October 27, 2020

Obama twirling and skittering in Lititz... Trump in Lititz...

On April 2, 2008, I blogged about Maureen Dowd's assertion that "Hillary has clearly raised Obama’s consciousness about the importance of courting the ladies." She fleshed out the theory like this: 
Touring a manufacturing plant in Allentown, Pa., Tuesday, he was flirtatious, winking and grinning at the women working there, calling one “Sweetie,” telling another she was “beautiful,” and imitating his daughters’ dance moves by twirling around 
Later, at a Scranton town hall, he went up to Denise Mercuri, a pharmacist from Dunmore wearing a Hillary button. “What do I need to do? Do you want me on my knees?” he charmed, before promising: “I’ll give you a kiss.”... 
At the Wilbur chocolate shop in Lititz Monday, he spent most of his time skittering away from chocolate goodies, as though he were a starlet obsessing on a svelte waistline. 
“Oh, now,” the woman managing the shop told him with a frown, “you don’t worry about calories in a chocolate factory.”

At the time, I said: "Wait, is [Hillary] toughening him up or feminizing him? And is the feminine stuff nauseatingly stereotyped?" Look at all the stereotypically feminine things pasted on Obama: He was "flirtatious." He was "twirling." His dance was an imitation of his daughters' dancing. He "charmed." He "skittered." He acted like " starlet obsessing on a svelte waistline." He was chided by another woman for worrying about calories. 

There's less shaming of Trump for seeming feminine, but it happens. He was mocked just 2 days ago for dancing like a woman.

But the reason I'm going back to that post is that it's about Lititz and Trump gave a rally in Lititz. My paternal grandparents are from Lititz. They are buried in the Lititz Moravian Cemetery. 

Lititz was founded by members of the Moravian Church in 1756 and was named after a castle in Bohemia near the village of Kunvald where the ancient Bohemian Brethren's Church had been founded in 1457.... For a century, only Moravians were permitted to live in Lititz....
Here's Trump in Lititz: 


I'm so pleased to see him in the home of my ancestors. From the transcript:
For the last half century, Joe Biden’s been outsourcing your jobs right here in Pennsylvania. You were one of the biggest victims of it... Now Biden is trying to ban fracking. You heard it the other night. Oh, it was so nice. He almost made it through the debate. I was a little surprised. Wasn’t great, but he was fine. And then we talk the energy question and he forgot. He forgot. Now we want to wean ourselves off energy. Oh, that’s not so good. And I said, Texas, are you listening? Pennsylvania, are you listening? Now he’s going to ban fracking because he has no choice. His party wants to ban it. He’s going to ban fracking and deliver an economic death sentence for Pennsylvania and for many other places in our country... 
In last week’s debate, Joe Biden confirmed his plan to abolish the entire U.S. oil industry. I said, “You mean no more oil, Joe?” “Well, that’s what I mean.”  
I felt Like Perry, Mason. You ever watched Perry Mason? That last little. It was always the last minute. “I did it. I did it. Yes, I did it." I was Perry Mason. No oil, Joe?...
Here's what that "I did it — I did it yes — I did it" looked like on the old Perry Mason show:

110 comments:

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Left wing terror is real.
&
Why the left love Che and Billionaire Castro family.... and re-education camps.


7 Open Leftist Threats That Political Terror Is Coming To America Whether Trump Wins Or Not

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Microsoft Rep Threatens To ‘Slide Knife Between Ribs’ Of ‘Asshole’ Conservatives

Humperdink said...

I traveled to Lititz the previous weekend to watch my grandson play soccer. Manhein vs. Lititz. Lovely town. They have the most beautiful rec center around. Three pools plus dedicated pickleball courts. Street sign "polling" reveals it's Trump country.

Skeptical Voter said...

Trump is hitting all the hot spots. Lititz PA--Bullhead City AZ---coming soon to a town near you.

chickelit said...

This explains Althouse’s bohemian streak, no?

David Begley said...

Trump in Omaha today!

mezzrow said...

Here are some excellent Moravian Trombones.

https://youtu.be/VCx40cQBhe4

My mother never missed a Perry Mason novel or television program.

