Stephen Miller. Of all things, hosted on FOX. (Consider the post below this one, from earlier today.) Miller is no ordinary human. Ordinary people do not rave so strongly, they are willing to listen. To try to see things from multiple angles so that error is avoided. So that sound ultimate decisions result. This is a demagogue. Ranting.
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
This man is spewing hate of "The Other." They're not us. They will undermine us. They are a danger. A wholly different culture, he says. Hitler said that about Jews.
Is Donald Trump cutting off his nose to spite his face? Having an immature reaction to FOX is unlikely to make Rupert's family happy and cozy. He needs them. Too many voters he'd want are FOX minions to where riling FOX is counterproductive to him.
A screen capture, minutes old:
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This is not a well-thought-out action. It is a passion of the moment which Trump may later regret. It is also childishly worded with regard to Conway and the Lincoln Project. A childish flailing. FOX has a bigger presence among his base than he can afford to alienate. Rephrased, FOX is the 800 pound gorilla where you don't yank its chain if you want it friendly. Unless, an unhinged moment . . .
Is it a meltdown sign? Uncontrollable narcissism edging out sound judgment?
What will Trump yield, wanting to edit FOX editorial judgment? Illwill? Pushback?
Tuesday, July 30, 2024
Already, a difference. And YouTube shows it.
Using notes, not a pair of teleprompters. Good ad people are needed, and we wait for them to show up. Jon Steward sets the table well, and - how else to say it - we await more. Not super positive, not at all negative. Waiting. Already, style points. Finish prepared remarks, and walk out on the press corps. They are not friendly people, caring a lot about policy. Talk policy, exit. This is a good start.
UPDATE: No funny cap. More professional than that.
FURTHER: Digressing a bit. This has good clip material, but the guy talks too much, and stridently. Not a good style for any political ads.
FURTHER: This is more sound than other things online, while clearly critical of the Trump - Vance ticket.
Back on point. Harris talks, professionally, and briefly, doing well. Being clear. Staying on topic. Wrapping up, moving on.
FURTHER: Now let's get real. Via some DWT posting and a Bernie YouTube item. And a Jon Stewart YouTube item, to sew things up.
Start with JD Vance. Because he is the more interesting of two-party ticket people, so far. DWT, here. It speaks for itself, so go read it.
Next, another DWT item - after the analysis of Vance as more likely phony than not, with his by-his-bootstraps bio book, and criticisms of others poor and staying there for lack of gumption; this. It fits. Read it.
Anothrer DWT item. Telling a truth about Clinton, Biden, where Biden was better than expected by Crabgrass. That's admitted. Not especially good and having Manchin to veto real stuff so he'd not take the heat. A quote:
For all the bullshit about what a fabulous, transformative president Biden has been… give me a break. He has accomplished pretty much nothing other than passing some spending bills. Sure, sure… better than Trump— but so is a pile of dog shit in the gutter. Did Biden raise the minimum wage? Did he strengthen Social Security or Medicare? Did he raise taxes on the super-rich? He didn’t do shit for the American people, unless you want to count some good foreign policy, like withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan and helping to finance Ukraine’s resistance to Russian aggression. And most Americans would be hard put to find either of them on a map or tell you why Biden deserves a good mark for doing that.
Wealthy people aren’t monolithic, and their support can be influenced by social and cultural issues. Many of them in sectors like technology and entertainment are socially liberal and support Democratic positions on issues such as climate change, abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, and immigration. Still, regardless of social policies, economic self-interest usually remains the single most powerful political motivator. The perception that Republican policies will be more beneficial for their financial bottom line drives support from wealthy individuals, including in Big Tech.
There's more at the start, so read it as it segues well from JD Vance's bootstraps to this item.
And Silicon Valley has a trusted Venture Capitalist now on the one ticket, the tax thing Trump delivered that one Christmas along with Paul Ryan is still there. No Biden rollback. And JD's got our backs. Or not? Read it and then - You decide.
Next, YouTube, Bernie saying Harris still has to show bona fides. Not Trump, and Bernie will campaign for her, but still. Show something, or be pedestrian mediocre used to be close to Willie Brown. It's open. The vista is broad and deep.
She could be special. Or basically a disappointment like Obama. Biden appointed people with varying skin color, but not basically any different from Obama's AG, Holder. Not different from Biden. Not different from Manchin. And Biden still has to own up to responsibility for Clarence Thomas, and submarining Anita Hill. Back then. Chairing the hearings. Some remember.
Last, Jon Stewart, subtle in showing Mayor Pete for who we'd not ever want a heartbeat away from White House occupancy. If that too clever McKinsey young man is the Harris pick for VP, she'd be giving away my vote. Let the election rest on others' voting in that case. She's got better options.
Well, somebody printed a bunch of "MASS DEPORTION NOW" signs for the white people at the RNC convention to hold up and wave around. That's as big a fraud as building the wall, (and Mexico will pay for it). Those people waving the signs from Trump are the same ones who'd eat a bullshit sandwich if Trump fed it to them.
Well, at that RNC convention, "Mass Deportation Now" signs. Where is Trump/Vance/Stephen Miller going to send them? Iraq? That part has not been clarified. And will Mass Deportation of Mr. Vance's Childless Cat Ladies be next? He does hate on them a lot. That whole deportation fraud is as big a sack of bullshit as building the wall. Never gonna happen. Concentration camps for people numbering the same as the population of Chicago's greater metro area? Israel cannot handle two and a half million, already concentrated, in Gaza. Give me a fucking break. What? Perhaps build the concentration camps on Trump owned golf courses, the government paying Trump per-square-foot rent? In perpetuity? Mar-a-Lego would only hold a few thousand standing room only. That's a giant fraud, and when Kamala calls Trump out on it at a debate it will be game over. Those old white people at the RNC convention, holding the signs. Once their Social Security is pulled (should Trump win with Project 2025 implemented), are going to cut lettuce, load melons, and work packing plants?
Those stupid Deportation signs will be remaindered at two cents on the dollar.
______________UPDATE_____________
Focus groups and polling tell the Big Liar he can sell MASS DEPORTATION.
So -
This video, he never says other nations will accept people he'd want to round up and deport. He never says how he could get any consensus that way? Draft people and go to war to force Guatamala to take in eleven million people? What? Economic sanctions? They sure are working against Russia and Iran. The people of those nations are suffering worse economies than otherwise. But the sanctions are not getting compliance with the aims intended to be imposed.
