"Does dementia make you taller?"

Let me tell you what I really think. I don't have *any* inside info about this particular event. However, it is a fact that presidents have body doubles and decoys for security reasons. And, from a very reliable, firsthand source: To the extent our intel agencies (or whomever)… https://t.co/lAgeTIYQbm

— Sharyl Attkisson 🕵️‍♂️💼🥋 (@SharylAttkisson) July 26, 2024

"If what you’re saying is right, that Biden did something really heroic by stepping aside, offering the Party and the country the best chance to beat Donald Trump in November..."

"... I think what irks me is my fear that the people around Biden, and you can include yourself or not, but his staff, his friends, his family, would not be denouncing it as a giant risk to the Republic if he had decided to stick it out. I feel like they would be showing loyalty to him more than to the needs of the country."

Isaac Chotiner asked Jon Meacham, in "Was Biden’s Decision to Withdraw 'Heroic'? Jon Meacham, the President’s friend and informal adviser, considers his legacy" (The New Yorker).

What do expect Jon Meacham, the President's friend, to say? He says: "I think your being irked is now a hypothetical.... I totally get what you’re saying. But the fact of the matter is that the decision has been made.... I’m not minimizing the concern you’re articulating. I’m not dismissing it. It is totally legitimate. I absolutely see how people would be wrestling with that. But in point of fact, it’s no longer an issue...."

It's not a hypothetical when looking backward into the many months when Biden was sticking it out and his staff, his friends, his family, and others, including Kamala Harris, were showing loyalty to him more than to the needs of the country. Was it not a great scandal?

"I have never met a nonbinary person who thinks that they/them pronouns are somehow exclusive to nonbinary or trans people."

"They are a way to opt out of the gender binary in third-person reference, and people may choose to do that for many reasons—gender-based, political, philosophical, even religious. One uses the pronouns someone requests because it is the courteous thing to do. It does not stop being the courteous thing to do because one disagrees with the person's reason for requesting them (at least so long as the request is made in good faith rather than as political trolling)."

Says a commenter to the NYT Ethicist column, "My Relative Isn’t Trans or Nonbinary But Wants to Use ‘They/Them’ Pronouns. The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on allyship and forms of solidarity" (NYT).

The Ethicist, Kwame Anthony Appiah, took a different position: "Using pronouns properly is a matter of not misgendering people. It isn’t part of a general policy of calling people whatever they want to be called.... [Y]our relative evidently identifies as cisgender and is motivated simply by allyship.... As the N.A.A.C.P. activist Rachel Dolezal notoriously failed to grasp, solidarity with a group does not grant you membership within it. Many will find the notion that you support people by appropriating their markers of identity to be passing strange."

Why Andy Beshear will be KH's choice for VP.

It's obvious. Just look at the lineup (at WaPo): 

The force that makes her want a white man — she on her own maxes out the desired intersectionality — will make her exclude the white men who would add intersectionality — Pete Buttigieg and Josh Shapiro. That leaves 4. One is unusually unattractive. Two look old, just as KH and her accomplices are kicking old to the curb. They can't re-old. That leaves Andy. Wonderful Andy. He's 46! Just old enough to make J.D. Vance look too young. 

I don't know anything about Andy other than that he's the Governor of Kentucky. I tried googling his name and the first thing that popped up was "Andy Beshear issues apology to diet Mountain Dew after argument with JD Vance." What got him attacking Diet Mountain Dew? 

"What was weird was [Vance] joking about racism today and then talking about diet Mountain Dew. Who drinks diet Mountain Dew? But in all seriousness, he ain't from here. He is not from Kentucky. This is a guy who would come maybe in the summers for some period of time, or to weddings or funerals."

"I would cry real tears of joy if I was drunk and a boy showed up [at a party] with homemade cinnamon bread."

Writes Nell — commenting on  a TikTok video — and it's "extremely validating" to the man who was treated as though he'd done something hopelessly weird.

"Look how angry the regime gets when you ask simple questions about what it’s doing."

Writes Sean Davis, who'd had the gall/wit to ask, last Monday, "Do we have any evidence that Biden is even alive right now?"

"Wilson said that, for as long as she could remember, Musk hasn’t been a supportive father. She said he was rarely present in her life...."

"... leaving her and her siblings to be cared for by their mother or by nannies even though Musk had joint custody, and she said Musk berated her when he was present. 'He was cold,' she said. 'He’s very quick to anger. He is uncaring and narcissistic.' Wilson said that, when she was a child, Musk would harass her for exhibiting feminine traits and pressure her to appear more masculine, including by pushing her to deepen her voice as early as elementary school. 'I was in fourth grade. We went on this road trip that I didn’t know was actually just an advertisement for one of the cars — I don’t remember which one — and he was constantly yelling at me viciously because my voice was too high,' she said. 'It was cruel.'... 'I would like to emphasize one thing: I am an adult. I am 20 years old. I am not a child,” she said. “My life should be defined by my own choices.'... 'He doesn’t know what I was like as a child because he quite simply wasn’t there.... And in the little time that he was I was relentlessly harassed for my femininity and queerness.'"

From "Elon Musk's transgender daughter, in first interview, says he berated her for being queer as a child/In an exclusive interview, Vivian Jenna Wilson said her father’s recent statements, including that she is 'not a girl,' inspired her to speak out: 'I’m not just gonna let that slide'" (NBC News).

Here's what Elon Musk said in that conversation with Jordan Peterson:

"It happened to one of my older boys.... I was essentially tricked into signing documents for one of my older boys, Xavier. This is before I had really any understanding of what was going on.... I was told oh you know Xavier might commit suicide.... It wasn't explained to me that puberty blockers are actually just sterilization drugs... and so I lost my son essentially uh so you know they uh they call it dead naming for a reason.... the reason it's called dead naming is because uh your son is dead. So my son is dead, killed by the woke mind virus...."

It's hard to believe Elon Musk was "tricked into signing documents." Wilson doesn't believe Musk was tricked. You can see that Musk is very angry, and Wilson depicts Musk as a person who gets angry — "constantly yelling at me viciously." But this supports the position Jordan Peterson is taking, that there are deeper personal and family issues at play in these cases of transgenderism. 

Was I too quick to accept the pushback against calling Kamala "Kamala"?

I thought the antagonism to "Kamala" was a bad idea, and I said so here.

But I switched to the "Harris" approach, as you can see in the previous post.

Then somebody asked me where I got the idea that to use the first name alone would make me look as though I were declaring my opposition to her. My aim is neutrality, cruel neutrality.

So I googled and found "'Harris' or 'Kamala'? Inside the debate over calling women by their first or last name/The vice president has enough support from delegates to assure her the Democratic nomination, but what name does Kamala Harris want to go by?" (Yahoo). Excerpt:

There's that "brat" crap again, with the fuzzy font and the intentionally repulsive green color.

And we're given this from a person who, we're told, is "an expert," Melissa Baese-Berk, a professor of linguistics:

"And we're going to have some fun with this, aren't we?"

Harris murmurs into the phone to Obama and Obama:

Earlier this week, Michelle and I called our friend @KamalaHarris. We told her we think she’ll make a fantastic President of the United States, and that she has our full support. At this critical moment for our country, we’re going to do everything we can to make sure she wins in… pic.twitter.com/0UIS0doIbA

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) July 26, 2024

I call her "Harris." I was going to call her "my girl Kamala" — because that's what Mrs. Obama calls her in that phone call — but the powers that be have warned us not to call her "Kamala" and of course you can't say "girl" — unless you can — and "my" is a terrible problem, perhaps insinuating a perverse sense of ownership. So I'll keep my distance. "Harris" is it. Don't harass me.

