I HOPE THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS PROUD OF ALL THE ATTENTION IT GAVE RFK JR.

The media moved the shark halfway across the ocean for Robert Kennedy Jr.'s benefit, but he might finally have jumped it:

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dished out wild COVID-19 conspiracy theories this week during a press event at an Upper East Side restaurant, claiming the bug was a genetically engineered bioweapon that may have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people....

“COVID-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” Kennedy said. “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

“We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact,” Kennedy hedged.

Kennedy said this, of course, in a city that suffered America's most devastating COVID outbreak in early 2020 -- a city with more than a million Jews, many of them of Ashkenazi descent. The city also has well over half a million residents of Chinese descent. The notion that these ethnic groups were somehow spared COVID is ludicrous. (There have been nearly five million COVID cases in Israel -- a country with a population of just under 10 million -- and the WHO has recorded nearly 100 million COVID cases in China, which is likely to be an undercount.)

This seems like a good time to look Jon Allsop's essay about RFK Jr. in the Columbia Journalism Review. Allsop agonizes over the question of how to cover Kennedy:

Confoundingly for the press, the answers to the questions Isn’t it dangerous to indulge Kennedy’s efforts to mainstream himself? and Isn’t it dangerous to dismiss his views as irrelevant? might both be “yes.” And both potential paths, it seems to me, constitute a different form of complicity, making the question of which one we should take very complicated indeed.

I don't believe it's as complicated as Allsop does, as I'll explain.

As I see it, there are a few cases for paying attention to Kennedy’s candidacy, in addition to the imperative of calling out his noxious views. One is simply that he is running for president...

So are Doug Burgum and Larry Elder and quite a few other nonentities, some of whom are as far behind their party's front-runner as Kennedy is behind his. Being a candidate doesn't automatically qualify you for the lengthy, elaborate profiles the mainstream media has published on Kennedy.

He is, in many ways, a ready-made media character. More than just that, he has been presented as an avatar of conspiratorial trends—and attendant anxieties about them—that have become central to American intellectual life, making him, also, a representative of the zeitgeist. (The fact that he is a scion of perhaps the most zeitgeisty political family of all time hasn’t hurt this impression.)

When was the last time the Kennedys were "zeitgeisty"? Two decades ago at least, right? The last important Kennedy, Senator Ted, left office shortly before his death in 2009. Only out-of-touch boomers still think the Kennedys are relevant to the zeitgeist.

This is my problem with the mainstream media's RFK Jr. coverage: Journalists cover him as a boldface name because his forebears were boldface names a long time ago. Allsop cites Brandy Zadrozny's long story about Kennedy for NBC News as a "sharp" piece that "interrogated Kennedy’s policies and the sort of damage he’d be liable to do as president"; there's some truth to that, as I said when the piece was published -- but much of the story also read like a celebrity profile, with Zadrozny watching raptly as Kennedy practices obedience training on his dogs during a hike.

As Kennedy speaks, his dogs remain at attention. For a long time. No treats are given.

“It’s something called an intermittent reward system,” Kennedy, noticing my discomfort, explains of the lapse. “I learned it from falconry. If you don’t give the animal a treat every time, it actually makes them more obedient.”

This is how you write a profile of a Hollywood celebrity: You are here with a famous person as he walks his dogs! Swoon! That was Zadrodzny. The New Yorker's David Remnick asked some sharp questions about Kennedy's crackpot theories, but also allowed Kennedy to offer his famous life story as a reason attention should be paid to all his theories.

This is my problem with the mainstream media's Kennedy coverage: Only a few MSM journalists can fully resist the temptation to cover Kennedy as a sexy, charismatic star from a sexy, charismatic family, rather than as what he is, a softer-voiced Alex Jones, someone who uses his bloodline and his faculty-lounge affect to extract money from people who might find Jones a bit much.

Kennedy should be covered like just another dangerous conspiracist, and therefore as a menace to society, with his pedigree as a fact about him that's peculiar, not fascinating.

AMONG DANGEROUS BULLSHITTERS, GAME RECOGNIZES GAME

At first I interpreted this as Robert Kennedy Jr. trying to pull a Kari Lake:

Democratic presidential candidate and anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared on Fox News’s Fox & Friends on Friday and offered praise for his potential general election opponent, former President Donald Trump....

“Trump is probably the most successful debater in this country since Lincoln-Douglas in the way he dispatched 16 Republican opponents, one after the other, in 2016, it was really quite extraordinary,” Kennedy continued, adding:

He has his own technique that people like, and it is like going to a prize fight and you need practice. And that usually happens during a primary, and asking the president not to debate during the primary is like asking a prize fighter to practice for his big bout by sitting on the couch and eating Chick-Fil-A.

My initial thought was that Kennedy was sucking up to Trump, flattering him in the hope that Trump will fulfill Steve Bannon's dream and put RFK Jr. on the ticket. But I think it's sincere respect. And why not? What is Kennedy's life work? Saying ignorant things with enough authority that many people think he knows what he's talking about, and therefore deserves to be treated as an authority. Doesn't that also describe Trump? I think Kennedy -- a professional bamboozler -- greatly respects Trump for being able to fool some of the people all of the time. Game recognizes game.

Trump, of course, didn't out-debate all of his 2016 opponents. There were moments when he demeaned a particular challenger on the debate stage, but the debates weren't where he won the nomination. But in the course of the campaign he out-talked all of them, without ever saying an intelligent or knowledgeable thing. Of course Kennedy would respect that.

DeSANTIS HAD A CHANCE TO BE THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA'S FAVORITE REPUBLICAN (AND IN THEORY IT COULD STILL HAPPEN)

Here's the headline of a Ron DeSantis press release:

‘Built On Muscle:’ The DeSantis Campaign’s Playbook to Beat Trump and Shock the Haters

Whoops! Sorry -- that's not a press release. It's a story from Marc Caputo of The Messenger that just reads like a press release.

Caputo might be DeSantis's biggest cheerleader in the mainstream media. When he was at NBC last year, he published DeSantis-fluffing stories such as "DeSantis' Education Message Is Winning in Battleground States, Teacher Union Poll Finds" and "Ron DeSantis Outflanks Trump on the Right with His Call for Covid Vaccine Probe." I'm not sure what DeSantis did to impress Caputo that much, but the Messenger story makes clear that the governor's campaign plans for Iowa have him utterly bedazzled:

Donuts for Iowa lawmakers. A 99-county pastor recruitment plan. An in-house marketing department outpacing competitors on Facebook.

Seven weeks after launch, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign is entering a new phase of its online outreach and ground game – all of it fueled by his $20 million fundraising quarter, the largest haul of any first-time Republican White House hopeful in more than a decade.

“We're not built on sugar highs,” Generra Peck, DeSantis’s campaign manager, told The Messenger. “We’re built on muscle that remains even amid the inevitable ups and downs that happen in the course of the campaign.”

(Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I think Republicans voters, in Iowa and elsewhere, want sugar highs. That's why Trump is leading.)

... the campaign’s in-house marketing team ... has created and algorithmically message-tested 14,000 ads and related variations on Facebook and other social media platforms to curry supporters and convert them into donors and voters. The operation displays a level of “sophistication” that other campaigns currently aren’t showing, one independent Republican digital guru told The Messenger.

Sounds good, although it also seems as if DeSantis might have a plan that will look brilliant until Trump punches him in the mouth. But we'll see. I guess DeSantis deserves some credit for not giving up.

Here, in my opinion, is the most important part of all this:

DeSantis, who has so far limited most interviews to conservative press, is preparing for more sit-downs soon with more mainstream media outlets with which he has had a strained relationship.

DeSantis misunderstood Trump's approach to the media. Yes, you refer to mainstream journalists as the enemy, as fake news, as Democratic operatives -- but you also court the same journalists you denounce. Behind the scenes, you treat mainstream reporters the way John McCain treated them. It works.

Or it least it can work. DeSantis will probably be humorless, awkward, and snappish in his mainstream interviews -- but if he could learn to be genuinely polite to mainstream reporters when they're conversing privately, suddenly much of the mainstream media would be writing about what a political genius he is and warning Trump that he needs to watch his back. The press desperately wants an alternative to both Trump and Joe Biden, and DeSantis is available, but when he rolled out his campaign, he missed the opportunity to be the liberal media's favorite Republican, because he'd committed himself to the strategy of freezing out mainstream journalists. The MSM was ready to portray him as a safe moderate, as seen in this paragraph from a 2022 New Yorker profile:

In office, DeSantis took steps that suggested he intended to govern closer to the center. He buoyed environmentalists by forcing out the nine-member board of the South Florida Water Management District, political appointees who were considered hostile to environmental interests. He named a commission to tackle algae blooms, which befouled rivers and lakes in the southern part of the state. And he appointed several Black jurists. At his inauguration, DeSantis asked the Reverend R. B. Holmes, the pastor of a predominantly Black church in Tallahassee, to lead the prayer. “I was encouraged,” Holmes told me.

He could still persuade the mainstream press that he might be a "pragmatist" if he put in some effort, and he could probably do it without actually moderating his positions -- remember, the press worked hard to convince us that both George W. Bush and Donald Trump would govern as moderates. Fortunately foor the country, DeSantis will probably fail at this. Let's hope so.

YOU CAN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT, EVEN IF YOU'RE A RIGHT-WING BILLIONAIRE

Mainstream Republicans and their billionaire backers are making it so easy for Donald Trump. Six months before the first contest, they're talking about bailing on Ron DeSantis. Some are considering a switch to Tim Scott. Rupert Murdoch is telling friends he wishes Glenn Youngkin would enter the race. They're splitting anti-Trump support and energy at a time when they should coalescing behind one candidate.

My unpopular opinion is that it was always unreasonable to expect DeSantis to do any better than he's doing. As soon as Donald Trump was indicted, he became unbeatable -- GOP voters rallied around him the way Democratic and independent voters rallied around Bill Clinton when he was impeached. Sure, DeSantis is a thoroughly unpleasant person and a lousy retail politician, but GOP voters still like him a lot -- just not as much as Trump. He's still solidly in second place in every national and state poll. In the most recent Morning Consult survey, he has a 66% approval rating among potential Republican primary voters, just 8 points behind Trump, and ahead of every other candidate in the field by double digits. He's the first choice of 17% of respondents in that poll and the second choice of 39% of people who prefer Trump, which suggests that he'd be at 56% if Trump were out of the race.

I know that billionaires don't like being told that they can't do something they want to do, but they simply can't beat Trump among GOP voters. He can't lose the nomination unless he decides he's so overwhelmed by legal problems that he shouldn't stay in the race -- which is unlikely -- or unless he dies or has a serious health crisis that forces him from the race. Which could happen!

But the billionaires want what they want, and they don't want to be told they can't have it. So some of them will switch to Scott, even though he's Black and soft-spoken and never actually owns the libs, all of which makes it highly unlikely that he can win over more than a handful of additional GOP voters. Even if Scott reaches the low double digits, he won't hurt Trump, because nobody can. He'll only hurt DeSantis, making him look like a real loser, and possibly ruining his political future (which is a good thing, because DeSantis is a fascist and would probably do more damage to America as president than Trump). But the plutocrats don't get this. They'll find out when the Dump DeSantis strategy fails as badly as the DeSantis Can Beat Trump strategy has. .

MURDOCH REJECTS HIS OWN MONSTERS

When I saw this Rolling Stone story, I thought it was just a standard piece of political journalism:

Murdochs Start to Sour on DeSantis: ‘They Can Smell a Loser’

... Since the beginning of the Biden presidency, the powerful Murdoch family has favored the Florida governor in the 2024 presidential primary, largely due to a conviction that DeSantis would be a more electable, and less chaotic, evolution from Donald Trump. But in recent weeks, the Murdochs have grown increasingly displeased with the DeSantis campaign’s perceived stumbles, lackluster polling, and inability to swiftly dethrone Trump, multiple sources tell Rolling Stone. They have also seriously questioned whether the governor is capable of defeating Trump in the 2024 GOP presidential primary.

Billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch in particular has been voicing his doubts and frustrations, in private discussions and calls, at times wondering if a DeSantis “comeback” is possible at this point.

Then I saw a New York Times story with the headline "DeSantis Confronts a Murdoch Empire No Longer Quite So Supportive" and I understood what's really going on: Rupert Murdoch is breaking up with Ron DeSantis in public. Ouch! Poor Meatball.

Here's the most hilarious aspect of this, as reported by Rolling Stone:

According to two of the sources, Murdoch has privately winced at DeSantis’ nonstop cultural-grievance strategy.... In his repeated attempts to outflank the already hard-right Trump on the right, DeSantis and his team have waged an aggressive messaging operation to paint the Florida governor as a much more extreme culture-warrior as compared to the former president — most recently via a bizarre, bigoted video lauding the governor for his anti-LGBTQ attacks.

In other words, Murdoch is upset at the DeSantis campaign for being exactly like Fox News.

The nerve of this guy -- Murdoch generates a 24/7 toxic spew of the lowest, nastiest demagoguery, then he's upset when candidates is his party sound like the hosts on his TV channel. We've been told for years that Murdoch doesn't like Trump either, even though Trump's worldview is largely built from Fox News talking points. Murdoch wants us to believe he's just the piano player in the multi-billion-dollar whorehouse he owns, a guy who has no idea what goes on in the other rooms. In 2015, just after Trump announced his presidential candidacy with a gutter-level attack on immigrants, Murdoch -- whose channel had been a safe space for dozens of anti-immigrant racists, including Trump, who'd been a Fox & Friends regular since 2011 -- tut-tutted that Trump's message on his immigration, which was Fox's party line, was tacky and de trop:

Mexican immigrants, as with all immigrants, have much lower crime rates than native born. Eg El Paso safest city in U.S. Trump wrong.

— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) July 12, 2015

Now Murdoch is treating DeSantis the way he treated Trump. The Murdoch empire is obsessed with trans people -- a search for Dylan Mulvaney's name at FoxNews.com yields 13,600 hits, and the New York Post is similarly obsessed. Murdoch Land is a haven for anyone who denounces what the right calls "gender ideology." But when the DeSantis campaign retransmitted an over-the-top LGBTQ-bashing video that wouldn't have seemed at all out of place on Tucker Carlson's old show,d Murdoch was appalled.

Murdoch doesn't like Trump or DeSantis, but he built these monsters in his own lab. And unlike Dr. Frankenstein's monster, Trump and DeSantis didn't escape -- Murdoch released them into the wild. And now he's renouncing his own handiwork.

REPUBLICANS ARE ALWAYS ON OFFENSE

Here are three D.C. stories from the past 36 hours or so. First this, from yesterday:

With House Republicans divided over impeachment for members of the Biden administration, some in the GOP ranks are considering a possible alternative: simply zeroing out their salaries.

The tool that some members, mostly conservatives, are eying is the Holman Rule, an obscure and controversial power that allows lawmakers to reduce the salaries of — and effectively fire — specific federal employees.

Their possible targets? You can probably guess: Attorney General MERRICK GARLAND, Homeland Security Secretary ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS, and possibly even FBI Director CHRISTOPHER WRAY, for starters. Some are hoping to use the procedure on investigators working for special counsel JACK SMITH.

