He seems to think what he is saying is perfectly bland.

It's hard to tell in the uncanny valley of his face (is that Botox?):

"Our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to hammer [disinformation] out of existence. What we need is to win...the right to govern by hopefully winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to implement change."

No thanks.pic.twitter.com/SLGHOLVjCr

— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) September 29, 2024

"Our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to hammer [disinformation] out of existence. What we need is to win... the right to govern by hopefully winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to implement change...."

Via Elon Musk, who opines "This is crazy."

Song parody idea: If John Kerry had a hammer/He'd hammer the First Amendment out of existence...

"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.

"A series of prominent Democrats were tested in a head-to-head ballot against Donald Trump."

By Emerson College Polling:

• Vice President Kamala Harris: 49% Trump, 43% Harris, 8% undecided
• Senator Bernie Sanders: 48% Trump, 42% Sanders, 10% undecided
• California Governor Gavin Newsom: 48% Trump, 40% Newsom, 12% undecided
• Former Vice President Al Gore: 47% Trump, 42% Gore, 11% undecided
• Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: 48% Trump, 41% Clinton, 11% undecided
• Senator Elizabeth Warren: 49% Trump, 39% Warren, 13% undecided
• Secretary of State Pete Buttigieg: 49% Trump, 39% Buttigieg, 12% undecided
• Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro: 46% Trump, 38% Shapiro, 16% undecided
• Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer: 48% Trump, 38% Whitmer, 15% undecided

Meanwhile, Trump beats Joe Biden by only 46% to 43%, with 11% undecided. That is, Biden loses to Trump by only 3 percentage points. All those other possibilities are worse: Harris loses by 6, Bernie by 6, Newsom by 8, Gore by 5, Hillary by 7, Warren by 10, Buttigieg by 10, Shapiro by 8, and Whitmer by 10.

I like how the most surprising inclusion — Gore — does best.

Saddest exclusion: Kerry. If Gore is in, it's mean to leave out Kerry.

Most interesting effect on Trump: Shapiro. Trump is at 48 or 48 for everyone else, but slips to 46 for Shapiro. There's a lurch toward undecided.

RFK Jr. said what needs to be said: Biden's use of government power to suppress the speech of his political antagonists is a worse threat to democracy than whatever Trump has done.

"I can make the argument that President Biden is the much worse threat to democracy, and the reason for that is President Biden is... the first president in history that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech, so to censor his opponent. I can say that because I just won a case in the federal court of appeals — and now before the Supreme Court — that shows that he started censoring not just me but, 37 hours after he took the oath of office, he was censoring me (sic). No President in the country has ever done that. The greatest threat in democracy is not somebody who questions election returns but a President of the United States who used the power of his office to force the social media companies — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter — to open a portal and give access to that portal to the FBI, to the CIA, to the IRS, to [???], to NIH, to censor his political critics. President Biden, the first President in history, used his power over the Secret Service to deny Secret Service protection to one of his political opponents, for political reasons. He's weaponizing the federal agencies. Those are really critical threats to democracy."

The interviewer — perhaps only pretending to misunderstand — asks how what Trump did is not a threat to democracy. RFK Jr. answers:

Where is the courage? Where is the leadership?

"President Biden will not attend a major United Nations climate summit that begins Thursday in Dubai, skipping an event expected to be attended by King Charles III, Pope Francis and leaders from nearly 200 countries, a White House official said Sunday. The official, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss the president’s schedule, did not give a reason...."

The NYT reports.

I'm seeing this immediately after blogging a NYT article about how young people are not supporting Biden. That article didn't even mention climate change. It guessed that maybe young people are more likely to worry about Biden's advanced age or disapprove of his support for Israel. But what about climate change? Don't young people (and other people) want to see Biden take a strong stand on climate? And here he is opting out of an event with Pope Francis and King Charles and many other leaders. 

And he's not even saying why. Is he afraid of looking frail and confused within that group or is worried — are his people worried — about needing to commit to anything at all?

"I love guitar. Oh, God. I mean, you know -- Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Buffett . . ."

