Cockburn

Orlando, Florida   Cockburn just got back from the second annual National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Florida. The ballroom of the Orlando Hilton can hold more than a thousand people. A little snowbird tells Cockburn that Yoram Hazony, the event's organizer, was in panic mode in the days before the summit. Not enough people had paid for the $315 ticket or $2,500 VIP pass. It seems even DC politicos had better things to do on Halloween than listen to Josh Hawley scream about porn. Cockburn hears that every right-wing organization in attendance received emails from Hazony begging them to help ship out more people. In the end, the official turnout was 700 attendees — though a hundred of them were the ladies and gentlemen of the press, and most of them were on a freebie.

Cockburn had thought he'd seen it all. But now he learns that DC has reached a new low in the annals of Swamp incompetence. Democratic staffers in Representative Ayanna Pressley's office can't figure out how to turn their phones back on after setting them to go straight to voicemail for over a year and a half. Every Capitol Hill rat would agree that the worse job in a congressional office is answering the phones. From dusk to dawn, deranged boomers light them up, demanding Representative Joe Blow do something about their loud neighbors, or fix their TV, or help them pay their rent. Many of these callers don't even live in the lawmaker's district or state. It's an exhausting task usually reserved for the lowest of the low — interns.

Cockburn’s rug-cutting days are behind him. An unfortunate misunderstanding with the wife of an Ecuadorian chargé d’affairs during a Georgetown salsa class means he now steers well clear of the dancefloor. But he learned enough in his time to know that Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate for Virginia governor, has a strong claim to the title of worst boogier inside the Beltway. The Macker’s moves gained fresh attention when the former governor, floundering in his bid for another stint in his old job, started shaking his hips alongside Joe Biden at a rally in Arlington this week. Everyone else on the stage seems to know what to do: stand, smile and wave. Pretend we’re not bombing in the polls, pat each other on the back, hold our hands in the air.

Cockburn lost a game of darts with Amber Athey at the weekend, so he got the distinct pleasure of trekking over to the Virginia Highlands Park in Arlington on Tuesday, to watch a cavalcade of Virginia Democrats — and President Joe Biden — stump for Terry McAuliffe, one week ahead of Election Day. (Amber, meanwhile, was indoors at a Loudoun County school board meeting, which you can read about here.) He joined a single-file line of Democrats at just after 5 p.m. that stretched the full width of the park. At its head, a group of Youngkin supporters were gathered on a verge, wielding signs that read “LET’S GO BRANDON,” “Virginia runs on Youngkin” and “More like Terry McAwful.

October is upon us, which means it’s horror movie season. And a new release promises ‘a dark dystopian story’ that depicts ‘terrifyingly evil’ behavior. But Cockburn raised an eyebrow at the trailer for Florever Purge, which contains very little to fear and a lot to love. Among the supposedly blood-curdling lines uttered by the movie’s main villain: ‘We trust people to make their own decisions’ and ‘We’re not going to be bludgeoning people with restrictions, mandates, lockdowns or any of that stuff.’ Cockburn is no horror connoisseur, but ‘I’m going to leave you alone’ doesn’t give him goosebumps. For most of the trailer, Cockburn found himself not hiding behind his sofa, but nodding his head in agreement.

Cockburn was intrigued to learn that OkCupid, the dating app service, now offers a ‘pro-choice’ badge for its users’ profiles. The feature was introduced in response to Texas Senate Bill 8, a law that could potentially limit abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected at around six weeks.  While dating apps are not Cockburn’s preferred method of wooing the ladies (mystery is everything), he wonders whether this corporate vice-signaling is catching on. In addition to abortion enthusiasm, OkCupid also promotes itself as a platform for the sexually adventurous. On its website, colorful gender-bending models simulate various sex positions and one apparent orgy.

Oh, those Hunter Biden emails? At least some of them are real, according to a new book. Politico staffers casually smuggled a ‘revelation’ from their colleague Ben Schreckinger’s The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty Years of Tragedy into Tuesday’s edition of the Playbook AM email. By sheer coincidence, Schreckinger’s book was also released on Tuesday. Schreckinger independently verified both the ’10 held by H for the big guy?’ email and a 2015 email ‘from a Ukrainian businessman thanking him for the chance to meet Joe Biden’. Politico further confirms that ‘emails released by a Swedish government agency also match emails in the leaked cache, and two people who corresponded with Hunter Biden confirmed emails from the cache were genuine’.

Cockburn’s invite to the Met Gala must have gotten lost in the mail — so instead he spent Monday night in Washington at the 2021 Bradley Prizes. Well-heeled guests sauntered into the National Building Museum, a rare building in downtown DC that has yet to be ceded to the homeless, or worse, the federal government. The night’s honorees were Federalist senior editor and Fox News mainstay Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, Roger R. Ream, chairman of The Fund for American Studies, and the author Amity Schales. The Bradley Foundation is a Milwaukee-based conservative foundation that, according to its website, 'envisions a nation invigorated by the principles and institutions that uphold our unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'.

Absent from most headlines on Wednesday was the egging of California recall candidate Larry Elder during a trip to the cockroach-infested district of Venice Beach in LA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PakVQjHPOyg Less than a week before Californians decide whether or not to sack Gov. Gavin Newsom, Elder's campaign thought it would be a great PR opportunity for the candidate to tour the homeless cesspool of Venice on Wednesday. The visit started with a warm boomer welcome from supporters outside a Gold's Gym as Elder stepped off his black-and-red campaign bus. Things took an unexpected turn when a large group of wet-brained granola munchers and resident crackheads confronted Elder and his convoy as they made their way through Sunset Avenue's dilapidated neighborhood.