Reminder: Today's Truth and Consequences Zoom Chat with Jonathan Zasloff
Just a quick reminder that I’ll be Zoom Chatting today with my old friend Jonathan Zasloff. Jonathan is legitimately one of the smartest people I know and a great observer and commentator on the Supreme Court so I have no doubt this will make for a great discussion. In yesterday’s post I forgot to add the time for today’s chat, but it’ll be at 12:30 PM. The link is here and I’ll see you soon.
The Crazy … It Burns
One thing that I try to stop myself from regularly doing in the newsletter is pointing out the abject craziness of the modern Republican Party. Honestly, I could spend all day on that topic if I really wanted to.
But come on now (from Michigan)
Only two of eight Republican gubernatorial candidates on Thursday said definitively that they believe former President Donald Trump lost the state’s election in November 2020.
The Michigan Republican Party is particularly unhinged. Still, the refusal of Republican candidates to acknowledge that Joe Biden is the legitimate winner of the 2020 election is more the rule than the exception. Indeed, it would be surprising if Republicans openly acknowledged that Trump lost and Biden won in 2020.
In Pennsylvania, the leading candidate for the GOP nomination, Doug Mastriano, is a full-on 2020 truther who says that he would have awarded the state’s electoral slate to Trump if he had been governor at the time.
In the state’s Senate race, you have perhaps the best example of the complete mishigas (it’s Yiddish for the non-tribal among you) of the GOP.
One aspirant, Dr. Mehmet Oz, is a celebrity candidate and former snake oil salesman with zero political or governing experience who didn’t even live in the state before he announced his candidacy.
Another, David McCormick, is a multi-millionaire hedge fund manager who shed aside his establishment Republican background to cast himself as a Trump-like populist.
And the emerging frontrunner, Kathy Barnette, who has spent less than $200,000 on the campaign and has in the last week rocketed up the polls, appears to be a literal crazy person. Barnette has a long background of making xenophobic and racist statements, though with the primary only days away she is now being attacked for previously having criticized Donald Trump and for saying positive things about the Black Lives Matter (it’s not clear which one is a bigger sin in the modern GOP).
So we have celebrity, inexperienced, dishonest, craven, and nuts. That pretty much covers all the GOP’s political bases.
What’s Going On
Read Greg Sargent on Doug Mastriano’s gubernatorial bid for governor.
Researchers have finally figured out the cause of sudden infant death syndome.
I’m having a hard time finding any justification for what Israeli police did today at the funeral of slain Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh.
More than 300,000 deaths could have been prevented if American adults had gotten vaccinated.