Fetterman made Voltaire’s prayer: “O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous”

My fellow Americans, you’ve probably already seen some of the mocking commentary on a Dr Oz campaign ad, in which he goes shopping for crudité in a Pennsylvania grocery store. He was a bit out of touch. How out of touch? Well, I haven’t lived in Pennsylvania for 22 years, and even I know there isn’t a “Wegner’s” there, it’s “Wegman’s”. And then the way he stands there and grabs at a few things in reach…Oz hasn’t been grocery shopping in ages, and it shows.

The real question, though, is John Fetterman’s reply to this rich man going shopping for the first time ever effective campaigning? You bet it is.

The amount of money it takes to run for office is unreal, but it helps when your opponent is so flamingly incompetent.

In other fun Oz smackdowns, the Republican party is cutting its losses and spending less money in Pennsylvania. That’s gotta sting, and it’s also going to have down-ballot effects. Watching Republicans screw up is wonderfully entertaining.

And then, Oz was asked how many houses he owns, which is the kind of question no one ever asks me (my answer would be one, sort of, since we still owe the bank on it). Oz stammered out an answer of two, but he was more concerned with qualifying it and hedging his numbers. The Daily Beast counted for him. It’s TEN. Ten houses.

• a 9,000-square-foot mansion in New Jersey

• a 7,000-square-foot country house in Pennsylvania

• a condo in New Jersey

• a piece of residential real estate in Sariyer, Turkey

• another piece of residential real estate in Sariyer, Turkey

• a Manhattan condo

• another Manhattan condo

• an oceanside mansion in Palm Beach, Florida

• a cattle farm in Okeechobee, Florida

• and a piece of residential property in Konya, Turkey, which appears to be used as a student dormitory

Each one is probably worth far more than my house. He could probably pay off my mortgage for me with a fraction of his monthly pay-out for houses.

This is a good question to ask any big wig politician of either party. You know, I’m going to be generous and suggest that three is not an unreasonable number, since they’re rich: a real home in their home state, plus a residence near the capitol, and what the heck, I’ll throw in a vacation home somewhere nice. Anything beyond that, you’re just pigging out at the trough.

While we’re at it, another sin of the revoltingly wealthy is investing in the stock market. You should be required to divest.

More primary elections today

These could be interesting, unlike the rather predictable Minnesota primary. It’s Trumpkins vs anti-Trumpkins.

  • Liz Cheney is expected to lose.

    Support for her has imploded since she first voted to impeach Donald Trump over the Jan. 6 attack, and then took a leading role in the ensuing congressional investigation. Wyoming voted for Trump in 2020 by 70 percent in the presidential election, and Cheney’s passionate invocations of Trump’s threats to democracy haven’t changed many minds there. In fact, Trump’s election lies have completely remade the entire Republican Party, a recent Pew Survey finds, to the point where most voters who identify strongly as Republican want to hear their elected officials parrot it.

    Either way, I lose. The only think I like about Cheney is her stance against Trump, but otherwise…just another evil Republican.

  • Sarah Palin is trying to make a comeback? I hope Alaskans have learned that she’s a useless flibbertigibbet.
  • Another race where I cannot see much hope: Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski is being primaried by a Trump fanatic. It hurts to hope a conservative Republican wins.

Also, I learned that Alaska has ranked choice voting. Why can’t the rest of the country do that?

Can Ted Cruz get any creepier?

Yes he can! And he hasn’t hit bottom yet!

The Texas senator made the remarks at a rally in Nevada on Saturday. Activist Lauren Windsor flagged the speech on Twitter.

“We need courage responding to crazy town,” Cruz told supporters. “Elizabeth Warren told reporters that a guy came up to her and said, ‘I would have voted for you if only you had a penis.'”

Cruz argued that Warren’s “story is a lie.”

“In today’s Democrat [sic] Party, how do we know she doesn’t?” Cruz said to laughter. “How could you possibly know? ‘My name is Elizabeth. Call me Bob.'”

Cruz went on to insist that transgender swimmer Lia Thomas is a “dude.”

“He looks like Michael Phelps,” the senator remarked.

Listen to his audience laugh.

It hurts him more than the people he fired

Look at this man. He is so sad. He is crying. His life is so difficult.

Poor man. Why is he crying? Because he is a CEO. Because he had to fire two of his employees. Oh, sure, the employees have lost their income and are going to have to struggle to find new jobs, but think of the mental anguish their boss went through.

This boss, though, had the idea that he could burnish his reputation as a Good Guy by crying for a camera.

“This will be the most vulnerable thing I’ll ever share,” HyperSocial CEO Braden Wallake wrote on LinkedIn Tuesday. “Days like today, I wish I was a business owner that was only money driven and didn’t care about who he hurt along the way. But I’m not. So, I just want people to see, [sic] that not every CEO out there is cold-hearted and doesn’t care when he/she have to lay people off. I’m sure there are hundreds and thousands of others like me.”

If there are a hundred thousand like him, that implies there are two hundred thousand people who have lost their jobs.

Isn’t it nice that the boss can hurt people and then post a picture to show he isn’t cold-hearted? I’m sure the PR was useful for him.

The article itself is 16 paragraphs about the weeping boss, and we know nothing about the two fired employees, not even their names.

Minnesota election went as expected

Yesterday’s primaries set up the big November election, where it will be incumbent Democrat Walz vs lunatic anti-vax, anti-abortion Republican Jensen for the the governor’s chair. I hope the main election follows the path this one took, in that all the candidates I voted for actually won. I’ll try to repeat my flawless performance again in a few months.

Outside my district, Ilhan Omar beat a Democratic challenger, barely. Neighboring Wisconsin is a mess, with Republicans arguing over who is the Trumpiest and yelling about the opposition being “liberal”. That’s enough, just call a Democrat “liberal” and that’ll get you votes. I’m hoping we can see the odious Johnson replaced by a black Democrat, Barnes, but you just can’t trust the Wisconsin electorate. All that cheese and ranch dressing has poisoned their brains.

Am I supposed to care?

The FBI raided Trump’s house in Florida.

Former president Donald Trump said Monday that the FBI had raided his Mar-a-Lago Club and searched his safe — activity related to an investigation into the potential mishandling of classified documents, according to two people familiar with the probe.

This trivial act seems to have thrown the MAGAts into hysterical fits.

I’m sorry, but if you weren’t outraged at the killing of Breonna Taylor, you should sit this one out. This “raid” was practically deferential — they got a formal warrant, guys in suits walked in and searched for some papers, and they walked out. That’s what the justice system ought to do, getting a warrant to respect privacy concerns, and using it to undramatically gather information. Do the right-wingers think Trump had something to hide?

Of course, the media is also in a tizzy.

Searching a former president’s property to look for possible evidence of a crime is highly unusual and would require approval at the top levels of the Justice Department. It represents a historic moment in Trump’s tortured relationship with the Justice Department, both in and out of the White House.

Why is it unusual? Why does it require unusually high levels of approval? The guy is a private citizen. The process should require no greater care than searching my home or your home or anyone’s home. An ex-president should have no greater rights than anyone else. I thought this country was supposed to be founded on a principle that there is no aristocracy? (As with most myths about the founding, that one’s a lie.)

Meanwhile, you know that Trump was sloppy and heedless of confidentiality issues. His entire gang is. Would you believe that part of the fallout from Alex Jones phone data is that he had a naked photo of his wife that he sent to Roger Stone? I’m more dismayed by that than that the FBI served a lawful warrant and gathered documents that might (emphasis on “might”, they might exonerate him. Ha.) be embarrassing to a shameless ex-president.