Okay, cut me some slack. The only other way I can wrangle politics into the title of a column published on the day of the Great American Race would be to mention the National Anthem, and frankly I’m a little “Oh say I can’t see” at this juncture.

The Good (Daytona 500):
Today marks the OFFICIAL start of the NASCAR racing season, with the running of Dayton 500 LXI (Pfffft NFL! We can do it too). It’s amazing that unlike every other sport on the planet, stock car racing BEGINS with the premier event, and everyone gets a chance to compete through qualifying runs. If you ain’t in it, it’s on you and you didn’t press the pedal on the right correctly. I hope it’s a good race. I don’t need a repeat of the year Dale Earnhardt died or the year a sinkhole caved in 8 feet of the track or the year that it took 9 hours to complete because of rain. I want sunny skies, safe drivers and a track with structural integrity.

Thank goodness Fox has the race this year.  For those unfamiliar with the dipso duo broadcasting that is NASCAR, the season is divided in half – the first half, through the road course at Sears Point in late June, is broadcast by Fox; the second half, starting with (usually; they keep mixing races around) Second Daytona through the final race at Homestead, is broadcast by NBC.  However, because the Daytona 500 is the Crown Jewel and by the end of the season everyone has stopped even CARING who wins the championship at Homestead, Fox and NBC alternate the 500 broadcast (in years it goes to NBC, Fox then broadcasts Second Daytona).

While NBC has improved its coverage over the years, I’ve never been a great fan of it.  It’s almost as if they were embarrassed that they had to get their visas to travel down to redneck country.  I do give them credit for snagging Dale Earnhardt Jr. for the booth – he’s infinitely better than Fox’s prize – Jeff Gordon (who is – sorry, homeboy – AWFUL).  Note to Fox.  Retire Jeff and Dale Waltrip – put in Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart).

The Lion
Donald Trump has had a most excellent two weeks.  He knocked it out of the park with the State of the Union, and the GOP got plenty of marvelous footage of Democrats sitting on their hands while he talked about the best economic news in a decade, decried the abortion laws of New York and pressed for better border security and … the WALL.  Overwhelming approval of the speech, especially from independents.  He gave the Democrats an opportunity to sit down and do the right thing.  Instead, a 1500 page spending bill hit the tables, which, like the ACA, no one has read but will vote on it.  And the Republicans in the Senate, who we thought had developed a spine (Grassley, et al.) after Kavanaugh and prior to the election, caved like a deflated football.  Oh, they gave him money for a border wall – 55 feet and so many damned restrictions attached that even chicken wire would probably have breached the terms.

But the President will not be cornered and on Friday declared a national emergency, which really pissed every Democrat off.  Personally, I think he’s had that money squirreled away all along.  And I think the supplies are in a nice warehouse or arriving by ship.  And now that he’s declared his emergency and all the focus will be on the courts and grandstanding by the Dim-o-crats, no one will be paying any attention to what’s going on down there.  If the courts side with the Dims, fine and good.  Except the Wall will be built anyway since the money was already allocated elsewhere.

Meanwhile, he’s now got just about every prominent Democrat on record as saying there should be no border restrictions or increased security.  On tape.  On video.  And that’s going to be hard to combat in 2020, especially when Trump will be working working and will reveal, no doubt, “YUGE” sections of Wall that were built and the statistics showing reduction in crime, in crossings, in drugs and human trafficking.  Shake your head about that again, Horizontal Harris…

The Witch
Nancy Pelosi?  Of course it is.  Any doubt?  I just wanted to take this opportunity to give present her with her lifetime achievement award.  Walls are immoral.  Walls are wrong.  We care about these poor people more then the safety of American citizens.   Nancy, you aren’t going to be able to harvest enough votes to keep those seats you mysteriously won in California come 2020.

And you know, I have to say, I am really rather disappointed in my compatriot conservative Game of Thrones fans.  One of the major plotlines in the book series involves the huge ice WALL that keeps out the Night King and his zombie minions in the north and away from the good people in Westoros.  At the end of last season, the evil Night King and his Zombie dragon destroyed the wall and the evil minions were going to be pouring in to destroy the country.  If that isn’t fodder for a good parody video or a T-shirt line I don’t know what is.  Featuring Nancy Pelosi as the king of the Zombies and Chuck Schumer as the Dragon.

And of course, this is your open thread for Sunday.  After hearing that a Congressman on Wednesday did a comparison of AOC to the Fyre Festival, if that Game of Throne thing pops up, I just want you to remember, you read it here first.  And damn me for not learning how to Photoshop.

Rush Limbaugh is fond of saying that the reason the media cannot destroy Trump’s relationship with his supporters is primarily because the media did not CREATE the relationship between them. Trump’s so-called “base” believe in Trump’s agenda because they believe in him – not because Morning Schmoe had him on MSNBC. (I really believe that Schmoe and Spouse thought that once Donald Trump was elected, they were going to somehow be the new media power couple best friends of POTUS and FLOTUS and were quite surprised to find out the President can spot a loser and a phony from about 10 miles out. Hence, Schmoe now seeks to destroy what he thinks he created. Unfortunately, all he’s really accomplished is to evidence that he’s starting to resemble that porch kid from “Deliverance” more than just physically at this point.)