... Using the power of the purse to punish Biden administration officials isn’t destined to be any more successful than impeaching them — which is to say not at all, given Democrats’ control of the Senate and the need for Biden’s signature on any appropriations bill.

Today there's this:

Republicans have a new idea for how to take Washington politics out of the FBI: Take the FBI out of Washington and send it to Huntsville, Ala.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), who has accused the bureau of overzealously investigating former President Donald Trump and his allies, wants to strip the bureau of funding for a new headquarters unless it relocates to the midsize Alabama city a 700-mile drive from the nation’s capital.

The Huntsville proposal, which Jordan attached Tuesday to coming appropriations bills, is unlikely to become law....

And this, which of course is an ongoing story:

The blockade from Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) on about 250 of the Pentagon’s general and flag officers has left the Marine Corps without a confirmed leader for the first time in 164 years.

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger officially retired on Monday, leaving Assistant Commandant Gen. Eric Smith as the acting commandant and leader of the military branch until he is confirmed in the Senate....

Tuberville is protesting the Pentagon’s abortion policy because it provides paid leave and reimbursement costs for travel for servicemembers who cross state lines to get an abortion.

Republians don't control the White House or the Senate, but they're never on defense. Even if they can't change laws or administration policy, they're always looking for -- and finding -- new ways to gum up the works, or at least tell the world how they might gum up the works in a few weeks or months, or the next time they control the government.

Democrats don't do this. Democrats seem more defensive when they have power than Republicans are when they don't. Mostly, that's a matter of temperament. But there's another reason.

Democrats regularly try to implement big, important policy changes that will make million of people's lives better. Universal health coverage! A massive infrastructure program! Student debt relief! That's what Democrats focus on. It's hard to fight for these things, and they can get watered down or blocked by the courts, or be implemented poorly. It might be years before Americans realize that somthing good happened as a result of Democratic policy.

What doesn't seem to interest Democrats is petty partisan warfare that does little or nothing for the general public but makes the base cheer. How would Americans benefit from an effort to zero out the salary appropriation for the homeland security secretary or the attorney general, never mind the fact that it could never get past the Senate and the president? How would moving the FBI help most Americans? How does Tuberville's blockade help them?

But this posture of total warfare is an easy way to keep the GOP's voters fired up. Meanwhile, Democrats are concerned that some of their base might not turn out in 2024, especially the young. It's hard to do many of the big things young people want, especially when Republicans block the efforts in the federal courts and in the states.

But petty partisan revenge might be easier. Democrats should consider it once in a while, just to send a signal that they're still out there fighting. It works for the GOP.

RFK JR. DOESN'T HAVE TO TRY VERY HARD TO OUT-DEBATE DAVID REMNICK

David Remnick recently interviewed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for The New Yorker Radio Hour. An edited version of the interview appears on the New Yorker website.

There's no good reason for this. Remnick gives Kennedy this opportunity despite the fact that Kennedy trails Joe Biden by 50 points in the polls. It's impressive that Kennedy is in double digits, but his polling average seems unlikely to break beyond the high teens. Remnick surely won't offer to interview Marianne Williamson, whose poll numbers are a lot closer to Kennedy's than Kennedy's are to Biden's. So why talk to him at all? Is it just because Remnick is a white male baby boomer who, like most white male baby boomers in the media, has a bad case of Kennedy brain?

In the text version of the interview, I give Remnick credit for asserting that Kennedy is a nutjob:

The experience of interviewing him and listening to his previous interviews, I found, was like settling in for a long train ride with a seemingly amiable stranger in the next seat. You ask a straightforward question and, an hour later, as you race by Thirtieth Street Station, in Philadelphia, he is still going on about the fraud of COVID vaccines and how he was unfairly “deplatformed” for spouting conspiracy theories. By the time you’ve pulled into Wilmington, he might be talking about how drugs known as poppers helped cause the AIDS epidemic, or how “toxic chemicals” might contribute to “sexual dysphoria” in children. As you head south, he is talking about being “censored” by Instagram, the F.B.I., and the Biden White House. New technologies like 5G towers and digital currencies are totalitarian instruments that could “control our behavior.” Wi-Fi causes “leaky brain.” After a while, you begin to wonder why you bought a ticket. But it’s too late. You’re pinned into the window seat.

But in the course of the interview itself, Remnick gets sidetracked by irrelevancies. First, there's a prolonged exchange on the subject of whether Kennedy is impertinently running for an office he's not qualified to hold. Remnick asks:

Experience of attending conventions and being around politics is not the same as being involved in the making of policy, either as an executive or as a legislator or as a governor. Are you saying that that kind of experience is not necessary to be President of the United States? The one President I can think of who hasn’t had any experience at that level is Donald Trump.

This is the worst form of elitist credentialism. If Kennedy weren't a crackpot, his experience would read as that of a serious person engaged in relevant issues -- corporate power, the environment, public health. He'd be as qualified for the presidency as, say, Carly Fiorina was in 2016. The reason he shouldn't run is that he's a lunatic.

Kennedy is a bamboozler -- but Remnick also seems to be easily bamboozled, or perhaps he's just too darn polite to call Kennedy on his bullshit. Consider this exchange:

You’re running as a Democrat for President, and I wonder, Who in the Democratic Party do you feel is kindred to you? Obviously not Joe Biden, but—A.O.C.? Or Joe Manchin? Or are you something new entirely? How would you define your ideology?

I’m something old. I’m a Kennedy Democrat. I believe in labor unions. I believe in a strong, robust middle class. I believe in racial justice, in policies that are going to actually help the lowest people on the totem pole.

I don’t think Joe Biden would disagree with any of that.

Well, then, why did he do the lockdowns? Lockdowns robbed four trillion [dollars] from the middle class and the poor in this country and transferred it to the super rich. We created five hundred new billionaires—a billionaire a day, every day.

Remnick annotates this by fact-checking Kennedy's numbers. That's nice -- but what he doesn't do is make the obvious point: The lockdowns happened on Donald Trump's watch, not Joe Biden's.

Remnick allows Kennedy to portray himself as the soul of reason. Remnick asks Kennedy whether his candidacy might help elect Donald Trump, who has praised him, as have many of Trump's allies. Kennedy says:

I’m trying to unite the country, David. I’m not going to do what you do, which is to pick out people and say that they’re evil, they should be cancelled, or whatever.... I think the kind of tribalism that you’re advocating is poisonous to our country. I think it’s toxic. It’s created a polarization, a division, in this country that is more dangerous than at any time since the American Civil War.

Remnick asks:

At what point do you say, with respect, that this is not about “tribalism” or “cancellation” or the terms that you’re using, but just an insistence on a certain level of decency and principle? Somebody like Alex Jones comes forward and he has nice things to say to you. At what point do you say, “You know what, Alex Jones, with all due respect, I don’t want your support”?

Kennedy replies:

I’m not a cancel-culture guy.

He's not? That's absurd. Kennedy wants to cancel Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, the National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization, all mainstream medical journals, and all drug companies. And that's an incomplete list.

Jones sicced his audience on the parents of murdered Sandy Hook children, whom he accused of participating in a fabricated massacre. We all know that Kennedy's father and uncle were assassinated, and Remnick gets a bit weepy when asking Kennedy about those deaths -- "You suffered something that I think is just beyond imagination," he says. But the Sandy Hook parents also suffered something that is beyond imagination -- and they had to endure the aftermath of the murder of family members in public, just like the Kennedys. Shouldn't that give Kennedy a special empathy for those parents? In the audio version of the interview, Kennedy says of Jones, "What he did with the Sandy Hook [families] is reprehensible." But he adds, "I'm not going to permanently write him off as a human being." Why not? Does no one ever reach the point of being iredeemable for Kennedy? Actually, we know the answer to that. To Kennedy, Fauci, Gates, and the entire medical establishment are iredeemable -- yet Alex Jones gets a do-over.

