister-wise who might get ensnared and exposed as paid by the Russia government — the man JVL trailed off at the end after a list of the usual suspect — Greenwald and Ritter — and the quick mention indicates he wants him revealed. For his part, I do see the Taibbi comment is a Fox News headline — “The Russia Hoax just Will Not Die” — presenting intriguing questions on just what the “Russia Hoax” be and be not to form “hoax”.

I do say Kirn and Taibbi did a fantastic job dissecting the ridiculous celebration on Tim Walz. On this new news item, where Taibbi is required to laugh off people’s casual dumping of him in any mid-length list, it is interesting to hear them move to one woman in the indictment, and kind of scratch their head at her fringe casual. Yes, it is an anti-19th Amendment advocate. Ponder the nature of Russia social and cultural conservative attempts and how they slide off of American political chatter. Or, simply keep within the terrain of online weirdness.

Out in the mists of our political sideshows, Senator Rob Johnson of Wisconsin has endorsed the conspiracy classic The Creature at Jekyl Island — and the fight against the Fed commences, and Ron Paul has won. Ticket Carlson, prime spot speaker at the RNC convention, veers to a guest wanting to take Winston Churchill down a peg — the true villain of World War 2. And the Lieutenant governor of North Carolina, the Republican gubernatorial candidate Democrats hope can drag Harris to winning the states’ electoral votes — was really big customer of our of state porn.

Actually one weird thing on the last guy, a hitch in the manner Democrats rail on him. It was a somewhat canned and rehearsed spiel from a Democratic official getting to carry forth on MSNBC. “Holocaust denier”, she said, and then “Abortion denier”. I sighed, muttering “knock it off”. Like, take the biggest anti-abortion figure — Constitution Party Presidential nominee Randall Terry. The man does not deny the existence of Abortions. Words appear to cease having any meaning here.