News roundup
(1) I believe that Democrats wanted Platner as the Maine senatorial candidate rather than Mills. After all, the money poured into his campaign, not hers; the reason she gave for quitting was lack of money, which doesn’t seem to have bothered him.
If that’s the case, then why, with all his weaknesses, did they support him over her? I think the answer is rather simple: he polled better against Collins., and they want to win at all costs. Among other things, they are betting that youth will be the draw, because Collins is also old (as is Mills), and that they can cover up or rationalize away the more “problematic” things Platner has said and done. These are people who kept seeing phantom “dog whistles” of Nazism in people like Musk, but have no problem whatsoever with the glaring evidence of an actual Nazi tattoo if it’s on a Democrat.
Platner could indeed win the election. This video shows why; Platner’s message here is exactly and precisely what Democrats want. Who or what Platner himself might be is not even an issue for many people, if his election would bring this about:
Graham Platner wants to “shut this White House down."
He offers a preview of a Dem-controlled Senate:
“I want the Trump administration not to function, because everyone in the White House is being hauled under subpoena in front of a Senate committee, day after day after day." pic.twitter.com/vDc1lqFpym
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) May 1, 2026
(2) There is a SCOTUS feud, in which Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has been going her own way, sometimes even in regard to her fellow liberal justices:
The Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for Louisiana to redraw a hotly contested congressional map that the court ruled days earlier was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, a highly technical decision that nevertheless sparked a bitter back-and-forth between three conservatives and a member of the court’s liberal wing.
The brief order dealt with a question about when the Supreme Court’s blockbuster decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act took effect in Louisiana. The state is quickly gearing up to redraw its maps ahead of this year’s midterm elections and suspended its US House primaries following the high court’s ruling Wednesday.
More notable than the decision itself, which was widely expected, was the tension it exposed in brief writings by Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a liberal.
Writing in dissent, Jackson said the post-decision “developments have a strong political undercurrent.” And she suggested that the court should have stayed on the sidelines “to avoid the appearance of partiality.”
Translation: in order to avoid a result that might help the Republicans, the Court should not order its own ruling implemented, but instead keep in place a system that favors the Democrats.
And of course Jackson herself is not the least bit politically partisan.
More:
Alito snapped back at Jackson’s dissent, describing her points as “trivial at best” and “baseless and insulting.”
“The dissent goes on to claim that our decision represents an unprincipled use of power,” Alito wrote in a brief concurrence joined by conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. “That is a groundless and utterly irresponsible charge.”
No one else signed on to Jackson’s dissent. Sotomayor and Kagan appear to be giving her a wide berth.
(3) Another day, another shooter near the White House:
The suspect has been identified as Michael Marx, 45, law enforcement officials tell NBC News.
Marx, as of Tuesday morning, remained hospitalized with multiple gunshot wounds, which aren’t considered life-threatening, reported. …
The incident occurred as President Donald Trump took the stage inside of the White House’s East Room for a Small Business Summit. And authorities sent the press into the briefing room for safety precautions while areas were placed under lockdown.
The Secret Service said the shooting took place at 15th Street Southwest and Independence Avenue after plainclothes agents at about 3:30 p.m. spotted, then confronted a “suspicious individual that appeared to have a firearm “and confronted him, said Secret Service Deputy Director Matthew Quinn.
(4) There’s another Democrat who wants Trump murdered, and this time he’s been arrested:
Raymond Eugene Chandler III, of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, was arrested Friday for allegedly leaving a series of menacing voicemails for a member of Congress, in which he threatened to slit the throats of both the lawmaker and his daughter if he did not kill President Donald Trump.
According to Pittsburgh’s Action News 4, Chandler is facing charges of “Influencing, Impeding or Retaliating Against a Federal Official by Threatening a Family Member and by Threatening a Federal Official,” and “Influencing, Impeding or Retaliating against a Federal Official by Threat.”
The court documents were unsealed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. Although the documents do not identify the lawmaker, the suspect refers to him as “Senator” in the second voicemail …
Who is Raymond Chandler (and by the way, I wonder whether he was named after the writer of detective stories)? Why, he seems to have been running for the Senate himself. You can read his chilling messages at the link, but here’s a bit of one:
You’re probably getting quite used to my voice. Sir, I’m calling this evening because what I want you to do is I want you to take a firearm. I want you to put it in your hand. I want you to walk into the Oval Office. I want you to put that firearm to the President’s head, and I want you to pull the trigger and I want you to kill him. I am petitioning you, Senator for redress of grievances. My redress of grievances is that this president is awful . . . He’s a liar among all liars. He’s a great deceiver. He’s the antichrist. I want you to walk into the Oval Office with a gun in your hand. I want you to put it to his temple, and I want you to pull the trigger. That is what I want you to do as my agent.