Poor Hamilton Burger. How thankless to be the Washington Generals of the courtroom. Thing is, with that record, he could work for some of the prosecutors we have going right now.

wendybar said...

Wait...I thought calling women sweetie was condescending and sexist?? I guess unless it is Saint Obama Do No Wrong. What a joke liberal women are. They make me laugh.

wendybar said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
wendybar said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Clyde said...

How squirrelly have things gotten that the Amish are actually taking a side? Don't they generally stay out of politics?

Temujin said...

Lititz. Once, a long time ago in another life I lived, I went to 'chocolate school' in Lititz. I thought it was a charming small town surrounded by rolling hills and pastures. Nice part of the country. Plus, the Yuengling tastes better there than it has anywhere I've lived.

Joe could win Philadelphia area voters without leaving bed. Democrats own that city. However, they don't own the state and Trump will take Pennsylvania, starting with Lititz.

Unknown said...

That last one was a doozy. I’m still laughing.

Unknown said...

That last one was a doozy. I’m still laughing.

iowan2 said...

Obama is admired, and praised for something President Trump would be impeached for by the end of the week.

Narayanan said...

If Joe ever watched Perry Mason what character would be his choice?

Wince said...

Speaking of 2008, 'Dancing Queen' was John McCain's favorite song.

You're a teaser, you turn 'em on
Leave 'em burning and then you're gone
Looking out for another
Anyone will do
You're in the mood for a dance
And when you get the chance

You are the dancing queen
Old and mean
Only seventy-three
Dancing queen
Feel the beat from the tambourine, oh yeah
You can dance
You can jive
Having the time of your life
Ooh, see that maverick
Watch that scene
Digging the dancing queen

gilbar said...

flirtatious, winking and grinning at the women working there, calling one “Sweetie,”
telling another she was “beautiful,”What do I need to do? Do you want me on my knees?”
he charmed, before promising: “I’ll give you a kiss.”...


Serious Question: was there EVER a time, when democrat politicians WEREN'T sexual harassers?

Kate said...

Thanks for that Perry Mason montage. Very funny!

Trump treats his supporters like gamer buds. High fives all around for a great achievement moment. It's endearing.

rhhardin said...

Charming feminists requires different but similar skills to charming regular women. Watch any guy attending a NOW meeting with a date.

Karen of Texas said...

In the era of MeToo, Obama's behavior should be seen as assault in all its nuances - like with words. Give a kiss indeed.

Of course, who am I kidding. He could behave the exact same way today and not an eyebrow raised. Trump would be roasted.

Lurker21 said...


You know who else came from Lititz?

Okay, Linz.

Big difference.

AllenS said...

Check out the Amish behind Trump in the video of Trump in Lititz.

Fernandinande said...

Obummer is/was like those "safe" males in boy bands.

Doug Sherlock said...

Plus, the Moravians cared for Lafayette when he was wounded!

FleetUSA said...

How many lawyers-to-be watched Perry Mason when they were kids. I did, but only did criminal law during my 3 years in the Navy.

bagoh20 said...

Of course Obama does this stuff for the ladies, because it works. That's the embarrassing part. It has nothing to do with the questions at issue in the race, and that's what really sucks about it.

daskol said...

What an unlovely collection of words in that title. Like nails on a chalkboard.

mtrobertslaw said...

Oh,Oh, looks like Trump has locked up the Amish vote.

mikee said...

I grew up with Ironsides, and discovered Perry Mason only later through reruns.

Trump has a few years on me, valuable experience such as being able to reference 1950s TV seen during the original broadcasts. But we both must have enjoyed the lovely Susan Saing James as the wife of MacMillan, the then-closeted homosexual Rock Hudson. And probably Mannix, McCloud, Cannon, Beretta, Barnaby Jones and, in the movie theaters of the era, SHAFT.

Nonapod said...

I was gonna say that younger people may not get the Perry Mason reference, but evidently HBO is doing a Perry Mason reboot.

richlb said...

