61 Comments

This article was really GOOD.

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Sep 1, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

Republicans have been awful since time immemorial, but I agree with the argument that Palin was a Trump precursor, championing the "not only conservative, but also crazy and stupid" model as a national political candidate -- yeah, I remember Dan Quayle, but he was more simply dim-witted than full-on, freak flag lunatic.

Anyway, I take great satisfaction in seeing those Little Starbursts extinguished.

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Palin pioneered (if that's the word I want) not just crazy and stupid, but PROUDLY stupid. Compare and contrast her saucy-little-minx stupidity to that of Visibly Brain Damaged Herschel Walker. Of all the awful GOP candidates this year, he's the one I truly cannot fathom. Two weeks ago, on Twitter, I predicted he would chicken out of the one debate with Warnock he'd agreed to, and last Friday he did. I hope the "debate" goes on, with Warnock vs. an unmanned lectern, but if the Dems really want to play hardball, they'd set up a video monitor and play clips of Walker giving statements, none of which are ever, ever coherent.

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Walker is a twofer insofar as he demonstrates the GOP’s cynical racism – throw any old Black guy in there to oppose the Black Democrat – as well as their contempt for their own voters: “look, here’s a potato with an (R) after his name, now go vote for it, you brainwashed losers.”

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Huh. Yeah, that about sums it up.

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This. And the Warnock campaign has made ads touting his accomplishments, and has run ads that have a (carefully selected, majority-white) cross section of Georgians saying "I can't trust anything Herschel Walker says". They haven't even discussed his domestic violence issues, because they don't have to.

Walker's people are counting on 40-year-old nostalgia (Heisman Trophy, National Championship, campaign signs with a stylized football in red and black). Ignoring that there are more schools in this state than UGA. (Warnock's people filmed a campaign ad with him jogging the track at the Atlanta University Center--a famous HBCU complex that includes his alma mater, Morehouse.)

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IIRC, you live in Georgia. If you have the time, what's your feel so far? I think Warnock has a decent shot, but I don't know the state and MTG's congressional district is there, sooo...

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Warnock has a decent shot if he can work through the expected electoral shenanigans. The same people who were in charge of the election machinery in 2020 are still there, and have narrowed the alternatives to in-person voting. (Raffensberger wouldn't go to jail for Trump and won't for Herschel.)

MTG's district is closer in distance and culture to Chattanooga than Atlanta; her voters won't go to Atlanta on a dare. Marcus Flowers is a very nice Black veteran who has absolutely no chance.

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Thanks. I always prefer to hear from people on the ground in a state as opposed to going purely by polls and pundits.

Here in Pennsylvania, I’m out of sync with some of the national pundits, because while I believe Fetterman will win, I would be (pleasantly) surprised if he wins by double digits. There is a lot of “Alabama in between” in PA and I expect Fetterman’s margin of victory to be closer to 3-6% when the votes are counted. But his Every County, Every Vote strategy is smart, because it’s firing up Dems in red counties that Trump won handily.

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They might also try, "I can't understand anything Herschel Walker says."

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"Hell, neither can I!" says Herschel.

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No matter how crazy they are, they vote the way the base wants so the craziness is of far more importance to us than it is to them.

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Sep 1, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

Two factoids:

Begich and Palin combined beat Peltola's numbers big time. I mean, Alaska, come on.

There appears like there's going to be a shit ton of new voters motivated to register in opposition to Dobbs.

The art has moved, if I may wax poetic, since Flores' election in the areas of state abortion laws and related insanity and the possibility that the last Republican POTUS has been gifting and/or selling state secrets. (I of course hedge but if the issue was just getting records back for the National Archive, why is DOJ's head of counter-intelligence involved as much as Blatt is?)

Meanwhile, November's moved from expected Red wave to something interesting which, of course, is a little scary put like that. Of course, the red wave idea was based on the past while ignoring the present but a present based in part in the MSM-pushed shitty poll numbers for Biden and the Dems and little else other than that.

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Sep 1, 2022·edited Sep 1, 2022

Ah, but the far-right and medium-right candidate split the vote, enabling the Democrat to WIN! Republicans in disarray, circular firing squad, "Not a member of an organized political party, I'm a Republican", yadda yadda yadda.

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Sep 1, 2022·edited Sep 1, 2022

In my own state, two weeks before the Democratic primary, all the major Senate candidates except one withdrew from the race and endorsed the front-runner, Mandela Barnes. Republicans fall in love, Democrats fall in line.

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Hope so!

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Ah, but the far-right and medium-right candidate split the vote, enabling the Democrat to WIN

Ranked choice voting like in Alaska destroys this point much better than a Ben Shapiro debate

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Sep 1, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

It's no more than a hunch and some hope, but it seems like Joe and Jane Sixpack are finding Republicans more and more repellant these days. Jane because the GOP has been screaming that she's not a citizen and may not actually be a human; Joe because he's just tired of the freakshow that the GOP has devolved into--especially the Party's new edict that you must buy into Trumpism and QAnon in its totality in order to be considered a "real American."

