2022 U.S. Congressional (and Other) Elections

[N.E. Brigand]

That poll is certainly part of their average. It seems to have improved Warnock's chances in their forecast, but not enough.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Hopefully the long odds will shorten. The House odds are actually a little bit less dire than I expected.

[N.E. Brigand]

Kristina Karamo, the Republican nominee in the contest for Michigan's Secretary of State yesterday warned against having sex with demons.

[Frelga]

Possibly the most reasonable policy statement to come out of GOP in recent years.

[RoseMorninStar]

Possibly the most reasonable policy statement to come out of GOP in recent years.

It sure explains a lot.

[N.E. Brigand]

I think this comment today from a Republican running for Congress here in Ohio is disgusting. Why does he hate people so much?



Also: "fewer."

[River]

I think we need to define or redefine "well organized militia" because this current situation where one person can just acquire a rifle and shoot up a parade or an elementary school is not okay.

[RoseMorninStar]

I think we need to define or redefine "well organized militia" because this current situation where one person can just acquire a rifle and shoot up a parade or an elementary school is not okay.

Agree.
Pell Center: A Well-Regulated Militia

[Cerin]

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The trouble isn't, imo, with the definition of 'well-regulated militia.' The trouble is with people's varying interpretation of the amendment's phraseology. Had the writers anticipated the need for clarity hundreds of years hence, they might have written,

' . . . the right of militia members to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.'

or

' . . . the right of the people to keep and bear arms for militia-related activity shall not be infringed.'

But what we have is a phrase that is absolute, and can stand alone as a complete sentence (which the other part of the sentence cannot).

[N.E. Brigand]

Looking ahead to 2024, in this clip, a Russian state media host, feeling stung by reports of Donald Trump recently claiming that if he were president, he would stop Vladimir Putin, says that in the next election, Russia will "have to think whether to re-install him again as the American president. We haven't decided yet."

[River]

Looking ahead to 2024, in this clip, a Russian state media host, feeling stung by reports of Donald Trump recently claiming that if he were president, he would stop Vladimir Putin, says that in the next election, Russia will "have to think whether to re-install him again as the American president. We haven't decided yet."

Oh please. Trump follows applause from his fans. If the funnel the same garbage to Trump's fan base that they've been funneling to Serbia Trump will come around. They probably already are, actually. I've recently seen some weird stuff on social media presented by people claiming to be freethinkers following independent news but the stuff they spout is translations of the chyrons I saw on Serbia's Russia Today channel when I was in Belgrade a couple weeks ago (the spoken language barrier is a bit steep but I could read enough).

[N.E. Brigand]

According to a new report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the former football player Herschel Walker, who is the Republican candidate challenging Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia, claimed in speeches in 2017-2019 that he had been an "FBI agent" and "worked in law enforcement, so I had a gun" and specifically that "I work with the Cobb County Police Department." He's also claimed to have earned a degree from the University of Georgia. None of this is true. His campaign says he attended a week of training with the FBI and that his reference to Cobb County meant only that he had been given an honorary position by that department (but the AJC thus far has been unable to get confirmation of those claims).

When I posted to encourage skepticism earlier this evening, I was not referring to this story in The Daily Beast, a legitimate news source, which I only encountered after that:

Scoop: Herschel Walker Has a Secret 10-Year-Old Son, Who He Doesn't See

According to the story, Walker is paying child support and does send gifts to his son.

But he's still a huge hypocrite, given that he has repeatedly criticized what turns out to be his own behavior in public statements in recent years, for example saying that if a man has "a child with a woman, even if you have to leave that woman . . . you don't leave the child" and "if you got a child, hug your child every day," and much more along those lines.

Oh my.

Herschel Walker, Critic of Absentee Dads, Has Yet ANOTHER Secret Son—and a Daughter (The Daily Beast)

Two days ago, when The Daily Beast reported on Walker's first-known secret child, his campaign responded:

"Herschel had a child years ago when he wasn't married. He's supported the child and continues to do so. He's proud of his children. To suggest Herschel is 'hiding' the child because he hasn't used him in his political campaign is offensive and absurd."

