It’s so awful in so many ways. But since people are taking it seriously as some sort of political manifesto. (They talked about it in the debate last night.) I think it’s worthwhile to point this out: Reminder: The “Rich Men North of Richmond” policy agenda is utterly incoherent. Anthony says government spends too much money, but also isn’t helping people enough. Miners (who earn 20 percent above the average national wage) are somehow in trouble. Skinny people are dying in the streets from drugs and suicide. But fat welfare queens are bringing home the bacon. The entire thing is an evasion of personal responsibility and an exercise in special pleading: The government should spend more money on the people I like and less money on the people I do not like. And also: Everything that’s wrong in my life is someone else’s fault. Finally: Oliver Anthony seems unaware that the places he romanticizes are actually the ones sucking the most off the government teat and contributing the least to our economy. We are indeed a nation of makers and takers. And the takers are Oliver Anthony and his friends. Thank you JV Last.
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Here’s an article about how Trump mini-me Vivek Ramaswamy made his fortune. He’s a familiar type: On the campaign trail, as he lays out why he is a different kind of presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy calls himself a Harvard-trained “scientist” from the lifesaving world of biotechnology. “I developed a number of medicines,” Mr. Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and conservative writer, told a gathering at a construction firm this month in Davenport, Iowa. “The one I’m most proud of is a therapy for kids, 40 of them a year, born with a genetic condition who, without treatment, die by the age of 3.” The reality of Mr. Ramaswamy’s business career is more complex, the story of a financier more than a scientist, and a prospector who went bargain hunting, hyped his vision, drew investment and then cashed out in two huge payouts — totaling more than $200 million — before his 35th birthday. Mr. Ramaswamy’s enterprise is best known for a spectacular failure.
The “ratings” are a little bit tepid Trump is bragging about his unprecedented numbers on Tucker’s Xitter show last night saying that it got over a hundred million viewers. That’s not true. “Views” on the platform are recorded as anyone who may have scrolled past it , not how many people actually saw it much less watched it. Here are the more pertinent numbers: As of this writing, Carlson’s interview with Trump has been reposted (formerly “retweeted”) 171,800 times, quote-posted (formerly “quote-tweeted”) 14,500 times, liked 578,100 times, bookmarked 46,500 times, and has been replied to around 47,000 times. Not especially low numbers. It’s undeniable that Trump has a lot of supporters, many of whom swarm on Twitter. But these days, Fox averages about 1.7 million viewers during its primetime broadcast. And notice the specificity of the word “viewers.” Because none of the numbers tracking engagement on a X post tell you if someone actually watched the video.
It’s not just a “Once in a Lifetime” question “Huh, I wonder what happened in 1980?” Dissent magazine’s Matthew Sitman snarked on Tuesday. He referred to a chart posted by David Leonhardt. “Reaganland” author Rick Perlstein replied, “Folks stopped getting a free ride. Now only can enjoy long life if they honor the natural order of things as dictated (if religious) by the Almighty; or (if secular) the almighty market. Or else, they had it coming. Order having been restored, conservatives are satisfied now…” But not really. Not until they’ve fully restored the monarchy on these shores. Barring that, reinstated feudalism will suffice. Surely the peasants will rejoice. Leonhardt has been working on “Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream.” The book that analyzes how over the last half-century “our society has abandoned working-class people – of all races – in crucial ways. Their incomes have stagnated, as has their life expectancy. They no longer trust either political party or other institutions.
This is just sad: When Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee began a push in April to address public safety, his family was grieving the loss of two close friends, both educators killed in a mass shooting at a Nashville Christian school. His call for millions of dollars to harden school security was embraced by Republicans in the legislature, who flanked him during a formal announcement. But days later, when Mr. Lee, a Republican, decided to go further and ask for an order of protection law that could temporarily restrict an individual’s access to firearms, he stood alone for the announcement. The legislature would wrap up its work by the end of the month without taking a vote to pass it. Now, Mr. Lee has summoned lawmakers back to Nashville on Monday for a special session on public safety that could include consideration of a limited version of the law. But without the support of most in his own party, that measure appears, once again, destined for failure, underscoring the power dynamics of a Republican supermajority driven by a right-wing base hardened against any potential infringement on gun ownership. They won’t even go for a temporary restriction on firearms.