Now, about this concept of "fun." It might be the new word of the day, the word on the memo that everyone got. It came up in this new Ezra Klein podcast, "This Is How Democrats Win in Wisconsin":

I mean, Sunday, I was still hearing from Democrats worried about Harris... And now, I mean, watching the party not just converge around her, but feel a real thrill around her, like really, really become passionate Harris stans, like watching the whole party fall outta the coconut tree and live unburdened by what has been, and only in the imagining of what could be. It's fun to watch Democrats have fun. They have not had fun in a long time. And it's also a good reminder that people don't know how something is gonna feel until it actually happens....

People talking about fun... enthusing This is fun... that's not a good marker of fun... whatever fun is....

I think of Zippy the Pinhead: "Are we having fun yet?"

And "And she'll have fun fun fun/'Til her daddy takes the T-bird away...."

And "Fun is the one thing that money can’t buy."

"The intentionally repulsive color won over the internet, and then the summer, and then, at a pivotal moment, an entire presidential campaign."

"In a few short days, supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, memed chartreuse into an unusually potent political symbol.... 'I will aspire to be Brat,' Jake Tapper said on CNN to one of his correspondents, who had been holding up a slime-green meme printed out on a sheet of paper."

From "You Can’t Escape This Color/'This is not millennial pink. The energy behind it is alive'" (NYT)(free-access link).

I used the last of this month's NYT gift link allowance on that article. Why? Because I knew it was hard to understand without more explanation, but I didn't want to do the explanation.

And you'll need to go over there anyway to see the particular green in question. It's a color that's connected to this word "brat," which reminds me of a word from many years ago when I was a teenager: "groovy." It was new and cool and precisely expressive of youth for a very short time before it got seized upon by everyone old and it became embarrassing. 

From the golden moment before the collapse of "groovy":

Once the TV talking heads and political candidates start using your word, they've stolen it from you. You have to move on or use it ironically or do whatever it is you kids do today when the adults are annoying you. 

As for you political candidates, be careful using the word "brat" in Wisconsin. I remember when John Kerry screwed up.

At the Ghost Flower Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

(No sunrise today. I slept too late — until 5:10 — but I could have rushed out and made it, but the weather website I use said the cloud cover was 98%, so I stayed in, had some coffee, and started up the blog.)

"Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered California state officials... to begin dismantling thousands of homeless encampments..."

"... the nation’s most sweeping response to a recent Supreme Court ruling that gave governments greater authority to remove homeless people from their streets....  His executive order could divide Democratic local leaders in California, some of whom have already begun to clear encampments while others have denounced the decision from conservative justices as opening the door to inhumane measures to solve a complex crisis. The order also comes as Democrats are uniting around Vice President Kamala Harris, a former senator and prosecutor from California.... Republicans have frequently pointed to homelessness in California as an example of the state’s purported decline.... In his executive order, Mr. Newsom advised California cities and counties on how best to ramp up enforcement on a signature issue of his administration. He cannot force them to take action, but can exert political pressure through billions of dollars the state controls for municipalities to address homelessness...."

From "Newsom Orders California Officials to Remove Homeless Encampments/The directive from Gov. Gavin Newsom is the nation’s most sweeping response to a Supreme Court decision last month that gave local leaders greater authority to remove homeless campers" (NYT).

Fungus of the Day.

Instant book.

Screen capture from Axios:

 

ADDED: Speaking of fist pumps caught in iconic photographs, I just noticed this, in The Daily Beast, published July 12th, one day before Trump was shot:

"Three years ago... JD Vance... suggested in a TV interview that some Democrats including Vice President Harris are 'a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable.'"

"Those 2021 comments are resurfacing on social media now.... [M]any... are embracing and owning the 'childless cat lady' label as a point of pride.... 'There’s a movement,” declared Nikki Barnes, a previous member of the Democratic National Committee from Florida, accompanied by a 'Childless cat ladies for Harris 2024' image quickly amassing nearly 2 million views. On TikTok, people are snapping up 'Cat ladies for Harris 2024' stickers."

From "‘Childless cat ladies,’ Jennifer Aniston, and Swifties take on JD Vance/Celebrities including Jennifer Aniston and Whoopi Goldberg cite many reasons women don’t have kids. Others are embracing being a childless cat lady like Taylor Swift" (WaPo).

It's clever to take an insult and turn it around like that. I'm trying to think of other examples of that. There's "nasty woman." And "suffragette."

Another reaction to Vance's "childless cat ladies" is that not everyone who is childless is childless by choice:

“I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States,” actress Jennifer Aniston wrote Wednesday.... “Mr. Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day.... I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option. Because you are trying to take that away from her, too.”

"They say something happened to me when I got shot, I became nice. If you don’t mind, I’m not going to be nice, is that okay?"

Said Donald Trump.

Quoted in "'Not going to be nice': Trump, Harris trade sharp attacks as 2024 race resets/The competing appearances are a chance for each candidate to frame the stakes of the race as it plunges into uncharted territory" (WaPo).

"Can Kamala Take the Money … Legally?"

That's the new episode of the "Advisory Opinions" podcast (audio and transcript, here). 

Is the legal question too abstruse to think about? I'd say yes, but one thing jumped out at me. I'll put it in boldface:

SARAH ISGUR: It definitely won't be resolved until well after the election if it's ever resolved at all... [And Harris either] gets $96 million in the Harris campaign [or]... $96 million in the DNC coffers to help the Harris campaign. And... probably this $96 million is just not make or break for the Harris team or for the Trump team to prevent the Harris team.

LAWPROF DEREK MUELLER: That's, that's probably right. Although I would point out, and this is the slightly cynical take —right? — you know, we, we do have a candidate running who, uh, was, uh, convicted of felonies for intentionally misrepresenting paperwork relating to campaign finance funds.

"Is 'apt alliteration's artful aid' actually alliterative?"

A discussion at English Language Usage, which I arrived at after reading the Orlando Sentinel headline "Joe Biden’s selfless act alters the arc of history."

Act alters the arc... is that alliteration or are vowels excluded from what we call alliteration? I do understand what assonance is, when you have a repeated vowel sound in the middle of words. But what about a string of the same vowel at the beginning of words? Is that alliteration?

I want the answer to be no, because it doesn't have the same feeling you get from, say, "From forth the fatal loins of these two foes." Just to use the delightful consonant "f," we can see that the weak "act alters the arc" would sound much more exciting if it were — excuse the obscure meaning — "fact falters the farc."

Anyway, don't get me started on the "arc of history." Yesterday was my day to go off on the overuse of "history": "I have an aversion to the 'making history' argument." And here's how I feel about that:

Behold selflessness.

Nothing brings out my skepticism like everyone using the same word:

Biden was only in a position to do this "selfless" thing because he'd gone so far down the road of selfishness. He should have declined to run for reelection, back when it would have given other Democrats a fair chance to fight for the nomination. They — whoever they are (Pelosi, Obama, etc.) — prevailed upon him to get out, at long last. And he finally did, perhaps because they said everyone would call him "selfless" if he did and — if he didn't — he'd go down in history as insanely, disastrously selfish.

"There is speculation among social media users that President Joe Biden's recent speech was pre-recorded rather than live."

