Pun Salad

Right now, it’s almost easier to list the number of prominent Democrats who aren’t thinking of running. No one knows for sure, but estimates on the number of potential Democratic candidates range from 20 to 40. In that kind of field, the ability to attract a small but passionate cadre of supporters will be more important than arguments about electability. Thus, there will be an enormous incentive to replicate the Trump model of taking unorthodox positions, stated as boldly as possible, in order to win over the most passionate ideologues and activists.

Moreover, the mood among Democrats is more than a little analogous to the mood among Republicans in 2016. Hillary Clinton was a uniquely disliked and feared figure among conservatives. The argument that America would be “over” if she won found purchase among millions of Republican voters. One need only listen to a few minutes of discussion on CNN or MSNBC, or to read the op-ed pages on almost any given day, to see that a similar attitude is widespread among Democrats. If you can’t imagine chants of “Lock him up!” at the Democratic convention in 2020, you haven’t been paying attention.

Earlier this month, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), a nonprofit advocacy group with offices in Minneapolis, Maine, and Washington, D.C., that "challenges concentrated economic and political power, and instead champions an approach in which ownership is broadly distributed, institutions are humanly scaled, and decision-making is accountable to communities," released research meant to push back against the spread of dollar stores, which the group argues are "targeting struggling urban neighborhoods and small towns."

If a celebrity celebrated the release of an abortion clinic bomber from prison, gave the abortion clinic bomber a present, then personally hung out with the abortion clinic bomber, we wouldn’t chalk it up to naïveté; we would conclude that the celebrity liked the idea of bombing abortion clinics.

Lin-Manuel Miranda––yes, that Lin-Manuel Miranda, the “Hamilton” guy, co-star of Disney’s upcoming “Mary Poppins Returns,” recipient of a MacArthur genius grant, awardee of a shiny new star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame––did all of those things as an avid supporter of the Puerto Rican nationalist terrorist Oscar Lopez Rivera, ringleader of the 1970s terrorist group FALN (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña / Armed Forces of Puerto Rican National Liberation), which murdered at least five and probably six innocent New Yorkers.

Bruce Springsteen is a phony, and he wants you to know it. “I’ve never held an honest job in my entire life,” he shouts early in his one-man stage show, viewable on Netflix Sunday. “I’ve never seen the inside of a factory, and yet it’s all I’ve ever written about. Standing before you is a man who’s become wildly and absurdly successful writing about something [with] which he has had absolutely no personal experience.”

Well, for one thing, he wouldn’t land on the roof! Do you know what roofs cost? We had ours re-shingled a couple of years ago and… “skyway robbery” is what I call it. No thanks to an overloaded sleigh and eight sets of sharp, pointy hooves busting through my rafters.

Although Santa is welcome to come down our chimney. We’ve been meaning to have it cleaned.