October 26, 2024
If Trump on the Joe Rogan show was not enough for you...
... get ready for JD Vance on the Tim Dillon show — here — in 26 minutes.
"But I’m beginning to think students who don’t read are responding rationally to the vision of professional life our society sells them."
Writes Jonathan Malesic, in "There’s a Very Good Reason College Students Don’t Read Anymore" (NYT).
"Everybody’s constantly looking for the next job, and it’s incredibly cynical and transactional and, now, dysfunctional."
"Trump... took the stage to ominous instrumental music. He stood on stage for several minutes as it played out."
... which is going to feel different to different people, perhaps depending on whether the music has any context for you. Me, I know the music is called the "Undertaker" theme, and though I know what an undertaker is — and I don't think you want the leader of your country analogized to a professional who disposes of the dead — I don't know who "The Undertaker" is — some movie/TV/video game character? Just off-hand, I'm reading Trump's message there as a threat to his antagonists, the so-called "enemy within," to whom he's going to say "You're fired" when he wins, which he wants them to believe he will. It's some scary music for them, but it's delightful to his admirers.Trump (who was 3 hours late to his rally this evening) took the stage to ominous instrumental music.
— Jake Traylor (@jake__traylor) October 26, 2024
He stood on stage for several minutes as it played out. pic.twitter.com/Ruwlyg1idG
Joe Rogan talks to Donald Trump for 3 hours.
He courted the show’s young male audience by floating the idea of eliminating the income tax, talking about mixed martial arts fighters, praising the military skills of Gen. Robert E. Lee and speculating that there was “no reason not to think” there could be life on Mars and other planets....
Why not say he "courted" the old women (like me) by talking about the length of the bed in the Lincoln bedroom and how badly depressed Mary Todd Lincoln was after her son Tad died?
Mr. Rogan seemed to back Mr. Trump’s questioning of election processes, at one point likening those who raised concerns over elections to those who questioned coronavirus vaccines.
“You get labeled an election denier,” Mr. Rogan said. “It’s like being labeled an anti-vaxxer if you question some of the health consequences that people have from the Covid-19 shots.”...
What I thought was so interesting was the first topic: how Trump felt when he found himself suddenly President. If that's not a topic for women, I don't know what is, especially when Trump centered the description on his interest in seeing the Lincoln bedroom and imagining the feelings of Abe and Mary. I loved Trump's (seeming) openness, as he repeatedly described his subjective experience as "surreal."
October 25, 2024
"The ad... could be the final shot in an extremely negative campaign. It puts the spotlight on [Tammy] Baldwin’s personal life..."
Tammy is openly gay. She has been praised for her gayness by major state and national media outlets for years. She has been openly celebrated and supported by LGBT groups since she was first elected to the Senate. Every Wisconsinite with a pulse knows she’s gay. Is she now saying she’s embarrassed to be gay? More likely she just doesn’t want voters to know if her partner benefited financially from her Senate gig.
All this likening of Trump to Hitler has got me looking back to my 2011 posts, when Wisconsinites likened Governor Scott Walker to Hitler.
From February 17, 2011: "Scott Walker compared to Hitler" (with video of Meade questioning a woman who is carrying a sign portraying showing Walker with a Hitler mustache).
"The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election."
Goodbye to Phil Lesh.
In addition to providing explorative bass work, Mr. Lesh sang high harmonies for the band and provided the occasional lead vocal. He also co-wrote some of the band’s most noteworthy songs, including ones that inspired adventurous jams, like “St. Stephen” and “Dark Star,” as well as more conventional pieces, like “Cumberland Blues,” “Truckin’” and “Box of Rain.”
Key to the dynamic of The Dead was the way Mr. Lesh used the bass to provide ever-shifting counterpoints to the dancing leads of the lead guitarist Jerry Garcia, the curt riffs of the rhythm guitarist Bob Weir, the bold rhythms of the drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, and, in the band’s first eight years, the warm organ work of Ron McKernan, known as Pigpen.
A source of particular excitement was the relationship between Mr. Lesh’s instrument and Mr. Garcia’s. At times they mirrored each other. At other times they contrasted, in the process widening the music’s melodic nuances while helping to create the kind of variety and tension that allowed the band to improvise at length without losing the listener.