But the utter disgrace here is the way the text interview concludes. Remnick confronts Kennedy on his thoroughly debunked belief that vaccines cause autism. Kennedy replies:

Remnick gives Kennedy the last word. And the last word is: There sure is a lot of autism these days -- do you have a better explanation than mine? It's completely irresponsible. There's no mention of the most common mainstream explanation for the increase -- that public awareness of autism has meant more children are tested and diagnosed. There's no mention of the fact that mercury -- Kennedy's original culprit -- hasn't been used as a preservative for most vaccines since 2001. Kennedy's dramatic question is just left hanging.

That's journalistic malpractice. David Remnick should be ashamed of himself.

FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE PRO-LGBTQ RETAILERS

This isn't being treated as a major story, but I think it's frightening:

Republican attorneys general from seven states signed a letter Wednesday to Target, warning that clothes and merchandise sold as part of the retail giant's Pride month campaigns could violate their state's child protection laws.

GOP attorneys general from Indiana, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and South Carolina signed the letter, writing they were "concerned by recent events involving the company's 'Pride' campaign." The letter asserts the states are obliged to "enforce state laws protecting children" from "content that sexualizes them," including obscenity laws....

The AGs said they believed the campaign was a "comprehensive effort to promote gender and sexual identity among children," criticizing items such as "LGBT-themed onesies, bibs, and overalls, T-shirts labeled 'Girls Gays Theys'; 'Pride Adult Drag Queen Katya' (which depicts a male dressed in female drag'); and girls' swimsuits with 'tuck-friendly construction.'"

Regarding that last item: Target never sold "tuck-friendly" swimsuits for children -- they suits were only for adults. That bit of disinformation was debunked back in May, but zombie right-wing lies never die.

The onesies and other items for very young children carry messages like this:

If you're saying that it's a potential violation of the law to sell children's products proclaiming that LGBTQ people exist, are equal citizens, and should be celebrated, you're a very short step from declaring that it's illegal to be a gay parent. If the presence of pro-LGBTQ clothing results in unlawful sexualization of children, so does the ongoing presence of an LGBTQ parent -- right?

The Katya shirt is a big nothing, and as the AGs themselves note, it's an adult shirt:

The AGs' letter is here. Let's take a look at some of it:

As the chief legal officers of our States, we are charged with enforcing state laws protecting children and safeguarding parental rights. State child-protection laws penalize the “sale or distribution ... of obscene matter.” A matter is considered “obscene” if “the dominant theme of the matter ... appeals to the prurient interest in sex,” including “material harmful to minors.”

Yes, a onesie with the word "EQUALITY" on the front spelled with a rainbow "U" will make babies think about sex all the time.

Target also sold products with anti-Christian designs, such as pentagrams, horned skulls, and other Satanic products. One such design included the phrase “Satan Respects Pronouns” with a horned ram representing Baphomet—a half-human, half-animal, hermaphrodite worshiped by the occult.

In a country where the Bill of Rights is still reportedly in effect, is it the job of the top law enforcement officers in these states to police the sale of jokey "satanic" products? Also, is "satanism" really the opposite of Christianity? And if so, isn't policing the sale of "anti-Christian" merchandise an "establishment of religion," in violation of the First Amendment?

And here we have the attorneys general policing a private company's business decisions as business decisions:

Target’s directors and officers have a fiduciary duty to our States as shareholders in the company. The evidence suggests that Target’s directors and officers may be negligent in undertaking the “Pride” campaign, which negatively affected Target’s stock price. Moreover, it may have improperly directed company resources for collateral political or social goals unrelated to the company’s and its shareholders’ best interests.

A corporation’s directors and officers owe duties of care and loyalty to the corporation and its shareholders. The duty of care requires that directors and officers act with reasonable prudence. That duty is violated when those directors and officers act with gross negligence. The duty of loyalty “requires an undivided and unselfish loyalty to the corporation” and “demands that there shall be no conflict between duty and self-interest.”

These AGs are implying that legal action might be appropriate because Target made a business decision they don't like. That's a heavy-handed use of the power of government to try to enforce ideological conformity. And, of course, this was a questionable business decision only because the AGs' ideological allies in the right-wing rage community were encouraged to vent their wrath at Target. So first these folks boycott your company, then they threaten legal action because you as a corporation should have known they were going to do that.

The AGs go on at great length about this:

Corporations are expected to pursue excellence in their chartered purposes, including, where applicable, by retailing goods and earning robust profits along the way. Though a company’s board of directors and its management have the discretion to make business decisions for how to best achieve those purposes, it is emphatically beyond the power of a corporate fiduciary to effectuate “a change in the end itself, to the reduction of profits ... in order to devote them to other purposes”—social, political, or otherwise.

This seems to be an argument that business decisions made for any reason other than profit -- for example, decisions made in the interest of social responsibility -- are actually illegal.

... Target’s management has no duty to fill stores with objectionable goods, let alone endorse or feature them in attention-grabbing displays at the behest of radical activists. However, Target management does have fiduciary duties to its shareholders to prudently manage the company and act loyally in the company’s best interests. Target’s board and its management may not lawfully dilute their fiduciary duties to satisfy the Board’s (or left-wing activists’) desires to foist contentious social or political agendas upon families and children at the expense of the company’s hard-won good will and against its best interests.

And this is an argument that companies "may not lawfully" be liberal. I don't know how else to read it.

I suppose I should assume that this is largely empty rhetoric, and that no one's actually planning to back it up with legal action. But it's clear that these AGs believe they'd be entitled to sic the law on Target.

This is where we're heading in America. This is why I believe that the possibility of a second Trump presidency is only a small part of the danger to our way of life. These people don't think anyone who disagrees with them has full constitutional rights. And they won't stop until they win, unless we stop them at the ballot box, decisively and repeatedly.

SORRY, RIGHTIES, YOU CAN'T TURN EVERY "WOKE" PRODUCT INTO BUD LIGHT

I'll admit that I underestimated the right's ability to do serious damage to Bud Light after the company expanded its marketing to include an endorsement from trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney. But now the right believes it can turn any product into Bud Light.

After just a couple of days, right-wingers are already declaring victory in a war against Ben & Jerry's. Here's the story, from the New York Post:

Ben & Jerry’s parent company has lost nearly $2 billion in market cap amid calls to boycott the Vermont-based ice cream maker over a July 4 tweet condemning the US for existing on “stolen Indigenous land.”

Shares of Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch multinational firm, slid 0.8% Thursday after closing down 0.5% the previous day....

The company’s stock price has closed Thursday at $51.31, nearly $1 below its closing price of $52.28 during Monday’s shortened trading — and the day before Ben & Jerry’s posted its unpatriotic tweet.

The result has seen its market cap drop to $128.5 billion from $130.2 billion on Monday.

So you're saying the stock dropped 1.3% in two days -- as stocks often do? And you're taking all the credit for that? You're sure the drop is entirely unrelated to the same market forces that caused the stock to drop 10%, from $55.56 on May 5 to 49.97 on May 30, well before the message from Ben & Jerry's that got the right all worked up?

And this $2 billion loss is for a company with a market cap of $128.75 billion. So it's not a huge hit. Ben & Jerry's (2022 revenue: $910.68 million) is only a small part of Unilever (2022 revenue: $63.293 billion).