Go to war with Honduras, to send people back there who never fit in or had a decent life there so send people back to where they left because the economy there could not absorb them?
Once you get to details, past the spin, it fails to impress, because it cannot be done.
Trump just waves his hands and delivers that bullshit sandwich, which some will willingly bite into. It's sick that a nation with most adults having K-12 educations cannot see to ask, "How are you going to get any other nation to take in millions of people you don't want, when they'd not want them either?"
The answer is for Congress to legislate ways and means and funding to regulate immigration as Congress sees fit, which could then be implemented by the executive branch. Once a policy is set into detail and funded, impose that policy.
And adapt the current economy to who is here now. It already is happening. Immigrants looking for work are working in large measure, with those born here or naturalized also finding work. There is no real problem.
There are jobs. There is a fat, mean man selling a scare speech, and nothing else. Buy at your own risk. However, when you buy dumb, its me and others with sense that have to live with bad decisionmaking of a deluded majority.
We had four years of that Trump bullshit and failure, of an unbuilt wall, already, and a sane majority voted Trump out, with Joe Biden over four years having proven better.
Different CPAC spinmeister schmuck, same problem. "Repatriation flights to Mexico," Miller glibly says, and if the Mexican government says no, go to war with Mexico? Get real.
CPAC is all talk. Talk is cheap. Talk is false. But glib. Nobody has advanced pricing data of any reliable kind for Trump policy talk. And talk not only is cheap, it's free at CPAC.
You don't pay for CPAC propaganda - to be propagandized. Somebody else pays to have it packaged and presented to you, and it is that somebody's investment, not gift. So who is behind the curtain? Paying the piper and calling the tune? And, why?
Genuine cost benefit data a thinking Congress and staff can deal with, is MIA. It is hand waving hocus pocus Trump and Miller deal out. It is Stephen Miller whoever he is and wherever he came from says so-and-so. Hell, it was Michele Bachmann who gave the SOB his first DC job. Crazy Michele. Then Jeff Sessions. That's his bona fides.
It is spinning humbug. It is a delusion sandwich. Etc. The man's left tracks.
Confrontational. In a mean, destructive, discourteous way.
And if you do not see a likely massive economic worldwide depression lurking in the glib words of Stephen Miller, if put into action where our nation needs the work immigrants provide, guess again. A suit like Miller ain't going to be out in the sun tending row crops, or cutting lettuce.
FURTHER: Slate. ScientificAmereican.
Quoting from the Slate item:
At his RNC speech on Thursday, Trump repeated his bizarre and farcical claim that migrants are “coming from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums, and terrorists at levels never seen before,” before once again pledging “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country—even larger than that of President Dwight D. Eisenhower many years ago.” This latter bit is an explicit reference to Operation Wetback (yes, that was its real name), a 1954 initiative to round up and deport hundreds of thousands of presumed Mexican immigrants that not only violated their civil and human rights but, historians agree, also targeted U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. That was a military-style operation using an armed Border Patrol, but Trump seems enthusiastic to go whole hog and just use the military.
This shockingly fascistic design hasn’t really come into the public consciousness for a number of reasons, including its sheer breadth, but also because it’s easy to wave away as patently illegal. Troops are prohibited from conducting any domestic law enforcement under the longtime principle known as Posse Comitatus, and so this plan is dead before it can start, right?
Sort of. That picture has now been complicated by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States, in which the justices decided that presidents are fully immune from prosecution for any conduct that involves a “core constitutional power.” In fact, such official actions can’t even be used as evidence in other investigations.
Much of the commentary around this ruling has homed in on the possibility of a reelected Trump using the Justice Department to go after political enemies or try to steal an election (again), but it’s hard to think of a presidential power as clear-cut as dominion over the military. The president’s role as “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States” is the first power explicitly given in Article 2 of the Constitution. Although the ability to formally declare and wage war is granted to Congress, operational command is fully vested in the executive and is perversely less limited when the president is calling upon troops for uses other than war.
Posse Comitatus, no matter how integral we consider it to our contemporary polity, is not a constitutional principle. In fact, it emerged only in the 1870s, as a direct backlash to the use of federal troops during Reconstruction. In the new calculus SCOTUS has laid out, core presidential powers like control of the military fully trump statutory constraints like this as far as presidential accountability is concerned. Put more simply, SCOTUS all but gave Trump the green light to violate Posse Comitatus with no conceivable civil or criminal repercussions. He cannot be sued or prosecuted as long as he has engaged in official acts, with the only course of action being the political remedy of impeachment, which has already twice failed to result in a conviction for Trump.
The ruling directly covers only the president, not any lower-level officials who would still be constrained by federal law, a stipulation that would be a lot more reassuring if the power to “grant Reprieves and Pardons” weren’t a few lines after control of the military. Posse Comitatus is a federal law and, as far as I can tell, has no state-level equivalents, which means Trump would also be immune from offering and issuing pardons to any military officers who carried out criminal mass arrest, detainment, and deportation-operation orders.
There would still be some avenues for targeted noncitizens and their local officials to fight back. The refusal by state and local governments to go along with Trump’s efforts is arguably the only thing that prevented the administration from ever reaching the staggering numbers of removals that characterized the early part of the Obama era. Although once steadfast support for undocumented immigrants has recently softened in dense, migrant-heavy urban areas like New York City, mayors and governors will not be keen on hostile military operations in their jurisdictions, though what little precedent exists tends to have the military prevailing in a face-off with local authorities.
Weird people.
Monday, July 29, 2024
WhiteHouse.gov - the official Presidential website, today posts of proposed Supreme Court reform. Bravo!
Short, stating, entirely:
From his first day in office—and every day since then—President Biden has taken action to strengthen American democracy and protect the rule of law.
In recent years, the Supreme Court has overturned long-established legal precedents protecting fundamental rights. This Court has gutted civil rights protections, taken away a woman’s right to choose, and now granted Presidents broad immunity from prosecution for crimes they commit in office.
At the same time, recent ethics scandals involving some Justices have caused the public to question the fairness and independence that are essential for the Court to faithfully carry out its mission to deliver justice for all Americans.
President Biden believes that no one—neither the President nor the Supreme Court—is above the law.
