stevenkesslar

As always, Sis, your sense of fashion and glamour exceed all expectations. Given your exceptional talent, I do have a teeny tiny little favor to ask. There have been various complaints about the authenticity of The Odyssey. But, given it's financial success, I'm guessing we can expect a sequel. Perhaps you could serve as costume designer? Or if not, at least fashion consultant? For example, lots of people complained that the armor didn't look authentic to the time. My complaint is a bit different. Nolan was obviously going for a more modern interpretation. I'm fine with that. Still, there were things that just seemed inauthentic. We get to see Tom Holland's gorgeous biceps and underarms. But am I to believe his pecs and 8-pack really look like that? You can't fool me! Perhaps in the sequel Nolan could instead use wrestling singlets for the warriors. It's not as novel as a Black Athena. But it's something. And, as you note, a little VPL goes a long way. I think Chris Nolan would find this kind of interpretation to be brilliant. In fact, he'd probably come up with some kind of Cyclops or whatever that would want to just eat these guys up! 🫢 Anyway, sorry for digressing. We now return you to your regularly scheduled post about a weak and genocidal President who is failing.

Have you tasted any of them, Sis? Just asking for James, of course.

I may be giving too much credit to Fetterman here. But I see his thing as different than Sinema/Manchin. With Sinema/Manchin I would say 100 % of it pointed to them being money whores, Sinema in particular. Manchin can say he is not and never was in no way, shape, or form a liberal. 😱 But Sinema was. 😍 They both can say we just want to be centrists and meet in the middle. And there is truth to that. But the middle also happened to be where there was tremendous amounts of special interest and corporate money waiting for them. I was a small money Sinema donor when she first ran. For months I sent her borderline sexist emails complaining she was a money whore and "pocket sucker" who just lunged at the money of special interest lobbyists with money in their pockets. I bet she got enormous amounts of nasty emails from donors and Arizona voters complaining she was a gutless wonder. She got the memo. And now we have a fighter in Gallego. Hope he doesn't turn out to be the next Eric Swalwell. But I digress. As you said, Manchin and Sinema knee capped Biden on higher taxes on the rich and things like the expanded child tax credit. I don't see Fetterman as a sell out money whore. Nor does he. Now THAT is Democrats being irrational. We desperately want a Democratic Senate. And yet we want Fetterman to leave? Huh? It confirms what seems to be part of Fetterman's bitch. Which is that the Democratic Party has too many purity tests. And fundamentally does not want to be a big tent party. By all accounts, Jon Tester feels the same way. But he didn't whine about it publicly. Tester said some Democratic Party positions made it too toxic for a Democrat to win in Montana. My standard is very simple. And I think indisputably mathematically correct on this. If we want a 60 seat filibuster proof Senate majority we have to win in Iowa, and Montana, and Indiana, and North Dakota. And certainly Pennsylvania. Those are the last Senate seats Democrats had in what could be called "Trump" states that we lost. A Heitkamp or a McCaskill would have been much more loyal than a Manchin and a Sinema. That's the difference between money whore and not money whore to me. But we can't have a McCaskill and Heitkamp and Tester if we want purity tests. Fetterman says the right needs to stop bullying trans kids. So, again, I may be wrong. But he seems like a decent, if weird, guy. I had the same feeling when he spoke at the Fauci Lynching Trial. He talked about being Lt. Guv while there is chaos and death due to COVID. And how he wonders in retrospect what he could have done differently, and better. If the hearing had been about THAT, it might have been a good bipartisan hearing. Some of this is he feels Democrats want to be the "anti-Israel" Party. For reasons I spelled out at length, I disagree. I would argue the Genocide Jew is "anti-Israel" and I am "anti-genocide." And I have the polls on my side. But Fetterman is not a big AIPAC money whore - yet. If he is smart, he won't take a penny from AIPAC if he runs again. He'll just say, "Sorry. I am with Israel. I see Hamas as a bully. I feel the same way about Republican attacks on trans kids. Period." Bottom line: I like to win. So does Chuck Schumer. I'm betting Chuck Schumer is trying to figure out how to work with him. Not to get rid of him. I've read that Fetterman may be more likely to just not run again. He is a small donor guy. And he still has a decent approval rating in his state. His problem is probably more a Democratic primary than a general election. If he just steps aside and lets someone else run and win, I will respect his decision. If he runs and wins the primary, I am with him 100 %. I hope he means what he says and is with us 100 %.

We agree. All this is just a small preview of what to expect if Democrats take either chamber. They won't be settling for crumbs. They will want Trump's head on a platter, And they will have to be careful. They will be elected to focus on affordability and health care and ending a forever war, just like Trump was in 2024. So if it's just more "Trump is evil" stuff, that's proven to be insufficient. That said, it is necessary. Expose every little shitty and stinky part of the Trump grifting empire. When it comes to Fauci, Republicans are saying they want truth and transparency. Well, guys. Hold that thought.

Here's something to scare you. Rick Wilson says he has a deep understanding of Trump. I agree. If you watch the video, he's not arguing Trump will win. He is arguing Trump will run, and cause chaos. Any sentence that strings "Trump" and "chaos" together always seems possible. Anyways, Trump can't be demented or dead in 2029, as well as POTUS. Or could he be?