Here's why a Ben & Jerry's boycott won't have the same impact as a boycott of Bud Light: The core market for Bud Light is blue-collar men. That's not true for Ben & Jerry's. What got right-wingers upset about Bud Light was a marketing effort that touched on gender and masculinity. Of course it drove right-wing blue-collar men absolutely berserk. They may care about defending white people's treatment of indigenous Americans, but not the way they care about defending star-spangled American heterosexual manhood and its sacred link to lousy domestic beer.

I might be wrong again. But I'm guessing that the truly successful wingnut boycotts will all be based on gender panic.

THE MAGAs ARE HAVING FUN BECAUSE THE THINGS THEY INCESSANTLY COMPLAIN ABOUT DON'T REALLY BOTHER THEM

In The New York Times, David French decodes a Fourth of July tweet from Republican congressman Andy Ogles, which is a mix of relaxed cheer and angry catastrophizing:

... the tweet features Ogles, a cheerful freshman Republican from Tennessee, wishing his followers a happy Fourth of July. The text of the greeting is remarkable only if you don’t live in MAGA-land:

Hey guys, Congressman Andy Ogles here, wishing you a happy and blessed Fourth of July. Hey, remember our Founding Fathers. It’s we the people that are in charge of this country, not a leftist minority. Look, the left is trying to destroy our country and our family, and they’re coming after you. Have a blessed Fourth of July. Be safe. Have fun. God bless America.

Can something be cheerful and dark at the same time? Can a holiday message be both normal and so very strange? If so, then Ogles pulled it off. This is a man smiling in a field as a dog sniffs happily behind him. The left may be “coming after you,” as he warns, but the vibe isn’t catastrophic or even worried, rather a kind of friendly, generic patriotism. They’re coming for your family! Have a great day!

Happy Fourth of July, y’all! 🇺🇸

I am thankful for this great nation my family calls home, where we freely practice our faith and exercise our liberties. pic.twitter.com/UT4Otqt5Sy

— Rep. Andy Ogles (@RepOgles) July 4, 2023

French continues:

It’s not just Ogles. It’s no coincidence that one of the most enduring cultural symbols of Trump’s 2020 campaign was the boat parade. To form battle lines behind Trump, the one man they believe can save America from total destruction, thousands of supporters in several states got in their MasterCrafts and had giant open-air water parties.

MAGAs intimidate their political opponents, but they don't really notice, French says -- their self-image is that they're

good, likable people who’ve just been provoked by a distant and alien “left” that many of them have never meaningfully encountered firsthand.

I agree with French that the MAGAs seem happy, and I think the reason is not just that they're happy and friendly within their bubble -- it's that the societal breakdown they feel is taking place is something that they've "never meaningfully encountered firsthand." I wrote about this back in March, when David Brooks argued that young liberals are more depressed because they're more likely to "catastrophize." Right-wingers catastrophize too -- as French would put it, they think America faces total destruction -- but, as I noted, the insulated, bubble-protected lives of most right-wingers are pretty sweet:

No one's really coming for their guns -- they have plenty, and it's easy to buy more. No one's really coming for their red meat or their big-ass SUVs. No one's forcing them to be gay or bi or trans. Politically, they run half the states. They run the Supreme Court and will control it for decades. They run the House, and they have an excellent chance of taking the Senate and the White House next year.

And in the meantime, they make liberals squeal in agony any time they please. Hey, let's propose a bill to make being a Democrat illegal! A legislator in Florida actually did that. Let's hand out AR-15 pins on the House floor! Let's find creative new ways to make guns more available and abortions less available! Let's ban books and drag shows, and put up more and more barriers to being trans, until eventually it's illegal at every age! Past a certain point, it's all just sport. It's quite possible that most right-wingers don't even care about the actual policy outcomes -- as the man said, the cruelty is the point.

The point is that the cruelty is fun for them. So of course right-wingers are happier -- they're having fun making us miserable.

As French says, we're a distant threat, so they don't care what they do to us. And because we're distant, all the things they hate us for are things they see only on Fox News, and don't recognize as exaggerations and distortions. They think America is going to hell in a handbasket, but they've never even seen the handbasket. And while they'll never admit it, their America is just fine. They run it. They own libs in it. And they'll stage more boat parades in it soon.

JESUS WANTS YOU TO BUY EXTRA TICKETS TO THIS RIGHT-WING MOVIE

On July 3, Variety told us this about a newly released film from a religious-right distributor:

“Sound of Freedom,” a faith-based film about child sex trafficking, is shaping up to be an unlikely box office hit.

Angel Studios, the streaming and distribution company behind the low-budget drama, claims that the film has generated more than $10 million in pre-sales ahead of its theatrical release on July 4. That’s ... another sign of the buying power of religious moviegoers....

Yesterday, Breitbart's John Nolte called the movie a hit:

Angel Studios’ Sound of Freedom opened Tuesday, July 4, to an astonishing $11.6 million, which nearly topped the July 4 take of Disney’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Some caveats apply.... Sound of Freedom sold $14.2 million worth of tickets Tuesday, which tops Dial of Destiny and makes the Christian-themed film America’s top 4th of July ticket seller.

The reason those “extra” ticket sales don’t officially count is because those tickets were not used. The additional sales were part of the movie’s “pay it forward” program, where people who enjoy the movie purchase a ticket for someone else. That’s some pretty smart marketing.

So what Nolte is saying is that this seems like a hugely popular movie, but partly because $2.6 million worth of tickets were purchased but never used. And presumably some tickets purchased through the "pay it forward" program were used. So it's a hit either because individuals have been persuaded to buy more tickets than they need themselves ... or because the studio is buying extra tickets and giving them away in order to make the movie appear to be a bigger hit than it actually is.

In the book business, this kind of manipulation is called bulk buying. Publishers -- particularly publishers of certain right-wing books -- buy their own books in bulk, and the books appear on best-seller lists as a result. The difference here is that Angel Studios acknowledges what it's doing, and portrays it as simple Christian charity. This is from an Angel Studios press release:

Angel Studios’ PAY IT FORWARD Technology Propels SOUND OF FREEDOM to #1 Movie in America July 4th

... PAY IT FORWARD is patent-pending technology from Angel Studios, which empowers moviegoers to purchase tickets for other people whom they want to see a particular film.... For more information, go to https://angel.com/freedom

Go to that link and you see this:

Nice marketing plan: You persuade people that they're honoring the Baby Jesus (or owning the libs) by buying more tickets than they need, and voila -- you've got yourself a box office success.

So what's the movie about? Nolte explains:

Sound of Freedom stars Jim Caviezel and Oscar-winner Mira Sorvino. Caviezel plays Tim Ballard, a real-life U.S. government agent who quit his job at Homeland Security to rescue children from drug cartels and sex traffickers in Latin America.

And now for some libel:

Sound of Freedom was produced in 2018, five full years ago, and 20th Century Fox acquired the distribution rights. But after Disney acquired Fox in early 2019, it shelved the movie. It then took the producers years to acquire the distribution rights back from Disney....

So why would the Disney Grooming Syndicate dump a movie with a meager $15 million production budget starring a bankable star like Jim Caviezel and a full-blown Oscar winner like Mira Sorvino?

Easy answer... Under CEO Bob Iger, Disney became demonic, and today’s very different and morally corrupted Disney wants nothing to do with anything Christian. Secondly, the same Disney that is now so aggressively defending child groomers and engaging in grooming and sexualizing little kids likely wanted nothing to do with a movie that condemns child sex trafficking.

Or maybe it was because Operation Underground Railroad, the organization started by the real Tim Ballard, was under criminal investigation in Ballard's home state of Utah. (The investigation was closed earlier this year with no charges filed.) Maybe it's because Ballard has been accused of exaggerating the extent of the child trafficking problem, and also exaggerating his group's role in rescues of trafficked children.

