Trump is a would-be caudillo, but his cowardice has largely spared us having to fight him, because he prefers to hide behind lawyers and then, after his lawyers get laughed out of court, to rage about the judges from the safe remove of social media. He is the Walter Mitty of Augusto Pinochets.
On abortion, to take a representative issue, Trump looks unlikely to take any affirmative act at all: His position—to the extent that one is discernible somewhere in that Hefty SteelSak full of meth-addled New York City subway rats that he calls a brain—is that he has done everything that needs to be done on the issue by appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who voted against Roe.
→ Lauren Boebert rival accuses her of “melting down” at debate: Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert, best known for giving her boyfriend a handy at the Beetlejuice musical, debated rival Trisha Calvarese on Tuesday. Afterward, Calvarese posted on Twitter that Boebert “melted down on the debate stage.” She also accused Boebert of disrespecting veterans and failing to help lower the cost of prescription drugs.
Now, I do not want to be fair to Lauren Boebert. Even if it was above the pants, no one who performs any kind of sex act at the Beetlejuice musical has a place in public office. Cats? Sure. It’s sexy. How could you not? But Calvarese’s claim of a meltdown isn’t really supported by the clips the candidate herself posted on Twitter. A meltdown is a tantrum. It’s shrieking, it’s crying, it’s banging your fists against the floor. It’s what happens when I don’t get rush tickets to Cats.
But Boebert just looks like a non-tantruming idiot because that is, in fact, what she is.
Katie Herzog, filling in for Nellie Bowles.
The Battle Cry of the Gullible
The battle cry of energy transition advocates is “Electrify everything.” Meaning: Let’s power cars, heating systems, industrial plants, and every other type of machine with electricity rather than fossil fuels. To do that, we need copper—and lots of it. Second to silver, a rarer and far more expensive metal, copper is the best natural electrical conductor on Earth. We need it for solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles. (A typical EV contains as much as 175 pounds of copper.) We need it for the giant batteries that will provide power when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. We need it to massively expand and upgrade the countless miles of power cables that undergird the energy grid in practically every country. In the United States, the capacity of the electric grid will have to grow as much as threefold to meet the expected demand. A recent report from S&P Global predicts that the amount of copper we’ll need over the next 25 years will add up to more than the human race has consumed in its entire history. “The world has never produced anywhere close to this much copper in such a short time frame,” the report notes. The world might not be up to the challenge. Analysts predict supplies will fall short by millions of tons in the coming years. No wonder Goldman Sachs has declared “no decarbonization without copper” and called copper “the new oil.” (Source: wired.com, bold added)
For the Washington Post, David Ignatius spoke to former Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin about his decision to resign from Congress in April. “The story turns on a gruesome moment the night of Dec. 30, 2023, in Gallagher’s hometown of Green Bay,” Ignatius wrote. “The local sheriff had received an anonymous call claiming that Gallagher had been shot in the face and that his wife and two young daughters, 3 and 1, had been taken hostage. A SWAT team arrived at the house to find Gallagher and his family safe. His anguished wife, Anne, somehow had the presence of mind to ask the SWAT team to take their shoes off before they searched the home. But for the young couple, trying to build a family in the town where they were born and raised, the cruel hoax was a deeply upsetting event. For Gallagher, it proved to be a breaking point. … ‘I signed up for this, but my family didn’t,’ he told me in one of a series of interviews. ‘That was a moment when we felt we needed to make a change and take a step back from politics.’”
Mark Twain on lemmings
The loud little handful—as usual—will shout for the war. The pulpit will—warily and cautiously—object . . . at first. The great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, “It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.” Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded, but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the antiwar audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long, you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men. . . . Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
William T. Kavanagh, The Uses of Idolatry (quoting Mark Twain).
Trump as of Labor Day Weekend
I get the sense that the assassination attempt spooked him more than he’s willing to admit and also slowed him down. And yes, there are those niggling details about him being a nut, a narcissist, a boor, a bigot, a blowhard, a tornado of baloney — a man who, to borrow from an old joke, could commit suicide by leaping from his ego to his I.Q.
…
Two things about the image stood out. One is the preposterous idea that “America” is accurately represented by five populist edgelords, all of whom live in close proximity at the ends of the proverbial horseshoe. But that’s in keeping with modern Republican mythology about Trump’s movement reflecting a supposed silent majority: If the only people who count as “real Americans” are those on Team MAGA, then sure, a coalition that runs the gamut from left-leaning Putin apologists to right-leaning Putin apologists is a fair portrait of America.
The other thing that struck me was that Republicans evidently believe this image benefits them politically. Somehow we’ve arrived at a place as a country where Donald Trump is no longer weird enough in his own right to lock down “the weird vote” this fall and needs cover on his weirdo flank from the likes of Kennedy and Gabbard. Worse, he and his party seem to think there are more votes to be had by appealing to that weirdo bloc than there are to be lost among normie voters by doing so.
Former Mesa County, Colorado, clerk Tina Peters was convicted on Tuesday of seven criminal charges—four of which are felony charges—after a jury concluded she permitted unauthorized access to election voting machines as part of a broader effort to falsely claim former President Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election. The 68-year-old former county clerk was found to have hired a technician to steal information from Dominion voting machines—information that was later publicly leaked at an event organized by Trump ally and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell—and is scheduled to be sentenced in early October. “Today’s verdict is a warning to others that they will face serious consequences if they attempt to illegally tamper with our voting processes or election systems,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement. “I want to be clear—our elections are safe and fair.”
