Pink slime used to be the bacterial mass that KTRK consumer newsman Marvin Zindler used to find in ice machines. The term has been rebranded to mean the substance that is put into meat as filler.

That allowed the term to be borrowed by webwatching organizations that expose fake news sites. Organizations like NewsGuard, discussed by this piece in The Voice of America website.

It’s a rather alarming article that makes the astounding claim that, at 1,265, the number of “fake news” websites now outnumber the country’s 1,213 legitimate local news sites.

According to VOA, at least 167 of those sites were created by one man, a former Florida sheriff’s deputy, John Dougan, who fled to Russia to escape justice.

And obviously, this couldn’t come at a worse time, especially in counties that are “news deserts” because they lack any trusted local news due to their unprofitability.

Now admittedly, “satire sites” that are left-leaning have also contributed to the problem, because MAGAns have been known to leave comments and requote from them as well.

As examples, these are all fake news items that have drawn comments from MAGA enthusiasts. No, really, these are all false.

Really.

1. Kid Rock shipped “millions of dollars worth of supplies” to areas impacted by Hurricane Helene and Hurricane.

2. FEMA is supposedly running out of money due to migrant aid .

3. Hurricane Milton Renamed to ‘Millicent’ for Transgender Awareness Month.

4. Walmart Canceled Taylor Swift Clothing Line Worth $150M.

5. Bread costs $11 in California because of the minimum wage increase.

6. The NFL “ruled” that there is only one national anthem.

These all seem patently absurd, but to some, fake news items have become so popular because they reaffirm their previously held beliefs. And that feels great.

We have a new derived word: sanewashing. Originally, it was coined in 2020 to make the “defund the police” war cry after the George Floyd murder seem to be a reasonable plan to promote social equity.

It has since evolved, almost universally, to be a description of the process that attempts to render TFG’s most outrageous false claims into being more socially acceptable.

Wiktionary has a good pair of definitions: “1. The practice of restating someone’s rhetoric to seem more palatable or acceptable.
2. Attempting to downplay a person or idea’s radicality to make it more palatable to the general public.”

Sanewashing has become a necessary political tool that I equate to translations of Adolf Hitler’s speeches and writings: because German to English translators were scholarly people, their translations were also scholarly. In actuality, Hitler’s speech pattern had such a country bumpkin aspect to it that he appealed to the German masses, but was deplored by the aristocracy.

Sanewashing puts a finer point on the whole question of what makes a MAGAn be so MAGA, giving Bronzer Boy a much wider audience consisting of those who hear him speak, and those who see his speeches after being cleaned up for the gentler souls.

It’s a win-win for our country’s most famous con artist.

Nader Akhlaghy is not a household name by any stretch of the imagination. An Iranian immigrant, Mr. Akhlaghy has recently availed himself to be considered in two elections that I am aware of. The first, back in 2022, was a run for US Congress under the Peace and Freedom Party banner in New York’s 5th District. He withdrew before the election was held.

More recently, he ran as a Republican for President of the United States.

Nader Akhlaghy (not Ralph)

But just today, the FEC is in receipt of three Form 99s from the now former presidential candidate. Form 99 is a form for “miscellaneous” filings. It is there, through his son, Amirhossein Akhlaghy, the campaign Treasurer, that Nader (not to be confused with Ralph, another 3rd party candidate) has again dropped out of the running.

This is Ralph

And not a moment too soon. Unlike the other Nader, this one knows that his name on the ballot might foul things up with unintentional consequences like getting another Republican elected when that would be a bad, bad thing.

So, in his own words, as shown on FEC Form 99, Nader Akhlaghy believes “Mrs. Harris is a more suitable person for this presidential term, and…will withdraw from the election in her favor…”.

America needs more responsible presidential candidates like Nader Akhlaghy.

I wonder if readers of the Salon not-a-blog recall my obsession with the Temecula Valley Unified School District Board of Education. Last year saw a skirmish between three MAGA-leaning school board members and the freedom-loving world when the board voted to reject a “controversial” state-mandated social studies curriculum and associated textbooks. This was all because of one paragraph in an ancillary text where the mention of former San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk’s existence caused a hue and cry from MAGAs who viewed him as a pedophile.

Temeculans got so irritated with this blatant injection of religiosity in a government body that they voted one of the three, their leader, Dr. Joseph Komrosky, out last June.

Not to be deterred, it seems Dr. Komrosky has thrown his hat into the three ring circus once more. He wants to be “re-elected.”

Here is a campaign video. I absolutely adore his choice in musical accompaniment.

You can’t keep a good homophobic nationalist dominionist down.

I know there is probably something that you don’t want to do. You probably don’t want to order your tickets (Limit 2) at this website in order to attend TFG’s rally at Madison Square Garden this October 27th.

You don’t want to do it in case people reserve tickets who have no actual intention to attend it. That would be tragic if it “sold out” and “The Garden” was … well … half empty.

Last time they had such a rally it was 1939 and a whole bunch of like-minded people got together for some real stiff-arm saluting.