21 Comments

1) Thank you for bringing these receipts. It demonstrates just how the media environment maintains Trump, (as it did Shrub and Reagan). The obvious corollary is that without our (non-Fox etc.) media, the Republican Party would be less relevant than the Whigs.

2) The Guardian today had an appropriate headline that would never appear mainstream American Media. Sofa so bad for JD Vance as Trump’s VP pick faces swirling speculation

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/04/jd-vance-critics-trump-vp?CMP=share_btn_url

3) After the James B. Comey email attack, I used to say that Clinton had the secret police of two nations after her.

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Since I never took a single class offered by the Econ Dept whilst I was a student at Cal, most of your posts are over my head. However, this post makes my paid subscription worth its weight in gold. Bravo.

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author

:-). Thanks! Brad

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Aug 4·edited Aug 4

Gallus, after torture, from the BBC's dramatisation of "I, Claudius"—I don't remember if the speech or nearly is in Graves':

I've watched your career with fascination, Sejanus. It's been a revelation to me. I never fully realized before how a small mind, allied to unlimited ambition, and without scruple can destroy a country full of clever men. I've seen how frail is the structure of a civilization before the onslaught of a gust of really bad breath!... Yes. But I suppose you're not really the destroyer. We must look elsewhere for that. You're merely the putrefaction that spreads after death - the outward and visible sign of its presence... . You're a lesson in history to me, Sejanus. Proving that above all.. mankind needs... its sense... of smell... .

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Aug 4·edited Aug 5

Has anyone publicised to white Appalachians what Mr Vance evidently wrote about them? From what I've read second-hand, in that book of his he adopted an 'I got out so itʼs their fault they didnʼt.' that's actually more traditional-Republican than M.A.G.A.T.y, which latter tendency provides plenty of scapegoats, e.g. blaming addiction on Mexico instead of calling it the moral failing his party traditionally has called it.

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Also the traditional view of whoever's in charge in those states. Democrats from the end of Reconstruction to the Civil Right Act, the Republicans.

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Many years ago I was in some online discussion where someone suggested that a then-popular US general could become Marius. Someone else said "In that case we have nothing to worry about, it will be 500 years before New York is sacked." I replied "But doesn't that mean we get proscription lists any time now?"

Not as funny now.

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Most of this is in plain sight and yet close to half the country think Trump is presidential?

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"We stayed with Mamaw Blanton in the house where she’d lived since before her husband left to fight the Japanese in the Pacific."

Well I'll bet he never saw John Wayne on the sands of Iwo Jima.

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Today he might have added '[…]in a pointless Democrat war.'.

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This is a whole pile of clinical goofiness.

But I wonder if this is simple decline or a lifetime mental deficit. He's been saying the wrong name for women, e.g., his entire life, I bet - they all meld into one troublesome b-word to him.

It reminds me of the story of a young man in 1964 at his high school graduation in Arizona. After the commencement speech, the young man shuffled along the receiving line with other grads to greet the speaker. The visiting 53 year-old celebrity looked him in the eye, smiled, shook his hand, and said, "My name is Ronald Reagan. What's yours?" And the graduate answered, "I'm your son, Mike." And Ronnie responded, "Oh. I didn't recognize you."

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Mixed feelings about wind power. They look nice, interesting addition to the landscape when traveling.

Search:

Windmills in Southeastern Minnesota.

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On vaccinations:

Someone I knew during my working years, science background, head of a research unit, master's degree in biology-refused to vaccinate his newborn baby. Reason was that he did not want to expose his child to risks of vaccination. Was I shocked.

The drift was: My upper middle class precious child will not be vaccinated, but we want the lesser beings to be vaccinated to give us protection.

That was way back in the 90's.

It must be very hard for a school to administer the vaccination requirement, when there are more than a few number of parents who refuse to vaccinate. That gives the schools an easy out, an excuse for government health vaccination mandates not being followed.

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Pay off the federal debt with crypto currency. Doable? It may happen.

Jewelry- don't you just love women with a couple pounds of jewelry on themselves, guess what for.

