It’s as if a HOA has taken over the town

A business in Rush City, MN had a mural painted on one wall of their building. I love these — a few places in downtown Morris have commissioned artwork for their buildings, too, and I think they help liven up the place. It’s a nice painting in Rush City, too.

And then the city slapped the business with a zoning violation and gave them ten days to paint over it. The rationale of Mayor Dan Dahlberg: anything that is not explicitly permitted is considered prohibited. That is absurd. It’s such an authoritarian interpretation of the law.

Mayor Dan is currently running for county commissioner. Smart move to plop out a stupid idea like that a few days before the election, Mayor Dan! The whole state is looking at you and wondering what kind of stupid rube gets elected to political position in that town.

Why are right-wingers so damn weird?

Curtis Yarvin, AKA Mencius Moldbug? Seriously? Here’s a whole excessively long article about Yarvin, which name-drops a whole army of deplorables like JD Vance and Blake Masters and Peter Thiel.

Besides Vance and Masters (whose campaigns declined to comment for this story), Yarvin has had a decade-long association with billionaire Peter Thiel, who is similarly disillusioned with democracy and American government. “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” Thiel wrote in 2009, and earlier this year, he declared that Republican members of Congress who voted for Trump’s impeachment after the January 6 attacks were “traitorous.” Fox host Tucker Carlson is another fan, interviewing Yarvin with some fascination for his streaming program last year. He’s even influenced online discourse — Yarvin was the first to popularize the analogy from The Matrix of being “redpilled” or “-pilled,” suddenly losing your illusions and seeing the supposed reality of the world more clearly, as applied to politics.

I’ll be shorter than the article: Yarvin’s schtick is to advocate for the dissolution of the American republic so that it can be replaced by a theocratic capitalist monarchy by writing long-winded pretentious articles that are both incoherent and much beloved by Silicon Valley tech-dudes, because their bottom line is always rationalized by Yarvin, who wants to make them the rulers of everything.

Hey, this is the morning I got slammed with a couple of painfully wordy media about fascist dorks. Here’s an hour-long video about Peter Thiel, which also mentions Yarvin. Sorry.

These are all good and thorough dissections which need to be done, but I’m feeling a bit squeamish. If I were to walk into a public toilet and see someone has left a multi-colored turd with strange filamentous spines and twitching blisters containing squirming invertebrates, I would hope that there’s a doctor somewhere who would do a careful inspection and a biomedical analysis of that person’s fecal output, but for me, I’m just going to flush it without asking a lot of questions.

It shouldn’t take that much inspection to figure out that JD Vance, Blake Masters, Trump, and all those creepy Thiel-supported nerds ought to be flushed.

Hey, politicians, thanks for the incessant reminders!

You get an email that starts with this sentence:

I hope you’re enjoying the Halloween festivities tonight with the family and aren’t being bombarded by too many election ads.

Can you guess what it is?

A. A note from a friend.
B. A family member exasperated with all the election ads they’re getting.
C. An invitation to a Halloween party.
D. An election ad. Give me money!

Everyone who answered “D” is awarded 1000 bronze quatloos. Everyone else needs to wake up to reality.

Don’t worry if you got it wrong, it’s one week until the election, and you’ll be getting lots to practice discernment on.

Practice run in Brazil turns out OK!

Good news, everyone! The left has won in Brazil, with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva beating world-class fascist and friend of Elon Musk Jair Bolsonaro for the presidency. Now we just need to do likewise in a week and a half.

Now we just have to hope that Brazil doesn’t erupt in the kind of chaos and violence our Republicans want. May you have a peaceful and orderly transition, Brazilians!

Learn this lesson, Democrats!

For all of his failings, there is one thing Obama does really, really well: he knows how to campaign aggressively. Here he is, campaigning for Mandela Barnes against Ron Johnson in Wisconsin.

Ron Johnson, as a senator, helped give millions of dollars in tax deductions to some of the biggest donors that funded his campaign. And after he voted for a tax plan that allows people to write off the costs of private planes– I’ve been trying to get this thing closed since I was president.