I'm rooting for my oldest nephew's daughter. It's a fun stage of my life. This young woman did go to an arts school that she recently graduated from. And she does want to win either a Tony or an Oscar. So all I have to do is be the uncle who at dinner says, "I already have my fantasy about how you win an Oscar. You're going to be living in Paris with your husband (she gets married in September) directing your first film. For which you will win an Oscar. And when you win I want to be the old guy in the rocker saying, "I know that woman!" I'll stop there. But she did smile and look me in the eye and say, "I like your fantasy!" I was visiting their state because her sister, who is now in college and wants to be an actor, starred in a local non-profit production of Hadestown. She lives in the South. But she has pictures on her Instagram of shots on Broadway, when Mom and Dad took them to see some play they had to see. My point is, I think Broadway will be fine. My nephew's daughter, as I said to her Mom and her Mom knows, is much more likely to do Thoroughly Modern Millie than Doubt or Schindler's List. It's all good. We need both. Somebody will come along and dazzle us again. And, since my standards are low, it'll be easy. 😉 Have fun in Bangkok.

The formula is remarkably simple. If you are famous and appear on my show, I make more money. So if you appear on my show, I will like you. Because you make me money. It's basically the same old same old as mainstream media. It's a business. Of course they always had an agenda. One big difference is that with mainstream media there is a standard around facts. With Joe Rogan, there obviously is not. He concedes the point to Bono that maybe 300,000 people have already died thanks to cuts in USAID. But then he goes right back into his false rant about "trillions" of dollars in fraud. Rogan is going out of his way to say, "I could give a flying fuck about facts, and math." That said, Bernie Sanders appears on his show and Rogan endorses him for POTUS. Donald Trump appears on his show and Rogan endorses him for POTUS. James Talarico appears on his show and Rogan says you should run for POTUS. So the formula is very simple. Rogan wants to be rich, and is. If you appear on his show and make him money, he will probably help your political career. What a shocker! How moronic is that? 🤔 If there is a moron in the room, it is Kamala Harris. What if Kamala Harris appeared on his show and made him money, and Rogan endorsed her instead? Some votes would have changed. She did it with Charlemagne Tha God. Biden bent over backward to insult Charlemagne, and all Blacks. Kamala dazzled him with warmth and recipes. Rogan really is that guy who you always want to make sure you're the last voice he hears before he opens his mouth. And you also want to make sure you're helping him get clicks and make money. It's very simple. Trump of all people knew that. It all helps tear the system down. And it invites disaster. True or not, I have resolved myself to that. Now it's just a question of whether we can keep the disasters contained, Or they blow us all up somehow. Maybe, as Talarico says, we will build back a less corrupt system that is less unequal.

I'm going to post several videos which I found interesting for specific reasons I will point out. This whole thing has been litigated to death. And I have now beaten it to death, again. That said, I personally found it helpful and interesting. I learned some things I did not know before. The clearest and saddest thing about is is that this is culture war and political war, not science. There are interesting debates that could still be had about the value of gain of function research. Or about how we could have had a lower death rate with COVID. Or about what we do to get test scores for kids back to what they were before COVID school closures. But this is about none of that. And I blame it on Rand Paul. Which is a partisan thing to say. But this looks, feels, and sounds like a one man partisan crusade to paint Dr. Fauci as Dr. Frankenstein. Happily, my guess is the American people are ahead of the politicians on this. While it is suspect, 87 % of people in one non-scientific poll said that Congress should grant Fauci immunity in return for his testimony. I'm reading into what that could mean. It suggests to me people understand what Fauci did say: that Rand Paul is "unhinged", and is simply looking for any reason to paint him as Dr. Frankenstein and put him in jail. So 87 % of Americans say take that threat away and just let the guy speak his mind. I agree. What is weird about that is that I think we have now heard everything we could possibly want to know from Fauci. Including that he likes Barbara Streisand's music, and didn't like the public adulation "one bit." We have certainly openly heard his views about gain of function research and the likely origins of COVID. For like a decade. But if we want to hear it again, give him immunity from Rand Paul and a MAGA lynch mob and let him speak. The one thing I credit Rand Paul for is putting the public spotlight on gain of function research, and the lab leak theory. But, like before, if Fauci does speak, I think Fauci will make Rand Paul look like an unhinged zealot who thinks his opinion is God's word. I started this thread as a rant about Halperin. His website has an email portal. And I sent him a bitchy email saying he did a great job covering the 2024 election. But here he sounds jealous and petty. Maybe he got a bunch of backlash. Because, to his credit, in the video above he has almost completely dialed back the petty and jealous nonsense. He gets one dig in at Fauci for going out to lunch with Brad Pitt after his testimony. Ha ha ha. I timestamped that video to 9:30 because I think the most interesting part of it is what Republican talking head Larry O'Connor has to say. O'Connor's rant is longer than that. But I think that is enough to explain the core of it. I think that explains what is happening. Probably with Rand Paul, too. Rage. Irrational rage. Of course, rage is always irrational. At least Paul can keep a lid on the rage, when his neighbor is not beating the shit out of him. Robert Kennedy, Jr - who is no moral icon - just flew into the same kind of rage with Dana Bush because she focused calmly on facts. What testosterone! What men! They probably have three foot long cocks, too! What BDE! But, sorry. Here's my rage. They are stupid dangerous barking dogs who got hundreds of thousands of their own Trump voting older Republicans killed by pushing their irrational and unscientific anti-vaccine theories. So my rage goes like this: YOU REPUBLICAN FUCKERS KILLED YOURSELVES! Affluent liberal Democrats in Marin County did not die at anywhere near the rate as you OLD REPUBLICAN BARKING MORONS in red California or red states. Why? Because we listened to Fauci and got vaccinated. I find it infuriating that Republicans now want to have a witch hunt and blame it all on Fauci. You should have a fucking hearing on Trump. Trump rape. Trump lies. Trump graft. Trump Forever Wars. Trump burning Iranian girls to death and lying about it. Trump cutting Medicaid and killing poor Americans. Trump cutting PEPFAR and killing hundreds of thousands of poor women and children with HIV all over the world. PEPFAR saved 26 million lives all over the world, AI says. And you want a witch hunt against the guy who started THAT? While you cut it and lie aboiut fraud and get hundreds of thousands and eventually maybe millions of poor people in Africa and Asia and South America killed? YOU are the monsters. YOU are the fucking Dr. Frankensteins. YOU are the cruel irrational barking pieces of shit. PLEASE. Have a hearing. Let Fauci say what he has said publicly and openly without threat of throwing him in jail or clobbering him with your irrational manly rage. This is obviously about partisan axe grinding and political witch hunts. Not facts. And I am sure it plays well among the MAGA base. Who want to believe Dr. Fauci is Dr. Frankenstein. That's the other thing this video in its entirety makes clear. As Hyma Moore, the one calm voice in the video says at 18:00, this is about politics. And "we are on a fool's errand." I agree with him. If we want to talk about the five worst things we did wrong on COVID that caused more deaths, let's do THAT. Doctor Fauci was Dr. Vaccination all through COVID. The whole world proved that vaccination worked. Americans were 5 times more likely to die than Australians because of vaccines. Meaning anti-vaccine dogma. Americans were more than twice as likely to die as Canadians because of vaccines. Trump voters in reddest parts of Michigan were about 7 times more likely to die than Biden voters in the bluest parts of Michigan because of anti-vaccine dogma. These are established facts. So blaming the disaster on Dr. Vaccination is irrational. What a shocker! Measles cases in the US are above recent historic norms for the second year in a row. It's not a disaster yet. But if fewer and fewer people get vaccinated, science says it will be. But who cares about science, and facts? It is very sad. And it is very much America and the world, 2026.