"This speculation is based on observations that the time displayed on Biden's watch during the speech did not match the actual time of the broadcast. Some users have expressed skepticism and questioned the authenticity of the speech, suggesting that it may have been edited or manipulated."

Grok summarizes the buzz on line.

Here's the image everyone is displaying. The diagram in the upper left corner shows the time of broadcast. The image on the watch, which is harder to see and upside down, shows a time around 6:07.

Great catch on the watch, but what did you expect? Why would he do it live? Yes, we have questions about his competence, but it would have been incompetent to do this live. He couldn't even really do it properly on the video that we saw, presumably pre-recorded and the best of several attempts to get it right. It was, of course, incompetent to allow the watch to show the wrong time, but someone else should have seen to that.

But why did they make the speech so long? If they needed to use pre-recording, why did they make the task of getting it right so hard? I'm thinking this was the only take, and they decided that it was good enough because it was impossible to believe it would get better. It was very poorly articulated and I (and others I talked to) found what we did hear hard to understand because it seemed to have been said by a person who did not understand the words. It was an effort to listen to that even for 11 minutes, which was all it took. Plus, it meandered through unnecessary material (while not covering the actual issue in any depth). 

It should have been half as long. Or less. A lot less. Something he could understand and say. 

Was that the last we'll ever hear from him?

ADDED: Whatever the time, we know the season. It is the winter of his possibilities:

OMG — 😂😂😂

pic.twitter.com/QnDTNXeQIw

— Catturd ™ (@catturd2) July 25, 2024

AND: The words, according to the transcript, are: "We’ve come so far since my inauguration. On that day, I told you as I stood in that winter — we stood in a winter of peril and a winter of possibilities, peril and possibilities." I listened to that repeatedly before reading the transcript and I listened after reading the transcript, and every single time I hear "winter apparel."

IN THE COMMENTS: rehajm said:

As someone who takes many pictures of watches...I took one look at the photo and thought something is amiss...

I don't care about Joe's watch collection but others seem to be and they claim he wears couple Omegas- a Seamaster and a Moonwatch and also a Rolex Datejust. The only one of these this watch could be is the blue dial Rolex Datejust. I believe moden Datejust has lumed sword style hands and the inset photo looks like dauphine or dagger hands- not the same. It looks 'off'...

I went to find high-res of the address video. I'm watching but it is hard to tell- lots of refraction caused by bright lights. I sometimes believe I see the absence of hands between the five and seven markers- no hour hand between the six and seven markers and sometimes think I see the time reads about five after eight early in the video...

I'll look some more but I put a place marker on fake...

Great achievements in the realm of disguise.

Matt Walsh tricking Robin DiAngelo by slightly changing his hair has got me reassessing Clark Kent’s glasses.
pic.twitter.com/2rYnTxup1E

— Nick Dixon (@nickdixoncomic) July 24, 2024

Caption from Nick Dixon (at X): "Matt Walsh tricking Robin DiAngelo by slightly changing his hair has got me reassessing Clark Kent’s glasses."

The clip comes from this trailer for Matt Walsh''s new movie "Am I Racist?"

Sunrise — 5:37.

Biden, in strange heavy makeup, just struggled through saying the words on a teleprompter.

And the news is he thinks he can continue as President. He's just fine, and, in fact, he'd still be in the race for reelection if he didn't put the power of the Democratic Party first, and the Party has told him that he cannot win. We're called to celebrate him for subordinating "personal ambition" to the Party's ambition. 

"It appears that every historical monument in DC is being vandalized with no intervention from the police."

Writes Ian Miles Cheong on X, with this video:

It appears that every historical monument in DC is being vandalized with no intervention from the police. pic.twitter.com/dQxKcW0NlS

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) July 24, 2024

Why is Biden doing an Oval Office address? Does it suggest he plans to do more than explain why he withdrew from the campaign for reelection?

Does the ultra-solemn setting suggest he is going to resign? It feels strange, perhaps even wrong, to use the Oval Office to talk about the political campaign.

Looking for clues, I'm reading this CNN article about the upcoming speech, "Biden to deliver Oval Office address on decision not to seek reelection as Harris and Trump hit the trail":

In the new trailer for "A Complete Unknown," we hear Timothée Chalamet, as Bob Dylan, sing "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall."

"Thank you for rescuing me from oblivion."

Eric Clapton's tribute (on TikTok) to John Mayall, who died yesterday....

"People went around saying, 'He who dies with the most toys wins'.... People said it in a way that suggested they didn’t really believe it..."

"... but it wasn’t clear then what they really did believe. The culture didn’t seem to be offering many alternatives. You can dispose of discretionary dollars in various ways. If you were a yuppie, you spent them on yourself. You consumed conspicuously. That’s what the yuppie-haters hated most about the yuppies. You bought things you didn’t need and paid extra for the brand: Sasson jeans, Frette linens, Cross pens, Rolex watches, Perrier water, Aprica strollers. Faux high-end imports emerged—Grey Poupon mustard (then owned by RJR Nabisco), Häagen-Dazs ice cream (invented in the Bronx).... Food became a highly cathected consumable.... The more entrepreneurial yuppies colonized abandoned row houses and warehouse loft spaces, and used some of their leisure time to work out. Fitness and self-care were big.... The yuppie strode forth from the economic wreckage of the nineteen-seventies: two oil crises, mortgage rates at thirteen per cent, a huge loss of manufacturing jobs in major industries like steel and cars, a stock market in the doldrums. When the economy recovered, in the early nineteen-eighties, it was easy for people to feel rich without feeling guilty. They had seen what it was like to worry about money. Spending it felt liberating...."

From "When Yuppies Ruled/Defining a social type is a way of defining an era. What can the time of the young urban professional tell us about our own?" by Louis Menand (The New Yorker).

"So far, indeed, polls of the matchup since Biden announced he wouldn’t seek a second term have been all over the place, showing everything from an 8-point Trump lead to a 4-point Harris edge."

Nate Silver writes, displaying a list of 9 polls, only one of which shows Harris ahead of Trump. One has the 2 candidates tied, and 7 show Trump leading. Trump is up by 8 in one, as Silver notes. He's up by 6 in two, by 4 in one, and by 2 in three.

Kevin Piette, paraplegic, used an exoskeleton to carry the Olympic flame.

Kevin Piette, paraplegic since an accident, made history today by carrying the Olympic flame with his exoskeleton! 💪

pic.twitter.com/oejQHQRAwG

— Kevin W. (@Brink_Thinker) July 23, 2024

"North Korea has released more than 3,000 of the trash balloons since May, many of which have reached the South after floating across the Demilitarized Zone...."

"They have landed on trees, farms and urban side streets, their payloads bursting and spilling out waste paper, used cloth, cigarette butts and compost​. On Wednesday, for the first time, some of them landed inside the sprawling compound in central Seoul that includes the office of President Yoon Suk Yeol... one of the most tightly guarded places in South Korea. Officials said they waited for the balloons to land before sending a chemical, biological and radiological response team to inspect their payloads, rather than blast them ​— and scatter their​ suspicious payloads ​— from the sky. The team found 'nothing dangerous or contaminating'...."

From "North Korean Trash Balloons Hit South Korean President’s Compound/Officials found nothing hazardous in the balloons’ payloads, as the North’s slow barrage of airborne garbage showed few signs of letting up" (NYT).

Why?

"Who knows if presidential candidate (and fellow South Asian) Kamala Harris was raised the same way I was..."