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Sep 1, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

These was a poll out yesterday here in Indiana showing our gop senator Todd Young up just 45-42 over Dem challenger Tom McDermott Jr. It was an internal McDermott poll, so take it for what you will, but there was another poll a week or so ago that showed the Dem SOS candidate Destiny Wells edging out the gopper in that race. For the record I will be stunned if either actually wins, but if these races are actually anywhere nearer that close, that’s bad, bad news for the gop elsewhere.

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I know I'm stereotyping here, but Indiana (and the Midwest in general) seems like the kind of place where exhausted voters might actually lean Dem just because they'd like some folks in office who won't demand so much of their attention. "Make politics boring again" could be their rallying cry.

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It should be a great cycle for blue dog Dems maybe.

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Sep 1, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

This is not the first time I've heard the child trafficking thing, it apparently is where you go when "They're taking your jobs we keep complaining no one wants" and "they're infected with that disease we convinced you wasn't real" stop working on even the most cursory thinkers. But I have this liberal need to figure out what weird seed got planted for *that* to turn up in the carrots, and do... do they not understand the difference between trafficking in general and child sex trafficking? Do they not know anything about it? Are they imagining every one of those is some little white girl stolen from a suburb and carried to, I assume, Mexico though from the state of the freakout you'd think we shared a border with the Vatican.

Most of the trafficking that goes on at our border, last I checked, is large scale trafficking of adult workers, and not just sex workers. And it's *into* our country. These are not the victims the republican base cares about.

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Sep 1, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

"for *that* to turn up in the carrots"

2 marks!

Also too: sharing a border with the Vatican...

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Sep 1, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

I'm holding a grudge against the Church. I'd apologize, but they never have.

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My dotard idee fixe du jour is that if there’s identity politics why not identity religion where the basis joining together is tribalism and a touch of superstition and nothing else?

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That's what Mega-church Christian fundamentalism has going for it: a VERY low bar to entry. Just say you accept Jesus as your personal lord and savior, and you're in! Don't need to know a word of the bible, in fact it's much better if you don't. Contrast that with more traditional forms or religion with their catechisms and Hebrew schools and Madrassas, it's the perfect religion for folks who don't take to the book-larnin'.

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I was just gonna make a Herry Potter/GC joke, but then you have to be all serious and intelligent and stuff.

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And then at the other end of that spectrum, you get the prosperity gospel. Somewhere in orbit of that, there’s the LDS. Weeeeird if one thinks too much about all that.

Oops. Nearly forget a shout out for Republican Jesus.

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Sep 1, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

I mean, I get that it's of a piece with their general "They're coming to sexualize your children" thing, but it's a very strange thing to try to get republicans to care about. It is tragic, but anyone who cares about this particular aspect is for open borders because that would stop much of it if people were free to come and go. Maybe they're just throwing everything at the wall knowing nobody's gonna look that deep and it'll be good as a fundrasier for a week.

Except that a lot of this stuff does gain traction, and this fits right in with their moral panic and people pick it up and people get hurt, and nobody blames anyone because this is how stochastic terrorism works.

And I'm getting paranoid, but there does seem to be a very determined effort to destroy the entire concept of consent, and in particular consent around childrens' bodies. It's less "blue maga" and more "internet nihilists for the lulz", but it's either that or I have to actively believe there is something that goes so wrong in the heads of a much higher percentage of people than I think I can personally consider right now.

On the other hand, these people are using children as human shields and this is a fucking Stephen KING novel and it's weird how this isn't more unacceptable.

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This is a GREAT COMMENT.

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Meanwhile, in Missouri, the Feds just indicted *actual* child traffickers who were, of course, affiliated with Republicans: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edca/pr/arrests-made-transportation-fresno-county-teen-school-missouri

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And in Texas, they have overwhelmed the system with parents of trans kids who are being investigated for *not* abusing their kids.

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I'll leave it to the Grouch to determine if "Hardcore adjacent" needs a hyphen...but the Really Important Point is this:

There's a whole comedic landscape to be sketched in regarding the (not quite throwaway line) "by sending her money". Sorta like the tag "between the sheets". This querida derecha deserves a long essay which every paragraph ends "by sending her money".

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Chicago Manual of Style would say it does. Grouchy is a grouch, but not a grammar nazi

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Never would I insinuate nazism (grammatical nor otherwise) to your mode/method.

Also, "Chicago Manual of Style" always makes me think of Chicago-style pizza, which is not a bad thing (irrespective of NY pizza snobbery, etc.)

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Well, the volume is rather thick & full of cheese

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(With endnotes as Tavern-Style Cut thin crust: https://www.italianfiestapizzeria.com/)

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Sep 1, 2022·edited Sep 1, 2022

Chicago Manual of Style clearly dictates sport peppers, fluorescent-green pickle relish and celery salt (and a hyphen)

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"fluorescent-green pickle relish" "A color not found in nature" as a fellow Chicagoan puts it. (We are also forgetting the tomatoes.)