Republicans want to talk about James Talarico’s manhood. Talarico says let them. Why am I not surprised? Sis, your taste in singlets - and cocks - is better than mine. Can you design Jimmy a singlet that shows off his manhood? You know the old line. Speak softly. But carry a big dick. If Republicans have to argue that Talarico is not a man, and Fauci is Dr. Frankenstein, it shows how weak and stupid they are. This could backfire on them. I came. I saw. I BDE'd. 😉

I was working out with Joe Rogan today. And I mentioned we have a goofy dumb mascot dog here that mostly just barks all the time. When I mentioned his name Rogan was stunned. "Dude, you don't know about @Barknaway? Damn! I mean this dog is smarter than any human being! His IQ is 407. He's even smarter than Elon. Who everyone knows is the smartest guy alive." So I was like, "Shit. And here I thought the dog was stupid, and dangerous. Should I apologize?" "Fuck yeah," Rogan said. "You better apologize fast. And while you're at it better apologize to Elon, too. Elon stopped the biggest fraudster money laundering operation in history at USAID." Well, sorry to say. But never mind. I came back from the gym all excited to have my Big Mea Culpa moment. Miss Graham is gone. So there is a natural opening for some drama and ass licking, I figured. But when I looked into this Elon stuff, the numbers literally did not add up. So in an effort to draft my apology, I asked AI. Here's what I learned. It took me maybe two minutes to figure this out using AI. And it fact checks with several articles I then read to confirm all these facts. Right after being informed hundreds of thousands of people may already be dead thanks to these USAID cuts, Rogan could have Googled it in real time before he opened his mouth. It seems clear to me Rogan really doesn't give a shit whether anything he says is true. As long as he's not giving bad medical advice he can be sued for. Some dead kid in Africa or Asia? They're not gonna sue Joe Rogan. No Basis for Corruption Accusations About USAID AI confirmed the same, and added this about how shoddy Musk's butcher job was: I have to say I am disappointed. Call me vain. But I thought it was kind of cool to be associated with the smartest dog, or human, alive. Sadly it turns out that's not mathematically possible, either. The highest claimed IQ is in the 200s. But most guidelines say few people have an IQ over 160. I'm thinking if you put Joe Rogan and Elon Musk and @Barknaway in a room, maybe you could get a decent IQ score if you added them. Just not any actual facts. So I guess there is no need for an apology after all. And it confirms that with our bad dumb barking dog, there's no need for facts either.

We need someone with clout to push this over the edge. Someone who can unite all Americans, red and blue, around the obvious fact that Trump is insane. I think there's only man up for the job.

