"Republican Kari Lake took yet another bite out of Democratic U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego’s lead in the race for Arizona’s open U.S. Senate seat on Friday evening."

"After cutting nearly 13,000 votes off Gallego’s lead on Thursday and Friday morning, Lake gained about 2,100 more votes when Maricopa County released the results of nearly 100,000 ballots just before 7 p.m. The state’s largest county is expected to release another update Saturday morning.... Gallego... was ahead 5.4 points in the initial results posted after the polls closed on Election Day...."

KTAR News reports on the only Senate race that is still not yet determined.

People who don't know — or pretend not to know — that Roseanne Barr is a comedian.

Here's the highly lovable video clip:

 

At Kari Lake’s fundraising event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, Roseanne Barr told young people to “drop out of college” while pushing QAnon conspiracies:

“It isn’t nothing but devil worshipping, baby blood drinking, Democrat donors.” pic.twitter.com/WP9Br1X1DQ

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) April 4, 2024

And here's where I found that: "Roseanne Barr Pushed QAnon Blood Drinking Conspiracy at Kari Lake's Mar-a-Lago Event/Barr also encouraged everyone to drop out of college" ("The people of Arizona will decide if they want to send someone who associates with QAnon conspiracy theories and those who against college to represent them in the senate").

That's at something called MeidasTouch, which I saw because it was featured at my favorite source of links, Memeorandum.

I'm amused by the combination of the headline and "at least somewhat correctly."

I'm reading "Joe Rogan Irresponsibly Suggests Kari Lake Has a Point About Election Fraud/Joe Rogan quickly veered into conspiracy territory in his most recent podcast" (Daily Beast). It begins:

Joe Rogan on Thursday let loose another doozy of a false claim, suggesting that despite a number of failed lawsuits and months of fruitless efforts, Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake may actually be correct about the wide-scale voter fraud she’s so far been unable to prove.

“It looks like there’s real fraud,” Rogan suggested during an episode of his podcast. “At the very least, there were voting machines that weren’t working properly,” Rogan said, at least somewhat correctly, an apparent reference to an incident in which some printers in Maricopa County voting centers didn’t make dark enough marks on ballots—a technical problem that former President Donald Trump also seized on at the time.

Boldface added. 

Here's the clip that Kari Lake is sharing on Twitter:

"Cotton Mather called them 'The Hidden Ones.' They never preached or sat in a deacon’s bench. Nor did they vote or attend Harvard."

"Neither, because they were virtuous women, did they question God or the magistrates. They prayed secretly, read the Bible through at least once a year, and went to hear the minister preach even when it snowed. Hoping for an eternal crown, they never asked to be remembered on earth. And they haven’t been. Well-behaved women seldom make history; against Antinomians and witches, these pious matrons have had little chance at all."

That's from "Vertuous Women Found: New England Ministerial Literature, 1668-1735," a 1976 article by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, a professor of Early American history at Harvard. I'm reading that at Professor Buzzkill because I wanted to know the source of the line I put in boldface, which is a pretty common feminist slogan.

Some people think that quote originated with Marilyn Monroe (or one of many others), but no, it was Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.

Anyway, the old saying popped into my head when I saw that title of a new NYT op-ed, "The Unruly Heirs of Sarah Palin" by Rosie Gray. Let's read:

"Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, was hospitalized after he was assaulted by someone who broke into the couple’s residence in San Francisco early on Friday morning...."

"'The assailant is in custody and the motivation for the attack is under investigation.'... The Pelosis have owned a three-floor red brick townhouse in San Francisco’s exclusive Pacific Heights neighborhood since 1987. In January 2021, after Congress passed a stimulus bill, their home was vandalized with graffiti, and a pig’s head was left on the sidewalk. The vandalism occurred before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. In the months since that attack, members of Congress from both parties have experienced a surge in threats and confrontations, including stalking, armed visits to their homes and assaults.... [T]here was no immediate indication that the attack was politically motivated."

The NYT reports.

We will learn more soon, as they've got a person in custody. I think the Times ought to refer to him as "the alleged assailant," not "the assailant." We don't know for certain what happened. I will be interested to see whether the incident fits better into the GOP narrative — we're in a horrific crime wave — or the Democratic narrative — domestic terrorism. 

I would have thought the Pelosis' house was a well-protected fortress. How could someone just break in? Was the 82-year-old husband of the Speaker of the House home alone, with no security guards, open to assault? What's the point of being wealthy if you cannot protect yourself from physical attacks?

ADDED: The very next thing I saw was this, and it felt related:

AFTER accusing my team of coordinating a Watergate style break-in of her office, Katie Hobbs has now flip-flopped and DOES NOT want to talk about the crime

This comes AFTER arrest was made and NO political motivation confirmed. pic.twitter.com/lb7YAwl3eN

— Kari Lake (@KariLake) October 27, 2022

David Brooks says, "The Trumpified G.O.P. deserves to be a marginalized and disgraced force in American life. But I’ve been watching..."

"... the campaign speeches by people like Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor in Arizona. G.O.P. candidates are telling a very clear class/culture/status war narrative in which common-sense Americans are being assaulted by elite progressives who let the homeless take over the streets, teach sex ed to 5-year-olds, manufacture fake news, run woke corporations, open the border and refuse to do anything about fentanyl deaths and the sorts of things that affect regular people. In other words, candidates like Lake wrap a dozen different issues into one coherent class war story. And it seems to be working. In late July she was trailing her opponent by seven points. Now she’s up by about half a point. 

From "Why Republicans Are Surging" (NYT).

How is sitting in the audience trying to make a debate happen?

I'm trying to read the NBC News article, "Kari Lake was booted from Arizona town hall audience before Hobbs took the stage/The scene, which took place a forum that has yet to air, is emblematic of the contrasting styles of the two candidates in Arizona's tight race for governor." 

I have no quarrel with the headline — other than that "booted" suggests physical resistance to removal — but the text is slanted. It begins:

Democrat Katie Hobbs won’t debate her opponent in Arizona’s race for governor, yet Republican Kari Lake tried to make it happen at a candidate town hall that organizers say she disrupted.

Before describing exactly what Lake did, we're pushed to regard it as disruption. And we're told Lake "tried to make [a debate] happen," so I'm picturing Lake getting on the stage and attempting to argue with Hobbs.

Under the agreed-upon rules for the pre-recorded event, which was taped Monday and airs at 7 p.m. Saturday Arizona time, the candidates were not supposed to be onstage at the same time and Hobbs was supposed to go first.

Again, we're pushed to think that Lake got on the stage with Hobbs, and we're told that would violate the specific rules that Lake had agreed to.

"We out-voted the fraud, we didn’t listen to what the fake news had to say. The MAGA movement rose up and voted like their lives depended on it."

Said Kari Lake, quoted in "Kari Lake wins GOP primary for Arizona governor/Her victory adds to the string of 2020 election deniers elevated by Republicans in the state on Tuesday" (WaPo).

Of course, WaPo openly rejects the "fake news"/voter fraud characterization: