CAN THE GOOD GUYS WIN THIS ONE? STRATEGY & TACTICS

 

If Strategy is the grand plan and tactics are the steps you actually take to execute that grand plan, then what is the strategy to beat Mr. Trump and his MAGA hordes? And what does that imply for tactics?

Mad Dog believes the strategy is to take the offense and that means committing to humiliating the Donald and his masses of Orcs. Only by calling them out for what they are, shattering the fantasies they peddle, push past the amnesia of what he did and how that played out last time.

The alternative is singing kumbaya and sitting quietly with our hands folded, as if politics were a tea party which requires not raisings one's voice. 

As today's NYT editorial noted Donald Trump and his minions spin their own version of memory and history: Senator Katie Britt of Alabama exhorted the Republican National Convention with the stirring words that Donald Trump gave us the "greatest economy in history."

Of course, inflation was low during part of his tenure, when gas prices dipped below $3 a gallon--but selective amnesia, when gas prices were that low, there was no place to drive to--stores, restaurants were closed and the economy careened toward a second Great Depression because President Trump refused to believe we had a pandemic, despite the box cars outside hospitals being used as temporary morgues to store the bodies, and when he finally came around, he had his own creative ideas about finding a cure for COVID--intravenous injections of bleach.

We would be well served if Governor Walz and Vice President reminded everyone face to face with Trump, Vance and the other Magats out there.

Don't Eat Me, Donald!

But we cannot depend on that happening. We have to act ourselves, in our own small towns, along the highways and byways, to express our opinions, which is our most fundamental right, upon which all other rights depend. 

One Weird, Creepy, Senile

One thing Mad Dog would like to see is the placement in public places of signs expressing unhappiness with Trump and his MAGA cause. 

Objections have been raised this may violate some local laws, signs needing names and addresses of sponsors.

But there are two things to note:

1. The other side already does this: Examples from my bike ride around Hampton below.

No Attribution

Political Statement

2. Local towns and states cannot defy the United States Constitution in violating the First Amendment which protects freedom of expression, particularly of political thought.

That is found in McIntyre v Ohio Board of elections:

Held: Section 3599.09(A)'s prohibition of the distribution of anonymous campaign literature abridges the freedom of speech in violation of the First Amendment. Pp.341-357.

(a) The freedom to publish anonymously is protected by the First Amendment, and, as Talley indicates, extends beyond the literary realm to the advocacy of political causes. Pp.341-343.

(b) This Court's precedents make abundantly clear that the Ohio Supreme Court's reasonableness standard is significantly more lenient than is appropriate in a case of this kind. Although Talley concerned a different limitation than § 3599.09(A) and thus does not necessarily control here, the First Amendment's protection of anonymity nevertheless applies. Section 3599.09(A) is not simply an election code provision subject to the "ordinary litigation" test set forth in Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U. S. 780, and similar cases. Rather, it is a regulation of core political speech. Moreover, the category of documents it covers is defined by their content-only those publications containing speech designed to influence the voters in an election need bear the required information. See, e. g., First Nat. Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U. S. 765,776-777. When a law burdens such speech, the Court applies "exacting scrutiny,"

---

335

upholding the restriction only if it is narrowly tailored to serve an overriding state interest. See, e. g., id., at 786. Pp.343-347.

(c) Section 3599.09(A)'s anonymous speech ban is not justified by Ohio's asserted interests in preventing fraudulent and libelous statements and in providing the electorate with relevant information. The claimed informational interest is plainly insufficient to support the statute's disclosure requirement, since the speaker's identity is no different from other components of a document's contents that the author is free to include or exclude, and the author's name and address add little to the reader's ability to evaluate the document in the case of a handbill written by a private citizen unknown to the reader. Moreover, the state interest in preventing fraud and libel (which Ohio vindicates by means of other, more direct prohibitions) does not justify § 3599.09(A)'s extremely broad prohibition of anonymous leaflets. The statute encompasses all documents, regardless of whether they are arguably false or misleading. Although a State might somehow demonstrate that its enforcement interests justify a more limited identification requirement, Ohio has not met that burden here. Pp. 348-353.

