Curb your Gen Z staffer

Delegating music choices to the youngest person on your campaign team might seem like a good idea. It’s not. Ignore the Billboard Hot 100, and pick songs you actually listen to — or at least songs that voters will believe you actually listen to. “Your first instinct might be, pick a song that’s relatable to young people or something. But that’ll just miss the mark and it’ll feel inauthentic,” says Rachel Kopilow, vice president and creative director at the campaign consultancy group Blue State.

Align your soundtrack with your message

This is Political Campaigning 101. “A particular song is not as important as, what does that song represent relative to the overall brand?” says Bonnie Siegel, founder of PoliticalBranding Associates.

Don’t use music by artists who hate you

Earlier this year, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s use of the instrumental version of a Dr. Dre track in a promo video earned her a cease-and-desist letter by the rapper, who called her “divisive and hateful.” She clapped back: “While I appreciate the creative chord progression, I would never play your words of violence against women and police officers, and your glorification of the thug life and drugs.”

TikTok is your playground

The life cycle on social media content is shorter than the classic TV ad that plays for weeks, so there’s an opportunity to take risks and show voters your fun (?) side. “Play up trends and be a little more cheeky, a little more fun, a little more sassy,” David says. When he was running for Congress, Democrat Maxwell Frost — the first Gen Zer to make it to the House — took to TikTok to post a video of himself jamming to salsa during a Pride parade.

An estimated 500,000 people marched through downtown Warsaw Sunday afternoon in a huge rally against the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, held on the 34th anniversary of the breakthrough election that effectively ended communist rule in Poland.

The march was called by Donald Tusk, former Polish prime minister and former president of the European Council, who is now leading his Civic Platform (PO) party in a bid to defeat PiS in an election due later this year.

“You’re all here because you have just believed we can win,” Tusk told the crowd, which filled Warsaw’s Castle Square. People in the crowd were holding up white-and-red flags and anti-government placards, including the locally famous ones with eight asterisks, denoting the Polish for “f*** PiS.”

“Here’s my pledge to you today: We are going to win this election and hold PiS accountable,” Tusk said.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley suggested in an interview that United States forces “need to align” with non-European countries including Russia to enhance global security, a remark her campaign characterized as a gaffe.

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“You see Saudi Arabia making deals with China, that’s not good for us. We need them to be with us, and then we need to align with others, Russia, Australia, Japan, Israel,” Haley added.

“We need to start focusing on the allies that we have besides the Europeans and make sure that we have more friends — one, for our needs, so that we’re not dependent on an enemy for energy or medicines or anything else, and then two, to make sure that we build those alliances so that the world is more safe.”

On Saturday, Haley’s campaign said the candidate misspoke when she included Russia with the other countries.

Gov. Kim Reynolds has signed a law requiring the Iowa caucuses to take place in person, potentially escalating a fight with Democrats who plan to offer a mail-in caucusing option in 2024.

Reynolds, a Republican, signed the law Thursday. It passed the Iowa Legislature last month with only Republican support.

Iowa GOP leaders have said the in-person requirement is essential to protect Iowa's first-in-the-nation status. Democrats say Republicans are undermining decades of bipartisan efforts to protect the caucuses by acting unilaterally.

The 2024 presidential nominating calendar is still unsettled for both Democrats and Republicans.

A key cooperator in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of former President Donald Trump is pleading for leniency for a convicted Jan. 6 felon: his cousin.

It’s a bizarre only-in-Washington tale. Sam Patten, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to acting as an unregistered lobbyist for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine, is the cousin of Noah Bacon, a Massachusetts resident found guilty in March by a jury for obstructing Congress’ Jan. 6 proceedings. Court documents indicate that Bacon was among the earliest rioters to enter the Capitol and spent 10 minutes on the Senate floor after watching others attack police officers trying to keep them out of the chamber.

“Because of the counts that occasion this moment, Noah is the second felon in our family and I am the first,” Patten wrote in a two-page letter to U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper, who is slated to sentence Bacon on July 27. The letter, dated June 1, was posted to the court docket on Friday morning.

It’s a twist on the typical small-world story of clubby Washington, where lobbyists, congressional staffers, government employees and contractors cross paths in the halls of power — and occasionally in the courthouse. Here, a figure associated with the first major scandal of Trump’s presidency — his ties to Russia — is literally related to a perpetrator associated with his latest: a bid to subvert the transfer of power to President Joe Biden. And Patten said it completely blindsided him.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/02/key-mueller-witness-seeks-mercy-for-jan-6-perpetrator-his-cousin-00099879

WEST HUMBOLDT PARK — A man with a gun, a flamethrower and a Nazi flag was found dead after an all day standoff with police Friday in Humboldt Park.

For weeks, neighbors have complained of a swastika flag being hung on scaffolding on the roof of a building in the 4100 block of West Chicago Avenue, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The swastika flag was up again Friday morning, when police responded to the scene of a man on the roof with a gun, a flamethrower and other weapons.

Police closed off a portion of Chicago Avenue near Pulaski Road, where the man could be heard either saying or playing a recording saying, “F– you, Chicago Police … I’m gonna kill you!” while blasting audio with the words “F– you” and a recording of “Eye of the Tiger.”

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Neighbors gathered around the block Friday said the man regularly goes onto the building’s roof and uses his flamethrower at night, and he would blast recordings for hours that say, “F– police” and “F– Joe Biden,” among other things. The Tribune reported that neighbors have heard the man make antisemitic commentary.

https://blockclubchicago.org/2023/06/02/man-with-swastika-flag-flamethrower-prompts-swat-team-response-in-west-humboldt-park

NEW YORK — Two NYPD officers patrolling a Queens public housing complex spot a woman outside in a tank top and slippers muttering incoherently to herself. The woman says the street is her home, but the temperature is expected to drop below freezing later that day. How should they respond?

The hypothetical scenario is among five posed to police officers in a 15-minute presentation on situations that may warrant involuntary hospitalization. The training was prepared to brief patrol officers on Mayor Eric Adams’ recent directive that people may be forced to undergo psychiatric evaluation when a mental illness is seemingly preventing them from meeting their own basic needs, putting them at risk of harm.

The presentation slides are also incorporated in a 9-minute video that describes when someone experiencing mental illness should be brought to the hospital against their will and walks officers through a step-by-step protocol.

The records were obtained by the New York Civil Liberties Union in a lawsuit filed in March against the NYPD and shared with POLITICO.

Some People Deserve to Starve: A Biblical View of Work and Welfare

Of course, Christians are supposed to be at the tip of the spear in alleviating poverty, especially when it comes to other believers. That doesn’t mean, however, that we are under any obligation to help indolent bums.

Such people are not entitled to our generosity.

They have chosen the path of poverty, to paraphrase Proverbs 10:4.

https://www.standingforfreedom.com/2023/05/some-people-deserve-to-starve-a-biblical-view-of-work-and-welfare/