"As prisoners arrived, they were stripped, searched and deloused, a process overseen by Dr. Zimbardo, who played the role of prison superintendent."
From "Philip Zimbardo, 91, Whose Stanford Prison Experiment Studied Evil, Dies/ His provocative research made him a popular figure on campus. But his exploration of how good people can turn evil raised ethical questions" (NYT).
"Harris’s closing argument is dishonest, desperate and hypocritical/Trump isn’t a fascist, and he didn’t say he would use the military against his political opponents."
In their miasma of outrage, Democrats seem to have forgotten that they have been demonizing Republicans as “enemies” for years. During his noxious 2022 speech in Atlanta, President Joe Biden accused Republicans who opposed his proposed federal takeover of our elections of standing with traitors such as Confederate president Jefferson Davis and explicitly called them “enemies” of America, thundering: “I will defend the right to vote, our democracy against all enemies — foreign and, yes, domestic.” Barack Obama famously declared “We’re gonna punish our enemies, and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us” (He later conceded that he should have used the word “opponents” instead.)
Asking AI to make a beautiful face more and more beautiful ends up in the same place as a person who gets too much plastic surgery.
"Once considered revolutionary, the notion of empathy and advocacy for the poor is now a central tenet of Roman Catholic social teaching."
From "Gustavo Gutiérrez, Father of Liberation Theology, Dies at 96/Once considered revolutionary, his notion of empathy and advocacy for the poor has become a central tenet of Catholic social teaching" (NYT).
"How brilliant is Donald J. Trump?"
WATCH: JD Vance is currently doing a Town Hall hosted by Chris Cuomo, and Trump surprised them with a call to ask a question
— George (@BehizyTweets) October 25, 2024
Trump: "How brilliant is Donald Trump?" 😂
Vance: "This is supposed to be for undecided voters. I would hope that I have your vote, of all people." 😂… pic.twitter.com/qvy5l0aWlX
It's finally happened. Mika has *SNAPPED* live on airpic.twitter.com/EeiNzwopeb
— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) October 24, 2024
I invite you to look at the Real Clear Politics "No Toss-Ups" Electoral College map right now:
And here's what I wrote last December:
The demonization of Trump has not worked for Democrats. I think Glenn Greenwald put it aptly (reacting to the polls I've displayed above):
"The more Trump is indicted, the more he rises in the polls. That correlation doesn't prove causation, but what it does prove is that most Americans have so much distrust in the justice system and DOJ that even felony indictments don't undermine Trump's standing with the public."
My advice, not that I think Democrats would or even could follow it: Fight Trump on the substantive merits of the issues. Show us that you deserve the power you seek.
I was right all the way down to the prediction that they wouldn't do it and the belief — which I still hold — that they couldn't do it even if they wanted.
If you had to take the over/under on Trump 312/Harris 226, you'd take the over.
"'If it takes Vice President Harris to elevate the voices of women in Houston so they are heard in Madison and Kalamazoo and Pittsburgh, that’s what we’re going to do'..."
From "Why Harris (with Beyoncé in tow) is heading to solidly red Texas" (NYT)
Somehow the first 2 articles I click to read in the NYT this morning both bring up Theodore Roosevelt.
2. "It Sounded Like Dancing, Drinking and Sex. It Blew People’s Minds" by John McWhorter: "We moderns can’t feel ragtime as the hip, naughty thing it was to people when Theodore Roosevelt was president. Jazz, rock, hip-hop and so much else came in ragtime’s wake, all of them syncopated (and hip-wiggly) to degrees beyond anything [Scott] Joplin, who died in 1917, ever knew." (Interesting use of language: "hip, naughty... hip-hop... hip-wiggly....")
"I'm dying for some action... I need a love reaction...."
October 24, 2024
"The Progressive Moment Is Over/Four reasons their era has come to an end."
Writes Ruy Teixeira (at Liberal Patriot).
The 4 reasons:
1. Loosening restrictions on illegal immigration was a terrible idea and voters hate it...
2. Promoting lax law enforcement and tolerance of social disorder was a terrible idea and voters hate it....
3. Insisting that everyone should look at all issues through the lens of identity politics was a terrible idea and voters hate it....
4. Telling people fossil fuels are evil and they must stop using them was a terrible idea and voters hate it....
That made me think of this TikTok I saw today, a woman describing what she thinks is "a new breed of conservatives":
"Usha and J.D. made a memorable pair. The legal writer David Lat remembers attending a poker night with the couple in 2011..."