It is weird to claim immigrants are eating pets; weird to say police could bring law and order if only they were allowed to get violent enough just briefly; weird to call Hannibal Lecter "the late great," weird to ponder, at a rally which is worse electrocution or being eaten by a shark; weird to claim the cure for COVID could be intravenous bleach; Weird to say Kim Jung Un of North Korea writes such beautiful letters Trump is now best buddies with him;  creepy/weird to speculate about dating your daughter because she is just so hot.

So, we ought to get out there and say our piece and not allow the other side to intimidate or dominate us.

DEFINING TRUMP

 

Not for the first time, Doonesbury comes to the rescue. 

Mad Dog has been trying to persuade his local Democrats it is not just okay, but mandatory to throw some punches in this campaign, especially as regards Mr. Trump.

Oh, Melania, You've Been Replaced

Here in New Hampshire, folks are very reluctant to put up signs calling Trump Weird or Creepy or Senile. Stick with the positive message. But don't stray into the negative. 

Of course, that's only Democrats saying that. Republicans have imposed no such shackles on themselves:

All this Democratic positivity is actually self destructive: Kamala Harris dug herself into a hole in the first debate when she launched into a Hillary Clinton Redux with a pre-canned story about her middle class affinities in answering a straightforward question about whether or not we are better off now, economically, than we were 4 years ago. 

She could have said, "Of course, it depends whose economy you are talking about--billionaires are always better off than they were 4 years ago. And actually, all of us are because we were handed an economy on the brink of a Great Depression by Trump. Sure inflation was low. Gas was $2 a gallon, but you had no place to drive because all the businesses were closed."

But no, she missed that opportunity to throw a punch.

It was only when she went on the offensive, and attacked Trump on outlawing abortion, on the size of his rallies, on how autocrats world-wide laugh at him that she steam rolled him into a blithering befuddlement and won the debate.

click to view

Hopefully, Tim Waltz will take to the offense in the first round this coming Tuesday and brand Trump/Vance/Laura Loomer ("Looney Loomer?") as weirdos who think only citizens who produce children are real Americans, who insist immigrants in Ohio are eating pets, who think the 9/11 attack was an inside job and the Holocaust never happened, and Donald Trump did not lose the election by a whisker but won in a landslide. [Not to mention, of course, those Jewish Space Lasers, which start fires in the Mountain West--an oldie but goodie from Marjorie Taylor Greene.] It's difficult keeping the weird separate, and remembering which one of the loonies said what--it all comes spewing out so fast.

But in Donald's case, his fascination with the late great Hannibal Lecter, with those horrible windmills as causing cancer and a bird Holocaust (as if cats do not kill more birds than windmills, but then again, with all those aliens eating cats, maybe that trend will be reversed), with choosing the electric chair over sharks, if you are ever presented with that choice. 

This should be the theme. When Barry Goldwater proposed using nuclear weapons to win the war in Vietnam, it wasn't the only thing he said, but it was the only thing we ever heard about him from the Democrats, who seized on a simple idea--he's a Dr. Strangelove--and Democrats won with that.

Democrats should seize on "weird" or "weird and creepy" with all their hearts and drive home that point, over and over until everyone knows just one thing about the Donald: He's weird.

Well, Laura, where's your GQ photoshoot?

He lusts after his daughter, or, when she's not around, Laura Loomer.

Apple of Daddy's Eye

Weird. Creepy, maybe a little senile, but basically weird.

Trump Steaks

Stop the Presses! Trump Calls Kamala Mentally Deficient!!!

One does wonder now and again about the mental deficiencies which may be present among the editors at the New York Times, given the selection of articles they choose to publish.

Most recently was this shocker: 

 [Trump] told supporters at a rally in Prairie du Chien, Wis., that “Joe Biden became mentally impaired; Kamala was born that way.”

Mr. Trump then tied Ms. Harris to the Biden administration’s border policies, adding, “And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.”

Now that ranks right up there with the sun rose in the East this morning for newsworthiness.

I mean, Trump does not talk about whether we should raise the taxable amount for millionaires paying into Social Security, or whether the country should be preparing for the next pandemic, or whether vaccines are a good idea. He calls his rivals horrible people, stupid, immoral or weak. That is the scope of his intellectual range.

And the New York Times treats each new insult as front page news.

Why?

