More evidence that JD Vance is shockingly un-moored from any principles — and may be literally unhinged: J.D. Vance’s long correspondence with a transgender friend who attended his wedding has been revealed—including how he spoke about hating cops and disparaged Donald Trump and conservative icon Antonin Scalia. Sofia Nelson, a Yale Law School contemporary of Trump’s running mate, revealed how they corresponded by text and email for years until falling out over his support for a ban on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors. The dossier of his emails and texts was revealed by the New York Times Saturday, with Nelson telling the paper the release was to highlight Vance’s shapeshifting from anti-Trump moderate Republican to MAGA culture warrior, accusing him of using his old position to amass money and his new one to amass power.
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In a previous post, I analyzed what Canadian corporations are doing with their profits. I described how across almost every sector of the economy, corporations are distributing more of their profits to owners than they are investing. In this brief post, I’m going to describe what Canadian corporations are doing with funds acquired through issuance of debt and equity securities. [...]
James Scott, the Yale political scientist who specialized in so many things, has died. Jim was a scholar of peasant politics and societies, Southeast Asia, state planning, ecology, forestry, Balzac, and much else. He meant a great deal to a great many people, intellectually and personally, but there’s a small cohort of us, who came to Yale in the late 1980s and early 1990s, for whom he holds a special place in our hearts. We had come to the political science department intending to study political theory, only to discover, upon our arrival, that the official political theorists on the faculty were neither political nor theoretical. Though we tried to make it work as theorists, many of us in this […]
When he was deployed in Iraq and a student at Yale Law School, J.D. Vance occasionally blogged. “It’s like a diary,” he wrote, “only far more masculine.” Here’s what I learned about Vance from his blogs. (If you’re confused by the different names on the blogs, well, there’s a story there.) 1. Getting emotional, he feels “more like a female than I think I ever have or will.” 2. Except for Jesus Christ, Winston Churchill may have been the greatest man that ever lived, and his life was a lot like Vance’s. 3. He cries twice on one day. With one exception, this is the only time he’s cried since he was 13. 4. In the midst of having to […]
Four weeks ago today, I was hit by a truck while crossing the street in Healdsburg, CA. I was hospitalized for a week in Santa Rosa with 9 rib fractures, a broken wrist and facial bone fractures. I learned how to walk, shower, dress and care for myself while in excruciating pain. On release, I … Continue reading Health Update
An asterisk mark or a pivot point It won’t be enough to break the spell. It’s not news that former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) opposes Donald Trump. Last year he called Trump a man with the moral compass of an axe murderer. Duncan announced he would support Joe Biden for president in May, writing in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “This November, I am voting for a decent person I disagree with on policy over a criminal defendant without a moral compass.” But about six seconds into the first presidential debate it was clear that Biden was not capable of handling the rigors of the campaign. If Harris is the one to pick up the baton, Duncan is on board. With Kamala Harris now the presumptive Democratic nominee, Duncan announced on FKA Twitter he will support her. He repeated his stance in a Wednesday interview on AJC’s “Politically Georgia” podcast. Duncan disagrees with Democrats on abortion. But he isn’t shy about hijacking the Democratic Party to restore a Republican Party “I can actually recognize.” He wants back a country where neighbors can disagree without being disagreeable.
In case of emergency, break glass ceiling To Donald Trump’s backward-looking “Make America Great Again” movement, Vice President Kamala Harris says forcefully, “We’re not going back.” Her rally crowds now chant it. @dailymail Kamala Harris said ‘we’re not going back!’ to ‘failed economic policies,’ which prompted chants from the crowd. #kamala #kamalaharris #vicepresident #president #trump #election #politics #usa #wisconsin #brat ♬ original sound – frankiepolari “So here’s the thing about breaking barriers,” Harris told the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies in Wasghington, D.C. on Monday. She’s broken a few. “Breaking barriers does not mean you start on one side of the barrier and you end up on the other side. There’s breaking involved. And when you break things, you get cut. And you may bleed. And it is worth it every time, every time.” This campaign to push back the fascist urges of the MAGA Republican Party’s Christian nationalists will not be pretty. Their once racist and sexist dog whistles now are fog horns.
This is good. Judging from the reaction on Tik Tok the youts really like this. Which is good. I’ve long pushed the idea of Democrats using freedom as a rallying cry. The idea that these authoritarian right wingers, of all people, promote freedom as their brand is ludicrous.
Is our Democrats learning? If you haven’t seen the first Kamala Harris ad that dropped Thursday, here ’tis. Both with the Beyoncé soundtrack and her “fighting for the future” framing, Harris is defining freedom our way while reclaiming it from conservatives who wrap themselves in it while stomping on the freedoms of everyone not in their MAGA tribe. Claiming freedom, that all-American value, is a move on which Anat Shenker-Osorio has insisted for years. It’s finally sinking in. Anand Giridharadas’s The Ink observes: Harris frames the election as the freedom to choose a future — following the advice messaging expert Anat Shenker-Osorio has been talking to us about all year. This isn’t about the narrow notion of freedom that’s gotten currency on the right, the sort of freedom that’s about retreating from public life and obligations, even if it is wrapped in the flag. It’s about coming together to work for a bigger, broader sense of freedom that includes all of us — the idea that the flag actually should stand for.
And it’s going to hurt them Awwww. They have belatedly realized that their piggishness might not be the selling point they thought it was. It’s too late, I’m afraid. We know who they are: That’s very nice, I’m sure. But unless Fox News and the right wing media lay off of it, it’s going to be out there. And it’s going to gross out over half the population. . And they need to have a talk with Donald Trump: Also, respects to our potentially new Democrat Challenger, Laffin’ Kamala Harris. She did poorly in the Democrat Nominating process, starting out at Number Two, and ending up defeated and dropping out, even before getting to Iowa, but that doesn’t mean she’s not a “highly talented” politician! Just ask her Mentor, the Great Willie Brown of San Francisco. I’m sure I don’t have to point out that he has suggested exactly the same thing about NY Attorney General Leticia James and Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis, both of whom are Black women. He’s the one who gives permission for this garbage, not Mike Johnson.