Former president Donald Trump won’t be appearing at tonight’s GOP presidential debate in Milwaukee Wisconsin. He says he has no need to participate because he’s so far ahead in the polls. And he’s right. He’s also very busy. He needs to get ready to be arrested on Thursday when he turns himself in for booking at the Fulton County jail. He’s got a lot on his plate. It will be interesting to see if any of the challengers will summon up the nerve to attack Trump for failing to show up or go after him for his legal problems. I’m sure we’ll hear something about Hunter Biden since this will be broadcast on Fox and they apparently have some sort of contractual obligation to discuss the “Biden Crime Family” every ten minutes or so. I expect the candidates will all be eager to participate. The question really is whether any of the challengers will take the opportunity to tell the audience about the “Trump Crime Family’s” global pay-to-play operation.
Republicans trust their doctors to make health recommendations. That’s good… But nearly 75% of Republicans trust Donald Trump to make health recommendations. They trust him over the CDC. Here’s where we are. Trump pushed Operation Warp Speed and took the vaccine but he isn’t allowed to take credit for it because his people have been brainwashed against them: America’s growing anti-vaxx crisis has been laid bare in a national poll that shows huge chunks of the country believe in conspiracy theories about safe shots. One-quarter of adults said they believe the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism – a widely studied and discredited claim that emerged in the 1990s. The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) poll also found that a third of adults believe that the Covid shots caused thousands of sudden deaths in otherwise healthy people. The vaccine-skeptical movement across the country intensified after the Covid pandemic, linked to pushback against Covid vaccine mandates and increased misinformation as people spent more time online.
The last time Trump skipped a debate was January 28, 2016. Remember this? Those were the days. I’m going to guess that won’t happen this time. Ron DeSantis has been admonished not to go after Trump and instead take on Vivek Ramaswamy and he’s already sinking like a rock in the polls. Chris Christie will likely be the lone Trump critic and he’ll probably be pretty harsh. But what difference does it make? This debate is basically a death watch pageant to determine who will be in position to step in if Trump is unable to run? Nothing will ever beat this moment, however. He’s so dignified. The good news for Trump lovers is that he’ll be with Tucker Carlson on his Xitter show: The interview between Carlson and Trumpalmost didn’t happen, according to two people familiar with its planning.The men had been talking informally for two months about possibly setting up an event to draw attention away from the Fox-hosted debate.
This new talking point is just plain weird. It’s all over Fox News that Biden doesn’t care about the Maui fire victims: Okaaaay: For some weird reason, the fact that Biden stopped to talk to a dog handler and pat the dog is being portrayed as more evidence of his cold indifference to suffering. Whatever. This is clearly an official talking point that’s coming out of Republican circles following the old Karl Rove strategy of “attack your enemy’s strength” as they did with John Kerry. But that was attacking him for something he’d done long in the past that couldn’t be verified. This is something that’s happening in real time. Not that it will stop them. They have realized that they can say anything — up is down and black is white — and their audience will believe them because they see nothing else. And if they do happen to see something that refutes the MAGA media, they just think it’s fake news. And honestly, the right is so performative now that it’s really all just a big game show to them. It doesn’t matter if it’s true. All that matters is if it owns the libs.
Donald’s Trump’s threats on social media MIGHT finally lead to legal consequences for him. Woo hoo! Today it was revealed that in Trump’s pretrial conditions in the Georgia RICO case he is forbidden from making any “direct or indirect threat of any nature against the community or to any property in the community,” including in “posts on social media or reposts of posts” by others on social media. Wow. It took a long time to get here, especially considering all the other times he intimidated and threatened witnesses on social media. Remember Alexander Vindman? Marie Yovanovitch, US Ambassador to Ukrainian? But now, because he’s under pretrial conditions and protective orders issued by a judge in our legal system, he MIGHT be charged with witness tampering. It’s one of the reasons that we needed to get him in this position. It’s the difference between lying to the media and on social media to the public, vs lying in court under oath. Keep Normalizing Jail For Trump Every time these conditions are set I watch the cable hosts and legal analysts talk about how pretrial jailing is not going to happen.