The Mystery of the Waterfowl.
"When I look at Kamala, I look at my aunt. I mean, we've got this black lady, strong, who stands on business, who means what she says, is relatable."
According to Ed O'Keefe, at CBS News, this ad is aimed at black men in the Philadelphia area.
Maybe Philadelphia is full of guys who think: You know who should be President? My aunt!
And maybe in the Philadelphia area, among black residents, they still speak of "empathy" by calling it "the nature of a female." But all of us can see this ad. And to me, it seems as though the Harris campaign looks upon black men as sexist — Obama let it show the other day — and wants to meet them where they are and is therefore calling women "females" and describing their "nature" in old-fashioned, stereotypical terms — "empathy, that's just, like, in their heart, the nature of a female."
RFK Jr. and Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard each take a quick turn touting Trump.
Kamala Harris, asked if she's made a mistake that she's learned from, could have nailed it by ending her painful fumbling by saying...
Oh. My. God.
— Tim Pool (@Timcast) October 24, 2024
That Kamala town hall is it
Holy fuck
Listen and SHARE THIS pic.twitter.com/r7sq3lfWR8
Everyone's talking about whether Trump meets "the definition of a fascist," after John Kelly "read aloud a definition of fascism that he had found online."
I saw that Kamala Harris, doing a town hall on CNN last night, "agreed" that Trump meets "the definition of a fascist," but she did not, herself, define "fascist," so I wondered what she was doing, embracing a conclusion, calling names. I live in a city where you can get called a "fascist" for venturing that Justice Scalia wrote a well-reasoned opinion. Among left-wingers, the definition of "fascist" is: right-wing. It's a shibboleth. To call someone a "fascist" is to identify yourself as on the left.
So it's a good thing to interpose the idea that a definition is needed, and it's interesting to see that Anderson Cooper did not ask Harris is Trump a fascist. But he did not task her with providing a definition. He just asked her whether Trump met the definition of a fascist. What's a home viewer to do?
I didn't watch the town hall live. Frankly, I didn't know it was on. Which is odd considering that I read the news all day yesterday and it was a 90-minute CNN extravaganza. Hard to hide, one would think. And yet it was hidden from me.
The first headline I saw this morning was "Harris says in CNN town hall she agrees Trump is a fascist" (WaPo). Agrees? Who is she agreeing with? It was confusing, because the article only says that the moderator, Anderson Cooper, asked her if she believed Trump is a fascist. Who is she supposedly agreeing with? I don't think Cooper expressed an opinion. (That would be wrong. He was the moderator. Whatever he may think, he can't properly say it.)
I quickly figure out that this traces back to an October 22 article in the NYT, by Michael S. Schmidt: "As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator/John Kelly, the Trump White House’s longest-serving chief of staff, said that he believed that Donald Trump met the definition of a fascist." Boldface added.
In response to a question about whether he thought Mr. Trump was a fascist, Mr. Kelly first read aloud a definition of fascism that he had found online.
Good for Kelly for sensing that a definition is required. Bad for Kelly for just finding something on line and reading it out loud...
“Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy,” he said.
... and quickly concluding that the definition is met:
Mr. Kelly said that definition accurately described Mr. Trump.
“So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America,” Mr. Kelly said.
He thinks... but didn't do in 4 years in office? When did Trump ever say that the better way to run America is through "centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition [and] belief in a natural social hierarchy"?
Are you wondering where on line Kelly found his definition? Make the most obvious guess and you will be right:
October 23, 2024
"And in quiet conversations, some female Harris supporters can’t shake the uneasy feeling that men in their lives are struggling to support a woman — especially a Black and South Asian woman — even if they don’t want to admit it."
“If she were a man, would this race be this close?” Gov. Janet Mills of Maine asked a clutch of Democratic women after campaigning for Ms. Harris in suburban Pittsburgh. Joyce Reinoso, one of those women, shot back, “Oh, she would’ve won three weeks ago.”...
If Kamala Harris were a man, she would not have been chosen for Joe Biden's Vice President, and if she were not Vice President, she would not have been the one that the nomination that was stolen from him got handed to. She wouldn't be anywhere near the presidency.
Is Obama helping Kamala by vocalizing about vomit on his sweater?