Perry Mason. How topical. I bet more people get the "weighs the same as a duck" reference than the Perry Mason reference.

Openidname said...

"I'm so pleased to see him in the home of my ancestors."

Hmmm, that doesn't sound like cruel neutrality.

mccullough said...

I love Trump’s references to the old-time stuff like Perry Mason.



narciso said...


Oh

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/hunter-biden-chaired-foundation-stop-child-abuse-daniel-greenfield/

Spiros said...

Is Obama's behavior responsible? Men turn to homophobia in order to reassert their manhood and compensate for this sort of feminisation. Is he encouraging violence?

Wilbur said...

This one 66 year-old lawyer - maybe the only one - who has never watched Perry Mason. Nor LA Law. Nor any lawyer show I can think of.

rcocean said...

When i first saw the place name, I thought "When did Trump go to Poland"? What an odd German name for a town. Anyway, i hope the R's don't think they're going to get that many votes because Senile Joe is going to destroy the oil industry. How many voters work in the oil industry? And even more important, how many are smart enough to know that destroying the oil industry is what Biden will do, and how it will effect their lives?

The D party has gone INSANE. Will the sainted Moderates save us? I hope so, but they are moderate for a reason.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

One of Althouse’s go-to publications, the New Yorker, ran an article about Portland’s Antifa organization, one of the oldest of such groups. This non-hyperlinked URL leads to a Hot Air summary of the New Yorker article. I didn’t peruse the original yet but if Althouse did perhaps she can evaluate whether Antifa is more an IDEA or an ORGANIZATION based on this article in a trusted source.

https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2020/10/26/new-yorker-signs-trouble-among-portlands-antifa-groups/

rehajm said...

They're Mennonites...cars, phones, electricity are okay...

traditionalguy said...

Good old Jan Hus founded the Moravians. He was the first of many Protestants to speak his mind and be cancelled (burned at the stake) for doing it.

rcocean said...

I think Dowd said more complimentary things about Obama in that one extract, then she's written about Trump in five years. Obama and Joe Biden are similar. Both project a moderate, "average moderate joe" persona but Obama has come out for packing the court and getting rid of the filibuster and thinks the USA is a racist country that needs to be changed in radical ways. Joe is the same.

Meanwhile the press keeps trying to paint Trump as some weird Hitler-lite, yet Trump has given us peace and prosperity (before CV-19) and is trying to give us law and order. He's the stable candidate. Biden is the radical. But appearances are deceiving.

Thistlerose said...

Looks like Trump just won PA

https://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2020/10/27/philadelphia-protest-walter-wallace-vandalism-stores-foot-locker-family-dollar-looting/

West Texas Intermediate Crude said...

Professor Althouse, more Perry Mason, please.
Also, a Perry Mason tag, if it's not too much trouble.
Professional courtesy, you know.

Joe Smith said...

"Left wing terror is real.
&
Why the left love Che and Billionaire Castro family.... and re-education camps."


Che. Che(r).

Coincidence? I think not.

We're one 'arr' away from armageddon.

To be safe, never elect a pirate.

Joe Smith said...

"Wait...I thought calling women sweetie was condescending and sexist??"

Not sweetie; 'sugar tits.'

Now that's sexist and more of a Bill Clinton line.

But he still got away with a lot of malarkey.

rehajm said...

Of course Obama does this stuff for the ladies, because it works.

It's gotta something about political power. That loser ginger Kennedy kid would patronize my local Starbucks and the buzz among some ladies while he waited for his chai- like panties just popping off and flying through the room.

Curious George said...

"AllenS said...
Check out the Amish behind Trump in the video of Trump in Lititz."

"mtrobertslaw said...
Oh,Oh, looks like Trump has locked up the Amish vote."

Amish? Or Mennonites?

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

My ancestors were from Prague. I didn't know Althouse had Czech ancestry. I guess the Moravians in Lititz wanted to keep their distance from the Bohemians though.

mtrobertslaw said...
Oh,Oh, looks like Trump has locked up the Amish vote.

