Fiddling while Rome burns

 I have been watching your rep gubernatorial race a bit since Beagles brought up the subject, and it has been wild.  As Beagles has said it is just a race to be Trumpier than thou. Four mad dogs slavering to kiss the ring on the notoriously short finger.  And at last, like that Michelangelo painting of God reaching down to touch the finger of Adam, Trump has leaned down from Mar A Lago and touched the finger of Tudor Dixon.

So of course she was on the Fox Sunday talk show.  She has been backed by that awful Betsy DeVos, whose main goal as secretary of Education was to destroy the nation's public school system.  Aye she was a slimy one that Betsy, and yet she resigned in the wake of 
January 6, like a handful of other Trumpists did.  A handful of portraits in courage?  More like rats fleeing a sinking ship.  Only it turned out that the ship was not sneaking and many of them (Kevin McCarthy) immediately jumped back on.

But Betsy DeVos did not, though she did not swim so far away enough to keep her from begging Trump to back her candidate, which he did a couple days ago.  And on the Sunday show when faced with DeVos's mild denunciation of Trump, she swiftly denunciated DeVos.  

I predict an easy victory for Gutsy Gretch.

The ship is listing though in the gales of Jan 6 hearings which have filled in the details of Trump's Putsch, and which would have never existed of the dems hadn't taken the senate.  Fox news has toned down their Trump praise and The New York Post and the Wall Street Journal have come out against him, and even some sitting pols.  The base however is as solid as it ever was.  However they are only like a third of the nation, so how are you ever going to take over the country with that?

And meanwhile cities bake and California is running out of water, and storms are flooding St Louis and Kentucky.  The house is burning down while the firefighters are squabbling.

The Endorsement

 After many minutes of research, I believed that I had identified the lesser of five evils in the Michigan gubernatorial Republican primary, but now I'm not so sure.  As I said previously, they are all Trumpists, varying only in degree.  The Trumpiest of all, according to his own ads, is a guy named Rinke, while the least Trumpiest seemed to me to be a woman named Dixon.  I don't recall her claiming that herself in so many words, but Rinke has accused her of it on several occasions, calling her a tool of the Republican establishment, or words to that effect, so I decided to believe Rinke and vote for Dixon.

Trump declined to endorse any of these candidates until Friday, four days before the election, when he graciously bestowed his endorsement on.......Dixon!  Does that mean that Rinke has been lying to us and Dixon is really the Trumpiest?  Does that mean that Dixon has been less than honest with us about her alleged Trumpism?  Does that mean that Trump really prefers Rinke to Dixon but endorsed Dixon, assuming that it would inspire me to vote for Rinke?  Normally that would work because I always try to vote the opposite of what they want me to vote, but this time it involves Trump, who is a notorious liar.  It's possible that he anticipated my suspicions and said the opposite of the opposite so that I would do the opposite of what I believed he wanted, which would be the same as what he really said.

Advance to the Rear

 That was the name of a movie I saw many years ago.  It was a comedy, set in the days of the old blue coat army.  I don't remember much about it, but the central theme was that a company of soldiers retreated when they should have advanced.  In the subsequent investigation, one of the soldiers was asked why he had retreated on that day.  He replied, "I didn't know we were retreating, I thought we were just advancing in a different direction."  I am also reminded of the old saying, "If you don't know where you're going, you're liable to wind up somewhere else."  My point is, before our nation can move forward, we must first agree on which way is forward.  What some people consider forward, others consider backward.  If we could all agree on where forward is, we'd likely already be there.

I saw a brief article about this "Forward" group on my news app last night.  I found it interesting, so I clicked on the link to their official website.  Now that I have read the Wiki article, I think I know all I need to know about these people.  I have been looking for a new home since the Trumpists took over the Republicans and the gays took over the Libertarians, but this ain't it.  Here's another article about this:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/andrew-yang-s-third-party-is-going-nowhere/ar-AA104QIJ?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&referrerID=InAppShare

Michigan's primary is coming up in a few days, and I'm about as ready for it as I will ever be.  There are three contested races for the Republican nominations for Governor, state house, and state senate.  As near as I can tell, all the candidates are Trump fans, varying only in degree.  I tried to pick the least Trumpiest ones and was aided by a couple of attack ads that identified them as fake Trumpists. 

 

FORWARD!!!

 Oh yeah no names, the vaguest of platforms, a big button for you to donate.  You can bet I will be cutting them a fat check.

Oh wait, I went to the wiki   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_Party

And it turns out that this is Andrew Yang's party.  I liked him a little in the dem primary, but not enough to send money to a site he doesn't want to put his name on.

This is New, At Least to Me

 I don't know if I like it or not, but it's something to think about.  

https://www.forwardparty.com/merger_splash?splash=1

bugs

 

It shall always be known in our hearts and minds as The Murder Hornet.

And what about this fellow?  I thought that this portrait was the beauty in the bunch, but some people, who apparently had cabins in Wisconsin, loathed it because of the actual bug.  I wonder if his ilk inhabit the swamp.

This is the only one in the bunch that sold.  And the only one who was at one time a threat to the Schadt family garden and, when detected, met his fate as a green smear under the foot of my grandfather Janovsky.

Go figure.

Murder Hornet Gets New Name

 Remember the murder hornet?  Well, it's no longer politically correct to call it that.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-so-called-murder-hornet-has-a-new-name/ar-AAZXA1n?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&referrerID=InAppShare