I was extremely fortunate this week to attend the Oregon Historical Society’s Hatfield Lecture given by Boston College Prof. Heather Cox Richardson (younger daughter is an alumna, Go Eagles). I’m sure all of the customers are aware of her incredible recording of history through her Letters from an American (over 1,600,00 subscribers). I know I look forward to either a late night post arriving in my e-mail box before I go to sleep (she admits to only sleeping 3 hours a night) or first thing in the morning with my coffee. The lecture and following discussion were way better than expected, and my expectations were high. She has a delightful sense of humor, which always helps in digestion of history.

The Sold Out event was held at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, a gorgeous venue in downtown Portland, Oregon. A friend wisely bought us tickets back when they were first released. It got me thinking about such venues and capacity, since crowd size is all the rage right now. Well, The Schnitz capacity is 2,776. We were in row W of the orchestra section, but there was a big screen and great acoustics, of course. So I got to googling the size of the Tucson venue (I will not say the name as its namesake is NOT happy it was used in this way and has come out with a full endorsement of Harris/Walz). Anyway, back to the story, lest I be accused of too much weaving…

The Tucson venue capacity is 2,289. That’s almost 500 fewer bodies for TFG’s sell out. And the dear Professor is not even running for office. I don’t know how many virtual tickets the OHS sold, but I’m sure it was a lot more than it cost to set up and record. That Hatfield series is pretty popular. We won’t even gloat about the size of the crowds at those NC venues used post-debate by Team Harris. That would just be piling on.

Humanity has all sorts of theories about where God Almighty might be located, from the physical to the cosmic. One Christian sect has claimed that He lives on a planet orbiting a star named Kolob. That’s a physical concept. A cosmic concept would be that He has no definite location but is everywhere.

Then, there are the concepts of other faiths. But I’ll not dwell on that. Not my area.

But I’ll tell you where the Federal Election Commission thinks God might be living if S/he is who S/he says S/he is.

Upper Marlboro, Maryland.

More precisely, here, as revealed by the Google.

God lives here?

It all comes from this letter from the FEC addressed to Christy Renee God Helmondollar, who is the subject of an FEC investigation vis-a-vis the name of the campaign in question.

The letter of complaint was sent to an address within the Upper Marlboro area, giving The Almighty a physical location.

Or not.

See, apparently the FEC has a problem with the failure “to include the true, correct, or complete information under 52 U.S. Code § 30121” which deals with Contributions and Donations By Foreign Nationals.

Foreign Nationals?

Well, I guess without a valid Birth Certificate or US passport, God might be considered a foreign national.

It also means S/he cannot vote in the coming election.

That’s just going to mess up TFG’s donor list if he’s got to include alien donors. Especially with this poking and prodding by an incredulous FEC.

O ye of little faith.

In the wake of another would be assassination attempt of Donald Trump we get this nagging question. Obviously, there are any number of rabbit holes we could go down here. A quick moment in both right wing and left wing echo chambers will show us all of these rabbit holes. I saw one on the right that saw this as some sort of Black Rock deep state kind of thing. The ones on the left question whether this was manufactured to distract from the fact that he got his butt kicked on national television. For the moment I am going to dismiss both of those. It’s not that I necessarily think neither is possible, but I think the simplest of explanations is more probable.

I also think that jumping to conspiracy theories becomes a nasty habit. We normally decry this thing on the right, so we want to make sure we are not simply doing the same thing on the left. The most plausible explanation is that these were two deranged souls that had their own motivations for doing this. Again, this is where each silo manages to put their own spin on it. Shooter number one wore a Trump hat in school, but had also donated to Democratic causes. The second voted for Trump in 2016, Vivek Ramaswamy in the last primary. However, he also supposedly donated to Democratic causes. Everyone is an enigma if we go back far enough and pull all of the evidence. So, again I’m not making any definitive statements here.

We can’t even say that they were activated by hateful rhetoric on either side. What we can definitively say is that one side uses hateful rhetoric far more often than the other. It is not even close. For J.D. Vance to call for cooler heads to prevail less than 48 hours after admitting that he made up a story about migrants eating pets is outrageous even for him. He put thousands of lives in peril as right wing violent actors went to work essentially destroying a quiet community that may have had its issues (who doesn’t) but was seemingly getting along just fine without his “help.” Essentially, the Vance argument is that we should not call a fascist a fascist and we should not repeat or quote the things he has actually said because it will make him look bad and might cause some people to target him. Got it.