"... with everyone having a stupider, faker name than their real one. In the public consciousness, at least, Harris has had plenty of names: Laffin’ Kamala, Veep, Brat, Momala (my personal favorite).... But through it all is one clear constant, already a thorn in the sides of a lot of brown people across the world: Even when you think you’re saying Harris’ first name right, you’re still saying it wrong.... For once, I don’t blame white people for this. In 2016, while she was running for the Senate, Harris released a PSA to help people learn how to say her name. 'It’s not Cam-el-uh. It’s not Kuh-ma-la. It’s not Karmela,' say a rotation of cutie-pie kids. 'It’s Kamala.' For years, Harris has been telling people her name is pronounced 'comma-la, like the punctuation mark.' It’s common, for people with unique ethnic names, to find ways to explain the pronunciation approachably and easily. I’ve been doing this for years, so much so that in my mid-20s, I realized I had been saying my own name wrong for most of my life...."

Writes Scaachi Koul in "An Indian Person’s Guide to Saying Kamala Harris’ Name Correctly/Get outta here with 'Comma-la'" (Slate).

It seems to me that however a person pronounces their own name becomes the correct pronunciation, even if that name is also a word in another language in which it is pronounced differently.

"As a candidate, I sometimes shied away from talking about making history."

"I wasn’t sure voters were ready for that. And I wasn’t running to break a barrier; I was running because I thought I was the most qualified to do the job. While it still pains me that I couldn’t break that highest, hardest glass ceiling, I’m proud that my two presidential campaigns made it seem normal to have a woman at the top of the ticket."

From "Hillary Clinton: How Kamala Harris Can Win and Make History," written by Hillary Clinton (or a ghostwriter), published in the NYT.

I have an aversion to the "making history" argument. And I don't like the idea of whether voters are "ready" for it. It's a visualization of a timeline of progress, in 2 ways. The first way makes perfect sense: The first female President of the United States has a place in history as the first female President of the United States. But the second way is an insidious attack on people: the idea that we voters as a group are in a process of enlightenment, some of us are further ahead than others, and one is most advanced when one is influenced by the argument that we ought to vote for someone because she will be the first.

I do appreciate the "sometimes" in "I sometimes shied away from talking about making history." As I remember it, she and her champions sounded the history-making theme continually.

And now, we've got a new candidate who can use the history-making theme. I'm still irked when I'm elbowed to come on, everybody, let's make history. I may on my own feel myself warming up to a candidate because of some personal attribute that has only a dubious connection to the ability to do the job well, but it's negatively related to this talking about making history.

ADDED: I was delighted to stumble into a TikTok that expresses how I feel about all this talk about making history:

"[Thomas Matthew Crooks] was a straight A student. He participated in class discussions. He truly excelled in science and math and...."

"... was also known to be very competent working with technical stuff and computers. But he was also kind of isolated and quiet. People say he did not have a large circle of friends and he had virtually no social media presence.... He was online playing video games. And also he did a lot of searches.... he searched famous politicians. He, in addition to President Trump, he searched Joe Biden, but he also searched Merrick Garland, the Attorney General and Christopher Wray, the FBI director. And he looked up the dates of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago along with dates of Trump rallies. And he also seems to have looked into the British royal family.... They have not found a manifesto and they didn't even find any sort of political paraphernalia in his room. So there's a sense, I think, among investigators that he was really interested in famous people more than pursuing any kind of a partisan path.... With the caveat that investigators might find some connection, he looks a lot like the alienated young men that have been responsible for school shootings and other mass shootings.... In many of these shootings we've learned to accept some level of ambiguity. It's less about finding one cut and dried motive than a set of circumstances in a person's life. And I think that's where we're headed on this one."

Says Glenn Thrush, interviewed on today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "How the Secret Service Failed to Protect Trump."

Thrush does have that caveat — he says it twice in the interview — that investigators may find something more, but you see how a lone gunman theory emerges: He was another one of those isolated, alienated young men. It wasn't about ordinary political partisanship. He was looking for famous people, looking for fame. We'll probably never really know and will need to accept some level of ambiguity... that's where we're headed on this one.

"A Michigan man suspected of using an all-terrain vehicle to run over an elderly man for supporting Donald Trump died by suicide as police closed in on him..."

"The elderly man was described as a supporter of the former president who was posting a political sign in his yard.... Investigators said they had identified a suspect in the case... and he had been linked to a total of three cases which were apparently 'politically motivated.' That man later contacted officers, told them he wanted to 'confess a crime involving an ATV driver within the last 24 hours'.... When police arrived at the scene, they found a 22-year-old man dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound."

The Guardian reports, in "Michigan man kills himself after running over 80-year-old Trump supporter/The man called police to confess to a crime and then killed himself before authorities arrived at the scene."

The rise of autumn — 2:41 p.m.

I'm getting a "Life of Julia" vibe.

The Lees are just one example of what a family of four can save thanks to the Biden-Harris Administration's actions to lower costs.

Head to https://t.co/MeAL17UoIM to see what your family can save on child care, grocery costs, and more. pic.twitter.com/5lpc4tm4kL

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) July 22, 2024

 

Remember "Life of Julia"?

Meanwhile, on that new White House tweet, I'm noticing, in the responses, repetitions of "Where is Joe?" and "Who took Joe?"

"Secret Service Director Resigns... Kimberly A. Cheatle gave up her post Tuesday after security failures that allowed a gunman to shoot at former President Donald J. Trump at an open-air rally."

The NYT reports. 

“I do not want my calls for resignation to be a distraction from the great work each and every one of you do towards our vital mission,” Ms. Cheatle said in [email to the Secret Service], which was reviewed by The New York Times.

She was monumentally horrible at the hearing yesterday.  

"President Joe Biden reportedly experienced an undisclosed medical emergency during his visit to Las Vegas on July 17, 2024."

"Police sources and various media outlets reported that Biden suffered a medical issue, with some suggesting it could have been a transient ischemic attack or a mini-stroke. There were preparations made at a local hospital for his possible arrival, but these were reportedly canceled, and Biden was instead flown to Delaware. The White House has not officially confirmed these reports, leading to speculation and controversy surrounding the incident, including rumors about Biden's health and the nature of the emergency."

That's the Grok (A.I.) summary of the discussion on X about this topic.

Drew what up?

Just like we drew it up. pic.twitter.com/9NBvc5nVZE

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) February 12, 2024

That was really tweeted by Joe Biden's official X account, last February 11th. Here's a screen shot, in case it disappears:

"Fate has presented Ms. Harris the rarest of political opportunities: to start a presidential campaign in the summer of an election year as a fresh, all-but-anointed candidate free to present her vision to all voters, not just to her own party."

From "What Harris needs to do, now, to win" by The Editorial Board of The Washington Post.

"Fate." You can call it fate, but I think human beings connived on a grand scale, out of our view. It's like calling a sleight of hand performance "magic." Even worse, really, though, because at a "magic" show, you have a chance to look closely and figure out how it's done. If it were off stage, it wouldn't be anything at all. 

But enough of this distraction with the word "fate." Let's look at that rare opportunity that has arrived for Ms. Harris. She is "free to present her vision to all voters, not just to her own party." She didn't have to go through the phase of winning with primary voters, then readjusting to appeal to "all voters"... and by "all voters," what is meant is a majority of the voters in the swing states. She can invent the version of herself that suits a precise sliver of Americans — the waverers of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. (I'm in this sliver myself, by odd chance... fate.)

