Lonely in the middle.

As you are no doubt aware, all things MAGA have been soundly beaten in the last week. The repudiation of Trumpism has been total and has reached across every election booth in America.  It has been interesting to see the reaction in some right wing circles. According to them the problem is that the candidates weren't MAGA enough.

Supposedly Talerico and Hinojosa won because Rove and Abbott were RINOs and Cornyn didn't "help enough." Please. The honest truth is that Cornyn would have probably swept the floor with Talerico but Trump's hand picked candidate the Adulterer went down in flames instead.

The Iran war was a problem but there were a host of other problems contributing to the royal ass kicking, not the least of which were tariffs, gas and food prices and heavy handed ICE Gestapo tactics which contributed to labor shortages in farm states and alienated hispanic Americans.

Ultimately, those Republican candidates who hitched their wagons to Trump went down in a fiery pyre and frankly he could not care less.

Always only about him. 

Hey, he wasn't on the ballot. Those crowds of his...

You would think that a party that just absorbed such a historic ass whuppin' would engage in an honest bit of self appraisal and see where they lost their way.

Think again.

The Orange monstrosity is stepping on the gas and doubling down on the hard right plunge instead. 

Donald Trump set the stage for his administration to lurch further to the right this weekend, claiming the US had taken a “giant step back” by widely rejecting his party.

The US president’s hardline aide, Stephen Miller, will begin as White House chief of staff on Monday. He will also meet with Dana White, CEO and president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, after offering him the job of press secretary.

“America took a giant step back in History with the results of the last Election,” Trump claimed in a post on his Truth Social platform on Sunday morning, citing the sharp sell-off in global markets, fueled a rout of US tech stocks. “But have no fear, we will be back, BIGGER AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE!”

He still thinks that he is the greatest president that has ever lived and now has appointed his own little Goebbels as Chief of Staff. Ostensibly, he is a lame duck settling down in his bunker for the next two years ramming gilded vanity projects up America's posterior.

Leslie told me a joke that is going around today, when Stephen Miller takes viagra he only gets taller.

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I look to the current political situation with a little hope but also a lot of pessimism. 

I am a centrist who gave up his Democratic registration over two years ago.

I think I know what is about to happen.

The progressive left will overestimate the strength of the election win and over reach, guaranteed.

They will forget that the election was basically about beef and gas prices and start all the stupid woke shit again, like allowing biologically born males to compete in women's sports and reparations. You like socialism? Look at the miserable records of the socialist mayors in Seattle and Oakland and get ready for disaster.

Eating the rich will not bring jobs and stability to your community as unfortunately they are the ones that usually provide jobs, not those playing in drum circles and balancing your chakras. Good luck with that.

Get ready for the progressives to stick their knives in any of the old guard that got them there, people like Schumer and Jeffries, the bearers of institutional knowledge that actually know the territory and paved the way.

And then there is Israel. My feelings on Netanyahu are pretty clear. But he still leads the only functioning democracy in the middle east, one where even muslim arabs have a vote. If the roles were reversed in Palestine, how do you think the Jews would fare?

El Sayed is the golden boy right now, polished and articulate. But I could not vote for either him or his opponent Mike Rogers, a MAGA anti abortion rubber stamp for Trump.

One of his own staff members, Mariam Odeh, was involved in some pernicious behavior that got her indicted. Some in the group talked in text mesages of poisoning jews in Michigan.

Odeh allegedly participated in vandalism and protests that included putting fake corpses on the lawns of faculty members, as well as spray painting anti-Israeli sentiments on the driveway of the president of the university at the time, according to prosecutors.

Federal officials announced Friday the addition of four more alleged co-conspirators to the indictment.

“No one has the right to threaten, intimidate, and coerce public officials, law enforcement officers, community institutions, or their families. In the dead of night, masked and hooded defendants allegedly threw noxious chemicals through the windows of families’ homes and taped demand letters to their front doors. At every step they attempted to cover their tracks and delete evidence of their crimes,” Jennifer Runyan, special agent in charge of the FBI Detroit Field Office, said in a statement at the time of the indictment.

When the synagogue pre-school was bombed in West Bloomfield, El Sayed tried to justify the action by saying that "hurt people hurt people." Obviously you could use the same logic for every other form of terrorist activity, from 9/11 to the Achille Lauro. 

Somebody was hurting inside so they get a pass. I'm just not ready to celebrate the "armed resistance" that murdered 1200 unarmed innocent people, many of them young kids enjoying an electronic dance music concert in the Negev on October seventh either. Even if they were hurting.

It is very slippery slope from hating Israel to Kristallnacht. This is how it starts. Did you hear about what is happening in Philadelphia this week?  There is a new drive to boycott Jewish owned businesses. Thanks, I won't be joining your movement any time soon.

 ...the bike ride, which is mainly organized by Philly Bike On Your Left, is being done on the eve of the 88th anniversary of "Kristallnacht" or the "Night of Broken Glass," a night in which Jewish citizens in Germany saw their businesses and synagogues torched while tens of thousands were taken to concentration camps.

The organizers behind this bike ride claim they are not antisemitic, but "anti-zionist." A flyer for their bike ride includes the names of multiple Jewish-owned businesses, including a mac and cheese shop and a deli, with those names crossed out. The organizers said these "zionist establishments must go."

So now I get to go after the right and the left, with equal fervor, just like I always have and please nobody, as usual.