In the face of this crisis of confidence in America’s democratic institutions, President Biden is calling for three bold reforms to restore trust and accountability:
- No Immunity for Crimes a Former President Committed in Office: President Biden shares the Founders’ belief that the President’s power is limited—not absolute—and must ultimately reside with the people. He is calling for a constitutional amendment that makes clear no President is above the law or immune from prosecution for crimes committed while in office. This No One Is Above the Law Amendment will state that the Constitution does not confer any immunity from federal criminal indictment, trial, conviction, or sentencing by virtue of previously serving as President.
- Term Limits for Supreme Court Justices: Congress approved term limits for the Presidency over 75 years ago, and President Biden believes they should do the same for the Supreme Court. The United States is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats to its high court Justices. Term limits would help ensure that the Court’s membership changes with some regularity; make timing for Court nominations more predictable and less arbitrary; and reduce the chance that any single Presidency imposes undue influence for generations to come. President Biden supports a system in which the President would appoint a Justice every two years to spend eighteen years in active service on the Supreme Court.
- Binding Code of Conduct for the Supreme Court: President Biden believes that Congress should pass binding, enforceable conduct and ethics rules that require Justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest. Supreme Court Justices should not be exempt from the enforceable code of conduct that applies to every other federal judge.
President Biden and Vice President Harris look forward to working with Congress and empowering the American people to prevent the abuse of Presidential power, restore faith in the Supreme Court, and strengthen the guardrails of democracy. President Biden thanks the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States for its insightful analysis of Supreme Court reform proposals. The Administration will continue its work to ensure that no one is above the law – and in America, the people rule.
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Details of actual legislation in tune with the proposal from President Biden and Vice President Harris await action in the Houses of Congress. One point of interest, with a new Justice appointed every two years, is that 18 years tenure would be a term limit. Legislation could at the outset open seats held 18 years or more at the start of the process, or remove the longest tenured Justice to start; but if all 18+ terms end upon passage, the first reform installment might lead to multiple replacements.
Likelihood of the proposed reforms passing during the remaining Biden term in office is low, and November's election may weigh upon passage thereafter.
The idea is great, with junketing Clarence being longest tenured, well past 18 years, so an immediate improvement would attain, once the new process starts with an appointment immediately after passage. If Trump wins, there will remain a problem of competence, appointer and appointee, but Harris has a good chance to be in the White House starting next January.
SeattleTimes carries an AP report, noting:
Democrats hope it’ll help focus voters as they consider their choices in a tight election. The likely Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, who has sought to frame her race against Republican ex-President Donald Trump as “a choice between freedom and chaos,” said the court’s fairness had been called into question following recent decisions.
The White House is looking to tap into the growing outrage among Democrats about the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, issuing opinions that overturned landmark decisions on abortion rights and federal regulatory powers that stood for decades.
Liberals also have expressed dismay over revelations about what they say are questionable relationships and decisions by some members of the conservative wing of the court that suggest their impartiality is compromised.
“I have great respect for our institutions and separation of powers,” Biden argues in a Washington Post op-ed published Monday. “What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach.”
Harris later issued a statement saying the American people must have confidence in a Supreme Court blighted by ethics scandals and decisions overturning long-standing precedent. She said the reforms being proposed “will help to restore confidence in the Court, strengthen our democracy, and ensure no one is above the law.”
The president planned to speak about his proposal later Monday during an address at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, to mark the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act.
Biden [...] argues term limits would help ensure that court membership changes with some regularity and adds a measure of predictability to the nomination process.
He also wants Congress to pass legislation establishing a court code of ethics that would require justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest.
[...] Polls indicate Americans support limiting how long justices serve on the nation’s highest court. Last summer, a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found 67% of Americans, including 82% of Democrats and 57% of Republicans, support a proposal to set a specific number of years that justices serve instead of life terms.
The first three justices who would potentially be affected by term limits are on the right. Justice Clarence Thomas has been on the court for nearly 33 years. Chief Justice John Roberts has served for 19 years, and Justice Samuel Alito has served for 18.
Supreme Court justices served an average of about 17 years from the founding until 1970, said Gabe Roth, executive director of the group Fix the Court. Since 1970, the average has been about 28 years. Both conservative and liberal politicians alike have espoused term limits.
“If justices have this much power, then they should be individuals who reflect America as it currently is, not the America of 30 or 40 years ago, the dead hand of the president who appointed them still influencing policy,” Roth said.
An enforcement mechanism for the high court’s code of ethics, meanwhile, could bring the Supreme Court justices more in line with other federal judges, [...] Last week, Justice Elena Kagan called publicly for creating a way to enforce the new ethics code, becoming the first justice to do so.
Still, when it comes to the Supreme Court, creating an ethics code enforcement mechanism isn’t as easy as it sounds.
The attorney general has always had the power to enforce violations of the financial and gift disclosure rules but has never apparently used that power against federal judges, said Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics expert at NYU School of Law.
The body that oversees lower court judges, meanwhile, is headed up by Roberts, “who might be reluctant to use whatever power the conference has against his colleagues,” Gillers wrote in an email.
Presently, Justices can be impeached. Gaining a Senate trial supermajority, as the Constitution requires for impeachment removals, however, has been a roadblock.
BOTTOM LINE: The current Court is a mess; one only a Leonard Leo could love. Love aside, respect for Trump's and other Republican appointed sophists and dissemblers on the Court is generally absent for good reason. Reform is overdue. The Court is an exceptionally bad joke. The people know it. Hence, something has to give. There is only so much we can stand, without reforming the stench.
Sunday, July 28, 2024
Heritage Foundation, that bastion of Conservative Thought (not mere small c,t) has stiffed me.
My email, dated July 13.
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A coupe of weeks have passed. No reply.
I wonder if any particular part of the inquiry led them to think ill of me. UPDATE. Not really. Their funding, hiding it, is their Achilles heel.
Why trust bought people, some high priced, when they will not disclose the most basic truth of ownership of their labor? Who pays the piper, calling Kevin Roberts' tune? Peter Thiel? People more right-wing authoritarian than Thiel? More likely so. They are not libertarian, as Thiel is, they are activists for a controlling government made in the image of their Project 2025 ultra-long, ultra-detailed manifesto.
If the Heritage Project 2025 people have their way in 2025, it will be years before the harm can be undone. More likely, they poison Trump's chances with the toxicity of their manifesto. As voters learn more of its detail, it will turn them off.
This Heritage thing is by his people, those in government during his administration, casting a shadow on him.
