August 24, 2024

"A weirdo singularity"!!

A conversation between TFG and JDV:

TFG: "The Harris campaign keeps saying we're weird. I don't get it. We are the least weird people ever, that I can tell you. Nobody has ever been less weird than us."

JDV: "That's true, sir, but we need to get out and do something that's clearly not weird so they'll stop saying that. I plan to visit a doughnut shop and speak normally with the hirelings. Everyone will see that I am not at all weird."

TFG: "That's fine for you; anyhow, people think you're weird. Nobody thinks I'm weird. And I'm going to prove it once and for all by accepting the offer of RFK Jr. to endorse me."

JDV: "Excellent. He's a Kennedy so the peasants will vote for us."

TFG: "Not only that, he had a brain worm and he left a dead bear in Central Park. Also, he ate a dog. That proves he's not weird. Maybe you should get a brain worm instead of fucking couches. Some people say fucking couches is weird."

JDV: "I don't fuck couches."

TFG: "Then why were those people at my enormous rally that was the biggest rally ever carrying your jizz around in specimen cups?"

JDV: "That wasn't my jizz. I save it all for my very fertile and normal wife whom I have impregnated like a normal manly man."

TFG: "Whatever. Just don't do that weird couch thing any more."

JDV: "I do not fuck couches."

TFG: "The specimen cups should have the campaign logo. The lid should be a little MAGA cap."

JDV: "[sigh] I have to get to the doughnut shop now to speak normally with the minions at a very normal campaign stop."

August 17, 2024

The claim was ridiculous on its face.

What do you suppose would happen to those items if they were left in boys' bathrooms? Has anyone ever met a teenage boy?

Anyhow, Walz should wear the appellation "Tampon Tim" as a badge of honor. The law does require schools to make the products available for free where they are likely to be needed - in girls' and unisex bathrooms and in the school nurses' offices. If you've ever been a teenage girl you'll know exactly why this is kind of a big deal - your body can do unexpected things and the results can be terribly embarrassing and inconvenient. And nobody has to pay for other hygiene items like toilet paper, soap or paper towels - things that everybody uses - but where girls and women are concerned, we get to pay extra for what we need. At least that won't be true any more in MN public schools (unlike when I attended them).

August 14, 2024

Walz is turning into kind of a rock star!

He's been a great governor, all-around good guy who's helped make MN a progressive oasis in the middle of a MAGA desert, but I didn't expect him to be such an effective political speaker. That's not to say he was a poor or boring speaker; only that on TV he seemed just normal, workmanlike, practical, not such a firebrand or so funny. He's proving to be a great asset for Harris.

I just spent a few days driving around far northern MN, visiting some nature sites (ever get a chance to see the Lost 40 in Chippewa National Forest, do it!), and observed very few Trump signs anywhere (3, I think), although this used to be Trump country, bigly. Driving through the Red Lake Nation I saw whole a lot of signs for Harris and Amy Klobuchar, definitely none for TFG. The folks on the rez definitely are not Trump fans.

July 31, 2024

Single guys without kids don't worry him. It's *women* without kids.

You know, all those miserable childless cat ladies. Women are supposed to have children; that's all we're really good for. Every one of us childless cat ladies should have been married and had children; if we're unmarried and "unfruitful" and just supporting a bunch of cats, what good are we? - Apart from the fact that in order to support ourselves and our cats we probably have jobs. Maybe we are teachers or doctors or professors or artists or senators or scientists or mayors or airline pilots or military officers or musicians or lawyers or software developers or judges or business owners or athletes or bus drivers or or or... Women with jobs, competing with men, maybe even being their bosses, instead of staying home and waiting on them and cleaning up after them and their kids. That, I suspect, is what's really burning his ass. Uppity women who don't want to be handmaids.

July 30, 2024

Some people are bound to be disappointed, but we need to keep in mind

that what we see and what we read about aren't the whole story. We see the 4 or 5 possible choices on TV, we read their resumes, we assume certain things about how they might or might not appeal to certain voters; we assume (mostly incorrectly, considering the historical record) that a particular person is essential to winning a particular state; but what we don't see are the internal polls and certain intangibles - importantly, how comfortable Harris and her staff will feel campaigning with and working with each of them. Are they compatible not only with her policies but with her vibe? Will they present to the public the way she wants the campaign to present? These things are unknowable at this point. I'm going to trust that the choice will be made after careful consideration of factors we know and don't know; I'll be satisfied that it's the best choice even if I'd personally preferred another, and I will immediately order my lawn sign and get busy.

July 22, 2024

With the greatest respect to Biden I don't think this was nine-dimensional chess.