(5) Speaking of the antichrist, there’s Tucker Carlson doing just that. Carlson demonstrates his m.o. in a NY Times interview, and it’s not pretty. But he lies with such utter conviction that I think that, like the most accomplished of liars, he actually achieves the trick of willing himself to believe his own lies:
The Times and the left are having a moment with Carlson:
Why is the New York Times so eager to sit down with Carlson for two hours? His closest media friends were out on X over the weekend — in the face of scoffing over that clip of him being called out as a bald-faced liar — to demand that people “watch the whole interview,” as if I’m about devote 110 minutes of my life to this exercise in cynicism. (Reading the partial transcript was bad enough.) What these supporters don’t want to admit is that there is a reason Carlson was given the opportunity to speak at length at the New York Times: He is of use to them ideologically.
Most of the voices on the right that the Times has given elevated coverage to, from Carlson to Marjorie Taylor Greene to Nick Fuentes, share a special characteristic: They are members of a “new right” antisemitic fringe, the faction most enraged by Trump’s preference for Israel over Hamas and Iran in the Middle East. A cynical man might suggest that the Times seeks to craft a political narrative for its readers wherein the Republican Party is safely cast as forever captive to culturally scary hard-right lunatics. An even more despairingly cynical man might suggest that the Times subconsciously realizes that the “anti-Zionism” of the modern right-wing fringe holds a surprisingly comfortable mirror up to the views of their own readers.
(6) The accused Palisades arsonist fancies himself as a Mangione RobinHood-esque type.
I think that, like the most accomplished of liars, he actually achieves the trick of willing himself to believe his own lies:
George Costanza’s last bit of advice to Jerry before he tries to beat a polygraph test:
Just remember Jerry, it’s not a lie – if you believe it.
Jackson is the poster child of the DEI hire. When the two liberal ladies steer clear of her, you know she is poison. She should never be even near a bench, let alone the one she’s on.
It would be great if she got the message and resigned, but that’s not how left activists mind’s work.
Murkowski Romney and Collins voted to confirm Jackson although the vote was meaningless since the Democrats with Harris’ tiebreaker could have confirmed her without them. Still it allows the Democrats to claim the vote was bipartisan
The Voting Rights decision was unreasonably delayed, which led some pundits to think the left wing on the Court was deliberately slow-walking the process in the hopes of getting past deadlines for the 2026 midterms. Jackson’s lone dissent sounds like that’s what she hoped would happen. Who’s playing politics, if not Jackson?
Tucker, Candice et al are more an attack on the right.
3) as compared to the brewer
4) of course she would think that
5) yeah hes lost the plot
6)I had forgotten about him, but hes as contemptuous as average people as with the rich
Five out the six are about people going bat-s**t crazy. How depressing. I don’t even want to look at the Tucker video.
KB Jackson is just being the partisan hack that she is supposed to be. Judicial qualifications are utterly irrelevant to the Dems who put her there. Her DEI factor is just a cherry on the top of the partisan sundae. She is a reliable vote.
But I’ll admit that her presence on the court is still somewhat depressing too. Kagan, is capable of reasoning the law, and sometimes voting in accordance with it. I’m not certain that KBJ is capable of that reasoning even if she tried.
TommyJay, yeah, I agree. A very depressing post.
Dems simply do not care who their candidates are. They are voting for the unelected people who will make and execute the real decisions, the elected candidates are figureheads. That’s why neither Biden nor Harris bothered them.
They are members of a “new right” antisemitic fringe, the faction most enraged by Trump’s preference for Israel over Hamas and Iran in the Middle East.
I don’t know who manages the others, but Fox owns the company that produces Tucker Carlson. I suppose most folks here would say that Carlson is past disseminating anti-Israel views and well into anti-semitism. Should Fox not be held accountable for profiting from that? Shouldn’t the other “independent” journalists whose podcasts are also produced by the company Fox owns be disentangling themselves from a venture that is profiting from the dissemination of antisemitism?
Re Platner:
Maybe, just maybe, if the Dems keep running people like Mamdani and Platner, Jewish Americans will wake up and realize that they may be better off voting for and supporting the GOP. I’m old enough to remember when black Americans were GOP voters; Jews are not numerically as prominent as black people but they are far more important financially to the Dems. They wouldn’t even have to contribute to the GOP, just stop sending money to the party that wants to kill them.
What I’m seeing continues to stimulate my hope that the South will secede again, leaving crap like Platner and Mamdani in the dust.
Been there done that, 1861-1865. Civil wars usually have unexpected negative consequences.
Just sayin’ y’all.
