Owning his ignorance. Dubya certainly did that. He out-Reaganed Reagan, on occasion, and he somehow finagled occupancy of the highest office in the land. George W. Bush once ridiculed someone for asking a question that included the word multitasking, sarcastically impressed by such a “big” word.

According to Andy Borowitz, a lack of intellectual curiosity among Republican candidates for POTUS has not hurt them, but has actually been a selling point. Candidates present themselves as being somewhat– or a lot– anti-intellectual, in an attempt at seeming folksy, less wonkish, more normal and somehow relatable. And more trustworthy? I know where Borowitz is heading, I think. He’s saving the “best” till last, the one who’s broken all the molds.

There’s nothing wrong with admitting that you don’t have all the answers, but when you put your ignorance on a pedestal and treat it as a source of pride, it morphs into a tragic deception, an unpardonable excuse and character flaw with real-world consequences.

Certainly even Dubya must know that there’s nothing wrong with being cerebral, with actually giving thought to important things. It’s just that the schtick worked for getting him elected Leader of the Free World. And it continues to work to this day, though Trump himself would never admit to not knowing something. He’s always the smartest guy in the room, a real genius.

The truth is out there, but its competition is fierce. Truth is being given a run for its money by fabricated lies that spread like wildfire. And we have to decide who we’re going to believe. It’s come to that, or maybe it’s always been that way, just made exponentially worse by social media.

To hear what developed after the attack on Paul Pelosi, one can rightly think that truth is a mere commodity up for grabs. If you’re quick and creative and paranoid enough, and have some command of the English language, you can spin your version of truth and disseminate it to the whole world in a matter of minutes. And voila! A counter-narrative that has people questioning the legitimacy of police reports or motives or whodunnit, or whether the incident happened at all.

Maddow tied all this together with what’s unfolding in Brazil, boiling it down to a stark choice before us next Tuesday: maintain free and fair elections or descend into a world that looks like what’s being threatened in Brazil or what unfolded at the Pelosi residence a few days ago.

The far right, or maybe the whole damned Republican party at this point, has no alternative to free and fair elections. “Free” and “fair” lie in the eye of the beholder. What it’s looking like instead is that they’re OK with the threat of all-out physical force and violence perpetrated against those who they brand as monstrous enemies.

It’s dumb, they know it’s dumb, and it looks like it has a chance of working.

Well, that didn’t take long.

Elon Musk buys Twitter and shortly thereafter posts something conspiratorial about the attack on Paul Pelosi. He posted it, then deleted it. But damage done—it was out there. Just testing the waters?

Musk is apparently a free speech absolutist, meaning anything goes? I’m not sure the framers of the Constitution had anything goes in mind when they penned the First Amendment. Don’t we know that, out of a sense of decency and restraint, if nothing else, there are limits to what we can say? Hate speech is OK then? Libel is just fine?

Most of us have a sense for when there’s potential for crossing a line. It’s probably wise to keep an eye on someone who has $44 billion to spend on purchasing a public speech platform.

The true tragedy is that Donald Trump and the sad sack groupies who have their noses firmly buried in his ass have been nothing more than a cruel, sick though consequential joke this whole time.

He’s behaved as if his words and actions don’t matter, have no consequences. He pleads ignorance, tries to distance himself from, yet somehow condone, the bad behavior he instigates. He is a sad sack impostor whose presence has been nothing but a huge distraction. A time suck, a life suck.

It matters not at all that he’s viewed as a mere symptom, as if this gives him an out, an excuse since he’s just a manifestation of more serious illness that was already festering before his arrival. The maddening fact is that he’s still making noise and won’t go away. He’s a poor sport with the emotional maturity of a fifth grader. He uses people, he doesn’t respect them.

He may run for President again, not because he cares about America or feels he has something to offer, but because he’s still sore about losing in 2020. More significantly, it’s a way to avoid prosecution for, among many other things, the insurrection he fomented on January 6, 2021.

He’s always in our face, running from the law, spending a lion’s share of any given day being ugly and annoying, fighting accusations, figuring out ways to avoid responding to a subpoena, finding lawyers who will actually choose to defend him. And he behaves as if it’s all in a day’s work.

His supporters will indignantly ask why their hero seems to be so put upon, so often in the crosshairs of law enforcement. They refuse to acknowledge, or choose to ignore, that he’s brought all this on himself—because of the way he’s decided to live his life: as someone who’s better and smarter than everyone else. Entitled, deceived, and delusional. A legend in his own mind.

Someone who, sadly, is not worth the time and effort we’ve been expending trying to figure him out. There’s nothing there except outsized and debilitating selfishness. What more do we need to know?

A Trump/MTG ticket in 2024? Perfect.

The circle of life. A match made in their version of heaven, with the added bonus that they could end up killing each other.