If you can afford a private plane, then you don’t need a tax break! But no, he fought for this. And then his adult children bought, not one, not two, but three private planes, because apparently carpooling was not an option.

That’s no holds barred ferocity. I wish more Democrats would ditch the reservations and politeness and go all King Kong on the Republicans’ greed and stupidity.

Meanwhile, Senator Johnson voted to raise the retirement age to 70, supported a plan that would put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block every single year. Each year you’d have to vote to renew this thing. I mean, think about it, because Washington works so well that you want your Social Security and Medicare reliant on Congress every year. He’s called Social Security a Ponzi scheme, said that it’s candy that the left is giving it away.

The point is, some of you here are on Social Security. Some of your parents are on Social Security. Some of your grandparents are on Social Security. You know why they have Social Security? Because they worked for it. They worked hard jobs for it. They have chapped hands for it. They have long hours and sore backs and bad knees to get that Social Security!

And if Ron Johnson does not understand that, if he understands giving tax breaks for private planes more than he understands making sure that seniors who’ve worked all their lives are able to retire with dignity and respect, he’s not the person who is thinking about you, and knows you, and sees you, and he should not be your senator from Wisconsin!

That seals the deal. Obama is doing more than bashing Republicans, he’s pointing out that they don’t have your best interests in mind.

Play the game, you lose; don’t play the game, you lose

You’ve all heard of this Christian Nationalism nonsense, right? It’s all the rage with old people and conservative freaks and Facebook readers.

So what is Christian nationalism? It’s an ideology that says Christianity is the foundation of the United States and that government should protect that foundation. Political scientist Ryan Burge has found that the term “Christian nationalism” was mentioned in more tweets in July 2022 than in all of 2021.

I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news first: it’s declining a little bit!

We did find that agreement grew slightly from 2007 to 2017 from 27 percent to 29 percent, as other scholars have found as well. But since then, the proportion of Americans who affirm this explicit Christian nationalist statement has mostly declined to somewhere around 19 percent, a statistically significant drop.

When a fifth of the country thinks we’re a Christian nation, in defiance of the principles we were founded on, that’s still a problem…but they’ll be outvoted, right? Unfortunately, here’s the bad news: the people most prone to this fallacy are more likely to vote, and there are all these wealthy special interest groups propping up the idea.

But while fewer Americans say they agree with a core Christian nationalist tenet, its influence on our political life may nevertheless be expanding. The U.S. Census reports older Americans like those ages 65 to 74 vote at rates about 25 percent higher than Americans ages 18 to 24. Our research finds older Americans are also most likely to embrace Christian nationalism. And powerful people and lobbying groups like the Family Research Council, the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) are working to promote Christian nationalist policy goals in government, the courts, and at the polls.

Recent experimental research shows when Christian Americans are told their numbers are declining, they respond with a greater commitment to Christian nationalism and Trump support. In other words, learning that they are or may soon be a minority pushes them toward extremist beliefs.

So get out there and vote! That last bit is concerning, though, because if these jerks lose elections, they’ll leap deeper into extremism, and they won’t mind follow criminal strategies to win in spite of losing. They’re already gearing up to compromise elections.

The Republican National Committee and its allies say they have staged thousands of training sessions around the country on how to monitor voting and lodge complaints about next month’s midterm elections. In Pennsylvania, party officials have boasted about swelling the ranks of poll watchers to six times the total from 2020. In Michigan, a right-wing group announced it had launched “Operation Overwatch” to hunt down election-related malfeasance, issuing a press release that repeated the warning “We are watching” 10 times.

Supporters of former president Donald Trump who falsely claim the 2020 election was stolen have summoned a swarm of poll watchers and workers in battleground states to spot potential fraud this year. It is a call to action that could subject voting results around the country to an unprecedented level of suspicion and unfounded doubt.

“We’re going to be there and enforce those rules, and we’ll challenge any vote, any ballot, and you’re going to have to live with it, OK?” one-time Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon said on a recent episode of his podcast. “We don’t care if you don’t like it. We don’t care if you’re going to run around and light your hair on fire. That’s the way this is going to roll.”

Bannon? Isn’t he in jail yet? You know he doesn’t care about the law, or ethics, or common decency. He’s going to lie and cheat to get his way, and then…uh-oh.

