FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

I love early-60s, button-down, organization-man satire,
especially when I have to sit in a goddamn office on a beautiful day.
• Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' victory in a Queens Democratic primary may or may not rate as a harbinger, but it sure has got the brethren riled up. "Left-wing socialists have infiltrated our nation," says the thick-necked whosis at NRATV -- apparently, in the paranoid universe of the gun nut, winning the votes of one's constituents counts as infiltration. Thickneck rages on that Ocasio-Cortez "openly despises the very system that makes America the greatest country in the world" and seeks to visit upon her unfortunate constituents "housing and job guarantees, abolishing ICE" -- which, like the rest of her platform as portrayed by wingnuts, sounds pretty darn wonderful -- before getting to the muzzle-strokers' money shot: "And say goodbye to your firearms if she gets her way -- no socialist country allows its oppressed people to empower themselves" -- you know, like if that nice fella in Annapolis (who, like Dana Loesch, wanted to send a message to the libtard press) tried to make his point in Sweden, he'd have a much harder time of it. [Pause for the libertarian going "Agg-tually Sweden is technically not socialist" to get his wedgie and his kick in the ass.] I realize there are millions of People of the Gun out there who will vote, and effectively have voted, for Satan himself to maintain their right to fire nine rounds a second whenever they feel grouchy, but I think a lot more people will prefer bread and roses to cordite and spatter.

• Speaking of libertarians, at Reason Peter Suderman tries to compare Ocasio-Cortez' big media moment to the days when "many in the media saw [Dave] Brat's victory [over Eric Cantor] as a sign that the Tea Party was winning—that the crony-corporatist, big-government-loving wing of the Republican Party was losing out to a libertarian insurgency... Even The New York Times thought so." Regular readers will remember this as the alleged "libertarian moment" that won the alicublog prize for Bullshit of the Year in 2014. And now the time gives it proof, as all Republicans, including alleged freemarket cultists, march behind the blood-and-soil banner of Trump, which Suderman seems to think is a big own of Ocasio-Cortez. Except she's offering things like Medicare For All and guaranteed employment, which are either the preference of most Americans or on their way to being it, while Suderman is offering the destruction of Social Security, Medicare, and the minimum wage, and the direct rule of rich bastards, which even morons don't want. Of course the New York Times kvelled over libertarians -- for the same reason they didn't even bother covering Ocasio-Cortez' campaign: Because they suck.