However he moves to try avoiding it, the shadow remains on him. His people. Writing it. Somebody's money. Funding it.
Saturday, July 27, 2024
Life expectancy at the age of 80.
Twenty year olds might not even think of the question. Reaching 80 this September and voting in November seem reachable for Crabgrass if not croaking sooner.
80 and one of JD Vance's childless miscreants, i.e. a miscreant for being childless and no other reason where he says the ultra-dumb thing that without children we care not for the future. That is like saying the childless care not for educating the next voter group; when the childless pay public school taxes at the same rate as those having broods. Those electing private schooling or home schooling, . . .
In fact, the finite planet which is taking on ever larger masses of people is a cause to praise the childless for having not added to the surge. However, Vance, a Catholic, a Catholic convert even, has biases cutting against human caused Climate Change one thinks, but examination of his dogma seems to chastise white folk far more not producing more of the same. He is in a mixed race marriage, but the MAGA message, reflected by the ethnicity of the recent GOP convention, is overly white.
Convention crowd scenes reflected that racial bias. Vance is his party's banner carrier, second fiddle, and so extols that which first fiddle rants over, and who they both rant toward - and Trump is a racist.
Politics over, answering the uncertainty of the headline, this NewEngJMed link.
Statistically, I have seven more good ones before going into history; but guessing from bad feet, more likely four or five. With luck that gives me one more voting cycle to vote against Trump, (presuming he looses this one and makes it to another before He croaks).
Isn't statistics wonderful? If it had told me twice as much likely average, fourteen more, it would be twice as great.
A voting bloc that paid into Social Security and is now drawing it statistically turns more conservative as they are aging. Still, personally being a democratic socialist of the Bernie type, (him being older than I am by a few years), I suppose that statistical trend toward conservative devolution is weighted that way by others.
As a Democratic Socialist, capitalized or lower case, I care about the earth and its physical global warming future and those living most of their lives into that climate uncertainty. And I care about educated, discerning, informed voters; because other voters are the ones responsible for today not being as good as it could be.
Education, K-12 and beyond should be available to those wanting it and bright enough to get into the real Universities, and not Liberty U., Trump U (since deceased), which is to say there is much mediocrity and fraud in the cobwebbed areas of "higher education."
Those who do the civil engineering and power grid work to keep the nation humming and floods less severe than otherwise, are a national treasure too infrequently recognized as such. Medical breakthroughs seem to be done by holders of advanced degrees beyond a baccalaureate, and even lawyers, the gum against progress, hold advanced degrees, and are smart regardless of the havoc some of them generate - can you say Presidential immunity or Citizens United? In a perfect world there'd be fewer law schools; Vance still having his elite Yale stay, since he qualified. Just fewer.
In Altman's Nashville film, as in Mash, the disembodied public address speaker played a part, where in Nashville it was candidate Hal Phillip Walker ranting via the P.A. speaker system about the problem with DC and Congress being too many lawyers there. My guy. Never shown as a person in the film, just the disembodied speaker voicing the man.
And, yes, digressing from age 80, to other things, Semi-stream-of-consciousness, but the next post will be tighter and focused, and that's a promise you can take to the bank. The bank could care a rats-ass, but you could take it there. End of today's story.
Friday, July 26, 2024
Thursday, July 25, 2024
" “The views of working-class voters of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin are just so fundamental to the course of this election cycle. Right now, you look at where her standing is with a lot of working-class voters, and there’s a ton of room for Kamala” to improve her standing, the Sanders ally said."
Bernie has not yet endorsed Harris. He awaits policy notice that she is on the right track to win. He will campaign for her, but it appears he sees a path to victory she should weigh most carefully, even if not followed or followed only in part.
Ads embracing identity blocs are fine early, but getting serious is finer.
Reporting is in The Hill, and Business Insider, linking to the earlier item.
The Party's Harris euphoria, after pearl-clutching over Biden, exists. It makes it harder, short term, to assess how strong her candidacy will be. I may wait until November, then having a better idea.
Watching a bit of a start of a recent Harris speech, and highlights put onto YouTube by others, I see some of what Harris offers now, but how she may adapt and shift style and emphasis awaits passage of time. Not at all throwing stones at Harris, just, campfire Kumbyah harmony is a bit too much.
Not my thing. Not my folk song. Try this.
Still early. There's time to hone a message and spell out issues.
This is out there, please watch the entire thing --- the most ironic part, NATO and "You gotta pay your bills." and he's known among all reaches of the business world - for not paying his bills - he stiffs people. Taught it to his two sons. Learned it from Fred.
There is time for movement and evolution, but the campaign has to get from feel-good-for-freedom and going-forward-not-going-back puff ads to wtf are the main worries. Something the dark PACs can touch if the campaign remains superficially messaged.
Another election, dark PAC vs. dark PAC, fear mongering over the other as a threat to our very way of life. Likely the odds are not that severe, but with Project 2025, the intent is to make a seismic change in the administration of the law and the regulation of commerce so the Trump opposition from Harris has to most vigorously oppose Project 2025 overreaching and short term trampling on norms of national order which would be hard to undo other than long term and at great cost.
As with this Court packed with corporatist rigor and Catholic dogma wanting a controlled people toeing the line, we could have an executive against freedoms and choices. Possibly both houses of Congress could go MAGA where founder notions of checks and balances would then fail to exist to leaven the passions of the winning army. It could be all federal organs of government going MAGA bad.
His way. Our way. Either your way, or get out of the way, is a hell of a future perspective to have to face.
Nip it in the bud. Or wish later you had. The ads need to get serious.
We are early in campaigns, no homestretch activity now, but JD Vance gets attention. Trump seems set and liking Vance. And Trump's the main poison on the MAGA Party's ticket anyway. Vance, now, is an afterthought.
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The Vance advantage over Trump. He's educated. He's smart. However, what do MAGA crowds want besides Trump long-windedness in Castro-length meandering speeches promising he'll be "retribution" for -- something.
White underachiever Angst?
Vance has donor love, Silicon Valley flavor, and at his age and Trump at his age, the chance is great that Trump fails to make four years, should he be elected to a second term. "President Vance" is then set for more campaigning into the future. Where a base beyond MAGA could be recruited.
So, no buyer's remorse, the buyer being Trump. Party and polls? There is reporting.