Said John Kerry, blogged here, on October 20, 2004:

That's John Kerry talking to Rolling Stone. I just don't know what to say about that juxtaposition. Many years ago--in the 1970s--I went to a concert and Jimmy Buffett was the opening act. I tried to sit it out, but I couldn't. I got up and walked out into the fluorescent-lit, concrete lobby and paced around with nothing to do. I can't remember what it was about Buffett that was so distinctly intolerable to me. The attitude? The patter? In any case, I've never listened to the man since then....

Recalled this morning, as I see the NYT obituary: "Jimmy Buffett, Roguish Bard of Island Escapism, Is Dead at 76/With songs like 'Margaritaville' and 'Fins,' he became a folk hero to fans known as Parrot Heads. He also became a millionaire hundreds of times over."

Condolences to all who loved him. When it comes to taste, there is no dispute.

"How is it possible that a disease characterized by coughing, emaciation, relentless diarrhea, fever, and the expectoration of phlegm and blood became not only a sign of beauty, but also a fashionable disease?"

Asks Carolyn Day in "Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion, and Disease," reviewed by Allison Meier in "How Tuberculosis Symptoms Became Ideals of Beauty in the 19th Century/In Consumptive Chic: A History of Beauty, Fashion, and Disease, Carolyn A. Day investigates how the fatal symptoms of tuberculosis became entwined with feminine ideals in the late 18th and early 19th centuries" (Hypoallergenic).

It helped that the wasting away of tuberculosis sufferers aligned with existing ideas of attractiveness. The thinness, the ghostly pallor that brought out the veins, the rosy cheeks, sparkling eyes, and red lips (really signs of a constant low-grade fever), were both the ideals of beauty for a proper lady, and the appearance of a consumptive on their deathbed. If you didn’t have the disease, you could use makeup to get the pale skin and crimson lips, and wear a dress that slumped your posture....

The perception of a medical problem as beautiful is not an isolated quirk of the Victorian age. We do it today. Look around.

I'll just quote an old post of mine, from 2004, my first year of blogging:

If Ron DeSantis asked me "How do you spell Lambeau?," I'd say "L-A-M-B-E-R-T."

But that's just my sense of political humor, and I have a long memory, and it certainly goes back to 2004, when John Kerry campaigned in Wisconsin and called Lambeau "Lambert." 

Anyway, here's the context for Ron's question "How do you spell Lambeau?," from the NYT article "Tom Brady and Ron DeSantis Are Said to Be on Texting Terms/The Republican nominee for Wisconsin governor, Tim Michels, told supporters recently that while DeSantis was watching a Packers game at Lambeau Field, he was texting the Buccaneers quarterback": 

Antic grotesquerie.

I'd thought this morning was the first time I'd ever used the word "grotesquerie" on this blog. I was talking about the female Olympics figure skaters. But no, back in 2014, I wrote of "the grotesquerie of politicians finding love with the Hollywood stars." I did not like seeing Leonardo DiCaprio and John Kerry locked in embrace.

But it felt new. I even looked it up in the OED to see if it counted as an English word (because if it were only a foreign-language word, I'd have put it in italics). Yes, it's English. They were saying it back in 1655:

1655    Ld. Orrery Parthenissa IV.  ii. vi. 536   In a large Compartiment compos'd of Groteskery were seene Sphynxes, Harpyes, the Clawes of Lyons, and Tygres, to evidence, that within, inhabited Misteries, and Riddles.

Of course, "grotesquerie" is just a noun version of "grotesque," and I got sidetracked into the original meaning of "grotesque": "A kind of decorative painting or sculpture, consisting of representations of portions of human and animal forms, fantastically combined and interwoven with foliage and flowers." 

"One of the biggest acts of political malpractice in the history of American politics."

According to Terry McAuliffe's new memoir, “What a Party! My Life Among Democrats: Presidents, Candidates, Donors, Activists, Alligators and Other Wild Animals,” that would be John Kerry's decision to forbid attacks on George W. Bush at the 2004 Democratic convention. Yes, that was Kerry's big problem all right. He was just too darned nice to his opponents.