Gift for Republicans
U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, as many Republicans have remarked, is the gift that keeps on giving.
Last week, a Media Research Center video, spoofing the "Deep Thoughts" skit from Television Parts and "Saturday Night Live" of many years ago, caught the congresswoman's attention.
"I love everything about this GOP attack ad," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. "Republicans underestimate my intelligence, bc [because] I invite people into my home and speak plain English instead of DC jargon.
"They think that's dumb, so they end up paying for ads that spread and explain our policy positions."
The spoof series, which wasn't an ad and wasn't paid for by Republicans, is called "Shallow Thoughts With AOC." It delineates many of Ocasio Cortez's unformed thoughts on climate change, migration, Medicare for all, capitalism, colonial environmentalism and underwater cities of the future.
Sadly, the series was finished too soon for her recent prophecy on thousand-year-old diseases being unleashed by melting glaciers. "That's a concern," she said.
In case it's not a concern, Ocasio-Cortz earnestly added, there's always mosquitoes.
"Even if there are no diseases frozen at all in these glaciers," she said, "you have diseases that are spread by mosquitoes, and now mosquitoes are starting to fly further north that carry diseases like malaria, and a whole slew of other things."
Don't tell Ocasio-Cortez, but mosquitoes are already here. Shh!
The Comeys' con
If anybody ever doubted where his loyalties ultimately lay in his tumultuous few months under President Trump, former FBI Director James Comey proved it by donating - along with his wife, Patrice - nearly $20,000 to Democrats this year, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
More than half of the $19,210 total, $10,000, was given by Patrice Comey to a political action committee linked to 2018 Georgia gubernatorial loser Stacey Abrams.
The Comeys split their left-wing presidential preferences, with the former FBI chief donating $2,700 to his law school classmate U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, and his wife doling out $2,700 to U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California.
Comey, once a registered Republican, also gave money to both Democratic U.S. Reps. Jennifer Wexton, D-Virginia, and Abigail Spanberger, D-Virginia, during the 2018 midterm races. He also campaigned for the former in her district, Politico reported last year.
His wife, who told RealClearPolitics in 2018 that she wanted Hillary Clinton to win the presidency in 2016 and "was devastated when she lost," also gave $1,000 to Emily's List, a political action committee that advocates for pro-choice candidates.
Harris hucksters
U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California, whose support as a presidential candidate plummeted after the second Democratic debate, drew cheering throngs during her recent Democratic National Committee (DNC) speech in San Francisco.
Except, it turns out, many of them were brought in to cheer for her.
"Kamala Harris's speech at the DNC was boosted by a cheering section of about 40 people that her campaign brought in, erupting every time she hit a big line - and then that group got up and walked out as soon as she finished," Edward-Isaac Dovere wrote in The Atlantic.
The senator's group outside the hall then began yelling as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, spoke to the gathering.
Harris peaked in the RealClearPolitics poll average with 17 percentage points after the first Democratic debate in June but fell as far 5% after being scored by U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, in the second debate, before slightly rebounding recently.
If her support doesn't improve, she may decide to have the hucksters follow her around.
The value of life
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke left no doubt where he stood on the limits of abortion last week. When asked by a man at the College of Charleston during the school's "Bully Pulpit" series if on the day before his birth, his life had no value, the former Texas congressman said while he didn't believe the man's life had no value, an abortion the day before birth nevertheless was a decision for the mother to make.
He had given a similar answer earlier this year in Ohio when a woman asked about third-trimester abortions and the potential for the baby's viability and the use of a Cesarean delivery in the case of an emergency.
The man at the South Carolina school then asked, "What about my right to life?" O'Rourke ignored his question and pontificated about the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision that was supposed to be "the settled law of the law."
"Only she knows," he said, referring to whether a mother should abort the child a day before its birth or not.