Weekend Entertainment Guide 7/10/26

Graham Platner and Mallory McMorrow are out of the running for US Senate

I didn’t say much about the Mars-Uranus conjunction of July 3-4 last week because I didn’t want to add to the fearmongering, but I also wasn’t entirely sure that nothing would happen. Fortunately, the worst-case scenarios didn’t come to pass. As the United States of America continues clunking along, 2026’s congressional races are heating up — but only in states I’ve never been to.

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Posts on current astrological events

Natty, barbault’s basket is empty

Natty presents a solid overview of things that went on in the United States on the Fourth of July amid the much-hyped Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini. I had a pretty boring day in Oregon; I felt the roughly simultaneous Sun-Saturn square much more than the Mars-Uranus conjunction as I spent the holiday handwashing a giant pile of sweaters and decluttering old magazines at home. However, extreme weather and other disturbances more reflective of the Mars-Uranus conjunction took place elsewhere in the country.

Mutual Reception Astrology, Dispatches from Pluto in Aquarius

Mutual Reception Astrology weighs memories of past Fourth of July celebrations against a frustrating present:

Maybe that’s why the Pisces Moon felt so appropriate.

Pisces has a way of dissolving the walls between different versions of ourselves. It doesn’t separate childhood from adulthood nearly as cleanly as other signs do. Instead, it lets memories rise like dreams, carrying every feeling they ever contained. Under a Pisces Moon, the past doesn’t stay politely behind you. It sits down beside you.

Robert Wilkinson, July 4 is Not the Birthday Of the United States

Wilkinson looks at charts for the approval and implementation of the United States Constitution. The chart for the Constitution being approved in 1787 especially has a lot of synastry with my dad, who was very fascinated with the Constitution and wrote several proposals to amend it. The 1787 chart has Uranus in Cancer broadly square Neptune in Libra. Many people born in the early 1950s, including my dad, also have a square between Uranus in Cancer and Neptune in Libra, so I wonder if that speaks to that cohort having a special relationship with the country’s destiny somehow.

Venus, Real Love Does the Dishes. Venus in Virgo Will Show You Why.

Venus Uninterrupted comments on the current Venus in Virgo transit for each Rising sign, noting that it includes Venus in Virgo squaring Uranus in Gemini.

Non-astrological posts

Ken Klippenstein, My Graham Platner Apology

On July 7, Klippenstein provided continuing coverage of Graham Platner, who was then still the Democratic nominee for Maine’s US Senate seat. By then, the allegations against Platner had vaulted from mere sexting — which was the case when I discussed Klippenstein’s previous comments on Platner in Weekend Entertainment Guide 6/5/26 — into the realm of actual sexual assault. Should people have been able to say that where there’s smoke, there’s fire? In my view, this is yet another consequence of the exaggerated sensitivity of the Neptune in Pisces era (2011-2026) that we are now moving away from: when the definition of smoke gets stretched to include every little fart, eventually people stop caring about smoke, for better or for worse.

Platner then officially withdrew from the Senate race today, as reported by NBC News. The date and city of Platner’s birth are available on Wikipedia, though his birth time is unknown. Of course, as Platner’s campaign fell apart over the past week, the transiting Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini opposed Platner’s natal Mars-Uranus conjunction in Sagittarius (which is part of a T-square configuration in Platner’s chart). You can’t make this stuff up!

Oliver Kornetzke, Two lumpen classes: one broke, one just useless

Kornetzke uses the Graham Platner situation as an example of why political movements need to be grounded in principles rather than personalities.

Ryan Burge, Cosplaying Free Speech

Burge shares data on which subjects current college students find it difficult to discuss openly on campus. I was surprised to see that the conflict in the Middle East tops the list. I do not recall being that aware of stuff that was going on in other countries when I was in college. Current college students are probably the younger end of the Pluto in Sagittarius generation, which might be more tuned in to international issues. I was in college around the time they were born, and the issues I remember being big among my classmates born on the Pluto in Libra/Pluto in Scorpio cusp were gay marriage, abortion, and whether George W. Bush should be getting the United States involved in war.

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Continuing coverage of Mallory McMorrow

In Weekend Entertainment Guide 4/4/25, I said of Mallory McMorrow, who had then just announced that she was entering the Democratic primary for Michigan’s open US Senate seat in the 2026 election:

McMorrow’s birth time is not publicly known, so her Sun sign could be Leo or Virgo — a 12 a.m. chart run for her known place of birth has Sun 29°44’ Leo. Either way, she definitely has Mercury in Leo, which makes sense for her flamboyant rhetorical style.

The South Node will move over McMorrow’s Sun on the Leo/Virgo cusp shortly before the 2026 election, which isn’t great for her vitality.

The transiting South Node (True Node) is scheduled to shift from Virgo into Leo on July 26, 2026, so it’s on McMorrow’s Sun about now. Sure enough, The Guardian reported on July 5, 2026, that she had dropped out of the Senate race. One of the remaining contenders for the Democratic nomination, Abdul El-Sayed, would be the first Muslim US senator if elected.

At least McMorrow’s departure does not seem to involve a sex scandal or any other weird drama. The most specific reason The Guardian gave for her exit was as follows:

But McMorrow’s political star fell in tandem with her public criticism of El-Sayed for campaigning in April with Hasan Piker, an influential leftwing streamer who has been accused of antisemitism for comments about Jews and once said that America “deserved” the September 11 attacks, a comment he later apologized for and cast as a bad joke.

McMorrow told Jewish Insider in March, when Piker campaigned with El-Sayed, that the popular streamer was “somebody who says extremely offensive things in order to generate clicks and views”, likening him to Nick Fuentes, the prominent white nationalist.

That criticism appeared to fall flat, with McMorrow dropping in public polls from roughly even with El-Sayed and Stevens in early April to a distant third in May and registering in single digits in four polls in June.

The simplest explanation might just be that she ran out of gas, as the transiting South Node going over her Sun could indicate. We probably haven’t heard the last of her, though. Transiting Saturn in Aries hitting her prominent Aries-Libra opposition in the next year and a half or so looks tough, but she also has a lot in Fire and Air signs that will receive favorable outer planet transits over the next several years.