10/27/20, 9:05 AM

That might be more significant than we think. The Amish are generally apolitical. However, the Democrat assault on religious freedom might have made them realize that they better get off their buggies and vote for the guy who will leave them alone or eventually they'll be a designated "hate group." The Orthodox Jews already realize that.

Earnest Prole said...

Trump, Obama, and Bill Clinton all share a certain femininity that balances their masculinity and contributes to their appeal. I believe you were for noticing that before you were against noticing that.

Sam L. said...

Ahhhhhhh, MoDo (the dodo).

Professional lady said...

I think MoDo is looking for a boyfriend not a president. Too bad for her that she's so confused.

narciso said...


Interesting


https://mobile.twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1321099919294423040

Ice Nine said...

Real men don't twirl. It's not at all surprising that Obama did. He also threw a ball and rode a bike like a woman. And it wasn't because he was trying to get women's votes.

richlb said...

Perry Mason. How topical. I bet more people get the "weighs the same as a duck" reference than the Perry Mason reference.

Bruce Hayden said...

I found the crowd behind Trump interesting. Men with traditional straw hats and beards, with the women in front wearing Trump hats and red and blue MAGA face masks.

Scott Patton said...

A post about Lititz.
Is Titus still around?

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

Not seeing BLM riots & looting in Philly on your local or national news?

Keep scrolling Andy Ngo's twitter feed for videos


If you charge the police with a knife - I guess the police should stand there and take it.

mockturtle said...

I had a good friend who was a Mennonite and her husband was a computer programmer. They dressed in the traditional garb and didn't register to vote, though. Maybe they do now when our basic rights are at stake.

I'm Not Sure said...

"perhaps she can evaluate whether Antifa is more an IDEA or an ORGANIZATION based on this article in a trusted source."

Do ideas have their own websites?

mockturtle said...

Charming feminists requires different but similar skills to charming regular women. Watch any guy attending a NOW meeting with a date.

So rhhardin attends NOW meetings. Who knew?

Churchy LaFemme: said...

The only Mason plot point I recall is the time his client was on trial for murder, and then the "victim" turned up alive, so she was found innocent.

Then the "victim" was murdered for realz and once again she was the suspect: Not so fast, said Mason, my client was found innocent of the murder of Mr. X and to try her again for that crime would be double-jeopardy. (Iirc, it didn't work, but bought him enough time to figure out the real answer).

WWIII Joe Biden, Husk-Puppet + America's Putin said...

After leftwing antifa brownshirts in Portland are arrested and released over and over- without consequence - is it any wonder the leftists who run Oregon want to keep their criminal identity a secret?

"Oregon Democrat lawmakers @ propose law to limit release of arrest photos in Oregon. Left-wing activists & antifa have been calling for this after so many of them were arrested at the 125+ days of rioting this year. ..."

link

gilbar said...

rcocean said...
i hope the R's don't think they're going to get that many votes because Senile Joe is going to destroy the oil industry. How many voters work in the oil industry?

as Al Smith would say, let's take a look, at the record
New Study: 322,600 Pennsylvania jobs supported by natural gas and oil
Trump won Pennsylvania by 44,292 votes, so that's 278,308 more people than Trump won by
The study, conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and commissioned by API, showed that the natural gas and oil industry supported 10.3 million U.S. jobs in 2015.
That's more than three times the number that Hilary! "won" the poplar vote by

Joe Smith said...

"Check out the Amish behind Trump in the video of Trump in Lititz."

Do an of them look like Kelly McGillis?

She didn't age well, btw, but few of us do.

But back in the day she was hotness personified.

Lurker21 said...


Perry Mason was on in syndicated reruns through the '70s. It's probably still on somewhere in the world. And of course the books were a big deal in the '50s and '60s. If you have to go with retroculture references, it's not a bad choice.

HBO has a new Perry Mason series on now. It's set in the '30s and doesn't have much to do with the original series. Perry's not a lawyer but a private investigator, and the new neo-noir show is more like Chinatown than the Raymond Burr series.

J. Farmer said...

For the last half century, Joe Biden’s been outsourcing your jobs right here in Pennsylvania.