I’ve noticed Tucker Carlson never shows happiness or a sense of humor now. As early as 3-4 years ago I would watch him semi regularly and he often seemed to be pleasant even if it was that irritating high-pitched giggle. No more. Maybe Victor Davis Hanson was on to something when he wondered if TC took a mental nosedive because of his father’s death especially coming on the heels of his still-unexplained ejection from Fox. He now looks perpetually sour.
Re. #2. The CNN article, of which an excerpt is posted, states that SCOTUS “gutted the Voting Rights Act…” That is incorrect. SCOTUS strictly enforced Section 2 of the act, stating that prior interpretations that created “majority-minority” were contrary to the provisions of the act. Such interpretations were actually race-based and in violation of the 15th Amendment. SCOTUS ruled that the act must be followed as written. The act was not gutted.
There is a good column at Powerline on the details of the SC Voting Rights decision, echoing Kate’s suggestion that the liberal justices slow-walked the dissent – the decision was made *seven* months ago! – in order to prevent its application in this year’s election. Not just KJB though the other two are letting her take the heat now. Just rumor? Or are they gaming the “optics”? Nah, leftists wouldn’t do that …
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2026/05/alito-vs-jackson.php#disqus_thread
Regarding Carlson suggesting President Trump may be the Anti-Christ, this is growing among fringe Christian podcasters. This idea didn’t originate from Carlson or Nick Fuentes who also calls Trump the Anti-Christ.
I was listening to the local Christian radio station driving home. There is an old pastor from W. Virginia that has a biblical prophecy show interviewing a podcaster who, besides being very anti-Israel was proclaiming Trump as the Anti-Christ. Kind of shocked me, since i hadn’t heard this before. Since then the pastor has repeated it several times. If you go on Rumble this is more common than I certainly expected.
@neo: Who is Raymond Chandler (and by the way, I wonder whether he was named after the writer of detective stories)?
Most likely. The realRaymondChandler had no siblings nor children.
Great name. Writer too. I trust everyone here has at least seen Bogart and Bacall in Chandler’s classic “The Big Sleep.” Reading’s good as well:
________________________________________
But she just wants to lay in bed all night
Reading Raymond Chandler
—Jim Caroll, “Three Sisters” (1980)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITm_IA1q3F8_
________________________________________
I went through a phase like that in a Kenmore Square apartment looking out at the Citgo sign.
Chandler went to an English college and wrote terrible romantic poetry in early 1900s style. WW I burned that out of him. The Depression forced him to try writing detective stories. He found he was rather good at it.
Great news roundup—mostly bad news, since good news is so common it’s hardly news.
Sadly, Tucker almost certainly believes his own lies. All smart folk are smart enough to know how to lie to themselves to believe falsehoods that they really really want to believe. The heart decides, the brain rationalizes to confirm the bias that the heart is right. Most Trump hate is based on this.
Nice Jim Carroll song by a punkish poet, with most modern poetry heard thru pop songs, if heard. Thx Huxley.
Reminds me of All The People Who Died.(?).
Robert Galbraith’s Strike series is worth a call out, my Slovak Daughter in law reads them, too. (AKA JK Rowling)
https://donsurber.substack.com/p/a-cabinet-of-worthy-of-1776
For good news I read Surber.
“LA is worth saving” — DEVASTATING! Spencer Pratt’s Ad For Mayor Of LA is Going Viral – Video
https://commoncts.blogspot.com/2026/05/devastating-spencer-pratts-ad-for-mayor.html
@Brian E:suggesting President Trump may be the Anti-Christ, this is growing among fringe Christian podcasters.
“Fringe Christians” trying to identify someone in the news as the Antichrist has been going on since at least the 70s. When I was young Mikhail Gorbachev was a popular target of this. Trump is not be the first US President accused of this, nor the second, nor the third.
Highly recommend the video SD posted. It’s great! He’s still gonna lose though.
Niketas,
Trying to identify “the Antichrist” has been going on since the 60s, and I don’t mean the 1960s. BTW, The Apocalypse refers to thiss guy as “the Beast”, not the “Antichrist”. There is no single person identified as “The Antichrist” in Scripture. The first candidate for the role, of which I’m aware was Caesar Nero. The Greek Neron Kaiser, translated into Hebrew, adds up to a numerical value of “666”. Plus, Nero was also referred to as a “beast” by historians of the period.
Waidmann
Yes, “Spot the Antichrist” has been a favorite Christian pastime since forever.
I haven’t entirely given up on Bill Gates. 🙂
Gates gave us his own Trilogy after all:
Control, Alt, Delete
Tom Grey:
Glad you enjoyed the Jim Carroll link. Yes, he wrote “People Who Died” — his most well-known song.