The same, however, cannot be said of one Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the media sensation with the hyperthyroid eyes and donkey snout. Much was made of her stunning defeat of old-school incumbent Joseph Crowley in the NY-14 primary, treating it as masterful politicking and brilliant campaign strategy. Except, no, not really. Consider some facts. Each Congressional district essentially represents 711,000 people. In NY-14, there are approximately 245,000 registered Democrats, in a district that is almost all either White or Hispanic. However, in the PRIMARY, only 10% of those voters turned out. Cortez got 16,898 votes; Crowley 12,880; so by a margin of 2.5% of the registered voters in her district, a grandstanding blight was unleashed into the American political arena.

Immediately, the media couldn’t wait to get the 28-year-old Democrat (who touted a degree in ECONOMICS, no less, from Boston University!) onto every major media outlet imaginable. She was Young! She was Pretty!  She was a Democratic Socialist!

She was also dumber than dirt.

AOC distinguished herself in those early interviews by making statements that put her ignorance of economics, international affairs, world history, and for all I know, the price of tea in China, on full display.  Her excuse?  “Hey, I’m not the expert on this stuff!”  This stuff?  When she uttered those cute little words, all I could think of was this:

Ben Shapiro, not precisely my favorite person in the world, but an articulate individual who knows a thing or three, challenged the former bartender to a debate.  He was willing to pay her $10,000 – not a bad sum for someone running a campaign for Congress.  She whined that he was “catcalling her.”  And, God help us, she’s been whining ever since.

Poor AOC.  She apparently believed that running in a 90% Democrat Congressional District and getting more airtime on CNN and NBC than anyone since Michael Avenatti, attorney to the (porn) stars, she was in for an easy ride.  She’s apparently forgotten there’s a whooooole other media out there, ready to hold her up to the ridicule she so richly deserves.  Heck, even the more educated and even handed among the liberal MSM are embarrassed by her.  When Anderson Cooper interviewed her and she made her “tippy top tax” statement, the expression on Anderson’s face could almost be interpreted as “how the HELL did you get elected?”  Because for all her fake resume of being “Alex from the Bronx” (when she’s really Sandy from Westchester), she exhibits an amazing amount of immaturity when it comes to criticism.

She whined about finding an apartment in D.C. because she “hadn’t been paid yet.”  Talk to the hand, honey.  Try looking in San Francisco.

She whined when Donald Trump Jr. used a meme about her in one of his tweets, and then turned around and literally threatened him by saying “Please, keep it coming Jr – it’s definitely a ‘very, very large brain’ idea to troll a member of a body that will have subpoena power in a month.”  He’s accomplished a great deal in his life; you were still perfecting the ratios for an Old Fashioned when you were elected, and honey, and last I checked, no matter who his father is, he’s still a private citizen.

Between that and fellow House member Eric Swalwell (Dumb-Silicon Valley) threatening NRA members with Nukes, we have so much to look forward to with this incoming Congress.

AOC believes that she is mocked by the right because they’re “afraid” of her, and her 1,000,000 Twitter followers take up the gauntlet for her on a daily basis.   These are probably the same type of people that put themselves inside the funerals of Princess Diana and Gianni Versace – they literally believe if they leave flowers at a gate or tweet about it, they are a part of the story.  They believe she is their socialist messiah, and they want to be a part of her fabulous Congressional life.  Until the day the reality hits.

I recently saw a documentary on Netflix about something called the “Fyre Festival”, an event I had actually never heard of, which was to take place in the Bahamas in 2017.  It was supposed to be this grandiose affair, hyped by the media and a promotional video featuring a dozen people I didn’t recognize, except one of the Kardashians, who all pushed it on Twitter and Instagram via a large orange block with the words “Fyre Festival…Will YOU BE THERE?”.  Since these people are what are referred to as “influencers” in social media, it’s target market was rich kids with trust funds, who were more than willing to fork over something like $5,000 to sleep in luxury glamping tents on the beach and frolic with super models.  There were to be primo acts, fabulous cuisine catered by world-class chefs, the most luxurious music festival ever.  Why, you could even rent a luxury villa for the two weekends for $250,000.  You would travel there by private jet.

Except it was all a fraud.  There were tents – of the FEMA variety.  Mattresses left to soak out in the rain which had to be carried in by the festival goers.  The fabulous cuisine was a dry cheese sandwich in a styrofoam take out container with seven lettuce leaves thrown in.  The private jet was a 737 with no air conditioning and people crammed in their seats.  There were no luxury villas.  Most if not all of the musical acts pulled out in advance when they weren’t paid.  Pretty much all the festival goers, who 12 hours earlier were dancing and singing in the Miami airport on their way to “FYRE!” were drenched and miserable sitting on a the tarmac for six hours on a plane trying to return to Miami.  And when they got home and posted their tales of woe at being duped, they didn’t get a whole lot of sympathy from hoi poloi, who couldn’t help but post their schadenfreude at these “better than you because I’m going to Fyre” rich kids who had been taken in by a slick, media-hyped fraud.

Which pretty much sums up what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez really is.  A slick media promotion with nothing whatsoever to back up the hype.