This will come as blasphemy to Chicagoland but I don't like *anything* on my hot dog and in fact prefer a Polish Sausage or Italian Beef.

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You and my partner would get along well. I see hot dogs as a vehicle for mustard, steak sauce, BBQ sauce, relish, onions, chili, sauerkraut, cheese, peanut butter, pineapple, or anything else that strikes my fancy. I often leave out the actual dog.

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So now we know Who Left The Dogs Out (WHO WHO WHO HOOHOO).

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Oof.

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I haven't seen the "ending this campaign" emails you mention, but I am still getting the "Is there ANYTHING we could do to get you to donate?" emails and I know I should get my mind out of the sewer, but that one really creeps me out.

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Also, it's Sept. 1, so I hope you enjoyed the end of the last FEC reporting period and the beginning of a new FEC reporting period! Ancient cultures used to mark time by the phases of the moon, but we have more advanced methods.

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FEC...pheh...

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I get a ton of them from all the Dem senate candidates. Texts, too. I ignore them. I donate according to my ability to give, and that precludes the majority of the beggars.

They all have this tone of giving up unless I personally give their campaigns some smallish amount.

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These idiots wouldn't recognize a real pesrson from the "radical left" if they met Stalin.

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Well, if accurately reporting the views of a Congressional candidate in a newspaper isn't a sign of radical leftism, I don't know what is.

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If they heard Stalin on the campaign trail, they'd like him quite a bit -- the authoritarianism, the anti-semitism, the crushing dissent, the cult of personality. What's not to like?

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I can imagine them lining up behind "Liquidate the Kulaks" just because "Kulaks" is all scary and foreign-sounding. "I don't know anything about Kulaks, but they probably take their kids to drag-queen story hour at the library!"

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Depends. What would Stalin’s position be on student debt partial forgiveness?

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Third option for the GOP is to turn over policy to the street gangs. I think that's where they'll end up in mid-November.

First they need to discover that no one likes them, and then they'll need to rationalize that as election fraud, and then finally that frisson that all authoritarians get when someone tells them they need to bust heads and take charge.

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Flores's campaign and political career do in fact prove only a halfwit judges by the group. If right-wing Cuban exiles weren't proof enough for decades, along with other notable "conservative" "grifters of a color," now we have a cottage industry across the spectrum. From "Blacks for Trump" to "Log Cabin" GOP, the big tent party of buy my shtick (and literally my stuff) wants you to give your money and your vote to the Cause. Which is? Well, what are you buying? A just cause or just because, uh, NANCY PELOSI OPEN BORDER BIDEN BIPPITY BOPPITY BOO HOO YOU!?

Step right up!

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Flores's campaign and political career do in fact prove only a halfwit judges by the group. If right-wing Cuban exiles weren't proof enough for decades, along with other notable "conservative" "grifters of a color," now we have a cottage industry across the spectrum. From "Blacks for Trump" to "Log Cabin" GOP, the big tent party of buy my shtick (and literally my stuff) wants you to give your money and your vote to the Cause. Which is? Well, what are you buying? A just cause or just because, uh, NANCY PELOSI OPEN BORDER BIDEN BIPPITY BOPPITY BOO HOO YOU!?

Step right up!

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BTW, Roy, where does that title come from? I can't decide whether it's Touch of Evil or Night of the Iguana or what. But I can hear the character chanting it.

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Ever since they watched Nixon board Marine One and swore "never again", Republicans have bet the seed corn on doubling down and it has paid off handsomely. For every "I'm not a witch" and " macaca" a thousand crazy flowers have bloomed and won elections. Biting the bullet and getting behind TFG gave them the Supreme Court they've been planning for decades, and the payoff will be jackpots for decades to come, followed by blocking Democratic initiatives for decades after.

All to say it will take far, far more than a few crazy flowers getting washed away to get the Republican Party to back away from its current death march. The pure crazy that Mayra embodies has its limits, but as enabled by billionaires and apparatchiks like McConnell, its working well enough to keep the Republican Party a viable power center. Predictions are hard, especially about the future, but if the crazys don't break free of the apparatchiks and set the kitchen on fire, some combination of Black Tuesday, a virus less accommodating than Covid-19, a few Dust Bowl/Galveston Flood disasters, and Gaia-knows-what and the end the Second Gilded Age will make the first one look like a picnic, because the Republican Party still has no governing philosophy other than lower taxes, purge the rottenness from the system, and drill, baby, drill. And it ain't 1929 any more. It didn't work then, and Mother of Mary, its really not gonna work now. Buckle up, its going to be a bumpy ride. In fact, the crazies breaking free might be our Avengers: Endgame best option.

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I dunno about the video game whatevers but much of what you say is sufficient to entice me to order your newsletter.

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The Apocalypse Will Be Televised.

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Here from the future to report that Ms. Flores lost her "re-election" and her 15 minutes of fame, as the vanguard of the Latino Red Wave, will be ending come January.

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