Election administrators say they welcome more participation from the public but worry that improperly trained observers could try to enforce rules that they are misinterpreting. Even a handful of bad actors, they note, can inject chaos into the voting system and sow distrust.

“The problems don’t need to be in a thousand polling places,” said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research in Washington, D.C. “If there’s a violent incident in one polling place, that’s enough, because the election deniers have been pouring gasoline all over the country, and it just takes one match.”

I am dreading 8 November, when the midterm elections take place. I won’t be watching the returns, because I sense a national crisis coming our way.

If the Republicans come back and win, and retake any portion of the government, we face years of stalemates and continued losses, and a strengthening of the loony faction. If the Republicans lose, there is going to be such a shriek of protest and armed assholes rampaging and years of legal wrangling over nothing.

We sane Americans can’t win.

One shining ray of light in the new UK government

There’s one less pompous supercilious twit in the cabinet — in a snit, Jacob Rees-Mogg has quit before he could be fired.

The move comes despite Mr Rees-Mogg suggesting he would be ‘open’ to a job in Mr Sunak’s cabinet. In u-turn on previous criticism of the new PM, he told the Telegraph today that he no longer considered Mr Sunak “a socialist.” He added that the Conservative party should unite around the new leader.

But these overtures have not been enough and Mr Rees-Mogg – who was a close ally of both Boris Johnson and Liz Truss – has left the government today.

He did make me laugh with his exit. Rishi Sunak, a man with hundreds of millions of pounds, a socialist?

From Dickens to Wodehouse to the Goons to Monty Python, Britain has always been a source of great comedy. Somebody needs to inform the people that you’re not supposed to elect the buffoons to high office, though.

Has anyone started a betting pool on the new UK PM yet?

I know we should wait until the PM is actually appointed yet, or even be betting on who it will be (apparently, Rishi Sunak is the favorite), but I wanted to get in early on the betting for how long this one lasts before being discarded. I’d like to place a dollar on 69 days. I think Sunak is a little smarter than Truss, so he’ll hang on longer, but he’s a BoJo-adjacent Tory, so I’m pretty sure some scandal or stupidity will scuttle him eventually.

I guess he already has a head start.

I may have to vote for Scott Jensen after all (no, not really)

There was a big debate between the candidates for governor of Minnesota last night. Did I watch it? No, I’ve already made up my mind that Jensen is an evil poop-flinging ape with regressive views on just about everything. I also knew what was coming after the debate: Jensen is throwing Twitter hysterics and is sounding rather desperate. He did say one thing I appreciate, though.

Minnesota’s southern border is with Iowa, and I think building a wall might be a very good idea. Perhaps an eastern wall as well, to defend against Wisconsinites. And then maybe a western wall to protect us from Dakotans.

But wait! I just remembered that winter is coming. Maybe Minnesota can instead be like a scrotum in the cold, and just contract and pull up into Canada. Cheaper all around. Never mind, I’ll cast my vote for Walz again.

By the way, the Feeding Our Future scandal has nothing to do with Walz or the Minnesota state government at all. Some grifters set up shop here, taking advantage of a federal program to provide food for families during the pandemic, sending in false invoices and getting reimbursed to the tune of $250 million. Minnesota investigators turned them over to the FBI, so blaming on Walz is just flailing.

There were two things Jensen isn’t talking about, though. One is his abortion policy: he wants to ban it altogether, but knows that won’t fly in this state, so he’s evasive about it now.

The other is that he’s an election-denier, one of a number of people running for office in this state, including these rascals:

Fischbach is my representative, and she’s probably going to coast to re-election because this region is largely populated with red-hatted gomers. None of those people should be elected to anything, though. That’s my great fear about the November election, that a swarm of anti-democratic Trumpkins get into office and begin playing games with election laws and triggering unwarranted doubts about every election, but especially ones where Democrats got elected.

It has the potential to be a colossal shit-show, thanks to those kinds of people who should be in jail rather than running for office. But, you know, we have to compete with the UK for the most spectacular political collapse ever, and we’ve got a shot at it.