This is true enough, but you could easily replace "Joe Biden"' with "the Democrats and Republicans." If you replaced "half century" with "four years" you could substitute "Trump" for "Biden." The factors.

The political figure most proximately responsible for our current state is Ronald Reagan. The neoliberal reforms Reagan supported and sent abroad via structural adjustment were the groundwork for the globalization that would kick into overdrive following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Trade liberalization, mas immigration, and militarism has been supported by every Congress and White House since, regardless of who controlled what. Trump has only slightly tapped the break on these issues, and even that has sent the establishment into apoplexy.

The ruling class benefits hugely from globalization, and they will fight tooth and nail to maintain those benefits. They've largely succeeding in hemming Trump him. No single The problem is too systemic to be solved by a single president. Congress has to be on board, and it's likely the country is too divided and fragmented to produce a governing majority that won't be loathed by a substantial number of people. This insures an incessant, motivated oppositonism from the other side.

More likely than not, it will take some kind of big external shock to the system before there is substantial change. And even then, something like breaking the country up into smaller pieces could be the best outcome to hope for.

Iman said...

What I loved about the 0bama Years was all the racial healing, all of the refugees and every last bit of the mincing.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Ah, Perry Mason! The only show in history with a honest-to-God ground-bass tune for its theme song. My husband once spent a year or so, 20 years back, putting dozens of PM episodes on CD-ROM, three to a disc. We still watch them.

Maureen Dowd wrote that? Man, what Obama does to a certain kind of ditzy female. If Trump had said or done any of that, she'd have gone all Kathie Lee Giffords on his head.

Yancey Ward said...

I have actually been to Litice Castle- is that the one?

Yancey Ward said...

Remind me- was Dowd pro-Shelob or pro-Obama in the primaries? The exerpts sound like she was pro-Shelob.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Nonapod said...

I was gonna say that younger people may not get the Perry Mason reference, but evidently HBO is doing a Perry Mason reboot.

Ew! They made Mason a PI and Paul Drake a cop! That's so wrong!

PubliusFlavius said...


Drain and Re-Delegate Federal Authority across the 50 states.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1321087723281801216

Bruce Hayden said...

“ They're Mennonites...cars, phones, electricity are okay...”

We see a lot more Mennonites in NW MT than other Anabaptist sects. The next town to the East though has a sign with a Buggy with “Next 25 miles”. And got a guy to do work for us from that town (still another sect), who has 16 kids, with grandkids older than his youngest kids. I suspect that their idea of family planning is different than you would commonly find in Madison. You can, literally see the Mennonites coming. They drive the clean stripped down minivans. If it looks trashy, it is probably White Trash. The Mennonites take care of their vehicles. And they drive minivans because they are the cheap way to drive around 4-5 kids. Very well behaved happy kids.

There was a group of four guys right behind Trump with beards and matching Straw hats. They maybe tried to be somber. But it didn’t work. The nearest one, not wearing a mask, in particular, laughed at a lot of Trump’s jokes and esp the one about Biden banning cows. When my partner was with her ex, they had a couple Mennonite families across the highway from their farm. Her uncle, ever the entertainer struck up a friendship with them, and whenever he was in town, they would come visit a lot. Always with a lot of hand prepared food, of course. Far better than what is available at the grocery store. One of the names that her uncle went by was “Cho Cho”, because he could blow smoke out his ears. And would do it saying cho cho. The normally stoic Mennonite men just loved his performances. Not so nice when he would do it walking around the grocery store. And esp embarrassing, when strangers, upon hearing her last name, asked if she were related to Cho Cho.

Still, I wonder if their views on female modesty might not have a place. There seems to have been a race to the bottom, in terms of female modesty in this country. It is always interesting to see Mennonite women and girls, in their hand made, patterned, ankle length dresses in line at the store with a lot of the late teen and early twenties aged women there, showing off as much more f their sexual charms as they can get away with. I ask myself, which are more likely to be treated as sex objects, versus persons in their own right. The reality is that males are very visual, when it comes to sexual arrousal. And seeing female sexual lures openly displayed automatically gets a lot of the guys in the vicinity thinking about sex. And if a guy is thinking sexually about a woman, he most likely isn’t looking at her as a person, with a brain, etc.

bagoh20 said...

