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.

It has admittedly been awhile. I am doing my writing elsewhere on my own page. I won’t broadcast that here, but some people know where that is. However, I felt the need to address a group called “StopHoustonmurders.com”. They have set their sight on Democratic judges locally and have run a whole litany of ads. These ads tend to find themselves on what I affectionately call “old people television.” I encountered probably 40 of them in the span of an hour when watching “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

When I say 40 I am not exaggerating. The general course is run about five or six of these ads back to back even having them interrupt other ads for other products. The setup is the same. You see a bunch of people holding up posters of dead loved ones with the voiceover focusing on one of those. It tells you that their loved one was killed by a criminal that a “bad judge” had released. These bad judges are “all Democrats” so we should vote them out to help protect our community.

With all apologies to momma, my bullshit detector was going off and it was screaming at me. Immediately we begin to ask the questions everyone should ask. Are we supposed to take your word for it that all of these judges are Democrats? What were the circumstances of these cases where they “released a criminal”? Did they serve their full sentence? Did a parole board grant their parole? Were they convicted of a violent felony or were they nonviolent offenders that suddenly committed a violent offense?

Tip O’Neill once said that all politics is local. You don’t get any more local than the home. Someone that is out of work or can’t afford to make ends meet doesn’t care how well the economy is doing. Someone that has had a loved one murdered doesn’t care about crime rates. I think we all get that. However, most of us don’t have a loved one that was murdered. So, those crime rates matter and it matters in particular if you are going to question the policy of judges and other elected law enforcement officials.

I know everyone is going to be shocked to hear this, but the rates of violent crime in both the United States and Houston are down. For Houston, it went down from 2022 to 2023. So, it would seem that is little empirical evidence to suggest that the policies of these so-called Democrat judges are making things worse. Again, I know you are shocked.

Instead what we have is yet another example of right wing political groups ratcheting up fear and hatred in order to score political points. More insidiously, they are using real victims to put forth this manufactured issue. It is not dissimilar to the Trump campaign using “data” that shows that two thirds of voters are worried about the economy. When you do nothing but tell people how bad the economy is then is it any wonder that people suddenly think the economy is bad?

Similarly, if you tell people that America is becoming a lawless hellscape then is it any wonder that many people assume that crime rates are out of control? It is all they have at this point. By all means, don’t provide any context. Just bombard people with imagery of Gotham and crime that is out of control. Make sure to imply that it is “the other” that is usually committing these crimes. You alone can fix it by throwing them in jail and throwing away the key. That will do the trick.

Question: Which House Committee has oversight of the US Armed services?
Answer: The House Armed Services Committee.

Question: Armed Services is a big budget item. Do they break up this onerous oversight task into manageable pieces?
Answer: Yes. There are six subcommittee that handle six different areas.

Question: Which sub-committee handles naval construction matters?
Answer: The House Sub-Committee on Seapower and Projection Forces.

Question: So if there is mismanagement and overcharging in naval construction contracts, this sub-committee would ferret that out?
Answer: Are you joking? This is a House sub-committee we’re talking about, right?

When Austral USA LLC (Austral USA), a Mobile, Alabama-based shipbuilder that constructs vessels for the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard, was charged with accounting fraud as well as obstruction of that investigation, they pleaded guilty last August and has agreed to pay $24 million to resolve the investigation by the Justice Department, the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS).

Not the House sub-committee charged with oversight of naval construction contracts, no way.

And I guess that’s a good thing because when Austral USA was asked – not once, but  twice – by the FEC to file disbursement reports from their Austral USA LLC Federal Political Action Committee (PAC), they finally found out that Austral gave two members of the sub-committee campaign cash: Ronny Jackson, TFG’s former physician, and Rob Whitman (R – VA-01).

That is good because, for some reason, it is perfectly OK to send campaign donations to congressmen who are tasked with oversight of your business doings.

Because if there is oversight of their oversight, at least there is someone around to do it – even if it is the dreaded “deep state” that does it.