Allegheny County Democrat Erin McClelland topped state Rep. Ryan Bizzarro in Tuesday's Democratic primary for state treasurer. She will now face Stacy Garrity, the Republican incumbent, this fall. Treasurer is one of three of Pennsylvania's executive level offices that will appear on the November ballot; the other two are state attorney general and state auditor general.

Along with attorney general candidate Eugene DePasquale, McClelland is Allegheny County’s other contender in the statewide ballot this spring — but her rival lives just a couple of hours up Interstate 79.

State Rep. Ryan Bizzarro has represented Erie in the state House for more than a decade and has garnered the endorsement of the state Democratic Party. McClelland is a mental health and substance abuse counselor who worked as a contractor for Allegheny County. She has previously run unsuccessful campaigns for Allegheny County executive and Congress, twice winning the party’s nomination but losing to the Republican incumbent.

Both have criticized incumbent Garrity for factors that include her close ties to Donald Trump. But their own primary battle was contentious, involving questions about McClelland’s campaign finance reports and Bizzarro’s decade-old support for a bill that would prevent state insurance exchanges from covering most abortions.

sssh! don’t wake up Donny during his trial. he’s in the middle of a dream. it’s a big, beautiful dream. in fact, it may be the greatest dream of all time. it goes something like this:

the real heroes of January 6th — the brave freedom fighters now beings unfairly held as hostages — bust out of prison and come to New York, where they stream into the courthouse where that crabby old fuckface Judge Merchan is forcing Donny to listen to mean tweets....

there’s just one problem with this dream: yesterday, outside the courthouse, only three or four protesters showed up.



they were outnumbered by the comedy duo The Good Liars, who came to interview them — by which I mean they were there to mock MAGA to their faces. also, there’s this little thing called security. welcome to New York, where they don’t fuck around, or take chances. lower Manhattan is now crawling with cops.

What is going on with this new The Office thing? The possible reboot/possible revival/possible spin-off has been all smoke and mirrors and Greg Daniels schemes. But it’s real enough to have apparently bagged two pretty big names as the first actors cast. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Domhnall Gleeson (of the Star Wars sequel trilogy) and Sabrina Impacciatore (of the second season of The White Lotus) have signed on to join this amorphous mystery version of the beloved sitcom.

As we’ve been following, Daniels (who created the American version of the workplace comedy) has been developing some new version of the show that’s set in the same universe as the one that’s home to Michael Scott (Steve Carrell), Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson), and Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer). Last month, it was reported that Daniels had brought on Nathan For You co-creator Michael Koman to be his partner on this new project, which as of yet has no studio attached. Now, THR says the duo “have been casting a wide net to find talent availabilities for the latter half of this year.”

Basically, we don’t know anything about what the show will be like or what the actors will be doing yet. But you couldn’t really ask for better stars than Gleeson and Impacciatore. Impacciatore was a standout in the darkly comedic White Lotus. And Gleeson has proven his range, from sniveling and unpleasant in Star Wars to warm, funny, and charming in About Time. Beyond their many talents, the casting also suggests an interestingly international bent to this new Office (Impacciatore is Italian and Gleeson is Irish). That’s a departure from the sort of homogenous middle America of Scranton, Pennsylvania in Daniels’ original. We’ll have to wait and see what Daniels and co. have in store.

Two hundred days remain until the presidential election that will shape America’s destiny for the balance of the 21st century. The time will pass quickly. The magnitude of the decision cannot be overstated, nor can the threat to the American way of life that is imperiled by MAGA/fascism. A great test is at hand.

What is the nature of the test? What must be overcome? We live in an era of obnoxious, transcendent and ubiquitous cynicism.

American politics and media are the white hot molten epicenter of our cynicism meltdown. We are besotted with some of the most unprincipled, craven and morally corrupt Americans in our history, who roam the MAGA range spitting venom, sputtering idiocies, and immolating previously stated unshakable principles for THE DONALD. They do it all for power and fame.

Whether it be Tucker Carlson, the 2020s version of Father Coughlin, a thousand religious hustlers like Pastor Paula, a million Covid grifters, slews of access journalists whoring for clicks, gaggles of media c-suite executives looking for a buck, insiders turned Saudi agents, Bitcoin hustlers and social media monarchs who poison society and target children with algorithms, we live in an age of taking. The ethos of the locust is immoral and self-defeating, but there are no practitioners of the philosophy who measure up against the Aristotles of our age, who are the MAGA politicians like Elise Stefanik, Bill Barr, Lindsey Graham, and hundreds more who have abdicated decency, Americanism and their oaths for a low man and lower cause.

let’s take a closer look at the situation that led a juror to be excused from Trump’s trial.

because Donny Fuckstick and his merry band of violent cultists are a collective menace to society, precautions have to be taken to ensure the anonymity of the jurors in his trial. at the start of each day of jury selection, the defense is given a sheet of paper with the prospective jurors’ names. they’re not allowed to photograph the list. they can’t copy it. they have to hand it back at the end of the day.

apparently, these measures were not enough to assure the safety of everyone involved, because smirking Fox News fratboy Jesse Watters — who apparently thinks endangering the life of an innocent person is an amusing joke — challenged his viewers to connect the dots and figure out who the jurors were.

“juror number two. a nurse from the upper east side, with a masters degree. she’s not married, has no kids, lives with her fiancee who works in finance. she gets her news from The New York Times, Google, and CNN. she said two things that really stuck out. one quote: ‘I really don’t have an opinion of Trump,’ and quote ‘no one is above the law.’ I’m not so sure about juror number two.”

within seconds, juror number two’s phone started blowing up, with friends and family members calling and texting. is this you, are you the juror they’re talking about on Fox News?