I think Trump had a doppelganger made of himself, maybe a couple of them. He's everywhere everyday. I think it was yesterday or the day before when he visited 5 states in one day. He seems to be here in Nevada every week. His opponent, who I forget the name right now, and who is running for Senate in some unknown state against George Bush seems unable to make more than one appearance a week.

Trump has more energy than any man I've ever seen. It makes me want to take up teetotalism and pussy grabbing for my health. Is pussy gluten-free? Just like with bread, I have a hard time stopping at just the grabbing.

bagoh20 said...

And what's this "sugar tits" stuff? Is that a real thing. It sounds wonderful.

bagoh20 said...

Is this legal?

"Google, the world’s most powerful technology company, is actively interfering in the coming election by burying links to Breitbart News in its search results.

In July, Breitbart News published data showing that Breitbart’s Google search visibility is down 99 percent compared to the same period in 2016.

RealClearPolitics later published data corroborating this, and showing that the same silent expulsion from Google search results has happened to a variety of other conservative news websites as well."


https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/10/27/election-interference-google-suppresses-breitbart-news-in-search-even-with-exact-headline/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+breitbart+%28Breitbart+News%29

Professional lady said...

I mostly hate lawyer shows/movies because they show lawyers doing things in court that they would never get away with. Perry Mason wins his case largely by putting his own testimony on the record through his "gotcha" questions. My Cousin Vinny is the exception - in so many ways it hits the mark.

MacMacConnell said...

Just watched Obama live at a rally in Orlando Fla on FOX. Meh. I've put on shrimp boils for the Young Republicans in Topeka that drew four times more people, FYI I'm not an ex-president.

henge2243 said...

“I’m going to be going to Iowa. I’m going to Wisconsin. I’m going to Georgia. I'm going to Wisconsin. I’m going to Florida and maybe other places as well, yeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagghhh... cough...cough.... wheez...cough” Biden said at the stop, which took place at the relatively late hour (for him - dinner time) of 4 p.m.

Rory said...

"The only show in history with a honest-to-God ground-bass tune for its theme song."

Many episodes begin with the theme as the camera zooms in on Perry...looking at a piece of paper.

"It's probably still on somewhere in the world."

It's a mainstay of the subchannel network MeTV, on morning and night.

Rosa Marie Yoder said...

Many Amish have registered to vote for the first time, just in case. It's a whole new territory for most, but they're are thinking about it. I don't think they comprise a large enough percentage of the population in most states to make a big difference. Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana are the exceptions. It's greatly encouraging to see them at Trump rallies.

Big Mike said...

That loser ginger Kennedy kid would patronize my local Starbucks and the buzz among some ladies while he waited for his chai- like panties just popping off and flying through the room.

When you’re rich and famous they let you grab them by ...

Ralph L said...

Perry Mason was on in syndicated reruns through the '70s. It's probably still on somewhere in the world.

Not too long ago, it was on MeTV at 11:30 pm weeknights.

Given Raymond Burr's proclivities, it's funny that most PM clients were pretty young females. The pretty young men got bit parts, probably in more ways than one.

Michael said...

One of the funnier moments of the 2016 campaign was a reporter constantly mispronouncing the town as "Lie-Tits"

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Bruce Hayden,

Wrt to modest female dress -- i.e., the kind that falls short of the full burqa/niqab monstrosities, but also far short of the insanity that passes for "fashion" today -- the Mennonites seem akin to our Russian Old Believers (yes, they exist in Salem, OR, as well as in Khovantschina). Their clothes are also generally handmade, not exactly Laura Ashley but in a similar vein. Simple, practical, long sleeves and long skirts, not designed to be skin-tight or to show off this or that body part.