I think he intended to stay in until increasingly bad polling and fund-raising reports (probably influenced at least in part by the media's constant references to his poor debate performance) convinced him that he was in serious danger of losing. Not wanting to risk turning the government over to Trump he finally (and apparently reluctantly) decided to step down, much to the surprise of almost everybody, including many of his closest aides. Politicians who are considering quitting a campaign don't signal it in advance; they don't release or even leak statements suggesting they might not stay in, since that would effectively kill any remaining chances they might have to turn a faltering campaign around - they are adamantly and absolutely in until suddenly they're out. I don't think this was a clever ruse designed to confound Trump's campaign; I think it's exactly what it seemed to be. The polls weren't good, the donations were slowing, and the RNC was probably the final straw. The assassination attempt made Trump look strong while Biden was stuck at home with covid following a widely-panned debate performance. It wasn't going to get better, as much as a lot of us hoped it would and that he'd stick it out. But the result, as sad and painful as the process was, will turn out to be a triumph, I think, and he'll be remembered as the president who sacrificed his career to save the country.

July 14, 2024

He's a narcissist to whom the illusion of strength, even invincibility,

is essential to his image - both the image he presents to the public and the one he presents to himself. He's just had to face the reality that he came within inches of getting his head blown off. That would freak out even a normal person, but what would it do to someone who wouldn't want to be seen as an ordinary mortal guy who nearly got shot in the head, and probably would have if the shooter had been even slightly more accurate, or if the Secret Service agents hadn't protected him? He was powerless in that moment, and just as vulnerable as all the other people who he regards as his inferiors. I bet that caused him to pucker bigly. He'll overcompensate with some sort of bravado performance, exaggeration of the scratch on his ear, and, of course, attributing it all to liberals, Democrats, immigrants, BLM, uppity women and Joe Biden. But I have no doubt that he soiled his Underoos, mentally if not literally.

May 30, 2024

This reminds me a whole lot of the George Floyd case

in the sense that both cases were extremely controversial. In the Floyd case lot of people didn't think a jury would convict a cop, because historically that hasn't happened often (and still doesn't, sadly). Many right here on DU predicted a hung jury, or deliberations that would go on for a very long time, or even an acquittal. In both cases the judges handled the cases fairly, calmly and competently, and the prosecutors in both tried excellent cases (the defense, not so much - but neither defense lawyer had much to work with). In both cases the juries came back with unanimous verdicts in about the same amount of time. The cases are very different, of course, in that one involved a rogue cop and the other involved a rogue ex-president. The rogue cop behaved himself throughout the trial and didn't threaten anybody. The rogue ex-president, not so much.

But the system worked in both cases, and that makes me very happy.

May 29, 2024

I do not understand people who share every aspect of their lives on Facebook

or other social media. Even on DU there's a certain amount of what for me, at least, would be over-sharing, but at least we have the relative safety and anonymity of screen names. On Facebook, though, you're just out there, telling everybody what you, Jane P. Bingleford of Bilgewater, OH, had for dinner while letting burglars know you're out of town on a marvelous vacation in the Bahamas; that your hemorrhoids are acting up again; and worst of all, that your son Fred still wets his bed and you're SO worried because he's going to summer camp next week, and your daughter Zelda just got her first bra and isn't that wonderful? The mother of the woman in the linked article must be some kind of fucked up to have exposed her children the way she did. If you, an adult, want to tell the whole world about the rash on your butt, go ahead (not that most other people actually want to know), but the harm done by narcissistic, attention-seeking parents who broadcast every minute of their children's lives is incalculable. We have become so used to not having privacy that we don't even respect our own.

January 14, 2024

Nixon resigned because he knew he was going to be impeached,

and he accepted Ford's pardon because he knew he was likely to be prosecuted. There was never any question about immunity at the time. Sometime later, in 1977, he said in an interview that when a president does something it's legal. Nobody ever actually believed that, though; and Nixon certainly didn't either. In fact, that statement was qualified as referring to acts taken for purposes of national security. Here's a transcript of that part of the interview:

https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/transcript-of-david-frosts-interview-with-richard-nixon/

So what Nixon was saying was that if actions that are ordinarily against the law are taken in the interests of national security or other national concerns, those actions should not result in prosecution. He added that he did "not mean to suggest the president is above the law," only that a president has "extraordinary powers" that can be used under certain circumstances to protect the national interest. This is not what Trump is claiming at all. Trump's argument is that a president can't be prosecuted at all for any crimes committed as president - including the murder of political opponents - unless he is first impeached and removed from office, which is ridiculous. Even Nixon didn't suggest anything like that.