Prior to that, Walker was only known to have one child, 22-year-old Christian Walker, who just last week mocked a celebrity for father multiple children by multiple mothers: "Nick Cannon is everything wrong with our culture. Knocking women up and then being too busy banging other women to take care of his children. Fathers, control your ding-a-ling, get home, and raise your damn kids."

There's new reporting about how former football star and current U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker is an inveterate liar.

Walker's campaign staff learned in advance of The Daily Beast reporting that Walker had a secret son (whom he almost never saw). The campaign asked Walker if it was true. He assured them that it was not. But they expected that he would lie to them and presented him with evidence proving it. Confronted with that information by his own staff, he admitted it was true, but he assured them that was the end of the story. Thus the public statement issued by the campaign that I have bolded and underlined above. But he had two more previously undisclosed kids.

Edit #1: Obviously this new reporting exists because Walker's campaign staff is talking to the press. Those Walker aides are also telling reporters that behind the scenes they have "ridiculed his intelligence ... fear his mood swings ... worry he could embarrass himself at any moment" and that they worry that his inability to manage criticism will "make him just not mentally stable."

Edit #2: Even so, a new DataProgress poll finds Walker leading by 2%.

[N.E. Brigand]

Mehmet Oz, a celebrity doctor who is the Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, who didn't even claim residence in that state until 2020, who seems to spend more time out of the state than in it, and who holds Turkish citizenship (though he says he'll give that up if he wins election to the Senate), appears to have filmed a recent campaign ad in his actual current home, a mansion in New Jersey. (This was noted by his opponent, Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor, John Fetterman.)

[N.E. Brigand]

The website of Senate candidate Blake Masters, Republican of Arizona, calls for not only Roe (1973) and Casey (1992) to be overturned (both concern abortion rights) but also for Griswold (1965) to be overturned. That's the case that makes contraception legal.

This article in the Tucson Sentinel includes video showing a 73-year-old liberal gadfly protester named Peter Jackson (!) being roughed up by attendees at an event for Republican Senate candidate, Blake Masters. As the reporter notes, Jackson's own description of what happened is somewhat exaggerated, but the video shows one woman punching him and then shows that Masters himself "lunged at Jackson, put both hands around his neck and pushed him backward". As with Greg Gianforte of Montana, who won election to Congress in 2017 after beating up a reporter and then, after being convicted of misdemeanor assault, last year went on to be elected as that state's governor, I expect this will only help Masters in Arizona.

More on Masters at Yahoo Money: A Trump-backed Arizona Senate candidate suggests he wants to privatize Social Security.

New reporting in the New York Times undearths some (borderline?) anti-Semitic historical analysis penned in the 2000s by a young Blake Masters, the Trump-backed candidate attempting to secure the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate from Arizona. In these writings, Masters relies on the writings of a "historian" who has praised the vile and fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion as Masters argued that the U.S. was led into World War I by the "Houses of Morgan and Rothschild" (blaming historical tragedy on the Rothschild family is a regular anti-Semitic device) and appearing to minimize what he called the "hot button issue of the Holocaust" in an argument that the U.S. shouldn't have entered World War II.

[N.E. Brigand]

This article in the Tucson Sentinel includes video showing a 73-year-old liberal gadfly protester named Peter Jackson (!) being roughed up by attendees at an event for Republican Senate candidate, Blake Masters. As the reporter notes, Jackson's own description of what happened is somewhat exaggerated, but the video shows one woman punching him and then shows that Masters himself "lunged at Jackson, put both hands around his neck and pushed him backward". As with Greg Gianforte of Montana, who won election to Congress in 2017 after beating up a reporter and then, after being convicted of misdemeanor assault, last year went on to be elected as that state's governor, I expect this will only help Masters in Arizona.

More on Masters at Yahoo Money: A Trump-backed Arizona Senate candidate suggests he wants to privatize Social Security.

