Lee Judge (KFS) is right, largely because the covid virus isn’t influenced by what all the other viruses are doing, and people responding to polls are.
Though voters as a whole may not be as dependable as a party’s base, as profiled in today’s Bizarro (KFS).
Trump candidates did pretty well last night, but Eric Greitens — who is neither balanced, hinged nor on the rails — got badly thumped in Missouri, and it looks like Kari Lake is going down to defeat in Arizona as well.
Though Trump didn’t lose face in Missouri, since he had endorsed “Eric” without specifying whether he meant Eric Greitens or Eric Schmitt.
Schmitt won, so that surely must have been who he meant.
Though the story of the night was the strong vote in Kansas to preserve reproductive rights, which, as Greg Kearny says, makes the triumph of Justice Alito’s foray into faith-based judicial legislation seem dubious.
It’s not clear if Mike Lester (AMS) drew this before the results were in from Kansas, but it was certainly done well after Justice Thomas announced his desire to overturn Griswold v Connecticut, and after Republicans in the House voted in near-lockstep against a bill to guarantee access to contraception.
And, of course, contraception is no guarantee against planned pregnancies that turn into medical emergencies.
He is correct that better sex education and more available contraception have lowered abortion rates, but leaving reproductive rights up to state legislatures seems as likely to produce good results as when slavery and women’s suffrage were left in their hands.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Hard to find a more divergent Juxtaposition than this one, in which Anderson recalls the heroic resistance to China’s impending crackdown on Tiananmen Square and de Adder cautions against annoying Beijing by taking a stance for Taiwan sovereignty.
Worth noting, by the way, that this isn’t the first time Pelosi has poked the panda: Not only has she condemned the mass murder that brought the Tiananmen Square demonstrations to a bloody halt, and the silencing of that part of China’s recent history, but she has spoken up against copyright and patent infringements by Chinese companies.
The NY Times offered this headline on an article that outlines the visit and its implications (paywall disabled), but it does raise the question of when wasn’t there a military standoff looming between China and Taiwan?
I’ll admit to having been optimistic when the Soviet Union collapsed and Gorbachev began reaching out to create a more equitable, open economic system, and I was bitterly disappointed when the oligarchs and mobsters shut it back down.
But I’m also old enough to remember when Nixon went to China, and, while opening relations seemed necessary, there was never a moment when it seemed likely to prove easy.
And I’m not so sure that a little poke now and then isn’t a good way to keep Taiwan from becoming the next Sudetenland or Crimea.
Going back to Biden’s popularity ratings, you’d think the drone strike that took out Al Qaida’s top man would be a boost, and perhaps a bit of a remedy for the hasty, confused way in which we withdrew from Afghanistan.
Kevin Siers accuses the Taliban of continuing to shelter Al Qaida, and Biden’s willingness to drop a drone into Kabul seems a demonstration of a policy under which we may not be there in force anymore, but neither have we rolled over to have our bellies scratched.
If Ronald Reagan had done it, the GOP would be cheering and naming even more airports after him, but Brian Kilmeade found a downside and Tucker Carlson said it shouldn’t make us feel any safer, because Fox is still Fox, regardless of their backing away from Trump.
But not all the loudmouths are having fun these days. As Pat Bagley notes, Alex Jones has managed to anger the judge in the current trial to see how much his lies about the Sandy Hook murders will cost him (He has another pending in Connecticut).
Bagley refers to the fact that Jones skipped the morning session, in which the parents of one child testified, so he could tape a podcast further attacking them, and to the judge admonishing him not simply for histrionics but for clearly lying under oath.
Oliver Darcy has an amusing, infuriating report on the trial in this morning’s Reliable Sources Newsletter, in which he also reports on Tucker Carlson’s loony theory about Pelosi’s Taiwan visit.
Nor is Biden likely to gain much through passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, since conservatives, including Dana Summers, have rallied around an analysis that, in contrast to most projections, says it will raise taxes on everyone.
It’s a labyrinth theory that involves the idea that raising taxes on businesses will force them to raise prices which will cost you money while … well, it’s pretty complicated, and reminds me of an ad campaign by oil companies a few decades ago to make us all feel like owners because we had a pension or 401k that included a petro firm among its holdings.
True, but not in any sense that matters.
However, RJ Matson shows the new star of the Senate, and the pun inherent in her name is not the only thing linking her to the story of a fading star: Sinema, like Norma Desmond, hasn’t quite kept up with things, or maintained the things that got her into the limelight to begin with.
She was a Green Party girl, north of Arizona way …
I like the Nick Anderson cartoon – Nacy Pelosi, one of the few US politicians with balls and no heel spurs.
And, you gotta poke the panda from time to time. Despite its size China does understand the maxim about the size of the fight in the dog.