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?

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

Here's the video of Ted Cruz joking that Elizabeth Warren might have a penis. @lawindsor pic.twitter.com/eZsQvVPD7Q

— David Edwards (@DavidEdwards) August 14, 2022

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.

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.

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.

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.

Wanna see a toothy asshole being obnoxious? No? Too bad, here it is.

Yeah, this isn’t cool. pic.twitter.com/A4YLFVrgLu

— Alex Salvi (@alexsalvinews) August 6, 2022

The obnoxious one actually posted this clip to his website as if he was proud of his behavior, or thought he was funny or clever. He was neither.

On top of his smug harassment, though, what I found most telling is that his complaints were all false. She’s the only one wearing a mask — but she was in the right, and all the smirking jerks in the crowd were wrong. He pesters about her vaccination status, and she rightly tells him it’s none of his business, but he goes on to babble about how she’s “viral shedding”. No, she’s not. That’s a right wing fiction.

So that’s what right-wing criticism is like.

I hope the Vice reporter got hazard pay.

Hey, you all remember that spectacularly effective bit of political theater coined by Sarah Palin that updating our health care system slightly would lead to death panels, where lawyers would sit in judgment over you to decide whether you were worthy of receiving health care? It was total lie, but it fired up the right-wing media and was a potent meme on the right. There was a good reason for that: American citizens are terrified by medical concerns, because we can’t afford any kind of health crisis and know that we’re one little disease away from losing our savings, our home, any kind of financial security. Republicans knew that, and saw it as a way to frighten voters into voting for them.

If only we could have known…

There’s your death panel. Republican lawyers enforcing Republican laws to make women suffer and die. The primary criterion these lawyers and politicians of death are using to determine whether you are worthy of living seems to be your sex. And they aren’t done! They’ve announced their intent to kill gay marriage, ban contraceptives, and of course, they hate trans folk to death.

Already they’re taking steps to expand their oppression. Indiana has enacted a total ban on abortion.

The Indiana ban, which goes into effect Sept. 15, allows abortion only in cases of rape, incest, lethal fetal abnormality, or when the procedure is necessary to prevent severe health risks or death. Indiana joins nine other states that have abortion bans starting at conception.

There is no shortage of Republicans who resent those exemptions.

This destructive hatefulness ought to be the focus of the Democratic party. They need to recognize Sarah Palin’s one good idea, dishonest as it was, and point out honestly that Republicans want to replace doctors with lawyers and pharmaceutical salespeople. It isn’t just women who should fear their policies: we’re on a long slow path to doom. This is what American exceptionalism looks like.

Great. I might have to retire to Italy or South Korea to get away from Republican parasites. The food would be better, too.

There’s more horror on the way! I wouldn’t want to be trans in this country if the Republicans get their way.

So get out there and vote! That’s the first step to save your life. Then once you get Democrats in office, don’t stop — they’re taking money from lawyers, health care companies, and insurance companies too, and we need to clean up that dirty money as well.

I only realized this weekend that we have an election this Tuesday. I’m so used to thinking of elections happening in November that I almost overlooked it.

At least deciding who to vote for is easy: if they are a Republican, there’s no way any sane individual could support them. Democrats, as usual, are an undisciplined mess, and somehow, multiple candidates are running as Democrats. Who to vote for? I propose a simple rule: vote for the incumbent Democrats. Normally, that would be a way to perpetuate lackluster leadership, but right now, with Evil in the opposing slot, we need as simple and clear a rubric as possible. So, yeah, I’m going to vote for boring, uninspiring Walz for governor.

Other obvious answers you already know for winnowing down the field: don’t vote for amusing weirdos, so no, we don’t want Captain Jack Sparrow for lieutenant governor. Don’t be seduced by tangential issues: I’m entirely in favor of legalizing marijuana, but do we really need two new parties, the Legalize Marijuana Now party and the Grassroots Legalize Cannabis Party, to advocate for a single issue? No, we do not, they’re just splitting the liberal vote.

This year, we should be all about holding the line presenting a solid front, and less about revolutionary actions. We can get radical when fewer people’s lives are on the line, and believe me, when Republicans get elected, people will die.

Every line of this story is a horror.

A mob of cops
   [always a bad sign]
gathered at a library
   [on duty cops? please stay away from the public]
during working hours
   [so when, like, other people were there]
to get trained in
   [don’t they have isolated places for training?]
whacking civilians with a baton.
   [oh. so appropriate. our tax dollars at work]
He showed off his quickdraw
   [cowboy. rugged individualism. frontier justice]
with a loaded pistol
   [wait, what? what about safety?]
and accidentally shot
   [oops. should be passive voice. coptalk. “a gun was discharged”]
a fellow cop, killing her.
   [could have been worse.]

The actual news story, so you don’t think I’m exaggerating.

A woman shot Thursday afternoon during a Special Police training session at a Washington, D.C. library has succumbed to her injuries, police said.

First responders were were called to the Anacostia Neighborhood Library at 1800 Good Hope Road SE shortly before 3:45 p.m. for the report of a shooting.

Police say the special officer who was shot was “unconscious and not breathing” when first responders arrived.

The D.C. Public Library system confirmed the woman was shot in a downstairs meeting room during a Special Police training session. A retired D.C. police lieutenant conducted the training on how to use an extended baton, Chief Robert Contee said.

Sources familiar with the investigation told News4 that when the trainer drew a pistol to illustrate how quickly it could be done, he fired one shot, striking an officer in the chest.

Homicide detectives were called to the scene to investigate. They are looking into why the trainer had live ammunition.

Arming cops is like giving a troop of baboons access to an armory.