I messed up. I accidentally trashed the Alex Jones page and Anna the Geek is going to try to find it for me.
Until then, here’s the latest interview. It’s one of my favorites except that he looks tired. He’s promised to sleep all weekend!
Heads up – Both Jones’ lawyers from Texas and Connecticut have a real hard day in Connecticut.
In case you were wondering about the bizarre relationship between TFG and Rudy Giuliani, and if you have you need to avail yourself of a free brain cleansing from Thelma which consists of a big stick, shear force, and your ability not to scream, and then enlighten yourself with this —
No.
Not a tunnel. Please, not a tunnel. Oh be still my synapsing neurons.
Yes, tunnel! Our friend Deb checked and here it is on the historic drawings of Mar a Lago. Bottom, left, oh hell – there’s a tunnel to the beach.
I cannot, and I will not, even imagine what manner of crapola is (1) hidden there, (2) what was brought in through there, (3) if the FBI had a key to the tunnel, or (4) why that sucker doesn’t flood during high tide. But mostly I wonder if anybody could tell the difference between Rudy and the nocturnal bats who obviously live there.
Our friend Deb also did some art for us over at craiyon.com
Luke Bowen. Never heard of him? Well, you will now. Luke Bowen is was political director of extreme anti-choice activist PAC Texas Right to Life. He’s also apparently been a blogger for the Texas GOP. David Lowe, a Republican candidate for the Texas State House, tweeted last night that Bowen, trying to help Lowe’s primary opponent, had smeared him by spreading a rumor that he is a human trafficker. Nice, huh? Well, justice and extreme irony collided a couple of weeks ago when Bowen was arrested in Conroe on charges of…wait for it…online soliciting of a minor for sex.
Texas Right to Life says they fired him the same day. SubStack blog Current Revolt has all the juicy details including the arrest record.
What is it that they say about those who scream the loudest? I think it has something to do with the most guilty. The irony is a bonus.
Luke Bowen of @TXRightToLife helped spread a rumor that I was a part of human trafficking on behalf of the @StephanieKlick campaign. Today, we find out that he was arrested for solicitation of a minor. Disgusting.
https://t.co/RmmCxtlcFj— David Lowe for Texas (@DavidLowe4Texas) August 25, 2022
Here on the Left Coast, we Californians love our initiative and referendum rights. In years past we’ve had some doozies to energize base voters that enhanced voter turnout.
Take Prop. 13. In 1978 California’s property owners gave themselves a break from punishing yearly property reassessment by limiting property reassessment only at the time of sale of the property, limiting the assessment rate to 1%, and allowing only a 1% adjustment per year. People liked that. It won in a landslide, and voter turnout in that off-year election was the largest in state history.
In advance of the 2016 election, California saw record voter registration among Millenial voters who signed up to vote for AUMA, the ballot measure to legalize recreational use of cannabis.
This year, we will see Prop. 1 on the November ballot. Prop 1 was placed on the ballot in reaction to the Roe v. Wade SCOTUS news leak last May. Prop. 1 will constitutionally protect abortion and contraception rights in California.
This is a guaranteed voter turnout booster that is bound to flip a few toss-up districts at least. Polls show California voters heavily favor a Yes vote in numbers that exceed 70%.
Ironically, had the May leak not occurred, it might have been too late to get Prop 1 on the ballot by the June 30th deadline as SCOTUS released the decision only 6 days before.
That’s going to be problematic for David Valadao (R) CD 22, Mike Garcia (R) CD 27 and Ken Calvert (R) CD 41. Toss-up districts all.
The late 1990s were difficult times for Democrats and progressives. It was soul searching time for me in those days. The president of the United States became only the second president to ever be impeached. There were numerous defenses for the president and his behavior. Most of those defenses were permutations of the same defense. Essentially they said that what a man (or woman) does in their personal life does not impact them in their professional life. As long as Bill Clinton was a good president from nine to five then what does matter that he isn’t a good man after those hours?
French president Jacques Chirac famously had multiple affairs. The joke was that he kept replacing each significant other with the same woman ten years younger. If the French people accepted him as their leader then we should have accepted Clinton as our leader. As we know, that argument won out. Except, it really didn’t win out. It helped Bush win the election over Al Gore. I ended up voting for Gore because he was a different man and an infinitely better one than Clinton. However, there were millions that punished him for the mistakes of his former boss.
We often have difficulty separating a message from the messenger. It’s one of the important things I point out when teaching Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. One of the steps he mentions before a direct action campaign is self-purification. It’s a challenging concept for students. Yet, it is absolutely crucial. Listening to someone like Newt Gingrich (at the time) prattle on about character is hilarious. However, it doesn’t mean the point is wrong.
If we have learned anything over the last seven or eight years it is that personal character is absolutely a big deal. We just endured a presidency of someone that has no character. We saw what happened. We saw how that spilled into everything. We saw the abject cruelty. We saw the inhumanity and indifference. We saw the lack of a fundamental understanding and empathy.
Whether this inhumanity is merely a reflection of the people that supported him or whether his inhumanity rubbed off on them is hard to parse. His grotesque existence brings forth any number of questions. However, the most important one is whether those that support him really reflect his inhumanity or if they support him simply because that inhumanity bothers us. Either is equally likely. One might ask what the difference is and I suppose it is a minor detail, but it tells me that in one case there are millions of sociopaths/psychopaths out there. In the other case, they have human empathy, sympathy, and concern in most situations, but just enjoy the political nihilism.
Humanity itself is a fragile thing. Everyone we encounter in our lives is flawed. Look at us in the perfect angle and we can be angels or demons. Both of things make us human. We are walking contradictions and so choosing any one to lead us can seem like an impossible task. The former guy may be human in the purest scientific sense, but lacks any redeeming human traits. Such a statement seems impossible and yet objectively true. There isn’t a positive human trait there. Some of us thought those things weren’t necessary to lead. They were absolutely wrong.
Okay, okay, with the help of Alfredo over at the Dairy Queen we have undercovered some of the nastiest scam PAC whatnots happening right here in the good ole USA.
This one is kinda “hey, come over here and let me punch you in the face” scam. These guys are pretending to be raising money to fight for veterans in congress. They even have the nerve to put this manner of crapola on the internet. It’s called the American Coalition for Crisis Relief PAC and they ask for your help.
They have raised $3.5 million dollars to lobby for veteran issues.
Let’s look at the second quarter of this year to see their latest filing with the FEC.
The scam PAC raised over $500,000 in the second quarter and spent $0 on candidates. All of the money it raised went to “operating expenditures.”
Oh, and there’s more. They have paid themselves nicely for running the PAC.
And they also paid consultants at this place.
Let me save you the trouble of looking up the address — it’s something called Lashed and Laced, and it looks legitimate.
It’s on the end there. I thought it was a hair salon and Lord knows I trust hair salons with political activism, but Thelma informed me that Lashed and Laced is most likely a line of ladies basement boudoir accessories and corsets. So, it’s probably an S&M shop, which, even if you don’t think too hard about it, might actually be the best place to hire congressional lobbyist.
So, I dunno.
Reminder: do not give money to any PAC unless you are very sure who runs that sucker.