He was one of the best high-school basketball players in NYC, then broke bad into drugs and became a junkie, while working hard on his writing. In the 70s he ended up in the beat-hippie-Warhol crowd.
In the 80s he got off drugs and took a turn as a rock star. I thought his albums were great. He performed “People Who Died” in the youth film, “Tuff Turf” (1985).
My favorite books were his diaries — “The Basketball Diaries” and “The Downtown Diaries.” Hilarious, though simultaneously grim.
Tucker Carlson’s bias and anti-Semitism is not new. One of his producers, Abbey Grossman, who was fired when she complained about a poisonous work atmosphere and anti-Semitism on the show. She sued the network and Carlson and another employee. She dropped the suit in exchange for $12 million settlement.
Carlson had also been sending texts with opposite sentiments that he espoused on his show.
This has been going on for quite sometime. He has just become more vociferous about his opinions à la pulling the curtain back on the “Wizard of Oz” revealing what a phony he has been. But which is phony? Past or Present?
https://www.google.com/search?q=How+long+did+Abbey+Grossman+work+for+Tucker+Carlson&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari
And another : https://www.google.com/search?q=Jewish+ex-producer+of+Tucker+Carlson+show+settles+for+%2412+million&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari&sei=c7v6acnkO7C3ptQPxsyh6A4
I am more and more dismayed and disgusted at the open vile lies fed to the public whether on You Tube, on network and the liberal cables by once respected “journalists” never mind the brazen lies of elected “leaders” in Congress. I doj’t care if it’s poliatical fodder directed at potential voters. Given our system of two parties (and occasionally small special issue parties) in my lifetime I can remember differences with opposing parties, but NEVER to the extent of spreading bald-faced lies exhorting violence, preaching misinformation, and outright trying to remove the opponents from office in numerous ways. The fear that when the Dems/Progressives retain office again (inevitable as the pendulum swings), they promise to turn our system upside down in ALL branches of govt.: Judicial, Legislative, and Executive.
om: “Gates gave us his own Trilogy after all:
Control, Alt, Delete”
The Ctl-Alt-Del escape sequence was invented at IBM by an engineer named David Bradley because he knew there had to be a way to reboot when the system froze completely, but not prone to be entered accidentally. They held a retirement party for him a few years back, attended by Gates, and the story went like this:
” … Bradley said ‘I may have invented Control-Alt-Delete but it was Bill Gates who made it famous’. Gates didn’t laugh”.
FOAF:
Thanks for the correction, although Bill Gates is still in the running for Antichrist.
Gate’s products made it famous ….
— Cindy Simon
Exactly two things have changed over the last sixty years on this issue:
1. The Establishment had effectively total information control in the period from 1945-1988. There were other voices, such as National Review, but they were very definitely marginal. The major big city papers like the NYT and Washington Post set the tone for all coverage, the Big Three news organizations were largely trusted by the public.
They did not deserve that trust, even back then, but they had it.
2. That monopoly began to crack and break in 1988, and the crack has only widened since then. I pick 1988 because that was when the Rush Limbaugh Show started. It’s hard to remember in 2026 just how rapidly Rush exploded and how huge his impact was. For the first trime in decades, the Establishment narrative monopoly was cracking. They’ve spend the 38 years since trying to recreate it.
Today’s partisan lies are no bigger or less nasty than the ones routinely repeated in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. It’s just that back then, the Establishment (which is mostly Lefty or business oriented) could put a mannerly, erudite mask. Walter Cronkite would quote a Republican or conservative statement, and then ad “Experts say, however-” and explain that it was not true and the Democrats were right.
Of course the ‘experts’ were themselves partisan Dems, but Cronkite was trusted and people assumed he met neutral technocrats. (Technocrats were unduly trusted back then, too.)
It became such a trope that conservatives would just mouth the words ‘experts say’ as a shorthand for media dishonesty.
What changed is that the monopoly broke, conservatives began to make progress toward rolling back liberal gains and gaining control of the GOP away from the business wing, and the Establishment went into an ever-more-frantic panic to stop this. The lies were no more nasty and false, but they were more blatant and direct.
Watergate was pure partisan, it was an attempt to remove a President they could not defeat at the ballot box by legal warfare. It worked because he played into their hands, but it was never non-partisan. They hated Nixon from the day he was sworn in because he won in a big election and because he was prosecutor for Alger Hiss.
Siding with the enemy in war is nothing new. It didn’t start in Iran, or Iraq, it happened in Vietnam, half a century ago.
Look at some of what was thrown at Goldwater.
Things were like this in the 1930s, too. Back then, FDR was the insurgent force pressing to throw down a former Establishment, and it generated the same panic and frantic hate. Human beings don’t give up power and social status easily.