I should've known this already, but when you see "concerned moms" screaming about "critical race theory" in schools, chance are that an astroturf group, maybe even one attached to the Koch brothers, funds them. Folks scoff when they hear about groups like Parents Defending Education or Moms for Liberty, because gosh they look just like ordinary Americans! But of course right-wing astroturf groups would find and groom ordinary Americans to mouth their nonsense -- after all, as a famous philosopher once said, you can't be a successful crook with a dishonest face.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema speaks with the Washington Post, and while I won't tabulate all of my objections, since they number approximately one per point she makes, I will say that we haven't been calling her an "enigma," as she supposes -- we've said she's defying the will of her constituents, which she tries to obscure by framing everything in terms of herself. ANd the notion that she's been very "open" about what she's doing matters nothing when her positions on Medicare drug price negotiation and raising tax rates on the rich and on corporations (to name two) fly in the face of the expressed will of her real bosses, her constituents. So clearly she's not being very "open" to them, and they're the people who matter most! (Hate to pile on, but when she talks about the "regular, everyday people" of Arizona, she's not only suggesting they approve of what she's doing when they clearly don't, she's also saying the rest of us really aren't "regular, everyday people." Maybe she's not the messaging Svengali she thinks she is.)
Surely Eve Ottenberg isn't the first observer to ask what the hell all this anti-vaccine sentiment not the first to ask what exactly all these anti-vaccine crooks hope to achieve -- it is reasonable, after all, to suppose that the targets of anti-vaxxers, as she puts it, have "no doubt already or will soon be relieved of every last cent they possess by internet charlatans" -- but I would submit, as I often do, that stoking rage among the already rage-addled is the endgame, not just because rage can be refocused on new targets as the "need" arises, but because right-wing politicians can so easily bait-and-switch the rage-addled into voting for them and therefore supporting things they'd never support during those moments they can think clearly, like dirty water or corporate tax cuts.
What could I possibly have to say about Marjorie Taylor Greene saying the Build Back Better Act is "Communism"? Same thing I've said more than once over the last decade: that virtually no one who brandishes “Communist” as a scare word these days can conceive of one-party elections, the abolition of capital ownership, complete central planning of the economy, citizens living in one-bedroom apartments assigned by the state, or the fear of being literally followed around by police at any moment, and calling anything else "Communism" insults all the billions of good people who suffered and died under real Communist oppression. Hey, if they're not going to change, why should I?
In a peripherally-related note, more than a few Republican Senators have smeared a Biden nominee -- whose family literally ran for their lives from Josef Stalin -- as, guess what, a Communist. Sen. Rubio, in particular, should be ashamed not just of being ignorant of Saule Omarova's personal history but of lying about her positions. "(A)bolishing private bank accounts"? Gosh, dramatic much? We can hope, I suppose, that Val Demings does America a favor next year and shoves this shit down Marco Rubio's throat.
Finally, Trump-endorsed Pennsylvania Senate candidate Sean Parnell suspends his campaign after losing a custody battle. And yet I still think he's not done, for what energizes Trump votaries more than a sense of having something taken from you? Mr. Parnell can still sell all of this to the votaries as that whore took my kids away from me, and to rank-and-file Republicans he can claim the judge didn't really think he was a bad guy -- which isn't exactly true, but they'll ignore the details if victory depends on it. Consider, also, that our "liberal" media loves a good "comeback" story, and you'll see why the good citizens of Pennsylvania to remain on their guard. I just hope his kids overcome what's happened to them.
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