Holy Cow! What Happened to Slow News Days?
Baseball radio reporter Harry Caray wasn’t the first to use the phrase “Holy Cow,” but he certainly was famous for saying those words as an impediment to swearing on the air.
While on vacation (I’m back, but not officially) an amazing amount of eyebrow raising news crossed over into the nation’s consciousness. So, because I always feel a little guilt about not writing daily, here are a few items.
Wanna-be presidential plans.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, desperate to get attention, rolled out an “economic plan” consisting of stuff he’s willing to do to get attention. It can best be summed up as ‘cut everything in the budget but defense’ and clearing the way for billionaire profits,
It includes the outright elimination of the EPA and CFPB, and rolling back Biden administration investments for everything from clean energy to Amtrak to the IRS.
Vivek Ramaswamy, a candidate rising in polling as Gov. Ron DeSantis crashes, offered a range of provocative and extreme policy proposals building on Trump’s efforts to expand presidential authority, including barring people under 25 from voting, closing the FBI and firing the majority of executive branch employees. “Yay,” said many nobodies.
Last night’s second quarter campaign filings provided a glimpse into what the poor SOB’s sending their small change to Trump are getting in return. Like the investors and buyers involved in the former president’s private sector enterprises, the yield has been nada… zero…zip.
This year Trump-affiliated committees have spent more than they’ve raised — with a staggering burn rate given that his joint fundraising committee reported raising $53.8 million in the first half of the year.
Via Politico:
California GOP consultant Rob Pyers flags an even more troubling trend for Trump: His greatest fundraising asset — the ongoing state and federal prosecutions targeting him — may be losing potency. Just look at this chart showing the differences between what the former president raised off of his first indictment over the STORMY DANIELS hush money scheme and the haul following the federal charges over his alleged mishandling of classified documents in June. The latter appears to be less than a third of the former.
We now know that the super PAC supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been largely funded by GOP donor Timothy Melon, who also gave $1.5 million to a Trump-aligned group late in 2022.
No Labels, the supposedly in-between group promoting an alternative candidate in the 2024 general election that many feel is just another front for the Trump campaign, will actually help incumbent president Joe Biden, according to a column from long-time reporter Hamilton Nolan.
He runs through the various scenarios -RFK, Trump as a third party candidate, Joe Manchin, etc.– and concludes Democrats have more important things to stress over.
None of this means that Biden is guaranteed to be reelected. It just means that third party candidates are not the thing to worry about. Instead, you can worry about all of the other infinite potentials of the chaotic and unknowable universe. Biden could drop dead, or Trump could drop dead. There could be wars, or terrorism, or natural disasters, or an economic crash, or another pandemic, or a weird gaffe where Biden slips and falls in a funny way and destroys his public persona. Lots of stuff. Only fools predict an election’s outcome more than a year in advance. But you might as well stress over the right things, not the wrong ones.
We’re officially on indictment watch, with the only question left being which grand jury will be first to indict: Georgia or Washington DC. I expect a lot of the former President’s minions will be hiring attorneys, if they haven’t already.
The superseding indictment in the boxes of secrets case got a lot of press this past weekend, probably because all those reporters waiting for the next indictments to drop had to write about something. And yet, many of these scribes missed the big news in Jack Smith’s latest filing, namely that there are more videos a’comin. The short version of this news is that the Special Counsel knows what the Mar-a-Largo subordinates did last summer.
In local news, Inewsource dived into the $160,000 various law enforcement front groups have channeled into defeating Council member Monica Montgomery-Steppe’s bid to replace Nathan Fletcher on the Board of Supervisors.
Item #1: They are full of crapola. A cornucopia of misleading advertisements have appeared on mailers and social media painting Montgomery-Steppe as a threat to public safety. They’re wrong about the crime rate (and attributing its ‘rise’ to Montgomery Steppe); wrong about saying she voted to defund police, and wrong for using photoshop to darken her skin.
“San Diegans Against Crime,” a committee sponsored by the Deputy District Attorney’s Association has used part of their funding in support of Janessa Goldbeck, another Democrat running for the seat.
Goldbeck’s career as a Democrat is finished as far as party activists are concerned. They aren’t buying into the tired “I can’t control what Independent Committees choose to do” defense. While technically true ,anybody who’s ever worked in local elections knows the politics behind smear-based advertising. Sure, Goldbeck didn’t order nasty mailers, but you can bet your bottom dollar her campaign strategy depends on fomenting distrust of her opponent.
Item #2: The aim of this negative advertising is support for an entrenched system of injustice that’s racist to its core, seeks to insulate a group from prosecution for felonious acts, works to keeps the processes of decision-making opaque, and is in support of a view of society best characterized as “us vs them.”
Here’s what the City Council member did “wrong” from the point-of-view of these law enforcement-based groups:
Candidate Monica Montgomery Steppe, now the San Diego City Council president pro tem, has spent years advocating for criminal justice reform in the city, sparking backlash from the police. She supported the ban on officers’ use of carotid restraints and the creation of a new independent commission to investigate law enforcement activities.
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SANDAG CEO Hasan Ikhrata is resigning his role as the region’s chief transportation planner. The tailpipe-sucking, climate-denying politicians involved in regional policy are celebrating what they call “a return to consensus decision making.” Lots of other folks have a different vision. And, after experiencing the East Coast blast over over the past few weeks, I’m ready to suggest a SANDAG Board field trip to Texas. Or Phoenix. Or Washington DC.
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Notes from the culture wars:
The Attorney Generals from 13 Red States are warning corporations currently or intending to do business in their jurisdictions against discriminating on the basis of race, including under the label of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” I’m sure separate (but equa)l water fountains are the next step.
The largest school district in Texas (the Houston Independent School District) is converting libraries in 28 schools into disciplinary centers and eliminating school librarian positions.
The symbolism and/or lack thereof of the Barbie movie.
As always, substacker Lyz at Men Always Yell at Me has a way-better-than-the-dreck-in-mainstream-media analysis of the pink flick dominating box office sales.
I saw the Barbie movie in a theater in Iowa City on Thursday night. The showing was filled with middle-aged Midwestern women all dressed in pink. In the bathroom after, we all talked about how we cried during Ferrera’s monologue. One woman announced she wanted it tattooed on her labia. Another woman joked that if she did, no man would ever see it because they so rarely put their faces down there. Wine tipsy. Teary-eyed. We all felt seen by a movie that is both too much and not enough. A movie as deranged and complicated and tied to the machine as we all are. It wasn’t everything. But it was something. And in that moment, something was enough.
There have been many essays and articles and opinions about Barbie this summer. Barbie is feminist. Barbie is not feminist enough. Barbie is ruining women. Barbie is ruining capitalism. Barbie is saying something important. Barbie isn’t saying enough. Barbie is too woke. Barbie is making fun of the wokes. Barbie. Barbie. Barbie.
Barbie is the perfectly imperfect vessel of our rage and our fears, so often destroyed by children in play. That plasticine locus of our anxieties and dreams. Barbie can’t save us. But also Barbie can’t destroy us. She contains nothing. She contains everything.
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I have no idea if I’m writing tomorrow. Thursday, August 3, I will be back in the saddle, for sure.
Thank you Doug.
Well done my friend!