The one aspect of this which is interesting is that here in New Hampshire, we do not, ordinarily, post lawn signs with political statements, certainly no signs with criticism of opposing candidates. Our lawn signs simply give the name of candidates we like. 

But, given the opponent we now face, would it not be appropriate to throw a punch every once in a while?

Here is one sign Mag Dog likes.

He would like to see it crop up along roadways, intersections, all the spots Trump Magat's have chosen for their signs.

But this is New Hampshire. Only Republicans throw punches here.

Danielle Pletka: Neurons Misfiring

 

Never heard of Danielle Pletka until she appeared in David Brooks's spot on the News Hour segment with Jonathan Capeheart.

No doubt conservatives and Republicans (two different things now) have been annoyed by the fact Brooks has transformed from a conservative voice to an anti-Trumper, so the pro and con aspect of having the ying and the yang on a segment meant to discuss the week's events has been lost. Brooks so despises Trump and all those who sail with him, he can barely bring himself around to voicing opposition the Capeheart's relentless attacks.

So enter Danielle Pletka who when asked about Kamala Harris's visit to the southern border voices the FOXNEWS response: "Where's Kamala been the past three years when she was supposed to be the immigration czar who fixed the border crisis?"

Of course, there never was such a czar and no one person, no group of administration cabinet officers and all the angels of Heaven with trumpets who could solve the "border crisis" (a term suggesting this tidal flow from poor to rich nations is something new and different.) Only Congress, the people's elected representatives can do this and when the most conservative Republicans put together a bill increasing border surveillance and some pretty draconian measures, the Democrats agreed and a new law was on its way to take at least a first step--but then Donald Trump called up Congressional Republicans and told them not to fix the problem he intended to ride into the White House, and like the sheep/lemming chimeras they are, Congressional Republicans caved and withdrew the bill.

"Don't fix this problem!" Donald Trump cried. "I need this problem!"

Where would Donald Trump be without pet eating immigrants?

Then Ms. Pletka threw in the assertion that the bill was killed because it would have weakened Presidential powers to intervene and assert a greater (and proper) role for Congressional oversight. (How many Congressmen would vote for children to be separated from their parents and imprisoned?)

Capeheart was not given a chance to say any of this.

Then we got Ms. Pletka's take on Volodymyr Zelensky's visit to the factory in Pennsylvania where weapons are manufactured and sent to Ukraine. Ms. Pletka was in high dudgeon about how this was turned into a political show in which Mr. Zelensky was manipulated. 

And she railed with righteous (Right-eous?) indignation that Kamala and Biden have been a dollar short and day late in aiding Ukraine, and unwilling to allow Ukraine to fire missiles at Moscow or elsewhere into Russia throughout the war. 

For months, if not years, the Right (J.D. Vance in the lead) have been saying Ukraine should not get a dime from the United States, that Ukraine isn't worth wasting U.S. Treasure on (unlike Afghanistan). Now the Right is all on board in defending Ukraine's right to exist and all over the Democrats for not doing more to save Ukraine in the face of Russian onslaught!

Of course, 

Wait! Are we talking about the same Mr. Zelensky who Donald Trump hauled into the White House and said, "Look I might help you, but you have to do me a personal favor first" ? The Don Donald Trump, "Help me get Hunter Biden, and then we'll talk about your problem with Russia."

Not to mention the many times Trump asserted,Oh well, if I'd been President Putin would never had dared! There would have been no war in Ukraine, no Hamas attack on Israel, and North Korea would have asked to become the 51st state in the US and China would have to pay for all our imports and Mexico would pay for the Wall. (If they haven't already.) 

And, of course, Trump noted that he wanted nothing to do with that NATO wall against Russia because NATO was a bunch of deadbeats who didn't pay enough for their own national defense, and if Putin wanted to overrun that  crowd, he should do whatever he wants because those NATO welshers deserved it for not spending enough money.

It's all about the money for the Donald, and for Ms. Pletka.

If Zelensky had just bought some of Donald's bitcoins, all would be forgiven.

So suddenly, the American Enterprise Institute, which pays Ms. Pletka's salary, is all in for Ukraine. Fire away Volodymyr! No matter if Russia responds, as Putin has threatened, with "tactical nuclear weapons" against Poland, Finland and Germany. 

President Biden said some time ago he wants to help Ukraine defeat Russia, but not at the cost of starting World War III. Seemed like a reasonable stance for an American President to take.