“I have done a lot of rallies, so I don’t usually get nervous,” Obama said as he took to the stage to promote Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday. “But I was feeling some kind of way following Eminem.... I notice my palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, vomit on my sweater already, mom’s spaghetti, I’m nervous but on the surface I look calm and ready to drop bombs but I keep on forgetting,” Obama rapped as the crowd cheered. “Love, love me some Eminem,” he added.
I'm not sure who he hopes to influence with that, but what do I know? I'm only an undecided voter in Wisconsin. I'm not awed by celebrities, and everyone acknowledges that Kamala is the candidate with the most celebrities. Does it augment or diminish her?
But I just want to say that I do not like the picture of mom's spaghetti vomited onto Obama's sweater. I can barely picture Obama wearing a sweater — as opposed to a beautifully ironed shirt with a casually unbuttoned collar and rolled up sleeves.
And I don't like thinking about spaghetti-vomit on that sweater. I get Eminem's lyric about his pathetic self, who's not only vomiting onto his bad clothes but stuck eating his mother's home-cooked food. I saw the movie "8 Mile" when it came out. I understand the context of the lyrics
But Obama is not so in thrall to Eminem that the thought of encountering Eminem would physically overwhelm him. Obama was President and had to go head-to-head with Putin and Xi, and he's supposed to be vouching for Kamala, who's asking to do the same, so I don't want to hear about his getting weak-kneed over a pop star.
And most of all, I don't like "mom's spaghetti" as a marker of wretchedness. Many of us are bereft of a mother — including you, Barack Obama. To have mom's spaghetti, even upchucked, would be to experience one's mother alive in the world again.
"State media has... suggested the new campaign intends to target even benign-sounding puns" — like "rainy girl without melons" (yǔ nǚ wú guā) for "it’s none of your business" (yǔ nǐ wú guan)."
China’s internet regulators have launched a campaign cracking down on puns and homophones.... The “clear and bright” campaign is targeting “irregular and uncivilised” language online, particularly jokes, memes, and wordplay, the Cyberspace Administration of China and the ministry of education announced this month....
“For some time, various internet jargons and memes have appeared frequently, leaving people more and more confused,” said an editorial by the Communist party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily....
The People’s Daily noted the quick turnover for online memes, and urged authorities and social media platforms to not allow “obviously ambiguous” new words to spread quickly without “rectification.”
"So OK," Nathan Silver will "tell you. My gut says Donald Trump. And my guess is that it is true for many anxious Democrats."
Quoted in "Nate Silver: Here’s What My Gut Says About the Election. But Don’t Trust Anyone’s Gut, Even Mine" (NYT).
Silver intuits that the polls reflect a "nonresponse bias": "It’s not that Trump voters are lying to pollsters; it’s that in 2016 and 2020, pollsters weren’t reaching enough of them."
October 22, 2024
I perceive a lull.
Obama's in Madison today — with Tim Walz in tow — but where is he appearing?
Why the big secret? Security? I'm going to guess that they'd like to use a big arena, but only if there's going to be the right size crowd. It can't be allowed to be seen that Obama does not draw in the masses.
October 21, 2024
"I fear that Harris is every bit as vacuous behind the scenes as she seems to be on the public stage."
Said Bret Stephens, endorsing Kamala Harris, in "Kamala Harris Has an Unexpected Ally" (NYT).
"Once European fashion houses stopped pretending that they were ignorant of Black culture, they began to openly feed on it."
"Is this rightward drift among young men simply a short-lived, Trump-inspired episode or a more permanent transformation?"
Writes John Della Volpe, the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, in "Trump’s Bro-Whispering Could Cost Democrats Too Many Young Men" (NYT).
"The book’s first sentence now feels brutally prescient: 'Dying really didn’t hurt,' Navalny wrote."
From "How Aleksei Navalny’s Prison Diaries Got Published/In his posthumous memoir, compiled with help from his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny faced the fact that Vladimir Putin might succeed in silencing him. The book will keep 'his legacy alive,' Navalnaya said" (NYT)(free-access link).
"Each time we argue my girlfriend will go away and discuss the argument with chat gpt, even doing so in the same room sometimes."
From "My girlfriend uses Chat GPT every time we have a disagreement. AITAH for saying she needs to stop?" (r/AITAH). Via "Couples are using AI to fight — and win — arguments: 'ChatGPT says you’re insecure'" (NY Post).