Well there ya go. Like I said, my standards are lower than yours. I did see Sweeney Todd with Patti Lupone. I felt honored that she looked at me, just because I was sitting in one of the front rows. It doesn't take much with me. And I should have gone to see Cabaret with you. I left that one out in my comments above. I took my Mom to see it on the same trip. And she hated it as well as Mamma Mia. Again, my bad. At least Mamma Mia was upbeat, but loud. Cabaret, of course, was not upbeat at all. Again, she loved 42nd Street. 1 out of 3 ain't bad. But now that I think about it I should have listed Cabaret and Chicago as my two favorite musicals. And movies. Arguably, they are the same musical, with plot differences but the same writers (Kander/Ebb) and similar themes. The Alan Cumming version was great, other than my discontented Mom. But there was no way to top the movie. And Liza. My love for that movie (and Liza) was an early indicator as a child that I was Gay. Which I somehow missed at the time. But it's okay. I caught up later.

Echoing what @Olddaddy said. It is fun to read your comments. You have deeper knowledge and higher standards than I do. As my answers to your question will reflect. I loved the revival of 42nd Street. I took my Mom to see it on her birthday. It was her only trip to Broadway. She hated Mamma Mia. My bad. Too modern. But she loved the old time swag of 42nd Street. She's passed away now. But that evening will always be near and dear in my heart. I loved the Producers, based on strange criteria. I was sitting in the front row. And at one point I think Nathan Lane spat on me. By accident, of course. Or maybe it was all a dream. Regardless, that was all it took for me. Jersey Boys falls in the same category. Just fun to watch. But nobody spat on me. The musical that impacted me the most was Next To Normal. It won the Pulitzer. So I guess I have good taste. Or maybe I have Mommy issues. But it left me deeply moved. You are one of the few people that was not impressed with Wicked. Neither was I. But I saw the stage musical three times. Mostly because I had friends that wanted me to see it with them. My best friend has seen the films I don't know how many times. So eventually I figured out the best thing was just to smile and go along for the ride. Which is of course easier when Jonathon Bailey is a fellow traveler.

I like to say that one of my brothers is a Bloomberg Democrat, and one a McCain Republican. And they are both more rabidly anti-Trump than me, the liberal Democrat. Of course, Bloomberg governed NYC as a liberal Republican. My own worldview is that the things that Bloomberg did in his three terms, I'd argue more for good than bad, set the stage for Mamdani to come in as a corrective. The reason NYC is so damn expensive is that it is thriving. To me, you never want to throw out the capitalism with the bathwater. We Can’t Fix America’s Schools Without Data So there you have a full-throated defense of the Department of Education, and facts, from a billionaire who served as a Republican. You also have this: I had never heard of the Mississippi Miracle. Here's an explanation. It makes sense that Bloomberg would focus on this. It echoes what happened in NYC when he was Mayor. At a minimum, test scores did not get worse under Bloomberg. And they probably got better. I think there's little dispute about Bloomberg's initial years. Gaps between Black and White students narrowed. As that chart suggests, progress seems to have stalled out later on. In part because test scores dropped when NYC adopted tougher common core standards. Recreating a Past Success New York City once led the charge to improve inner-city schools—can it do so again?https://www.city-journal.org/article/recreating-a-past-success That article from right-of-center City Journal argues that deBlasio killed a period of innovation and improvement. Test scores did not improve. And then they plummeted - especially for the lowest income kids - under COVID. COVID was, in effect, the opposite of the Mississippi Miracle. Mississippi added resources to help teachers and focus on the best proven teaching techniques. COVID took away even the basics for the poorest kids. Like classrooms. This also makes me think of John McWhorter, who describes himself as a contrarian liberal Democrats. He was a one man attack machine against Black Lives Matter. His point was we don't need to defund the police. We need to fund phonics. The Mississippi Miracle suggests he has a point. I think it's true that there was a time in the US where better public education was a bipartisan issue. Legislators could meet in the middle. W was President No Child Left Behind. Those days are gone, at least in Trump's White House. Looking on the bright side, at least he hasn't come up with schemes to enrich his family through Trump U education. Who needs that when Genocide-Adjacent Jared can pander to the Genocide Jew and suck up billions from the Saudis? And besides. We will always have crypto. I don't know that Democrats really have an answer on public schools. It's fine to say we're not for charter schools as a solution. But what are we for? Oregon educators led the way to historic school funding victory I do like to brag. This is an example of be careful what you wish for. One of the funnest organizing campaigns of my life was "Kickers For Kids." The kicker is a weird law in Oregon that says if the state gets more tax revenue than it estimated, it has to refund the money to taxpayers. Corporations estimate their tax revenues. So there is an incentive to underestimate. One particular year in the 90's Oregon corporations were getting something like a 50 % tax refund due to the kicker, while Portland public schools were crippled by state initiatives that enacted property tax cuts. A County Chair, who literally was a former democratic socialist, told us in private that she could not support our goal of enacting a progressive county tax on the largest corporations to fund public schools. She was worried corporations would target her and drive her out of office. We did it anyway. She held her breath and backed us. The County Chair won re-election handily. Later she ran for Governor, but narrowly lost in the Democratic primary. We won a one year increase in the county business income tax. And all the ideas stuck. A few years later a state initiative passed saying any future corporate kickers have to go to public education. It helped, but mostly was a drop in the bucket. The very big deal was the 2019 law above, enacted over 20 years after these local organizing skirmishes. In the 90's when we were picking on Oregon corporations, the Republicans had solid majorities in both the House and Senate. Out most effective spokesperson was Avel Gordly, Oregon's only Black State Senator at the time. And an amazing talented leader who just passed away. By 2018 Democrats had solid majorities in the Oregon House and Senate. Which is why they could pass a 0.57 % gross receipts tax on Oregon's largest corporations to fund schools. Presumably this is where Wisconsin is headed, if we have a Governor Hong in 2027. And a Democratic legislative majority in Wisconsin in the future. This happened to kick in just as COVID did. So of course test scores were going to go down, just like they did all over the US and the world. Including in Mississippi. Spending more, Achieving less Oregon's Education Challenge One day a few weeks ago I did a deep dive into what has happened in Oregon schools now that they finally have the political conditions to tax wildly profitable corporations more to fund schools. It is not a rosy scenario, as that headline documents. Test scores went down due to COVID. And they have not come back up. Both US and Oregon test scores dropped between 2022 and 2024. Oregon scores actually got slightly relatively worse, compared to the US as a whole. That can't be blamed on COVID. I haven't been in touch with politicians and school leaders in Oregon on this issue for decades. But even as a liberal Democrat, I thought of John McWhorter. Too much woke bullshit, and not enough phonics. That was my Joe Rogan-like conclusion. But I base it on facts laid out in that report above. Whatever the cause, if that headline above is still true five years from now the tide will turn again. And Bloomberg-like Republican reformers will come roaring back in Oregon. Or is this what pragmatic, fact-driven and results-driven Democratic reformers in Wisconsin may do? Time will tell.

