We have previously explored new methods of getting campaign cash by members of the new (TFG Era) Republican Party. Ted “Cancun” Cruz heads the list, but there is also the constellation of kid lit authors corraled by Brave Books. But here on the Left Coast, that new-fangled stuff hasn’t caught on yet. Republicans here are still engaged in what can now be called old-fashioned grift.

Case in point, my own elected representative to Congress, Ken Calvert (R CA-41). Calvert has been into real estate since he gave up managing his parents’ restaurant in the sleepy inland town of Corona, California, in the 1970s. In 1979, he founded Ken Calvert Real Properties, Inc. which is now run by his brother, Quint. Nevertheless, Ken still keeps his hand in the business, frequently in partnerships.

Like the one identified by the DC Watchdog group End Citizens United, as reported here.

End Citizens United filed a complaint at the Office of Congressional Ethics, citing Calvert’s partnership in his real estate acquisitions where he “failed to disclose information about various rental properties that he owns in Riverside County”.

Calvert, they say, made “use of the legislative process known as earmarking to secure more than $100 million in taxpayer funds for his district, including more than $16 million for transportation projects within a few miles of his own rental properties.”

Calvert’s office claims that this is all stuff and nonsense: “This is a meritless complaint from a far-left super PAC that’s endorsed Ken’s opponent.”

Well, that last part makes so much sense that it probably is true enough.

This couldn’t come at a worse time for Calvert, who is involved in one of the most competitive congressional races in the country. Current polls show Calvert trailing his Democratic opponent by a point. His opponent is Will Rollins, who is back in the saddle again: he nearly defeated Calvert in the 2022 mid-term election.

I can’t think of a worse, more ill-timed thing to occur to Calvert as we ramp up to the general election now that we are inside the 90-day mark. Well, there may be one.

He could accept Will’s challenge to a 3-debate format on a local TV station formerly owned by Gene Autry.

But he won’t.

Donald Trump has been walking around and telling people that he doesn’t need their vote. He has plenty of votes. There are three possibilities of why he is using this gambit and all of them are still on the table. The first is that he is using some kind of Eric Cartman reverse psychology where you will all of the sudden want to vote for him since he told you he doesn’t want your vote.

Before you call me crazy let me explain how this works. No one is storming the capital or any of the state houses. Instead, they have installed loyalists at the county and state levels that will simply refuse to certify the vote if it goes against them. Heads I win and tails you lose.

Trump is using the same playbook he ran in 2020. Essentially, there is no way the Democrats can beat him. Look at the size of his crowds. Look at how much merch these people buy. Look at all the monster trucks with his face and the MAGA flag on them. So, if the vote turns out differently you know they cheated. I know the polls say they are ahead, but that’s a vast left wing conspiracy from the liberal mainstream media.

That’s why if you look carefully you can see cracks in the veneer. Harris’ crowds are bigger than Donald’s crowds. The enthusiasm gap has been narrowed and Harris is pulling ahead. He knows this and can’t trot out the same lines about nobody coming to Joe’s rallies. Instead he has to pivot to Georgia St. somehow cheating and keeping his people out.

This is an important first step to beating him. Listen, I know this as much as any of you. I’ve listened to family members and friends parrot the big lie even now. There is no way Joe Biden got 81 million votes. It was fake news. It was all made up. So, seeing Harris one or two points ahead in the polls is nice and certainly better than the alternative. Still, it isn’t enough.

As hilarious as this is to say, Trump is playing a longer game. He doesn’t have to convince a majority of voters. He just has to keep it close enough to allow his minions on the ground to contest the results. If enough counties and states throw their results into chaos then he can eek out an electoral college victory and become the first president to serve two terms without ever winning the popular vote.

Obviously finding a way to make one person, one vote the law of the land is the long-term plan. That’s years or even decades away. The plan now is to play for the blowout. A one point victory isn’t going to do it. I might not even feel comfortable with a five point win. So, ignore the polls and put your foot on the gas. We need a buffer to win this thing. We need a blowout so significant that they will be shamed into accepting it. Remember, all MAGA accusations are a confession.

The effort has begun. As someone that pays a lot of attention and used to study this stuff it makes perfect sense. Conservatives are test-marketing different insults and slogans to see what sticks. So, their opener is that Tim Walz is a San Francisco liberal. That’s an interesting insult given the circumstances. I have been to San Francisco on two separate occasions. I have apparently been to San Francisco more frequently than Walz.

The two policy planks that are getting the most attention is his desire to make sure every child is fed in school in his home state. Additionally, he wants every citizen in Minnesota to get paid family leave. Those planks are very popular amongst voters. According to Pew researchers, more than 80 percent of voters think that workers should get paid leave for their own medical problems. Well over 60 percent think that fathers and other family members should receive paid leave WHEN OTHERS IN THEIR FAMILY are dealing with a medical crisis or just gave birth.

Free school lunches are not quite as popular. Those programs test out in the high fifties and low sixties depending on how the question is asked and who is doing the asking. However, let’s ignore the numbers for a bit and consider the pros and cons of such proposals.

