Trump is once again scraping the bottom of the barrel: It reminds me of this… He only hires the best…
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Apparently, the only thing people still value in this country is money. Ugh: Patriotism, religious faith, having children and other priorities that helped define the national character for generations are receding in importance to Americans, a new Wall Street Journal-NORC poll finds. The survey, conducted with NORC at the University of Chicago, a nonpartisan research organization, also finds the country sharply divided by political party over social trends such as the push for racial diversity in businesses and the use of gender-neutral pronouns. Some 38% of respondents said patriotism was very important to them, and 39% said religion was very important. That was down sharply from when the Journal first asked the question in 1998, when 70% deemed patriotism to be very important, and 62% said so of religion. The share of Americans who say that having children, involvement in their community and hard work are very important values has also fallen. Tolerance for others, deemed very important by 80% of Americans as recently as four years ago, has fallen to 58% since then.
He doesn’t recall… This is weird: Where was Ron DeSantis on 9/11? A new spot from the Lincoln Project contends that you wouldn’t have a good answer based on the Governor’s fumbling response in a recent friendly longform interview with Piers Morgan. DeSantis was beginning his year teaching at the Darlington School in Rome, Georgia when the terrorist attacks that changed America were orchestrated. But those who listened to the Morgan interview would have had no clue that he was shaping some of Georgia’s brightest minds on that dark day. “I think I’d just graduated college and I didn’t have a care in the world and all of a sudden, Boom. You know, it happened,” DeSantis said. The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson offered explanatory excoriation of the Governor’s gaffe as being of a piece with recent missteps as he continues to move toward a run for the Republican Presidential nomination. “Every American knows where they were on 9/11, and though he refuses to say it, we know Ron DeSantis was teaching at the elite Darlington school in Georgia on that day.
Tapping the American id A second look at Abraham Josephine Riesman’s Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, this time by John Hendrickson in The Atlantic, contemplates how watching a “good guy” wrestler like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson deliver “‘the people’s elbow’ to a bullying foe” is cathartic for professional wrestling fans. They pay good money for it. WWE’s McMahon “tapped into the American id,” made a fortune by it, and drew Donald Trump a roadmap to the White House. A technology and science fiction writer I know online commented Saturday night on how Generative AI “will turn civilization upside down” in ways hard to predict. For better or worse, Pandora’s Box is open and will never be closed, she wrote. That’s how technology works. Similarly, who could have predicted that professional wrestling and McMahon “could have such a profound influence on American culture and politics,” Hendrickson writes. McMahon’s pal Donald has changed American political culture and the party he leads by dint of throwing elbows at people his fans love to jeer.
Monday morning geek-out Reflecting on the studies E.J. Dionne referenced (post below), let’s consider where Democrats can narrow their vote margins and perhaps turn losses into wins. The key to Democrats winning in 2024 and beyond could lie in turning out more independent voters in precincts where they lean Democrat. My focus at the moment is how independent voters swing, especially in evenly divided states like North Carolina. (Donald Trump won the state in 2020 by under 1.5 points.) “Unaffiliated” voters (UNAs) here are the largest tranche of state registrants (36 percent in 2022), meaning Democrats must turn out D-leaners to win. Except UNAs statewide voted only 42 percent for the Democrat at the top of the November ticket in the last two general elections. That performance, however, varies wildly by precinct. In mine, four out of five UNAs voted for Joe Biden.* In some of North Carolina’s largest counties, UNAs split as much as 60 percent for Democrats. But take note.
Well, that didn’t go well. I noted over the weekend that the Israeli defense minister had called for the government to at least postpone its “judicial reforms” because the military was starting to fracture over the issue and it was threat to national security. On Sunday, Prime Minister Netanyahu fired the defense minister — and the country looks like it’s exploding. This Liveblog of the “night of chaos” is stunning. An excerpt: Anti-judicial coup protesters are blocking roads and intersections at multiple locations across Israel on Sunday night to protest Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to fire Defense Minister Gallant. According to police, demonstrations are taking place at over 150 locations. Bibi wants to make these judiciary changes to protect himself from the corruption charges that hang over his head and he has a slim 4 vote majority which he cobbled together by selling his soul to the far right, which wants to hobble the independent judiciary for its own purposes. The systems are very different and it’s not useful to make too many comparisons. But damn, there’s a lot in there that sounds familiar, no?
More things that I’ve noticed about integrating LLMs into my workflow: I also spent some time today catching up on that last piece of hype, Meta’s VR bid. I don’t like to dismiss anyone’s work, but it’s strange how Meta has been shifting tone from Oculus’s gaming vibe to something more … generic? Flat enterprise? […]
A new, anonymously-produced UN report denouncing Nicaragua’s government whitewashes the brutal US-backed 2018 coup against it while refusing to interview victims of sadistic opposition violence. Abuse and weaponization of the United Nations system by the United States and its vassal governments to both mislead and intimidate the rest of the world have been a feature of international relations since the very founding of the United Nations during the time of the Korean War. In recent years, that situation has deteriorated […]
The post Bad faith UN report on Nicaragua whitewashes violent US-backed coup appeared first on The Grayzone.
Kentucky’s 1st District sent this idiot to Congress Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, insisted to CNN’s Jake Tapper this morning that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is improperly conducting a federal investigation. “He’s investigating a presidential candidate, not to mention a former president of the United States, for a federal election crime,” Comer said repeatedly. In fact, Bragg is investigating Donald Trump for falsification of business records under New York state law. “It should be done by the Department of Justice on the federal level,” Comer insisted. BS. Comer Bragg doesn’t believe Trump should be investigated at all. He has a B.S. in Agriculture, BTW. As Aaron Rupar tweeted, the interview did not go well. “We just want the government out of our elections,” Comer said later without recognizing how that sounded. “We believe the local DAs need to be focused on business crimes, on burglary, on theft …” Again, Bragg is investigating Trump for falsification of business reords.
I confess that I thought I had followed this story as closely as humanly possible and I totally forgot about this woman: TWITTER WENT WILD after former President Donald Trump posted to Truth Social that he expected to be arrested on Tuesday. (Surprise: It turned out to be false.) The potential indictment against Trump stemmed from a hush-money payoff to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. From the moment news of the alleged 2006 extramarital tryst between Trump and Stormy came to light, the public instantly formed their opinions and chose a side. You had those who were curious and believed in the possibility of truth beyond the gossip, while the other side of the grass was littered with Trump supporters who chose to believe the desperate words of denial from both the former president and his then-lawyer/fixer, Michael Cohen. As the story grew, I knew exactly which side of the lawn I was on. I had firsthand knowledge of that fateful night in Lake Tahoe, but the story was moving faster than even I could keep up with. Lake Tahoe is a scenic, touristy town that isn’t exactly known for being popular among adult film stars.