The bad stupid barking dog does not want to kill you. This is not intentional. The bad stupid barking dog does not want to kill children. Hundreds of thousands of kids and adults are dying from HIV thanks to Elon Musk. But the bad stupid barking dog does not intentionally want children to die. The bad stupid barking dog is not a mass murderer. In fact, I worry that Trump will turn our barking pup into Trump Steaks to feed the troops in Iran. The bad stupid barking dog is dangerous because he is stupid, and stupid because he is dangerous. But the bad stupid barking dog just wants to be seen as good and loyal and true. New: Michigan counties that voted heavily for Trump have more COVID-19 cases, deaths The fact that we are relitigating mass death from years ago, and facts that have long been established as facts, tells us that the bad stupid barking dog - like Elon Musk and Joe Rogan - is deeply committed to being stupid and dangerous. At least Joe Rogan calls himself a "moron" and disavows the idea that he knows shit about viruses and death. The bad stupid barking dog is too stupid and dangerous to even understand that he is a moron. Being an American during COVID meant you were more than twice as likely to die from the virus as a Canadian. And about 5 times more likely to die than an Australian. That said, many older vaccinated Australians died of COVID. Here's a news flash. Older people are just more likely to die from flu or COVID, even when vaccinated. It's a weird Trumpian standard. If Fauci opens his mouth, he proves he wants to kill us and is a publicity whore. If he shuts his mouth because he understands the bad barking dog is stupid and dangerous, he proves he wants to kill us and won't be accountable. Meanwhile, you were more than 5 times more likely to die if you lived in one of the reddest parts of Michigan after the vaccines came out. Michigan's Canadian neighbors knew better. But the bad barking dog does not want accountability, or truth. He does not want to save the lives of kids dying of HIV. He wants to be good and loyal and true. I wish I kept a screen shot of US death rates around when the vaccine came out. DeSantis was a poster child for one particular approach to COVID. And California was a typical blue state. Around the time the vaccines came out, I know California and Florida were both in the middle of the rankings of COVID death by state. I'd guess they were both clustered around #20 or so. Today, Florida was the 7th most deadliest state, right behind Michigan which was #6. Blue California was # 38, and had a death rate about 35 % less than Michigan or Florida. Michigan was Whitmer and Florida DeSantis. Poor Blacks in Wayne County with less access to affordable health care were more likely to die. Michigan was also one of the national focal points of Trumpian COVID resistance, and Whitmer assassination plots. The Trumpian resistance did result in more deaths in Michigan, as the chart above proves. Unless you are a bad stupid barking dog who has been vaccinated against facts. Poor thing. You really have to feel sorry for him. Fetterman actually wore a suit and made a good point at the Fauci Lynching Hearing. He said the facts around COVID got too polarized too quickly in 2020. True. I think it's fair to blame that mostly on Trump. But that just makes me a partisan. Trump voters did often pay for their resistance with their lives. I think Democrats were the most wrong on kids and schools. Test scores dropped like a rock and kids lost a part of their education. Older kids who were young adults by 2024 actually said they voted for Trump in part for that reason. That said, Fauci and the vaccine saved lots of lives. Just like Fauci and PEPFAR have saved the lives of millions of HIV patients all over the world. But the bad stupid barking dog insists Fauci wanted to kill himself. And you. The bad barking dog does not want to kill you. He does not intend children with HIV to die. The bad barking dangerous dog is good and loyal and true.