Two people with loud voices and the gift of empty utterance, and no gifts for the jobs they’d be campaigning for. It makes so much sense.

A two-for-one sale, both in way over their heads. The ultimate mic drop, the intentionally bruised and blemished fruit born of the far right’s in your face strategy.

And they say they don’t believe in evolution. Well, maybe devolution.

Caught a couple minutes of All In recently, and that was enough for me. I don’t need any more reminders of how effective the Republicans have been (at least as this is being reported on MSNBC and elsewhere) at being devious and conniving, specifically in gerrymandering their districts.

Republicans know their stances and platforms don’t resonate with certain demographics, so they boldly rearrange boundaries in an effort to ensure outcomes and, ironically, keep their own minority in power. It must be widespread enough that no one can do anything about it? Is it actually happening as much as we hear it is? I suppose nothing is being done because Democrats over the years have engaged in similar antics?

It’s stunning how focused and intent humans can get when it comes to devising ways to cheat. Some will hail this as simply being resourceful. But of course that’s not what it is. It is an act of desperation and fear. It’s the dark side of proactivity. It’s rigging the system in order to create an advantage and maintain a status quo. It’s muting the voting process for people who have as much of a right to participate and be heard as anyone else, and whose voices will be marginalized and essentially silenced.

And it’s been going on for years. As American as apple pie, apparently.

Happened to catch a clip of Last Word from a recent show, where Lawrence O’Donnell really stood up for John Fetterman after what, by most accounts, was not exactly a stellar debate performance on Fetterman’s part.

The fact that he’s only a few months beyond suffering a stroke seems to be playing mainly to his detriment at the moment. Many in the press and of course the noisy Fox News crowd pounced, doing the predictable piling on, questioning his fitness and the wisdom of continuing to campaign. But O’Donnell reminded his audience that there have been two members of Congress who suffered strokes earlier this year and are back on the job. He also brought Churchill and FDR into the conversation, as examples of notable leaders who were dealing with physical ailments and limitations throughout their tenures.

It remains to be seen to what extent Fetterman recovers from the stroke. Doctors seem to think he’s making good progress. Obviously, the stakes are high, and if things were different– i.e. a less controversial opponent– maybe Fetterman would bow out and understandably take time to heal more fully. As things are, though, the need will remain for an alternative to Dr. Oz– an out-of-touch, out-of-state opportunist, and the embodiment of a scary proposition.

May Mr. Fetterman continue to heal and prove the skeptics wrong.

Following up on a post from earlier this month, it is ever clearer that Republican strategy is to offer a slate of candidates running the gamut from heartless to clueless to extraordinarily inept. On purpose.

Because, apparently, their concern lies not with good, rational governance but instead with letting Democrats know just how angry they are about… everything. The worse the candidate, the better.

They are willing to let the union go to hell just to prove a point. The point being?

Races that in more sane times one might think wouldn’t be close (or happening at all) are turning into nailbiters. Raphael Warnock in a dead heat with Herschel Walker? John Fetterman in a dead heat with Dr. Oz. Ron Johnson in a statistical dead heat with his Democratic challenger. The list goes on, across the nation.

Let’s cut to the chase: we are heading toward a day of reckoning. The healing did not begin, nor was anything settled at Appomattox.

The latest math and reading test scores for 4^th and 8^th graders were predictably low. Quite low, and trending that way before the pandemic, but exacerbated by Covid-19 and the attendant upheaval.

Before the finger-pointing has a chance to fester, I hope educators can sidestep the blame game and address ways to make up for lost time, which happened through no one’s fault—left or right, red or blue. It’s best we remember that we were dealing with A PANDEMIC, uncharted territory for everybody.

Let’s leave it at that and commit to finding ways to reverse the trends.

Ron DeSantis was recently put on the spot in a debate with Charlie Crist. Crist asked him directly whether or not he intended to finish out his term if he were to be reelected, and the best DeSantis could do was offer up a predictable and pathetic burn, along with total avoidance of a real answer to the question. Everyone in Florida and anyone else who’s been following the trends knows DeSantis has his sights set on the White House, which of course means Florida will be looking for a new Governor about this time next year, or sometime early 2024. It probably won’t matter. People will vote for DeSantis anyway, just because.

On another depressing note, Lindsey Graham got what he was looking for from Clarence Thomas- an injunction from a sitting Supreme Court justice that keeps Graham from having to answer a subpoena in Georgia. On its face, this seems like overreach and an inappropriate ask on the part of Graham, but he obviously knew what he was doing, that he had a friend in high places who should have recused himself but didn’t. So the sniveling, conniving wiener avoids the hot seat, for now.

When do these people have time to actually do their jobs? They seem to be very busy saving their own asses or furthering their careers.