But that's just a day late and dollar short for Ms. Pletka and the American Enterprise Institute, who are a bit more than a day late with their own indignant support for poor, suffering Ukraine.

I'm sure Mr. Trump will find a place for her in his cabinet, along with one for Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani , Ivanka, Jared Kushner, Mike the Pillow Guy, Hulk Hogan, that guy who sings "Proud To Be An American," Steve Miller, the entire FOXNEWS team on their white leather couches and anyone who buys his new silver coins for the bargain price of $100 a pop. 

Because, in the end, it's all about the money, isn't it? 

A Ride Along New Hampshire Seacoast

 

Sunny, light breeze off the ocean, riding along Route 1A, the coastal two lane road provided a reminder of what brought Mad Dog to the New Hampshire seacoast, roughly 18 miles of blue gray ocean stretching from the coastal towns of Seabrook to Hampton to Rye to Portsmouth, a list of roughly ascending wealth and a journey from Trumpland, to a town so liberal that when Barack Obama won in the Presidency in 2008, the celebration in Portsmouth went on all night, including the Leftist Marching Band and dancing in the streets, while in the southern most town, Seabrook, deep gloom and despair. 

But riding along Route 111 to get down to the sea, you pass through pockets of Trumpiness. 

Runnymead Farm, home of the 1968 Kentucky Derby winner, Dancer's Image and a story of unblushing liberalism in that time, but now, right next door a display of Trumpish longing for that imagined lost paradise.

The story of Dancer's Image, is always bracing to Mad Dog. The story as Mad Dog recalls it is this: This New Hampshire horse won the Derby in 1968, an annus horribilis which included the assassination of Martin Luther King, cities alighting in flame, the Tet Offensive which demonstrated once and for all the war in Vietnam was unwinnable. A terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year, but for that one spark of light, suggesting there is a God in Heaven after all, looking down, and like some Greek God, taking a hand in events on Earth. 

The owner of the horse announced he was donating the winnings to Martin Luther King's Southern Leadership Conference. 

But you must remember the race was held in Kentucky, and somehow, several days after the race traces of phenylbutazone were found in the post race urine of this horse belonging to this man, Peter Fuller who had the temerity to take money the good people of Kentucky gave him and hand it over to the cause of racial equality and so the crown was rescinded.

Anyway, that's the way Mad Dog likes to think of the story and there are those who tell it that way.

But now, the neighboring farm owner recalls those halcyon days when a jury of white men could always be counted upon to find white men innocent of lynching black men, and to find a reason what we all saw happen, the horse coming home first, the Capitol assaulted by men wearing T shirts saying "The Civil War Begins Now," and finding that their boys were in the right (Right) and are now political prisoners,  and reality is what you want it to be, because, you know, you saw it on television, or people are saying or well, everyone knows they stole that election using absentee ballots or rigged voting machines.

My Flag is Bigger than Yours: I'm the Patriot

The Southland of Faulkner never could face the truth.

If Aaron Sorkin Wrote Kamala's Lines

 Watching the endless replays, clips, snippets, analyses of the Kamala/Trump debate, there are moments of ecstasy, moments of cringe and moments you wanted to throw something at the TV.

Overall, as Colbert accurately noted, Kamala gave Trump a spanking, and not with a rolled up Forbes Magazine.

But the very first question to Kamala, one she had to know was coming, should have been waiting for, is the old, "Are Americans better off now economically than they were four years ago, when you took office?" And this evoked a response from Kamala which provoked a groan you could hear rumbling from all across town, likely all across America:  She launched into a fake, phony, no-good very-bad pre-cooked bit about how she was raised in a middle class home with sainted mother figures...oh, pluuueeeze!

Answer the freaking question!

What Jed Bartlet would have said:

"That depends on who you are, of course. There is no one economy in this country. There is the economy for the billionaires, the economy of the middle class, work a day wage earners, the economy for the professionals and the small business owners. 

But most of all, it depends on looking backward. When voters ask themselves this question, they have to honestly recall where they were in 2020, as we took office. And remembering is often clothed in the misty shrouds of emotion. Mr. Trump will say it was all beautiful and we were all rich when he was in office.