Across the Atlantic, faculty opinion, University of Manchester, sees things dispassionately, but unfavorable to Vance -
A lack of crossover appeal
Angelia R. Wilson, the author of "The Politics of Hate" and a professor of politics at the University of Manchester, agreed that Harris' likely replacement of Biden had exposed new weaknesses in the Trump-Vance ticket.
She noted that with Biden leading the Democratic ticket, Trump and Vance could effectively criticize Biden's age and competency.
But with Harris as the candidate, they need to focus on other topics.
Wilson suggested the Trump team would try to exploit divisions around race and gender, which, she said, is "going to lose them votes with suburban soccer moms," among other voters.
Colin Talbot, a professor emeritus of politics at the University of Manchester, told BI that he thought Trump's all-male ticket was at great risk of losing the "independent, middle-ground women's votes."
In recent days, a 2021 clip has resurfaced of Vance describing Harris as one of the "childless cat ladies" who is "miserable" with her life and who has no stake in the future of America because she has not had children.
(Harris has two stepchildren with her husband, Doug Emhoff.)
The premise there being Vance needs to be attracting voters beyond the MAGA-cap crowd Trump already owns. "Crossover appeal" being the phrasing.
Same outlet, Business Insider, today does a polling shtick, for what early polling is worth, and concludes Vance is a landmark VP candidate of sorts, "JD Vance breaks polling records in the worst way." Not cheerleading in any way.
LATimes, also not cheerleading, "Opinion: J.D. Vance’s book ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ was a con job. Don’t let it slide" stating in part -
The selection of J.D. Vance on Monday as Donald Trump’s running mate is a direct result of the political media’s failure to understand class in America. For his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance was venerated by many journalists and book critics as a powerful voice representing long-overlooked Americans. But he’s no working-class hero.
Vance portrayed this group — 35% of Americans, by the way — as tragic victims of alcoholism, drug abuse, laziness and their own self-destructive moral failings. Journalists ran with that, bringing their own stereotypes to depict the working class as angry, uneducated white men driven by economic insecurity and racist nostalgia to support Trump’s retrogressive campaign.
[...] Lauded by David Brooks as the interpreter of some mythical “working-class honor code” that could illuminate the motivations of the core Trump voter, Vance was praised in reviews in the New York Times, the Washington Post and a host of other publications, and he became the go-to guy on the working-class perspective. CNN hired him as a political pundit.
This was no better than the “parachute journalism” of upper-middle-class reporters who would visit an Appalachian tavern for one afternoon and then presume to tell the nation what the working class was thinking.
Arguably less a criticism of Vance than of other bedrock MSM outlets' "journalism" chops, the message is also that while the press extolled Vance as a worker-whisperer, he was not, is not, and likely never will be. That earns Crabgrass huzzas on both critiques. MSM and Vance are quite overrated, and unworthy.
More a critique of Vance and the bona fides of his memoir, People -
The memoir is billed as “the true story of what a social, regional and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.” While it hit No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list and was later adapted into a Ron Howard-directed Netflix film starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close, many critics — particularly those who live in or hail from Appalachia — questioned the accuracy of some of its claims.
“Elegy is little more than a list of myths about welfare queens repackaged as a primer on the White working class,” said a New Republic story, at the time. “Vance’s central argument is that hillbillies [or the poor in general] themselves are to blame for their troubles.”
“We spend our way to the poorhouse,” Vance writes in the book. “We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don’t need, refinance them for more spending money and declare bankruptcy, often leaving them full of garbage in our wake. Thrift is inimical to our being.”
In his review of the film for the Associated Press, Jake Coyle noted that explanation was attractive to many readers, especially coming as it did during Trump's first presidential campaign. “The 2016 book came at the moment many were searching for explanations for the political shift taking place across Appalachia and the Rust Belt," he wrote.
In another review of the film adaptation, Vulture writer Sarah Jones wrote, "The book is poverty porn wrapped in a right-wing message about the cultural pathologies of the region. In Vance’s Appalachia, poverty and immorality intertwine. Success happens to hardworking people, and structural explanations for poverty receive glancing attention when he chooses to mention them at all.”
“This region is huge, and there’s all kinds of people here; people of different classes, races, ethnicities, genders, etc.,” Dr. Anna Rachel Terman, professor of sociology of Appalachia, diversity in Appalachia and women in Appalachia at Ohio University told Southeast Ohio magazine in 2020. “Distilling our understanding of the region down to one person’s story is problematic because that larger diversity is not reflected.”
But there’s more to the issue than its factual merit, according to Silas House, who talked to Politico about the book in 2020. House, an Appalachian author himself and the Appalachian Studies chair at Berea College in Kentucky, said he looks at Hillbilly Elegy as “not a memoir but a treatise that traffics in ugly stereotypes and tropes, less a way to explain the political rise of Trump than the actual start of the political rise of Vance.”
"Poverty porn" and "traffics in ugly stereotypes and tropes, less a way to explain the political rise of Trump than the actual start of the political rise of Vance” are harsh criticism Crabgrass must take at face value, for not intending to spend a jot of time reading the thing. Others have liked it. Silicon Valley billionaires like Vance, welcoming him into their venture capitalist world, after Yale, so presumably they have no problem with his discourse on the working class; a class where MAGA caps are found more frequently than among Yale elites.
It would be remiss to leave this post about Vance only, as a ticket is a ticket, and Trump is boss of this one. Being Trump -
Former United States President Donald Trump has contemplated firing military generals and replacing them with the best NASCAR drivers. Trump also paid respect to the top football coaches in the nation, and claimed that if they replaced the current military personnel things would be "so different."
[...] Trump has huge respect for NASCAR drivers and made history in May when attending the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. He became the first former or sitting president to attend a live race and was met with a huge ovation from the crowd as fans began chanting "USA" in his direction.
The former president attended to pay his respects for Memorial Day, a big event on the NASCAR schedule. While Trump has immense respect for the U.S. soldiers and veterans, he hasn't always seen eye-to-eye with some military generals.
Former chiefs have spoken out about Trump in the past, but his most infamous comment came back in 2020 when learning that old equipment was left in Afghanistan by U.S. military officials. It was later uncovered that they assumed it would be cost-effective to leave the equipment in the Islamic country rather than pursue relocation options.
In response to this, Trump said: "I don't want to tell you what I had to go through with these people. Some of the dumbest people I've ever met in my life."