Nolte continues:

Ah, but the arc of history does bend toward justice, doesn’t it? The Disney Grooming Syndicate has released one money-losing flop after another. But Sound of Freedom will go on to make a nice, fat profit (Sound of Freedom is projected to gross anywhere from $20 to $28 million by Monday).

Actually, three of this year's top six box office hits are from Disney, according to Box Office Mojo: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ($356,057,705 domestic gross, $838,313,750 worldwide gross), The Little Mermaid ($283,804,896 domestic gross, $527,549,654 worldwide gross), and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania ($214,504,909 domestic gross, $476,071,180 worldwide gross). And I'm pretty sure no one bought extra tickets to those movies because a studio boss persuaded them that God wanted them to.

THEY WERE LEFT-WING BEFORE THEY WERE RIGHT-WING. WHEN THEY WENT RIGHT-WING, THEY TURNED VIOLENT.

Kimbrady Carriker killed five strangers in Philadelphia on July 3. To Marjorie Taylor Greene and others on the right, the salient fact in this story is that Carriker was regarded as a male but appeared to be wearing women's clothing in photos posted on social media.

I'm less interested in that aspect of Carriker's life than I am in the fact that Carriker has been identified as both a leftist and a rightist. The New York Post tells us:

[Carriker] regularly posts about supporting Black Lives Matter, including supporting workers who protested in the Strike For Black Lives in July 2020....

In May 2020, Carriker also posted a video to his Facebook of a burning Philadelphia police car that had been daubed with grafitti including “ACAB” — an acronym for “All coppers are b—–ds” — and captioned it: “I was there; where were you? #we matter.”

On the other hand, Heavy.com reports:

On Facebook, Carriker shared videos of guns and expressed concern that President Biden was going to take away gun rights....

Multiple posts on the page dealt with concern that people’s guns will be taken away by government.... He also shared a post about supporting President Trump....

Carriker sometimes wrote about political issues, and he shared memes negative to President Biden....

Carriker shared a video of Biden and wrote, “This y’all president. We said 2A defends our rights. Now it’s god save the queen while he attempts to take our arms.” He also shared a video headlined, “Biden turns red coat, in latest gun grabbing speech,” and wrote, “I told you he wanted your rights. GOD SAVE THE QUEEN SAYS BIDEN.”

Carriker also shared a post from President Trump’s Patriot Army that reads, “Who supports President Trump in 2024?”

He shared a photo of a sweatshirt that read, “I lubricate my AR-15 with liberal tears.” He shared a YouTube video of Tucker Carlson that said he humiliated Eric Swalwell, a Democratic U.S. congressman from California.

Carriker reminds me of another unstable person who was in the news a few months ago: Paul DePape, who beat Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul, with a hammer after a break-in. Right-wingers said that DePape was obviously a lefty:

Lidia Curanaj, a talk-show host, tweeted, “Reportedly Paul Pelosi attacker is David Depape—a Castro supporting nudist transient from Berkeley CA (he’s on the far LEFT literally and figuratively).” Sebastian Gorka tweeted out a photo of the Woolsey Street home with the caption, “Here is the hippie commune Pelosi’s pro-hemp nudist attacker lived in. It is festooned with LGBTQ flags, BLM signs and other Leftist propaganda.”

DePape had been on the hippie/lefty end of the spectrum. But by the time of his attack on Pelosi, he'd moved far to the right:

... those who knew him for years ... paint a portrait of a man who began to “deteriorate” over the last year and a half, as he spent a great deal of time alone, absorbing extremist views online and shifting his political views from supporting former President Obama years ago to believing in the false “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory...

In a personal blog on which DePape began posting in August, he included essays titled “Manipulation of History,” “Holohoax” and “It’s OK to be white.” ... He posted videos about conspiracies involving COVID-19 vaccines and the war in Ukraine being a ploy for Jewish people to buy land....

In an Aug. 23 entry titled “Q,” DePape wrote: “Either Q is Trump himself or Q is the deep state moles within Trumps inner circle.”

Another post referenced Pizzagate, a bogus conspiracy theory that posited that children were trapped in a sexual abuse ring in a Washington, D.C., pizzeria run by Hillary Clinton and a chief aide.

Eventually, DePape explained his reasons for the attack:

A jailhouse interview with David DePape ... provides insight into his apparently troubled mind. In an 18-minute clip of the interview ... DePape told detectives he broke into Pelosi’s San Francisco home to hold her hostage and make her admit to a series of “lies” she’d told about Donald Trump. “If she told the truth, I would let her go scot-free,” DePape said. “If she fucking lied, I was going to break her calves.” The supposed lies “originate[d] with Hillary” he said, as he ranted about Pelosi, the Democratic Party’s “crime spree” and the supposedly stolen 2020 election.

Carriker and DePape embraced ideas identified with the left -- but then they discovered the right, which is much better at inducing and sustaining rage, and also more inclined to portray violence as justifiable. Right-wingers talk about "the violent left", but it was when DePape and Carriker had become immersed in right-wing ideas that they turned to extreme violence. Whatever DePape and Carriker were in the past, they were steeped in a right-wing culture of violence when they shed blood.

THE ALL-POWERFUL DEMOCRATIC DISTRACTION MACHINE WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS

Every right-winger in America knows that President Brandon and the evil Democrat Party have built the most fearsome propaganda machine in human history, all designed to accomplish one goal: distracting the American public from the story of Hunter Biden. Consider the brutal efficiency of this distraction engine just in the past two months.

In May there was this:

... right-wing media outlets are claiming that charges against [George] Santos are a distraction from Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop....

Fox News contributor Joe Concha complained about mainstream media focusing on Santos, adding, “You can barely find anything on the Comer investigation and the allegations. And think about what we're talking about here: George Santos is a freshman congressman. Is it a story? Yes, it is. But Joe Biden is the sitting president of the United States.”

Fox News host Laura Ingraham described the Santos news as “shady timing.” Her guest Kyle Seraphin, a former FBI agent, added that “the timing is obviously suspicious.”

... Right-wing radio host Clay Travis called the timing of the Santos arrest “so diabolically brilliant.” New York Post writer Miranda Devine responded saying, “You can’t imagine that this is just a coincidence.”

A few weeks later, in early June ...

Former President Trump on Sunday suggested that his recent federal indictment comes as a “distraction” for allegations made by House Republicans in their probe into President Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

“It was done for political reasons, but it was also done, I guess, to cover up the kind of a massive crime that’s now being revealed by the Republicans in the House,” Trump said of the indictment on the debut episode of his “The Roger Stone Show” on 77 WABC....

And a couple of weeks after that ...

Several right-wing commentators have accused Joe Biden of withholding news of the Titan submersible's demise to distract from recent developments with his son, Hunter, after it was revealed the U.S. Navy likely detected the vessel's implosion on Sunday....

"The WSJ is reporting the U.S. Navy detected the Titan implosion on Sunday but Biden held the news until today's whistleblower testimony on Hunter," Jack Posobiec, a conservative activist and commentator, wrote in a tweet on Thursday evening, which as of 4 a.m. ET Friday had been viewed 5.9 million times. "The entire thing was a distraction op."

And, more or less simultaneously ...

Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo claimed the Biden administration is “drumming up” on the civil war that nearly broke out in Russia in order to dodge the latest revelations on Hunter Biden....

“I know that the State Department and the White House would like everybody to move the Hunter Biden story off of the front page and start talking about all the drama in Russia over the weekend,” Bartiromo said. “We’re not going to do that on Sunday Morning Futures. The biggest story of the week was that WhatsApp message from Hunter Biden....”

Now ...