Thanks, Sis. You set up the next thing I will rant about. It's Sunday and I have nothing better to do. I am pivoting back to Wisconsin, and Hong. What Republican would not want the first map? And what Democrat would not want the second? The first map is Joe McCarthy's Senate map in 1946, when he won in a 63 % landslide as an anti-Communist war hero. He won a second term with 54 % of the vote. We know he is now discredited. We know he is connected to Trump by way of Roy Cohn. I'd bet money Trump will end up the same way. Trump won twice, by narrower margins. He never got 50 % of the vote. And I think Trump will ended up discredited, too. He already is discredited for about half of America. And more than half of the world. My point is you can be "strong and wrong" for a while. 12 years, in the case of both Joe McCarthy and Donald Trump. The second is the Senate map of Democrat Bill Proxmire in both 1970 and 1976. "Prox" won six Senate elections, the first to replace Joe McCarthy, with anywhere from 53 to 72 % of the vote. As such, he is the Democrat who won the most times, consecutively, in Wisconsin history. So this tells us Wisconsin can be the fountainhead of a lot of progressive things, and a lot of right-wing populism. And you could do worse than try to figure out what made Proxmire so successful as a Democrat. In the interview I posted of Hong, she ticked off a list of Wisconsin progressive icons that included Democrat Gaylord Nelson but excluded Proxmire. I can guess why she did that. Gaylord won three times and was defeated in his fourth try when he lost narrowly in 1980 during the Reagan landslide. Proxmire was the father of the Community Reinvestment Act. He chaired the Senate Banking Committee, and never took a dime in money from banks - or anyone. And he still won in landslides. He went to Green Bay Packers games and kept a little clicker in his pocket, which he clicked every time he shook hands or talked to a constituent. He had a quota for how many times he had to click the clicker before he sat down and enjoyed football. Does that count for BDE energy? When I think of Proxmire, I think of homeownership. It is really a Clinton thing. I Googled "Why did homeownership rates for the working class rise in the late 1990's" and got this: I also got this, which is the Proxmire/Clinton thing: Clinton took Proxmire's Community Reinvestment Act enacted in 1977, and all the bootstrap pilot projects worked on by community groups and the banks they forced into partnerships for over a decade, and turned it into a national working class wealth creation machine. It helped blue collar White working class people buy homes. It helped Blacks buy homes. It helped Hispanics buy homes. It helped Asians buy homes. The subprime defaults of 2008 were made on mortgages originated much later under W. Which were often unsound teaser rate refinances of sound fixed rate mortgages made under Clinton. It is a classic example of how, over a period of decades, government can mostly get things right. And then, under the wrong POTUS who lets the greedy predators loose, it all goes to shit. But it doesn't mean you throw capitalism out with the bathwater. Proxmire was very good with labor unions. So, to oversimplify Proxmire, was the kind of Democrat who said you should be able to support a family by working in a factory or farm, owning a home, and going to a Green Bay Packers game. Where you can shake my hand and tell me your problems. I'll help, and never ask for a dime. My Reaganite Dad loved Proxmire and his Golden Fleece Award. So that maybe had as much to do with those landslide wins as factory jobs and stable farms. Proxmire had a touch of RFK, Jr. before Trump. I just learned today from Wikipedia that the Senator became a verb. When he opposed some worthy science project, it got "proxmired". Examples included projects that studied why people fall in love, and why criminals want to get out of jail. Proxmire was accused of attacking good science projects for political ends. If Proxmire were Senator today, he might say that the good people of Wisconsin don't need to be told by some government agency that criminals want to get out of jail so they can rape and murder again. And I won't let them. Right or wrong, it worked. If Hong loses, this may be why. Maher is right that her dreamy stuff about a world without prisons sounds scary. The better update of Proxmire would be that you ought to be an Asian American Mom who can start a small business. And send your kid to a good public school. And get affordable child care. And you should be able to meet your Guv at a Bucks game, and even check out her Bucks tattoo. I checked and she rents an apartment in Madison. If she says the government should own homes, she loses. If she talks about government making homes affordable again, she wins.

Where Lichtman totally lost me is this. He argued that his analysis and prediction was correct. The problem is too many voters are stupid. They buy this bullshit or "vibe" on social media. So they just don't have the correct analysis, like he does. So, great! A pundit who is identified as Democrat and is an academic is telling Trump voters they are stupid. How novel is that? It is the equivalent of Brownstein saying that RFK is a negative for Trump. All Brownstein's arguments were correct, to a degree. But Trump won the election. And Castellanos won the argument. Especially in retrospect. I'm of course the pot calling the kettle black. Since my rant is that the bad stupid barking dog is dangerous and .................... well .................... stupid. Playing to stupid, or the related feature of "strong and wrong", works in politics, for a while. Especially if you are dealing with low information voters and barking dogs who watch sound bites on Tik Tok. If Fauci opens his mouth, he confirms he is Evil Fauci who wants to kill himself, and us. If Fauci does not open his mouth, he confirms that he is Evil Fauci, who wants to kill himself, and us. That only gets you so far. I think Fauci's reputation is intact. Rand Paul and Mark Halperin and a stupid dangerous barking dog only make themselves look petty and jealous when they rant like they do. But this worked for Trump, twice. Albeit with less than 50 % of the vote each time. I do think Lichtman is fundamentally right. His basic argument is that elections are not about vibes. And they never were. They are always about things that matter. It's the economy, stupid. No More Forever Wars. My main point about Lichtman in 2024 was that his analysis was wrong. It was the inflation and prices, stupid. Ukraine and Israel both hurt Biden more than they helped. Because people who saw them as Forever Wars voted for Trump. If El Sayed wins Michigan and Hong wins Wisconsin - huge IFs - it suggests that Biden and Harris were off message in 2024. As you note, Biden was just too old, anyway. El-Sayed and Hong have way better messages than saying lots of people who vote for Trump are stupid. Even though lots of people - and dogs - who vote for Trump are stupid. And dangerous. And completely full of shit.

While we don't advertise it, my Sister In Cock and I are very religious.