The Editors recommend:

Elon Musk says he was "essentially tricked into signing documents" and "vowed to destroy the 'woke' mind virus after that."

So actually @elonmusk bought X not to “own the libs” but because of the infinite depth of his love for his son who was trans’ed by the left. To destroy what destroyed his son, even as his som rejects him. That’s… wow. That’s some kind of love.❤️

pic.twitter.com/YKC7BmrTsV

— Liz Wheeler (@Liz_Wheeler) July 23, 2024

AND: Here's the entire conversation between Jordan Peterson and Elon Musk:

My conversation with @elonmusk. Live today at 3pm ET. https://t.co/RyaZFmvC8i

— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) July 22, 2024

"Jewish Republicans are smearing Kamala Harris as anti-Israel.... Harris and her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, have a strong pro-Israel and pro-Jewish record."

 Writes Rob Eshman in Forward.

Less than a day after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential campaign and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the Democratic nomination, the Republican Jewish Coalition launched a series of tweets calling Harris “a total disaster for Israel” and “disgraceful,” falsely accusing her of refusing to condemn a Hamas supporter during a speaking engagement at a college.

Piling on, David Friedman, who served as ambassador to Israel in the Trump administration, wrote on X, “There is now the widest gap in American history between the two candidates’ support for Israel. Donald Trump is the best ever — Kamala Harris would be the worst.”...

There's also this from last April: "Emhoff calls Columbia University leaders amid campus unrest/White House side steps getting drawn in to the campus protests" (Politico).

“The Second Gentleman recognized that while every American has the right to freedom of speech and to protest peacefully, hate speech and calls for violence against Jews is both antisemitic and unacceptable,” said the official, who was granted anonymity to describe private conversations.

"But if it turns out that her short general election campaign doesn't go well, and if she doesn't beat Trump, how much of the blame will belong directly to Joe Biden..."

"... for putting the party and Harris in this situation by discouraging anyone else from running against him by snuffing out any whiff of competition. I mean, he changed the primary calendar to favor him and him alone. He ditched Iowa and started the primaries in South Carolina, a state he knew he would win. I mean, how much of this is gonna be on him if Harris loses?"

Asks Michael Barbaro, in today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "The Coronation of Kamala Harris."

NYT reporter Reid J. Epstein answers:

"Top Dems threatened to forcibly remove Biden from office unless he dropped out, set him up to fail at Trump debate: Sources."

A New York Post headline.

The well-orchestrated “palace coup” to stop the faltering president seeking re-election has been in place for weeks, but stubborn Biden fought against it every step of the way, a source close to the Biden family told The Post Monday. The insider also made clear the anger, paranoia and frustration Biden displayed as the party elite circled around him and piled on the pressure.

Paranoia? But they were out to get him. If only he'd been more "paranoid" when the set up that early debate. But he gave them the material to use against him, and they spent the next 3 weeks jacking up the pressure on the staunch old man, and it seems they were ready to go as far as necessary.

“That debate was a set-up to convince Democrats that he couldn’t run for president,” the source said Monday. As calls for him to bow out mounted, Biden insisted he would continue, but party bigwigs threatened to invoke the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution.... 

Following the debate, first son Hunter Biden suddenly became more involved in his father’s day-to-day business and insisted upon attending every official and unofficial meeting, the source said. “Hunter felt he [Joe Biden] was being set up and he was very concerned about his father,” the source said. “These people, these officials were not on Joe’s side.”... 

Democratic Party insiders have also known for at least two years how Biden was in decline, said the source. “When I saw him a couple of years ago, it was frightening,” said the source. “He was just repeating slogans and had no idea who I was.”

They were out to get him, but only after he'd sewn up the nomination, excluding all challengers. Did the old man enjoy his seeming triumph, winning the nomination — a nomination that Kamala Harris would probably not have won, had Biden dropped out a year ago —  before they grabbed it and handed it to Kamala?

Was the NY Post's source Hunter?

Sunrise — 5:33.

"A growing number of Gen Z men are seeking out stiff chewing gum from brands that claim their products will build up chewers’ jaw muscles..."

"... giving them a more conventionally masculine look. Teenage boys hoping to improve their attractiveness in 'looksmaxxing' communities online are encountering an explosion of gum brands that position their products as the facial equivalent of a Spartan workout routine.... Hard gum has also become a frequent recommendation in Reddit groups dedicated to 'mewing,' an unproven technique for defining the jawline that traveled from incel communities online toward the mainstream."

From "Why Are Gen Z Boys Chewing on Rock-Hard Gum?/Young men are buying 'Facial Fitness' chewing gum that promises to bulk up their jawlines. But dentists say the products are not particularly effective or safe" (NYT).

The gum is expensive, probably doesn't enlarge your jaw muscles, and it can cause jaw pain and damage tooth fillings.

A stupid TikTok:

"When will the press tell us that Democrats 'assert, without evidence,' that Biden has withdrawn?"

Glenn Reynolds quips darkly, linking to something I wrote earlier this morning.

ADDED: Speaking of evidence, Kamala Harris is a first hand witness:

"I am first hand witness that everyday, our president, Joe Biden, fights for the American people, and we are deeply, deeply grateful for his service to the nation."

She is quoted in "Harris: ‘We are deeply grateful’ for Biden’s service/Harris spoke on the South Lawn of the White House for a celebration of NCAA championship teams, filling in for Biden as he recovers from Covid" (Politico).

So she's filling in for him and simultaneously attesting to his daily work, his "fight" for us. The last time we saw him, he was fighting to keep his place as the nominee. KH is a "first hand witness," that is, we're stuck with hearsay.

I have a tag for the word "deeply," and she just said it twice in a row. She must really mean it.

AND: Here's the original post where "deeply" became a tag: "Deeply... it's such a poser word." That's from 2014. There, I made a list of earlier examples of the use of "deeply" in the blog archive. And look what's #1 on the list!

1. "Beauty is a system of power, deeply rooted, preceding all others, richly rewarded," wrote Garace Franke-Ruta, explaining "Why Obama's 'Best-Looking Attorney General' Comment Was a Gaffe."

Obama's 'Best-Looking Attorney General' was, of course, Kamala Harris. 

Photoshopping you'd think would already have happened.

You can see that someone proposed it 8 days ago on Reddit, but it didn't happen. 

The impassive Kimberly Cheatle is getting raked over the coals.

ADDED:  The NYT has "some of the questions Ms. Cheatle was asked repeatedly that she did not answer":

"I adore war. It is like a big picnic without the objectlessness of a picnic. I’ve never been so well or so happy."

Wrote the WWI poet Julian Grenfell, quoted in "How the Rich and Poor Once Saw War/In 'Muse of Fire,' Michael Korda depicts the lives and passions of the soldier poets whose verse provided a view into the carnage of World War I" (NYT)(free-access link).

That book review was published last April. I'm reading it today, because I wrote a post that got me researching the phrase "happy warrior."

Here's the book "Muse of Fire" (commission earned). From the book review:

"My baseline view of politics... is that political parties engage in something roughly resembling game-theory optimal behavior..."

