He's not polling 50% chasing the White House, but he gets 50% on this. (Not that he aimed for it.) Of interest, the item references back to the site's July, 2024, post -
That earlier item hints at why some may have been confused by Trump, days ago, when he was a crypto barker for the next new thing. His personal confusion levels showing through the too-long barking spiel.
Yes. Suggested justification. A blindlingly convincing majority of Americans want something, and its off the table. We deserve better, from the better choice - by far - among two.
A link is enough. It is on a topic still getting much attention, but far from Presidential policy, good or bad. It is a story about an elite educated man who wants something.
It is a story from an apparent perspective, about how two people are behaving who know better, but want something. Worth the time to read.
Another story, from mid-August, a news report about a situation worth the read. Something we don't need.
A thread ties the two together: A Senator seeks nationwide office, and does stuff.
UPDATE: A Kevin D. Williamson prequel of sorts - more direct in its critique, less nuanced, but still more nuanced than much of the Internet.
To a certain kind of nationalist-curious
conservative intellectual, having a fellow traveler with J.D.’s
brainpower so close to the presidency raises tantalizing possibilities
about enacting family-forward populist economic policies. Trump will
always be Trump, but Vance supposedly represents something smarter and
more substantive. He’s the thinking man’s MAGA, a more cerebral
America-First-er who prefers kitchen-table issues to demagoguery.
In reality, it turns out he’s a sewer rat, the
same gutter Know-Nothing populist trash that you’ll find among the
worst elements of Trump’s movement. Let’s hear no more after this,
please, about Vance being “different” now that he’s started a Two Minutes Hate directed at a group of immigrants.
The real significance of this episode, though,
lies in how difficult it is to imagine his predecessor on the
Republican ticket stooping to the same behavior. Mike Pence is no angel—no
one who spent four years apologizing for Trump could be—but he was
certainly more immune to the scummiest impulses of populism than Vance
is.
For evidence, look no further than J.D.’s appearance this week on the All-In podcast, where he interrupted his posts about Haitian pet-eaters to again confirm that he would have blocked the certification of Joe Biden’s victory on January 6
had he been in Pence’s shoes. Nowhere is nostalgia for Trump’s first
term more potent than it is on this point: Vance would have been an
eager enabler of the single most destructive authoritarian impulse his
boss had during his first term, not a constraint on it as Pence was. The
replacement of one man by the other on the ticket is the radicalization
of Trump’s operation in miniature.
Yes, Vance raised expectations of a kinder, gentler MAGA man, and yet firmly is a Jan 6, Stop the Steal-er. They taught him the Two Minute Hate along the way? Was it Ohio State, or Yale Law School, or just an innate skill?
He converted Catholic to be a better man. Married with children.
For today's story linking to the X image, Guardian.
Quoting -
In 2018, Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, told the New York Times
about attending a dinner hosted in Rome by James Harvey, an American
cardinal and hardliner, and sponsored by the Napa Institute, a group
founded by Timothy R Busch, a conservative Catholic businessman and political activist.
[Leonard] Leo, 59, is an activist
and fundraiser who worked on the confirmations of all six rightwing
justices who now dominate the supreme court, Alito among them. Now
controlling billions of dollars in funding for rightwing groups, Leo is a
director of the Napa Institute Legal Foundation, also known as Napa Legal Institute, and the Napa Institute Support Foundation.
Also among Napa Legal Institute directors is Alan Sears, founder of the Alliance Defending Freedom. The ADF was the principal driver
of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, [...]
In 2017, the Napa Institute hosted a two-day symposium at the Trump hotel in Washington, during which Alito attended a dinner.
[...] Alito
is not the only supreme court justice with links to the Napa Institute.
In September 2021, as part of a series sponsored by the group, Justice
Clarence Thomas spoke [at the University of Notre Dame's Center for Citizenship & Constitutional Government, which is partly funded by the conservative Napa Institute].
[...] Thomas and Alito, however, have been
the subject of numerous reports about undeclared gifts from rightwing
donors, fueling an ethics crisis now stoked by news of Alito’s
acceptance of concert tickets valued at $900 from von Thurn und Taxis.
Von
Thurn und Taxis, 64, is a former punk turned billionaire, also known as
Princess TNT, with close links to the far-right Alternative für
Deutschland (AfD) party. News of her gift to Alito was accompanied by
reporting of further links between the two, including a picture
of Alito and another rightwing justice, Brett Kavanaugh, posing at the
supreme court in 2019 with the German socialite; Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig
Müller, a German hardliner; and Brian Brown, a prominent US anti-LGBTQ+
campaigner. [at top of post]
Von Thurn und Taxis told German media that Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann, attended a concert at her castle in Bavaria last year as “private friends”. In emails to the Guardian,
the aristocrat clarified: “We never speak about politics nor religion
at the table, because we believe it limits the possibility to make
friends.”
The socialite, who rejects the label “networker of the far right”,
also said it would “never occur” to her to speak about “touchy
subjects” like abortion with someone she knew socially, and claimed not
to know that “the Dobbs decision” referred to the supreme court abortion
rights ruling written by Alito.
Smoke, no provable fire, but the folks Alito networks with are unwholesome. Leave that as the thrust of the Guardian item.