I really am just into into spontaneous political ranting now. But it is fun. You reminded me of Republican consultant Alex Castellanos. I think he is one of the smarter and more successful consultants out there. While Republican, he is basically an old school bipartisan-leaning political whore. Castellanos has used that formulation for decades. He is also credited with the term "soccer Mom." That rant piece is from 2018. It's 2026, and Morning Joe is doing just fine. Castellanos argues Republicans are always the daddy bear party. I think the best example is both Bush 41 and 43 leading the nation into war in scary times. Trump as Daddy Bear? Maybe. If we stipulate that Daddy is a rapist and serial liar and narcissist. 🫢 Castellanos says something interesting in that essay that is quite relevant today. Trump may get the facts wrong, but he gets the truth right. The media may get the facts right, but they get the truth wrong. That is how our bad stupid dangerous barking dog feels, no doubt. But that is what makes him stupid and dangerous. Facts are facts. The bad stupid barking dog, Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk can not produce facts about fraud. All they can rant is that they are not murderous. And Musk smugly laughs away criticism by saying there have been zero deaths. Even though the facts suggests clinics closed and pills stopped being delivered and lots of people are dying. But Bono is one of those guys who comes across as more "mommy party" than Joe Rogan, who is clearly "Daddy Bear". Why believe Bono, just because he has the facts? So Rogan kind of concedes that he was wrong about cutting things that save lives. But then he proceeds to spout more bullshit about trillions of dollar in fraud. Rogan has no clue he is arguing that USAID fraudulently allocated more money that it ever received. Rogan is a serial moron. As you say, it is an emotionally safe space for a stupid and dangerous dog to bark in. The bad stupid barking dog is dangerous and even murderous. Even though "murder" suggests an intention the bad stupid barking dog is too stupid to have. Here's another bizarre example of lie stacked upon lie upon lie that the bad stupid dangerous dog posted. Is Robert Kennedy, Jr. a Daddy Bear or the fallen away voice of the mommy party? Maybe eating bears makes you a Daddy Bear? Or does it just make you untruthful and dangerous and weird? Fauci’s Ailment Falsely Linked to Vaccine RFK Jr. and other conservatives claim that Anthony Fauci suffered a serious complication from the COVID-19 vaccine: NewsGuard’s False Claim of the Week It's not that the bad stupid dangerous barking dog wants people all over the world to die. It's just that he is too stupid to know he is dangerous. He is a fool, and most of us - but not him - know he is a fool who is dangerous and stupid. Poor thing. Every idea in that RFK, Jr. says in that brief Tik Tok video is wrong. One thing I like about AI is it fact checks pretty well, more often than not. So AI confirmed what a human fact checker said above. Fauci's side effect was not "highly expected." AI says the risk of the so-called side effect is "incredibly low." In the rare instances that it has occurred, it typically occurs in days or weeks. AI quotes an expert saying it can be considered a side effect if it happens in 30 days. Fauci's medical problem occurred five months after vaccination. RFK Jr is wrong about everything anti-vaccine he says. Who knew? What's weirdest about it is that the Evil Fauci dogma suggests that every Us President since Reagan was fooled by this guy. Millions of people with HIV whose lives were saved by a program started by Bush 43 and this guy were fooled by this guy. He got a shot that endangered his own life, five months later, goes the theory. Why? To endanger YOUR life. That is what RFK, Jr, and the bad stupid dangerous dog want us to believe. They are stupid, and dangerous. The facts are clear, as you pointed out. The US COVID death rate was almost double that of Canada, and 4 times that of Australia. There may be many reasons for that. But a big one is that people who listened to Fauci and got vaccinated were more likely to live. And people who did not get vaccinated were more likely to die. Australia proved the point. A lot of people who were vaccinated died. Because the vaccine does not stop old people from dying. Fauci never claimed it did. His own health problem seems to be related to his age, not being vaccinated. Go ask Lindsey Graham about aging and heart issues. The stupid bad dangerous dog is too stupid to know he is dangerous and too dangerous to know he is stupid. He really doesn't care that this bullshit, in both cases, is getting hundreds of thousands of people killed - whether they are seniors in America or kids in Africa. The stupid barking dangerous dog could care less. I'll end this sad rant by going back to Alex Castellanos and Joe Rogan. At the time, and in retrospect, I view that as two expert political whores at their best. But, in retrospect, Trump won. And Castellanos was right about what RFK, Jr. added to the ticket. Castellanos did not say this. But arguably RFK added some "mommy party" spice to Trump's "Daddy bear" appeal. As the host noted, RFK did talk about healthy food and kids. And also low-interest rate affordable mortgages. I thought RFK, Jr. was spot on about affordable housing. Brownstein was right that college educated women who RTFK, Jr. turns off are way more likely to vote than young men who didn't go to college. Rogan and RFK, Jr. helped get enough of those young men to vote that Trump could win a close one, again. Brownstein was right that Trump still could not get to 50.0 % of the vote. And a lot of those young men now regret the way they voted, which is why Trump is so disapproved of. No more Forever Wars? Right! And back to Rogan. If Talarico wins Texas, which polls suggest he could, that in itself is a political revolution. Here he is on Joe Rogan giving what might be considered a textbook definition of what it means to be a guy running in the "mommy party." But I don't think Talarico has BDE. If Ossoff, El-Sayed, and Talarico all win, it confirms that having a big dick is an optional feature in the Democratic Party. Lucky for some of us! 😉