First son Hunter Biden joined his father and other members of the Biden family at the White House Tuesday to take in the Fourth of July fireworks following a weekend getaway to Camp David – during which a powdered substance found in the West Wing initially tested positive for cocaine....

Authorities are now trying to determine how the substance got into the White House.

Hunter Biden, 53, who has acknowledged a prior addiction to crack cocaine, was on the White House grounds Friday before heading off to Camp David with his father for the second weekend in a row.

Wow -- is Brandon such an evil genius that he's now using Hunter Biden to distract us from Hunter Biden?

Otherwise, I can't understand why I'm even hearing about this cocaine at all, given the Orwellian capabilities of the all-powerful Democratic distraction apparatus.

ALWAYS BE OTHERING

Even if they win a trifecta in 2024, Republicans won't really do this, but it's disturbing that so many of them think it's a good idea:

Twitter owner Elon Musk had an interesting reaction to a tweet arguing that only parents should have voting rights in America.

He appeared to support the idea with an all-caps "YUP."

User "datahazard" got the positive response on Saturday when he argued in a tweet that "democracy is probably unworkable long term without limiting suffrage to parents."

Datahazard was responding to an earlier tweet from Musk declaring: "The childless have little stake in the future."

They can't do it at a national level because that would require a constitutional amendment, which would need to be ratified by legislatures in 38 out of 50 states. An effort to do this in a state or locality would lead to serious legal challenges and send a massive signal to the young and other childless people that the Republican Party hates them. It would be political suicide for the GOP -- you wouldn't have to be a liberal or a moderate or a member of an oppressed group to feel targeted. So it won't happen, at least not until we're much further along the road to totalitarianism.

The value of this is that it others Democratic voters along lines other than race and sexual orientation. Propaganda that lengthens the list of ways Democrats aren't truly American, or fully human, builds solidarity on the right, and reinforces the notion that conservatism is the proper American ideology, at least if we're talking about real Americans.

Musk isn't the first prominent figure to go natalist. Here's a clip from just after the 2022 midterms in which Jesse Watters -- the guy who just won Tucker Carlson's timeslot on Fox -- argues that single women are a menace to society and need to be (forcibly?) married off and impregnated:

... single women are breaking for Democrats by 30 points. And this makes sense when you think about how Democrat policies are designed to keep women single. But once women get married, they vote Republican. Married women, married men, go for Republicans by double digits. But single women and voters under 40 have been captured by Democrats. So we need these ladies to get married.... They're also teaching our children in schools. So you have hardcore Democrat females in school with your kids for eight hours a day. So there's a brainwashing pipeline that runs through women and children, and it's starting to show up on Election Day.

J.D. Vance won an Ohio Senate seat last year after this nasty pronouncement in 2021 (on, naturally, Tucker Carlson's show):

"We are run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too," Vance said.

"It's just a basic fact," Vance continued. "You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC. The entire future of the Democrats are controlled by people without children."

(Vance said this before Buttigieg and his husband adopted twins.)

Vance proposed giving parents extra votes:

“The Democrats are talking about giving the vote to 16-year-olds,” Vance noted. “Let’s do this instead. Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of the children.” He continued, asking, “Doesn’t this mean that nonparents don’t have as much of a voice as parents? Doesn’t this mean that parents get a bigger say in how democracy functions?” He answered with a simple “yes” ...

But there's no legislation attached to this. No one in Congress is floating the text of a bill or a constitutional amendment, not even Vance. It's just trash talk meant to stir up hate in a new way, as if Republican voters don't hate the rest of us in enough ways already.

The GOP establishment isn't ready to propose radical restrictions on voting by Democratic groups. As I said a few days ago, establishment Republicans want to keep boiling the frog slowly, manipulating democracy primarily in ways that won't enrage ordinary Americans. Most Americans' eyes would glaze over if you tried to talk to them about state legislative gerrymandering or alterations in voter ID requirements. So that's the level of manipulation establishment Republicans prefer.

Also, I suspect that playing the long game on democracy is good for the players' careers. Look at how powerful Leonard Leo became in the decades it took or the GOP to overturn Roe v. Wade. Seizing control of elections and throwing millions of people off the voter rolls, or turning millions into second-class voters, virtually overnight at this moment would probably end the careers of quite a few Leonard Leo types whose work it is to propose new voter bills every legislative year, and collect billionaire dollars to promote them.

So no one is likely to take childless people's votes away anytime soon. But the demonization of childless people will continue.

COVID VACCINES ARE STILL RESPONSIBLE FOR 100% OF ALL DEATHS IN PEOPLE UNDER THE AGE OF 80, BREITBART COMMENTERS SUGGEST

A famous bodybuilder just died at a very young age, Breitbart reports:

Jo Lindner, a popular YouTube bodybuilding star known as “Joesthetics,” has died of an aneurysm at the age of 30.

Lindner, a German, had one of the largest social media followings of any fitness influencers. His YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok accounts boasted over 10 million followers.

Even without looking at my headline, you know where this is going, although the Breitbart story itself doesn't make the leap. Instead, we're told:

Two days before his death, in his final Instagram post, Lindner revealed that he was experiencing health issues following his Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT).

“When I lost my gains because I went off everything for 1 year but then could not recover my own [testosterone] levels so went back on trt,” Lindner wrote. “Trust me I tried to stop but be aware it might have long-term effects for your life.”.

Also:

Lindner suffered from a rare condition known as rippling muscle disease. An affliction that causes the muscles to be susceptible to movement or pressure. Lindner spoke about his health concerns in an interview with YouTube host Bradley Martin.

“The heart is also a muscle, that’s my biggest concern that what if I get such a bad cramp that my heart gets a cramp,” Lindner explained. “That makes me scared. That’s why I’m staying away from bodybuilding competitions too much.

(Lindner's characterization of rippling muscle disease may not be quite accurate, but it's a real condition.)

“Because I would take all these diuretics and if I stop eating salt and drink a lot, and then stop drinking as well, you would pee everything out, and then you would take a diuretic as well on top and then you pee even more sodium out,” the German bodybuilder said

“I cannot exist really. I cannot even walk anymore.”

But Breitbart puts stories like this on its front page for one reason only: so commenters can blame COVID vaccines for the death. Quite a few, admittedly, don't rise to the bait. They place the blame where a normal person might:

Must be the steroids

****

Or HGH, that's the new steroids

****

Massive abuse of steroids, muscle enhancing drugs and erratic dieting over long periods of time will tend to wreck havoc on the heart, vascular system and endocrine system rending one's body a walking time bomb.....Apparently the testosterone replacement therapy taken due his body not being capable of making enough of its own due to steroid abuse finally lit the fuse resulting in cardio/vascular failure.

But other say just what you'd expect Breitbart readers to say:

He was also warp speed jabbed to the gills.

****

The jabs made his heart issues much worse, that’s a given.

****

The jabs are the decider, period. THey will kill you no matter how healthy or unhealthy you are. You get a jab that isn't a dud, a real mRNA jab, and you will die from it. The mass culling in the world continues.

****

steroids have been around forever and no 30 year old ever died from it. don't be so naive

****

Of course this article fails to mention he took 4 fake vax shots and he blamed the shots for heavy metals in his blood and ailments.

****

Here's the interview.
"What did I do man":

(In the clip, Lindner does tells interviewer that he'd had four COVID shots -- and claims that "heavy metals" were found in his blood afterward.)

Unfortunately, many of the same medical authorities who preach against steroids, and rightly so, are silent on the proper investigations of the various negative side effects of the 'jab'. Unacceptable behavior on their part.

****

Mixing Roids and the Clot Shot may be hazardous to your health.

