Category: News & Comment

Herschel Walker Is ‘the Perfect Candidate for a Fallen Party’

Pensito Editors

Ex-Republican Peter Wehner in The Atlantic: “Donald Trump could not have changed the world without a party with which to do it. The GOP has turned on virtually every noble principle it once claimed to stand for. It has become a freak show, embodied in people like Trump and Walker, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, Ron Johnson and Josh Hawley, Blake Masters and Doug Mastriano, Adam Laxalt and J. D. Vance, Steve Bannon and Roger Stone, Michael Flynn and Mike Lindell, Tucker Carlson and Sebastian Gorka, Eric Metaxas and Paula White. They shape its sensibilities, providing the script for everyone else to follow.

“To make matters worse, those who surely know better—people like Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, and especially Kevin McCarthy—turned out to be hollow men, ‘shape without form, shade without colour, paralysed force, gesture without motion.’

“For them and for so many people in their party and the MAGA movement, with exceptions so rare that you can almost count them on a single hand, politics have been stripped of any honor. Politics, for them, is about power in the pursuit of yet more power. Politics is purely performative, nasty and brutish, a way to stoke anger and grievances, a means to exact vengeance. That the most impressive person in the Republican Party, Liz Cheney, is the most despised, says everything.

“Whatever you thought about the GOP pre-Trump—and it may be that the ugliness was much closer to the surface than I wanted to acknowledge at the time—the Republican Party is today much more conspiracy minded, anti-democratic, and anti-truth. This worries me, because I love my country. And it disheartens me, because I once admired my party. Today, however, because of its diseased state, the most urgent political task is to defeat it in the hopes of eventually rebuilding it.”

‘Southpark’ Writer Takes Novel Approach to Political Action

Buck Banks

Fake Kari Lake website designed by Toby Morton.

From the happy mutants at Boing Boing comes this piece about Toby Morton, a former writer for “SouthPark” and “MadTV,” who buys domain names that relate to MAGA and Q figures and uses the resulting websites to undermine them.

Does Morton’s efforts influence campaigns or policy? Hard to say, but Arizona gubernatorial candidate and monster Kari Lake offered him $150 for the domain he used to build her site. Morton has also given the same business to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

Toby Morton, we salute you!

NYC Sending Migrants TO Florida for Hurricane Cleanup

Buck Banks

US President Donald Trump and Florida US Sen. Rick Scott (R) listen to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (L) during a tour of the Edgar Hoover Dike on Lake Okeechobee in Florida, March 29, 2019. (Photo by Nicholas Kamm/AFP)

Talk about your irony, the New York Post reports that New York City is loading migrants — many of them Venezuelans — into vans and shipping them to Florida to help with hurricane recovery efforts:

Scores of Venezuelan migrants in New York City are hopping on vans to head down to Florida for Hurricane Ian clean-up, they told The Post.

The migrants had scant information about whom they would be working for, but they still piled into vans in Queens that they said were headed to the Sunshine State over the weekend.

“They want us for hurricane cleanup, we’d get paid $15 an hour, overtime and $15 for food daily, I think,” said Javier Moreno, 37, noting that a woman named Camila “from an organization” approached him with a flier.

“Perla” has been replaced by “Camila,” but printed fliers and vague promises are still involved. We wonder if this presages a sea change in Gov. Ron DeSantis’ feelings about migrants, similar to how he is now FOR federal emergency money for Hurricane Ian, whereas he (and the odious Marco Rubio and creepy Rick Scott) was AGAINST it a decade ago for victims of Hurricane Sandy in New York.

GOP ‘Platform’ Features Fake Lincoln Quote, Video from Russia and Ukraine

Buck Banks

When Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich unveiled his “Contract with America” in 1994, you might have been forgiven for not engaging your dial-up modem to fact check it. But in 2022 there’s no reason why, with the search capabilities of today’s internet and the widely available cheap stock images and video, the Republican Party employed a quote from an advert and attributed it to Abraham Lincoln and used video shot in Russia and Ukraine to represent scenes of American exceptionalism.

Maybe they should have stuck with their 2020 strategy of going platform-free. Apparently, the GOP’s “Commitment to America” does not include a commitment to either accuracy or American videographers.
[…]

Florida Schools Have Banned 560 Books Over the Past Year

Buck Banks

According to the Temple Terrace Patch, many of the books have been made into movies and TV shows.

More than 560 books were targeted by school districts in the Sunshine state over the past year, according to the report from PEN America, a New York-based literary and free expression nonprofit advocacy group. The report highlights how challenges to books have become a political issue nationwide. A majority of the targeted books focus on sexual identity, race and racism.

The report, “Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools,” said the majority of book bans weren’t “spontaneous, organic expressions” of concern by parents and citizens, but rather “reflect the work of a growing number of advocacy organizations that have made demanding censorship of certain books and ideas in schools part of their mission.”

Nobel Prize and Pulitzeer Prize winner Toni Morrison was a repeat offender with “The Bluest Eye” and “Beloved.”

Newsom Signs Gun Bill Based on Texas’ Abortion Vigilante Law

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Politico: “California has issued the U.S. Supreme Court a direct challenge at the confluence of gun and abortion rights as Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a firearms bill embracing the doctrine of private enforcement.

“The new law allows Californians to sue manufacturers and citizens who distribute banned assault weapons or ghost guns. Newsom explicitly modeled the concept on a Texas law, preserved by the high court, that allows people to pursue legal claims against abortion providers.

“By calling for and then signing the bill, Newsom has set up a legal test while illuminating the gulf between liberal California and a conservative Supreme Court on politically charged issues.”

Joe Rogan Endorses DeSantis

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Daily Beast: “Joe Rogan escalated his one-sided feud with Donald Trump on Monday, suggesting during his podcast that the former president’s outsized energy derives from Adderall and calling him a ‘man baby…’

“While Rogan said during the 2020 election that he would rather vote for Trump than Biden, he has since confirmed that he didn’t vote for either candidate. Last month, he endorsed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for the 2024 race and said he was “not interested” in helping Trump by hosting him on his popular podcast, despite multiple overtures from the former president.

Florida Dems Meet, See for Signs of Hope

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Politico: “Various Democrats said during the three-day “Leadership Blue” conference that they see openings that can be used to overcome Republican advantages. They see their best hope for a statewide victory in Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), who is challenging Sen. Marco Rubio and has bested him in fundraising in successive quarters even as she trails in most polls.

“But party leaders also say that voters are alarmed by the Supreme Court decision to undo abortion rights and are upset with Republican resistance to address gun violence. They contend some Republicans were turned off by the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol that left several people dead and has led to a negative headlines in recent weeks as the Jan. 6 committee holds hearings that uncover damning details about Trump and several Republicans, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).

“’This is not about ‘all right, let’s just take our best shot,’ Florida Democratic Party Chair Manny Diaz said in an interview. ‘This is a real belief in winning.’”