Trump used his latest rally to slam Kamala Harris, after she was officially endorsed by Joe Biden who pulled out of the election race. Biden finally stepped down following concerns he was not fit to serve another four years in office, and will now focus on his remaining time as president.
The decision has handed Trump a major boost, and in a bid to silence Kamala and her fans, he said: "This November the American people are going to tell her 'No thanks, Kamala. You've done a terrible job you've been terrible at everything. You're ultra-liberal and we don't want you here. Kamala, you're fired.'"
The man's genius for capability analysis speaks for itself. (He picked Vance.) Crabgrass leaves things to his words as reported, without breaking any of the quote or report down into analytic comments. This from one wanting to be President, having been President, and lying about being voted out as President. There is a term, "reaching beyond one's talents."
Wednesday, July 24, 2024
Why this video of Kentucky's Governor, and the state's former AG. Somebody has to make a choice and name a name.
This name has been mentioned. See how he handles softball questions in a non-stressful situation. Unlike Trump at the debate, where questions asked were treated by Trump as wholly irrelevant to what he wanted to say. This guy has more class.
And he has the accent you don't hear with JD Vance. Vanderbelt undergrad, U. Virginia Law School. Dad was an elite Kentucky lawyer and is a past Governor.
Not from nowhere. So, wait and see.
And a snowball rolling downhill in snow grows. (Does he repeat his talking points, interview to interview, or if plowing the same turf, showing diverse ways of saying the stump speech venue to venue?)
For Crabgrass, finding something good to say about Trump is not easy. But, here goes.
He could have picked Marco.
Leave the dog whistle to us
AP:
Republican leaders urge colleagues to steer clear of racist and sexist attacks on Harris
[...]
At a closed-door meeting of House Republicans on Tuesday, National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Richard Hudson, R-N.C., urged lawmakers to stick to criticizing Harris for her role in Biden-Harris administration policies.
“This election will be about policies and not personalities,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters after the meeting.
“This is not personal with regard to Kamala Harris,” he added, “and her ethnicity or her gender have nothing to do with this whatsoever.”
Isn't express mention of her gender and ethnicity itself a dog whistle? Come out of a meeting saying the campaign will hinge upon critique of policy and administration actions and aims, isn't that enough? Were I to say it is best to talk of Trump, as Trump, not Drumpf, what is the message in a message?
Elon is being unclear, not that the situation is novel. [UPDATED]
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| - Link - |
Raw Story: quoting Elon -
“What’s been reported in the media is simply not true. I am not donating $45 million a month to Trump,” Musk said in an interview over his X platform with Jordan Peterson, the far-right Canadian psychologist and media personality. He went on to say that “I don’t prescribe to [a] cult of personality,” and that America PAC “is not supposed to be a sort of hyperpartisan” group, but rather one that promotes "meritocracy" and "freedom" from “as much government intervention as possible.”
"Meritocracy and freedom" sounds bell-like to be saying we are tax deductible 501(c)(4) and not taxable 501(c)(3) whatever actual truth may be.
Money gets accumulated in the super PAC, which then spends it, some being put there by Elon, that is bedrock fact, and beyond that Elon says what he says.
DeSantis operatives? Not 501(c)(3) "cult of personality?" Just educating people?
Hillbilly Portfolio
How a man with lots of money spends his money is his own business, or so Republicans have been claiming for a recent long time, perhaps reaching back to Lincoln, if not later when Teddy Roosevelt invented the term "malefactors of great wealth." While not a billionaire, to the best of Crabgrass knowledge, J.D.Vance is well fixed.
A site calling itself "Fast Company" posted: https://www.fastcompany.com/91157500/companies-jd-vance-invested-in-as-a-vc
The headline is not needed, since the link, if read, says what has to be said.
Rather than quoting, readers should follow the link, with that item linking over to: https://pitchbook.com/profiles/person/143425-72P where the link tells no story to where it should be noted Pitchbook appears to look at individual investors and public knowledge of their money-related activity and holdings; this item being about "J.D. Vance JD Overview" which can be taken as a "title" Without calling Vance an elegyic hillbilly, nor anything else beyond noting he holds a Juris Doctor degree.
Upshot of both links - the man owns more interests in companies than a dog has fleas, companies almost nobody has heard of and some of them already failed. That is how Venture Capitalists operate, and we got one here talking up hillbilly roots, rather than fairly vast current wealth, and we can only guess why that might be.
Being an active Venture Capitalist means investing in handfuls of new hopefuls, where if one scores big the whole bundle is well worth the gambles spread out to where numbers of held items is hedging.
And he's not gotten there alone. The text preamble of the first linked item to the gist of the list, (excuse that please I couldn't resist), to the extensive listing - that preamble tells names of prominent Silicon Valley movers/shakers who "hillbilly Vance JD" enlisted into mentoring relationships - he did not do it alone as the book he wrote might imply. Now, Trump is mentoring him, and a fictional hit was about Dr. Frankenstein creating a monster, should that unrelated thought have relevance.
Vance could prove otherwise, but objectively we see a Yale educated millionaire investor with foreseeable conservative politics. Yeah. Big deal. As if never before seen. The key now, seen and heard, since he took up politicking.
Vance presently stands (and talks) conjoined in yet another Venture, a campaign with a grave older man who's engineered casino bankruptcies and traded on his brand name, Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump Towers, where you decide what the name is worth, as a talisman of high class elitism, and he decides its worth in pricing it for sale.
_________UPDATE__________
To access actual disclosure data for Senators, readers can navigate from:
https://efdsearch.senate.gov/search/home/
Crabgrass has not gone there, relying on other online info sources. For instance, this link notes in ending:
Vance reported having investments, real estate, and bank accounts totaling somewhere between $4.3 million and $11 million in 2022, according to a cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer analysis of his most recent financial disclosure form, filed last year.
That figure doesn’t include Vance’s home in Cincinnati or his wife Usha’s full salary from her law firm, [no longer applicable since she resigned] nor does it reflect what his investments are worth today.
Senate financial disclosure forms only require filers, in most cases, to list financial holdings within certain ranges, not specific amounts. However, Vance did report receiving $945,000 in profits and a $110,146 salary from Narya [his VC operation] in 2022, as well as $121,376 he made in royalties that year from his bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.”
While the Vances’ financial holdings put them among the top 2% of Americans, Vance – who grew up in poverty in Middletown, Ohio – is hardly among the richest members of the U.S. Senate.[...]