I'll leave that to Allan Lichtman. Since he got 2024 badly wrong, it probably increases the odds that he will get 2028 right. Mark Halperin trashed Lichtman at one point in 2024 as just being too formulaic. And Halperin turned out to be right. I have my own rant about that. Lichtman has a key about being in a recession. And he said, correctly, we're not in a recession. But it felt like one to lots of voters. He also scored Ukraine as a foreign policy for Team Biden. That proved wrong too, I think. Trump proved quickly that a lot of Americans did not see Ukraine as worth the effort. So it's sure not a victory. I think Lichtman's Keys are still a very good model for analyzing why people vote the way they do. But nobody's analysis is perfect. Not totally unrelated: A lot of smart market analysts, like perma-bull Tom Lee, have been saying midterm election years are always rocky in the stock market. So he's been correct about the market all year, so far. He correctly anticipated a first quarter sag and a second quarter rally. He and others have been saying the market usually tanks around now, and September in particular is a bad month. But he just did a webinar a few days ago where he said maybe the bottom to this recent modest tech sell off is in. This is probably just a blip on the screen for most voters. But if the war continues to drag on, or get worse, and the market sags or tanks into the midterms, that will have an impact. Who knows? i don't.

So since I am whining about fact checking, I will fact check myself. El-Sayed is not Palestinian. He is Muslim, and his parts are immigrants from Egypt. By coincidence I read El-Sayed's Wikipedia page right before you posted that, @RockyRoadTravel . I was curious how far out there El-Sayed is. He has been married since 2006 and has two kids. Haley Stevens was married for one year, and got divorced. That's gossipy. But nothing bad jumped out at me about El-Sayed. El-Sayed was asked if he is a socialist. He said, nope. I'm a capitalist. Not all lefties are into democratic socialism. The other thing that jumped out at me is he was team captain for wrestling, football, and lacrosse in college. If he were a right winger, he could be Pete Hegseth. If "democratic socialist" becomes a scary label, @Pete1111 has offered us a creative solution. Perhaps Democrats could run Ossoff and El-Sayed on the BDE Party ticket? And make wrestling singlets their campaign uniform?

I think these podcasters make it worse. I get the idea that the mainstream media has an agenda, and always did. Duh! But this is out of the frying pan, into the fire. This Tik Tok bullshit about Joe Rogan amazes me. I think there's no doubt that Rogan helped Trump win in 2024. And he helped legitimize the idea that Elon Musk was opening the coffins at USAID so we could see the vampires inside finally - to use Rogan's colorful and totally bullshit language. I think it's true that if you listen to the whole podcast, you learn that these brief Tik Tok clips are often taken out of context. So Rogan is popular because he is a skeptic, especially of government. And he will talk about how it's not black and white. But with Musk and USAID, Rogan just keeps getting the facts wrong. Again and again and again. Everything from the WaPo to AI is saying Musk never documented the fraud he said existed. Rogan likes to say Musk claimed there were "no receipts", so you couldn't even find where USAID was sending the money. In fact, Musk's "receipts" of how much DOGE saved turned out to be total bullshit. What is not bullshit is that, as argued, hundreds of thousands of poor people - lots of whom are kids - are dying all over the world thanks to Elon Musk. Rogan will have Bono on his show and say this seems to be resulting is mass preventable death. Rogan will say somebody should have spelled that out. No, Joe. You should have spent five minutes on the computer fact checking Musk's lies. As you say, Rogan no doubt is just going for the ratings. But this is worse than the mainstream media. At least Fox News and MSNBC fact check. If only to avoid getting sued. I watch Steven Bartlett's Diary Of A CEO a lot. BBC has claimed Bartlett spreads lots and lots of unsubstantiated and dangerous information on health. He definitely airs lots of out their opinions. So it's probably true that in the course of their rants his guests manage to say things that are not true, intended or not. And they are probably often not fact checked. None of this is new in the history of politics or news. But right now is a particularly bad period for facts. And Rogan is one of the worst.

Now be honest, Sis. You haven't sucked his cock, have you? If so, perhaps that is part of the effortless confidence he projects. So enjoy. And keep taking one for for the team. P.S. I know. Only a whore would ask a question like that.

Great. You get Ossoff, and my Sister In Cock gets Mamdani. Who do I get? The barking dog? I

This is what communism means in Wisconsin these days: And this: And this: Kudos to Van Jones for bluntly calling out some of the lefty slogans that are simply toxic, as 2024 proved. Trump won because people don't want open borders. They do want rapists deported. Did I mention Donald Trump is a rapist? 🫢 Hong didn't really disavow Van Jones' shit list. She danced around it with lefty jargon. She sounded better when she talked about being a small business owner. Whether she can win or not may come down to being clear with voters about ideas that scare them. For most of American history, "same sex marriage" was an idea even more radical than "democratic socialism." It was illegal. It was evil. There was a period in the early 2010s that was really fun for me, and effective. A rich and Jewish liberal friend of mine was one of the top donors of same sex marriage efforts in California. I was a top volunteer training people to go door to door to fight for same sex marriage. I remember talking to him right before the SCOTUS ruling. He said, "I'll see you on the other side." This is one of those moments. I understand the excitement. I understand the hope. How will this end? I don't know. We'll all find out on the other side. See ya there.