"... and undertake reasonably rational strategies in an effort to win elections and fulfill their other objectives.... As compared to Republicans’ decision about what to do about Trump, I thought Democrats had more agency about Biden following his disastrous debate. Unlike Republicans in 2016, Democrats hadn’t even bothered to hold a competitive primary — if they had, Biden’s flaws might have been even evident earlier — so the will-of-the-voters argument was weak. And unlike Trump in October 2016 following the release of the 'Access Hollywood' tape — after which some Republicans called on him to drop out — Biden wasn’t even the Democratic nominee yet since the party convention hadn’t been held. And Biden has always been a loyal Democrat who got a huge boost from the party establishment in wrapping up the nomination in 2020 — not someone who gave his party the middle finger...."

Writes Nate Silver, noting his failure to predict that Trump would win in 2016 and his early prediction that Biden would withdraw, in "Biden and Democrats make the rational choice/They're probably still underdogs against Trump, but Biden dropping out improves their odds."

"He announced it via Twitter... I thought that if Joe Biden was going to do this, he would've announced that he had a presser or..."

"... some sort of big statement that he was going to give from the Oval Office or from the White House somewhere, and that he was going to do that at a preset time later in the evening.... The rest of the world knows that Joe Biden is... totally senile and not in control of his faculties at this point. I mean, when Joe Biden wakes up and someone tells him he's no longer running for president, he's gonna be quite shocked about that. I would assume. I mean, by the way, he could wake up tomorrow and undo this...."

Said Ben Shapiro, in the new episode of his podcast.

So, yeah, what evidence do we have that Joe Biden knows he has given up his candidacy and released the delegates pledged to him? We haven't seen him. He's been sick with Covid. When last we heard from him in person he was defiantly clinging to the candidacy, apparently still believing that he is the one person who can save the world from Donald Trump. We were simply handed written statements.

Shapiro imagines Joe Biden shocked to hear that he's dropped out. He could be shocked because he didn't actually agree to drop out, but he could be shocked because he actually is something like what Ben Shapiro calls "totally senile" and he doesn't remember or understand what he did or supposedly did yesterday. Is his written statement binding? 

Perhaps his people won't tell him he has withdrawn. How would we know? I've read articles about caregivers for persons with dementia that advise us to go along with the errors and not correct all the mistaken beliefs.

He shouldn't be President though, of course, if things are this bad. Couldn't they keep him in Rehoboth and call him Mr. President?

ADDED: I see Trump himself wafted this theory on Truth Social last night:

It’s not over! Tomorrow Crooked Joe Biden’s going to wake up and forget that he dropped out of the race today!

And he repeated the idea this morning:

It’s a new day and Joe Biden doesn’t remember quitting the race yesterday! He is demanding his campaign schedule and arranging talks with Presidents Xi of China, and Putin of Russia, concerning the possible start of World War 3. Biden is “sharp, decisive, energetic, angry, and ready to go!”

"Garner" of the Day

"Elon Musk shared a video of an AI-generated fashion show featuring world leaders such as PM Modi, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Vladimir Putin, showcasing them in futuristic outfits. The video, which has garnered significant attention on social media, highlights the capabilities of AI in creating visually striking content. The event has sparked a wide range of reactions, with some users expressing excitement and approval, while others are skeptical or critical. The AI fashion show has also raised discussions about the potential impact of AI on the fashion industry, including its role in enhancing creativity and sustainability." 

A summary at X about the virality and discussion of this video:

AI fashion show for world leaders 😂😂😂 #OccupyJKIA Muhoho Sodium Cyanide Joe Biden #Leak Michelle Obama New World Order pic.twitter.com/XRjkS4OfWG

— Derrick Shabatai (@DerrickShabz) July 22, 2024

"Harris’s stint as vice president has often been pretty unremarkable, but it has provided a rich vein of memes, in part because she can be an awkward communicator...."

"It’s part of what fueled critical media coverage of her during the first year of her tenure, and which led the White House to largely sideline her during the first half of the Biden presidency.... As the first female, Black, and South Asian vice president, Harris was always doomed to receive an extraordinary amount of scrutiny and bias — and emphasized her persona as a 'joyful warrior' in part to combat some of those stereotypes. The joyful warrior, it seems, is sometimes a goofy one too. Harris delivers many of these lines in a genuinely funny way, with an affect unlike many politicians (described sometimes as just vibing along).... Plenty of people are... meme-ing their way to a new celebration of Harris — unburdened by what has been."

I'm reading "Why is everyone talking about Kamala Harris and coconut trees? Ironic Kamala Harris meme-ing isn’t so ironic anymore," a Vox article from July 3rd, when KH was just coasting along in the background, shielded by the seeming candidate, Joe Biden. I don't really understand what was ever "ironic" about any of this.

There are various embedded tweets at that link, including, "How are you supposed to exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you AND be, unburdened by what has been at the same time? Waiting for her 3rd great revelation that synthesizes these two." That's a reaction to this:

Four straight minutes of “what can be, unburdened by what has been.” It’s incredible. I had no idea she used it this much. pic.twitter.com/TClfC1EyH6

— John Cooper (@thejcoop) June 29, 2024

I can understand her interest in being "unburdened by what has been," but she's stepping into the candidacy without having had to fight off rivals who offered new visions or even needing to present anything of her own.

ADDED: I didn't know people had taken to calling Kamala Harris a "joyful warrior," but this year is a lot like 1968 — President withdraws, VP steps into candidacy, convention in Chicago — and the candidate, Hubert Humphrey was famously called "The Happy Warrior."

ALSO: Gretchen Whitmer has called herself "The Happy Warrior." From a July 9th article in the NYT, "Whitmer Talks Tequila, Pearl Jam and Debates in New Book/The Michigan governor will not talk about running for president. But her new book, 'True Gretch,' is full of details keeping the chatter alive":

Sunrise — 5::29.

"Crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for President, and is certainly not fit to serve - And never was!"

"He only attained the position of President by lies, Fake News, and not leaving his Basement. All those around him, including his Doctor and the Media, knew that he wasn’t capable of being President, and he wasn’t - And now, look what he’s done to our Country, with millions of people coming across our Border, totally unchecked and unvetted, many from prisons, mental institutions, and record numbers of terrorists. We will suffer greatly because of his presidency, but we will remedy the damage he has done very quickly. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

Writes Trump, on Truth Social.

"I heard last week that he would resign at this exact time and date. It was widespread knowledge in DC."

"The real powers that be are discarding the old puppet in favor of one that has a better chance of fooling the public. They fear Trump because he is not a puppet."

Tweets Elon Musk.

He's responding to someone who said: "The Democratic elite, corporate media, and billionaire donors successfully pressured the candidate chosen by Democratic primary voters to drop out because he's down in the polls and losing. Democrats destroy democracy in pursuit of power."

Biden drops out!

The NYT reports.

After three weeks of often angry refusals to step aside, Mr. Biden finally yielded to a torrent of devastating polls, urgent pleas from Democratic lawmakers and clear signs that donors were no longer willing to pay for him to continue.

Mr. Biden’s decision abruptly ends one political crisis that began when the president delivered a calamitous debate performance against Mr. Trump on June 27. But for the Democratic Party, Mr. Biden’s withdrawal triggers a second crisis: who to replace him with, and specifically whether to rally around Vice President Kamala Harris or kick off a rapid effort to find someone else to be the party’s nominee.

My longstanding tag — "biden drops out" — has come true.

MORE: Will he be able to avoid the pressure to resign as President? From "Biden Drops Out of Race, Scrambling the Campaign for the White House/The president’s withdrawal under pressure from fellow Democrats after a disastrous debate cleared the way for a new nominee to take on former President Donald J. Trump in the fall" (NYT)(free-access link):

"At their convention next month, the Democrats should nominate Mitt Romney."