****

This kid is yet another c19 nano clot victim. aneurysm was the cause, if I recall. I think he was suffering a few hours of weakness.

****

Steroids and the warp speed death jabs don’t mix.

****

The slab jab does it's magic.

****

It cant be the covid shots. Pfizer said they were safe and effective.

****

I just read up about him. He was fully into natural body building, never took any anabolic steroids or any other enhancement drugs. But it still cant be the shots, no.....it cant be because they are safe and effective. Dr. Peter Hotez said so many times. We have to trust science.......

****

The vaxx has forcibly been inserted in to our lives and is a contender for trouble. It must be ruled in as reasonable suspicion in Joe Lindner's untimely death.

****

Why did he get the vaccine? He was young and fit and at almost zero risk of Covid? The steroids combined with God knows what is in those vaccines took his life far too young.

****

The fake vaccine poison shots have claimed another soul. I did hear some good news coming from out of Denmark that 30% of the Pfizer fake vaccines were placebos. So there is some hope that the people we love who were tricked by TPTB into taking these potentially fatal fake vaccines got saline instead.

(I can't find that claim online, but it doesn't pass the smell test. "TPTB" = the powers that be.)

So there you have it: Sure, Lindner took some stuff to make his body look like this...

But it was the vaccine that killed him.

CHRISTIE'S ANTI-TRUMP CAMPAIGN MIGHT ACTUALLY BE HELPING TRUMP

Of course Maureen Dowd thinks Chris Christie could take down Donald Trump.

We have both known the blackguard for decades. And let’s be honest. We want Christie on that wall. After years of watching Republicans cower before Trump, it’s bracing to see the disgraced former president finally meet his mean match.

What evidence is there that Trump has met his match? I understand how this is meant to work in theory. Christie tells Dowd:

“I don’t think he’s ever gone up against somebody who knows how to do what he does. He’s never run against somebody from New Jersey who understands what the New York thing is and what he’s all about. For people like me, who’ve grown up here and lived my whole life in this atmosphere, he’s just one of a lot of people I know who have that personality. He knows I know what his game is.”

Christie is right: Combative people from this area have a certain style. But so what? Please identify any defeat in Trump's lifetime that came about because someone out-argued or out-trash-talked him, in that particular New York/New Jersey way or otherwise. It's never happened. Most of his failures in business were self-inflicted. His most recent loss in court was to E. Jean Carroll, who grew up in Indiana and who beat him in a court of law, not in a face-to-face debate. There was no flamboyant antagonist when Trump was order to pay millions to people who'd been defrauded by Trump University. And Jack Smith, his current nemesis, isn't even speaking to the public.

Electorally, who's the only guy to beat Trump? Joe Biden. Biden just kept his head down and ground out a win in 2020, with none of the verbal brawling Christie promises.

Christie is contemptuous of previous Trump opponents. Dowd writes:

I warned that Trump is an asymmetrical fighter, so it’s hard to know how to go at him. Clinton tried to rise above him, and Marco Rubio imitated his crude style.

“You just brought up two of the most unskilled politicians I’ve ever met,” Christie said....

Really? Rubio has won three statewide elections, which is one more than Christie has ever won (and Rubio probably isn't done winning, which is more than you can say for Christie). Rubio won 3 contests and 173 delegates in the 2016 Republican primaries, which exceeds Christie's total by ... um, 3 contests and 173 delegates. Hillary Clinton, of course, won the popular vote in a presidential election, nine months after the high-water mark of Christie's campaign, a fifth-place finish in the New Hampshire primary.

What's the theory of Christie's 2024 race? There are two theories. The really naive one says that Christie can talk his party out of Trumpism, for which he'll be rewarded with the nomination. The somewhat less naive one says that of course he can't win the nomination, but he can do so much damage to Trump that Trump won't be able to win.

Here's what actually seems to be happening: Christie is moving up in the polls somewhat, particularly in New Hampshire. In a March poll of New Hampshire from St. Anselm College, Christie was at 1%; a poll this month from St. Anselm has him at 6%. But Christie isn't hurting Trump at all -- in fact, Trump's numbers went up from the March poll (42%) to the June poll (47%).

It's the same story with the National Research/American Greatness poll. Christie wasn't included in the May survey and was at 7% in the June survey. But again, Trump numbers went up, from 39% to 44%.

So Christie is talking, people (or at least people in New Hampshire) are listening -- and Trump is even more popular.

You can probably guess who's being harmed: Ron DeSantis. He was at 29% in the earlier St. Anselm poll and 19% in the later one; in the American Greatness poll, he dropped from 18% to 12%.

So Christie denounces Trump and takes votes away from the only candidate with even a slim hope of catching Trump. Genius plan.

IF IT WEREN'T FOR PERFORMATIVE CONSERVATISM, THERE WOULDN'T BE ANY CONSERVATISM AT ALL

What does it mean to be an American right-winger in 2023? What really matters to the American right?

This is what really matters:

Joyless leftists, as they are prone to do, got all triggered when Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders' kids used chalk to draw a cross surrounded by colorful stained glass-like shapes on the driveway at the governor's mansion this week....

Quickly, the hall monitors at Americans United for the Separation of Church and State issued a demand letter: remove the chalk rendering of a cross.

The group claimed that its presence at the official home of Arkansas' executive was a violation of the Constitution....

In what should come as a surprise to no one, Gov. Sanders is not backing down....

In an official letter of her own obtained by Townhall on Friday, Sanders responded to Americans United.

"I have received your letter and my answer is no," Sanders wrote. "I will not erase the beautiful cross my kids drew in chalk on the driveway of the Governor's Mansion or remove my post on social media, and I will not now or ever hide that I am a Christian, saved by Christ."

Here's the driveway of the taxpayer-funded governor's mansion, with the artwork Sanders insists her children drew:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Sarah Huckabee Sanders (@sarahhuckabeesanders)

No, really, she says that her children -- the very young kids seen at the end of the driveway -- drew this all by themselves with their little crayons. And, presumably, they designed it all by themselves. (It may not be to your taste, but that's definitely a professional design.)

I don't know exactly how old the governor's kids are, but in September 2017, when she was the White House press secretary, Deadline said that the kids were 5, 3, and 2. So they're approximately 11, 9, and 8 now.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders has a real job -- she's the governor of a state with a population of 3 million people. Among the 50 states, Arkansas is 45th-best in health and safety, 46th-best in crime, and 47th-best in infant mortality. But instead of addressing these problems, Sanders spends her time on cockamamie schemes like this. In this case, someone with professional skill went to great trouble to draw this cross on the driveway, and someone brainstormed the specific narrative of this lib-baiting act until it was decided that she'd say it was a simple project the kids undertook because they love Jesus too. American United rose to the bait -- which was the point of the whole exercise -- and now Sanders gets another few national media hits, all in the service of her next campaign. (VP in 2024? President in 2028? She's only 40. The possibilities are endless.)

You'll recall that the first thing Sanders did as governor was to ban the use of the term "LatinX" in official state documents. A couple of months later, she signed a law calling for the construction of a monument to the unborn near the state capitol. In April, there was this:

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) is now selling “Real Women of Politics” can koozies, marking the latest Republican outrage over transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney’s partnership with the beer brand Bud Light.

Huckabee Sanders’ “Real Women of Politics” koozies offer four different choices that each feature a different Republican female governor, including herself, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem.

She promoted her new merchandise on Twitter on Monday, captioning the video, “Real women don’t have to fake it.”

Has Sanders done anything of substance? Oh, sure -- in March, she signed a bill that would make it easier for employers in the state to use child labor.

That's conservatism in 2023: 80% performative culture-war nonsense, 20% goodies for capitalists. Sanders has a bright future.