Let them eat sand
The Democrats' Marie Antoinette moment of the week belongs to U.S. Rep. Harley Rouda of California, who said opening beaches was "reckless," then was photographed last weekend spending time on a beach with his family.
On April 21, the Orange County Board of Supervisors voted to keep county beaches open with the advent of a heat wave but suggested residents enjoy them "responsibly" (i.e., social distancing).
Rouda said the move was a bad one.
"Keeping Orange County beaches open during a heat wave is reckless," he tweeted. "We need leaders who will prioritize public health and make the tough calls to keep our families safe."
When the weekend brought tens of thousands to Newport and Huntington beaches, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said there would be a "hard close" of California beaches.
But Rouda and his family "were actively moving and adequately socially distancing on a residential beach," which supposedly had fulfilled the beach access requirements of Newsom, according to Rouda's campaign, despite the governor's "hard close" order.
The report didn't detail which beach the congressman was on, but social media photos show he has frequented a private beach in the exclusive gated community of Emerald Bay in North Laguna Beach.
Fake guy, real hate
Remember Nick Sandmann, the kid with the Make America Great Again hat who was lynched in the media for something he did not do at a pro-life rally in Washington, D.C.? Well, Brian Cash of New Hudson, Michigan, can sympathize.
A bearded protester at the Michigan state capitol on April 30, he was photographed yelling near a line of police outside the state House of Representatives chamber.
The image was featured on a Twitter post, which misidentified him, mislabeled him and was retweeted more than 7,000 times after it went live last weekend.
"Meet Rob Cantrell who lives in Los Angeles," the tweet stated. "Rob is a white supremacist who is being paid to attend protests in blue states all over the country. This #Deplorable is the face of the Republican Party." Another tweet identified him as a member of the Proud Boys, a neo-facist group.
The hate tweets toward "Cantrell" went off the chart.
Cash, a Bernie Sanders supporter in the 2016 Democratic primary, was not amused, said he had no idea who Cantrell is and said he was not yelling at police but an officer behind the line who he said had assaulted a female protester the day before.
The incident sparked an investigation by the Michigan State Police and a USA Today fact check that determined the actual man in the photo was not a white supremacist from Los Angeles.
Santa Joe
We continue to marvel at the gift to Republicans that is U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York. She told The New York Times last week presumed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden should simply adopt a more progressive platform and run on it because, "like Santa Claus," he has a "soothing effect" on more "traditional voters."
"I think the fact that he is an older white man kind of has a Santa Claus soothing effect on a lot of traditional voters," she said. "I'm convinced that Biden could essentially adopt Bernie [Sanders]'s agenda, and it would not be a factor - as long as he continued to say things like malarkey. And just not be Trump."
To sum up: Voters will vote for him because of his white hair, he says "malarkey" and will not differentiate if he slips in some suggestions to placate the far left.
Ocasio-Cortez, in another head-shaking moment, said she planned to vote for Biden because the country must stop the bleeding - evidently a heretofore unknown symptom of the COVID-19 virus that the former vice president will cure - but she's not sure she will endorse him. Go figure.
It's OK, we're Democrats
Apparently, if you work for the Senate Democratic leader in Pennsylvania, social distancing and close contact rules don't apply to you. Meanwhile, those who make their living at such professions are going hungry.
Alert state Rep. David Rowe called out the hypocrisy on Facebook last week after a photo surfaced of the Senate Democrats' spokeswoman giving the policy director for the Senate Democratic leader a haircut. They were both wearing masks, but it is not a privilege those who make their living doing that have in the Keystone State.
"If Democratic staff are allowed to give and get haircuts," he wrote, "why can't the thousands of barbershop and salon owners across the Commonwealth enjoy the same standard? Governor [Tom] Wolf can plant a garden but we can't. Governor Wolf and Senate staff can get haircuts but we can't."
Rowe apparently had spotted the social media post of the hair cutter, who described herself filling the part of the job description that says "other duties as assigned."