New reporting in the New York Times unearths some (borderline?) anti-Semitic historical analysis penned in the 2000s by a young Blake Masters, the Trump-backed candidate attempting to secure the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate from Arizona. In these writings, Masters relies on the writings of a "historian" who has praised the vile and fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion as Masters argued that the U.S. was led into World War I by the "Houses of Morgan and Rothschild" (blaming historical tragedy on the Rothschild family is a regular anti-Semitic device) and appearing to minimize what he called the "hot button issue of the Holocaust" in an argument that the U.S. shouldn't have entered World War II.

To expand on my use of the word "borderline" above, see what Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine has since written about Masters's "Nazi-adjacent" positions:

"Blake Masters is not a Nazi. But Nazis correctly see him as a vehicle to advance their agenda and bring them closer to political respectability. ... Masters occupies an ideological position in the party where he can attract puffy coverage in mainstream conservative organs like National Review and also get rave reviews from people who wish to exterminate the Jews."

(Donald Trump did something similar in 2016, when instead of forcefully rejecting neo-Nazi David Duke's endorsement of his candidacy -- as George H.W. Bush had done in 1988 -- Trump pretended not to know who Duke was.)

[RoseMorninStar]

Is willful ignorance adjacent or borderline behavior? It's manipulatively done with full knowledge of the damage and harm that can be caused. To me that would be akin to what I believe the legal phrase 'accessory' implies. Perhaps it's 'adjacent or borderline' because the damage isn't specifically due to deeply held personal belief but is expedient to their perceived gain?

[N.E. Brigand]

New reporting in the New York Times unearths some (borderline?) anti-Semitic historical analysis penned in the 2000s by a young Blake Masters, the Trump-backed candidate attempting to secure the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate from Arizona. In these writings, Masters relies on the writings of a "historian" who has praised the vile and fraudulent Protocols of the Elders of Zion as Masters argued that the U.S. was led into World War I by the "Houses of Morgan and Rothschild" (blaming historical tragedy on the Rothschild family is a regular anti-Semitic device) and appearing to minimize what he called the "hot button issue of the Holocaust" in an argument that the U.S. shouldn't have entered World War II.

To expand on my use of the word "borderline" above, see what Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine has since written about Masters's "Nazi-adjacent" positions:

"Blake Masters is not a Nazi. But Nazis correctly see him as a vehicle to advance their agenda and bring them closer to political respectability. ... Masters occupies an ideological position in the party where he can attract puffy coverage in mainstream conservative organs like National Review and also get rave reviews from people who wish to exterminate the Jews."

(Donald Trump did something similar in 2016, when instead of forcefully rejecting neo-Nazi David Duke's endorsement of his candidacy -- as George H.W. Bush had done in 1988 -- Trump pretended not to know who Duke was.)

Masters has now rejected the endorsement of the Nazis at the Daily Stormer, but it wasn't until a month had passed and a reporter at Jewish Insider asked him about it. Meanwhile, the Stormer has also endorsed J.D. Vance, the Repulican candidate for Senate from Ohio, and Vance's campaign declined to comment when JI asked about that.

- - - - - - - - - - -
And speaking of Nazis and their ilk, Fox News host Greg Gutfeld yesterday said that the National Education Association (the major teachers' union) is "the KKK with summers off." I'm not sure that saying that teachers are KKK members (and yes, he must mean teachers not NEA leadership and office staff, because the latter do work in the summer) will help Republicans win votes, but what do I know?

[RoseMorninStar]

And speaking of Nazis and their ilk, Fox News host Greg Gutfeld yesterday said that the National Education Association (the major teachers' union) is "the KKK with summers off." I'm not sure that saying that teachers are KKK members (and yes, he must mean teachers not NEA leadership and office staff, because the latter do work in the summer) will help Republicans win votes, but what do I know?

[N.E. Brigand]

President Biden signed an executive order today that may offer women some additional protections when traveling across state lines to seek abortions and that requires the Department of Health and Human Services to step up education programs about abortion medication and emergency contraception, but he said that U.S. law doesn't give him leeway to do much more than that (although some Democratic governors disagree), and thus November is crucial:

[Dave_LF]

It's cute how Democratic leaders continue to imagine that voting is the solution vs. people who literally attempted a coup the last time they lost