Vance worked as a venture capitalist for six years until he was elected to the Senate in 2022. He listed more than 140 investments in his financial disclosure for that year. Most of them were somewhere in the range of $1,000 to $15,000 each.
Vance had somewhere between $15,000 and $50,000 invested in Hallow, a Catholic meditation and prayer app. [https://hallow.com/] He invested up to $300,000 in Rumble, a conservative-leaning video-sharing platform. He had a smaller stake – somewhere between $1,000 and $15,000 – in Shearshare, an app that helps people rent salon or barbershop space.
Vance also invested somewhere between $116,000 and $315,000 in AppHarvest, a Kentucky-based startup that aimed to grow food via giant greenhouses. He also served on AppHarvest’s board until 2021, when he resigned after tweeting against corporate resistance to GOP-proposed voting restrictions. Appharvest filed for bankruptcy last year.
One died, many more may score. It is VC in a nutshell. While there may be danger in judging a man by his holdings, if Vance rails MAGA style against elites, it is helpful to know how very elite he is. As is Trump himself, atop the ticket telling people what he thinks they want to hear. Indeed, you don't get into the Senate without being elite going in, it is entirely an elitist body, and regular people have to understand that in studying how politics works and how it might work better for them. Or, just don a red MAGA cap, and believe in it as a religion.
Tuesday, July 23, 2024
Pay Pal Mafia's Wise Guy
search = silicon valley pay pal mafia
With that link, read all about it. For context.
JD Vance is not the Don. Peter Thiel is. Vance is one of the Wise Guys. One who branched out so he could reach the Senate, which he was not going to do if staying in the San Francisco Bay area.
Pay Pal Mafia Senior Wise Guys loved him, mentored him.
A late arrival Wise Guy, fresh out of Yale and a stint in a private sector 100% super elite law firm. (Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R) had a stint there. The Obamas have ties. Not at a struggling practice in some strip mall outlet doing DUI defense, evictions, and such, where a true non-Yale hillbilly might end up.)
Hillbilly Pay Pal Mafia Wise Guy? From Yale. Go figure from there. He can talk Hillbilly Elegy, great. He wrote a book. He can talk, Project 2025, saying not me, not us. Talk is cheap.
What is the real nature of a Silicon Valley Pay Pal Mafia Venture Capitalist, and should an entire nation's future be trusted to one? Trump thinks so. But Trump is a very wealthy pirate. Trump is a felon, tax cheat, grab 'em by the pussy. Roy Cohn, Fred Trump throwback. So discount Trump's view and form your own.
Does Vance have a ton of proving to show? Of course.
Trump's choosing Vance gets him a MAGA cap. No more. Vance's start at campaigning Trump's way is unimpressive. If there's more in the tank, show it.
When this suit pulls his hillbilly - working guy advocate shtick, bashing elites to MAGA crowds - know that his background is as elite as they come.
Know who you are dealing with.
Monday, July 22, 2024
Kamala Harris is okay. She's not AOC. She's not Cory Bush. But she's okay.
Take trump out of it, he won't make four years in the event he squeezes out a MAGA based win. So, it is Harris or the San Francisco Venture Capitalist who moved back to Ohio to get into politics, calling himself a hillbilly from Yale.
Let it play out. Harris has been the candidate two days, right?
Surely a better candidate - more progressive - would have been nicer, but she is the VP with the P punting.
She does not have to be super. Like that joke about the two guys and the charging bear, the one putting on running shoes, the other saying, "You can't outrun that bear," first guy saying, "I only have to outrun you."
Harris only has to outrun the San Fran Thiel Venture Capitalist, which is a fair fight.
The Silicon Valley money can go far, but it cannot alone buy the White House.
Somebody besides an old fading felon - tax cheat will need to take Harris out.
They ain't got top ticket somebody better than who they've got, and it ain't enough.
Then, Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist? Why not stay there and get richer?
What's the ego trip? Hillbilly President, from what, central Ohio, road trip west to make a pile of money, then, "I be Senator. Bow." What else?
This is stream of consciousness, but Harris is a Democrat. That counts for a lot.
A saner, sounder party with better people and not Jim Jordan creep shows.
Harris is okay. Okay is enough, given it's Trump.
__________UPDATE__________
Making explicit what was implicit - okay is a starting analysis from what is known. Biden exceeded expectations during his presidency. It would be great if Harris started as okay, let's see, and proved better as Biden did.
There is no reason to think she would not excel. We don't know.
We know Trump. That's enough. Harris is better than a bar set so low, so we install her as boss of the White House next January, hoping her transition people show wisdom, and bless the luck of Trump losing. He does not need to lose by many votes. Just enough. More being better. It is similar to Harris starting as okay.
Okay means fine for the task, but show me.
_________FURTHER UPDATE_________
"Existential" is a word that should not be used lightly. This next election will be "existential" is an outlook I doubt. It will allocate the spoils. Two political forces, each a party which means a like-minded collective, each wanting eminent power.
That is normal, not existential, one way or the other.
As a skeptic toward both parties, I see infrastructure being improved now, more than earlier. I see unaffordable housing. I see student loan talked of, not fixed as an issue where the social good of educated people is worth society paying, not something where it's a ticket to something unopen if you have not been to college, a ticket where, as with every ticket, you buy to gain admittance. College used to be affordable. The late 60s, make it cost. Put them in debt. They will not talk up as much if facing possible collection efforts when they've not really gained materially from college, because they think wrong, they are "lazy" meaning unpliant to hazing via job "testing," how much compromise and being overworked can we make them take, how can we get compromise, things not needed but "real world" testing, it is called.
That said, If JD Vance wins, see how things go. If Harris wins, see how things go. The earth will still spin on its axis either way. Citizens will not be rounded up and put into death camps either way. Immigrants at a number of eleven million will not be mass deported without much attention to how that could really tank the economy.
Existential, it is not. Serious, it is. One aspect of Project 2025, Heritage stuff, is the solicitation of resumes, of people who'd do as told/expected anyway, for greatly enhanced spoils, by sacking institutional memory in favor of trying something which might fail greatly, in terms of best interest of the people, but infiltrating things with our people, our stuff.
We'll see. The inclination here, Harris is okay. If it's Vance instead, see it play out. The nation is not as fragile as Wiemar after the First World War. We are not on the brink of National Socialism - Christian Nationalism being closest to that, I will survive, we will survive.