Writes Aaron Sorkin, in "How I Would Script This Moment for Biden and the Democrats" (NYT) (free-access link).

What if you had to argue this Georgia O'Keeffe painting is not "conservative"?

 I'm reading "To Sell Prized Paintings, a University Proclaims They’re Not ‘Conservative’/Valparaiso University is arguing it should never have acquired two paintings, including a Georgia O’Keeffe, in the 1960s. It hopes to sell them to pay for dorm renovations" (NYT)(free-access link).

The school bought the painting with money from a gift that restricted the purchase of art to work "exclusively by American artists preferably of American subjects' and "of the general character known as conservative and of any period of American art." Now that the school wants to sell the painting, it's saying the painting should never have been bought.

"As I watched the TV footage of former president Donald Trump being grazed by a bullet but avoiding death by millimeters, I remembered how I felt when I was shot."

"There’s survivor’s guilt, bewilderment, fearlessness, gratitude and the gnawing question of, 'Why was I spared?'... Before my life was almost snuffed out, I would have described myself as risk averse. I was cautious, conservative and played only by the rules. Afterward, I lived my life differently, with a real sense that there wasn’t time to wring my hands or to weigh the pros or cons of a certain action.... "

Writes Jackie Speier, a former member of the House of Representatives, "How getting shot changed me/Before, I was risk averse. After, I lived my life differently" (WaPo).

Speier was shot, nearly 46 years ago, alongside Rep. Leo Ryan, who was assassinated while attempting to investigate what was going on with Jim Jones in "Jonestown" in Guyana. Speier took 5 bullets "and lay on an anthill for 22 hours before being rescued."

Speier's words reminded me of something I happened to quote earlier this morning, Theodore Roosevelt's idea of "the man in the arena":

"Be safe out there!"

Page break for your protection from TikTok:

"When I was a young girl I used to seek pleasure/When I was a young girl I used to drink ale/Right out of the alehouse and into the jailhouse/Right out of the bar room and down to my grave...."

A song from the great 1969 album "Streetnoise," called to mind this morning on the occasion of spell correct. I've known for a long time that my last name, should I be so weak as to mistype it, spell-corrects to "alehouse," and that has me hearing the voice of Julie Driscoll singing "Right out of the alehouse and into the jailhouse."

I didn't slip so low as to typo my own name this morning. I typo'd "Meadhouse," my name for Meade and me, when we do something together:

Ann Althouse said...

"The shower scene was creepy too and I'm not talking about the movie."

Read aloud and laughed over here at Meadhouse. 

7/21/24, 8:10 AM

The auto-correct on the typo amused me: Madhouse.

"This CNN anchor is saying Trump sent a bad message by saying fight fight fight... So the President who had just been shot was sending a divisive message?"

"Can you imagine these people? The president who had just been shot was at fault for the divisiveness, having just been shot. The guy who got shot, who almost died, who a bullet missed his head by, you know centimeters, I mean... it's crazy.... and somebody's on CNN going: Actually, we felt the message was a bit divisive. We're actually disappointed in the wording. We don't love the wording of that. I wish he had kind of workshopped that a bit as he was being bloodily dragged off the stage by the Secret Service. I wish he had kind of — I don't know— taken people's temperature more. We're trying to ramp it down.... Was that the Secret Service trying to ramp it down when there's nobody on the fucking roof? Is that what they were trying to do? Trying to ramp it down a week ago Biden goes: Let's put him in the bullseye?..."

Tim Dillon ridicules the civility bullshit:

"That's very severe, that combover."

Trump makes fun of his own hairstyle:

Donald Trump roasts himself for his “severe comb-over” 🤣

“I looked up there I said ‘WOW’— look at that, wow. That’s like a work of art” pic.twitter.com/3RegJ7ZbCb

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 20, 2024

IN THE COMMENTS: Jersey Fled said:

Would “Hitler” make fun of his mustache? I think not.

Creating an aura of inevitability around Kamala.

I'm reading "Democratic consensus solidifies around Harris, should Biden step aside" (CNN).

No one quite knows what the process of picking a new nominee would be if Joe Biden did step aside – but many Democrats say that any process is likelier than ever to quickly end with Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee.

Many Democrats say! 

The informal conversations about how a fight to replace Biden at the top of the ticket would play out have been raging for weeks behind the scenes. But uncertainty about the process has been so unclear it’s given multiple Democrats – even those with serious concerns about Biden – pause about coming out against the president’s candidacy, given that what comes next could be even messier.

“F**k it, I’m coconut pilled. I just want this to stop,” said one well-known Democratic operative, referring to the online meme that has taken off from an old video of the vice president telling a story of her mother saying, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?”

It's been so unclear that unclearness itself is causing clarity. You know how it is when you're engulfed in chaos, you get so confused and desperate that if there is one thing that you can see you rush headlong there. You're driving in dense fog, but you can see what looks like 2 taillights up ahead. Those 2 lights become your entire conception of the road and you drive forward with confidence.

You drive forward with the candidate you have, not the candidate you might want or wish to have at a later time.

Some are pushing for a fast and closed process, where delegates would bless the swap as part of their planned pre-convention virtual nomination plan....

Bless the swap, that says. Not bless the swamp. 

 The article continues:

Few can conceive of Biden stepping aside and not tapping his running mate to take over.

That's why he can't step aside! 

Sunrise — 5:23, 5:26, 5:37, 5:43

Today's photos are all by Meade. I slept through it all.

"Last week, I took a bullet for democracy."

Said Donald Trump at his rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan just now.

If you think his convention speech went long, this speech was half an hour longer. It clocked in at two hours.

The speech wasn't just long. He was talking quite fast. Fast and crisply enunciated. Strong. I had the feeling maybe the brush with death had heightened his sense that he needs to compress his energy and do more and more. At the end, when it was time to walk out, he seemed to want to linger, as if the rally was life itself, and he didn't want to leave.

"The Trump team has already prepared opposition research books on Ms. Harris...."

"In particular, the Trump team plans to attack her over the border crisis, one that the president tasked her with finding the 'root causes' of.... They are also looking to define her based on her tenure as a senator in California and, before that, her time as the state’s attorney general and as the district attorney of San Francisco, where her record during her 2020 presidential campaign was alternately criticized as too conservative, or too lenient toward first-time drug offenders. According to people briefed on the strategy, if Mr. Biden drops out of the 2024 race but doesn’t resign as president, Republicans will argue that the reasons he quit the race are the same reasons he’s unfit to remain as commander in chief. They will try to tie Ms. Harris to Mr. Biden by claiming there was a broad effort to prevent the public from seeing the president’s deterioration and suggest she was part of that effort...."

From "Trump Campaign Prepares Attack Plan for Harris in Case Biden Withdraws/The effort, which includes expansive advertising and polling, assumes that the vice president would be the most likely candidate to replace the president at the top of the Democratic ticket" (NYT).

Things that are in the movie "Hillbilly Elegy" but not in the book.

1. Meals on Wheels

2. Funyuns

3. ... 

"Attacks without clear motivation aren’t unusual and have increased, researchers say, in part as a reflection of the ideologies that swirl together on social media..."

"... and gaming platforms, creating a toxic soup of grievances with no cohesive political agenda. Authorities have cited unclear or overlapping beliefs in recent plots or violence where, for example, white nationalism melded with misogynistic 'incel' subcultures, or when a member of a satanic neo-Nazi group invoked Islamist militancy in what the Justice Department called a 'a diabolical cocktail of ideologies.'"