But if you remember correctly, we inherited a country with low inflation, which had been low long before Mr. Trump took office and maybe got even lower during his term. At one point you could by a gallon of gas for under $3 a gallon, but once you filled your tank, you had nowhere to go--your worksite was closed down, stores and restaurants were shuttered by a pandemic which Mr. Trump denied was even happening, and once he finally was forced to admit it, he said you could cure it by injecting your veins with bleach.  We had an economy on its knees, because Mr. Trump refused to believe the science, the public health authorities, local hospitals, because he simply had no idea how to deal with the reality, and so we had trucks parked outside of hospitals to receive the bodies he denied even existed. He had to be rescued from his own mumbo jumbo by Dr. Fauci and the government agencies and universities who worked with industry, which developed vaccines and distributed them in record time.

Then the Biden administration responded with cash to ordinary Americans, some of it wasted in the inevitable boondoggles you get with any emergency program to get aid to those who need it, but we avoided another 1929 type Great Depression, and once we used science to get the economy back on its feet, inflation rose. 

Sure it did.

 And it hurts people at the grocery store even now, sure it does. And rents are too high, although it's not clear how much any government federal or local can do about that. But now inflation is coming down and people have jobs in record low unemployment, overall.

Throughout all of this, the billionaires have protected themselves with the help of Trump and it's the working folks who have had to ride out the stormy seas. But we provided the lifeboats and if there were some scoundrels who got on board those, well, that's the price we pay for rescuing the greatest number of citizens and for using science and conscience and good will to steer the ship through stormy seas.

So are people better off now after 4 years of Democratic economics? You bet they are. 

Not everyone is feeling it yet, and rents are still too high and grocery prices need to come down and while many factory workers are still struggling or out of work, but many more are back to work and more can see they will be soon.  The economy, overall is booming, as is the stock market, setting new highs weekly after it rides up and down, but the trend is up. But overall doesn't help everyone and it may not help you. But there are jobs now and higher wages and if you think we are not doing well, well you can vote for the other guy and maybe your memory will be refreshed once he takes office and starts imposing 25% tariffs and then you will see real inflation, and a your wages stagnate and he kills labor unions and social security and Medicare. 

Poor Jimmy Got Sex Changed at School!

 

Imagine the look of surprise on Mad Dog's face when he learned this morning, watching Trump's rally in Wisconsin that children going to public schools are not in danger of being shot dead by some maniac exercising his Second Amendment rights but instead they face a worse fate: Go to school a boy and come home a girl!

Right there in public schools!

Where, exactly this sex change surgery happens Mr. Trump did not reveal. In the cafeteria? In the sex neutral bathroom? In the locker rooms? 

But, oh, what menace!

And I quote:

Can you imagine you're a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day at school, and your son comes back with a brutal operation. Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?”  

And the danger does not end with public school castration. It's coming for all of us!

“If I don’t win Colorado, it will be taken over by migrants and the governor will be sent fleeing.” "Migrants and crime are here in our country at levels never thought possible before…. You're not safe even sitting here, to be honest with you. I'm the only one that's going to get it done. Everybody is saying that." He urged people to protest “... you’re being overrun by criminals.” 

Oh, and he's not weird. It's them that's weird he says.

Tit for Tat with Weird MAGAts

 

After the Throwback Brewery hosted a Kamala Harris event, the owners were assailed on social media as "Communists."

Donald Trump's schtick is always about calling Democrats or anyone with whom he disagrees "horrible people" or "nasty women."

When Mad Dog stuck up a sign near a Kelly Ayotte for Governor sign, saying "Trump Chump/No More Creepy Weirdos" it was quickly disappeared.

Mad Dog's Democratic friends chided him for being confrontational, pugnacious, unpleasant.

But Mad Dog doesn't get it. Why not put up a "Weird Maga" sign up in front of every Ayotte, Bridle, MAGA Republican sign?

Why not engage?

Republicans do this sort of street fighting all the time.

Why are Democrats not allowed to respond in kind? 

Mad Dog is not advocating defacing or removing Republican signs, but responding to them.

So, as of today, Mad Dog is taking a vote, soliciting opinions.

Should these response signs go up, or not?

Send in those cards and letters or respond in the comments section, but educate Mad Dog and all those drooling dogs who run with him.

What is Mad Dog missing?