It seems to me in general that we've lost track of what clothes are for. There was a protest in the local public school system last year about "overly restrictive dress codes," yet again. The poor darlings insist that their individuality is being trodden upon because they can't wear skirts that barely cover their buttocks, or show off their navels, or slit their blouses all the way down to crotch level. There were a few actual complaints, of girls being disciplined for accidentally-on-purpose showing their bra straps and the like, but really.

Richard Dolan said...

Trump is such a hoot at these rallies. He notes, e.g., that Sleepy Joe put another 'lid' on today, and then adds, like a 'lid on the garbage can.' The guy knows how to be entertaining while making his points.

Michael K said...

The political figure most proximately responsible for our current state is Ronald Reagan. The neoliberal reforms Reagan supported and sent abroad via structural adjustment were the groundwork for the globalization that would kick into overdrive following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Remember that Reagan had Democrat Congresses that allowed him, grudgingly, to win the Cold War while they spent and passed what they wanted. The Amnesty deal was the most flagrant sell out but he was caught with both parties supporting it. The Republicans were no pikers in globalization. Those were the days of Chamber of Commerce Republicans. The worst thing Reagan did was pick Bush for VP but he was seen as a wild man by the GOP.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

bagoh20, of course it's "legal"; Google can have its ultra-secret algorithms do whatever the hell it wants, being a private company. Is it also unfair, prejudicial, and weirdly petty? Of course. Google will probably say that it's just an unfortunate side effect of its algorithms, just as Harvard defended Asian students' all mysteriously getting lower "personality" scores than white kids (or other minorities) in its admissions process as just the way things happened to shake out.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Yes, MeTV is where Perry hangs out these days. (Forget the "remake," which is nothing of the kind, beyond filching the names of a couple of characters and applying them to members of different professions ... yikes.) At the time we were ripping CD-ROMs, I think it was on Turner Classic Movies, lunchtime hour.

Big Mike said...

If you charge the police with a knife - I guess the police should stand there and take it.

I assume BLM wants the police to supplement their handguns by carryIng a bunch of knives, like the guy in “V for Vendetta,” except of varying blade lengths so when a guy with a knife attacks them they can match the size of the attacker’s knife and make the fight as fair as possible.

Or ... we can take the position that a person with a lethal weapon (the knife) attacked other people armed with lethal weapons (guns). What do they say about bringing a knife to a gunfight? It used to be called “suicide by cop,” and intelligent people need to remember that.

tcrosse said...

On the old Perry Masons you could set your watch by the time whodunit was revealed, ten minutes to the end.

Big Mike said...

[Obama] also threw a ball and rode a bike like a woman.

But Althouse thinks Trump dances like a woman, so Obama earned her vote but Trump does not.

todd galle said...

They're Mennonites, not Amish, but traditional Mennonites just the same. Used to spend time on a friends relatives Mennonite farm not far from Lititz. Had to work in the fields, but that made the pond feel better for swimming. Far nicer than picking Okra at my aunts South Carolina place. Ugh. Old PA joke - you can drive through Blue Ball to Lititz and end up in Intercourse. God bless Lancaster County. Has the best train museum in the country at Strasburg, a PRR memorial really.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

bagoh20 said...

And what's this "sugar tits" stuff? Is that a real thing. It sounds wonderful.

Don't you remember George Carlin's "7 Dirty Words"? He maintained that tits shouldn't be on the list because it sounded like a snack food!

Sebastian said...

MDT: "It seems to me in general that we've lost track of what clothes are for. There was a protest in the local public school system last year about "overly restrictive dress codes," yet again. The poor darlings insist that their individuality is being trodden upon because they can't wear skirts that barely cover their buttocks"

Careful! Don't tell Althouse! You are forcing her to relive major childhood trauma! When her individuality was trodden upon!

John Scott said...

Speaking of Perry Mason...Not too long ago I watched an episode where someone called someone else the "lyingest dog faced soldier in the Pacific theater" Maybe Biden saw the same episode the first time around.

Leora said...

My lawyer mother loved Perry Mason. She particularly liked the way he was always working for free.

I watched the Allentown rally and Trump did the same Perry Mason bit. The crowd loved it. Coal Miners instead of Amish in the audience.

effinayright said...