Gotta call bullshit when a steaming pile of it is seen. From the new intellect of MAGA, JD Vance.
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First nail down what's afoot. Joe Biden is capable of being President, and running a campaign, but his age has been a problem, so he gives up the more stressful thing, the campaign. He has run the government better than Crabgrass expected, preferring Bernie, but he's been far better than the fading oaf who he ousted.
Trump's latest show of inability is giving Castro-length speeches, meandering doing it, and using memorized buzz words in and out of diverging. Biden is sharper and more fit than Trump, disagree if you'd like.
But Biden has been pushed by the media and others into giving up the campaign part of things, where he's never been gaffe free, to concentrate his powers where his decades of experience in getting things done in DC running the government, bipartisan or by his party alone, where he excels, can be most helpful.
Biden thus staying in the White House where he won that right from voters to finish his successful governing term makes sense. He does so while freeing Harris from the dual weight of governing and campaigning so that she is fully free to go to the hustings and show how inadequate the Trump-Vance-Project 2025 ticket and world view are.
Dividing governing and campaigning establishes a win-win situation to build recognition for Harris as a woman more fit than needed to be President when women's rights and freedom are under attack by a Catholic dominated toxic SCOTUS and facing a Catholic VP candidate-convert thinking it best if women are barefoot and pregnant baby factories and not equal careerists to himself.
That said, this bald ass awful tweet from one whose education suggests he knows far better makes sense only if you remember his taking a position to be Trumplike in being Trump's butler.
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| click the tweet image to read it |
Work it out. Were Biden to resign, Harris would have to pick cabinet officials and a VP where, under the 25th Amendment, Section 2, the chosen VP Harris would want would have to be approved by majority vote of both Houses of Congress.
Republicans holding the House majority could stymie a new VP appointment, with the vacancy putting Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, in direct succession, were Harris to meet foul play. Christian Nationalist Mike Johnson a heartbeat away from the Presidency should scare the living shit out of any non-Christian Nationalist.
Rather than face such a risk filled scenario, don't do a Biden resignation with a President Harris finishing a term with Johnson positioned next. It would be stupid to do that. Instead, as is being done, Biden does what he does best by continuing to run the government and occupy the White House, taking any heat for doing it without worry over how it might affect polling, while Harris builds trust and respect among voters as better than MAGA might ever be.
Vance says, "Give up a win-win situation because I'd like that." Well, fuck you JD.
Who'd ever want that Christian Nationalist Johnson anywhere near the White House, besides another Christian Nationalist?
So, bullshit from a Yale educated lawyer knowing better, that is the substance of JD's tweet. How dumb does he think we all are? It is demeaning his telling us this crap. The son-of-a-bitch knows it will not happen his way; never; he is only politicking for the hell of it because he sells short the ability of the people to smell what he's producing.
His mind, his intent, we can only speculate. But he's up to no good in selling us short.
Yes, honked off by the stupidity he presumes of us, the people of the nation, as if a bunch of dumb lazy-assed, drug crazed, dispirited hillbillies he grew up with; who he can jive and lie to, disdain, whatever.
We are not that. We know what's best. The result of the 2020 election proved it.
____________UPDATE___________
So, who could sincerely be more motivated to suggest Biden resigning than Vance? To bring forth the situation of a Christian Nationalist being a heartbeat away from a President Harris, were Biden to resign.
__________FURTHER UPDATE_________
The whole pond is full of croaking in tune as the bullfrog croaks. We need to have the energetic young snapping turtle enter into that pond, to silence the croaking.
Abandoning the metaphor, the contest is between Harris and Vance. Trump is too old and feeble and mentally damaged to be considered capable of a full four year term if elected, (as unlikely as that is). It will be Vance or Harris carrying on, respectively, for MAGA or sanity free of hate and bias. Vance is trying his best to be a Trump, rather than trying to be credible on his own. Bad choice. But his choice to make. There might be something there. But he's not showing it.
__________FURTHER UPDATE__________
In addition, more to figure. Harris bumps to P. when P. Biden resigns, were he to. What then?
What is the effect on nose count, and the hammer when there's a tie Senate vote, if Harris cannot get a VP choice through the House until term end next January?
Stalemate.
Sunday, July 21, 2024
Biden - latest. Endorsing Harris for the candidacy, keeping the White House full term.
Being told Biden announced, I checked Guardian, presuming it was ready for the development, more bullshit free than either NYT or WaPo, and quicker to post than local regional papers in Minnesota or Seattle.
Guardian home page covers, with Biden's letter being of most interest here.
The link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/21/read-joe-biden-letter
JD Vance writes well.
https://thelampmagazine.com/blog/how-i-joined-the-resistance
You can read that, and reflect on his convention speech, and wonder who is this man.
Being unsure of who Trump picked as a MAGA successor, younger, and now in line, we must see him as empowered to a longer life as a political power than Trump has.
I do not believe I am alone in thinking what to make of Vance now that he has passed Rubio and Cruz in a party I have no part in nor any affinity for. Seeing the Roman Church as Francis being the first Jesuit Pope, and the institution being better for that is easy, perhaps that is enough from the outside. But with much trepidation toward Leonard Leo and his hubris over Knight of Malta status, his Justices and Trump's deference, seeing that Francis trimmed the wings of the Knights of Malta, brought them closer to his own grace and insight was helpful. The Cardinals perhaps choosing a New World Pope sooner might have been better, but they have one now and it works. Francis has to hope to have the next day and the day after to continue his effort and insight fits with age touching everyone, some closer now than young JD Vance. I close this having been told Biden has made a decision I disfavor but saw coming. I close so that I may learn more of that development, being told he has conceded the candidacy, but not the present office too. I have seen it reported Vance has suggested Biden should abandon both, and who is he to presume?
A web search and a couple of hits the Michigan Palestinian-American voting bloc might take to heart.
web search = Mariam Adelson Trump money Israel West Bank annexation
Two returned items from the Israeli press, from before the Vance VP nomination and the consequent commitment of tons of Silicon Valley money to Trump - Vance
https://forward.com/fast-forward/618034/miriam-adelson-funding-trump-israel/
A thread among returns seems Dr. Adelson, Sheldon Adelson's widow, has a specific goal in mind which might trigger her putting more money this cycle behind Trump's candidacy.
Michigan is a swing state where to win it Biden [the Dem nominee] will need its elector count to win. Part of Michigan's turnout will be among Palestinian-Americans.