"There were way too many kids and it seemed to her that since they didn’t speak the language, or didn’t understand what was going on, they were getting more attention."
Said the mother of a 16-year-old who dropped out of public school and enrolled in an "online homeschool," quoted in "In Logansport, Indiana, kids are being pushed out of schools after migrants swelled county’s population by 30%:/'Everybody else is falling behind'" (NY Post).
The Washington Post Editorial Board pushes Kamala Harris to pay attention to the upcoming 250th anniversary of the United States.
Efforts are already underway to plan the semiquincentennial, but they got off to a slow start, mirroring much of the country’s political dysfunction.
The federal commission appointed to oversee the proceedings, writes the Atlantic, “swiftly descended into a morass of charges and countercharges over process, favoritism, hiring, gender discrimination, and budget decisions.”
So here's what cued up the issue. There's an article in The Atlantic, published a week ago: "America Is Suffering an Identity Crisis/In two years, the U.S. will mark its 250th birthday, and the left doesn’t seem to care—giving up on America’s symbols and its very meaning."
The left doesn't seem to care. But if Trump is elected he will preside over the occasion, and he certainly seems to care. I can now understand the WaPo editors' decision to forefront this issue. There's a horror of the Donald Trump Birthday of America Extravaganza and a chilling realization that his Make-America-Great-Again theme fits enragingly perfectly with the occasion. Quick! Present a left-wing alternative vision!
The WaPo editors lamely suggest that Kamala Harris "try to persuade skeptics on her side of the political spectrum that the United States is indeed something worth celebrating." It's a little late for that. But the editors say she's "well-positioned to make this pitch, because as the child of immigrants and a woman of color, she represents in her very candidacy the progress the country has seen." As if this big occasion should revolve around her: Celebrate me! Because I embody what's worth celebrating!
The Atlantic article says that Biden dealt with the "meltdown" at the commission by appointing Rosie Rios as the commission chair. Under her, the key concept seems to be a "radically decentralized" social-media concept called "America's Stories" — a website where anybody/everybody writes anything. This would be inclusive, but it would include all the hostility against America that we expect from the left. Would they resort to censorship? They would have to!
The Atlantic writer, the Yale historian Beverly Gage, says:
For the past 60 years, much of American historical scholarship has been about exposing a darker story behind self-congratulatory myths.
Next time you propose a toast at a birthday party, try exposing a darker story behind the self-congratulatory myths.
As a believer in that effort, I have long shared the left’s ambivalence about patriotic symbols: the flag, the Founders, the national anthem, the Fourth of July. Today, though, I feel an urgency to reclaim and redefine all these things, lest they be ceded to those darker forces historians like to write about.
So you and your fellow historians devoted yourself to telling the "darker story" and now, as the people look to celebrate a big birthday, you are worried that they aren't going to frame the event around your dark story but will look to the kind of characters — the "darker forces" — that you've been disparaging all these years? People are drawn to the good — to an uplifting idea of what the country means — and you see that very optimism as an embrace of the darkness.
Nearing the end, the historian comes out with: "[N]ow that I think of it, why not wear the hat and fly the flag?" Well, for one thing, flying a U.S. flag at your house is regarded as equivalent to having a Trump yard sign.
We have a U.S. flag at our front door. But I'd consider bringing it inside for the next few weeks, because I don't like exacerbating the anguish in the neighborhood as the impending Make-America-Great-Again victory comes into focus.
October 20, 2024
Who better than Alec Baldwin to play the role of Bret Baier as a complete jerk in last night's "SNL" cold open?
"We expect our would-be tyrants to command a certain gravitas, to be earnest, play it straight. But Donald Trump almost never does."
Writes Sam Adler-Bell, in "The Music Man/Trump’s kitschy nostalgia is the point" (NY Magazine).
Trump said Abraham Lincoln was only "probably" a great president, because "Why wasn’t that settled?" ("That" = the Civil War.)
Meanwhile, there's only one article about Kamala Harris on the front page of the NYT at the moment, and it's not about problems with the way she speaks. It's not that she said "It's real," when someone asserted that Israel is committing genocide. It's not that she taunted "You guys are at the wrong rally" when somebody yelled "Christ is Lord."