Rory said...
"The only show in history [Perry Mason] with a honest-to-God ground-bass tune for its theme song."
*****************

Hmmmm...what about the "Theme from Peter Gunn"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oysMt8iL9UE

Same TV era.

DanTheMan said...

We used to have a public defender we called the anti-Perry Mason. He couldn't win a case to save his life.
The joke was you could pick up somebody at random, charge them with a crime that didn't exist, and this guy couldn't beat it.

BUMBLE BEE said...

Bruce +100 on the Mennonite foods. If you eve get a chance to taste Amish pies or breads, it will ruin you, fair warning.

Darrell said...

In HBO's Perry Mason, he becomes a lawyer in the end--helped by Della's friend, Hamilton Burger, to pass the bar exam. The mother on trial needed competent counsel after the lawyer Perry was working for died. The DA, with ambitions for higher public office, has pulled out all stops to get a conviction, scaring off established lawyers--as do the leaked facts of the case.

This show is another example of Hollywood cannibalizing an existing intellectual property and its fanbase instead of creating original characters. The show has nothing to do with the original source material or its original adaptation, except incidentals.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

wholelottasplainin',

That wasn't Rory, it was me. And you have got a point there. Except "Peter Gunn" is more a bar-long ostinato, and "Perry" a whole four-bar ground bass.

J. Farmer said...

@Michael K:

The worst thing Reagan did was pick Bush for VP but he was seen as a wild man by the GOP.

I disagree, I think the worst thing he did was lay the groundwork for the most recent phase of globalization. Regan ran on free trade in 1980 and after the launching of the Uruguary Round of negotiations, the administration supported reducing barriers and global tariffs and supported what would eventually become the WTO. He also negotiated the first part of what would eventually become NAFTA.

On immigration, Reagan mouthed now familiar clichés. He would quip that Latinos were "Republicans" that "just don't know it yet." He supported Puerto Rican statehood. Reagan was even engaging in "crops rotting in the fields" alarmism in the late 1970's: "It makes one wonder about the illegal alien fuss. Are great numbers of our unemployed really victims of the illegal alien invasion, or are those illegal tourists actually doing work our own people won't do? One thing is certain in this hungry world: No regulation or law should be allowed if it results in crops rotting in the fields for lack of harvesters."

Reagan's sentimental views of trade and immigration were steadfast right up to his last day in office. During his televised farewell address, he gave his vision of America as the city on a hill, "a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and heart to get here.”

Thanks, Gipper.

bagoh20 said...

"bagoh20, of course it's "legal"; Google can have its ultra-secret algorithms do whatever the hell it wants, being a private company."

Seems like an illegal campaign contribution if you use your company resources to promote or restrict material for just one candidate over the other, especially if you do advertising for a living.

If not illegal, isn't it a tort?

bagoh20 said...

"Reagan's sentimental views of trade and immigration were steadfast right up to his last day in office."

Lots of us believed it too, because it was mostly true then, but like most government programs, people figured out how to game both immigration and trade to the detriment of U.S Jobs, government benefits, and trade secrets of our companies. No good deed goes unabused. We had 40 years to reign it in, and we did just the opposite.

Unknown said...

"I'm so pleased to see him in the home of my ancestors." You should be ashamed.

ken in tx said...

Historical trivia: A sugar tit is a homemade baby's pacifier. It is made from a lump of sugar tied inside a corner of a scrap of cloth.

Clyde said...

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...
Nonapod said...

I was gonna say that younger people may not get the Perry Mason reference, but evidently HBO is doing a Perry Mason reboot.

Ew! They made Mason a PI and Paul Drake a cop! That's so wrong!


I'm surprised they didn't make him black, like Ralph Kramden or Jake from State Farm. Or a woman. Or gay. Seems like almost all of the reboots are about rebranding some old straight white male into something else.

Doug said...

You know, the dems must secretly hate themselves for lavishing so much love, affection, and assets on zerobama, only to find out what a self-centered egotist and lousy campaigner he is. It is clear that now that he has his hay in the barn, he gives zero f*cks about anyone else. What a non-entity.