I voted for Kanye West in 2020 because thought I should be able to say to family members that I did not vote for Trump. At the time I did not want to vote for Biden because of the people he gave jobs to, like the vice president. The odds that my vote was counted correctly was probably 0. What a joke to say we have a fair election with all those mail in ballots.

Not sure about his statements on what foreign citizens we should let into the country. In an earlier age, I could have been put in the state hospital because of a diagnosis of dementia. What people not to let in, mainly shoplifters and workers looking for high paying jobs. According to my sister, employers who use prison labor would rather have a murderer than a shoplifter.

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What do you think of the speech at a Christian conference: "you won't have to vote any more after 4 years."

Scary. Some sort of apocalyptic activities will take place? I would rather have Biden in office for another 4 years.

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I will not vote for Kamala Harris. I don't think she is a good person.

I don't like the way she took over the campaign from Biden as if she was plotting it for some time. Exactly when what her campaign literature printed?

I donated money for Biden, not to Kamala Harris.

Major work of Trump in his past term in office: care for the lower classes by eliminating the health care premium responsibility payment and expanding Medicaid, raising the standard deduction on the income tax form, demonstrating to his followers that a barrier at the border would not do very much. No matter what the wall, certain people will manage to climb over like Spider-Man, I saw that one on television.

The things he said on the campaign trail are not really what he did while in office.

I am planning to vote for Biden as a write in candidate.

Check this out:

https://www.whitehouse.gov

Biden can do a lot now that he does not have to campaign any more.

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Too bad you make fun of dementia. Last May at my Medicare physical I am pretty sure I flunked my dementia exercise, and also pretty sure I did well on my Alzeimers test. They don't tell you what each is for, you have to figure out for yourself.

The tester will give you three words to remember. Then they give you a pencil and paper and you are supposed to draw a clock, and then they tell you to write a certain time on the clock with the clock hands. When you are finished you are asked to repeat those three words you were supposed to remember. I remembered one word, but not without great difficulty. I decided not to even worry about dementia type questions like that. I will just relax and flunk the test. I don't mind if I have dementia, I am in the good group and not the bad one.

It is awful to think that your "loved ones" can make you take this test for an excuse to change your life. They use dementia as a reason for removing you from your home, wanting to control your finances, other things. Things like "not sleeping in your pajamas" is a sure sign that your life needs to be changed, not wanting to eat meat anymore, the list goes on and on. If they do things like that that is ok, because they are so creative and smart. If you do things like that you must have severe problems.

So, the world is made up of people with dementia and people with Alzeimer's. I would much rather be in the dementia group. I have had experience in my family where they tell me their experiences of total loss of memory for a few hours and not knowing where they are sometimes, which does not bother them in the least, it is something that makes them special. They make up stories about my past- the event they remember about me took place, but the facts are not the same as mine. It does not take too long that their stories they make up become their truths.

I really feel sorry for Biden and Trump both for having to take those tests. Those tests are very stressful. Try one yourself. Talk about high stress, was for me.

I have some more test questions from another tester, but one I did very well on. I will tell you one: name the presidents going backward. Will not say any more because that is supposed to be confidential.

Trump recently survived an assassination attempt, he is supposed to keep campaigning for people who want him dead. Must be hard.

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I may be going against the current here, but I don't think Trump is promising an end to elections, merely an end to their having any importance because the World will have been put in conformance with what evangelicals want, completely and permanently, so they will feel no need to sully themselves by voting. (Think of Jerry Falwell's quietist screed against Martin Luther King, Jr c.1965C.E., an attack predicated on 'Christians should stay out of politics.')

This is pretty chilling itself…and reminiscent of the older libertopians'—ones not _explicitly _ anti-democratic like the Silicon Valley boys of late—effectively saying that in the ideal state elections would not matter because there would be nothing the State could ever do that would matter, and the rules set such that this could never change.

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Trump feels comfortable dismissing any appointment that didn't spring full-grown from his brow—if anyone else had any input, he bears no responsibility.

Funny, if that's the word, that his supporters enthusiastically endorse the Unitary Executive hypothesis, in which in effect there were noöne in the Branch apart from him.

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