The truth is fairly simple and most sane Americans know it. This is a case where the arsonist is blaming the victims for the fire he has started. Anyone that wants to look at the numbers are free to look them up for themselves. Don’t simply take their word for it. Who is responsible for most of the violent rhetoric and actual political violence? I an already tell you because I’ve done the research. What I also know is that the cult either doesn’t hear the rhetoric or remember it as violent. When I’ve talked to friends and family that are MAGA they will pretend that dear leader has never said the things he has said.

This isn’t hard to understand. We have seen it happen to numerous demagogues throughout history. Was George Wallace an innocent victim or was a hateful bigot that suddenly became a victim of his own vitriol? I know many of you know for sure. While we can’t convince MAGA of these inconvenient facts, we can rest assured that we are on the right track. They want us to stop saying things they know to be true. They want us to be afraid to say the things that are actually making a dent. We can’t convince MAGA but we can ignore them.

Oh, to be a celebrity in 2024. So many decisions to make. And with a public that demands that you like who they like, and vote for who you vote for, those decisions must be enormously difficult for some.

And a no-brainer for others.

Brittany and Taylor: BFFs

Witness poor Brittany Mahomes. OK, she’s not a major celebrity in her own right, but she’s married to one: Patrick Mahomes, her husband, throws footballs for the Kansas City Chiefs. That she is a supporter of Von Shitzenpantz came as a small surprise to a few, those who cared, anyway. Mainly because she is besties with Taylor Swift, whose bf also plays for the Chiefs.

Taylor, as you know, announced her support for Harris as soon as they shut off the mics at last week’s presidential debate.

All of that would have been copasetic had not the Orange Julius would-be Caesar posted on his social media website “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT.”

Now what is Brittany Mahomes going to do? Her preferred presidential candidate HATES her BFF! The Daily Mail reports that she has decided to be less obvious in supporting TFG. No more “liking” TFG’s social media posts, for instance. Well played, Brittany.

Nicky Jam. Not a chick.

But then what about Nicky Jam? That poor guy. Nicky Jam is a rap vocalist who supports Don the Con, and was at his recent rally in Las Vegas when he was called out by The Man himself: “Do you know Nicky? She’s hot.”

Many believe TFG thought he was calling up Nicki Minaj, who IS hot. But alas, Nicky Jam is a dude, and TFG misgendered Mr. Jam as a result.

And because of that, Nicky Jam spent the weekend quietly deleting his post of support for The Former Guy, and just to make sure, closed the comments on his preceeding post. though it was not even about The Don.

And don’t even ask about the uproar with the pro-Harris Mexican rock band Maná, with whom Mr. Jam has been collaborating. I have no words!

These are the real issues we have to deal with here in 2024. How will we ever survive?

James E. “Trey” Trainor is our MAGA guy in the Federal Election Commission. Appointed by TFG himself in 2020, Trainor has played musical chairs with TFG’s other appointee, Sean Cooksey, as the FEC chairman. Together, they have formed an AI voting bloc.

AI, you see, is merely exercising its God-given right to “Free Speech,” and both Trey and Sean are going to stand up and fight for the constitutional rights of…well…AI.

Because it is far from the purview of the FEC to regulate “Free Speech.” It’s just not in their mandate, even if it is false information generated by AI.

Apparently, someone, let’s call him “Public Citizen,” petitioned the commission to exercise its authority under a federal statute (52 U.S.C. § 30124) that forbids false representation of a candidate or political party as speaking or acting for another candidate or party so as to do damage to that candidate or party.

In other words, “dirty pool is not allowed.”

But as Trey outlines in his statement published in the Washington Examiner today:

“[The Federal Election Campaign Act] does not prohibit broader general untruthfulness in a campaign ad, such as making untrue statements about a candidate’s voting record.”

Besides that, this AI stuff is big and complicated, too big for the FEC.

But how does this impact “Free Speech,” you may ask. Further on, he writes:

“No matter the dangers of AI, an ill-conceived knee-jerk response risks constraining free politica expression. As history has taught, from fear does not often spring good law. And this concern is heightened when those laws regulate the core of political speech in our country.”

In other words, this “free speech” could be wrong on so many levels, but if it’s generated by Artificial Intelligence, well that’s infringement upon the constitutional rights of AI.

It brings to mind “Citizens United,” the controversial SCOTUS opinion that corporations use campaign contributions as “Free speech”.

So, taking this to a test mentioned in a famous Supreme Court criterion, if it is AI that yells “FIRE!” in a theater, that’s OK.

[Everyone thank Alfredo at the Dairy Queen for this one.]

Oh puhleeze. Donald, just say you want some money. Fear not…