The cons are obvious and short. It costs money. Government is about priorities and some people think we shouldn’t be prioritizing those things. There are three groups of people that this would describe. There are libertarian types that don’t think the government should be spending on anything like this. Pure libertarians think the government should fund for national defense and that is pretty much it. So, they also eschew tax breaks and other subsidies for corporations and wealthy Americans as well.

As much as I admire their consistency, that kind of opinion is not common and not horribly realistic. That horse done left the barn. That brings us to the second group. It is an unholy combination of people that either feel cheated because they didn’t get it or they object to helping poorer people because they are becoming dependent on assistance and need some tough love. Of course, then you just have the assholes that are happy when the people they don’t like get hurt. I’d like to think they are in the minority.

I can’t do anything for the last group of folks. The first folks we will call the “anti-progress” crowd. That logic can extend out to almost everything. Why should younger people have cell phones? I didn’t have one until I was 26. Why should my car have automatic steering or seat belts? The first cars didn’t have that. If we want our children to have things better than what we had then that comes with improvements in technology and programs that makes life easier.

The bootstrapping folks are the hardest nut to crack. There are some instances where this ideology makes sense. It doesn’t in this instance. An eight year old cannot pick themselves by their bootstraps and as much as you might think their parent is a lazy piece of shit, the kid has no control over that. Feeding them only helps them. There are other tangible benefits. A fed child is a happier child and a child that can focus more in class.

If you are a conservative operative you know all of this. You at least know that feeding children and giving people paid leave is incredibly popular. Yet, this is what happens when you have no other policies to campaign on.

I love watching The Olympics, but only every 4 years. On even-numbered years. It has become a sporting event like no other, incorporating weight lifting, swimming, track and field, and break dancing.

The Olympics has become very DEI, don’t you think? It used to be synonymous with running and jumping events, but now darn near every human endeavor except Coding has become an Olympic event.

But I have always been entranced by the jumping events, mainly because the force of gravity has always been a challenge for me to overcome. Not so with Olympian jumpers.

I recall a revolutionary change in the high jump event. Originally, the high jumpers would attack the horizontal bar face-on and clear the bar by rotating their whole bodies in a semi-circular path with the bar as the center of rotation.

Then along came Dick Fosbury. In the 1968 Olympics, the high jump event was turned on its head when Fosbury introduced the “Fosbury Flop” to the games and took the gold by a mile. My father took me to an indoor track meet not so long after that, and the fascination was the high jump. Naturally, Dick Fosbury and the Fosbury Flop was something to see, and see it we did.

Now they just call it high jumping.

Advance the clock 56 years to today, and we are witness to another need to revolutionize another jumping event.

The pole vault.

Witnesses to French pole vaulter Anthony Ammirati’s attempt to clear the bar at 5.7 m saw him catch the bar with a not-so-small appendage just below his waist, and that ended his run for the event finals.

But this may have opened more doors for Ammirati: he was offered a new gig in the entertainment industry.

I maintain that he could gain more fame and attention – as well as fewer snagged bars – by incorporation of Dick Fosbury’s technique into his own.

They could call it the Ammirati Avoidance.

I’m not going to speculate on how the Harris team opted for Minnesota’s Governor Tim Walz to be the Veep. I don’t really care. I hope no one else does, but that’ll never happen.

What surprised me is that Walz is just a little more than 6 months older than Harris.

Right?

Well, the fact that he looks like someone’s (as in like my own) grandfather must have something to do with his vocation as a high school geography teacher.

It ages you a bit.

I can’t vouch for what his time as his school’s state championship-winning football coach did to him. Most coaches I ever knew were tadpoles.

But how about that, huh? A high school teacher becomes Vice President of the United States.

Or am I jumping the gun here? Maybe I better wait and see whether President Maduro…er…TFG and his crew will allow all of this to happen after the Harris/Walz victory in November.

The main discussion this week has been who should Kamala Harris pick for Veep. But just as the field has narrowed this weekend, out comes an announcement that TFG will debate Harris on September 4th on Fox in front of an arena-sized crowd.

That was news to:
1) Fox,
2) Harris, and
3) Everyone else.

Harris immediately countered with a succinct ‘see you on September 10th on ABC’ response in reference to the previous agreement between the Biden/TFG camps.

But really, I have to ask at this juncture, should there even be a debate? Who is likely to benefit from one? In any given format? TFG? Harris? Voters?

I submit: None Of The Above.

Reasoning? I don’t think there is a ‘persuadable voter’ left to persuade in this year’s presidential election, and that’s a crazy thing to say. But this has been a crazy election year that makes the 1968 election look like an exercise in politics as usual.

The choices are so extremely divergent this year that I can’t imagine a single person (who knows that we have an election this year) that has not formed an opinion on either of the two options.

And in particular, I cannot imagine a single tortured soul out there who will change their opinion from supporting one of them to support the other as a result of a debate between them.

But wait. What about those who simply don’t vote at all? What if, as Julien Labarre, administrator of UC Santa Barbara’s Center of Information Technology and Society, says “…people who were not thinking of going to vote [are spurred] into participation, we do see that kind of effect.”

What if indeed? A sage once said: What if I had some ham? If I had some ham, I could have some ham and eggs.

If I had some eggs.