TMD.
Odd, ain’t it, that with all Trump’s kvetching about stolen elections, the only election crime convictions seem to be against his toadies?
From my bank when I logged on:
⚠️ 𝗪𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗺𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝗮𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗮 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗳𝗿𝗮𝘂𝗱 𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗮𝗿𝗴𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘀. Members have reported receiving phone calls claiming to be [our] fraud investigators. The caller is claiming that they have detected fraud on their account and directing the member to leave their card and PIN in their mailbox and a member of fraud will come pick up the card and issue a new card.
𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗡𝗢𝗧 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 [us]. Do not trust these calls. [We] will 𝗡𝗘𝗩𝗘𝗥 ask you to do this.
If someone reaches out claiming to be from [us] and you suspect it may be a scam, 𝗱𝗼 𝗻𝗼𝘁 share your personal information with them. You can email 𝗳𝗿𝗮𝘂𝗱@[us].𝗰𝗼𝗺 or call us at 𝟴𝟬𝟬.xxx.xxxx to report it to our fraud team.
𝗜𝗳 𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹 𝘂𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗱 𝗰𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 [us], 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗮𝗹𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗖𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗿 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝘁 𝗮 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗵 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗳𝗳 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗯𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗳𝘆 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘆𝗼𝘂.
Weird politics
Remember this when the Democrats try to make a mountain out of childless cat ladies.
“They say DEI is a good thing then get mad when you call someone a DEI hire. Make it make sense,” - Ryan Duff.
Via Andrew Sullivan
Also in The Times, Bret Stephens found a perfect metaphor for a certain potentate’s use of social media: “With his every tweet, Trump’s presidency felt like a diesel engine blowing black soot in the face of the country.” In a subsequent article, Bret weighed in on Trump’s climactic remarks in Milwaukee: “In its length, the speech was worthy of Fidel Castro. In its depth, of Justin Bieber.”
Via Frank Bruni
Who do we need for President? A “California lightweight, a dingbat diversity hire and BLM riot enthusiast who failed conspicuously in the single job Biden gave her: managing the crisis on the U.S. southern border”? A childless “abortion-rights fanatic who has been willing to trample the liberties of Catholic and Christian institutions, for the sake of imposing a pro-abortion hard line”
Well, if you put it that way, Rod ….
“I know that there was not the same red meat, sort of blood-and-soil nationalism that you might hear in, I don’t know, other parallel universe Republican conventions, but I do think there were some sort of Easter eggs of white nationalism in [Vance’s] speech. … [He] fundamentally believes in the supremacy of whiteness and masculinity,” - Alex Wagner, MSNBC.
“Like his mentor, like Peter Thiel, who had given him all his jobs in the world, Mr. Vance also when he founded his ‘own’ venture capital firm with help from Peter Thiel, named it after a Lord of the Rings thing. He called it Narya, N-A-R-Y-A, which you can remember because it’s ‘Aryan,’ but you move the N to the front,” - Rachel Maddow, MSNBC, who seems to think Tolkien was a fascist.
“We still don’t know for sure whether Donald Trump was hit by a bullet. … We know almost nothing. Why?” - Joy Reid, MSNBC.
(Via Andrew Sullivan)
“If Trump wins, Biden can still run again in 2028,” - Richard Harambe.
I’d be skeptical of anyone who claimed to become a radically new person on the basis of a single event, however traumatic. It might seem for a time like the person has fundamentally changed. But true transformations like that are extremely rare. And one from a 78-year-old life-long embittered narcissist in the middle of a political campaign that could benefit from an unexpected change of direction? Gimme a break.
…
Trump did seem humble and a little shaken as he described what he called “a providential moment,” though his 6th-grade-level vocabulary and digressive way of speaking often seemed to undercut what could have been a rhetorically powerful evocation of the events …
…
But last night was still useful as a reminder. Oh yeah, this guy is nuts! I hate this guy! It’s been said a million times over the past eight years, but it’s worth rehearsing one more time: It is truly remarkable that this man with this way of speaking and thinking has completely taken over one of two major political parties in the world’s oldest and most powerful and prosperous liberal democracy. That he won the presidency once, governed for four years, lost re-election, attempted a self-coup, set out to run again, and has led the race for the past year is astounding.
…
In a sensible and sane country, the man I saw on stage at the RNC Thursday night should be polling at 10 percent or lower. As it is, he’s leading.
All political conventions are cringe-worthy idolatry fests. But even by those low standards, there was so much abject Trump flattery going on among his cultish speakers that if this had been Kim Jong-un’s convention, he’d have told his propagandists, “Hey, fellas, dial it back a little.”
Trump made many false claims about immigration throughout his remarks, but the most absurd was: “You know who’s taking the jobs, the jobs that are created? One hundred and seven percent of those jobs are taken by illegal aliens.”
Compared with Trump’s acceptance speeches in 2016 and 2020, which were unusual enough, this one was unrestrained, self-indulgent and undisciplined, radiating a sense of grievance. It was Trump untethered, which is the right way to understand what his second term would be. We can’t say we haven’t been warned.
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