From "Lack of motive in Trump attack frustrates public, but fits a pattern/Terrorism analysts say Trump’s would-be assassin is among a string of high-profile assailants with unknown or murky reasons for turning violent" (WaPo).

I thought at least you could say that shooting multiple bullets at Trump's head was anti-Trump, but apparently not.

We're supposed to stand back while the officials mull it all over, perhaps to tell us years from now that one can never really know the inside of anyone else's head. But until that modern-day equivalent of the Warren Report issues from the earnest authorities, please note that the Justice Department has bellied up to the bar of your mind and ordered a diabolical cocktail of white nationalism melded with misogynistic incel subculture and garnished with satanic neo-Nazism. Drink deeply and ideate about the right-wing morsels that might have swirled in the toxic soup of young Mr. Crooks's mind.

"The crab warned her. The goldfish warned her."

"Tell me who enlarged NATO. Tell me who did the Pacific basin. Tell me who did something that you never done with your Bronze Star — and your — like my son — and, you know — proud of your leadership. But guess what? Well, what’s happening? We got Korea and Japan working together."

That's what "Biden snapped over Zoom at Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), a decorated, retired Army Ranger, according to a recording of the virtual meeting with House Democrats," reported in "Behind the scenes as Joe Biden lost control of the Democratic Party/Many Democrats described the first three weeks of July as a kind of nightmare — too extraordinary to be real, too unexpected to be believed" (WaPo).

"Lost control" is right. Lost control of the Washington Post too — whatever control he had. Selecting that quote — it's in the third paragraph of the article — shows vicious hostility. 

To get hung up by Crow's Bronze Star! Is there any coherence to "who did something that you never done with your Bronze Star — and your — like my son"?

He's saying he did something as President that Crow hasn't done, even though Crow won a Bronze Star, and he's distracted onto the topic of his deceased son, perhaps because the son is always on his mind but probably because that son also won a Bronze Star.

I wondered why Beau Biden won was awarded a Bronze Star and found some discussion here. I believe it had to do with service in a combat zone and not for a particular act of heroism.

But Crow's Bronze Star has the "V" device for combat valor or heroism during the battle. He was the a platoon leader in the 82nd Airborne Division in the Battle of Samawah in 2003. To get up in Crow's face over the Bronze Star is just insane.

Joe Biden seems bereft of the ordinary tools of human interchange. His son died. Go home and grieve constantly if that's what you really need to do, but don't use your dead son randomly as a weapon when you run short of things to say. Quite aside from how the Democrats are going to extricate themselves from the idiotic jam they've gotten themselves into, the entire world is put at risk when the President of the United States has lost his mind.

"I appreciate President Zelenskyy for reaching out because I, as your next President of the United States, will bring peace to the world and end the war...

"... that has cost so many lives and devastated countless innocent families. Both sides will be able to come together and negotiate a deal that ends the violence and paves a path forward to prosperity."

Wrote Donald Trump last evening (on Truth Social).

Zelenskyy, we're told, called Trump to congratulate him for his nomination, to "condemn[] the heinous assassination attempt," and to "remark[] about the American people coming together in the spirit of Unity."

The NYT report about the phone call says that it came "amid mounting concern in Kyiv that a second Trump administration would spell the end of American support in Ukraine’s fight against Russia." And:

"The publics of many of our allies, and those countries we seek to build stronger relationships with, have traditional Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu moral values,"

"If confirmed, how would you explain to them what the United States' promoting 'human rights for LGBTQ people' would look like in their country?"

From a questionnaire J.D. Vance gave to nominees seeking Senate confirmation as ambassadors, quoted in "Leaked memo shows J.D. Vance’s anti-woke ideology on foreign affairs/Trump’s VP pick froze dozens of ambassador nominations over issues like gender transition care and diversity hiring, offering a glimpse into his anti-establishment views" (WaPo).

Sunrise — 5:38, 5:39, 5:48.

"Viewed from the traditional American abundance mind-set, MAGA looks less like an American brand of conservatism and more like a European brand of conservatism."

"It resembles all those generations of Russian chauvinists who argued that the Russian masses embody all that is good but they are threatened by aliens from the outside. MAGA looks like a kind of right-wing Marxism, which assumes that class struggle is the permanent defining feature of politics. MAGA is a fortress mentality, but America has traditionally been defined by a pioneering mentality. MAGA offers a strong shell, but not much in the way of wings needed to soar. If Democrats are to thrive, they need to tap into America’s dynamic cultural roots and show how they can be applied to the 21st century. It should be said that social dynamism is more complicated than it appears at first blush. It’s not just getting on your Harley and hitting the open road. It’s not really about rugged individualism or the libertarian version of freedom as the absence of constraint...."

Writes David Brooks, in "What Democrats Need to Do Now" (NYT).

Somehow I thought you should know he's saying that. Be it known that it’s not just a matter of getting on your Harley and hitting the open road. 

Fungus of the Day.

"Seeing Donald Trump get up after getting shot in the face and pump his fist in the air with the American flag is one of the most badass things I've ever seen in my life."

"But look, as an American, it's, like, hard not to get emotional about that spirit and that fight. And I think that's why a lot of people like the guy."

Said Mark Zuckerberg, who's not endorsing anyone this time around.

Mark Zuckerberg says that it’s "hard not to get emotional" about the spirit Trump showed getting up and pumping his fist with the American flag behind him after being shot. He says it’s "one of the most badass things I've ever seen."

What is happening? 😳pic.twitter.com/YV2MkQBIpb

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) July 19, 2024

Absolutely he's in... until he's out.

"Absolutely the president is in this race, you've heard him say that time and time again... He is the best person to take on Donald Trump."

"Absolutely the president is in this race, you've heard him say that time and time again... He is the best person to take on Donald Trump."

— Biden campaign chair @jomalleydillon says Biden is not exiting the presidential race pic.twitter.com/zElSb3fG4X

— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) July 19, 2024

"One of his signature bits, where an advertising man coaches Abraham Lincoln before the Gettysburg Address..."

"... was a pointed critique of the cynicism of professional politics. 'Hi, Abe, sweetheart' begins the man from Madison Avenue, who encourages him to work in a plug for an Abraham Lincoln T-shirt. When the president says he wants to change 'four score and seven years ago' to '87,' the ad man first patiently explains they already test marketed this in Erie. Then he says: 'It’s sort of like Mark Antony saying "Friends, Romans, countrymen, I’ve got something I want to tell you."'"

Writes Jason Zinoman, in "Bob Newhart Holds Up/He basically invented the stand-up special in 1960 and continued to be a source of comic brilliance until his final years" (NYT).

Listen to the Abe Lincoln routine here (at YouTube).

I would have blogged that passage anyway, so it is by mere chance that in 2 posts in a row I'm quoting something that contains a quote from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar." The line quoted above is from Act III, Scene II, with Antony speaking at Caesar's funeral:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.
I have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interrèd with their bones.

In the previous post, Maureen Dowd had written that Trump, at the convention, "played the Roman emperor, like a Julius Caesar who survived that 'foul deed' and 'bleeding piece of earth,' fist in the air, sitting high in the forum, gloating, as his vanquished foes bent the knee." The internal quotes, from Act III, Scene I, are spoken by Antony over the dead body of Julius Caesar:

O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.